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351 John Paton Davies, Jr., China Hand Book Reviews / Journal of American-East Asian Relations 19 (2012) 345–358 351 John Paton Davies, Jr., China Hand: An Autobiography. Foreword by Todd Purdum; Epilogue by Bruce Cumings. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012; x + 340 pp. $34.95 (cloth). The names of the “China Hands” are familiar to historians of World War II and the Cold War: John S. Service, John Carter Vincent, John Emmerson, O. Edmund Clubb, and Ray Ludden. Foreign Service officers, most of them were driven out of government service by accusations of being Communist “fellow travelers.” Now, an account from one of the most prominent, John Paton Davies, has been published posthumously. Davies begins with his firing by John Foster Dulles on 5 November 1954, after years of years of being pursued by primarily Republican critics. While eight security investigations had found him innocent of being a Communist, Dulles said he had to fire him because he lacked “judgment.” Ironically, the bulk of the historical record suggests just the opposite. Davies regained his security clearance in 1969 and he received further vindication with the nor- malization of relations with China in the 1970s. Davies’s description of the context in 1954 shows little rancor. He clini- cally argues that the public’s disillusionment after World War II and various fears of communism “had been inflated and exploited by a relatively few politicians, publicists and military men” over several years. He notes that the Republicans had discovered the political benefit, however unfair, in accusing Democrats of “losing China and tolerating a Communist conspir- acy” (p. 4). The Republican broadening of the purge did not placate such agitators as Senator Joseph McCarthy. Davies does not deal with the specif- ics of the long years of investigations or his later life. In Dragon By the Tail (New York: Norton, 1972), Davies had covered simi- lar ground. But China Hand is more analytical and revealing about intrica- cies regarding policy and personality and makes use of a personal diary and more declassified documents that bring a sharp focus on policy issues. Davies writes of his missionary parents and his early life in China, his accep- tance into the Foreign Service, and his delving into Chinese studies at the Beijing legation where he met Edgar Snow, John Fairbank, and Owen Lattimore, as well as Joseph Stilwell, then a colonel and the military attaché. About Stilwell’s assignment in China in January 1942, Davies was percep- tive: “And so a general who had been appraised as one of the best fighting commanders in the American army was dispatched on a ceremonial, nego- tiatory, administrative mission in which he was also to command Chinese troops at the pleasure of the Generalissimo, whom Stilwell regarded as © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI 10.1163/18765610-01904002 352 Book Reviews / Journal of American-East Asian Relations 19 (2012) 345–358 disastrously incompetent in military matters” (p. 42). Shortly thereafter, Davies himself was assigned to Stilwell’s China military mission. The fuzzy nature of his own assignment became clear when the State Department said he would be supervised by Stilwell but Stilwell declined to offer super- vision (p. 48). Much of Davies’s book deals with the turmoil between Chiang Kai-shek and Stilwell and the decisions from Washington that often seemed to lack recognition of the realities. Davies criticizes Chiang’s famed aviation adviser Claire Chennault for his “pretension to omnipotence” and his “per- sistent scheming to usurp Stilwell’s position” (p. 50). The U.S. ambassador to China, Clarence Gauss, felt snubbed by both generals. Davies places the blame for the confusion on President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Davies describes several decision-making processes and even meetings with FDR that seemed to end only in vague generalities. At the Cairo Conference where both Davies and Stilwell met with FDR and Harry Hopkins, the presi- dent offered colorful anecdotes and stories. As Davies recounted in his diary: “[Roosevelt] never directly came to grips with the real subject at hand – what instructions as to policy toward China did he have?” (p. 153). Thus, because of Chiang’s resistance, Stilwell was never able to discover what might have been the potential of the Chinese forces. This lack of direction in policy, of course, led to the disastrous decision to send General Patrick Hurley to China. Hurley took it upon himself to bring conciliation and alliance between the Nationalists and the Communists, never understanding the motivations of each side, and the naïve approach led to a series of bungled interactions. Hurley did succeed, however, in getting Stilwell recalled. When he predictably failed to create a Chinese alliance, he blamed the Foreign Service officers, particularly Davies who had warned him of the complexities. With Stilwell gone, Davies, by this time, had sought an escape from the incompetent American efforts in China. His first move was to the embassy in Moscow where he met George Kennan, an experience he called “exhilarating” (p. 248). Kennan was impressed with Davies’s intellect and, later, became one of his greatest defenders. After Moscow, Davies tells of joining Kennan as part of the first incarnation of the Policy Planning Staff. At various points in China Hand, Davies seems to go out of his way to demonstrate his understanding of the danger represented by the Soviet Union. All of this, of course, runs counter to the accusations he later faced..
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