China, U.S. Armed Forces in
CHINA, U.S. ARMED FORCES IN
CHINA, U.S. ARMED FORCES IN. The United States maintained a military presence in China throughout the first half of the twentieth century. After the Chinese Revolution of 1911 various treaties and extraterritorial arrangements allowed the U.S. to reinforce its garrisons in China. At this time, the U.S. supported a battalion-sized Marine legation guard at Beijing and an Infantry Regiment at Tianjin. Elements of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet frequented Chinese ports and the Americans established a patrol on the Chang River.
Throughout the 1920s, the U.S. bolstered its garrisons in China. In March 1927, after Jiang Jieshi marched on Shanghai, the U.S. sent the Third Marine Brigade to help protect the International Settlement. The Fourth Marine Regiment remained at Shanghai while the rest of the brigade marched to Tianjin, where they stayed until January 1929. Sino-Japanese hostilities caused the U.S. to deploy more troops to China in the 1930s. In 1932 the Thirty-first U.S. Infantry Regiment joined the Fourth Marines in Shanghai. The Sixth Marines reinforced the city in 1937. In December 1937, a Japanese air attack sank the U.S. gunboat Panay in the Chang. In 1938 the Sixth Marines and the Fifteenth U.S. Infantry departed China. During World War II the Fourth Marines left Shanghai for the Philippines in November 1941 and were eventually captured at Corregidor.
In January 1942 Jiang Jieshi and Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell, his chief of staff, waged war against Japan in the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater. After the bitter retreat from Burma, Stilwell proposed a thirty-division Chinese Nationalist force for a fresh Burma campaign in the spring of 1943. Jiang was more attracted to the air strategy proposed by Major General Claire L. Chennault. With the entry of the United States into World War II, Chennault took command of the U.S. China Air Task Force. In May 1944 the U.S. military deployed B-29s to Chinese airfields. The Japanese reacted by launching an offensive that overran most of the air-fields, and the American military withdrew its B-29s to India. As a result, the CBI was split into two theaters—China and India-Burma—and U.S. commanders sent Lieutenant General Albert C. Wedemeyer to replace Stilwell in China.
China's disappointing contribution to the Allied effort in World War II was in large part the result of Jiang's deliberate policy of conserving his strength to fight the Chinese Communists. With the end of the war, the 55,000-man Third Marine Amphibious Corps arrived in North China to disarm and repatriate the Japanese and to bolster Nationalist forces. Meanwhile, a Soviet army had occupied Manchuria and turned over key ports and cities to the Communists. In January 1946 General George C. Marshall arrived to arbitrate between the Nationalists and Communists. There was a short-lived truce, but by July 1946 it was obvious that Marshall had failed to convince either side to settle their differences peacefully.
The U.S. Marines reduced their occupation force in China until just two battalions were left by the spring of 1949. By then, Mao Ze-dong's Communist forces had defeated the Nationalists. By the end of June the last American troops had left Qingdao. Mao formally established the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949, and relations between the new nation and the United States remained tense until the 1970s.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mann, Jim. About Face: A History of America's Curious Relationship with China from Nixon to Clinton. New York: Knopf, 1999.
Perry, Hamilton D. The Panay Incident: Prelude to Pearl Harbor. New York: Macmillan, 1969.
Prefer, Nathan N. Vinegar Joe's War: Stilwell's Campaign for Burma. Novato, Calif.: Presido, 2000.
Tuchman, Barbara W. Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–1945. New York: Macmillan, 1971.
Edwin H.Simmons/e. m.