America's Search for a China Policy, 1943-1950

Much controversy has surrounded recent American policy toward China. Books of various stripes--distortions, misrepresentations, emotional accounts, and purportedly scholarly studies--have dealt with the formulation of a China policy. Several of the objective studies have featured the role that politics played in reducing American freedom of action. The emphasis has been that, since American diplomatic strategy during the decade of the 1940's was a Democratic responsibility, Republican critics took political advantage of the China "tangle." As congressional criticism mounted, the framework within which the Truman Administration could evolve a policy was increasingly restricted. With the Communist victory in China and the subsequent Korean War, Democratic strategy had apparently backfired. The public became aroused, and policy makers have since had difficulty adjusting to realities