Remembering John Leighton Stuart
By David Barboza
Photo: Fugh familyTwo leading historians were asked to comment on the role John Leighton Stuart played in U.S.–China relations. They responded with these emails:
Photo: Fugh family
Photo: Fugh familyFrom NANCY BERNKOPF TUCKER, a professor of history at Georgetown University and an expert on U.S.–China relations:
Stuart was reasonably significant as the last US ambassador on the mainland. Having been president of Yenching University he knew some of the Chinese leadership from their school days. Most important of these was Huang Hua and he may have been sent to Nanjing specifically to make contact with the ambassador as the civil war was in its critical phase. Stuart wanted to travel to Beijing and was invited to go. He hoped to talk to Chinese leaders (it is unclear if he would have been able to do so), but the Truman administration would not allow him to travel north. He and Chiang Kai-shek had somewhat tense relations in the last years he was in China but the Korean War changed his mind and Stuart became more supportive of Chiang and the ROC. He was later denounced on the mainland in the “Resist America, Aid Korea” campaign as a spy and enemy of the people. I suppose it makes a difference what you mean by significant. Stuart was a symbol of what the US hoped to do, and thought it was doing, in China — helping to build a strong and prosperous country
Photo: Fugh family
Photo: Fugh familyFrom CHEN JIAN, the Michael J. Zak professor of history for U.S.– China relations at Cornell University:
In my own research on the making of the Chinese-American confrontation, I studied Stuart; as the last US ambassador to China before the 1949 Communist takeover and also as head of Yenching University in the 1930s, he played an extremely important role in US-China relation. In particular, his efforts to bridge the US and the Chinese Communists (which included his meetings with Huang Hua, one of his Yenching students and, in 1949, the person in charge of the Communist Communist foreign affairs in Nanjing, where Stuart stayed after the departure of the Nationalist Government) has been a topic of extensive dicussion about scholars on US-China relations. Shao Yuming has a book on him; and, in my own book, China’s Road to the Korean War, I devoted a section to the Stuart-Huang meetings (Hua later became the PRC’s foreign minister). After the US Statement published the “China White Paper” in August 1949, Mao wrote five essays to rebut it, and one was titled “Farewll, John Leighton Stuart.”
在毛泽东笔下美国人司徒雷登是一个美国文化帝国主义忠实地守护者，在中国民众眼中他是一个能说一口流利杭州话的前美国驻华大使，而司徒雷登评价自己则是一个更甚于美国人的中国人。本周二，在司徒雷登逝世46年之后，他的骨灰在其生前好友的陪伴下被安葬在杭州。
华盛顿和北京对司徒雷登一生有着特殊意 义。美国纽约时报在本周四的报道中写道：“美国传教士、前美国驻华大使司徒雷登逝世46年后骨灰在杭州安葬。他在去世前曾希望自己死后能和1926年去世 的妻子埋葬在一起。但由于当时的政治原因司导致了几十年间司徒先生的遗愿没能得以实现。”
1876年他出生在中国杭州，父亲也是早年到中 国从事基督教传教工作的神职人员。11岁那年他随父亲回到美国弗吉尼亚上学时，他的同学都取笑他是一个不会说话的怪物。司徒雷登的生命中有很多个第一，他 把西方的神学教育带到了中国，1919年他出任教会大学燕京大学的第一任校长。直到1949年在政权交替时被毛泽东勒令关闭学校，司徒雷登一行人在当年8 月返回美国太平洋舰队所在地珍珠港。燕京大学重新开放是在1996年。
可以说司徒雷登全家都和中国有着密切关系，他的父母和他的一个弟弟都被安葬在杭州。1962年，司徒雷登因病在美国去世。今年的11月18日，本周二在现任美国驻华大使雷德和数十位中外友人的陪伴下终于达成了司徒雷登半个世纪未了的遗愿，将他的骨灰安放于杭州安闲园墓地。
回忆起司徒雷登，他的老校友至今还历历在目，燕京大学老校长手捧着白色鲜花为曾经的老友送别。为此美国纽约时报中写道：“直到1973年美国总统尼克松努力恢复中美外交关系前，司徒雷登曾是中国共产党掌权前最后一任驻华大使。”
与习近平有关
1949年，司徒雷登返回美国后他的生活交由一位华裔秘书照管。现在这位秘书的儿子美国陆军华裔将军傅履仁对纽约时报透露，“实际上司徒雷登去世后他的骨灰一直被存放在他父亲的卧室中。经过多年交涉才去年才终于从中国政府得到答复。”
2007年傅履仁作为中美友好团体美国华裔百人会在会见中央政治局新任常委习近平时才与中国政府达成协议，今年通过外交途径将司徒先生的骨灰运抵杭州。
在安葬仪式中现任美国驻华大使雷德先生对中国媒体表示：“中国是司徒雷登先生热爱的国家，他出生在杭州，今天又回到杭州，完成了他的人生旅途。他相信教育是加深中美两国关系的重要途径之一，如果他能看到今天的变化，他一定会非常高兴。”
John Leighton Stuart, China Expert, Is Buried There at Last
SHANGHAI — On Aug. 2, 1949, with the Communists about to seize power in Beijing, the United States recalled its ambassador to China, John Leighton Stuart, a respected missionary, educator and diplomat.
A ceremony on Monday honored John Leighton Stuart,a missionary and educator whose ashes were laid to rest at a cemetery near the eastern city of Hangzhou, China.
Mao Zedong, the insurgent Communist leader who would take power two months later, quickly denounced Mr. Stuart as a symbol of failed American imperialism. Mr. Stuart’s departure effectively ended diplomatic ties between the United States and China for a quarter century.
Mr. Stuart died in Washington in 1962. He had written in his will that he hoped his remains would someday be buried in China, where he had been born the son of Christian missionaries in 1876 and had helped found a prominent university, but where he was no longer welcome.
For decades, the answer from Beijing seemed to be no.
But on Monday, 46 years after his death and after years of negotiations about the political implications of such a burial, Mr. Stuart’s ashes were laid to rest at a cemetery near the eastern city of Hangzhou, about two hours south of Shanghai.
A small ceremony honoring Mr. Stuart on Monday was attended by Chinese and American officials, including the vice mayor of Hangzhou and the United States ambassador, Clark Randt Jr., as well as alumni of Yenching University in Beijing, the institution Mr. Stuart helped found.
“We tried for years to get this done,” said Maj. Gen. John Fugh, 74, who has retired from the military and whose father was a close aide to Mr. Stuart in China. “Now, after nearly a half century, his wish has finally been carried out.”
China granted the longstanding request after General Fugh, who now leads the Committee of 100, a Chinese-American advocacy group, appealed to several top officials, including Xi Jinping, a new member of the Politburo Standing Committee. Mr. Xi, whom experts on party affairs expect to succeed President Hu Jintao as China’s top leader in 2012, had been the party boss in Shanghai and neighboring Zhejiang Province, where Hangzhou is located.
It took decades to resolve the matter, in part, because of an essay Mao wrote on Aug. 18, 1949, titled “Farewell, Leighton Stuart!” In it, Mao called Mr. Stuart “a symbol of the complete defeat of the U.S. policy of aggression” and chided the United States for its support of the Nationalists, who fought the Communists in a civil war before fleeing to Taiwan in 1949 with their leader, Chiang Kai-shek.
The essay was reprinted in Chinese textbooks and is recited by children all over China to this day.
In spite of President Nixon’s opening to China in the 1970s, the restoration of diplomatic relations between the United States and China and trillions of dollars in trade between the countries, even senior Communist Party officials hesitated to take a clear stand on a matter on which Mao had made such a memorable pronouncement. While many of Mao’s policies have long since been discarded, the ruling party still promotes him as the father of the modern Chinese nation.
Mr. Stuart’s own history is a window into the shifting sands of United States-China relations from the later years of the Qing dynasty to the rise of Communism.
He was born in Hangzhou and grew up speaking fluent Chinese. He moved to the United States with his parents at the age of 11, eventually earned a degree from Union Theological Seminary and returned to China in 1904.
For the next 45 years, he worked as a missionary and educator in Hangzhou, Beijing and Nanjing. He raised money from wealthy Americans, including Henry Luce, the founder of Time and Life magazines, and in 1919 founded and was president of Yenching University, a Christian institution whose idyllic campus now is the site of Peking University.
Historians say Mr. Stuart pushed for reforms in China and led protests against the Japanese occupation of northern and then eastern China. Because of his stance, he was jailed in Beijing by the Japanese after Pearl Harbor. He was released in 1945.
A year later, he was named ambassador to China at a time when Washington was supporting the Nationalists, who were waging a civil war with the Communists.
Mr. Stuart was the last American ambassador to China before the Communists seized power. It was not until 1973, after Nixon pushed to re-establish relations, that the United States opened a diplomatic liaison office in Beijing.
Mr. Stuart returned to Washington in 1949 and suffered a stroke. His wife, who had died in 1926, was buried near Yenching University; his parents were buried in Hangzhou.
General Fugh said Mr. Stuart lived the last decade of his life in Washington, under the care of General Fugh’s father, Philip Fugh. Mr. Fugh was Mr. Stuart’s longtime assistant.
The effort to have Mr. Stuart buried in China goes back to the 1960s. Mr. Stuart’s children tried but failed to persuade Beijing to allow his remains to be buried there. They died and left no heirs. And in 1988, Philip Fugh died after unsuccessfully pressing for a burial in China. General Fugh has led the efforts since.
Last year, after meeting Mr. Xi, General Fugh said he got word that a burial in Hangzhou had been approved.
Mr. Stuart’s ashes were brought to Shanghai through American diplomatic channels. And on Monday, they were slipped into the ground in Hangzhou. The Yenching alumni played “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Amazing Grace.”
“This is a promise that has been fulfilled after half a century,” General Fugh said Wednesday. “Now, Ambassador Stuart and my father can rest in peace.”
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