Although the mass media present China today as “progressive,” especially after the 2008 Olympics fanfare, it remains among the world’s cruelest regimes. The term “Red China” is not anachronistic. Though certainly less oppressive than during the Cultural Revolution, when it executed millions, China is still governed by a single regime, the Communist Party, which requires members to be atheists. It imprisons dissidents without due process, oppresses Tibet, and enforces a policy, backed by compulsory abortion, restricting most families to one child. (Since Chinese traditionally prefer male offspring, this has led to disproportionate abortion — even infanticide — of female babies, creating an artificial majority of males in China.) The government directly controls most media, blocking criticisms of itself on the Internet.
Perhaps worst is suppression of religious freedom. Christian churches, though permitted, must submit to government control and censorship — either as part of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement or Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. Independent house churches, comprising some 90 percent of China’s Christians, face persecution. The Voice of the Martyrs reports:
The human rights record in China is one of the worst in the world. Its system of “re-education through labor” detains hundreds of thousands each year in work camps without even a court hearing…. The house church movement (unregistered churches) endures unimaginable persecution, yet stands on its commitment to preach the gospel, no matter the cost. China continued its crackdown against Christians and missionaries in 2008, as they sought to purge the country of religion before hosting the Olympic games…. Church property and Bibles were confiscated. Christians were harassed, questioned, arrested and imprisoned. Christians in prisons are routinely beaten and abused.
- In China, censorship, now largely automated, has reached “unprecedented levels of accuracy, aided by machine learning and voice and image recognition.” — Cate Cadell, Reuters, May 26, 2019.
- As in other Communist regimes, such as that of the former Soviet Union, the Communist ideology does not tolerate any competing narratives. “Religion is a source of authority, and an object of fidelity, that is greater than the state… This characteristic of religion has always been anathema to history’s totalitarian despots…” — Thomas F. Farr, President of the Religious Freedom Institute, in testimony before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, November 28, 2018.
- In 2018, China had an estimated 200 million surveillance cameras, with plans for 626 million surveillance cameras by 2020. China’s aim is apparently an “Integrated Joint Operations Platform” which will integrate and coordinate data from surveillance cameras with facial recognition technology, citizen ID card numbers, biometric data, license plate numbers and information about vehicle ownership, health, family planning, banking, and legal records, “unusual activity”, and any other relevant data that can be gathered about citizens, such as religious practice, travels abroad, and so on, according to reports of local officials and police.
- At the moment, China is in the process of fulfilling what Stalin, Hitler and Mao could only dream about: The flawless totalitarian state, powered by digital technology, where the individual has nowhere to flee from the all-seeing eye of the Communist state.
China has been shutting down churches and removing crosses. They have been replaced with the national flag, and images of Jesus have been replaced with pictures of President Xi Jinping. Children, future bearers of the Communist ideology, have been banned from attending church. In September 2018, China shut down one of the largest underground churches, Beijing’s Zion Church. In December 2018, the pastor of the underground Early Rain Church, Wang Yi, and his wife were arrested and charged with ‘inciting subversion’, a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Along with the pastor and his wife, more than 100 church members were also arrested. In April 2019, Chinese authorities forcibly took away an underground Catholic priest, Father Peter Zhang Guangjun, just after he celebrated Palm Sunday Mass. He was reportedly the third Catholic priest to be taken by the authorities in one month.
The government has also been sending Uighurs, a populace that includes around 11 million people, mostly Muslim, in the western Xinjian province of China, to internment camps for ‘political reeducation’. China has said that the camps are vocational education training centers aimed at stemming the threat of Islamic extremism. Uighurs have launched several terror attacks in China, according to one 2017 report, “Uighur Foreign Fighters: An Underexamined Jihadist Challenge” by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague. The report also states:
“Uighurs consider themselves separate and distinct in ethnicity, culture, and religion from the Han Chinese majority that governs them. These distinctions form the basis of the Uighurs’ religious ethno-nationalist identity, leading some of them to engage in violent activities aimed at establishing their own state, East Turkestan…
“… the appeal of radical Islamic ideology outside of China has attracted many Uighurs to participate in violent jihadism as part of their religious identity and as a way to further their struggle against the Chinese authorities.”
“The [Chinese] are using the security forces for mass imprisonment of Chinese Muslims in concentration camps,” Randall Schriver, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs recently said. “[G]iven what we understand to be the magnitude of the detention, at least a million but likely closer to three million citizens out of a population of about 10 million” could be imprisoned in the detention centers.
According to The Epoch Times, in the Chinese detention camps, Uighurs have been drugged, tortured, beaten and killed by injection. “I still remember the words of the Chinese authorities when I asked what my crime was,” said Mihrigul Tursun, a woman who escaped to the United States with two of her children. “They said, ‘You being a Uyghur is a crime'”.
Physically persecuting religious minorities, however, does not suffice for the Chinese Communist Party. It also seems to have campaigned against Christianity in schools throughout the country. It has, for instance, forced students to swear an oath to resist religious belief. Teachers were also indoctrinated to “ensure that education and teaching adhere to the correct political direction.” Classics taught in schools have been censored: In Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, references to the Bible were deleted, and references to Sunday service or God in stories by Anton Chekhov and Hans Christian Andersen were expunged.
Additionally, the use of ‘sensitive’ words related to religion, such as ‘prayer’, are not allowed in the classroom.
In both the oppression of religion, as in the censorship of free speech, the Chinese Communist Party is utilizing high-tech means to achieve its goals. There are reports that Xinjiang is being used as a testing ground for surveillance technology: Uighurs in Xinjiang, according to a report published in the Guardian, are “closely monitored, with surveillance cameras mounted over villages, street corners, mosques and schools. Commuters must go through security checkpoints between all towns and villages, where they undergo face scans and phone checks”. China uses facial recognition technology that matches faces from surveillance camera footage to a watch-list of suspects.
In 2018, China had an estimated 200 million surveillance cameras, with plans for 626 million surveillance cameras by 2020. China’s aim is apparently an “Integrated Joint Operations Platform,” which will integrate and coordinate datafrom surveillance cameras with facial recognition technology, citizen ID card numbers, biometric data, license plate numbers and information about vehicle ownership, health, family planning, banking, and legal records, “unusual activity”, and any other relevant data that can be gathered about citizens, such as religious practice and travels abroad.
Book Burning. In communist China, practicing a certain faith, printing, or even reading religious books could result in prison terms and abuse. Spiritual believers in China – be it Christians, Buddhists, Uyghur Muslims, or Falun Gong practitioners – are faced not only with brutal suppression or forced-labor terms but also have their religious books burned or trashed at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The coercive policies are aimed at forcing these religious followers to renounce their faith and follow the communist ideologies based on atheism and Marxism.
As the communist regime is escalating its restrictions on religious publications, those in the printing industry are left in distress. A sales department manager in Luoyang City, Henan Province, told Bitter Winter in September 2020 that printing of religious materials, “especially Christian,” is not allowed. Apart from banning the spiritual publications, the Chinese authorities spare no efforts in confiscating religious books that aren’t officially approved by the CCP.
When the CCP launched the decade-long Cultural Revolution in 1966, temples were looted, and scrolls, books, relics, and even Buddha statues were burned. A few decades later in July 1999, the then-leader of the CCP, Jiang Zemin, ordered the eradication of the spiritual practice of Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa), an ancient meditation system based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. Although Buddhism is one of the recognized religions in China, the Buddhist temples and their followers are still being targeted by the authorities. The only authority in China is the CCP and obedience to any other authority is forbidden.
At the moment, China is in the process of fulfilling what Stalin, Hitler and Mao could only dream about: The flawless totalitarian state, powered by digital technology, where the individual has nowhere to flee from the all-seeing eye of the Communist state.
What surprises many Americans: the regime ruling China was largely put there by the United States.
In the 1930s, Japan, then militarily powerful, was the main barrier to Soviet ambitions to communize Asia. Benjamin Gitlow, founding member of the U.S. Communist Party, wrote in I Confess (1940):
When I was in Moscow, the attitude toward the United States in the event of war was discussed. Privately, it was the opinion of all the Russian leaders to whom I spoke that the rivalry between the United States and Japan must actually break out into war between these two.
The Russians were hopeful that the war would break out soon, because that would greatly secure the safety of Russia’s Siberian borders and would so weaken Japan that Russia would no longer have to fear an attack from her in the East…. Stalin is perfectly willing to let Americans die in defense of the Soviet Union.
In 1935, U.S. Ambassador to Moscow William C. Bullitt sent a dispatch to Secretary of State Cordell Hull:
It is … the heartiest hope of the Soviet Government that the United States will become involved in war with Japan…. To think of the Soviet Union as a possible ally of the United States in case of war with Japan is to allow the wish to be father to the thought. The Soviet Union would certainly attempt to avoid becoming an ally until Japan had been thoroughly defeated and would then merely use the opportunity to acquire Manchuria and Sovietize China.
In the 1930s Japan moved troops into Manchuria (northern China). U.S. history books routinely call this an imperialistic invasion. While there is certainly truth in this interpretation, the books rarely mention that Japan was largely reacting, in its own version of the Monroe Doctrine, to the Soviets’ incursions into Asia — namely their seizure of Sinkiang and Outer Mongolia. Anthony Kubek, Chairman of Political Science at the University of Dallas, wrote in How the Far East Was Lost:
It was apparent to Japanese statesmen that unless bastions of defense were built in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, Communism would spread through all of North China and seriously threaten the security of Japan. To the Japanese, expansion in Manchuria was a national imperative…. But the Department of State seemed not to regard Japan as a bulwark against Soviet expansion in North China. As a matter of fact, not one word of protest was sent by the Department of State to the Soviet Union, despite her absorption of Sinkiang and Outer Mongolia, while at the same time Japan was censured for stationing troops in China.
The Chinese Republic
China had been ruled by emperors until 1911, when the Qing Dynasty was overthrown. The revolution is largely attributed to Sun Yat-sen, who sought to make China a constitutional republic, led by the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party of China. However, Sun encountered extreme difficulties in unifying the enormous nation under his idealistic principles. After the emperors’ fall, China was largely ruled by local warlords, and following Dr. Sun’s 1925 death, the task of unifying China fell to Chiang Kai-shek, a Christian and Kuomintang leader.
The Soviets tried infiltrating the Kuomintang, but Chiang Kai-shek eventually saw through their schemes, and by 1928 had deported many USSR agents. That same year, 1928, Foreign Affairs, American’s most powerful foreign policy journal, published its first article criticizing Chiang. From then on, he became the enemy of both the Soviet Union and the American establishment — which had ironically sought to support communism since the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Chinese Reds: Soviet Puppets
The Chinese Communist Party was little more than a puppet of the Soviet Union, which recognized the value for communism’s future in China’s massive manpower. In 1933, the Chinese Communist Party sent this message to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin: “Lead us on, O our pilot, from victory to victory!”
Stalin encouraged the overthrow of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government. However, with Japanese troops’ arrival in Manchuria in 1937, Stalin ordered Chinese communists to ease their attacks on the Nationalists because the latter were repelling the Japanese, whom Stalin considered a barrier to his own ambitions in Asia.
This order was amplified after June 22, 1941, when Germany and its European allies invaded the Soviet Union, and began decimating the Red Army. Stalin feared that Japan — Germany’s ally — would invade Russia from the East, destroying himself and world communism’s center. One may reasonably conclude that proven Soviet agents within the U.S. government — such as Harry Dexter White, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury; and Alger Hiss, a leading State Department figure — shared this concern.
This author has documented in The New American that Washington had full foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack, but did not warn our military commanders; and also that Washington sought to provoke the attack through such measures as a freeze on Japan’s U.S. assets; a steel and oil embargo; closure of the Panama Canal to Japan’s shipping; and humiliating ultimatums to the Japanese government (see, for example, Pearl Harbor: Hawaii Was Surprised; FDR Was Not).
The U.S. war with Japan fulfilled the Gitlow and Bullitt warnings. Since Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists were also fighting the Japanese, official U.S. policy was to support them, especially after President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Chiang at the 1943 Cairo Conference. Stalin ordered the Chinese communists to help against the Japanese too — but in a very limited capacity. Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung told followers: “Our determined policy is 70 percent self-development, 20 percent compromise, and 10 percent fight the Japanese.” The Reds spent little energy against the Japanese, mostly attacking the Nationalists, whom they planned to overthrow at the war’s conclusion. This emphasis increased as Japan’s defeat, from U.S. advances in the Pacific, became imminent. Robert Welch, in his study of China’s downfall, Again, May God Forgive Us, wrote: “In Shantung in 1943, just for one illustration, they [the communists] attacked from the south an army of twenty thousand Nationalists, simultaneously with a Japanese attack from the north, and helped to slaughter the whole force.”
Roosevelt’s Betrayal
But China’s destruction came not only from communists. Fateful decisions resulted when Roosevelt met with Stalin at the Teheran Conference (late 1943) and Yalta Conference (February 1945). Stalin, though our ally against Germany during World War II, maintained a nonaggression pact with Japan. This suited Stalin, as he wished the Japanese to wear down China’s Nationalist forces.
At the Teheran and Yalta wartime conferences, however, Roosevelt asked Stalin if he would break his pact with Japan and enter the Far East war. Stalin agreed, but attached conditions. He demanded that America completely equip his Far Eastern Army for the expedition, with 3,000 tanks, 5,000 planes, plus all the other munitions, food, and fuel required for a 1,250,000-man army. Roosevelt accepted this demand, and 600 shiploads of Lend-Lease material were convoyed to the USSR for the venture. Stalin’s Far Eastern Army swiftly received more than twice the supplies we gave Chiang Kai-shek during four years as our ally.
General Douglas MacArthur protested after discovering that ships designated to supply his Pacific forces were being diverted to Russia. Major General Courtney Whitney wrote: “One hundred of his transport ships were to be withdrawn immediately, to be used to carry munitions and supplies across the North Pacific to the Soviet forces in Vladivostok…. Later, of course, they were the basis of Soviet military support of North Korea and Red China.”
But Stalin didn’t just want materiel in return for entering the Asian war. He also demanded control of the Manchurian seaports of Dairen and Port Arthur — which a glance at the map shows would give him an unbreakable foothold in China — as well as joint control, with the Chinese, of Manchuria’s railroads. Roosevelt made these concessions without consulting the Chinese. Thus, without authority, he ceded to Stalin another nation’s sovereign territory. The president made these pledges without the knowledge or consent of Congress or the American people.
The State Department official representing the United States in drawing up the Yalta agreement was Alger Hiss — subsequently exposed as a Soviet spy. General Patrick Hurley, U.S. Ambassador to China, wrote:
“American diplomats surrendered the territorial integrity and the political independence of China … and wrote the blueprint for the Communist conquest of China in secret agreement at Yalta.”
The decision to invite and equip Stalin — a known aggressor — into the Far East must go down among the worst acts of U.S. foreign policy. Stalin’s divisions entered China to fight the already-beaten Japanese on August 9, 1945 — five days before Japan’s surrender. The atom bomb had already pounded Hiroshima.
After barely firing a shot, the Soviets received surrender of Japan’s huge arsenals in Manchuria. These, with their American Lend-Lease supplies, they handed over to Mao Tse-tung’s communists to overthrow the Nationalist government.
Vinegar Joe
Another means of destroying the Nationalists: U.S. personnel assigned to China. Among the worst was Army General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell. Though generally respected as a strategist, Stilwell became notorious for hatred of Chiang Kai-shek — whom he nicknamed “the peanut” — and admiration for the communists. Stilwell wrote in a letter: “It makes me itch to throw down my shovel and get over there and shoulder a rifle with Chu Teh.” (Chu was commander-in-chief of the Chinese communist armies — as he was later in the Korean War, overseeing the killing of GIs.)
Because Japan controlled China’s ports, the Nationalists had to receive supplies by air lift from India. Stilwell oversaw a campaign of Chinese troops against the Japanese in Burma, attempting to open a land supply route. When the effort failed, Stilwell demanded the operation be tried again, using 30 Nationalist divisions.
At this, Chiang balked: diverting 30 divisions south into Burma would facilitate further conquest of China by both the Japanese and the Chinese communists. General Claire Chennault, commander of the famed “Flying Tigers,” agreed with Chiang. Significantly, Stilwell did not request use of communist forces — whom he so vocally admired — for his envisioned Burma campaign.
Stilwell complained to Washington, and received a message from President Roosevelt directing Chiang to place Stilwell in “unrestricted command” of all Chinese forces, and send troops to Burma. After jubilantly handing this message to Chiang, Stilwell wrote in his diary:
I’ve long waited for vengeance —
At last I’ve had my chance.
I’ve looked the Peanut in the eye
And kicked him in the pants…
The little b*****d shivered
And lost the power of speech.
His face turned green and quivered
And he struggled not to screech.
But Stilwell’s scheme backfired. Chiang refused the directive and asked Roosevelt to replace Stilwell. Otherwise, he said, he would go it alone against the Japanese — as he had for the four years preceding Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt was forced to concede. To his chagrin, Stilwell was relieved by General Albert C. Wedemeyer, who saw eye-to-eye with Chiang.
Chiang Kai-shek wrote: “Stilwell was in a conspiracy with the Communists to overthrow the Government” — an opinion shared by General Hurley, who stated: “The record of General Stilwell in China is irrevocably coupled in history with the conspiracy to overthrow the Nationalist Government of China, and to set up in its place a Communist regime — and all this movement was part of, and cannot be separated from, the Communist cell or apparatus that existed at the time in the Government in Washington.”
State Department Junta
What “cell” did Ambassador Hurley refer to? In China, he was surrounded by a State Department clique favoring a Chinese communist takeover. Dean Acheson, who as a young attorney had represented Soviet interests in America, became Assistant Secretary of State in 1941. As such, he ensured the State Department’s Far Eastern Division was dominated by communists and pro-communists, including Alger Hiss (subsequently proven a Soviet spy); John Carter Vincent, director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs, later identified by Daily Worker editor Louis Budenz as a communist; John Stewart Service, Foreign Service Officer in China who turned State Department information over to the Chinese communists, and was arrested by the FBI in the Amerasia spy case (about which more later); Foreign Service Officer John P. Davies, who consistently lobbied for the communists; Owen Lattimore, appointed U.S. adviser to Chiang Kai-shek but identified as a communist by ex-communists Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley; and several others.
“The Communists relied very strongly on Service and John Carter Vincent,” said Budenz, “in a campaign against Ambassador Hurley.” Hurley, an honest statesman, was shocked by the maneuverings of those under him. “The professional foreign service men,” he reported to President Truman, “sided with the Communists’ armed party.”
Hurley was compelled to dismiss 11 State Department members. Upon return from China, however, they were mysteriously promoted, and some became Hurley’s superiors — after which he resigned. “These professional diplomats,” he wrote, “were returned to Washington and were placed in the Far Eastern and China divisions of the State Department as my supervisors.”
Pro-communist Stratagems
This State Department clique employed several tactics to advance Chinese communism. Among the chief: claiming Mao’s followers weren’t communists, but merely “agrarian reformers.” Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto had commanded: “Workers of the world, unite!” But since China had little industry, Chinese communists made farmers their focus.
Professor Kenneth A. Colgrove testified that Owen Lattimore informed him that “Chinese Communists under Mao Tse-tung were real democrats and that they were really agrarian reformers and had no connection with Soviet Russia.”
The aforementioned John Carter Vincent referred to Mao and his followers as “so-called Communists.”
Raymond Ludden, another in the State Department clique, reported that “the so-called Communists are agrarian reformers of a mild democratic stripe more than anything else.”
In 1943, T. A. Bisson wrote in Far Eastern Survey: “By no stretch of the imagination can this be termed ‘communism’; it is, in fact, the essence of bourgeois democracy applied mainly to agrarian conditions.”
The State Department’s John P. Davies told Washington: “The Communists are in China to stay. And China’s destiny is not Chiang’s but theirs.” An additional tactic: portraying Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists as “fascists,” “reactionary,” and “corrupt.” General Wedemeyer conveyed this matter’s reality:
Although the Nationalist Government of China was frequently and derisively described as authoritarian or totalitarian, there was a basic difference between it and its Communist enemies, since the Kuomintang’s ultimate aim was the establishment of a constitutional republic, whereas the Communists want to establish a totalitarian dictatorship on the Soviet pattern. In my two years of close contact with Chiang Kai-shek, I had become convinced that he was personally a straightforward, selfless leader, keenly interested in the welfare of his people, and desirous of establishing a constitutional government.
While some corruption undoubtedly existed in the Nationalist regime, Wedemeyer insightfully noted that corruption existed in all governments, including ours. For China, a conspiracy on the U.S. side compounded this. Their government offices displaced by Japan’s invasion, the Nationalists had to rely on paper currency. Runaway inflation threatened China’s economy. To stabilize the situation, Chiang Kai-shek requested a loan of U.S. gold. President Roosevelt approved, but the gold shipments were delayed and withheld by Assistant Treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White, long since proven to be a Soviet agent. This collapsed China’s currency. One can understand why some Chinese officials, forced to accept salaries paid in worthless money, turned to corruption.
Walter S. Robertson, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, informed the National Press Club in 1959:
“We stood by and saw China drift into a state of complete economic collapse. The currency was worthless…. In China, we withheld our funds at the only time, in my opinion, we had a chance to save the situation. To do what? To force the Communists in.”
As a final tactic, State Department leftists demanded the Nationalists form a “coalition government” with the communists. This was an old communist trick. By forcing the postwar governments of Poland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia to form coalitions with communists, the Marxists seized control of those nations; Mao Tse-tung envisioned the same strategy for China. In his report “On Coalition Government,” made in April 1945 to the Seventh National Convention of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao predicted that a coalition would destroy both Chiang and “reactionary American imperialism.”
The State Department’s China clique echoed this call. John P. Davies wrote in 1944: “A coalition Chinese Government in which the Communists find a satisfactory place is the solution of this impasse most desirable to us.”
A more realistic assessment of coalition government — which meant combining constitutional freedom with totalitarian gangsterism — was provided by Douglas MacArthur, who said it would have “about as much chance of getting them together as that oil and water will mix.”
In fact, Chiang Kai-shek wanted a postwar government representing all Chinese parties. In November 1946, he convened a National Assembly that met for 40 days, with 2,045 delegates representing diverse views from all over China; it adopted a national constitution. However, despite their clamoring for “coalition government,” Mao’s communists refused to participate: they knew that, lacking popular support in China, they could only take power by violence.
Marshall Mission
At World War II’s close, Mao’s troops, armed by the Russians — both from American Lend-Lease and captured Japanese arsenals — began a full assault on the Nationalist government. Mao’s rebellion would have undoubtedly failed if not for interventions by George Marshall, whom President Truman designated his special representative to China.
Marshall had a remarkable penchant for being in “the wrong place at the wrong time.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt had advanced him over dozens of senior officers to become U.S. Army Chief of Staff. In that capacity, on December 7, 1941, he absented himself from his office on a notoriously long “horseback ride,” while junior officers sought his permission to warn Pearl Harbor of the impending attack. During the Korean War, he was conveniently named Secretary of Defense; as such he overruled General MacArthur, saving the Yalu River’s bridges from destruction by the U.S. Air Force, and thus permitting Communist Chinese soldiers to invade Korea, which precluded victory by MacArthur, guaranteeing the stalemate that ultimately occurred. Regardless of where Marshall served, his actions fortified communism and defeated American interests — a record summarized by the wrongfully maligned Senator Joseph McCarthy in his book America’s Retreat from Victory: The Story of George Catlett Marshall.
Before leaving for China, Marshall revealed he already accepted the communist propaganda line. Five-star Fleet Admiral William Leahy reported: “I was present when Marshall was going to China. He said he was going to tell Chiang that he had to get on with the Communists or without help from us. He said the same thing when he got back.” And when told Mao Tse-tung and his followers were communists, Marshall remarked: “Don’t be ridiculous. These fellows are just old-fashioned agrarian reformers.”
When Marshall first arrived in China, the Nationalists outnumbered the communists 5-1 in both troops and rifles, and were successfully driving them back. Marshall, however, imposed a total of three truces — which the communists violated, allowing them to regroup, bring up Soviet supplies, and further train their guerillas. This expanded their control from 57 Chinese counties to 310. General Claire Chennault recounted the impact of Marshall’s truces:
North of Hankow some 200,000 government troops had surrounded 70,000 Communist troops and were beginning a methodical job of extermination. The Communists appealed to Marshall on the basis of his truce proposal, and arrangements were made for fighting to cease while the Communists marched out of the trap and on to Shantung Province, where a large Communist offensive began about a year later. On the East River near Canton some 100,000 Communist troops were trapped by government forces. The truce teams effected their release and allowed the Communists to march unmolested to Bias Bay where they boarded junks and sailed to Shantung.
Marshall’s disastrous 15-month China mission ended in January 1947. Upon his return to the United States, President Truman rewarded his failures with appointment as Secretary of State. Marshall imposed a weapons embargo on the Nationalists, while the communists continued receiving a steady weapons supply from the USSR. Marshall boasted that he disarmed 39 anti-communist divisions “with a stroke of the pen.” This doomed Chinese freedom.
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