Great Power Conflict and the Chinese Civil War

Abstract

For many years, scholars relied almost exclusively on Western sources to write about Cold War history. In his 1983 survey of the field of post-1945 SinoAmerican relations, Warren I. Cohen hoped for a breakthrough in the coming decade: access to Chinese archival material.' Since 1989, a steady stream of publications utilizing new Chinese documents as well as American archives has appeared.2 By presenting highly revealing Chinese materials and incorporating Chinese perspectives into the investigation of Sino-U.S. confrontations, these new works have greatly invigorated the study of the early Cold War, especially its East Asian dimension. In varying ways, these studies have addressed many fundamental questions about the origins of the Cold War in Asia and the emergence of Sino-American conflict: What were Chinese Communist perceptions of the post-1945 international situation in general and the United States in particular? Why did Mao Zedong decide to lean to the side of the Soviet Union? What was the nature of the Mao-Stalin relationship? Why did Beijing intervene in the Korean War? What was the extent of China's assistance to the Viet Minh in the early 1950s? Many heretofore unknown events and episodes have been illuminated and many previously unanswered questions about the role of the communist side in the early Cold War have begun to be addressed.3 The appearance of these new studies would certainly have satisfied Cohen, a doyen in the field of American-East Asia relations, who, together with Akira Iriye, has made tremendous efforts to encourage fresh scholarship and introduce young scholars into the field. The book under review represents one of the latest entries in this emerging international history of the Cold War in Asia. Westad has benefited from a great deal of previously unavailable Chinese material both on the mainland and in Taiwan. From the mainland, he has drawn upon a wide array of primary sources, including officially published documentary series, memoirs,