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AMER ICA'S FAILURE IN C H I N A , 1 9 4 1 - 5 0
A M E R IC A ’S
FAILURE
IN
C H IN A
1941-50
TANG TSOU
T H E U N I V E R S I T Y OF C H I C A G O P R E S S
CHICAGO AND LONDON
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-13072
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago ir London
The University of Toronto Press, Toronto 5, Canada
© 1963 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved
Published 1963. Second Impression 1964
Printed in the United States of America
To my wife, whose unshakable
faith in me has sustained
me in my quest for identity
s ' r
FOREWORD
All nations live by myths. That is, they paint a picture of the past that
satisfies their present needs but does violence to the historic record. Some
myths are beneficial. They are those that strengthen a nation’s confidence
in having been, and being, able to do what the tasks of the moment de
mand of it. The distorting remembrance of great feats, tribulations, and
successes is of this kind.
Other myths are pernicious. They draw from a distorted reality lessons
for the understanding of the past and the charting of future action which
please collective emotions but lead judgment and action astray. They are
a spell which the past casts upon the future, a curse with which the dead
threaten the living.
The myth of Algeria being an integral part of France was of this per
nicious kind. It impressed upon the French mind a wrong conception of
reality and corrupted judgment and action. It not only made France pur
sue disastrous policies in Algeria, but it also afflicted the body politic of
France with a seemingly incurable disease. It required the authority, cour
age, ability, and insight of a great man to restore reality to its rightful
place. That man has performed similar operations on French parliamen
tarism and the Atlantic Alliance. Thus he has been hailed in France as the
great “demythologizer,” who has made the French to see reality again.
What most of us think about our relations with China partakes of the
quality of myth, and it is indeed a pernicious myth. It meets our emotional
needs but not the requirements of right judgment and correct action. The
communization of China has indeed been the greatest single defeat the
foreign policy of the United States has suffered. Yet the very expression,
“we have lost China,” points to the mythological element in our explana
tion of the event; for one can lose only what one possesses as one’s own,
and if one loses what is one’s cherished possession the loss must be due to
negligence or foul play.
The “loss of China” has been for our collective ego a truly traumatic ex
perience, bringing forth neurotic and psychotic symptoms and calling to
mind the story about the distinction between the neurotic and the psy
chotic: The psychotic believes that two and two make five, the neurotic
knows that two and two make four but is unhappy about it. As far as
China is concerned, the American people have split into a neurotic and a
psychotic party. Only a small and almost inaudible minority has dared to
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viii FOREWORD
look at the historic record with dispassionate objectivity; for to do so
meant looking at ourselves, baring our own errors of judgment and mis
taken actions, and thus discovering the cause for the “loss of China” not in
the negligence or treachery of an identifiable group of scapegoats but in
ourselves, in policies which expressed not only the preferences of the gov
ernment but the consensus of the people.
It is the great and unique merit of this book to have laid bare the strands
of American policy which led to the communization of China and its
emergence as a great power. What is revealed is something which is not
peculiar to our China policy but has been characteristic of many of our
other foreign policies as well: The simultaneous pursuit of contradictory
policies and the commitment to ends which could not be achieved with the
means employed. The defects of our China policy reveal a style of foreign
policy whose roots are embedded in the character of the nation.
This book, prepared under the auspices of the Center for the Study of
American Foreign and Military Policy at the University of Chicago,
makes a great intellectual contribution in that it combines deep theo
retical understanding of foreign policy with meticulous attention to,
and judicious interpretation of, the historic evidence. It is both history
in the grand style and political science at its best. The book also renders a
great public service; for instead of arguing against the myth of our China
policy on rational grounds and with impressionistic factual evidence, as
others have done, it reconstructs history as it actually has been and thereby
exposes the fictitious nature of popular beliefs. It does in the realm of
scholarship what great statesmen have done in the sphere of action: It
restores truth to its rightful place.
Hans J. Morgenthau
P R E F ACE
This study is an examination of the reasons for the failure of American
policy toward China between the time of Pearl Harbor and the collapse of
General Douglas MacArthur’s “home-by-Christmas” offensive in the Ko
rean War. The measure of this failure is not the loss of China. No one
can lose something which he has never possessed. More than any other
single person, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was responsible for what
happened in China; for responsibility goes with power, and Chiang was
the most powerful figure in China. Yet when gauged by her objectives,
intentions, and interests, America’s policy did fail. In the war against
Japan, a Nationalist China was an ally of the United States; in the battle
of North Korea, a Communist China emerged as a strong power by de
feating American armies.
One way to begin our analysis is to view foreign policy as an integrated
structure of assumptions, objectives, and means. This structure can then
be examined from two points of view: the interrelations among its vari
ous elements and the degree of correspondence between its assumptions
and reality. A foreign policy may fail to work out as expected because
it contains inconsistent elements. A consistent foreign policy may still fail
to promote a nation’s interests, if the rational order between political ends
and military means is reversed or if its basic assumptions are not in accord
with reality or emerging trends. The China policy of the United States pro
vides us with many instructive examples of the reasons why a policy fails.
Obviously, the various elements within a pattern of foreign policy are
not of equal importance. Underlying our analysis is a belief that one ele
ment stands out as the decisive factor in determining the success and
failure of the China policy of the United States from the time of the dis
patch of the Open Door notes to the eve of the North Korean aggression.
This is the imbalance between end and means. From one point of view,
this imbalance takes the form of an unwillingness and, at times, an inability
to use military power purposefully to achieve political objectives. From
another point of view, it appears as an unwillingness and inability to aban
don unattainable goals in order to avoid entanglement in a hopeless cause.
The first aspect of the imbalance emerges most clearly in American policy
up to 1947, while the second aspect looms large from 1947 to June, 1950.
Yet both unwillingness to use military power and espousal of idealistic
objectives were integral parts of America’s China policy. Together, they
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