Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T00:43:24.537Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

John Leighton Stuart and U.S.-Chinese Communist Rapprochement in 1949: Was There Another “Lost Chance in China”?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Yu-ming Shaw
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Reverend John Leighton Stuart (1876–1962) served as U.S. ambassador to China from July 1946 until August 1949. In the many discussions of his ambassadorship the one diplomatic mission that has aroused the most speculation and debate was his abortive trip to Beijing, contemplated in June–July 1949, to meet with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Some students of Sino-American relations have claimed that had this trip been made the misunderstanding and subsequent hostility between the United States and the People's Republic of China in the post-1949 period could have been avoided; therefore, the unmaking of this trip constituted another “lost chance in China” in establishing a working relationship between the two countries. But others have thought that given the realities of the Cold War in 1949 and the internal political constraints existing in each country, no substantial result could have been gained from such a trip. Therefore, the thesis of a “lost chance in China” was more an unfounded speculation than a credible affirmation.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 89 , March 1982 , pp. 74 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

* A preliminary draft of this paper was delivered to the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, 12-15 March 1981, Toronto, Canada.

1. See Topping, Seymour, Journey Between Two Chinas (New York: Harper and Row, Harper Colophon Books, 1973), pp. 89–90Google Scholar; and Zagoria, Donald S., “Choices in the postwar world (2): containment and China,” in Gati, Charles (ed.), Caging the Bear: Containment and the Cold War (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1974), pp. 109–127.Google Scholar With regard to the origins of the “lost chance in China” thesis, see Tuchman, Barbara, “If Mao had come to Washington: an essay in alternatives,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 51, No. 1 (10 1971), pp. 44–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Esherick, Joseph W. (ed.), Lost Chance in China: The World War II Dispatches of John S. Service (New York: Random House, 1974).Google Scholar See also, Reardon-Anderson, James, “The case for the ‘lost chance in China,’” Contemporary China, Vol. 1, No. 3 (12 1976), pp. 33–34.Google Scholar They generally hold the view that the U.S. Government, either due to ignorance or shortsightedness, lost the chance to reach a working relationship with the CCP during the period of 1944–46. If we accept this interpretation, then the American Government's rejection of Stuart's trip to Beijing in 1949 could be considered as another “lost chance.”

2. See Goldstein, Steven M., “Chinese communist policy toward the United States: opportunities and constraints, 1944–1950,” in Borg, Dorothy and Heinrichs, Waldo (eds.), Uncertain Years: Chinese-American Relations, 1947–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), pp. 275–78Google Scholar; and Levine, Steven I., “If my grandmother had wheels she'd be a trolley, or reflections on the ‘lost chance in China,’” Contemporary China, Vol. 1, No. 3 (12 1976), pp. 31–32.Google Scholar

3. See Hunt, Michael H., “Mao Tse-tung and the issue of accommodation with the United States, 1948–1950,” in Borg, and Heinrichs, , Uncertain Years, pp. 209–16.Google Scholar

4. See Simmons, Robert R., The Strained Alliance: Peking, P'yongyang, Moscow and the Politics of the Korean Civil War (New York: The Free Press, 1975), pp. 59–65.Google Scholar

5. For Stuart's life story, see this' author's unpublished manuscript, “John Leighton Stuart and Sino-American relations in the twentieth century.”

6. Ibid. pp. 423–59.

7. For instance, on 2 April 1949 Chiang issued his directive with regard to the peace talks with the CCP and he was acting as director-general of the GMD; see Liu Shao-t'ang, (ed.), Min-kuo ta-shih jih-chih, 2 Vols. (Taipei, 1979), Vol. 2, p. 827.Google Scholar Furthermore, Chiang in July 1949 established the Extraordinary Committee of the Central Executive Committee of the GMD to be the supreme organ supervising party, government and military affairs of the country, in which Chiang was the chairman and Li the vice-chairman, see Tong, Te-kong and Li Tsung-jen, , The Memoirs of Li Tsung-jen (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1979), pp. 531–32.Google Scholar

8. Stuart to the secretary of state, 16 March 1949, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, VIII, pp. 182–83Google Scholar; Stuart to the secretary of state, 28 March 1949, ibid. pp. 207–208; and Stuart to the secretary of state, 4 April 1949, ibid. pp. 224–25 (hereafter cited as FRUS).

9. The secretary of state to Stuart, 30 March 1949, FRUS, 1949, IX, p. 752.Google Scholar

10. Stuart to the secretary of state, 10 March 1949, FRUS, 1949, VIII, pp. 173–77.Google Scholar

11. The secretary of state to Stuart, 6 April 1949, ibid. pp. 230–31.

12. The acting secretary of state to Stuart, 7 December 1948, FRUS, 1948, VII, p. 859.Google Scholar

13. The secretary of state to Stuart, 26 January 1949, FRUS, 1949, VIII, pp. 667–68.Google Scholar

14. The secretary of state to Stuart, 22 April 1949, ibid. pp. 682–83.

15. Ibid. pp. 723–42.

16. Stuart's diary, 26 June 1949.

17. Stuart to the secretary of state, 14 May 1949, FRUS, 1949, VIII, pp. 745–46.Google Scholar

18. Stuart to the secretary of state, 8 June 1949, ibid. pp. 752–53.

19. For Stuart's educational career, see this author's manuscript, “John Leighton Stuart,” pp. 104–181; and West, Philip, Yenching University and Sino-Western Relations, 1916–1952 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Stuart to the secretary of state, 30 June 1949, FRUS, 1949, VIII, pp. 766–67Google Scholar; and Stuart, 's diary, 26, 28 06 1949.Google Scholar

21. Stuart's diary, 26 June 1949.

22. Stuart to the secretary of state, 30 June 1949, FRUS, 1949, VIII, pp. 766–67.Google Scholar

23. See Tsou, Tang, America's Failure in China, 2 Vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Phoenix Books, 1963), Vol. 2, pp. 530–34Google Scholar; and Westerfield, H. Bradford, Foreign Policy and Party Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), pp. 351–52.Google Scholar

24. Davies to Kennan, 30 June 1949, FRUS, 1949. VIII, pp. 768–69.Google Scholar

25. Ibid.

26. The secretary of state to Stuart, 1 July 1949, ibid. p. 769.

27. Clubb to the secretary of state, 1 June 1949, ibid. pp. 357–60.

28. Clubb to the secretary of state, 17 June 1949, ibid. p. 389; 22 June 1949, ibid. pp. 394–95; 24 June 1949, ibid. pp. 397–98; 27 June 1949, ibid. pp. 398–99; and 11 July 1949, ibid. p. 780.

29. See Blum, Robert M., “The Peiping cable: a drama of 1949,” New York Times Magazine, 13 08 1978, p. 56.Google Scholar

30. Mr Blum seems also to share this view, see ibid. p. 58.

31. This move was made under Stuart's initiative, see Memorandum by Minshu, Chen, TRUS, 1949, VIII, p. 711.Google Scholar

32. Stuart to the secretary of state, 13 June 1949, ibid. pp. 756–57; and Stuart's diary, 10 June 1949.

33. Stuart to the secretary of state, 24 June 1949, FRUS, 1949, VIII, p. 764.Google Scholar

34. In FRUS, 1949, VIII, p. 782Google Scholar, it was wrongly reported as either 1 or 12 July; it should have been 9 July, see Stuart, 's diary, 9 07 1949.Google Scholar

35. See Memorandum by Minshu, Chen, FRUS. 1949, VIII, pp. 771–74.Google Scholar

36. Ibid. pp. 773–74.

37. Ibid. pp. 774–75.

38. Ibid. pp. 776–79.

39. Stuart to the secretary of state, 13 July 1949, ibid. pp. 782–83.

40. Stuart to the secretary of state, 14 July 1949, ibid. pp. 430–35.

41. See Memorandum by the Policy Planning Staff, 7 September 1948, FRUS, 1948, VIII, pp. 146–55.Google Scholar

42. See Note by the executive secretary of the National Security Council, 28 February 1949, FRUS, 1949, IX, pp. 491–95Google Scholar; and Memorandum by the acting executive secretary of the National Security Council, 3 March 1949, ibid. p. 499.

43. Stuart to the secretary of state, 23 July 1949, FRUS, 1949, VIII, p. 797Google Scholar; and Jones to the secretary of state, 12 August 1949, ibid. p. 485.

44. Clubb to the secretary of state, 12 August 1949, ibid. p. 485.

45. See Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, 4 Vols. (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), Vol. 4, pp. 438–39.Google Scholar

46. Zagoria, , “Choices,” pp. 119–25.Google Scholar

47. Goldstein, , “Chinese communist policy,” pp. 248–73.Google Scholar

48. Ibid. pp. 273–78.

49. For the anti-CCP and anti-Truman Administration sentiments at the Capitol Hill, see Tsou, , America's Failures, pp. 503–520.Google Scholar

50. See Cohen, Warren I., “Acheson, his advisers, and China, 1949–1950,” in Borg, and Heinrichs, , Uncertain Years, pp. 38–39.Google Scholar

51. Ibid. pp. 37–40.

52. See Tsou, , America's Failure, p. 515Google Scholar; and Stuart, John Leighton, Fifty Years in China: The Memoirs of John Leighton Stuart, Missionary and Ambassador (New York: Random House, 1954), p. 273.Google Scholar

53. For the details of the CCP's harassment of American consular staff in Mukden, see FRUS, 1949, VIII, pp. 933–1051Google Scholar; and Gwertzman, Bernard, “The hostage crisis three decades ago,” New York Times Magazine, 4 05 1980, pp. 41, 42, 44, 101, 102, 104, 106.Google Scholar

54. Simmons, , Strained Alliance, p. 61.Google Scholar

55. Hunt, , “Mao Tse-tung,” pp. 212–13.Google Scholar

56. Simmons, , Strained Alliance, p. 64.Google Scholar