V.K. Wellington Koo and the Emergence of Modern China by Stephen G. Craft

Author:Stephen G. Craft [Stephen G. Craft]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-12-29T14:01:00+00:00

WHILE KOO SAT IN LONDON fretting over the state of British-Chinese relations, Sino-American relations experienced their own tensions. By the end of 1943, government officials in Washington realized that Chiang Kai-shek's potential contribution to the war effort against Japan was minimal. In February 1942, Gen. Joseph Stilwell arrived in China to make the Chinese army more combat effective. Commander of all American forces in the China-Burma-India Theater, Stilwell controlled the Lend-Lease supplies going to China and was FDR's military representative to the generalissimo. Almost immediately, Stilwell and Chiang were at odds over strategy: Stilwell wanted to retake Burma while Chiang did not. Chiang feared that another Chinese defeat in Burma would lead Japan to take out bases in Kunming that were vital for the Hump supply route over the Himalayas. Chiang preferred to remain on the defensive. Stilwell and other Americans grew impatient with Chiang's dallying, and press reports of Chiang's dictatorship gradually captured the attention of Washington. By the time of the Cairo Conference, Roosevelt wanted to find a new leader in China should Chiang's government collapse.'

At the end of 1943, decisions made by three of the UN allies did not bode well for Chiang Kai-shek. In November 1943, after the Cairo Conference, Roosevelt met with Churchill and Stalin in Teheran and raised the issue of the Soviet Union and the Far East. Stalin declared that the Soviet Union would come into the war against Japan three months after the defeat of Nazi Germany, but Stalin wanted a warm-water port somewhere in the Pacific. FDR offered, and Stalin accepted, the Port of Dalian in Manchuria. And with the potential Soviet entry into the war, the operation to land Anglo-American forces into southern Burma was cancelled now that China was not needed to defeat Japan. In January, FDR rejected Chiang's request for a $1 billion loan. At Cairo, FDR advised Chiang to implement some of Stilwell's suggested reforms including combining Chiang's army units with that of communist ones and even forming a GMD-CCP coalition government. Chiang agreed to do so if he had assurances from the Soviet Union to not lay its hands on Manchuria. After Cairo, Chiang was quite disappointed, particularly as the Americans showed increasing interest in his enemies, the CCP. Chiang blamed the change in American opinion and accusations that he was not taking the war to Japan on communist propaganda.'

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