Relations with Wartime China

Abstract

M Y FIRST visit to wartime China was made in March 1942. It was a dark time. We Americans had just suffered a humiliating defeat in the Pacific, and the full development of our industrial and military power still lay far in the future. The British had been sorely shaken by the long Blitzkrieg, by losses at sea, and by defeats in almost every corner of their far-flung empire. The Russians, though holding their own, were hard pressed, with the Nazis threatening the gates of Moscow. The Chinese, weak and divided after almost five years of fighting, had lost much of their most productive territory to the invader. China was largely cut off from the outside world. The fortunes of the Axis powers, by contrast, had never been brighter. I arrived in China at this unhappy hour as the bearer of more bad tidings. At the close of the Casablanca Conference, I was sent east to Chungking to inform President Chiang Kai-shek of certain basic decisions that had been taken by Roosevelt and Churchill at Casablanca. By far the most important of these was the decision to defeat Hitler first. This meant that the war in the Pacific and the Far East would have second priority. It meant that Allied strategy in those areas would be essentially defensive, at least for many monthsalthough it was hoped that enough resources could be spared to keep China in the war, and to deny the Japanese complete freedom of action.