The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia

“Which disaster?” you might ask after reading this subtitle. We’re almost too far gone from the Pacific Theatre of WWII, the Korean War, or even the Vietnam War to recall clearly what pains the American military has experienced in Asia. With our attention on Eastern Europe for a few decades following Vietnam, then on the Middle East ever since, we’ve almost forgotten the magnitude of American lives lost in Asia fighting wars that, according to James Bradley, never needed to happen.

This is a book that has really got me thinking (hence the abnormal length of this review). I hope you keep reading, because I think we all have some things to learn—not just about China but about our approach to history in general.

Bradley’s key thought in this book is that Americans (including FDR) were for decades hoodwinked by the illogical (or deceitful) China Lobby into thinking that China was on the verge of becoming a Christianized and Americanized nation, and that America must do everything in its power to ensure Chiang Kai-shek’s victory, defending this “Christian” leader’s ascension at all costs. Those costs included shutting off Japan’s oil supply (leading to Pearl Harbor and the War in the Pacific), misunderstanding and shunning Mao Zedong (leading to the Korean War and decades of fear), and misinterpreting nationalism for aggressive Communism (leading to war in Vietnam). Like dominoes, America’s good intentions in Asia kept falling, because we were following something that was never real in the first place, the China Mirage, and we never took the time to understand reality (or at least to listen to those who tried—thank you, Senator McCarthy).

A simple post like this can’t possibly untangle the many threads of Bradley’s argument, but I’ll try to hit some of the highlights. In doing so, I’ll discuss the following key players:

• American Missionaries, FDR, and the China Lobby
• The Soongs and Chiang Kai-Shek
• Mao Zedong

I’ll close this post by sharing a few thoughts on the concept of “revisionist history.”

American Missionaries, FDR, and the China Lobby

As fascinating as I found James Bradley’s writing to be, I caught an air of bitterness throughout the book which tainted the entire thing. From the outset, he essentially blames the idealism of American missionaries as the spark that began this whole Asian conflagration that he calls “The China Mirage.” In his introduction he writes:

Very few Americans had ever traveled to China. Yes, some American missionaries, businessmen, and diplomats made it across the Pacific, but they clung mostly to the westernized New China settlements on the coast. These Americans wrote home about a cultural and spiritual blossoming of the Chinese under their care, decades of hopeful hogwash foisted on unknowing readers. Both Presidents Roosevelt were thus constantly well informed about New China, that place that was always going to be. …For generations, American hearts have been warmed by the missionary dream of a New China peopled by Americanized Christians. Then, beginning slowly in the early 1930s, a foreign-funded China Lobby sprouted in the United States and gained a powerful adherence in the U.S. government, in the media, and in pulpits across the country. By 1941, nearly a decade of China Lobby propaganda had been pumped into American churches, homes, and heads, convincing the vast majority of Americans that a Christianized, and Americanized New China would blossom as their best friend in Asia if the United States drove the Japanese military out of China. (6, 7)

You can tell from his early tone his view of American missionaries in China—good people don’t foist “hopeful hogwash on unknowing readers.” I have to begin with these comments, because it’s how he begins his book: James Bradley mischaracterizes missionaries and their impact on China both by clumping them all into a single body (that of the self-focused, compound-loving, culture-hating “missionary” who undoubtedly existed but by no means characterized the whole) and by completely ignoring the heart and influence of hundreds if not thousands of true missionaries who shared Jesus only and couldn’t have cared less if the Chinese ever spoke English or wore Western clothes (see for example James O. Frasier, James Hudson Taylor, and countless others from the China Inland Mission).

His early attack on missionaries started this book off wrong for me, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. After all, it was the American church’s hopeful response to the reports they read that caused them to believe in China’s bright future as a necktie-wearing, God-fearing, pulpit-pounding, burger-eating nation just like ours. They were encouraged by the likes of Pearl S. Buck and downright lied to by Henry Luce’s Time Magazine. From this atmosphere grew the China Lobby that had the ear of “the loosey-goosey FDR administration” (264)—constantly clinging to their poster-children, the Soongs and Chiang Kai-shek—and which caused those first few dominoes in Asia to fall.

The Soongs and Chiang Kai-shek

Enter into this mix Charlie Soong,

A nattily dressed, Vanderbilt-educated, North Carolina-baptized Southern Methodist Chinese man describing, in Southern-accented English, the coming of a Christianized New China. To his devout listeners, Charlie was the China mirage made flesh, a living, breathing incarnation of the missionary dream… Charlie Soong married well, and by 1897, he had sired three daughters (Ailing, Chingling, and Mayling) and a son (Tse-ven, called T.V.). Raised in a world between two cultures, his children were influenced by their father’s Christian faith, his American education and business success, his support for Sun’s revolution, and his ability to leverage the China mirage for financial gain. The Soong family lived in a Western-style house in a New China area of Shanghai carved out by the sea barbarians. They were Chinese and connected to the hundreds of millions who sought the expulsion of foreign devils, but they ate with knives and forks and went to Christian schools. (91, 92)

Many years ago, I read a book titled The Chiangs of China (1943), a case-in-point book written for an American audience about the deep-seated Christianity of the Soongs and of Mayling’s husband, Chiang Kai-shek. Not having any other background to the story beyond what little I’d heard in American schools, I ate it up too: These were godly people who cared only about democracy, the free exercise of religion, and the spread of peace and prosperity across the nation.

Millions of Americans believed not only that they loved (and understood) China and the Chinese, but also that it was their duty to Americanize the Chinese…. There were two Chinas. There was the China in the American public mind, a China as Americans wanted it to be, and the other China, the real China… The illusory China was a heroic ally, ruled by the brave, industrious, Christian, pro-American, Chiang Kai-shek and his beautiful wife, Mayling. (David Halberstam, 303)

The confusion would have drastic effects, for it caused Americans to view America’s war against Japan and in favor of China as quite equal to a missionary campaign. In 1941, for example, Time Magazine reported:

China is today the only great non-Christian state with a Christian head. …If anything should happen to bring the U.S. and Britain into an active shooting war at China’s side, enthusiasm for their allies might make millions of Chinese receptive converts to Christianity. (285)

James Bradley, however, makes a strong case and a convincing argument that the American public was (and still is, considering our view of Taiwan even today) definitely hoodwinked by “hopeful hogwash,” and that the Soongs and the Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek were not who they claimed to be. Mao ZeDong told Stilwell:

Fundamentally he [Chiang] is a gangster… The United States has handled Chiang very badly. They have let him get away with blackmail– for instance, talk of being unable to keep up resistance, of having to make peace, his tactics in getting the 500 million loan… With Chiang. You can be friendly only on your own terms. (311)

President Harry S. Truman eventually saw the light that FDR refused to see:

Like the British, Truman referred privately to Chiang as “Generalissimo Cash-My-Cheque.” Truman later remembered, ‘She [Mayling] came to the United States for some more handouts, I wouldn’t let her stay at the White House like Roosevelt did. I don’t think she liked it very much, but I didn’t care one way or the other what she liked and what she didn’t like… I discovered after some time, that Chiang Kai-shek and the Madam and their families, the Soong family and the Kungs, were all thieves, every last one of them, the Madam and him included. They stole 750 million out of the 3.5 billion that we sent to Chiang. They stole it, and it’s invested in real estate down in Sao Paulo and some right here in New York. And that’s the money that was used and is still being used for the so-called China Lobby. I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all. And I don’t want anything to do with people like that.’ (336)

Although James Bradley makes no reference in this book to the issue of Taiwan’s independence today, his subtext is clear: America was conned for decades by a corrupt and greedy family and a China Lobby that stuck its nose into a civil war where it didn’t belong, and she chose the wrong side once she did; but past failures can be acknowledged and remedied, and the future can change. He leaves it to reader though to find this out for himself.

Chairman Mao

Another key player in this book, of course, is the ultimate victor in the Communist-Nationalist war of the 1930s and ’40s, Chairman Mao. This book almost seems like a love letter to Mao when compared to how thoroughly Bradley trashes Chiang. Almost nothing negative is said about Mao, only that he was an honest man who understood his people. He was definitely not a Russian puppet, as the American media claimed, and he was committed to friendship with America yet was rebuffed at every turn. Of Mao’s early rise, Bradley writes:

Mao put his social ideas into play, becoming a Robin Hood who took land from the rich and gave it to the poor. Mao’s policies against opium use, prostitution, child slavery, and compulsory marriage improved peasants’ lives. Mao pushed mass education, and in some areas, the populace attained a higher degree of literacy than rural China had seen in centuries. His movement spread, attracting many converts, and soon he had established bases in neighboring provinces. Chinese peasants supported Mao because he gave them land, which meant that they and their families could live. Mao also lightened taxes and promised resistance against Chiang and his landlord allies. Soon Mao held sway over constituency of five million people. (143)

Pretty much the last we hear of Mao in this book is how offended he was at America’s rebuffs—with nothing more said of his leadership, uh, “foibles” like The Great Leap Forward and The Cultural Revolution which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese people. He was a good guy with good intentions…and definitely not a “bad Communist.”

While James Bradley’s arguments against Chiang Kai-shek appear sound (and they seem to be backed by a great deal of players, especially in hindsight), his manipulation of facts is on full display in this comparative study of Mao. If he can ignore so much relevant historical data about Mao to fit his narrative, then what else is he leaving out? It makes a reader wonder.

Revisionist History?

This brings me to the final section of my post, a consideration of “revisionist history” and whether a book like this would earn such a designation. I’m no expert in this regard, but I’d have to argue: No. Rather than being revisionist history, this book would be more accurately described as “history from another angle,” which I’d argue is something incredibly healthy and necessary for readers to absorb.

No matter who you are, you’ve grown up with your own nation’s (or perhaps more accurately, your own party’s or your own sect’s) interpretation of historical events. Because of that, you probably take your view of history as correct, because what you’ve read and have been taught is 99% true—to you. We’re all susceptible to this, to listen to our side of history and leave it at that.

Of course, I’m not talking about historical facts here (who, what, where, and when). Instead I’m talking about the why‘s and the how‘s of history, those subjective areas easily tucked and tugged by whoever is holding the pen. It’s the difference between historical facts related and historical events interpreted. Your side (often the winning side or the losing side that’s finally found its voice) is the loudest to you, making you believe that you now understand the issue fully and need not explore it any further. Such an approach to history works fine—if you never leave your home area and never talk to anyone different than yourself. The moment you encounter another view of history, though, or “history from another angle,” something happens. You become defensive. You argue for the “Truth.” You vilify the one sharing an alternative view (possibly adding that moniker of “revisionist!”). You build walls that become very difficult to tear down.

Examples of this abound (and not just with the daily headlines from our various news outlets): the legacies of Christopher Columbus or Thomas Jefferson; the treatment of Native Americans and African slaves; the underlying causes for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; and every conspiracy theory you can think of. We’ve all got our own beliefs and we’re generally only willing to hear from those that agree with us, but we’ve got to realize that there is always (always) another perspective out there. I am absolutely not suggesting that truth is relative, but rather that we can’t automatically assume that our version of history is 100% true. We’ve got to view it from the other angles too.

I remember a few years ago visiting a Korean War Museum in Central China. I had done a little reading about the War in honor of my grandfather who had served in Okinawa during those years and didn’t meet his eldest daughter (my mom) until she was 2 years old. I’d visited some similar portions of museums in the U.S. as well, so I didn’t anticipate learning a whole lot that was new—especially since I couldn’t read Chinese at the time! But I recall walking into that hall and seeing a full-sized wax display of an American helicopter crashed in the snow, the evil-faced barbarian pilots splayed in on the ground with bayonets in their chests, bayonets affixed to rifles held by strong and triumphant Chinese soldiers. It shocked me, but it shouldn’t have: the Chinese fought in the Korean War too, helping their neighbors fight off the foreign invaders—and we were those invaders. It wasn’t an issue of right-and-wrong but about what happened and from whose perspective I was viewing it.

Even last night, I watched the Tucker Carlson interview in the Kremlin with President Vladimir Putin. Throughout Putin’s long explanations (because this was “a serious interview and not a show”), he laid out 1200 years of Russian history to describe why he felt compelled to invade Ukraine. He blamed America’s broken promises, Western rebuffs and ill treatment, and CIA-supported coups that threatened Russia’s borders, which forced their hand to take back land that (in his opinion) had always been theirs. Is this revisionist history like we’re prone to accuse, or is it simply history from another angle?

Conclusion

I commend James Bradley for offering us this other angle on America’s history with Asia, though I think he plays slight-of-hand tricks by supporting the facts he wants to support and ignoring many of the others. The quotations he offers of officials viewing this situation in hindsight make it clear that the U.S. was certainly chasing a mirage in China that didn’t quite exist—China was never going to be an Americanized democracy with churches on every corner. Still, relations with China might have been better had we not backed the wrong horse, and we might have also had the side-benefits of avoiding three Asian wars and preserving the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers. These aren’t small things. Former Secretary of Defense McNamara summarizes why we continued to struggle in Asia even long after the War in the Pacific:

Our government lacked experts for us to consult to compensate for our ignorance… There were no senior officials in the Pentagon or State department with the comparable knowledge of Southeast Asia… The irony of this gap was that it existed largely because the top East Asian and China experts in the State Department—John Patton Davies, Jon Stewart Service, and John Carter Vincent—had been purged during the McCarthy hysteria of the 1950s. Without men like these to provide sophisticated, nuanced insights we, certainly I, badly misread China’s objectives and mistook its bellicose rhetoric to imply a drive for regional hegemony. We totally underestimated the nationalist aspect of Ho Chi Minh’s movement. We saw him first as a Communist and only second as a Vietnamese nationalist. (360)

And so it went. This book was a fascinating study for me. While I certainly don’t agree with everything Bradley offers, I appreciate the opportunity to view this history from a brand new angle. You might enjoy it as well.

©2024 E.T.