Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
any sort of reconciliation. At the same time, however, both sides
attempted to curry favor with the United States and tried to humor the
idealistic American diplomats who sought to reconcile the Nationalists
and the Communists. The U.S. government was sympathetic with the
Nationalists for the simple reason that Chiang Kai-shek's regime was
almost universally recognized as China's government at the time.
Immediately after Japan's surrender, American diplomat Patrick
Hurley, a cantankerous and apparently prematurely senile man, tried
to get the two sides together to conduct discussions. Yielding to U.S.
pressure, Chiang Kai-shek invited Mao to Chongqing, but Mao balked
because he feared a KMT trap. After Hurley gave the assurances of the
U.S. government that there would be no trap, Mao boarded an air-
plane for the first time in his life and flew from Yan'an to Chongqing
in mid-August 1945. Six weeks of talks yielded no practical results,
however, and Mao went back to Yan'an determined to prepare for
all-out war with Chiang Kai-shek. Hurley returned to the United
States a discouraged and disillusioned man, but the Americans were
not yet ready to give up on China. In December 1945 the United States
sent another envoy to China, General George C. Marshall, the origina-
tor of the Marshall Plan for the postwar recovery of Europe. Because
of Marshall's enormous prestige, the Nationalists and Communists
came to the negotiating table once more in early 1946 and feigned a
tentative settlement of their differences. By March, however, both sides
were fighting once again. “Talk, talk, fight, fight” was the guiding prin-
ciple for the Communists at this time, and it might as well have been
for the Nationalists as well. Marshall finally left China in January 1947,
thoroughly disgusted with the refusal of both sides in the Chinese civil
war to engage in peace talks in good faith.
After Marshall's departure from China, civil war flared up in
Manchuria. American military advisors had encouraged Chiang to
maintain his hold over southern China rather than spread his forces
too thin in the Communist-dominated north. Chiang, however, stub-
bornly refused to heed their advice and had the American military
airlift thousands of Nationalist troops to areas throughout northern
China. Chiang's insistence on attempting to recapture the north was
simple from the Nationalists' point of view: Manchuria and other parts
of northern China had been occupied by Japanese invading forces since
1931, and one major reason for China's war with Japan was over these
very areas. Strategically, however, Chiang's moves against the north
were quite foolish, and his campaigns turned out just as American
military advisors had feared: his widely spread forces were eventually
outmaneuvered and overwhelmed. By late 1947 his armies inManchuria
