General Albert C. Wedemeyer by John J McLaughlin

Author:John J McLaughlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781480406612
Publisher: Casemate Publishers

CHAPTER 12

HOW THE COMMUNISTS TOOK CHINA

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

—Mao Zedong

On October 1, 1949, a beaming Mao Zedong and his second-in-command, Zhou Enlai, stood atop Tien An Men, the Gate of Heavenly Peace at the center of the old Forbidden City of Peking, and triumphantly proclaimed the birth of the People’s Republic of China. A host of newly installed Communist political operatives and nearly half a million jubilant followers who had jammed into the massive square joined in celebration. Chiang Kai-shek and two million of his followers had been exiled to the island of Taiwan. Formal diplomatic recognition of Communist China by the Soviet Union came on the very next day. Five months later, the two countries signed a Treaty of Friendship.

Debated to this day is whether the United States, as a consequence of its actions (or inaction) failed China or, as Barbara Tuchman opined at the end of her Pulitzer Prize-winning treatise, Stilwell and The American Experience In China, that “China went her own way as if the Americans had never come.”1 The issue has been posed pejoratively by conservative historians as “How Did We Lose China?” Liberal pundits correctly and dismissively counter that “China Was Not Ours to Lose.” Clearly though, the perfect storm of military, political, economic, and social circumstances that brought about the transition of power in China has exerted a monumental and lasting influence on the history and geopolitical climate of the world.

There is no shortage of opinions as to the reasons China went Communist. In The Man Who Lost China, Brian Crozier, as the title of his book suggests, lays the blame squarely on the personal deficiencies of Chiang Kai-shek and of his administration.2 Conservatives, especially in the early years of the Cold War, invoked the influence of elements within the administrations of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. Indeed, China’s government fell for a complex variety of reasons, many of which had been percolating for decades. But clearly, American diplomacy played a longstanding and critical role. The main causes will be examined.

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