Divided Counsel
The Anglo-American Response to Communist Victory in China
Publication Year: 2015
In the long controversy over the failure of the United States to extend early recognition to the People's Republic of China, the story of American efforts to maintain an official presence in the Communist-controlled areas of China until 1950 has been largely neglected. Moreover, the often bitter partisan strife over Sino-American relations during this period has obscured important facts or so distorted them that making an independent judgment is difficult indeed. In this book, Edwin Martin seeks to set the confused record straight by providing a well-documented, detailed account of American responses to the policies and actions of the victorious Chinese Communists from their capture of Mukden in November 1948 to their intervention in the Korean War and rejection of U.N. cease-fire offers.
Uniquely, Martin provides also a parallel account, based on recently released Foreign Office documents, of Sino-British relations during this period, shedding useful light on the course of American policy. Significantly neither the British nor the American approaches were successful; both governments overestimated their power to influence events in China and the vulnerability of the Sino-Soviet relationship. Only at the Geneva meetings in 1954 did the Chinese Communists reverse policy positions they had steadfastly maintained during 1949-1950.
This corrective view of early American relations with the People's Republic of China will be welcomed by all concerned with Asian history and diplomacy.
Published by: The University Press of Kentucky
Cover
Title page, Copyright, Dedication
Contents
Preface
When I began research for this book, my intention was to describe how the United States had responded in China to the Communist triumph there, for this story, I thought, had not been adequately dealt with in the existing literature on Sino-American relations. I had long noted, for...
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the American Philosophical Society for a grant from the Penrose Fund, enabling me to travel to the United Kingdom to do research at the Public Record Office, to Professor Trevor May of Hertfordshire College for his helpful letters of introduction, and to the...
Part I. Staying Put
1. Responses to a Parade of Victories
The closing weeks of the year 1948 saw a series of stunning Communist military triumphs in China. Completing their conquest of Manchuria in November, Communist armies swept south to threaten the great cities of Tientsin and Peiping on the north China plain, both of which...
2. Consulates Carry On
A key element in the American and British response to the Communist triumph in Manchuria and north China was to stay put. To this end, the United States kept its consulate open in Mukden when the People's Liberation Army captured that industrially important Manchurian city...
3. The Soviet Union and the CCP
In sharp contrast to Britain and the United States, the Soviet Union espoused the Chinese Communist view of the status of consuls. It closed its consulates in cities taken by the PLA on the ground that no diplomatic relations existed with the Chinese Communists.1 Presumably...
4. British and American Policies
While the CCP and the USSR drew closer, British and American policies toward China began to diverge. Initially, the United States and the United Kingdom had adopted policies on trade with the Chinese Communists that were quite compatible. In Washington the National...
5. Ambassador Stuart's Initiative
Emerging Anglo-American differences on Formosa did not prevent the United States and Britain, and other members of the Atlantic Group, from reaffirming in April their common decision of the previous January to keep their ambassadors in Nanking after Communist occupation...
6. The Stuart-Huang Discussions
It was not long before Ambassador Stuart had the opportunity to hold talks, if not with the "top Communist leaders," at least with a Communist official who had direct access to Chou En-lai. The opportunity was brought about by the PLA's conquest of Nanking the latter part of April...
7. The Chou Demarche
Several days before the second Stuart-Huang meeting took place, U.S. officials in Peiping had received a signal from the Communist leadership quite different from the negative one Huang had conveyed--or so it seemed at least. On May 31...
8. The Shanghai Blues
The capture by the Communists on May 26 of Shanghai, China's largest city and largest port, multiplied the opportunities for friction and misunderstanding between the Communists and British and American officials. From the standpoint of the Communists, and probably...
9. An Invitation from Mao
On June 28 Ambassador Stuart received through Huang Hua what he called "almost an invitation" from Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-Iai to "talk with them while ostensibly visiting Yenching." In reporting "the background of this suggestion" to the State Department, Stuart indicated...
10. Fewer Stay Put
The month of July, which had opened inauspiciously from the AngloAmerican point of view with Mao's public reiteration of the lean-toone- side policy, brought more frustrations and irritations for British and American officials, especially the latter. The cumulative effect of...
11. Blockade
The Nationalist blockade referred to in Dening's memorandum had been inaugurated by the Chinese government toward the end of June, when it had taken action to close ports no longer under its control along with adjacent territorial waters.1 Both the British and U.s. governments...
12. Anglo-American Policy Differences
The need for closer British-American consultation on China had been recognized for some time in both Washington and London. On July 20 Secretary of State Acheson had instructed U.S. Ambassador Lewis Douglas to see Foreign Secretary Bevin for a frank exchange of views...
Part II. Recognition and Withdrawal
13. The People's Republic Proclaimed
On October I, Chou En-Iai sent a public statement by Mao Tse-tung to the foreign consuls in Peiping and asked them to transmit it to their governments. The statement announced, among other things, the establishment of the Central People's Government of the People's...
14. The Mukden Ordeal
On October 24 Consul General Ward and four members of the consulate staff in Mukden-two Americans, Ralph C. Rehberg and Shiro Tatsumi, an Italian, Frank Cicogna, and a German, Alfred Kristanwere taken away from the consulate compound by police and jailed on...
15. Britain Ponders Recognition
The British were reluctant to risk offending the Chinese over the Ward case partly because the Foreign Office had already decided to lose no time in recognizing the People's Republic of China. On October 22 Assistant Undersecretary Esler Dening had submitted a draft cabinet...
16. The United States Ponders Formosa Policy
Following the establishment of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, the fortunes of the Nationalist government continued their rapid decline. After the government had moved its temporary capital from Canton to Chungking in mid-October, the division between...
17. Britain Recognizes the People's Republic
The British Government announced its recognition of the People's Republic of China the day after Truman announced the hands-offFormosa policy, and the coincidence, in the opinion of the British embassy in Washington, "drew the fire away from the recognition...
18. American Consular Properties Seized
The day the British government announced its recognition of the CPG, January 6, the Peking Municipal Military Control Commission made a move that squelched any hope of early U.S. recognition. It proclaimed that within seven days land acquired by "certain foreign countries...
19. Sino-Soviet Accord
Just when Chinese actions affecting British, French, and American interests were causing the Foreign Office to ask whether the People's Republic had "any real disposition" to establish diplomatic relations with the West, Chinese leaders were negotiating a defense treaty and...
20. British Frustrations
By an odd coincidence, the representative the United Kingdom had sent to Peking to negotiate the establishment of diplomatic relations made his initial call at the Foreign Ministry on February 14, the day the Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty and other agreements were signed in...
21. The Hazards of Departure
While the British government was seeking through negotiations with the CPG to maintain a diplomatic and commercial foothold in China, the U.s. government was trying to arrange for the departure from China of all its officials and of those American and British private...
22. An American Probe
In an effort to ensure that the CPG understood the reasons the United States was pulling its officials out of China, and to probe Peking's attitude toward the United States, the State Department instructed Consul General Clubb on March 22 to endeavor to arrange an "informal interview...
23. Mutual Sino-British Dissatisfaction
Just before the opening of "ministerial conversations" between Acheson and Bevin in London on May 9, the British received the Chinese reply to the statements of British policy Hutchison had conveyed to Chang Han-fu on March 17. It was an unhappy one and may...
24. Foreign Business in a Squeeze
Pursuant to a cabinet decision, the Foreign Office instructed Hutchison on May 18 to take up the plight of British business in China with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and to do so before an upcoming foreign affairs debate in the House of Commons.1 The Foreign Office wanted...
Part III. Impact of the Korean War
25. The Neutralization of Formosa
On April 27, 1950, the Nationalists abandoned the large island of Hainan off the south coast of China, after battling local and invading Communist forces for about ten days. On May 16 they completed the evacuation of the Chusan Islands, which had been an important base...
26. Reactions to Neutralization
Peking reacted strongly to Truman's announcement that he had ordered the Seventh Fleet to prevent an attack on Formosa. In an official statement, Chou En-Iai described this move as a "violent, predatory action by the United States Government" but claimed that it came "as...
27. The Effect on Trade
At the outbreak of the Korean War, U.S. policy on trade with China was governed, as it had been since February 1949, by NSC 41. Approval by the National Security Council on December 29,1949, of NSC 48/2, "The Position of the United States with Respect to Asia," reaffirmed the...
28. British Foothold Survives
The Sino-British preliminary and procedural discussions on the establishment of diplomatic relations were not resumed after the outbreak of the Korean War. The People's Republic had never seemed to be particularly interested in them anyway, and the United Kingdom had...
29. Focus on the United Nations
Shortly before the outbreak of the Korean War, the United States and the United Kingdom had drifted farther apart on the issue of Chinese representation in the United Nations. The British had decided in mid-June to vote for seating the People's Republic in UNICEF, and the...
30. Chinese Intervention in Korea
The apparent miscalculation by Moscow and Peking in the late spring of 1950 of the probable U.S. response to a North Korean attack on South Korea was matched in the early fall by a U.S. miscalculation of PRC intentions and capabilities. In ordering U.S. troops north of the 38th...
31. The End of Flexibility
Not long after his return to London from his meetings with President Truman, Prime Minister Attlee became concerned about what U.S. intentions toward China really were. In a letter of January 8, 1951, he told Truman that he had been "left with the impression, particularly...
32. The Imprisoned and the Detained
The Chinese intervention in the Korean War had much greater consequences for westerners, especially Americans, in China that the outbreak of the war itself had had. Despite an intensification of anti-American propaganda after the outbreak of the war and the neutralization...
33. An Aftermath of Bitterness
The Korean War left a legacy of bitterness in Sino-American relations that affected them, especially on the American side, for years to come. As Roderick MacFarquhar sums it up in his documentary study of Sino-American relations: "By the time the armistice agreement was...
34. A PRC Policy Reversal
The armistice in Korea did not result in any significant improvement in U.K.-PRC relations. The Chinese did nothing to revive negotiations on the establishment of diplomatic relations, which they had allowed to die following the Hutchison-Chang meeting of June 17, 1950; the...
Image plates
E-ISBN-13: 9780813149714
E-ISBN-10: 0813149711
Print-ISBN-13: 9780813115917
Page Count: 288
Publication Year: 2015
OCLC Number: 562619338
MUSE Marc Record: Download for Divided Counsel
