Chapter 169 Chiang loses legitimacy

When the protests swept across the province and completely spread to the whole of China, the authorities prepared to transfer the Second Army Reserve Division from Dali to assist the Yunnan Garrison Commander Huo Kuizhang in suppressing the protest movement.The wisest strategy would be to try to appease the left-wing liberals, and Chiang Kai-shek, in his summer home on Mount Lu, might have considered that.However, now that Dai Li is dead, the secret agents are getting more and more out of control. At 1 pm on July 15, Li Gongpu's memorial service was held in the auditorium of Yunnan University.The main organizer of the memorial ceremony was Wen Yiduo, a poet, professor and vice-chairman of the Democratic League.After the ceremony, Wen Yiduo held a press conference in the office of Democracy Weekly.At the meeting, he publicly accused Chiang Kai-shek himself of planning the murder.A little after 5:00 p.m., Wen Yiduo and his son Wen Lihe left the press conference together and went back to their home in the teacher's residential area of ​​Southwest Associated University in Xicangpo.On the corridor leading to the residential area, four ambushing people jumped out and shot Wen Yiduo in the head.His son threw himself on the poet's body, and he was also shot.The killers jumped into a jeep parked nearby and fled.

The whole country was shocked.Perhaps no event in the postwar period galvanized elites against Chiang Kai-shek's regime more than the tragic assassination of Wen Yiduo, and its influence spread to the U.S. Navy Department, which was accused of having provided Dai Li's murderers with specialized Silent pistol.Even Chiang Kai-shek realized that the murder had gone too far, so he sent senior military personnel to Kunming within a few days to try to keep the damage to a minimum. The main personnel in charge of the investigation are the officials of the Military Command itself: Tang Zong, Director of the Police Department of the Military Command Bureau, and Cheng Yiming, Director of the Inspection Division of the Police Department of the Songhu Garrison Command.From the beginning of the investigation, Tang Zong made it clear to Cheng Yiming that he was not investigating the assassination of Li Gongpu, which clearly implied that it was an assassination order issued by Chiang Kai-shek himself.

Key to the investigation is the Jeep, which left tire tracks at the scene of the murder and whose license plate was noted by at least one person.Cheng Yiming quickly judged that the assassination was carried out by four agents from the Inspection Office of the Yunnan Garrison Headquarters, led by a man named Xiong Guangfu, who had received direct orders from the commander of the Garrison Headquarters, Huo Kuizhang. At a meeting held in a guest house of the Military Command (now renamed the Bureau of Secrecy), Cheng Yiming truthfully reported the results of his investigation to Tang Zong.Tang pondered for a long time, and finally asked: "What do you think should be done in this case?" Cheng Yiming made two suggestions.First, the "Old Mister" must be told that the case has been solved and that the four assassins are all soldiers.The four should therefore be handed over to the gendarmerie for investigation and prosecution.Second, since Tang Zong and Huo Kuizhang were both from the same hometown and classmates in Huangpu, he should let General Huo report directly to Jiang about his involvement in the case through the radio station of the Security Bureau.

Once the case was transferred to the military police department, it fell within the purview of Commander Zhang Zhen.Commander Zhang promised to take full responsibility for the case, and suggested the following lie to get by: Two military policemen tasked with protecting the Chairman's safety attended Li Gongpu's memorial service and subsequent press conference.When they heard that Wen Yiduo attacked the "head of state" himself, they were filled with righteous indignation, and followed Professor Wen home, drawing guns and assassinating him on the way.Chief of General Staff Gu Zhutong was asked to contact Chiang Kai-shek directly at Lushan to get his approval for the ruse.After the chairman agreed, the Military Police Department announced the names of the two military policemen: Li Wenshan and Tang Shiliang were the murderers, and then held a public trial for them.

This was the statement made public by the Central News Agency on August 25. As a result, the two military policemen were executed as the murderers of Wen Yiduo.However, in the end, Chiang Kai-shek was still not convinced of the reliability of this deception. He was afraid that the conspiracy would be exposed sooner or later, and his role in it would be revealed.In order to prevent the conspiracy from being exposed, the real murderer was placed under house arrest, Huo Kuizhang was relieved of his post as Yunnan Police Commander, and Gong Shaoxia, chief of the Kunming Police Station, was forced to retire.However, all these remedial and preventive measures failed to erase people's memory of Wen Yiduo's massacre by a brutal and tyrannical regime whose illegitimate ruler was the secret police, which the chairman could hardly control.