The “Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II: 1937-1945” by Rana Mitter was both an enlightening and a depressing experience to read: enlightening, because I learned much I did not know before of this phase of the World War II theater, and depressing, because Mr Mitter’s narrative vividly portrays the continuously unfolding horrors visited upon the Chinese people during these years.

While I have been aware since my graduate student days of the multiple millions of deaths suffered by the Russian people during World War II, I was stunned to learn that upwards of 20 million Chinese died as a consequence of Japanese attempts to subdue China.

Accordingly, I wish this book could be required reading in the United States, as it would significantly assist American citizens to understand the remarkable progress made by China in a very short time, as well as the ongoing dynamics of the tensions between China and Japan.

I certainly better appreciate why the Chinese leadership and the people of China are so quick to bristle at any evidence that Japan is moving towards once again emphasizing “national patriotism,” while concurrently seeking to alter the pacifistic constitution imposed upon Japan by the Americans following the end of World War II. I am also deeply alarmed at these developments! 

This book could also provide the West with much-needed perspective on the complicated history of Chinese-Western inter-relationships. China’s ongoing suspicions of the West’s intentions have their roots in an unsavory past in which the West regularly interfered with China, treating its ancient culture with insulting disrespect.

If today’s Chinese government occasionally strikes some in the West as being “overly assertive,” this may be in part because we still subconsciously expect China to “remember its place,” and to maintain its former deference to Western powers.

While as an historian I was aware of the shameful way China had been repeatedly treated throughout the 19th century by Western powers, I did not realize before reading this book how poorly China was often treated even as an ally of the Western powers during World War II.

The following passage from “Forgotten Ally” [pp 243-44] provides but one example.

The problem was that the Chinese and the Westerners looked at China’s role through almost entirely different lenses. To the Western Allies, China was a supplicant, a battered nation on its knees, waiting for the Americans and British to save it from certain destruction at the hands of the Japanese. In Chiang’s(Chiang Kai-shek’s) view and that of many Chinese, their country was the first and most consistent foe of Axis aggression. Despite numerous opportunities to withdraw from the conflict, China had fought on when the prospects of outside assistance seemed hopeless, and it now deserved to be treated as an equal power.

The United States itself waxed warm and cool towards China in the 1930s and 40s.

On the one hand, President Roosevelt was personally sympathetic to the Chinese and, despite British concerns over implications that a strong China might have for its still extensive colonial holdings in Southeast Asia, he strongly supported a role for China as an equal.

However, the figure sent by America to act as the principal liaison between the US and China — General Joseph Stilwell — repeatedly clashed with Chiang Kai-shek, placing his own judgment as to the appropriate use of Chinese troops before those of Chiang.  He even came to despise Chiang, referring to him privately as “the Peanut.”

In reading about Stilwell I often winced, for he seemed to embody one of the types of “ugly Americans” who have so often annoyed other cultures — an arrogant, self-righteous individual who was unaware that he was, in fact, not nearly as bright as he thought he was.

Despite the difficulties Stilwell caused, the over-all American reaction to Mao Zedong initially ranged from neutral to positive.

Of course, the fact that he was a Communist rattled many cages in Washington, but his clarity of purpose, demonstrated organizational skills, and obvious concern for the peasantry near his organizational headquarters in Yan’an made a very positive impression upon several American visitors, civilian and military alike.

In contrast, while Chiang Kai-shek came across as forcefully anti-Communist, his preference for hierarchical structures, and seeming relative unconcern for non-soldiers, left most American visitors with a less positive impression.

McCarthy’s witch hunts

When the war ended more quickly than either Mao or Chiang thought likely, the United States tried to arbitrate some form of workable compromise between Chiang and Mao in order to avoid the continued disruption that a civil war would bring. However, their differences in vision for the future of China were so vast that this effort was doomed from the beginning.

America’s right wing seized upon Mao’s subsequent triumph in 1949 as evidence of how the “liberals” in Washington had “lost” China (as if China belonged to anyone other than the Chinese people!).

That charge was part and parcel of a right-wing resurgence in America, fueled both by the soon-to-emerge Korean conflict and the irresponsible charges of widespread Communist infiltration throughout all levels of American government by Wisconsin’s Senator McCarthy, whose witch hunts dressed up as congressional hearings were telecast nationwide.

This ugly period within the United States helped further poison relations with China for decades. In fact, it was only after the Republican President Nixon’s remarkable decision to visit China in the 1970s — and his gracious reception by the Chinese leadership on that occasion — that matters slowly began to turn back toward a more hopeful direction. 

In these opening decades of the 21st century, where China is clearly destined to be the equal of the United States in economic and military power, we must wonder: Are we doomed to continually replay the missteps of the past? Or are both sides capable of freeing themselves from the ideological shackles that distort what is possible while also masking new opportunities?

Right wing forces in the United States continue to argue that China “cannot be trusted.”

In their opinion, the US posture toward China should be similar to that adopted by this country towards Soviet Russia in the years following the Cold War in which we sought to encircle the Soviet Union with commercial and military alliances that would stay its possible aggression against its neighbors.

The errors behind such arguments are many. American leadership failed from the beginning to recognize that one of the primary reasons Stalin was trying to erect his own network of friendly states was in order to reduce the likelihood of yet another invasion of Russia from the West. He remembered, although it seems that many in the West did not, that it was Russia that had been invaded by the French in 1812 and by the Germans in 1941. 

Further, Stalin recalled the intervention by several Western powers in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 when the West sought to assist the “Whites” in their struggle against the “Red” armies as that revolution played out.

Creating a true partnership

In many ways, China’s current position is similar to the situation facing my own young country in the early 19th century: growing in both self-confidence and power, yet aware of the historically unfriendly — even hostile — posture of existing powers, and seeking to demonstrate its earned right to be treated as an equal among nations.

If only the United States would recognize this opportunity to create a true partnership with China — one obviously based first and foremost upon equal respect and working towards a relationship of mutual trust and inter-reliance — there is every likelihood that these two countries could work together to create, and maintain, the conditions for peace and stability in Asia and elsewhere.

The challenge is probably equally great for both countries. As the established superpower, I think it only proper that the United States be the first to offer a genuine hand of friendship. Suspicion and distrust will likely linger for some time, but the more Chinese-American communication and cooperation spreads at all levels — between governments and military, of course, but also between citizens — the more likely that genuine friendship based upon mutual respect will result.

The alternative, returning to the old days of power politics, has already shown in the past century the futility of that course.

Do we have the courage to try a new way? For all the dead — Chinese, Russian, Asian, European and American — who have paid the price beyond measure — we had better try.

The author has been a college teacher of American history and political science, the director of the US National Catholic Rural Life Conference; he served as a member of the Iowa State House of Representatives, and retired from public service in the Iowa executive branch in 2004.