Again, in 1930, Mme. Sun, the former Soong Chingling, burst into print in an angry tirade against the Generalissimo. On January 22nd of that year, she sent a cable to the Anti-Imperialist League in Berlin, saying: “Reactionary forces in the Nationalist Government are combining with the Imperialists in brutal repression against the Chinese masses. They have degenerated into Imperialist tools and attempted to provoke war with Russia.”
Feeling ever closer to the Communists and farther, ideologically, from the rest of her family, she chose the anniversary of the eightieth birthday of her predecessor, the first Madame Sun, to take her stand, in 1946, in favor of the Chinese Communists and the Soviets. Her stinging speech was headlined in every Chinese newspaper and many abroad. There could be no doubt now that she was a full-fledged militant Communist, willing to use the powers of her brilliant mind and persuasive personality to the utmost.
Today, nearing sixty, she is third Vice-Chairman of the Communist Party, and her influence is, perhaps, the strongest and most forceful of any women member, so global are her contacts. Soon after her “elevation” to the third Vice-Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party early in 1950, she said: “China will continue to follow the policy of leaning to one side, to the side led by the great Soviet Union under the leadership of the mighty Stalin: the side of peace and construction.”
A current rumor, despite denials, is to the effect that Mme. Sun may be having another change of ideas and ideals and is, therefore, not in the good graces of General Mao who, like his mentors, Stalin and Genghis Khan, hates a turncoat.
In appearance, Madame Sun is not unattractive. She dresses simply, preferring plain silks without the elaborate trimmings so dearly loved by her sisters. She wears her neat, black hair parted in the center and drawn back smoothly from her face to form a large, soft “bun” at the nape of her neck. She speaks in a quiet voice and says exactly what she thinks.
At the Shanghai Opera one evening in 1946, Madame Wei Tao-ming, wife of the then Chinese Ambassador to the United States, was seated just behind her. Madame Sun, who was flanked on either side by well-known Chinese and American Communists, turned around at each intermission to chat with Madame Wei, who had been one of the youngest and most devout revolutionaries. I learned the subject of the conversations that evening when we returned to Madame Wei’s temporary home in the Avenue Lafayette. Livid with rage, Madame Wei said to me:
“Do you know what she kept saying to me, over and over again?”
Naturally I could not have known and said as much. Madame Wei continued:
“She berated me bitterly for not being nicer to the Communists! Me, of all people, who was one of the first and hardest working fighters in her husband’s own revolution! She said, ‘You’re going to regret it one day, if you do not change your attitude. They are in the driver’s seat, and they are going to stay there’!”
I had never seen Madame Wei so beside herself with anger. This was just four years before it was generally acknowledged that the Communists were in full authority, and the period of tenure is a matter of conjecture. Madame Sun, apparently, had seen the handwriting on the wall and had interpreted it correctly.