Communist Party of China Quotes
Many American ideologues assumed that the Chinese Communist Revolution would lead to an economic collapse. They did not realize that historically a competitive business economic system had been operational in the Chinese culture for thousands of years. In reality the economy was however really being suppressed somewhat by the Mau style of communism. When Deng loosened up the economic rules in China, their “Communist” system not only functioned as it had under Mao, but then thrived and China became a world economic power in just a relatively few years.
China, in the last – less than half a century, has become one of the great democracies of the world.
At the time, the President wanted to get Chiang to fight aggressively against to Japanese when he was taking large amounts of American monetary aid and military equipment but using it to try and exterminate Mao and his Communists who were fighting the Japanese. FDR was clearly trying to flatter Chiang and his wife and gain political points with the China Lobby but it is not known whether or not he really believed this and other statements. Chiang was a vicious, cruel, corrupt military dictator but he had become a “Christian” and always spoke of the importance of democracy of which there was none in China. Our intelligence from China was very bad at the time, with the secret reports of General Stillwell (the senior American military man in China) and that of a few state department China hands were in total contradiction to the Public information that the President was receiving from Henry Luce and his Time Magazine and the large China Lobby, much of which was ironically paid for with the American AID money given to China. So it is not known whether Roosevelt actually believed this and other statements or was just being diplomatic.
