42 { China’s Quest
A short while later, the consulate was required to hand over its radio trans-
mitter. When this was refused, the consulate was entered and the transmitter
seized. Ordinary foreign citizens in China were not permitted to possess radio
transmitters, Ward was told. Then consular officials were forbidden to leave
the consular compound, and entry into the facility was restricted. Efforts by
US diplomats elsewhere in China to contact the Shenyang consulate were
thwarted. The consulate was cut off from the outside world. Then CCP media
began charging (groundlessly, historians determined in retrospect) that the
Shenyang consulate was a base for US espionage. In October 1949, Ward and
four consular employees were arrested and charged with assaulting a Chinese
employee of the consulate. Ward was put on trial and convicted. The point
of all this was that US official personnel in China had no special privileges
or immunities, but were mere foreign citizens subject to Chinese law and
authority. Finally, on December 11, 1949, after thirteen months of detention
and harassment, Ward and his consular staff were allowed to leave China.
Another “house cleaning” followed shortly after Ward’s departure. On
January 6, 1950, PRC authorities seized former military barracks in Beijing
that had been turned into regular offices used by US diplomatic personnel.
The United States held those facilities under a 1943 treaty with the ROC. In
the CCP view, that treaty had no validity, and the Americans were required
to vacate the facility. Shortly after the seizure of the US offices in Beijing,
the United States ordered the withdrawal of all US diplomatic personnel in
China. They would not return until 1973.
Two interrelated goals underlay these CCP policies: forging a close and
comprehensive partnership with the Soviet Union, and preparing conditions
for the movement of the revolution to its socialist stage. Stalin’s deep suspi-
cions of Mao and the CCP were discussed earlier. Allowing a US/Western
diplomatic presence to remain in China would feed Stalin’s paranoia, while
driving them out in a revolutionary fashion would help convince Stalin that
Mao and the CCP were true communists. The recommendation to seize the
Shenyang consulate’s radio, for example, had come from Soviet advisor Ivan
Kovalev. While criticizing Shenyang mayor Zhu Qiwen for his initially cordial
approach to US diplomats, Mao instructed the head of the CCP’s Northeast
Bureau Gao Gang to inform the Soviet Union that “So far as our foreign pol-
icy in the Northeast and the whole country is concerned, we will certainly
consult with the Soviet Union in order to maintain an identical stand with
it.”^31 Regarding the link between eliminating the Western diplomatic pres-
ence in China and maintaining the forward momentum of the revolution,
Mao informed the nation in his January 1949 New Year’s address that the
United States was “organizing an opposition within the revolutionary camp
to strive with might and main to halt the revolution where it is or, if it must
advance, to moderate it.”^32 Two months later, Mao told a Central Committee
session that in order to prevent the Western countries from sabotaging the