los gatos huelen mal

"This is a strange thing to occur in what is called a civilized country.''

In 1949, the civil war in China drew to a close as Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang (KMT) forces retreated to the island of Taiwan, leaving Mao Zedong and the Communist party in control of the country that the U.N. would later officially recognize, and continues to officially recognize, as the only legitimate Chinese state.

As a child, I was taught, both through the nationalism acquired from being born and raised in America, as well as a good deal of KMT propaganda passed down to me by my parents, which was of course passed down to them by the KMT in Taiwan, that communism and Communists were evil.  From that viewpoint, China was something of a quagmire; on one hand, I loved China, if for no other reason than because I was Chinese.  On the other hand, China, after six thousand years of continuous civilization, after several millennia of glorious history (not the kind referred to on the backs of disposable chopsticks sleeves), was ultimately being ruled by evil.  I think more than once my cousin and I enacted fantasy war scenarios where the great armies of Taiwan, who in our imaginary games flew American planes, defeated the evil Communists and made things right - China, after all, was good, and the only good form of government in the Cold War world was democracy.

I still wondered, though, how China could fall to the Communists, especially given that they were on America's side during World War II.  I never had a problem accepting that China was weak for a period of time, and being American, had no problem with America being the most powerful nation in the world.  But how could America allow the Communists to win in 1949 - a mere four years following the conclusion of World War II - with so much power at their fingertips?

One big reason, I read last night on Wikipedia, was our government's failure to heed the calls of our foremost experts on China at the time.  Known as the "China Hands," these men saw the changes in China as they were occurring, and correctly assessed the relative popularity and strength of the Communists compared to the KMT.  Given this fact, it would be in America's best interests to work with the Communists somehow, which could at least give China some incentive not to diametrically align with Stalin and the Soviet Union.

However, this view was not supported by the ambassador to China at the time, who had the diplomats espousing this view recalled from service.  Furthermore, once the Communists did gain the upper hand and expel the KMT, the China Hands were simultaneously slandered as pro-Communist for having believed that the Communist Party in China was more popular and impressive than the KMT, and blamed for the "loss" of China to the Communists.  It seems odd that one could acknowledge the clarity of view these men had in understanding that the Communists were the stronger party, while at the same time claiming that the Communists' subsequent victory was their fault.  However, McCarthyism being the prevailing trend of the times, this logical flaw was not garner much attention.

Over twenty years later, with McCarthyism long dead, and as China re-opened its doors to foreign relations with the U.S., the China Hands were invited to testify before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, whose chairman remarked:

''It is a very strange turn of fate that you gentlemen, who reported honestly about conditions, were so persecuted because you were honest about it. This is a strange thing to occur in what is called a civilized country.''

Finally, an interesting quote from a book written by one of the China Hands, John Paton Davies, which I have not yet read:

"The truth of the matter is that China has been since the fall of the Empire a huge and seductive practical joke. The Western businessmen, missionaries and educators who had tried to modernize and Christianize it failed. The Japanese militarists who tried to conquer it failed. The American government, which tried to democratize and unify it, failed. The Soviet rulers who tried to insinuate control over it failed. Chiang failed. Mao failed.''