At the height of the McCarthyite hysteria of the 1950s, John Paton Davies, Jr., was summoned to the State Department one morning and fired. His offense? The career diplomat had counseled the U.S. government during World War II that the Communist forces in China were poised to take over the country-which they did, in 1949. Davies joined the thousands of others who became the victims of a political maelstrom that engulfed the country and deprived the United States of the wisdom and guidance of an entire generation of East Asian diplomats and scholars. The son of American missionaries, Davies was born in China at the turn of the twentieth century. Educated in the United States, he joined the ranks of the newly formed Foreign Service in the 1930s and returned to China, where he would remain until nearly the end of World War II. During that time he became one of the first Americans to meet and talk with the young revolutionary known as Mao Zedong. He documented the personal excesses and political foibles of Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. As a political aide to General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, the wartime commander of the Allied forces in East and South Asia, he traveled widely in the region, meeting with colonial India's Nehru and Gandhi to gauge whether their animosity to British rule would translate into support for Japan. Davies ended the war serving in Moscow with George F. Kennan, the architect of America's policy toward the Soviet Union. Kennan found in Davies a lifelong friend and colleague. Neither, however, was immune to the virulent anticommunism of the immediate postwar years. China Hand is the story of a man who captured with wry and judicious insight the times in which he lived, both as observer and as actor.

Auteur

John Paton Davies, Jr. Foreword by Todd S. Purdum. Epilogue by Bruce Cumings

Contenu

Foreword -Todd S. Purdum PART I. LEAVING AND RETURNING i The Firing ii From China to America iii My Itinerant Education iv Hankow, the Far East Desk, and Pearl Harbor PART II. ''THIS ASSIGNMENT IS NOT MADE AT YOUR REQUEST NOR FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE'' v To Asia with Stilwell vi A Moment with Mr. Gandhi vii Nehru and ''The Problem'' viii An American in India ix Willkie, Washington, and Vinegar Joe x Among the Naga Headhunters PART III. PUBLIC AND PERSONAL DIPLOMACY xi The Politics of War xii Cairo: With Roosevelt, Churchill, and Chiang xiii The Resurrection of Britain's Empire in Asia May Be Said to Lie Outside the Scope of Our Mission xiv Patricia's Passage to India; A Soong Family Fracas PART IV. THE QUESTION OF CHINA xv Stilwell's Wars xvi The Generalissimo Versus the General xvii Meeting Mao xviii Communists Versus Nationalists Versus Hurley PART V. MOSCOW NIGHTS AND DAYS xix Posted to Moscow xx Hurley's Opening Salvo xxi Postwar Moscow PART VI. AT WAR AT HOME xxii Returning to America, and the China Lobby xxiii Assigned to Kennan's Policy Planning Staff xxiv Working with the National Security Council xxv Revisiting Asia in 1948 xxvi ''The Most Nefarious Campaign of Half-Truths and Untruth in the History of the Republic'' Epilogue -Bruce Cumings Index Acknowledgments Gallery follows page 240