And indeed, the spectacular failure of US-China relations
after the war showed, in part, how thin our alliance with China was,
and how few interests and values were in fact shared between the two nations
once the defeat of Japan was assured.
This became very clear after VJ Day.
President Roosevelt's desire to treat China as a great power
was one reason why the United States relinquished
its extraterritorial rights in China in 1943.
But the policies by which the Chinese government
expected to attain great power status turned out to be in some opposition
to American interests.
China's postwar plans called for a state-led, military industrial
development of an increasingly socialized economy
in which foreign and Chinese capital, as Sun Yat-sen had imagined,
would be channeled to the needs of the Chinese state.
The difficult negotiations for a commercial treaty
to succeed the old so-called unequal treaties system, negotiations
that make today's commercial problems with China seem
rather minor, revealed the size of the gap
between Chinese and American interests.
Even before the complications of the Chinese civil war, which
started in earnest in 1946, it was clear enough
that the prospects for post-war Chinese American cooperation
were not all that great.
After the war, with the issue of extraterritoriality gone
and with a Chinese government in a position
to enforce its authority on the internal frontiers of Chinese-foreign relations,
Chinese laws began to govern and to restrict the activities of Americans
in China.
As they still do to this day.
When one thinks about it, perhaps what has
been most special about Chinese-American relations,
compared with those of Great Britain in the 19th century
or Russia in the 20th century, was that, until World War II,
these relations had been of secondary importance to both nations.
And even then, they would not remain at the center for either side.
And this is something that comes as a bit of a shock
to Americans, who like to think of themselves as being
at the center of the world, and to Chinese, who know they are.
And it's a disappointment to the small cottage industry in both countries that
studies the history of Chinese-American relations.
But it seems to be true, and the patterns of the 1940s,
in which a Chinese government would show its determination
to resist American advice, pressure, and even support in order
to pursue its own objectives, would be a theme
that would be remembered in later times, under a later Chinese government.
One can get a sense of the spiral going down
of American-Chinese relationship in the debates that
took place in Congress of how to aid China.
Would the United States come to Chiang Kai-shek's aid
in the face of an apparent communist conquest of China.
There were those, such as senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska,
who urged enormous aid to China, not only for Chiang Kai-shek,
but for the rebuilding of post-war China,
arguing for a Marshall-style plan for post-war China
that would bring it peace and prosperity.
Wherry said on the Senate floor that the United States should invest in China so
that we could, for example, lift Shanghai, that great city, up, up,
and ever up until it was just like Kansas City.
I don't know what people in Shanghai thought of that prospect at the time.
But American support of the national government and of Chiang Kai-shek
was waning.
It was certainly not a positive sign in the relationship
that Harry Truman, President Roosevelt's successor,
would come to refer privately to Chiang Kai-shek not
as the great generally-spoke Chiang Kai-shek, but as Cash My Check.