312 ChaPter^6
more popular and more likely to win the war, and that Jiang was corrupt and
almost certain to lose. One American diplomat, John Paton Davies, spoke of
the reverence that the Chinese had for the Communist leader by observing
that “it was clear that when Mao spoke, no dog barked.”
Rather than create a policy for China based on that reality, Truman and his
administration continued to support Jiang and the Guomindang. In large mea-
sure this was because it distrusted Mao, seeing him as an ally, or even a pup-
pet, of Stalin and the Russians–a point that was particularly wrong as Stalin
did not trust Mao a great deal, feared a rival in the communist world, and
actually backed Jiang as the legitimate leader of China. But the “China Lobby”
in the U.S. also had a great deal to do with the support of Jiang. This group
included businessmen with investments in China, Christians who supported
Jiang [who was a Christian himself], and media who wrote positive, if virtu-
ally fictional, stories about the Guomindang’s strength and popularity. Support
of Jiang, as the China Lobby saw it, was essential to promote economic invest-
ments and democracy, and anyone questioning the Guomindang could be
called a traitor. So American aid to China continued to flow, despite growing
evidence, and advice, that it was like pouring money down a rathole. And, on
October 1st 1949, everything for the Americans fell apart. Mao marched into
Tiananmen Square in the capital of Beijing and victoriously proclaimed the
establishment of the People’s Republic of China [PRC]. The world’s most popu-
lous country had turned communist in a genuine revolution. Even though
there were significant differences between the Soviet Union and the PRC, the
Americans saw them as part of the same “conspiracy” and did not realisti-
cally try to develop a relationship with Mao. Inside the U.S., the “loss” of
China to Mao [which implied that the U.S. once “owned” China] would have
great consequences, as conservatives would use it to accuse Truman of weak-
ness and incompetence, and accuse others of being dupes or spies for the
Communists. The failure to try to develop a relationship with China only
guaranteed that global tensions would get worse, as they soon did– in Korea.
Korea was not a combatant in World War II. It had been invaded by Japan
and was formally annexed by Tokyo in 1910. During World War II, an anti-
Japanese group, led by many Communists under the direction of Kim Il-sung
[grandfather of the current leader, Kim Jong-un], conducted guerrilla opera-
tions against the Japanese occupation forces and when the war ended in 1945
expected to assume power over the Korean state. That was not to be, how-