"Note on sources": p. [xxv]-xxvi.

An Economist Best Book of 2018 New York Times Book Review Editor’s Pick “Gripping [and] splendid.… An enormous contribution to our understanding of Marshall.”—Washington Post At the end of World War II, General George Marshall took on what he thought was a final mission—this time not to win a war, but to stop one. In China, conflict between Communists and Nationalists threatened to suck in the United States and escalate into revolution. Marshall’s charge was to cross the Pacific, broker a peace, and prevent a Communist takeover, all while staving off World War III. At first, the results seemed miraculous. But as they started to come apart, Marshall was faced with a wrenching choice—one that would alter the course of the Cold War, define the US-China relationship, and spark one of the darkest-ever turns in American political life. The China Mission offers a gripping, close-up view of the central figures of the time—from Marshall, Mao, and Chiang Kai-shek to Eisenhower, Truman, and MacArthur—as they stood face-to-face and struggled to make history, with consequences and lessons that echo today.

This book examines the political exigencies facing both the US and the Chinese Communist Party during the decisive years of the Chinese Civil War. The book offers a new and challenging perspective on America's infamous loss in China, and on the Communists' victory.

This is a study of Sino-American relations and the editorial policy of the China Weekly Review / China Monthly Review , published in Shanghai by John William Powell during the Chinese Civil War and the Korean War. The Review supported US attempts in early 1946 to avert civil war through the creation of a coalition government. By 1947 it reflected growing disillusionment with Guomindang policies, and increasing sympathy for the demands of impoverished students and faculty for multi-party democracy and peace. As the Civil War shifted in favour of the Communists in late 1948, Powell and the Review counseled US businessmen to remain in Shanghai and urged the US government to establish working relations with the Communists, and later to recognize the new regime. Staying in Shanghai to report changes engendered by the Communist victory, the Review 's staff accomodated themselves to the new orthodoxy and to the regime's coordination of the press. During the Korean War, the Review opposed the expanding US air war, becoming the foremost American purveyor of Chinese and North Korean allegations of American use of bacteriological weapons. The Review was also utilized for the political indoctrination of US prisoners-of-war by the Chinese and North Koreans. After closing the Review in July 1953 and returning to the United States, Powell, his wife Sylvia Campbell and assistant editor Julian Schuman were put on trial for sedition. As the government narrowed its focus to the bacteriological warfare issue, Powell and his lawyers countered by trying to prove the veracity of the charges, seeking witnesses in China and North Korea. Adverse publicity led to a mistrial in January 1959 and limitations in both the sedition and treason statutes ended plans to renew prosecution. Powell and the Review had insisted that positive diplomatic and economic relations between China and the United States were both possible and desirable. The gradual normalization of trade, investment and political relations since the 1970s seemed to validate this belief. In the post-Cold War age when Sino-American relations are often strained and tempestuous, this book serves as a reminder of the value of making the extra effort to achiece understanding.

China's Road to the Korean War

This study examines how and why Chinas military intervention in the Korean War came into existence within the time span from May 1949 to July 1951. China was involved in the war preparations much earlier and deeper than was previously known. Beijings preconditions to enter the war boiled down to three: (1) its full control of China; (2) foreign enemy forces invasion of North Korea; and (3) Moscows logistic and air support. Beijing had incorrectly calculated that Washington would dispatch only Japanese field forces to Korea, which is the very reason underlying its inadequate though early preparations for the war, while it had correctly calculated that Washington would not invade China proper via Korea before it entered the war. Expecting an enemy troops landing at Inchon followed by their invasion of North Korea, Beijing planned to ambush them in northern North Korea. It therefore failed to dispatch a symbolic force into Korea to give credibility to diplomatic deterrence against Washingtons possible invasion of North Korea. China developed ten prime interventionist goals as follows: (1) to save North Korea; (2) to dispel Stalins suspicions and to pay Maos political debt owed to Stalin in 1941 and 1942; (3) to have the PLA experienced in modern warfare; (4) to have the PLA modernized with Soviet weaponry; (5) to have its economy revitalized with overall Soviet assistance; (6) to enter the United Nations; (7) to exchange South Korean territories for an American withdrawal from Taiwan; (8) to have Nationalist forces in Taiwan; (9) to defuse an American retaliatory or nuclear attach upon China proper; and (10) to have North Korea and South Korea almost return to the status quo ante bellum. It was Maos de facto dependence upon rather than his alleged independence from Stalin that had made him rise to power in 1949. This Soviet reign turned out to be considerably more decisive than the American threat in driving China into the war in 1950.