Hurley's mission was to unify the military forces in China for defeating Japan. Political Consultative Conference (PCC) met from 11 to 31 January 1946 for the purpose of seeking a peaceful solution to the KMT-CCP conflict. For a time it was the chief focus of popular attention and even after the hopes were shown to be illusory, the authority of the PCC agreements was invoked by the government to legitimize a number of its subsequent political actions. The CCP and the Democratic League refused to participate on the grounds that the KMT had not honoured the terms of the PCC resolutions on government reorganization. The strident anti-American themes of the official CCP pronouncements that pursued Stuart out of China in August 1949 were matched by the uncompromising anti-Communist tones which dominated contemporary American diplomatic reports and public opinion in general. Together these Chinese and American postures indicated differences so great that they would require more than two decades to surmount.