BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – A new book by Illinois Wesleyan University Associate Professor of History Thomas D. Lutze explores how American anti-Communism in China after World War II helped tip the middle classes to the side of the Communists, unintentionally aiding their victory.
In Lutze’s book, China’s Inevitable Revolution: Rethinking America’s Loss to the Communists, published by Palgrave-Macmillan, he argues that American support for Nationalist Party leader Chiang Kai-shek convinced the democratically-minded Chinese middle classes to align with the Communists in the late 1940s.
“Americans were taught during the Cold War that anti-Communism and pro-democracy were flip-sides of the same coin. The great irony is that in China the American effort to contain Communism actually constrained democracy,” maintained Lutze, who said the middle class saw Chiang Kai-shek as a dictator. The United States policy was to support Chiang as an anti-Communist and a friend of American interests in China; at the same time, Washington hoped to win over the liberals to bring about reform of Chiang’s one-party rule. But the two policies were contradictory. “True democrats in China abandoned the American side and threw their support to the Communists.”
The book is part of Lutze’s ongoing study of the middle class and the Chinese Communist Revolution that dates back to his graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 1973 and 1989. He spent time studying East Asian history and the history of U.S. foreign relations at Cornell University and at Peking University before earning his doctorate in modern Chinese history at the University of Wisconsin in 1996. His ties with Peking University (PKU) aided him in writing the book. “Thanks to colleagues at PKU, I had access to photos, archives, and interviews with middle-class liberals and leaders of China’s democratic parties who were active during the Revolution,” said Lutze.
According to Lutze, scholars have generally ignored the middle class when examining the history of the Chinese Communist Revolution. “The middle class democrats have been dismissed in retrospect,” said Lutze, “but they should be identified as a crucial political force that both Chiang Kai-shek and the Communist Party (CCP) needed.” It was the middle class who would solidify either the Nationalists or Communists in the cities of China, he said.
This liberal middle class of urban doctors, lawyers, educators, and businessmen held political ideals similar to that of America, and many of them were educated in America, said Lutze. “But they took democracy seriously and recognized that the Communists legitimately represented important sectors of the population. Chiang Kai-shek made it clear that the Communists, and other opposition voices, would be suppressed—and that he would enforce that decision militarily.” American support for Chiang thus translated into the curtailing of democracy and the expansion of a very unpopular civil war.