Chiang Kai-Shek and FDR: China's destiny

By Fred E. Pollock
Real Clear Wire

Anyone interested in Chinese President Xi Jinping's blueprint for territorial expansion should read Chiang Kai-Shek's WW2 book, China's Destiny. As the leader of Nationalist China and a key U.S. ally, Chiang claimed vast areas in East and Southeast Asia, including the South China Sea, asserting they were part of the ancient Chinese empire and predicting they would reunite with China again under his leadership. Today, some of these territories are part of China, some are its tributaries, while others are in Xi’s sights. 

Although the Communists defeated Chiang in the Chinese Civil War, they adopted his expansionist blueprint. Both Chaing and Mao Zedong viewed the Han race as superior and China’s “lost territories” as rightfully belonging to the nation, setting the stage for its rise as Asia’s dominant power.

Reviewing the wartime background of Chiang’s claims sheds light on Xi’s imperial designs. President Franklin D. Roosevelt included Nationalist China among the Big Four powers, joining the U.S., Britain, and the Soviet Union in fighting the Axis. Roosevelt knew China was weak and not on a military or economic par with the Big Three powers but saw it as vital in tying down Japanese forces in mainland Asia. Additionally, he needed Chaing to counter Tokyo’s pan-Asian propaganda which sought to unite Asians against Western powers. Nationalist China’s inclusion as an interracial ally, Roosevelt believed, disproved Tokyo’s declarations of pan-Asian unity.

As a Chinese nationalist, Chiang eagerly joined Roosevelt’s push against imperialism, targeting European empires like the British and French, and demanding the repeal of “unequal treaties” that undermined China’s sovereignty. Roosevelt backed this stance despite British resistance, encouraging Chiang and his wife, Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, to promote independence from colonial rule, serving Roosevelt’s broader vision for postwar stability.

Chiang leveraged his alliance with the U.S. to strengthen China’s position, insisting on military and economic aid. More significantly, in China’s Destiny, he outlined territorial claims based on historical precedent, arguing that vast regions in East and Southeast Asia should return to China or become vassal states. He ignored the fact that many inhabitants of these territories were not members of the Han race and were opposed to Chinese rule. To avoid controversy, he refused to authorize an English translation, but the book’s contents became known in diplomatic circles.

Roosevelt’s vision of gradual independence for colonies conflicted with Chiang’s ambitions. Roosevelt proposed a UN trusteeship model to guide colonies toward self-governance, fearing premature independence could lead to instability. He saw the Philippines as a model for this transition. Chiang, however, opposed this approach, seeking to extend Chinese influence over liberated territories. His claims on Xinjiang and Outer Mongolia, traditional Russian spheres of influence, also angered Stalin, straining U.S.-China-Soviet relations.

At the 1943 wartime conference in Cairo, Egypt photographs and film showed the generalissimo and Madame Chiang as equals to the Anglo-Americans, sitting and engaging in conversations with Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Pleasantries among the leaders hardly concealed the policy differences that divided America and China. In private discussions away from their British allies, Roosevelt and Chiang haggled over the future of East Asia. Roosevelt tried to restrain Chinese expansion. With this in mind, he persuaded Chiang, Churchill, and finally, Stalin to approve a press release of Asia-Pacific Allied war aims. The Cairo Communiqué promoted China as one of the greatest allies and included the pledge to return Manchuria, Taiwan, and the Pescadores to China. The communiqué also contained, as an indirect quid pro quo, the Chinese disavowal of territorial expansion. It was a disavowal that neither Chiang nor his Communist successors took seriously.

After Cairo, the generalissimo did not give up. The conflict between China and Russia escalated when Chiang-backed Xinjiang and Stalin-backed Outer Mongolian troops exchanged fire in cross-border clashes in early 1944. Washington feared this confrontation could lead to the widening of the conflict, including the resumption of the Chinese Civil War. For a time, it seemed to Roosevelt that Chiang intended to draw America into a war against Russia. And for a time, Roosevelt gave up on Chiang and hoped for his removal. But the generalissimo hung on, and the president could not give up on China owing to its importance in the race war. To avert civil war and thwart Tokyo from a propaganda victory, Roosevelt sent American advisors to China to press both sides.

During the war’s final months, Roosevelt persuaded the British to agree to his international trusteeship scheme, but they refused to include their colonies. They joined the French and other European nations that temporarily returned to East Asia as colonizers before the revolutionary nationalists, through much suffering and lost lives, fought and gained independence. After Roosevelt’s death, the American push for international trusteeships quickly lost momentum. The new Truman administration acquiesced to the return of the European colonial powers as it did not share Roosevelt’s vision of trusteeship.

Even so, the president’s diplomacy had upended global politics at the highest level. With Chiang’s claims on respective British and Soviet territorial interests in East Asia, both nations opposed including China as one of the Big Four powers. However, owing to Roosevelt’s diplomacy, China gained a place on the world stage with the Big Three most powerful nations.

President Roosevelt died in April 1945. In the weeks following his death at the initial UN conference in San Francisco, the opportunistic Chinese joined the Russians in voting for immediate independence for European colonies, as both powers had respective geopolitical agendas in mind. Chiang, for his part, never gave up on China’s destiny. 

Today, President Xi and his Communists, utilizing the generalissimo’s old claims and maps, continue to build on Chiang’s blueprint of imperial expansion at the expense of China’s neighbors. 

Fred E. Pollock is a past Research Associate at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, and was awarded the prestigious Bernath Article Prize by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations for his piece “Roosevelt, The Ogdensburg Agreement, and the British Fleet: All Done with Mirrors,” Diplomatic History 5 (Summer 1981). With Warren F. Kimball, he co-authored “‘In Search of Monsters to Destroy’: Roosevelt and Colonialism” in Kimball’s book, The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman (Princeton, NJ, 1991).  He is a recognized scholar of Franklin Roosevelt’s diplomacy during WWII.  Among his publications, Pollock has reviewed for the Pacific Historical Review and The Journal of American History. He taught high school U.S. History in the Newark, New Jersey Public Schools for thirty-eight years. He holds degrees in history from Rutgers University and the University of Tampa.