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The Birth of Modern China: Mao, Truman, and 1949 Fashion

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New York Occasions Guide Evaluation Editors’ Alternative   • Winner of the 2018 Truman Guide Award

Dive into the captivating account of the Truman Administration's actions during the fall of Nationalist China and the Communist victory led by Mao Zedong in 1949. This extraordinary political revolution from 1949 continues to shape present-day East Asian politics significantly.


 
Within the opening months of 1949, U.S. President Harry S. Truman discovered himself confronted with a looming diplomatic catastrophe–“maybe the best that this nation has ever suffered,” because the journalist Walter Lippmann put it. All through the spring and summer time, Mao Zedong’s Communist armies fanned out throughout mainland China, annihilating the rival troops of America’s one-time ally Chiang Kai-shek and taking management of Beijing, Shanghai, and different main cities. As Truman and his aides–including his shrewd, ruthless secretary of state, Dean Acheson–scrambled to formulate a response, they had been pressured to contend not solely with Mao, but in addition with unrelenting political enemies at residence. Over the course of this tumultuous yr, Mao would style a brand new revolutionary authorities in Beijing, laying the inspiration for the creation of contemporary China, whereas Chiang Kai-shek would flee to the island sanctuary of Taiwan. These occasions remodeled American international policy–leading, finally, to many years of friction with Communist China, a long-standing U.S. dedication to Taiwan, and the following wars in Korea and Vietnam.
 
Drawing on Chinese language and Russian sources, in addition to just lately declassified CIA paperwork, Kevin Peraino tells the story of this outstanding yr by the eyes of the important thing gamers, together with Mao Zedong, President Truman, Secretary of State Acheson, Minnesota congressman Walter Judd, and Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the influential first girl of the Republic of China. 

Currently, the significance of the events of 1949 holds more relevance than ever in shaping the dynamic relationships between China, the US, and the global community. This is particularly evident as Beijing asserts its territorial claims in the South China Sea, and tensions persist between Taiwan and the mainland.

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