When China and America Were Friends

China and America were friends, but the Chinese Communist Party destroyed the goodwill that existed between the US and China.

With the incessant drone of anti-US agitprop from communist Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and the rest of China’s “wolf warriors,” as well as the Chinese state-run media, a person might think that Chinese animosity toward America has always existed. The communists’ venom and vitriol are blatant (examples here, here, and here) but obscure the fact that the US and China were once upon a time friends and wartime allies – before the communists took over China in 1949.

AMERICANS COME TO CHINA

Americans have been visiting, living, working, trading, and proselytizing in China from the earliest days of the American republic. The proselytizing aspect was particularly important. During the Third Great Awakening (1855-1930), a period maximum Christian activism in the United States, China was one of the countries targeted by American missionaries as part of a worldwide campaign that promoted Christianity and social change to non-Christian peoples.

The introduction of Christianity in China was actually a destabilizing factor, as Christian tenets conflicted directly with the patriarchal Confucianism that underpinned Chinese society, culture, and government for millennia, as noted here. As a result, social change came hard, but that did not deter generations of American missionaries from performing mission work in China as Chinese laws were increasingly liberalized over time to facilitate the admission of foreigners into the country.

Chinese resistance to foreign presence led to the Boxer Rebellion (1900-1901) during which “The Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists” (or “Righteous Hands”) targeted all foreigners, including Chinese Christians and US missionaries. After the Boxers were defeated by a joint US-European military force, China was forced to indemnify the victorious nations, including the US and Imperial Japan, further adding to Chinese resentment of the foreign presence in their country.

In 1908, as a gesture of goodwill to China, the US remitted the $11 million remaining from the “Boxer indemnity,” and the ruling Qing dynasty used the remittance to finance the education of 50-100 Chinese students in the US per year.

ENTER THE IMPERIAL JAPANESE ARMY

Japanese aggression in China began in the early 20th century as part of their plan to develop a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” dominated by Imperial Japan. Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 after the Mukden Incident. It is believed that Japanese army officers planted a bomb on a Japanese-owned railway in Mukden that precipitated the Japanese invasion. The Japanese aggression led to the “Stimson Doctrine” in which US Secretary of State Henry Stimson declared that “the United States would not recognize any agreements between the Japanese and Chinese that limited free commercial intercourse in the region.” In short, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria pushed China and the US together as de facto allies, setting the stage for an alliance during the coming world war.

The Marco Polo Bridge incident at Wanping in July 1937 precipitated the start of World War II in Asia after which the Imperial Japanese Army occupied much of coastal China and engaged in bitter reprisals against Chinese noncombatants. The US sided with China as an extension of the Stimson Doctrine and placed diplomatic pressure on the Japanese to restore the integrity of China’s borders and sovereignty, which had no real effect on continuing Japanese atrocities, including the “Rape of Nanking” in December 1937 through early 1938 and the carpet bombing of Chongqing from 1938-1943. Nanking was the capital of China at the time the atrocities were committed, and the Japanese executed an “estimated 150,000 male ‘war prisoners,’ massacred an additional 50,000 male civilians, and raped at least 20,000 women and girls of all ages.”

[Note: the Stimson Doctrine is eerily similar to the sanctions and other diplomatic measures placed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. The ineffectiveness of the Stimson Doctrine in deterring a determined aggressor like Imperial Japan should have been an historical lesson-learned that diplomatic and economic measures are futile measures against a determined adversary that only respects military force.]

WORLD WAR II ALLIES

After Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Imperial Japanese Navy, the US and China formed an official wartime alliance in 1942. The US provided considerable material support to China throughout WW-II – including through an extension of credits to the Chinese government and also via direct military aid without strings attached – delivered through both overland and air routes. A main supply line throughout the war was via air over the Himalayas from India to China in support of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang-led Chinese Republic.

In addition, the American Volunteer Group (AVG) Flying Tigers were volunteer airmen from the US and Britain who manned the fighter aircraft that attacked Japanese bombers operating in East Asia during the early years of the war. According to US General Chennault, the founder of the AVG: “The group had whipped the Japanese Air Force in more than 50 air battles without a single defeat. With the R.A.F., it had kept the port of Rangoon and the Burma Road open for 2 1/2 precious months while supplies trickled into China … [and] gave both Chinese and American morale an incalculable boost at a time when it was sagging dangerously low.”

For their part, the Chinese helped Jimmy Doolittle’s raiders who survived the carrier-launched B-25 bomber attack on Tokyo in 1942 and crashed in Manchukuo, the China “protectorate” in northeast China that was then occupied by the Japanese. Doolittle’s raid and the assistance afterward provided to surviving US airman by local Chinese was dramatized in the 2019 remake of the movie “Midway.”

Eventually, the Stilwell Road was completed that provided the main overland resupply route connecting Assam, India, with Kunming, China, in 1944. Some 44,000 Chinese troops supported British and American forces in defeating Japanese army forces to enable completion of the 1,000-mile road used to supply China for the rest of the war.

The contribution made by the Chinese people in winning World War II in the Pacific is a largely untold story in the US. The Chinese fought the Japanese army for eight long years, tying down and preventing the Japanese military from completing other operations, including the likely invasion of Australia and possibly even India. As the Russians did in fighting the Nazis on the Eastern Front, the Chinese army inflicted large numbers of casualties on the Japanese during a bitter war of attrition that had racial overtones.

The Chinese themselves suffered enormous casualties during the war. According to World Population Review: “China is estimated to have endured the second-highest number of total casualties in WWII. As many as 20 million people died in China, including up to 3.75 million military deaths and 18.19 million civilian deaths [the numbers include as many as 10,000,000 who died through war-caused famine and disease].” Contrast those numbers with the estimated total of 419,000 deaths suffered by the US in battles fought in both the European and Pacific theaters of war.

AMERICAN SENTIMENT ON V-J DAY

A lifelong friend provided a laminated edition of The San Francisco Chronicle of 15 August 1945 to peruse. The articles were a remarkable journey back in time to help ascertain the emotions, issues, and opinions of Americans at that seminal moment in history – the day after V-J Day. Here are some of the articles and announcements contained in that issue:

  • Multiple articles on the unconditional surrender of Japan, including the text of President Truman’s announcement, as well as this quote from Japan’s Emperor Hirohito: “We accept Potsdam. … I do not want to turn the country into a scorched earth.”
  • Japanese War Minister Korechika Anami committed suicide “to atone for his failure.”
  • President Truman announced that General Douglas MacArthur was named Supreme Allied Commander and would formally receive Japan’s surrender. [MacArthur would later be instrumental in helping turn post-war Japan into a staunch US ally, as noted here.]
  • The US monthly draft was cut from 80,000 to 50,000. Large military contracts were canceled, with the attendant fears of impending unemployment for thousands of workers (a big national concern with memories of the Great Depression firmly in the minds of many Americans). Job controls were ended. Concern about future worker strikes was expressed in association with “reconversion” of wartime to peacetime production.
  • All US censorship to be ended. The US government actually had an Office of Censorship during World War II to preclude the disclosure of war-sensitive information of any sort that could be exploited by the enemy.
  • Some bitter comments from men wounded in the war who were convalescing in US hospitals: “Don’t write a tear-jerker about us, but right now I’d sure like to have that leg back. Just for a little while.” “I wish I could get happy like the rest of them.”
  • A banner article describing the loss of the USS Indianapolis to a Japanese torpedo on 30 July. “Down in 15 minutes” with the loss of over 1,000 men.
  • The conviction of Marshall Henri Petain, the former head of Vichy France, for “crimes against France” and “collaboration with the Nazis.”
  • A fascinating first public article detailing the workings off radar, including technical information on how it works and was used during the war (all such details were previously censored).
  • On a secret trip to Russia, General Eisenhower visited a Soviet collective farm and said that it reminded him of his boyhood days in Kansas (he was being diplomatic, of course).
  • Captured German documents detailed the duplicity of Swedish banking house Wallenberg (through Stockholm’s Enskilda bank) playing both sides during the war and accepting large commissions for safeguarding the stocks of German companies. [Consider this story in the context of the near-total financial sanctions on Russia; German business interests were not sanctioned by the Allies throughout World War II!]
  • A long article summarizing the entire war in the Pacific that pulled no punches in describing atrocities and battles fought. As one example, the Hiroshima atom bomb “was followed by a warning to ‘surrender or face annihilation.’”
  • A comparison of the fighting styles and demeanor of the two 5-star flag and general officers in the Pacific: Douglas MacArthur and Chester Nimitz.
  • A very interesting article highlighting the split between the Nationalist government in Chungking and Mao Zedong’s Communist forces in north central China. General Chiang Kai-Shek was portrayed as a strong American ally and the rightful head of the Chinese government, and the sacrifices of the Chinese people during the war were acknowledged. Meanwhile, the Chinese communists continued attacks on Japanese forces after the ceasefire was declared, with Mao ordering “the Eighth Route Army, the new Fourth Route Army, and the South China Anti-Japanese Brigade to attack Chinese positions in north China.” This willful violation of the ceasefire in pursuit of communist political objectives was the spark that reinitiated the Chinese civil war.

CONCLUSION

China and the US were wartime allies during World War II, with the US providing significant war material and logistics support to China from 1940 onward. Chinese forces bore the brunt of the land war in East Asia, suffering tragic losses including millions of civilian deaths.

The goodwill that existed between the Chinese and American peoples was destroyed after the Chinese communists consolidated control of China in 1949. That mutual goodwill can be restored with the demise of the Chinese Communist Party – a mutual goal for all moral people in the world.

The end.

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