troops, the communists charged, attacked areas controlled by the Reds, directly opened fire on them, arrested military officers, and disarmed soldiers.6 The Americans found themselves blasting a small Chinese village unmercifully , wrote a Marine to his congressman, not knowing how many innocent people were slaughtered .7

United States planes regularly made reconnaissance flights over communist territory to scout the position of their forces. The communists claimed that American planes frequently strafed and bombed their troops and in one instance machine-gunned a communist-held town.8 To what extent these attacks were carried out by US airmen is not known.

There were, however, American survivors in some of the many crashes of United States aircraft. Surprisingly, the Reds continued to rescue them, tend to their wounds, and return them to US bases. It may be difficult to appreciate now, but at this time the mystique and the myth of America still gripped the imagination of people all over the world, and Chinese peasants, whether labeled communist or not, were no exception. During the war the Reds had helped to rescue scores of American fliers and had transported them through Japanese lines to safety. The Communists , wrote the New York Times, did not lose one airman taken under their protection. They made a point of never accepting rewards for saving American airmen. 9

When 1946 arrived, about 100,000 American military personnel were still in China, still supporting Chiang. The official United States explanation for the presence of its military was that they were there to disarm and repatriate the Japanese. Though this task was indeed carried out eventually, it was secondary to the militarys political function, as Trumans statement cited above makes abundantly cleat.

The American soldiers in China began to protest about not being sent home, a complaint echoed round the world by other GIs kept overseas for political (usually anti-communist) purposes. They ask me, too, why theyre here, said a Marine lieutenant in China at Christmas-time, 1945. As an officer I am supposed to tell them, but you cant tell a man that hes here to disarm Japanese when hes guarding the same railway with [armed] Japanese. 10

Strangely enough, the United States attempted to mediate in the civil war; this, while being an active, powerful participant on one side. In January 1946, President Truman, apparently recognizing that it was either compromise with the communists or see all of China fall under their sway, sent General George Marshall to try and arrange a cease-fire and some kind of unspecified coalition government. While some temporary success was achieved in an on - and - off truce, the idea of a coalition government was doomed to failure, as unlikely as a marriage between the Czar and the Bolsheviks. As the historian D.F. Fleming has pointed out, One cannot unite a dying oligarchy with a rising revolution. 11

Not until early 1947 did the United States begin to withdraw some of its military forces, although aid and support to the Chiang government continued in one form or another long afterward. At about this same time, the Flying Tigers began to operate. The legendary American air squadron under the leadership of General Claire Chennault had fought for the Chinese against the Japanese before and during the world war. Now Chennault, Chiangs former air force adviser, had reactivated the squadron (under the name CAT) and its pilots - of - fortune soon found themselves in the thick of the fray, flying endless supply missions to Nationalist cities under siege, dodging communist shell bursts to airlift food, ammunition, and supplies of all kinds, or to rescue the wounded.12 Technically, CAT was a private airline hired by the Chiang government, but before the civil war came to an end, the airline had formally

interlocked with the CIA to become the first unit in the Agencys sprawling air-empire-to-be, best known for the Air America line.

By 1949, United States aid to the Nationalists since the war amounted to almost $2 billion in cash and $1 billion worth of military hardware; 39 Nationalist army divisions had been trained and equipped.13 Yet the Chiang dynasty was collapsing all around in bits and pieces. It had not been only the onslaught of Chiangs communist foes, but the hostility of the Chinese people at large to his tyranny, his wanton cruelty, and the extraordinary corruption and decadence of his entire bureaucratic and social system. By contrast, the large areas under communist administration were models of honesty, progress and fairness; entire divisions of the Generalissimos forces defected to the communists. American political and military leaders had no illusions about the nature and quality of Chiangs rule. The Nationalist forces, said General David Barr, head of the US Military Mission in China, were under the worlds worst leadership .14

The Generalissimo, his cohorts and soldiers fled to the offshore island of Taiwan (Formosa). They had prepared their entry two years earlier by terrorizing the islanders into submission-a massacre which took the lives of as many as 28,000 people.15 Prior to the Nationalists escape to the island, the US government entertained no doubts that Taiwan was a part of China. Afterward, uncertainty began to creep into the minds of Washington officials. The crisis was resolved in a remarkably simple manner: the US agreed with Chiang that the proper way to view the situation was not that Taiwan belonged to China, but that Taiwan was China. And so it was called.

In the wake of the communist success, China scholar Felix Greene observed, Americans simply could not bring themselves to believe that the Chinese, however rotten their leadership, could have preferred a communist government. 16 It must have been the handiwork of a conspiracy, an international conspiracy, at the control panel of which sat, not unexpectedly, the Soviet Union. The evidence for this, however, was thin to the point of transparency. Indeed, ever since Stalins credo of socialism in one country won out over Trotskys internationalism in the 1920s, the Russians had sided with Chiang more than with Mao, advising the latter more than once to dissolve his army and join Chiangs government.17 Particularly in the post-World War II years, when the Soviet Union was faced with its own staggering crisis of reconstruction, did it not relish the prospect of having to help lift the worlds most populous nation into the modern age. In 1947, General Marshall stated publicly that he knew of no evidence that the Chinese communists were being supported by the USSR.18

But in the United States this did not prevent the rise of an entire mythology of how the US had lost China: Soviet intervention, State Department communists, White House cowards, military and diplomatic folly, communist dupes and fellow-travelers in the media ... treachery everywhere ...

The Truman administration, said Senator Joseph McCarthy with characteristic charm, was composed of egg-sucking phony liberals who protected the Communists and queers who had sold China into atheistic slavery .19

Yet, short of an all-out invasion of the country by large numbers of American troops, it is difficult to see what more the US government could have done to prevent Chiangs downfall. Even after Chiang fled to Taiwan, the United States pursued a campaign of relentless assaults against the communist government, despite a request from Chou En-lai for aid and friendship. The Red leader saw no practical or ideological bar to this.20 Instead, the United States evidently conspired to assassinate Chou on several occasions.21

Many Nationalist soldiers had taken refuge in northern Burma in the great exodus of 1949, much to the displeasure of the Burmese Government. There, the CIA began to regroup this stateless army into a fighting force, and during the early 1950s a number of large- and small-scale incursions into China were carried out. In one instance, in April 1951, a few thousand troops, accompanied by CIA advisers and supplied by air drops from American C46s and C47s, crossed the border into Chinas Yunnan province, but they were driven back by the communists in less than a week. The casualties were high and included several CIA advisers who lost their lives. Another raid that summer took the invaders 65; miles into China where they reportedly held a 100-mile-long strip of territory.

While the attacks continued intermittently, the CIA proceeded to build up the forces capabilities: American engineers arrived to help construct and expand airstrips in Burma, fresh troops were flown in from Taiwan, other troops were recruited from amongst Burmese hill tribes, CIA air squadrons were brought in for logistical services, and enormous quantities of American heavy arms were ferried in. Much of the supply of men and equipment came in via nearby Thailand.

The army soon stood at more than 10,000 men. By the end of 1952, Taiwan claimed that 41,000 communist troops had been killed and more than 3,000 wounded. The figures were most likely exaggerated, but even if not, it was clear that the raids would not lead to Chiangs triumphant return to the mainland-although this was not their sole purpose. On the Chinese border two greater battles were raging: in Korea and Vietnam. It was the hope of the United States to force the Chinese to divert troops and military resources away from these areas. The infant Peoples Republic of China was undergoing a terrible test.

In between raids on China, the Chinats (as distinguished from the Chicoms ) found time to clash frequently with Burmese troops, indulge in banditry, and become the opium barons of The Golden Triangle, that slice of land encompassing parts of Burma, Laos and Thailand which was the worlds largest source of opium and heroin. CIA pilots flew the stuff all over, to secure the cooperation of those in Thailand who were important to the military operation, as a favor to their Nationalist clients, perhaps even for the money, and, ironically, to serve as cover for their more illicit activities.

The Chinats in Burma kept up their harassment of the Chicoms until 1961 and the CIA continued to supply them militarily, but at some point the Agency began to phase itself out of a more direct involvement. When the CIA, in response to repeated protests by the Burmese Government to the United States and the United Nations, put pressure on the Chinats to leave Burma, Chiang responded by threatening to expose the Agencys covert support of his troops there. At an earlier stage, the CIA had entertained the hope that the Chinese would be provoked into attacking Burma, thereby forcing the strictly neutral Burmese to seek salvation in the Western camp.22 In January 1961, the Chinese did just that, but as part of a combined force with the Burmese to overwhelm the Nationalists main base and mark finis to their Burmese adventure. Burma subsequently renounced American aid and moved closer to Peking.23 For many of the Chinats, unemployment was short-lived. They soon signed up with the CIA again; this time to fight with the Agencys grand army in Laos.

Burma was not the only jumping-off site for CIA-organized raids into China. Several islands within about five miles of the Chinese coast, particularly Quemoy and Matsu, were used as bases for hit-and-run attacks, often in battalion strength, for occasional bombing forays, and to blockade mainland ports. Chiang was brutally pressured by the US to build up his troops on the islands beginning around 1953 as a demonstration of Washingtons new policy of unleashing him.24