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Word: chiangs (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
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Usage:

...Patriotic Communists. Strange and disturbing scenes from the past-some vicious, some tragically funny-rose from the pages of the Government's record. There was irascible old General Stilwell, in 1944, sneering in his reports to Washington over Chiang's reluctance to swallow "the bitter pill of recognizing the Communists"-as if recognition of the Communists would be plain good medicine for a government needing a cathartic. The same year saw the dispatch of Henry Wallace, of all citizens, to Chiang to urge accord with the Communists. There was sardonic humor in the State Department record...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: FOREIGN RELATIONS: Petition in Bankruptcy | 8/15/1949 | See Source »

...Ripe Apple. Through the State Department record marched an imposing parade of U.S. ambassadors and special presidential envoys. All of them, whatever their politics, had worked tirelessly for years to induce Chiang to clean his dirty, disordered house which had scarcely known a day without war-against the Communists, the Japanese (for eight years) and again the Communists. Every one of the U.S. envoys wanted to soften Kuomintang one-party rule, guarantee civil liberties, suppress graft, reform landholding, balance budgets...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: FOREIGN RELATIONS: Petition in Bankruptcy | 8/15/1949 | See Source »

...said the State Department, Chiang conceded little and always too late: the official record depicts him as a leader whose wisdom was corrupted by power, his reason corroded by fear. He balked at the zealous U.S. envoys who urged and arranged negotiations with Communist leaders. As he became ever more stubbornly sure that Chinese unity could be won only by whipping the Red armies in battle, U.S. advisers from General Marshall down ever more firmly warned he could not win. They still thought China should make a deal with the Communists. Dead set against any deal of the kind, Chiang...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: FOREIGN RELATIONS: Petition in Bankruptcy | 8/15/1949 | See Source »

Instead it was Chiang who fell on Jan. 21, 1949. Promptly Chiang's successor, Acting President Li Tsung-jen, blatantly betrayed the bankruptcy of Nationalist China by trying to pull one of the most freakish double-steal plays in modern diplomacy. He proposed to the Soviet Union a pact promising elimination of U.S. influence in China-and simultaneously asked the U.S. for a statement of support to assist him in negotiation with Moscow. The State Department's one word for this was "incredible...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: FOREIGN RELATIONS: Petition in Bankruptcy | 8/15/1949 | See Source »

This eerie blend of fatalism and foolishness formed the background for the Marshall mission. Painstakingly, the white paper gives the now painful details: the suspension of arms shipments to Chiang to allow the U.S. a brief, bootless masquerade as a neutral arbiter between Chiang and the Communists; and General Marshall's increasing infatuation with the dream of building a middle-of-the-road "liberal" party from scattered political factions in a nation at fatal war with itself. From those factions that inspired such hope, only one leader later rose to power: General Li Tsung-jen, who last year proposed...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: FOREIGN RELATIONS: Petition in Bankruptcy | 8/15/1949 | See Source »

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