Formation | 1946 January 1950 |
---|---|
Founder | J. B. Powell, Helen Loomis |
Founded at | New York City |
Headquarters | New York City |
Location |
|
Chairman President | Alfred Kohlberg |
President | J. B. Powell, Clare Booth Luce, William Loeb III |
Vice President | Helen Loomis |
Alfred Kohlberg, Freda Utley, Irene Corbally Kuhn, Max Eastman, Walter H. Judd, William R. Johnson, Isaac Don Levine, David Prescott Barrows, William Henry Chamberlin, George Creel, Roscoe Pound | |
Key people | Alfred Kohlberg |
Affiliations | Plain Talk magazine, American Jewish League Against Communism |
The American China Policy Association (ACPA) was an anti-communist organization that supported the government of Republic of China, now commonly referred to as Taiwan, under Chiang Kai-shek. [1] [2]
On July 17, 1946, [2] J. B. Powell, correspondent, and Helen Loomis, missionary teacher, founded the American China Policy Association (ACPA). Alfred Kohlberg, a leader in the China Lobby joined as chairman [3] shortly thereafter to promote American interests by promoting the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang as a counter to Soviet and Chinese Communist support. [1] (Another source says that Kohlberg established ACPA. [2] )
In 1947, co-founder J. B. Powell died, succeeded by Clare Booth Luce (wife of Henry R. Luce) as president for one year, then by newspaper publisher William Loeb III. [1]
In 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party seized full control of mainland China and established the People's Republic of China, the ACPA accused the United States Department of State of "losing China." ACPA supported its allegations with copious literature: letters, pamphlets, brochures, press releases, and book reviews. Kohlberg's name went on most of those publications. [1]
ACPA obtained two US Army intelligence reports, which it reproduced via "photolithography" and made available to the press; these documents showed numerous errors and omissions by the State Department. [2]
Directly and through ACPA, Kohlberg criticized US President Harry S. Truman and US Secretary of State George C. Marshall. [2]
During the Korean War, ACPA advocacy "effectively changed" America's orientation with regard to Communist China. [1]
ACPA's board of directors included:
Another person associated with ACPA was Edna Lonigan. [2]
Chiang Kai-shek was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and military leader. He was the head of the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party, General of the National Revolutionary Army, known as Generalissimo, and the leader of the Republic of China (ROC) in mainland China from 1928 until 1949. After being defeated in the Chinese Civil War by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, he led the ROC on the island of Taiwan until his death in 1975.
Soong Mei-ling, also known as Madame Chiang Kai-shek or Madame Chiang, was a Chinese political figure who was First Lady of the Republic of China, the wife of President Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China. Soong played a prominent role in the politics of the Republic of China and was the sister-in-law of Sun Yat-sen, the founder and the leader of the Republic of China. She was active in the civic life of her country and held many honorary and active positions, including chairwoman of Fu Jen Catholic University. During World War II, she rallied against the Japanese; and in 1943 conducted an eight-month speaking tour of the United States to gain support.
The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and the forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with armed conflict continuing intermittently from 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949, resulting in a CCP victory and control of mainland China in the Chinese Communist Revolution.
Henry Robinson Luce was an American magazine magnate who founded Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated magazines. He has been called "the most influential private citizen in the America of his day".
Bai Chongxi was a Chinese general in the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China (ROC) and a prominent Chinese Nationalist leader. He was of Hui ethnicity and of the Muslim faith. From the mid-1920s to 1949, Bai and his close ally Li Zongren ruled Guangxi province as regional warlords with their own troops and considerable political autonomy. His relationship with Chiang Kai-shek was at various times antagonistic and cooperative. He and Li Zongren supported the anti-Chiang warlord alliance in the Central Plains War in 1930, then supported Chiang in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War. Bai was the first defense minister of the Republic of China from 1946 to 1948. After losing to the Communists in 1949, he fled to Taiwan, where he died in 1966.
Liu Zhi was a prominent Kuomintang military and political leader in the Republic of China.
Owen Lattimore was an American Orientalist and writer. He was an influential scholar of China and Central Asia, especially Mongolia. Although he never earned a college degree, in the 1930s he was editor of Pacific Affairs, a journal published by the Institute of Pacific Relations, and taught at Johns Hopkins University from 1938 to 1963. He was director of the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations from 1939 to 1953. During World War II, he was an advisor to Chiang Kai-shek and the American government and contributed extensively to the public debate on U.S. policy toward Asia. From 1963 to 1970, Lattimore was the first Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds in England.
Patrick Jay Hurley was an American politician and diplomat. He was the United States Secretary of War from 1929 to 1933, but is best remembered for being Ambassador to China in 1945, during which he was instrumental in getting Joseph Stilwell recalled from China and replaced with the more diplomatic General Albert Coady Wedemeyer. A man of humble origins, Hurley's lack of what was considered to be a proper ambassadorial demeanor and mode of social interaction made professional diplomats scornful of him. He came to share pre-eminent army strategist Wedemeyer's view that the Chinese Communists could be defeated and America ought to commit to doing so even if it meant backing the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek to the hilt. Frustrated, Hurley resigned as Ambassador to China in 1945, publicised his concerns about high-ranking members of the State Department, and alleged they believed that the Chinese Communists were not totalitarians and that America's priority was to avoid allying with a losing side in the civil war.
The Huaihai campaign, or Battle of Hsupeng, was one of the military conflicts in the late stage of the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The campaign started when the People's Liberation Army (PLA) launched a major offensive against the Kuomintang headquarters in Xuzhou on 6 November 1948, and ended on 10 January 1949 when the PLA reached the north of the Yangtze.
Alfred Kohlberg was an American textile importer. A staunch anti-Communist, he was a member of the pro-Chiang "China lobby", as well as an ally of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, a friend and advisor of John Birch Society founder Robert W. Welch Jr., and a member of the original national council of the John Birch Society.
The Second United Front was the alliance between the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to resist the Japanese invasion of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War, which suspended the Chinese Civil War from 1937 to 1945.
Isaac Don Levine was a 20th-century Russian-born American journalist and anticommunist writer, who is known as a specialist on the Soviet Union.
The historical Kuomintang socialist ideology is a form of socialist thought developed in mainland China during the early Republic of China. The Tongmenghui revolutionary organization led by Sun Yat-sen was the first to promote socialism in China.
In American political discourse, the "loss of China" is the unexpected Chinese Communist Party coming to power in mainland China from the U.S.-backed Chinese Kuomintang government in 1949 and therefore the "loss of China to communism."
The Chinese Communist Revolution was a social and political revolution that culminated in the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. For the preceding century, China had faced escalating social, economic, and political problems as a result of Western imperialism, Japanese imperialism, and the decline of the Qing dynasty. Cyclical famines and an oppressive landlord system kept the large mass of rural peasantry poor and politically disenfranchised. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was formed in 1921 by young urban intellectuals inspired by European socialist ideas and the success of the October Revolution in Russia. The CCP originally allied itself with the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party against the warlords and foreign imperialist forces, but the 1927 massacre of Communists in Shanghai ordered by Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek forced them into the Chinese Civil War, which would last more than two decades.
Lawrence Kaelter Rosinger was an American specialist on modern East Asia, focusing on China and India.
The retreat of the government of Republic of China to Taiwan, also known as the Kuomintang's retreat to Taiwan or the Great Retreat in Taiwan, refers to the exodus of the remnants of the then-internationally-recognized Kuomintang-ruled government of the Republic of China (ROC) to the island of Taiwan (Formosa) on December 7, 1949, after losing the Chinese Civil War in the Chinese mainland. The Kuomintang, its officers, and approximately 2 million ROC troops took part in the retreat, in addition to many civilians and refugees, fleeing the advance of the People's Liberation Army of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP, who now effectively controlled most of Mainland China, spent the subsequent years purging any remnant Nationalist agents and bandits in western and southern China, solidifying the rule of the newly established People's Republic of China.
The Joint Committee Against Communism, also known as the Joint Committee Against Communism in New York, was an anti-communist organization during the 1950s.
Millet plus rifles, also known as "Millet and rifles" or "a rifle with bags of millet", was a phrase used by Mao Zedong to describe the materials and supplies of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). The first recorded instance of Mao using this phrase is in a speech he gave at a party meeting in Yan'an. He was recalling a conversation with David D. Barrett, an American military officer sent to observe the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces fighting in WWII. When warned that the Americans would support Chiang Kai-Shek against the CCP if they refused to enter into a coalition government, Mao had responded:
Chiangism, also known as the Political Philosophy of Chiang Kai-shek, or Chiang Kai-shek Thought, is the political philosophy of President Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who used it during his rule in China under the Kuomintang on both the mainland and Taiwan. It is a right-wing authoritarian nationalist political ideology which is based on mostly Confucian and Tridemist ideologies, and was used in the New Life Movement in China and the Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement in Taiwan. It is a syncretic mix of many political ideologies, including revolutionary nationalism, Tridemism, socialism, militarism, Confucianism, state capitalism, constitutionalism, fascism, authoritarian capitalism, and paternalistic conservatism, as well as Chiang's Methodist Christian beliefs.