WEEK 6 POSTWAR CHINA

AND THE RISE OF THE COLD

WAR IN EAST ASIA
What is Cold War?
THE Global Cold War

- Global conflict
- Contest between two superpowers, the US and the Soviet
Union
- Extended to all regions of the globe
- New kind of conflicts - Battle of ideas: American liberalism
vs. Soviet communism
- The Iron Curtain- dividing line between the two worlds
(Winston Churchill)
- Europe as a central front of the Cold War
* American Marshall Plan, 1947/ Establishment of the Cominform, 1947
- Asia as the second front of the Cold War
How did the Cold War play out in East Asia?
• Cold War in East Asia
- US occupation of Japan in the postwar period:
Japan as the outpost of the US global strategy to counter
Communist expansionism

- China’s successful Communist revolution and the

establishment of the People’s Republic of China(PRC), 1949

- The PRC’s alliance with the Soviet Union

The Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual
Assistance in 1950

*** Quadrangular relations involving the US, the Soviet Union,

China, and Japan as the focus of the Cold War in Asia
• Why did the US and China fail to establish a diplomatic relations in
East Asia?

• Did the U.S. lose the last chance for peace in East Asia in the late
1940s?

• Did China intend to maintain a friendly relations with the US?

I. The Rise of the CCP and the Early Cold War,
1944-1949
1. The CCP and the “International United Front”
1) The Dixie Mission, 1944
- The US Army Observation Group sent to Yan’an
- The first direct offi cial contact between the US government and
the CCP
- The US attempt to establish diplomatic relations with the CCP
- Initial positive reports of the CCP condemned by the pro-GMD
offi cials in the US government
• The main objectives of the CCP’s “international united front”
1) To improve China’s War of Resistance
2) To enable the CCP to use the US to check the power of the GMD
government
I. The Rise of the CCP and the Early Cold War,
1944-1949
2) Dispatch of Patrick Hurley for mediation between the CCP and the
GMD, 1945
- Mediating Negotiation between the CCP and the GMD
- Five points agreements with the CCP
- Chiang Kai-shek’s rejection on the part of coalition government
- The CCP offended by Hurley’s abandonment of the five point
agreement
- In April 1945, Hurley announced that the US government would
not cooperate with the CCP.
I. The Rise of the CCP and the Early Cold War,
1944-1949
2. Soviet Union’s entrance into the war in August 8, 1945

- The Yalta Conference (Feb. 1945) – Stalin’s promise not to support the CCP in China’s
internal conflicts
(Roosevelt’s promise that all former Russian rights and privileges lost to Japan during
the Russo-Japanese War, including those in Manchuria, would be restored to the Soviet
Union./ Stalin agreed to enter the war in Asia within two or three months of Germany’s
defeat)

Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance in August 1945 (between the Soviet Union
and the Nationalist government (GMD))

- Stalin’s lack of confidence in the CCP’s ability to win a civil war against the GMD

- Stalin’s reluctance to risk a direct conflict with the US

The US was planning large-scale landing operations in north China
- The CCP’s sense of betrayal
• Sin0-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Assistance, August,
1945
- China’s acknowledgement of
1) the independence of outer Mongolia
2) 3) Soviet privileges regarding the Chinese Changchun Railroad
I.The Rise of the CCP and the Early Cold War,
1944-1949
3. Civil War(1946-1949)
- Military conflict between the CCP and the GMD
- In the context of the escalating conflicts between the Soviet Union and the
US
1) US support of the GMD
- With the help of the Americans, large numbers of GMD troops were
transported by air or sea to several Northeast ports
- The American used the GMD to counterbalance the impact of the
perceived Soviet challenge

** Dilemma of the US
1) It was necessary for the US to provide aid to the GMD government to
check the expansion of the Soviet influences in East Asia.
2) America’s intervention could result in its involvement in China’s civil war,
risking a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union.
Civil War in China

East Sea
3. Civil War(1946-1949)

2) Soviet Union’s support of the CCP

- Soviet Union’s new China policy favorable for the CCP
The cooperation between the American and GMD military in
northern China and the Northeast sent a warning signal to Moscow
The Soviet Union’s willingness to break their obligation under the
Sino-Soviet treaty
- The Soviet Red Army’s covert and overt support to the Chinese
Communist military operations in the Northeast
- The Soviet Union used the CCP’s conflict with the GMD to counter
American influence in East Asia
Big power politics, the Soviet- China’s international
American confrontation in the political development
context of the Cold War GMD-CCP conflicts
1)China’s political development’s impact on the Soviet-American
rivalry
- intensifying conflict between the CCP and the GMD  nullifying
the Soviet-American Yalta agreement on China and East Asia
(Soviet Union promised not to support the CCP in China’s
internal conflict in Yalta conference)

2) Soviet Union used the CCP’s conflict with the GMD to counter
American influence in China
The US used the GMD to counterbalance the Soviet influence in
China
• How should we understand the CCP’s alliance with the Soviet Union
and confrontation with the US by 1950?
• The conquest of China by the Chinese Communist Party
• Explosion of the first Soviet atomic bomb, 1949

 Shocked Americans
• The “lost chance” - American-centered framework.
- Washington’s anti-Communist and pro-GMD policy forced the CCP
to treat the US as an enemy.
- Assuming that the Chinese Communist policy toward the US was
simply passive reaction to Washington’s policy toward China. 
• US President Truman and Acheson (US Secretary of State)
- Acknowledged that the US picked the wrong one
- Carefully kept open the possibility of recognizing Mao’s new
government (US trade with China until 1950)
- Truman’s anti-Communism and mistrust of Mao were reinforced
by the pro-GMD congressmen

 Washington “lost chance” to win over the CCP from Moscow in

the late 1940s.
• US “lost a chance” to pursue a nonconfrontational relationship
with the CCP (1949-1950)

Assumption:
1) the CCP sought US recognition to expedite their country’s
postwar economic reconstruction
2) the relationship between the CCP and the Soviet Union was
vulnerable because of Moscow’s failure to offer suffi cient support to
the Communist during the Chinese civil war
II. The Myth of America’s “Lost Chance” in
China
1. The Ward case, 1948-1949
- U.S. consul general, Angus Ward
Remained in Shenyang and pursued establishing offi cial contact with the
CCP

- CCP’s unwillingness to grant offi cial status of the Western diplomats

“Squeezing the Americans out of the Liberated zone”
Mao Zedong and the CCP leaders’ unwillingness to pursue Western
recognition or to establish diplomatic relations with Western countries

- The CCP’s confiscation of the radio transmitters from the British, French, and
American consulates 1) concern about the military intelligence, 2) Soviet
influence, 3) The CCP’s foreign policy

- Detention of Ward until December 1949

• Party center’s directive to the Northeast Bureau, November 10,
1948
• “Since the governments of the Britain, the US, and France had not
recognized the CCP, the Communists should not recognize the legal
diplomatic status of those countries’ consulates in the CCP-
controlled area. The western diplomats should be recognized only
as ordinary foreign citizens.”
II. The Myth of America’s “Lost Chance” in
China
2. The Huang-Stuart contacts, spring of 1949
- A series of meetings with Huang Hua and John Leighton Stuart, the
American ambassador to China
- The CCP’s some interest in establishing contacts with the US

** The CCP asserted that if Western capitalist countries cut off

their connections with the GMD and treated China and the Chinese
people as “equals,” the CCP would be willing to consider establishing
relations with them
** Stuart promised that “if a genuine coalition government
committed to peace, independence, democracy and freedom was to
be established in China and if the CCP would change its attitude
toward the US by stopping the anti-American campaign,” the US
would be willing to maintain friendly relations with the CCP.”
II. The Myth of America’s “Lost Chance” in
China
3. Mao Zedong’s anti-Americanism
- Mao defined the US as the most dangerous enemy of the Chinese
people and the Chinese revolution by July and August, 1949.
II. The Myth of America’s “Lost Chance” in
China
4. The CCP’s foreign policy
1) “Make a fresh start” (to build a new stove (Lingqi luzao), To
cook one’s own food in one’s own way)
- to undertake a different course on an entirely new basis
- Non-recognition of the legal status of the existing foreign
diplomatic establishment
- Attempt to eliminate western powers’ political and ideological
influence in China
• Zhou Enlai’s explanation of the CCP’s foreign policy in the period of
1948-1952 (1952)

“In history some people inherited old diplomatic relations after

victory. For example, after the I911 Revolution, the new government
hoped to obtain foreign recognition quickly, and therefore they
inherited the old relations. We should not do the same ... Lingqi
luzao is not to recognize the old diplomatic relations between the
GMD government and various countries, but to establish totally new
diplomatic relations on a new basis. .. . [We shall] wait and see if they
will or will not accept our principles for establishing diplomatic
relations.”
II. The Myth of America’s “Lost Chance” in
China
4. The CCP’s foreign policy
2) “Clean the house before entertaining guests”
- ‘suppression of reactionaries’ and the ‘reeducation of bourgeois
intellectuals’
- socialist reform of private capitalism
- consolidation of the CCP’s power
3) “Lean to one side”
- Mao’s expression of the ‘lean-to-one-side’ policy in June, 1949
- Mao’s visit to Moscow, December 1949
- The Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual
Assistance in 1950
 ** Understanding the CCP’s policy toward the US
1) A response to America’s pro-GMD policy
2) The CCP’s goal of restoring China’s central position in the
international community
3) CCP’s concern about enhancing revolutionary momentum
Mao’s use of anti-American discourse as a means of mobilizing
the masses for his continuous revolution.