Heroes' Welcome

Boat whistles shrieked, gongs clanged, and bunting fluttered from every sampan as the LSTs bearing 14.000 Chinese P.W.s from Korea nosed into the gaily decorated pier. Flag-waving thousands lined the 20-mile route to Taipei; firecrackers were so thick that the prisoners waving from their trucks were often hidden in haze. Premier Chen Cheng proclaimed "the advent of doomsday" for Communist China's rulers, and posters urged ACCELERATE PREPARATIONS FOR COUNTERATTACK.

Said one P.W. "My tongue fails to describe how happy I feel." Nationalist China, bursting with pride that so many of its countrymen have chosen the Nationalist side when choosing was difficult, was determined to give the prisoners a rousing welcome. But it also wanted to be sure that no unregenerate Communist agents slipped in unrecognized in the general rejoicing. Charged with the duties both of welcome and of careful screening is the officer who has emerged as Nationalist China's rising man. He is Lieut. General Chiang Ching-kuo, eldest son of the 66-year-old Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek.

Young Revolutionary. General Chiang Ching-kuo at 44 is an experienced hand both at ferreting out subversives and at educating the uncertain -- he was trained by the Russians themselves. A round-faced man growing slightly stout, who wears his jet black hair in a crew cut, Chiang Ching-kuo is a bit of a mystery even to intimates.

He is closemouthed about his personal life. The only child of the Generalissimo's first marriage, he was a bumptious youth who was jailed in Shanghai by the British when he was 15 for fomenting a student strike. Soon after, he told his father he wanted to go to Moscow, "to learn more about revolutionary ideas," and set off.

He became a cadet at Leningrad's military academy, where he lasted two years before being expelled for "antiStalinist" activ ities. Condemned, he spent the next seven years in Stalin's forced-labor camps. There he met the Russian girl whom he married.

Released when Chiang Kai-shek negotiated a nonaggression pact with Russia in 1937, Chiang Ching-kuo was put in charge of rehabilitating a big district in Kiangsi which had been under Communist rule, and of reindoctrinating its 3,000,000 inhabitants. Even his detractors admit he was outstandingly successful. During World War II he ran a training school for political officers in Chungking. In Shang hai in 1948 he directed the drive to stabilize the gold yuan ; hundreds of black marketeers were arrested. His enemies say dozens were summarily executed.

The Octopus. In 1950 on Formosa, Chiang Ching-kuo came into his own. He organized the political department of the Ministry of National Defense. He established "political officers" in every echelon down to platoon level and even among the guerrilla forces operating on the mainland. Their mission: to indoctrinate the troops for Nationalist China, against the Communists. Orders issued by unit commanders had to be countersigned by the unit political officers, who got their orders from Chiang Ching-kuo and were responsible only to him. They also functioned as a secret police. (In 1951 a top-ranking general was accused by Chiang Ching-kuo's men, and shot for espionage.)

Under Chiang's "overcoming-difficulty" program, his men operated like chaplains listening to soldiers' troubles; under his "troop-comforting" program, women officers taught troops to dance and sing. If & when the Nationalists invade the mainland, Chiang Ching-kuo will be in charge of reindoctrinating the population. He has already practiced the technique on Communist Chinese captured in Nationalist raids, organizing them into "New Life Units," which are gradually mobilized into the regular army.

Whose Efficiency? Chiang Ching-kuo drives his own jeep, mingles with crowds at night to listen to their complaints, has often gone along on raids on the mainland to assess their effectiveness. His critics charge that Chiang Ching-kuo is a totalitarian, trained by the Communists and still using Communist methods. His admirers say he is the ablest man on Formosa. Chiang Ching-kuo says: "The basic objective is to eliminate Communism, and any tactic that helps toward that end should be used. For example, the fact that the Russians use jet fighters does not mean that we should not use jet fighters against them. What difference does it make whether it's Russian efficiency or American efficiency?"

Chiang Ching-kuo, busy preparing the prisoners' camps, shucked off his mud-spattered uniform this week and donned a sober black suit to greet the first arrivals. He shook hands with as many as he could, telling each: "Welcome to Formosa. Tell us your wishes, and we will try and answer them." Chiang's plans are to treat the P.W.s as civilians. Each will be offered the choice of entering the Nationalist army or going into civil life. In the three to six months during which they will be under surveillance, political officers will lecture them. Said a Chiang Ching-kuo aide last week: "The small number who may be identified as Communist spies must be treated as spies and not as free citizens. But ... we prefer to fight ideas with ideas. When conversion is found to be absolutely impossible, then we will consider other measures."

Most of the proven antiCommunists, however, will have heard all the indoctrination before. They even have a phrase for it, whatever side it comes from: "chewing cold rice." Chiang Ching-kuo hopes to keep the cold-rice chewing to a minimum. After all, most of the 14,000 have already risked their lives (or at least bravely entrusted them to the conscience of the West) to get the freedom that is now about to be theirs.

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