In November 1943, Columbia University professor and China expert Nathaniel Peffer wrote an article for The New York Times Magazine entitled: “Our Distorted View of China ,” in which he accused missionaries, businessmen, and other Americans who had lived in China of having a sentimental predisposition about everything Chinese . In his view, that had led to the construction of an idealized image of China, as a country willing to embrace American Christianity, medical aid, and political ideas, that in the end, “more harm than good would come out to Sino-American relations.”1
Peffer’s ill-fated prediction came true on October 1, 1949, when the Communists took over mainland China and forced US ally, Nationalist leader Generalissimo Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek),2 to withdraw to the island of Taiwan (Formosa). America’s self-centered image of China prevented it from realizing that Chinese politics were far more complex than was imagined. It was absolutely inconceivable to Americans that the Chinese people had voluntarily chosen communism. The only plausible explanation was that Communism had been imposed on them because they had fallen victims to an international conspiracy orchestrated by Moscow . That belief triggered a painful witch-hunt that was famously and shamefully exploited by Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy .3
McCarthy’s search for culprits for the “loss of China ” combined with the Truman administration’s negative propaganda campaign against the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to rally support for the American effort in the Korean War and the terrible stories of atrocities from the front strengthened the already hostile feelings among the American people toward the Chinese Communists . According to several National Opinion Research Center surveys and Gallup polls conducted in the first half of 1950, 62–12% of the general public opposed diplomatic recognition of the Beijing (Peiping) regime, 78% of the respondents opposed the PRC’s admission into the United Nations and 76% opposed trade relations with Communist China .4
The vast historiography on the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and China policy in the 1950s has often blamed that hostile public opinion for the tensions and the lack of diplomatic relations between the US and the PRC . For example, political scientist Hans Morgenthau described US policy toward mainland China as “irrational.” He believed that Washington officials, including the President, wanted to recognize Beijing’s regime, but the administration was prevented “by its fears of public opinion from devising and executing a positive policy of its own.” Similarly, political scientist Leonard Kusnitz, in his extensive quantitative study of US public opinion and America’s China policy between 1949 and 1979, has argued that Eisenhower tried to push changes in China policy, particularly during his second term, but popular hostility blocked any openings toward the Chinese Communists .5
More recently, David Mayers and Rosemary Foot have contended that conservative opinion in the US, represented by the Republican right wing in Congress , was also very influential in preventing alteration in policy toward the PRC . According to both, the President understood as early as 1953 that a review of China policy was necessary. However, pursuing a policy even remotely hinting of conciliation with Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) would have meant challenging McCarthy’s wing of the Republican party, something Eisenhower was not willing to do. Foot further argues that the White House had to wait until the mid-1960s to reassess China policy. It took the Sino-Soviet split combined with Beijing’s newly acquired nuclear capability and the perception that the American strategy had become ineffective for Congress to finally launch its own investigation and the Council of Foreign Relations to initiate a series of studies on the PRC .6
Historian Nancy Bernkopf Tucker went even further in arguing that China was not a major concern for Eisenhower. The President was first and foremost an Atlanticist and believed that the most serious challenge for the US would come from the Soviet Union , not the PRC . His minor interest in Communist China was reflected in a lack of an adequate understanding of the American public’s views of Beijing . He therefore “pursued policies toward China that he did not believe in wholeheartedly because he thought public opinion wanted a hard line stance against Beijing .” This ultimately led to a muddled and disappointing approach to China policy.7
The historiography has also put more emphasis on the role played by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in shaping China policy. Many, including Tucker and Steven Goldstein, argued that Dulles was the major force in formulating China policy. Similar to the President, he was a prisoner of pressure groups, such as the Committee of One Million against the Admission of the PRC in the United Nations , which had replaced the China Lobby in Congress to advocate support for the Nationalist regime on the island of Taiwan since 1953.8
The purpose of this book is to show that the role that domestic public opinion played in shaping US-China relations in the 1950s has been greatly understudied and misinterpreted. Contrary to traditional historiography, it argues that the Eisenhower administration’s hard line policy toward Beijing had been formulated in line with US national security interests and not as a result of pressure from popular feelings. While public opinion opposed relaxing tensions with the PRC until the middle of 1955, the first Taiwan crisis of 1954–1955 combined with Senator McCarthy’s fall from grace marked a turning point in US popular attitudes toward Beijing . The military crisis particularly forced a significant change in public opinion, not so much a change in how Americans saw the Chinese Communists , but a change in how to deal with the enemy. In the summer of 1954, an overwhelming number of the public, 85%, saw Moscow as the main US enemy. In the spring of 1955, immediately after the threat over the Straits ended, the State Department reported that six out of 10 Americans interviewed considered Communist China to be more dangerous than the Soviet Union and thought World War III would “break out” fairly soon because of the PRC . The same survey also found that 73% of Americans interviewed believed that rather than continuing to antagonize Beijing , it would be better to enter into talks “in order to avoid another global conflict.” President Eisenhower was fully aware of the changing public opinion. An investigation of his public and private papers clearly shows that he kept a careful eye on public opinion in general and more specifically on its views on China. Had he wanted to implement a more flexible policy toward Beijing , he knew he had enough public support.9
Revisionist and post-revisionist scholars such as Fred Greenstein, Stephen Ambrose, and Martin Medhurst have already amply demonstrated how the President intentionally projected an image of warmth and used garbled syntax to deflect criticism, avoid polarization, and retain flexibility to implement his policies. Likewise, they have also dispelled the myth of a US foreign policy being dominated by John Foster Dulles . As historian Richard Immerman asserts, the two men ‘were in a real sense a team,’ because they both shared the same fundamental outlook about international relations and the role the US should play in it. While in public, the President might have given the impression that the GOP and popular feelings or Dulles’ beliefs shaped his China policy, he was in reality in full control of the foreign policy making process.10
Eisenhower believed that the US position in the Far East had considerably weakened since the end of World War II. First, the outcome of the Korean War had elevated Communist China’s image within the Soviet sphere and in Southeast Asia, thereby diminishing US prestige. Second, the PRC was an emergent threat to the US in Asia and had widened the divisions among Western allies. This re-evaluation of China’s role in international relations meant that the “bipolarity which distinguished the immediate post-hostilities period was losing much of its rationale” and Beijing had become a power to be reckoned with. Although a strong China could also create problems for the Kremlin, ultimately, the President believed that the Chinese Communists , as Communists, would continue to maintain a basic hostility for the West in general, and particularly the US.11
Secretary of State Dulles concurred with the President. A Communist China, whether allied with the Soviet Union or not, represented a national security issue for the US in Asia. The US goal was therefore to secure, through a hard line policy, a re-orientation of the Chinese Communist Regime that would not be hostile to the US. That was not possible in the 1950s because China’s military capacities made the invasion of its territory costly and required a commitment of forces that the US was not ready to make after the Korean W...