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Choice in China
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2011
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In Europe the zones of Soviet and non-Soviet dominant influence have, for the time being, been stabilized. Moves and counter moves have become tactical. Despite recurrent impressions to the contrary—which may, in part, be intended by our opponent—there is in Europe hardly an immediate crisis requiring immediate counteraction. Such a crisis, and such a requirement, exist, however, in Eastern Asia; and our successes in stopping the Soviet advance in Western Europe will prove illusory if we fail to contain it in the Far East.
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- Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1949
References
1 The “frontal” attack in Europe came to an end in the middle of 1948 with the stabilization of the airlift to Berlin and of the Yugoslav Politburo in Belgrade. The campaigns of Tulpanov and Zhdanov failed. But they served the purpose, whether so intended or not, of being feints in connection with the Asiatic “rear” attack which gathered force in the fall of 1948 and achieved major victories around the turn of the year.
For the background of our recent policy in the Far East, see Rowe, David Nelson, “American Policy Toward China,” Annals of the American Academy of Politicai and Social Science, vol. 255, January, 1948, pp. 136–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Dallin, David J., Soviet Russia and the Far East, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1948, p. 233Google Scholar; Byrnes, James F., Speaking Frankly, New York, Harper, 1947, p. 228.Google Scholar
3 Subcommittee no. 5, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Communism in China, Washington, U. S. Govt. Printing Office, 1948, p. 2.Google Scholar Italics are in the original text.
4 Quoted by Dallin, David J., op. cit., p. 245.Google Scholar
5 Ibid, p. 341.
6 Cf. Tse-tung, Mao, “China's New Democracy,” in Communism in China, loc. cit., pp. 67–91.Google Scholar
7 For a detailed discussion of China's resources for military power, cf., Rowe, David Nelson, China among the Powers, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1945Google Scholar, Chaps. III–V.
8 This need not exclude the economic integration of China and Eastern Siberia, particularly by placing Chinese unskilled manpower, certain tropical products, and ingress and egress by water at the disposal of the Siberian economy. The Soviet interest in Japanese prisoners, and the MVD empire in northeastern Asia are among the many indicators of Siberia's demand for manpower—which China will be in a position to satisfy.
9 Agricultural collectivization is apt to begin in Manchuria, the area most suitable for large-scale mechanization, and most capable, in view of its population structure, of yielding regular and substantial agricultural surpluses.
10 The massive 1945–46 removal of Manchurian industrial equipment to the Soviet Union was probably not so much motivated by a Soviet conception of Manchuria as a permanently “colonial” region ancillary to Eastern Siberia as by Soviet uncertainty about the postwar territorial status of the Chinese Communists. It seems likely that the Politburo envisaged in 1945–46 the possibility of an American-Kuomintang entry into Manchuria, and characteristically oriented preventive action on this most unfavorable variant of the image of the future. North Korea was not stripped.
The Politburo may come to consider the transfer of sectors of Eastern European industry to Eastern Asia, following its long-standing practice of compelling vast migrations of men and matériel in peace and war. The migrating installations might be less vulnerable militarily; the losses involved in migration might be compensated by the “trigger” impact on East-Asiatic industrialization.
11 Communism in China, loc. cit., p. 49.
12 Communism in China, loc. cit., pp. 51–52.
13 A full conquest of China by the Communist Party is thus likely to have a profound impact on the loyalties of the vitally important Chinese communities in Southeastern Asia.
Those marginal regions of China in which much of the old Chinese political pattern survives are known to be among the “best governed” areas of non-Communist China. Oddly enough (from a Western point of view), these are the areas in which any government under Kuomintang auspices enjoys the greatest amount of mass support. Instances are Kwangsi, Chinghai and Ningsia. The fact that they are all “owned and operated” by Mohammedan leaders does not detract from the bearing of this on China at large.
14 In Burma, Indo-China, and Indonesia, Communists have, since the end of World War II, adopted a strategy and tactics similar to those which the Chinese Party adopted after its near-extermination by the Kuomintang in 1927–28: the creation of highly mobile politico-military units as nuclei of a future state. In Japan, following the Bolshevik doctrine of utilizing all legal opportunities, the Communists are acting in part through the new democratic channels which the occupation has provided.
15 The recent Delhi conference of 16 Asiatic nations on the Netherlands East Indies issue indicates the gravity of the conflict between ourselves and the Asiatic nations, with whom we want to be friends and allies, which such a policy is almost certain to involve. This conflict would extend to both Australia and the Middle East.
16 Until a very recent date the Soviet directive has—wisely—been not to refer to these perspectives. But in his speeches at the Fifth Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party in the second half of December, 1948, Dimitrov alluded to them; in his January 31, 1949, Moscow speech, the Pravda editor, Pospelov, did likewise—in the presence of the Politburo —and spoke about the twentieth century as that of the world triumph of Communism; and on December 5, 1948, J. Raymond Walsh said in New York: “In six to twelve months when Chiang Kai-shek is dead in his grave and the Kuomintang is scattered in the rubble of history and the Liberation forces have taken over in China and we must recognize them in the United Nations; and all the colonial areas of Asia have also been liberated, then, when the representative of the Soviet Union in the U.N. rises and says he speaks for more than half of mankind, we Americans will have to hang our heads in shame.”
17 The course of events in Europe, after Congressional approval of the Marshall Plan, but before Marshall Plan goods began to arrive in any quantity, suggests that the mere announcement of a new policy may have profound immediate effects. In Europe, it made possible an immediate rallying of anti-Communist strength.
18 The military supplies most needed in China are small arms, light artillery, light transport equipment, ammunition, fuel—rather than, say, jet planes whose distinctive capabilities would seem superfluous in view of the nature of the Communist opposition.
19 In this article we abstain from discussing the problems of democracy in China. We do of course regard the democratization of China as a major and attainable goal for the latter half of the twentieth century—provided China escapes the 1949 danger of absorption by totalitarianism, a process notoriously difficult to reverse. Even in the context of this urgent task certain immediate measures of democratization may be indispensable. Discussion of this major point lies beyond the confines of this article. For an analysis of basic factors see David Nelson Rowe, op. cit., Chap. VIII.
20 Cf. the discussion of the Soviet decision to strip the factories of Manchuria, , supra, p. 280Google Scholar, which would hardly have been taken if Russia had expected to retain full control there.
21 This and other points on Politburo strategy and tactics draw on an overall study of Bolshevik behavior which is at present being prepared by one of the authors.