No exit?: the origin and evolution of U.S. policy toward China, 1945-1950

Abstract

No Exit? Origin and Evolution of U.S. Policy toward China 1945-1950, by Zi Zhongyun. Translated by Zhang Ciyun and Jia Yanli. Norwalk: EastBridge, 2003. xxii + 335 pp. US$34.95 (hardcover), US$22.95 (paperback). Zi Zhongyun is a brilliant scholar of the older generation. She graduated from Qinghua University in 1951 and was posted to China's Foreign Service in Vienna in the 1950s. the 1980s, when she was a visiting scholar at Princeton University for a year, she discovered the richness of historical documents on American foreign policy and started to work on this book project. book was originally published in China in 1987 and has become a landmark of China's scholarly studies about American policy. Michael Hunt, who was instrumental in the publication of this English-language edition and is the author of the Foreword, points to the significant differences between Zi's book and the old Maoist-influenced publications. Where the orthodox literature used a very limited amount of archival material with very few footnotes, Zi constructs her interpretive framework on the bedrock of a comprehensive historical database, including published document collections such as Foreign Relations of the United States as well as presidential and other papers housed in various libraries. While the old Maoist interpretation tended to be simplistic and ideologically confined, arguing that due to its capitalistic/imperialistic nature Washington was inherently antagonistic to the Chinese Communist Party and bent on a hostile policy of subversion and aggression, Zi's analysis of America's China policy is nuanced and sophisticated. Taking a multi-layered approach, she examines the role of domestic politics as well as Washington's global Cold War strategy in the making of China policy, which was in flux and often self-contradictory. Starting with a quotation from Friedrich Engels, Zi states the basic premise of the book: How did the United States embark on an interventionist policy that would prove both harmful to China and self-defeating? (p. 1). the conclusion, she asserts: In the final analysis, the United States never viewed the Chinese revolution as an independent historical event, and it subordinated its China policy to its relations with the Soviet Union. Starting from this false premise, U.S. policy was bound to end in failure (p. 270). between, Zi offers detailed accounts of major events, such as the Hurley mediation leading to the Chongqing negotiations, the Marshall mission, the Wedemeyer mission, and the hands-off policy of Dean Acheson. the process, Zi reveals the often self-contradictory and ineffective nature of Washington's handling of Chinese affairs. For instance, the Marshall mission's main objective was to prevent the KMT-CCP civil war, yet Washington continued the policy of supporting Chiang, which emboldened the KMT to be intransigent. The result was a full-scale civil war, precisely what the United States had wanted to avoid in the first place. Zi states that Washington's Taiwan policy today is repeating the same mistake made by the Marshall mission five decades ago (p. 282). As a Chinese perspective, Zi's study of US China policy has a structural problem. Although she recognizes that it takes two to tango, the book examines only the making of US China policy without adequate background information regarding the Chinese side. This is particularly unsatisfactory in view of the recent trend of multi-national analysis based on multi-archival research. …