The Helpless Confession—A Critique of the U.S. White Paper on China, 1949, August 12 The lengthy white paper entitled “Sino-U.S. Relations,” together with other related materials, which the U.S. Department of State released on the fifth of this month, has by now become widely known to the Chinese people.
What lessons ought the Chinese people draw from the U.S. government’s white paper and from Secretary of State Acheson’s statement?
The first and most fundamental lesson is the deep-seated hostility of the U.S. imperialist government toward China’s national interests and the democratic forces of the Chinese people.
The U.S. white paper makes no secret of the U.S. government’s imperialist, aggressive stance.
With brazen impudence, the U.S. government declares that “non-interference in China’s internal affairs” is impossible, since it would conflict with “supporting China’s unity and territorial integrity.”
In other words, the U.S. government maintains that it must intervene in China’s internal affairs, treating China as a U.S. protectorate, only then can China supposedly achieve “unity and territorial integrity.”
Guided by this Hitlerite arbitrariness, the U.S. government, despite acknowledging that Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party is composed of “reactionaries no different from the warlords of old,” whose regime has “already lost the support of the people,” nevertheless continues, for “obvious reasons,” to pour all its resources into aiding them, enabling them to “establish their authority over as large an area of China as possible.”
Just what are these “obvious reasons”?
The U.S. government provides this reactionary, unpopulated regime with aid amounting to more than any it has ever extended to any other country—indeed, exceeding half of its total expenditures—yet for what purpose?
For what mysterious “friendly” objective does the U.S. government render such massive assistance in transportation, armaments, and supplies to a reactionary army already “demoralized,” furnishing the bulk of its military requisites, so that it was even able to, by means of war, “extend its control over most of North and Northeast China”—note well: this is what the U.S. government calls encouraging both sides to engage in negotiations in order to avert civil war!
Surely anyone of sound mind and minimal reasoning power must conclude that the U.S. government harbors a resolute, consistent intention to invade China.
The reason why it appears to be providing unfounded aid to an unpopular, reactionary government and its armed forces to attack the vast masses of the Chinese people who reject reactionary rule lies in a hidden, unspeakable “reason”: namely, since the U.S. government’s policy of aggression contravenes the will of the Chinese people and the national interests of China, it cannot hope to secure the cooperation of the Chinese people; it must therefore resort to coercive interference in China’s internal affairs in order to install, through military means, a quisling puppet regime of the Quirino type that would “cooperate” with the U.S. government.
Is there any other explanation?
The white paper vainly indulges in a torrent of hypocritical platitudes about Sino-U.S. friendship.
Such friendship does indeed exist and will endure forever, but it exists solely between the American and Chinese peoples, for the American people have neither the motive nor the need to invade China, and they have, on numerous occasions, engaged in mutually beneficial cooperation with the Chinese people—a partnership that will never be forgotten.
As for the U.S. government’s aggressive actions, even Acheson is compelled to admit that they are something the American people would “clearly not permit.”
In a letter to President Truman, Acheson wrote: Should the United States undertake further intervention today, “it would inevitably provoke the indignation of the Chinese public and draw condemnation from the American people.”
How strange!
If the U.S. government truly harbored friendly intentions toward the Chinese people, why would expanding the scope and extent of this friendship—for example, if the U.S. government had aided the Chinese people during the War of Resistance rather than the evil regime they opposed—result in indignation on one side and censure on the other?
Does this not suffice to prove that what the U.S. government harbors is not friendship at all, but rather an outrageously aggressive ambition deserving of censure?
And if that is so, would delimiting the scope and boundaries of this aggressive ambition—for instance, by stipulating that the Japanese aggressors should halt at the eastern bank of the Yellow River and southern Henan—suffice to quell indignation and condemnation?
The U.S. imperialists fancy that the entire world is foolish, yet the facts demonstrate that only they themselves are truly so.
But how, in reality, does the U.S. government define the limits of its own aggression?
Driven by the imperatives of monopoly capital, imperialists seek limitless expansion; if there are any limits, they stem not from fear of popular indignation or censure—the records of such indignation and censure have long since grown thicker than the white paper itself—it is simply that imperialists’ own strength has its bounds.
Regarding the outcome of U.S. aid to the Nationalists, Acheson writes: “Our assistance and encouragement helped them hold out.
The unfortunate but unavoidable fact remains that the tragic consequences of the Chinese civil war lay beyond the U.S. government’s control.
Nothing we have done, or could reasonably do within our capabilities, has altered this outcome.
Nor would anything we might have failed to do have made any difference.
This is the product of internal Chinese forces, upon which we have sought to exert influence, albeit without success.”
Behold!
This is the candid, pitiful confession delivered to the world by the insatiable yet ultimately defeated intervener and aggressor—the United States!
Only resolute, effective struggle can utterly vanquish and overthrow the imperialists; only then will their advance come to a halt, and ultimately this abhorrent scourge of imperialism will be eradicated.
But the question before us today is: Have these interveners and aggressors now given up their designs in China?
No—in that sense, their ambitions remain boundless.
The adage “One will not rest until reaching the Yellow River” certainly does not apply to imperialists.
Despite the U.S. government’s helpless confession… critique of the U.S. white paper on China—one nine|