Tales From the China Lobby
Chiang Kai-Shek (Library of Congress)
For several decades around the middle of the twentieth century, US policy toward China was heavily influenced by the “China lobby,” an amalgamation of evangelicals interested in Chinese missionary work, businessmen interested in the Chinese market, members of the Kuomintang political elite, and Cold War ultra-hawks who pushed the United States toward heavy alignment with the KMT and policies of brinksmanship with Communist China.
Robert Farley takes a look back at their heyday:
The language that the China Lobby used to preclude US rapproachment with China will be familiar to contemporary readers; China was a rogue state that could use its nuclear weapons randomly at any given time, and as such wasn’t fit for diplomacy. At one point, Chiang Kai Shek claimed knowledge of the location of the most important Chinese nuclear facilities, and suggested that he could take them out, if only the US would loosen the leash a bit. The PRC, it seemed, was full of atheist maniacs who didn’t believe that 72 virgins would be waiting for them when they died, and consequently could do ANYTHING. Lousy atheists. Anyway, strategic considerations (and sanity) precluded any meaningful unleashing of Chiang, but the influence of the Lobby in the executive branch and in Congress helped prevent a Sino-American dialogue over Vietnam, the final status of Korea, the role of the PRC at the UN, and the potential for collaboration with the Soviet Union. When any President hinted at acknowledging the PRC, the Lobby could arm Congressional opponents with money and righteous rhetoric about the dangers of appeasing Beijing. Nixon was able to break the cycle, in part because the most vocal China advocates came from within his own party, but also because of the shifting strategic situation of the early 1970s. Concern about increasing Soviet power and the need for a way out of Vietnam eventually overwhelmed the story that the Lobby was trying to sell.
At any rate, I don’t like arguments purely by analogy, but one point I try to make in my book is that while neoconservatism is a relatively new phenomenon, the basic ideas that undergirded the neocon foreign policy approach in the early 21st century have a long lineage in twentieth century American foreign policy. And it’s a lineage of pretty consistent wrongness. The main difference is that in the 20th century these impulses were usually either checked (no engagement with the PRC, but no “unleashing” of Chiang either) or else channeled into relatively unimportant developing world sideshows (Arbenz coup, assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the contra war). Under Bush, however, this approach came to be applied to the central areas of strategic concern for the United States with catastrophic results.
Relatedly, if you want to understand the intellectual decline of the Bush family, this weird anecdote about unleashing Chiang is priceless.
27 Responses to “Tales From the China Lobby”
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June 14th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Actually, the man who talked about unleashing Chiang was the late Senator from California, William Knowland, known not so affectionately as the Senator from Taipai.
June 14th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Apparently, Matthew has decided to unleash Farley today…
June 14th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
If DeLong’s interpretation of elder Bush’s mocking intent with the “unleashing Chang” phrase is right then the mystery is why he did not instruct his sons as to the proper meaning. Not why are the Bush’s still ruling us? It is pretty universal among non conservatives to give a lot more than grudging respect to Bush the Elder for not being a True Believer in American Exceptionalism, for want of a better summary of the foreign policy views which are embedded in what is now called neo conservatism.
Did the elder Bush really hold strong pragmatic and realist foreign policy views? You would think if he did he might have at least mentioned it to his sons. I have my doubts. I think the elder Bush was concerned exclusively with doing deals. We were never going to do deals with China while the China lobby was in charge. Once you ascend to the White House however the level and scale of deal making gets much more complex while at the same time the very ascension to that place represents finalizing the best deal of all. If his youngest son embraced every bit of the revisionist histories ever to come out of the John Birch Society which might queer the future strategic ‘deals’ for the nation that’s a small price to pay for having the family name next to another president.
June 14th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
One of the fruits of those unimportant venting of misguided foreign policy in unimportant sideshows was Al Qaeda and the Taliban … and we may well find later in this century that destabilizing what could have been the bread basket and linchpin of Central Africa was no a very smart idea either.
June 14th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
“relatively unimportant developing world sideshows (Arbenz coup…the contra war)”
I think there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Guatemalans and Nicaraguans who lost loved ones in these US-backed exercises in imperialist brutality who would strongly disagree with your characterization, Matt.
Our conduct in Latin America during the Cold War was a national disgrace, and we will never, as a nation, acknowledge our culpability if commentators who should know better continue to dismiss it as a “sideshow.”
June 14th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Don’t you just love how Matty and his fellow thug-ettes love to elide their shared responsibility for Bushit’s illegal wars?
June 14th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Wow, that anecdote from Brad DeLong about the Jebster is priceless.
The strident, uncurious idiocy of conservatives never ceases to amaze me.
June 14th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Matt,
I’d recommend David Halberstam’s book on the Korean War “The Coldest Winter” for its treatment of the China Lobby and how they helped push for disastrous choices in that war. There are many similarities between those who pushed for the Iraq War, including the Chalabi element, and the pro-Chaing morons on the Republican right.
June 14th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Just wait till the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable realize that there is a shit load of slave labor to exploit in North Korea. Then we’ll discover than Kim with J to the Ill has been horribly misunderstood.
June 14th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Don’t forget, Matt, Reagan “won” the cold war; this is why he is saint to the neocons, because his “success” justified forty years of hawkishness. Never mind the fact that the Evil Empire imploded when Gorby tried to reform and moderate it’s politics/economy. Reagan will continue to be the stick that the right goads (or bludgeons) would be diplomats with.
June 14th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Sahu,
Precisely. Mr. Yglesias’ cavalier dismissal of the victims of the Cold War in Latin America (numbering in the hundreds of thousands) is truly outrageous.
June 14th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Pretty cavalier for MY to extol Greg Grandin all the time but pepper over American sponsored genocide as a developing world “sideshow.” Terrible stuff.
June 14th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Matt and DeLong are clueless about the meanings of the Bush family’s “unleash Chiang/Chang” tennis joke, which is actually the cleverest thing I’ve ever heard from the Bushes. The point of the joke is pretty obvious when you note that the Bushes are huge pro tennis fans (recall that when GWB was arrested for drunk driving in the 1970s, one of his passengers was Australian all-time great John Newcombe.)
The first President Bush made up the “unleash Chiang/Chang” joke on the White House tennis court the year that diminutive baseliner Michael Chang won the French Open. Bush Sr. was both poking fun at the ancient GOP battle cry of “unleash Chiang,” which was always pretty ridiculous considering how Chiang had gotten his butt thoroughly kicked by Mao, and at the 6′-3″ President’s own fading tennis powers by announcing he was going to unleash his inner Michael Chang, who was the least physically fearsome of top players.
From there, it appears to have mutated for the Bushes into an all-purpose inside joke about getting intense. Obviously, Jeb couldn’t explain that his family’s joke was based on the stereotype of East Asians as physically unprepossessing, so he made up some BS about Chang being a mystical warrior.
June 14th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
An important thing to keep in mind is that many American members of the China Lobby had family ties to China through Protestant missionaries in China, most famously Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life, who was born in China. FDR, who saw Chiang as a great leader (much to the disgust of Gen. Stilwell), came from the Protestant upper crust that supplied the missionaries in China.
Similarly, Neocons and Neolibs increasingly have family ties to Israel, such as Norman Podhoretz’s four grandchildren in Israel.
June 15th, 2009 at 1:29 am
LOL @ Sailer’s bullshit tennis explanation. It almost sounds plausible until you remember that Poppy Bush’s use of the term dates back at least to the 1970s.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:53 am
I think there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Guatemalans and Nicaraguans who lost loved ones in these US-backed exercises in imperialist brutality who would strongly disagree with your characterization, Matt.
Our conduct in Latin America during the Cold War was a national disgrace, and we will never, as a nation, acknowledge our culpability if commentators who should know better continue to dismiss it as a “sideshow.”
For goodness sakes, lay off the moral outrage. It is unattractive, sickly, and sickening. We have enough moral crusaders as it in the world today; no one needs any more of these useless fools.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:23 am
Most people don’t realize (though the odious Sailer does) what a big deal the missionary effort in China was. I lived for four years in a reasonably sized West Coast town that was founded by China missionaries and had a gigantic retirement home that was originally geared to house retired ex-China bible-thumpers.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:07 am
15, right, and if Jeb knew it was a borderline-racist inside joke about tennis, then why bring it up in a big political speech with such ridiculous ceremony?
June 15th, 2009 at 7:36 am
Myles,
Nice of you to dismiss the butchery of the Nicaraguan and Guatemalan people at the hands of Right-wing tyrants and terrorists, as so much ‘moral outrage’. The only thing sickening and unattractive is your unwillingness to face the brutal face of capitalism in the third world, and the mass graves in Guatemala. Of course it fits with your penchant for worshipping decadent upper classes, whether they be in Nicaragua, Edwardian Britain, or modern Dubai. Indeed I see little difference between your arguments and those of Judith Jarvis Thomsen.
June 15th, 2009 at 7:37 am
Burritoboy,
Yes, Chiang Kai-Shek was actually a Christian if I recall correctly. His massive butcheries don’t, of course, provide the best advertisement for the religion (though on balance he probably better than Mao).
June 15th, 2009 at 8:40 am
Wow. G. W. Bush is almost exactly my age, and Jeb is older, I guess. The idea that someone of that generation — a politician, no less — doesn’t know who Chiang Kaishek was, or what the phrase “unleash Chiang” means, is truly mind-boggling.
June 15th, 2009 at 8:45 am
Even more mind-boggling, given that G. H. W. Bush, their father, was our quasi-ambassador to China under Ford.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:54 am
It was Chang’s father-in-law who was the “Christian” — opportunist would be more accurate. The family’s unsavory doings are chronicled in the book The “Soong Family Dynasty”.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Harold,
Apparently Chiang became a Methodist in 1929, arguably under the influence of his wife.
June 15th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Apparently Chiang became a Methodist in 1929, arguably under the influence of his wife.
His father-in-law was supposed to be missionary, I think.
June 15th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
My dad used to refer to letting the cat out as “Unleashing Chiang Kai-Shek.” That was the kind of thing that he thought was funny.
And, yeah, Hector what is the world coming to when you’ll make a big deal of over a few hundred thousand dead people?
Just don’t try to argue that Elliot Abrams and Casper Weinburger were hipsters, k?
June 15th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Per thompsaj (#18) responding to Steve Sailor (#13), this in fact demonstrates the intellectual decline of the Bush family. Jeb – the smart brother – looks like a fucking idiot any way you slice it:
a) didn’t know who the hell Chiang Kai-shek was.
b) didn’t remember who the hell Michael Chang was.
c) sounds like an idiot when suddenly remembering to keep dumb family jokes to himself.
In any case, labeling him the “smart” brother ain’t setting the bar very high.