The attached report by the Secretary of State on the subject is submitted
herewith for consideration by the National Security Council and, at his
request, is scheduled as Item 2 on the Agenda for the 35th Council Meeting
to be held on Thursday, March 3, 1949.
It is recommended that, if the Council adopts the enclosed report, it be
forwarded to the President with the recommendation that he approve the
recommendations contained therein and direct their implementation by all
appropriate executive departments and agencies
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of the U.S. Government under the coordination of the
Secretary of State.
[Enclosure]
Draft Report by the National Security Council on
United States Policy Toward China
The Problem
U.S. policy toward China.
Analysis
1. During the past four months, the situation in China has so developed
that we are warranted in reviewing PPS–39* and
spelling out with somewhat greater precision some of the considerations
laid down in that basic survey of the China problem.
2. As anticipated, the Communists have shattered, although they have not
yet completely destroyed, the power of the National Government. They now
look southward across the Yangtze and westward across the mountains
watching the fragmentation of non-communist China and pondering by what
means and at what tempo they should proceed to bring the rest of China
under their sway. These are tactical questions, the answers to which
turn on a variety of complex and fluid factors. It would be unprofitable
in this paper to speculate on these details. It is sufficient here to
recognize that (a) preponderant power has now
clearly passed to the Communists, (b) although a
remnant of the National Government may survive in South China or Formosa
for months or years to come, it will at best be a local regime with its
claims to international recognition based on insubstantial legalisms and
(c) eventually most or all of China will come
under Communist rule.
3. The fruits of victory in a revolution are responsibility. Now for the
Communists comes the pay-off. Manchuria and North China are already
theirs. They have moved from caves to chancelleries and for the first
time are confronted with urban and national problems. For a long time to
come these problems are going to grow rather than diminish.
4. The administrative problems confronting the Communists now loom as a
larger factor than anticipated in PPS–39. The disciplined administration
of their sprawling domain, possessing no tradition of strong,
centralized government but rather beset by stubborn regional tendencies,
is likely to constitute a formidable task for Mao Tse-tung.
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The Chinese Communists are not
taking over an existing centralized state apparatus as the Communists in
Czechoslovakia did but are having to build from the ground up.
5. As responsibility for the rehabilitation of China is only beginning to
descend on the shoulders of the Communists, the problems which will
arise from this massive factor have not yet come into play. It may be
months before we see the first evidences of them and years before they
develop their full force. The first conflict between communist theory
and Chinese environmental realities will probably come concretely to our
attention in the economic field—when the Communists, in attempting to
carry out their avowed intent to develop China economically, seek trade
with the West. A separate paper deals with this specific problem.†
6. The natural points of conflict between the Chinese Communists and the
USSR have not yet developed. The vestiges of American “intervention”
still serve the Chinese communists as a rationalization for equating
their interests with those of the USSR. This is so notwithstanding
obvious Kremlin cupidity in northern Manchuria, its extraterritorial
activities in Sinkiang and the dispatch of the Soviet Ambassador48 with the Nationalist
Foreign Office to Canton. The full force of nationalism remains to be
released in Communist China.
7. The Kremlin for its part appears to be following at the moment a
policy of cautious conservatism. Its negotiations with the Nationalists
for special privileges in Sinkiang are tidily sewing up that province
for the USSR no matter who wins out anywhere in China—and are a salutary
check on inflated Chinese Communist ambitions. The southward move of the
Soviet Ambassador was an elaborate masquerade of correct Soviet
intentions toward the National Government, warning Mao that the Kremlin
had feet in both camps and could do business in a number of directions
at once.
8. Our present position is not a happy one. The new China emerging in the
north is deeply suspicious of and hostile to us—and is likely to
continue to be so for a long time to come. As for our policy of aid to
the Nationalists, it is now beyond question of doubt that any further
military program for the Chinese mainland will in the foreseeable future
(a) be ineffectual, (b) eventually contribute to the military strength of the
Communists and (c) perhaps most important of all,
solidify the Chinese people in support of the Communists and perpetuate
the delusion that China’s interests lie with the USSR.
9. It is even questionable whether we have anything to gain from
political support of any of the remaining anti-communist public
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figures in China. They are
likely to prove only slightly less impotent than Yugoslav royalists. The
only vital political resistance to the Chinese Communists is something
that is not yet evident. That force will take time to appear and
develop; but inevitably it will, simply because a China under the
Communists will breed it just as surely as Chiang’s Kuomintang was the
forcing ground of the Communists. It will and must necessarily be a
grass-roots movement finding its expression in native Chinese forms.
10. We shall therefore find ourselves before long entering upon a period
when the Kremlin and we shall find ourselves in reversed roles. The
Kremlin is going to try to influence, probably more than we, the course
of events in China. And it will not be easy, as we can testify with
feeling. We shall be seeking to discover, nourish and bring to power a
new revolution, a revolution which may eventually have to come to a test
of arms with the Chinese Communists, if it cannot in the meantime so
modify the composition and character of the Chinese Communists that they
become a truly independent government, existing in amicable relations
with the world community.
11. This is obviously a long-term proposition. There is, however, no
short-cut. Consequently we have no sound alternative but to accommodate
our native impatience to this fact. The Kremlin waited twenty-five years
for the fulfillment of its revolution in China. We may have to persevere
as long or longer. But in one respect at least we can wait with greater
confidence: we are under no Byzantine Tartar compulsion to shackle as
our own captive the revolution which we seek to release.
Recommendations
12. We should avoid military and political support of any non-communist
regimes in China unless the respective regimes are willing actively to
resist communism with or without U.S. aid and, unless further, it is
evident that such support would mean the overthrow of, or at least
successful resistance to, the Communists.
13. We should, of course, maintain so far as feasible active official
contact with all elements in China.
14. We should continue to recognize the National Government until the
situation is further clarified.
15. We should, in the near future, publicly reaffirm our adherence to the
traditional American policies of (1) friendship for the Chinese people,
(2) respect for the territorial independence and administrative
integrity of China and (3) advocacy of the “Open Door”.
16. We should maintain our cultural and informational program, both
official and private, at the most active feasible level.
17. While scrupulously avoiding the appearance of intervention, we should
be alert to exploit through political and economic means
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any rifts between the Chinese Communists
and the USSR and between the Stalinist and other elements in China both
within and outside of the communist structure.
[Paragraph 18 not printed.]
