China Hand : : An Autobiography / / John Paton Davies, Jr.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Asian Studies Backlist (2000-2014) eBook Package
• VerfasserIn: Jr., John Paton Davies,,
• MitwirkendeR: Cumings, Bruce,; Davies, Tiki,; Purdum, Todd S .,
• TeilnehmendeR: Cumings, Bruce.; Purdum, Todd S.
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2012]; ©2012
• Year of Publication: 2012
• Language: English
• Series: Haney Foundation Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (376 p.) :; 16 illus.

At the height of the McCarthyite hysteria of the 1950s, John Paton Davies, Jr., was summoned to the State Department one morning and fired. His offense? The career diplomat had counseled the U.S. government during World War II that the Communist forces in China were poised to take over the country-which they did, in 1949. Davies joined the thousands of others who became the victims of a political maelstrom that engulfed the country and deprived the United States of the wisdom and guidance of an entire generation of East Asian diplomats and scholars.The son of American missionaries, Davies was born in China at the turn of the twentieth century. Educated in the United States, he joined the ranks of the newly formed Foreign Service in the 1930s and returned to China, where he would remain until nearly the end of World War II. During that time he became one of the first Americans to meet and talk with the young revolutionary known as Mao Zedong. He documented the personal excesses and political foibles of Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. As a political aide to General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, the wartime commander of the Allied forces in East and South Asia, he traveled widely in the region, meeting with colonial India's Nehru and Gandhi to gauge whether their animosity to British rule would translate into support for Japan. Davies ended the war serving in Moscow with George F. Kennan, the architect of America's policy toward the Soviet Union. Kennan found in Davies a lifelong friend and colleague. Neither, however, was immune to the virulent anticommunism of the immediate postwar years.China Hand is the story of a man who captured with wry and judicious insight the times in which he lived, both as observer and as actor.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- FOREWORD -- PART I. LEAVING AND RETURNING -- I. The Firing -- II. From China to America -- III. My Itinerant Education -- IV. Hankow, the Far East Desk, and Pearl Harbor -- PART II. ''THIS ASSIGNMENT IS NOT MADE AT YOUR REQUEST NOR FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE'' -- V. To Asia with Stilwell -- VI. A Moment with Mr. Gandhi -- VII. Nehru and ''The Problem'' -- VIII. An American in India -- IX. Willkie, Washington, and Vinegar Joe -- X.Among the Naga Headhunters -- PART III. PUBLIC AND PERSONAL DIPLOMACY -- XI. The Politics of War -- XII. Cairo: With Roosevelt, Churchill, and Chiang -- XIII.The Resurrection of Britain's Empire in Asia May Be Said to Lie Outside the Scope of Our Mission -- XVI. Patricia's Passage to India; A Soong Family Fracas -- PART IV. THE QUESTION OF CHINA -- XV. Stilwell's Wars -- XVI. The Generalissimo Versus the General -- XVII. Meeting Mao -- XVIII. Communists Versus Nationalists Versus Hurley -- PART V. MOSCOW NIGHTS AND DAYS -- XIX. Posted to Moscow -- XX. Hurley's Opening Salvo -- XXI. Postwar Moscow xxi Postwar Moscow -- PART VI. AT WAR AT HOME -- XXII. Returning to America, and the China Lobby -- XXIII. Assigned to Kennan's Policy Planning Staff -- XXIV. Working with the National Security Council -- XXV. Revisiting Asia in 1948 -- XXVI. ''The Most Nefarious Campaign of Half-Truths and Untruth in the History of the Republic'' -- Epilogue -- Index -- Acknowledgments