Joining the Socialist Camp } 43
revolution from within, new China must not establish diplomatic relations
with the Western countries until “imperialist” privileges, power, and influ-
ences in China had been eliminated.
Uprooting the Old: Destruction of the “Imperialist” Presence
in China
Uprooting the large Western presence in China and eliminating the influ-
ence of that presence on Chinese society paralleled the move toward alliance
with the Soviet Union. Under the treaty system in place by 1860 that opened
China to interactions with Western countries, an array of Western entities
had established themselves in China. This Western presence in China prob-
ably reached its apogee in the first decade of the twentieth century and was
thereafter attenuated first by China’s instability and then by the long war with
Japan. With a few exceptions, after the start of war with the United States and
Britain in December 1941, Japan suppressed Western interests in areas under
its sway, which included all of China’s major coastal cities, where Western
interests were concentrated. Yet China is a big country, and many Westerners,
especially those associated with Christian missionary efforts, survived the
Japanese wave. After Japan’s surrender, many of the businesses and cultural
organizations suppressed by Japan reestablished themselves in their old areas
with the general welcome of China’s Nationalist authorities. The Nationalist
government had negotiated new treaties with the United States and Britain in
1943 which generally kept China’s door open, but on the basis of equality and
without such humiliating features as extraterritoriality.^33
In 1946, there were an estimated 65,000 foreigners residing in Shanghai,
down from 150,000 in 1942, but still constituting about 1 percent of a pop-
ulation of approximately six million in 1949.^34 That included many Russian
refugees from the Bolshevik Revolution and German and Austrian Jewish
refugees from Nazi rule. Chinese are rightly proud that China was one of
the very few countries in the world to provide refuge to Jews fleeing the Nazi
terror. Those “Shanghai Jews” were, however, driven out by the CCP along
with the rest of the Westerners resident in Shanghai and China. Being mostly
Caucasian and living Western lifestyles, Westerners were a highly visible mi-
nority. There were an estimated 4,000 British citizens and 2,500 Americans
residing in Shanghai in the late 1940s.
Businesses and commercial interests were one major type of Western pres-
ence. Foreign investment in post–World War II China is estimated to have
totaled US$1.5 billion, divided roughly equally between British and American
ownership. British investment was concentrated in Shanghai and played a
major role in that city’s manufacturing, import-export trade, and finance.
Shanghai’s foreign trade represented three-quarters of all China’s trade, and