Divided Counsel

The Anglo-American Response to Communist Victory in China

Edwin W. Martin

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780813184517
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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.

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 they took early in the new year. Meanwhile, in the battles of the Huai-Hai campaign in east China, Communist forces “600,000 strong,” according to their own account, “wiped out” more than half a million Chinese government troops, subjecting China’s capital, Nanking, to a “direct threat by the People’s Liberation Army.”¹

In the midst of this parade of military victories, Communist party Chairman Mao Tse-tung proclaimed in his 1949 New Year’s message to the Chinese people that the “Chinese reactionaries” and “the aggressive forces of U.S. imperialism” now realized that “the countrywide victory of the Chinese People’s War of Liberation [could] no longer be prevented by purely military struggle.” Precisely for this reason, they were placing more and more importance on “political struggle,” which meant “using the existing Kuomintang government for their ‘peace’ plot.” But Mao was in no mood for peace negotiations. “The question now facing the Chinese people,” he declared, “is whether to carry the revolution through to the end or abandon it halfway. . . . Only by completely destroying the Chinese reactionaries and expelling the aggressive forces of U.S. imperialism can China gain independence, democracy and peace.”²

A year earlier, in a report to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party (CCP), Mao had announced that a turning point had been reached in the worldwide struggle of the “democratic forces headed by the Soviet Union” against the “imperialist and anti-democratic forces,” and that the “strength of the world anti-imperialist camp” had surpassed that of the “imperialist camp.” The Central Committee not only endorsed Mao’s report but resolved that the “Chinese people’s revolutionary war” should be carried forward “uninterruptedly to complete victory, and that the enemy should not be allowed to use stalling tactics [peace negotiations] to gain time for rest and reorganization.”³ Thus Mao’s 1949 New Year’s message reflected the CCP’s determination, now given powerful effect by its recent battlefield victories, to pursue its revolutionary objectives without thought of conciliation or compromise.

British and American policymakers could hardly ignore the dramatic manifestations of rising Communist power in China, and they made plans, as best they could, to adapt their policies to the changing scene. On December 13, 1948, the British cabinet considered a Foreign Office memorandum dealing with the problem of “what action is open to us to counter the spread of Communism in China and from China to adjacent territories in the Far East.” The cabinet concluded that the only power that could take counteraction in China was the United States, but that it was unlikely that such action would be taken and extremely doubtful whether it would be effective.⁴ These cabinet views were reflected in a policy paper that the British embassy in Washington gave the Department of State on January 11, 1949. According to this paper, only the United States was in a position to “contribute financial, material or military resources for counter-action against the Chinese Communists in China.” The United Kingdom’s best hope in China lay “in keeping a foot in the door . . . stay[ing] where we are, to have de facto relations with the Chinese Communists in so far as these are unavoidable, and to investigate the possibilities of trade.”⁵

A U.S. National Security Council paper (NSC 34/1), coincidentally dated January 11, expressed the American objective in China as the development “by the Chinese themselves of a unified, stable and independent China, friendly to the U.S.” Clearly, however, there did not seem to be much prospect that any Chinese group would fulfill this objective: the Chinese government was not expected to be around much longer and the Communists were not friendly. In these circumstances the immediate U.S. objective, according to the NSC, was “to prevent China from becoming an adjunct of Soviet power.” The cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union had, of course, long since broken out in earnest. When NSC 34/1 was prepared, the Berlin blockade had been in full swing for some months.

The NSC did not say precisely how the United States would try to keep China from becoming an adjunct of Sovie power, but it recommended that the United States should make plans and preparations to exploit opportunities, “while maintaining flexibility and avoiding irrevocable commitments to any one course of action or to any one faction.” Another important proviso of the NSC paper was that the United States should “regard efforts with respect to China as of lower priority than efforts in other areas where the benefits to U.S. security are more immediately commensurate with expenditure of U.S. resources.”⁶

The political impact of the Communists’ military triumphs on the Chinese government was, of course, enormous. The already waning public confidence in President Chiang Kai-shek’s leadership was further eroded, while support for those in the government who favored a negotiated settlement of the war grew rapidly. In a personal telegram to Secretary of State George Marshall on December 21, 1948, Dr. John Leighton Stuart, the China-born missionary educator who had been the United States ambassador to China since mid-1946, commented on “how completely Chiang had lost public confidence” and “how widespread is desire he retire,” a sentiment “shared by most officials of all ranks in Government.”⁷ Just a month after Stuart’s message to Marshall, Chiang finally announced his retirement, leaving the task of negotiating a peace settlement to his principal political rival within the Kuomintang, Vice-President Li Tsung-jen.

Li’s prospects of salvaging anything for the government from negotiations with the Communists were hardly bright in the wake of the latter’s successes on the battlefield. Moreover, the CCP’s eight conditions for undertaking peace talks, which had been broadcast by the Communist-controlled North Shensi radio on January 14, gave little ground for encouragement. At the head of the list of conditions was “strict punishment of war criminals,” among whom was Chiang Kai-shek himself. The U.S. embassy called the CCP’s terms “something closely approximating unconditional surrender,” pointing out, “Most immediate and irreconcilable divergence now is that Kmt wants armistice before beginning peace talks while CCP will not cease fire prior to Kmt capitulation to CCP peace terms.”⁸

Despite the poor prospects for a negotiated peace, Acting President Li decided to send a delegation to Peiping, and the Communists agreed to receive it, but under conditions that, in the embassy’s view, left “no scope for bargaining.” The embassy believed Li was now faced with a choice between “complete capitulation and continued resistance” and that he would choose resistance.⁹ Li did choose resistance eventually, but only after his peace delegation had spent three fruitless months in Peiping. In the end, Li’s resistance was to prove equally fruitless.

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 on November 1, 1948, and it followed the same policy in Tientsin and Peiping when those cities fell to the Communist armies. The Department of State assumed that American business and philanthropic organizations would stay on in China under the Communists. It even encouraged their key personnel to remain, assuring them that in case of emergency they would be given the same consideration as U.S. consular personnel, who were staying on. The department evidently hoped that its policy of maintaining “all the present Foreign Service establishments in China even though the tide of civil war should pass over them” would encourage those private citizens to remain whose presence in China was essential for the continued functioning of American institutions.¹ At the same time, however, nonessential Americans were periodically warned of the dangers of staying in China and advised to leave.

The decision of the United States, British, and other governments to keep their consulates open in cities taken by the Communists was quite in line with usual diplomatic practice, but the decision that faced them with respect to their embassies was politically more sensitive. On January 26, 1949, Ambassador Stuart and other diplomatic mission chiefs in Nanking received a formal note from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announcing the removal of the Chinese government to Canton and asking diplomatic missions to follow the government there.² As Ambassador Stuart later noted in his autobiography, “The government naturally wanted the Diplomatic Body to remove to Canton and thus help to maintain its own prestige. Technically we all were accredited to it and properly should follow it to the ‘temporary capital.’ ”³

In view of the threat to Nanking posed by the Communists’ victories in the Huai-Hai campaign, the Foreign Ministry’s request did not come as a surprise. Ambassador Stuart and his colleagues of the North Atlantic Group had, in fact, been discussing such a possibility for some time.⁴ At a meeting on January 19, they had unanimously agreed to recommend to their governments that, should the Chinese government actually move to Canton, each ambassador would send a senior officer of his staff, possibly accompanied by others, to maintain contact, preserving the position of the ambassador himself for future consideration.⁵ This decision was in line with the State Department’s contingency plan drawn up the previous month.⁶ Nevertheless, the whole question was reviewed once again in Washington before the department’s plan to keep Ambassador Stuart in Nanking was reaffirmed.

The rationale for this decision was spelled out in a memorandum from Walton Butterworth, director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs, to Acting Secretary of State Robert Lovett.⁷ According to Butterworth, the majority of American businessmen and missionaries in China would soon be in Communist areas. If Ambassador Stuart were withdrawn from Nanking, it would look as though the United States intended to continue aid to the Chinese Nationalists, making the position of Americans in Communist areas untenable. “If the U.S. is to afford any protection to or promote U.S. interests in these areas,” Butterworth explained, “it must have official representation which can get in touch with the central governing authorities of the area.”⁸

Butterworth acknowledged that some congressional quarters and newspapers would be highly critical of a decision not to direct Ambassador Stuart to follow the Chinese government to Canton, but he maintained these circles were not aware of the hopelessness of the military situation. He cited a statement by General David G. Barr, director of the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group in China, to the effect that the Nationalist government could maintain a foothold in southern China only with unlimited U.S. assistance, including the immediate deployment of American armed forces. Barr emphatically discouraged such a course, and in any case, the U.S. government was not prepared to go this far to save the Chinese government. Only two alternatives remained: complete U.S. withdrawal from China or an effort to influence the final outcome in a way that would salvage as much as possible of American interests there.⁹ Keeping Ambassador Stuart in Nanking would serve the latter purpose.

President Truman approved the State Department’s recommendation that Stuart remain in Nanking, on the understanding that he carry out his instructions in concert with the North Atlantic Group.¹⁰ Nearly three months were to elapse, however, before the Communists captured Nanking and put to the test the wisdom of the decision of the United States and its allies to leave their ambassadors there.

Meanwhile, the Communists served notice in the cities they had occupied that they were not going to play the diplomatic game by the international rules practiced in the West if it did not suit them. For about two weeks or so after their capture of Mukden on November 1, 1948, they did seem to be playing by these rules. Thus on November 5 the new mayor of Mukden, Chu Chi-wen, summoned the British, French, and American consuls general to his office in their official capacities and promised that he would issue identity cards to consular personnel and identification pennants for consular motor vehicles.¹¹ Four days later the mayor made return calls on the consuls, again in their official capacities. In the meantime the American consul general, Angus Ward, had received “several communications from local authorites” addressed either to him “as Consul General or to the office as the American Consulate General.” This led Ward to conclude: “It was obviously the intention of the Communist authorities at the time to recognize us and permit us to function as an official United States Government establishment.”¹²

The treatment accorded the foreign consulates in Mukden was so exemplary that the State Department cited it to allay the fears of Americans in other cities in the path of the Communist armies.¹³ But this treatment did not last for long. As William N. Stokes, at the time American vice consul in Mukden, subsequently recalled:

A notification dated November 14, addressed to the “former American Consul” (similar letters were sent to the “forme...