Congress and the U.S. -China Relationship 1949-1979

Guangqiu Xu

• Publisher: University of Akron Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781931968393
• eBook ISBN: 9781935603139
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Guangqiu Xu, a native of China fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese, has written an exhaustive study of United States-China relations during the Cold War, with a special focus on the role of the U.S. Congress in influencing Sino-American policy. Based upon extensive archival research in Chinese and American sources, Professor Xu's book is comprehensive and original. It is a detailed account of the interactions between Congress and the White House as the United States forged its policies regarding the world's most populous nation. Covering the period from the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 to the United States' recognition of the PRC in 1979, this study shows how Congress became a key factor in the formulation and conduct of China policy. No other book examines so fully the legislative-executive struggles and compromises during this thirty-year period, from the postwar maneuverings of Truman to Nixon's surprising visit to Beijing. Especially important is Professor Xu's use of Chinese source material to discuss China's reaction and response to American policy decisions. Congress and the U.S.-China Relationship, 1949-1979 examines a familiar story from a fresh perspective, putting into a new context the forces at play in determining how the United States and China responded to each other during the chilliest years of the Cold War. With his emphasis on Congress, Professor Xu has opened up the history of the period to an analysis of how legislative power, direct and indirect, can affect foreign policy and change the course of world events.

CHAPTER 1

Congressional Influence on China Policy and the CCP’s Reaction, 1949–1951

Despite the voluminous and diverse studies on U.S.-China relations between 1949 and 1951, Congress’s role in China policy during that time is rarely closely examined, and the CCP’s reactions to Congress’s China policy are seldom investigated at all.¹ Historians generally cite the intense China policy debates in the late 1940s and early 1950s as evidence that Congress did not always agree with the administration’s China policy; scholars still differ on the part Congress played in shaping China policy during this period.² A review of the literature reveals that little attention has been paid to Congress’s China trade embargo legislation. When trade policy is analyzed, it is seen as an extension of the president’s overall China policy. Some researchers conclude that the China trade embargo began and ended with the executive branch, neglecting the role Congress played and not mentioning the impact of legislation on U.S.-China relations.³

To achieve a better understanding of China policymaking and its impact on Beijing, this chapter places the congressional role in the broader context of Sino-American relations, examining Congress’s attitudes and actions toward crucial policy decisions, such as the recognition of Beijing, the defense of Taiwan, Beijing’s admission to the United Nations, economic aid to the Nationalists, and the China trade embargo. This chapter also describes Beijing’s response to Congress’s actions. Challenging conventional scholarship, this chapter argues that Congress did play a significant part in China policy and had an impact on the CCP’s U.S. policy from 1949 to 1951.

THE BACKGROUND: THE 1948 CHINA AID ACT

By mid-1946, the Truman administration had concluded that the GMD under Chiang Kai-shek could not defeat the CCP under Mao Zedong; the GMD could not dominate all of China by force of arms. General George Marshall, then a special presidential representative, was sent to China in an attempt to bring the GMD and CCP together in a coalition government. Marshall’s most powerful diplomatic weapon in coping with Chiang was the potential termination of U.S. aid, but Congress’s outspoken support of the GMD greatly reduced the possibility of its actual use. Marshall believed that he was able to stop any China aid bills from being introduced in Congress, but Chiang, aware of a congressional request for economic and military aid to the Nationalists, attempted to solve the problem by force, believing that American aid would be available if the Nationalists defeated the Communists.⁴

After the failure of the Marshall mission in late 1946, fighting erupted between the Nationalists and Communists. Consequently, congressional disapproval of Truman’s China policy and calls for aid to the Nationalists increased. China policy became a congressional battlefield. On January 11, 1947, Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg called on the administration to abandon its policy of establishing a coalition government and to help the Nationalists gain control over all of China. Some congressional Republicans answered Vandenberg’s call, among them Walter Henry Judd. Judd, a former missionary in China, had won the Republican nomination for the fifth congressional district in the Minnesota primaries of 1942 and the general election in November of that year. He soon emerged as the most forceful spokesman in Congress for the Nationalists. In 1947, Judd became a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a position that helped him play a substantial part in encouraging Congress to pay more attention to East Asia and its problems.⁵

The military failures of the Nationalist forces in the civil war in the spring of 1947 persuaded the pro-Chiang congressman that if the United States wanted to keep its influence in China, it was time to provide the Nationalist government with economic and military aid, while Chiang Kai-shek requested the same thing—extensive economic assistance—from Truman. The president did try to help Chiang, but not on a large scale. On May 26, 1947, the administration repealed the ten-month-old embargo on consignments of American arms and munitions to China. In July, at the request of Representative Judd, Truman sent General Albert Wedemeyer, former commander of American forces in China, on a fact-finding mission. In the summer, American Marines transferred sixty-five hundred tons of munitions and weapons to the Nationalist army before leaving China.⁶

By the summer of 1947, the volume of Republican congressional condemnation of the administration’s China policy had increased after the Republican Party had won control of both the Senate and the House in the 1946 election. Since the China issue provided the Republicans with anti-Communist ammunition in the presidential campaign, the pro-Chiang Republicans in Congress anticipated that their party’s candidate would win the presidential election in 1948, enhancing their call for American aid to the Nanjing government.

Unwilling to risk its European Recovery Program, the administration accepted little by little congressional requests for aid to the Chinese Nationalists. In November 1947, President Truman called a special session of Congress to consider interim economic aid to the governments of France, Italy, and Austria. During the debate on the authorization of interim aid to Europe, Representative Judd, supporting the assistance to Europe, suggested before the House of Representatives that such aid be extended to China, too.⁷

Without any opposition to the inclusion of China as one of the recipients of economic aid, the authorization of interim aid to Europe and China was approved by a voice vote of the House of Representatives on December 11, 1947. The conference committee with the Senate voted to bring in China as one of the countries authorized to receive economic assistance under the interim aid bill, and the Senate approved the appropriations bill on December 19.⁸

The amount of aid made available to China under this legislation was not momentous, but it indicated Truman’s eagerness to accommodate the pro-Chiang Republicans in Congress in order to win their cooperation for the larger European Recovery Program in 1948. The pro-Nationalist Republicans applied sufficient pressure on the administration to allow China to receive some appropriations, but they failed to win the agreement of a large Republican majority in Congress that Chiang Kaishek should receive extensive American military and economic aid immediately. At that point, most Republicans in Congress, in agreement with Senator Vandenberg, were reluctant to appropriate more than symbolic aid to the Nationalists and chose to wait until Secretary Marshall presented his full policy plan for China. Marshall did suggest, on February 18, 1948, that $570 million be granted to China over a period of fifteen months. During the discussion, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee decided to authorize aid for China as part of the larger Economic Cooperation Act of 1948 but reduced the length of the program from fifteen months to twelve months and approved $100 million for military aid. The Senate, endorsing the committee’s recommendations, approved the authorizations without any changes on March 13. The House passed its own authorizations on March 31. Finally, the full Congress approved this act on April 2, and the president signed it into law the next day.⁹ Thus, the pro-Chiang Republicans in Congress wielded sufficient force to make it necessary for the administration to support some programs of aid to the Nationalists in 1948.

Congress reduced the total amount of aid to the Nationalists requested by the administration in its initial plan for China but allocated an independent military provision asked by the administration. The Republican Congress agreed to carry out a policy of limited military aid to Chiang Kai-shek, but a majority of Congress was unenthusiastic about satisfying the pro-Chiang Republicans’ request for American engagement in Nationalist military operations. Although the Republican supporters of Chiang Kai-shek were doing well in providing the National government with some military aid, the amount of funds for military spending was not large, and the Truman administration was authorized to use such money flexibly. The appropriation for China could be considered a partial victory for both the administration and Congress, since the Republican Congress did not essentially alter the administration’s endeavor to avoid involvement in the Chinese civil war but did postpone its attempt to pull out completely from the war.

The CCP’s Response to the China Aid Act

The Chinese Communist Party strongly condemned the China Aid Act. After President Truman presented to Congress on February 18, 1948, a recommendation that $570 million be granted to the Nationalists, a CCP spokesman denounced Truman’s statement on February 22 in order to discourage Congress from approving the grant. The spokesman pointed out that “this grant is U.S. imperialism’s plot to extend the Chinese civil war and a part of U.S. imperialism’s aggressive plan to enslave the people in both Asia and the world and to destroy world peace.”¹⁰

On November 21, 1948, the CCP Central Committee reiterated its policy opposing U.S. economic and military aid to Chiang. It warned:

The economic and military aid from the U.S. government and other countries’ governments to the Nationalist government is a hostile activity against the Chinese people and the Chinese nation. Such aid has to be stopped. When the U.S. government sends its military forces to China and provides partial or total protection of the Nationalist government, the Chinese regard such activities as a military invasion of China’s sacred territories and sovereignty. The U.S. government will be responsible for all the consequences it has caused.¹¹

Angered by the China Aid Act, CCP leaders regarded it as an intervention in China’s internal affairs and used it to promote anti-American sentiments among the Chinese by publishing many anti-U.S. aid articles in their newspapers, an escalation of the CCP’s hostility toward the United States.

In September 1948, the Chinese Communists commenced a full-scale offensive in Manchuria, and by the end of that year, nearly all of Manchuria and much of northern China was under Communist control. The Truman administration, however, continued its disengagement policy from the Chinese civil war between the Nationalists and Communists.

In short, the introduction of the interim aid bill and the European Recovery Program in Congress gave the legislative body an even greater chance to force China aid on the administration. The China aid program of 1948 came too late to save Chiang’s regime, whose military situation was deteriorating rapidly, but Congress did, indeed, play an important part in the formulation and conduct of China policy from 1947 through 1948.

CONGRESSIONAL CRITICISM OF CHINA POLICY

In 1949, members of Congress increased in volume and frequency their attacks on the administration’s China policy, angered by Marshall’s failure to halt a Communist victory in China and by Truman’s surprise victory in the presidential election. Republican leaders in Congress believed that, because they had been excluded from participation in the making of China policy in the postwar years, they were free to blame the administration for the China setback. In addition, Truman’s reelection in a close race in November 1948 contributed to the bitterness of defeat, which helped deepen the partisan crack.

On January 20, President Truman was sworn in for a second term and nominated Dean Acheson to be his secretary of state. Republican senator William Knowland, of California, vigorously opposed the nomination, claiming that, as undersecretary of state, Acheson had pressured Chiang Kai-shek to seek peace with Mao Zedong in an effort to establish a coalition government. Knowland was one of only six senators who voted against confirmation.¹²

On February 7, just several weeks after Acheson came to the State Department, fifty-one Republican senators and representatives, including Knowland, sent President Truman a letter voicing their disapproval of the administration’s failure in China. The letter alleged that “[v]ictory by the Communists in China would be a monumental and historic defeat for us and a grave threat to our national security.”¹³ Accordingly, Acheson had a meeting with thirty of the Republicans signers in a closed, confidential session on February 24, informing them that the administration could not make any decisions on China until the situation on the mainland was clear or “until the dust settled.”¹⁴ Unsatisfied with this explanation, congressional Republicans regarded such a policy as pessimism and accelerated their assaults on the Department of State.

Believing that the United States had increased its influence and power in Asia during World War II and now was losing it during the postwar era, Knowland condemned officials of the Far Eastern Division of the State Department for producing such a disaster. He intended to replace what he regarded as bad policy with a new China policy, calling for General Douglas MacArthur to play a significant part in East Asia affairs and then introducing a concurrent resolution on April 21 to investigate East Asia policy by a bipartisan committee of five senators and five representatives. Acheson, however, was successful in keeping the issue from reaching the Senate floor—the Senate Foreign Relations Committee ignored the resolution.¹⁵

The assaults on the State Department increased in the summer, when the Senate was considering the confirmation of W. W. Butterworth as assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs. During the long hearings, Senator Vandenberg stated that it was a great blunder not to modify the current Far Eastern policies. Butterworth was confirmed by a vote of 49 to 27, but the partisan features of the disagreeme...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Transliteration
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Congressional Influence on China Policy and the CCP’s Reaction, 1949–1951
• 2. Congressional China Inquests and the McCarran Act, 1950–1952
• 3. Congressional China Policy and the Issue of Taiwan, 1953–1963
• 4. Congress’s Role in U.S.-China Rapprochement, 1964–1972
• 5. Congress’s Role in U.S.-China Relations, 1972–1979
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index