"WHO LOST CHINA" DEBATE

In 1949 communist armies led by Mao Zedong defeated the nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek. The communists took control of the Chinese mainland, establishing the People's Republic of China, while Chiang Kai-shek, who had received U.S. support during the conflict, fled to the island of Taiwan. China, previously a loyal U.S. ally and a country Americans felt particularly familiar with because of the strong presence of American Christian missionaries, overnight became one of America's most bitter enemies. With the post–World War II world starkly divided into American and communist spheres of influence, the Chinese shift was seen as a serious loss. From the establishment of the People's Republic of China well into the Korean War and the witch hunts of the McCarthy era, a debate raged in Washington about whom to blame for the loss of China to communist forces. At the time, most of the blame fell on the administration of President Harry Truman, as well as fellow-travelers and subversives. Studies in the late twentieth century, however, challenged this view and emphasized Chiang Kai-shek's own weaknesses. Although without the urgency of the 1940s and 1950s, the debate over "who lost China" recurrently appeared within American society during the second half of the twentieth century. The debate has informed American responses to crises in the region as well as within China itself, such as the Tiananmen Square repression in 1989. …