China 1945

At the beginning of 1945 relations between America and the Chinese Communists couldn’t have been closer. Chinese leaders talked of America helping to lift China out of poverty; Mao Zedong himself held friendly meetings with U.S. emissaries. By year’s end Chinese Communist soldiers were setting ambushes for American marines; official cordiality had been replaced by chilly hostility and distrust a pattern which would continue for a quarter century with the devastating wars in Korea and Vietnam among the consequences. . In China 1945 Richard Bernstein tells the incredible story of the sea change that took place during that year—brilliantly analyzing its far-reaching components and colorful characters from diplomats John Paton Davies and John Stewart Service to Time journalist Henry Luce; in addition to Mao and his intractable counterpart Chiang Kai-shek and the indispensable Zhou Enlai. A tour de force of narrative history China 1945 examines American power coming face-to-face with a formidable Asian revolutionary movement and challenges familiar assumptions about the origins of modern Sino-American relations.