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Abstract
Gordon Harmon was born in China in 1900 and after the First World War served in the Salt Revenue Guards for a number of years. After the outbreak of WWII he was posted in a liaison role to the centre of Chinese government in Chungking. There he worked with Chiang Kai Shek's Nationalist Intelligence Service. But he also had quite close links with Chou En-Lai, who was also in Chungking at that time. The extent of his more general relationship with the Communists is unclear, but he seems to have reported fairly extensively on their plans and intentions. Harmon has left a very detailed record of a conversation with Mao Tse-tung in 1946 which seems to suggest that he had met Mao a few times before.. It was Mao who apparently said to Harmon “I am not interested in Hongkong and I will certainly not allow it to become a bone of contention between your country and mine”
Notes
†The Wade-Giles system of romanisation has been used in this article as this was the version used by Harmon throughout his writings.
1 This later became part of Yenching University.
2 During the Qing Empire (1644–1912), Chahar had not been a Chinese province but a ‘Special Region’, and in Harmon's time during the early days of the Republic of China, Chahar Special Administrative Region had been a subdivision of Chihli (直隸) Province, but referred to colloquially by foreigners as Mongolia.
3 Little seems to be known about Marmon. A copy of Hardinge's letter to his parents, dated September 1956, posted on an internet website, referred to Oscar Marmon, describing him as a “man in his late 70s, well-known in China, who had been recalled by The Firm (i.e. MI6) after a break since the First World War and who had accompanied Hardinge to Peking on that last greatest mission”. This he enigmatically described as “having as its real purpose that, recognising Communist domination was inevitable, (and) no set-up planned to work with Chiang Kai Shek would last, we set in motion what is running out there now”.
4 The British, who controlled the Administration of the salt tax, Peking Government's largest source of revenue, maintained that the purpose of Chinese Maritime Customs and the Salt Gabelle was to meet the indemnities imposed as a result of the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion.
5 T V Soong became finance minister in the new Nationalist government in 1925.
6 It was also known as the Salt Revenue Guards Division, and was commanded by Major General Wen Yin-Hsin, a graduate from West Point.
7 Supplement London Gazette 22 January 1943 (p. 435).
8 WO 203/127 British Military Mission Chungking: Administration, TNA.
9 FANY – First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, all women volunteers, a small number of whom were employed during World War II by SOE (and probably SIS).
10 Richard J. Aldrich: Britain's Secret Intelligence Service in Asia during the Second World War, 1998.
11 K. Jeffery, MI6, The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p. 583.
12 Jeffery. ibid. p. 584.
13 Heliwell (Chief SI, OSS, CT) to Donovan, ‘A Study of British Intelligence Organisations in China’, 13 February 1945, DP.
14 MI6 CX Report 28100, ‘Chinese Economic Policy’, 3 July 1945, WO 208/474, PRO.
15 MI6 Political Report No. 13 to the FO, 3 April 1945. WO 208/474, PRO.
16 Exodus 16.
17 Barnouin and Yu, Zhou Enlai: A Political Life. Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006, p. 78.
18 By May 1942, US HQ AAF CBI had absorbed the Chungking staff of US Military Mission and Forward Echelon responsible for liaison with Chinese Nationalist Government and Executive of the 8th Route Army of the Chinese Communist Party, and the US Government. (Federal Records in the National Archives of the US.)
19 Lieutenant General 1897–1946) Dai Chunfeng … (commonly known as Dai Li): Head of Chiang Kai-shek's Military Intelligence Service.
20 Lanxin Xiang, Recasting the Imperial Far East, 1995.
21 Edgar Snow, Red Star over China. Random House Inc, 1944.
22 Agnes Smedley, Daughter of Earth. New York: Howard-McCann, 1929.
23 Garnons-Williams (HPD) to Mackenzie (SOE) and Bowden-Smith (SIS) 28 April 1945, HS 1.304, PRO.
24 Harmon, ‘Where now, China?’ (p. 51).
25 Lanxin Xiang, Recasting the Imperial Far East, 1995, p. 187.
26 Brucellosis.
27 Photos and objects treasured by Harmon:(A) Autographed photograph of Chou En-lai dedicated to Ho Ke-teng [He Gedeng] (Gordon Harmon) and signed ‘Chou En-lai 2nd of !st month 1945’.(B) Photograph of Chiang Kai-shek dedicated to Mr. Ke-deng and signed Chiang Chungcheng (Jiang Zhongzheng) [i.e. Chiang Kai-shek] undated.(C) Photograph of Mao Tse-tung dedicated in English to W G Harmon, Esq. signed cc Miao with date 27 Mar. xxxx (illegible).(D) Photograph of Harmon with Dihowa-Gegan Huktuktu, a living Buddha.(E) Photograph of Harmon's wedding group when he was British Consul in Peip'ing March 1948.(F) A painting presented (undated) to Harmon by Pu Quan (a cousin of the last Emperor, Pu Yi), ‘A scholar dwelling amongst the pines’.(G) A Japanese sword received from Mao for Harmon's anti-Japanese co-operation with Chou En-lai (according to Lanxin Xiang).
28 An interesting point has been raised – just how did they communicate? Despite Harmon's fluency, Mao's rich Hunanese accent is well known to have been well nigh impossible to understand by Chinese from other provinces.