Historiography: Who Lost China - Essay Example

The Nationalist forces after years of corruption and misgovernance had lost the initiative in the country. The Nationalists lacked popular support and suffered from poor morale and a corrupt leadership. The deficiencies were mainly intrinsic to the Nationalist forces as has also been indicated in the White Paper published by the US Government in 1949.1 While they were not defeated on the battlefield their organizational cohesion which is a function of leadership, confidence and a will to resist had collapsed. The Americans supported Chiang who had lost considerable status as a national leader and the Nationalist Army was no match for the Communists due to the breakdown of a will to fight.

The Communists on the other hand could impose discipline and win over the people. The internal balance had thus shifted strongly in their favor. The US policy during and after the War was aligned to support the Nationalist Forces under Chiang Kai Sheik, to prevent the country from being taken over by a wave of Communism sweeping many parts of the World in a new era of the balance of power named the Cold War. Britain the other great Western power of the time had already lost the initiative and was primarily engaged in keeping the faith of America during the 1940s through symbolic diplomacy.

2 The United States was committed to providing aid which was done in ample measure. Dean Acheson, the Secretary of State thus authoritatively brings out that there was no deficiency of arms or ammunition available to the Nationalist Army in the critical year of 1948.3 However active mediation between the two antagonists, through its Ambassadors, Hurley and Marshal failed to evoke a positive response, denoting the failure of US foreign policy to influence the events. The Western powers were also inhibited from achieving a positive impact due to the traditional antipathy of the Chinese against aliens who dabbled in their internal polity.

4 Lack of deep-rooted perception of the internal political, social, and military dynamics of the country in the years preceding the Second World War as well as the war years added to the hostility felt by the Chinese towards outside powers. American fault also lay in attempting to impose a different culture on an old and proud civilization from above.5 Dean Acheson does reflect an understanding of the difficulty of imposing policies on the Chinese on more than one occasion.6 Thus despite the overall mood in the United States in 1949 blaming the US Government for the loss of China, the same was inevitable given the debility of Nationalist influence, lack of weight of American foreign policy, and Chinese inhibitions against outside persuasion.