China White Paper

During the presidential campaign of 1948, as Cold War fears of communist global expansion mounted, critics of the Truman administration heatedly raised the question "Who Lost China?." Criticism mounted after Truman's surprising victory in the election as the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong steadily defeated Chinese Nationalist armies of Chiang Kai-shek and was winning the Chinese Civil War. In November 1948 John Paton Davies proposed a collection of documents to explain and defend American policy in China to the American public, an idea that Secretary of State Dean Acheson ordered his staff to prepare. The group was headed by the Director of the Far Eastern Division, Walton Butterworth but much of the work was done by Charles W. Yost, John F. Melby who had served for the State Department in the Soviet Union and China during the war, and by Philip Jessup. The 1054 page volume was published August 1949, as Mao and his retinue were about to enter Beijing. ==Content==

The document consisted of 412 pages of narrative covering relations from 1944 to 1949, and 642 pages of documents as an appendix. It was based entirely on documents from the State Department files. Chapters covered American policy, 1844–1943; Nationalist-Communist relations, 1921–1944; the Ambassadorship of Major General Patrick J. Hurley, 1944-1945 and his efforts at mediation; the Yalta Agreement and the Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1945; the Mission of General George C. Marshall, 1945–47; including the development of the Civil War; the Ambassadorship of John Leighton Stuart, 1947–1949; including further developments in the Civil War; the military picture, 1945–49; American economic aid, 1947–49. A set of annexes includes 186 treaties, official statements, and other documents. The body of the volume was preceded by a "Letter of Transmittal," signed though not written by Secretary of State Dean Acheson. The letter described origin and nature of the White Paper and defended American policy, 1944–1949. The Letter opens by saying The letter went on that "the religious, philanthropic and cultural ties which have united the two peoples, and has been attested by many acts of good will over a period of many years, including the use of the Boxer indemnity for the education of Chinese students, the abolition of extraterritoriality during the Second World War, and our extensive aid to China during and since the close of the war," and that the United States maintained the doctrine of the Open Door, such as respect for the administrative and territorial integrity of China, opposition to any foreign domination of China. The Letter advised that the Chinese people "should be given time to develop those political institutions which would best meet their needs in the modern world". The "causes" of China's revolution were "unbearable pressure upon the land" and the "impact of the West." Acheson wrote that the Chiang's Nationalist government had lost the confidence of its own troops and the Chinese people, and that as a result its defeat in the Chinese Civil War was therefore something that the United States could not have prevented. ==Reaction==

Domestic reaction Congressional Republicans responded by criticizing the State Department as having been misleading regarding the nature of Mao and the communist movement. Chinese reaction The white paper outraged Mao Zedong, who wrote a number of articles responding to the report. "Acheson is telling a bare-faced lie when he describes aggression as "friendship". To the contrary, he wrote, all the "friendship" shown to China by U.S. imperialism since 1840 when the United States collaborated with Britain in the Opium War, and especially the great act of "friendship" in helping Chiang Kai-shek "slaughter" several million Chinese in the last few years..." Mao asked why Truman would provide so much support to Nationalist forces if he believed them to be so "demoralized and unpopular." Mao stated that since Truman's position of supporting a demoralized and unpopular Nationalist government was otherwise irrational, Truman must have been acting out of imperialist ambitions "to slaughter the Chinese people" by needlessly prolonging the war. Mao spurned the White Paper's explanation of the revolution in terms of over-population and the stimulus of Western ideas, since in later passages "even this bit of tedious and phoney theory of causation disappears, and one finds only a mass of inexplicable events". Mao's sarcasm accuses Acheson of not understanding the revolution: ==References==