Both the White Paper on United States Relations with
China released by the U.S. Department of State in 1949 and
the letter from Secretary of State Dean Acheson to President
Harry S. Truman admitted that, guided by its conceived
global strategy and national interest considerations, the
U.S. government gave full support to the Kuomintang,
providing it with money, weapons and advisors to carry on
the civil war and block the advance of the Chinese people's
revolution. In his letter Acheson said: "The
unfortunate but inescapable fact is that the ominous result
of the civil war in China was beyond the control of the
government of the United States. … Nothing that was
left undone by this country has contributed to it. It was
the product of internal Chinese forces, forces which this
country tried to influence but could
not."
At the time of the founding of the
People's Republic of China, the then U.S. administration
could have pulled itself from the quagmire of China's civil
war. But it failed to do so. Instead, it adopted a policy of
isolation and containment of New China. When the Korean War
broke out, it tore up all international agreements about
non-interference in China's internal affairs. In his
statement on June 27, 1950 President Truman announced:
"I have ordered the Seventh Fleet to prevent any attack
on Formosa." Thus the Seventh Fleet invaded the Taiwan
Straits and the U.S. 13th Air Force entered Taiwan and was
stationed there. In December 1954 the United States
concluded with the Taiwan authorities a so-called
"Mutual Defense Treaty", placing China's Taiwan
Province under U.S. "protection".
The
erroneous policy of the U.S. government of continued
interference in China's internal affairs led to the
prolonged and intense confrontation in the Taiwan Straits
area and henceforth the Taiwan question became a major
dispute between China and the United States.
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