Freda Utley - The China Story

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Text originally published in 1951 under the same title.

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The China Story

BY

FREDA UTLEY

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

IN KOREA, in 1950, the first payment in American lives was demanded for the blunders of our policy makers in the Far East. Five years after the total defeat of Japan and Germany a third world war looms on the horizon.

How did it come to pass that after so great a victory American security is today in greater jeopardy than at any time since the founding of the Republic? How and why were the fruits of victory thrown away?

These are the questions which the American people are beginning to ask as the casualty lists mount and American boys fight against overwhelming odds in a country thousands of miles away which most of them had barely heard of when they were called on to defend it.

Deluded for years by dreams of one world to be established by collaborating with Stalin in the United Nations, the American people now face a bitter awakening.

Surveying the frustration of their hopes, we see that all and more of the European nations that won independence in World War I lost it, together with all vestiges of freedom, in World War II. Turning our eyes to the Far East, the picture is yet blacker. China before World War II had retained a part of her territory in spite of Japanese aggression. Today, she is wholly in the camp of Soviet Russia. And all Asia trembles at the prospect of Communist domination.

What combination of circumstances and influences accounts for this tragic dnouement of military victory?

The historian sees that the basic mistake we made was our failure to remember that in international affairs, as in physics, nature abhors a vacuum. President Roosevelts demand for the unconditional surrender of Japan and Germany left power vacuums in Europe and Asia which Soviet Russia was bound to fill unless we determined to take positive action. In Europe, we endeavored at least to build up England and France and sustain Italy and Greece to compensate for the elimination of Germany. In Asia, however, we were not concerned with creating a balance of power of any kind. We had the alternative of reconstituting Japan or backing a government in China that would be a reliable ally of the United States and a counterbalance to Soviet influences and machinations in the Far East, including Korea. We chose neither wayutterly ignoring straight and logical thinking in the realm of higher politics.

The moralist and the political philosopher will argue that it was the decay of our faith in the values which made us great and strong and free which has led the Western World close to the brink of disaster. If we had stuck by the principles of the Atlantic Charter and offered just terms of peace to the vanquished provided they overthrew their totalitarian dictators and ideology, the barriers against Communism would not have been destroyed.

As Senator Taft said in his January 5, 1951, speech in the Senate, the failure of the United Nations is due to the fact that it was never based on law and justice to be interpreted by an impartial tribunal, but on a control of the world by the power of five great nations.

Those who wrote the first draft of the Charter did not even mention the word justice, and in the Charter as finally drafted, the Security Council entrusted with the task of preserving peace, was not enjoined to consider justice as its guiding principle.

We are already paying, in Korea, and by the conscription of our young men and heavy taxes, for the failure of the Administration, after the last war, to insist on a just peace. Yet it was not the desire for power, but the hope that peace on earth, good will toward men, could be established by American generosity and concessions, which induced the American people to support the Administrations fatal war and post-war policies.

It is not enough to recognize the consequences of its unforgivable navet in believing that the men in Moscow were as well-meaning as we, thus enabling Stalin to step into Hitlers place as the scourge of Western civilization. One must seek the reasons why Communist influences were able to distort American policy, and induce the American people to believe in the peaceful intentions and democratic nature of the Soviet State.

In the following pages, therefore, I not only give a record of our China and Korean policy, but also endeavor to show the fallacies and misconceptions which weakened our resistance and enabled a small group of Communist sympathizers to influence the Administration and the public to our lasting detriment.

This book is not concerned with our blunders in Europe, important as it is to survey them. For in Europe our errors have been at least partially recognized and to some extent compensated for. The savage Morgenthau Plan was never fully implemented in Germany and the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine followed by the Atlantic Pact and now by our attempt to enlist the German people on our side in the defense of Western civilization, have begun to compensate for the agreements made at Yalta and Potsdam. In the Far East, on the other hand, in spite of the war in Korea, fundamental errors concerning the nature and aims of Communism still weaken our will and prevent us from joining hands with the only ally in Asia ready to fight beside us: the Chinese Nationalist Government in Formosa.

If the Administration recognized its errors and made every effort to amend its former mistaken policies, then in this time of peril it would be wiser and better to remain silent concerning the immediate past. Unfortunately, those responsible for the disastrous course of United States policy toward China since Japans defeat have neither admitted their errors nor sought to rectify them. Ignorance and wishful thinking, coupled with lingering Communist influence in high places, and the desire to save face still prevent America from confronting squarely and honestly the realities of the situation.

No valid judgments can be made, or intelligent policies adopted, without knowledge of the facts. So the first chapters of this book are a record of our Chinaand Koreanpolicy from Yalta to the present. Later chapters deal with the evidence in the White Paper on China ( United States Relations with China ) , in the published proceedings of the Tydings Committee, and other sources concerning the extent to which Communist influences determined Far Eastern policy.