Wednesday, April 11, 2012
KENNAN ON AMERICA ON CHINA AND cf also RUSSIA
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=2973239501462830480&postID=7219969820006220461
"Since the beginning of this century, we Americans had tended to picture ourselves as the particular friends and patrons of the Chinese. This image was obviously gratifying to us; it enabled us to pose as the wise guardians and teachers of what we liked to think of as a childlike, innocent, and grateful people. It pleased us particularly to think of ourselves as the protectors of these people against the sinister designs of the other great powers, notably England and Japan. The satisfaction which Americans had always derived from the supposed success of John Hay's Open Door policy towards China was the embodiment of these feelings.
"The concomitant of all this was a gross idealization of the Chinese themselves--- a distortion which made itself felt with particular force during the Pacific war, when we and China were formally at war against a common enemy. In tune with the wartime psychology of democratic peoples, we assumed that since we were fighting against the same adversary, we were fighting in the same cause. Because China was partly occupied by Japan and because, again, it was hard for us to bring direct military aid to the Chinese government in this struggle, something of the same guilt complex entered into our feelings towards the Chinese which we have already noted with respect to Russia and the second front."
PP 373-374.
"Since the beginning of this century, we Americans had tended to picture ourselves as the particular friends and patrons of the Chinese. This image was obviously gratifying to us; it enabled us to pose as the wise guardians and teachers of what we liked to think of as a childlike, innocent, and grateful people. It pleased us particularly to think of ourselves as the protectors of these people against the sinister designs of the other great powers, notably England and Japan. The satisfaction which Americans had always derived from the supposed success of John Hay's Open Door policy towards China was the embodiment of these feelings.
"The concomitant of all this was a gross idealization of the Chinese themselves--- a distortion which made itself felt with particular force during the Pacific war, when we and China were formally at war against a common enemy. In tune with the wartime psychology of democratic peoples, we assumed that since we were fighting against the same adversary, we were fighting in the same cause. Because China was partly occupied by Japan and because, again, it was hard for us to bring direct military aid to the Chinese government in this struggle, something of the same guilt complex entered into our feelings towards the Chinese which we have already noted with respect to Russia and the second front."
PP 373-374.
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