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76 The fight for control over the Liaoxi corridor had repercussions not only in China, but also in Washington, D.C. America’s grand strategy in the emergingColdWarwiththeSovietUnioncalledforaunited,pro-American China to help secure American influence in East and Southeast Asia. A civil war between Chiang Kai-shek’s government and the Soviet -sponsoredChineseCommunistPartythreatenedtounderminethe American vision of China’s future. Therefore President Truman asked General George Marshall to go to China as his personal representative and negotiate a settlement between Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Communist Party. George Marshall’s mission to China extended from his arrival in Shanghai on December 20, 1945, until the recall of the mission on January 6, 1947. The Marshall Mission itself has been documented and analyzed in a number of excellent books and articles.1 The purpose of this chapter is not simply to retell the familiar story of the Marshall Mission, but rather to explore the interplay among American, Chinese Nationalist , and Chinese Communist strategic goals, Marshall’s negotiations, and the development of the military situation in the Northeast. Marshall ’spresenceinChina,hisdaily,personalassertionofAmericaninterests , and his attempts to use diplomacy to influence the course of events in China became important parts of the framework within which both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party made tactical decisions on 4 George Marshall’s Mission December 1945–March 1946 George Marshall’s Mission, December 1945–March 1946 77 thegroundinManchuria.Ultimately,boththedecisiontofightatSiping in April–May 1946 and the handling of the aftermath of the battle were intimately linked to Marshall’s negotiations. Harry Truman’s China Problem HarryTruman’sattitudetowardChinacanbesummedupintwowords: apathy and ignorance. That verdict may overstate the case, but in truth, China does not seem to have held much interest for Truman. Like most Americans of his generation, Truman would have grown up knowing very little about China. Given his background and the strong influence of Christianity and of the missionary movement on his knowledge of the world, it is more than likely that before he became president, Truman saw China as did most Americans of his time: as a vast, backward nation of souls to be saved and as a huge market of four hundred million consumers.But practically speaking, there was no profit to be made from saving souls, and as long as China’s four hundred million potential consumers were mired in poverty, the huge China market remained no more than a dream. China, accordingly, had never played a significant role in American foreign policy. When the Great Qing Empire faced disintegration in the early twentieth century, President Theodore Roosevelt suggested that imperialism would be a good thing for China. The place was so backward, and the people so inferior, that its only hope for progress was to be ruled by a superior nation. As for Manchuria, Roosevelt was of the opinion that its fate was of little importance to the United States, and that everyone might be better off if it were taken over by the Russians or the Japanese. When Japan really did take over Manchuria in 1931, the United States protested, but did little else. The territorial integrity of the Republic of China was simply not a matter of serious interest or concern to the United States. Only when Japan took French Indochina—thus encroaching on the interests of a European nation—and then attacked at Pearl Harbor did AmericanleadersbegintolinktheirnationalintereststothoseofChiang Kai-shek’sRepublicofChinainanyseriousway.ButevenduringtheSecond World War, China played a distinctly secondary role in American 3.138.105.41] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 20:02 GMT) 78 The Battle for Manchuria and the Fate of China strategy and in American foreign policy. Lend-Lease supplies to China were granted in limited amounts—never enough to make a significant difference to Chiang Kai-shek’s ability to fight the Japanese. Joseph Stilwell , the man whom Roosevelt chose to act as commander of the ChinaIndia -Burma theater, was a mediocre commander whose incompetence on the battlefield was matched only by his arrogance at the negotiating table.2 Stilwell made no secret of the fact that he despised Chiang Kaishek . His reports to his superior officer, General Marshall (then Chief of Staff), and to President Roosevelt himself portrayed Chiang Kai-shek as the head of a hopelessly corrupt government and an ineffective military, unwilling to take the fight to the Japanese. On the strength of these reports , and at Marshall’s express urging, Roosevelt ordered Chiang Kaishek to put Stilwell in command of China’s armies. Stilwell delivered the message in person, in a...

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