American attitudes toward China from the nineteenth century until the Second World War had been broadly paternalistic, assuming a “special friendship” with the Chinese people. However, the situation altered dramatically in 1949 and 1950, when the communists won control of the mainland in the civil war and “Red” China subsequently allied itself with the Soviet Union. The communist victory seemed to signify Chinese rejection of American values and the American model of civil society, a rejection that gained enormous salience in the context of the rapidly developing Cold War. The Sino-Soviet alliance dramatically confirmed America's “loss” of China to its main enemy. After the Second World War, the Soviet Union was the only power capable of challenging American hegemony; and the communist leadership in Moscow coupled its rhetoric about a communist world revolution with action, expanding domination over its neighboring Eastern European states by setting up Soviet-backed communist regimes in them.