A Force So Swift Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949

by Kevin Peraino

A narrative of the Truman Administration's response to the fall of Nationalist China and the triumph of Mao Zedong's Communist forces in 1949. In the opening months of 1949, U.S. President Harry S. Truman faced a looming diplomatic catastrophe. Throughout the spring and summer, Mao's Communist armies fanned out across mainland China, annihilating the troops of America's ally Chiang Kai-shek and taking control of Beijing, Shanghai, and other major cities. As Truman and his aides, including secretary of state Dean Acheson, scrambled to formulate a response, they contended with Mao and with political enemies at home. Over this tumultuous year, Mao fashioned a new revolutionary government in Beijing while Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan. These events transformed American foreign policy, leading to decades of friction with Communist China, a long-standing U.S. commitment to Taiwan, and subsequent wars in Korea and Vietnam.

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