Stilwell and the American Experience in China: 1911-1945

by Barbara W. Tuchman

American policy remained fixed in the proper position of refusing to deal independently with, or aid, a dissident group in domestic conflict with the sovereign government. This was correct but unreal. The sovereignty of the Central Government was a husk, just as its democracy was an illusion. The Communists were not, as Hurley maintained in a statement to Chou En-lai, merely one of the political parties of China different from the rest only because it was armed, but a virtually independent body with the de facto attributes of statehood—political organization, territorial control and an army. The Communist pretense, for the time being, that they were merely an element within the state and willing to negotiate unification on certain terms helped to confuse the issue but not the facts. They were dynamic and growing while the Kuomintang was eroding.