Loss of China

The "loss of China" refers, in U.S. political discourse, to the unexpected Communist Party takeover of mainland China from the American-backed Nationalists in 1949, and therefore the "loss of China to communism". The "loss of China" was portrayed by critics of the Truman Administration as an "avoidable catastrophe". It led to a "rancorous and divisive debate" and the issue was exploited by the Republicans at the polls in 1952. It also played a large role in the rise of Joseph McCarthy, who, with his allies, sought scapegoats for that "loss", targeting notably Owen Lattimore, an influential scholar of Central Asia.

During World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt had assumed that China, under Chiang Kai-shek’s leadership, would become a great power after the war, along with the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Russia. According to John Paton Davies Jr. (one of the so-called "China Hands", whose diplomatic career was later ruined by the loss of China), Roosevelt's lack of sufficient material support to Chiang Kai-shek during the war against Japan in the 1930s and 1940s and his deplorable choices of U.S. diplomatic emissaries to China contributed to the failure of Roosevelt's policy.

According to historian Arthur Waldron, "Franklin Roosevelt thought of China as a power already securely held by [Chiang Kai-shek]." Chiang Kai-shek's hold on power was, however, tenuous, and "once the Japanese were defeated, China would become a power vacuum, tempting to Moscow, and beyond the capability of the Nationalists to control. In that sense, the collapse of China into communism was aided by the incompetence of Roosevelt’s policy."

Noam Chomsky, a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, has commented that the terminology "loss of China" is revealing of U.S. foreign policy attitudes:

In 1949, China declared independence, an event known in Western discourse as "the loss of China" – in the US, with bitter recriminations and conflict over who was responsible for that loss. The terminology is revealing. It is only possible to lose something that one owns. The tacit assumption was that the U.S. owned China, by right, along with most of the rest of the world, much as postwar planners assumed. The "loss of China" was the first major step in "America's decline." It had major policy consequences.

See also

• Albert C. Wedemeyer
• China Lobby
• Chinese Civil War
• Cold War
• Dean Acheson
• Dixie Mission
• Kuomintang
• Harry S. Truman
• Marshall Mission
• McCarthyism
• Henry Luce
• Venona

Further reading

• Newman, Robert P. Owen Lattimore and the "Loss" of China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992. ISBN 0-520-07388-6.