The China Mission

By: Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

A spellbinding narrative of the high-stakes mission that changed the course of America, China, and global politics - and a rich portrait of the towering, complex figure who carried it out.

As World War II came to an end, General George Marshall was renowned as the architect of Allied victory. Set to retire, he instead accepted what he thought was a final mission - this time not to win a war, but to stop one. Across the Pacific, conflict between Chinese Nationalists and Communists threatened to suck in the United States and escalate into revolution. His assignment was to broker a peace, build a Chinese democracy, and prevent a Communist takeover, all while staving off World War III.

In his 13 months in China, Marshall journeyed across battle-scarred landscapes, grappled with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, and plotted and argued with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his brilliant wife, often over card games or cocktails. The results at first seemed miraculous. But as they started to come apart, Marshall was faced with a wrenching choice. Its consequences would define the rest of his career, as the secretary of state who launched the Marshall Plan and set the standard for American leadership, and the shape of the Cold War and the US-China relationship for decades to come. It would also help spark one of the darkest turns in American civic life, as Marshall and the mission became a first prominent target of McCarthyism, and the question of "who lost China" roiled American politics.

The China Mission traces this neglected turning point and forgotten interlude in a heroic career - a story of not just diplomatic wrangling and guerrilla warfare, but also intricate spycraft and charismatic personalities. Drawing on eyewitness accounts both personal and official, it offers a richly detailed, gripping, close-up, and often surprising view of the central figures of the time - from Marshall, Mao, and Chiang to Eisenhower, Truman, and MacArthur - as they stood face-to-face and struggled to make history, with consequences and lessons that echo today.

©2018 Daniel Kurtz-Phelan (P)2018 Blackstone Publishing

Diplomatic thriller at its best

The book follows Gen. Marshall through a long series of in person meetings, dinner parties and visits spins China, masterfully providing context and character descriptions where needed. I have to say, I was impressed how engaging and easy Daniel Kurtz-Phelan (himself a former dollar and the current executive editor of the esteemed foreign affairs journal) was able to make the story of this desperate and ultimately failed mission. I couldn’t stop listening.

My only criticism I suppose is that the author is clearly star struck my Marshall and that makes the story feel a little one sided. He does mention the criticism that the mission drew, but mostly discards it as personally or politically motivated. On the same note, I felt that he didn’t go into sufficient detail regarding the main reason the mission ultimately failed, which is as he mentions in the epilogue the bigger game for world dominance between Russia and the USA. How did that “game” impact the negotiation in China specifically? Perhaps a topic for a follow up book.

Riveting, Enlightening, and Relevant

A thorough exploration of what is traditionally thought to be one of America's greatest people of the 20th century's rare failures illustrates the complexity, nuance, and limits of power and influence.

Sequel to Stilwell and the American Experience in China

Before listening to this I just finished ‘Stilwell and the American Experience in China’ by Barbara W. Tuchman. This complimented Tuchman’s telling of a less than successful outcome of U.S. foreign policy. Kurtz-Phelan conveys that George Marshall had no obviously good options between the corrupt Nationalists and the fanatic Communists. He attempted to stoically and doggedly pursue negotiations between two factions who proved irreconcilable. Despite his failure, hindsight doesn’t provide particularly clearer alternatives. It is probably to the credit of Marshall, this supreme allied commander fresh from victory in World War II, that he recognized the limits of his country’s ability in resolving a land war in Asia. But Marshall would be branded a communist sympathizer and a fool for not backing the Nationalists. The wider more open ended military approach of Vietnam was in part due to LBJ’s memory of the political punishment the Democrats received for “losing China.”

Marshall’s adventure/mission in civil war China

This book is about general George Marshall and his attempt to get the fighting Chinese nationalists and communists to stop and unite China as a state. The book gets into some deep details and towards the end feels like it repeats itself or lingers too long at some parts. But the book is an excellent chronicle on how pre-Marshall Plan Marshall tried to save China from all out war, even if he ended up being blamed for losing China to the reds.
Narrator is a great voice and doesn’t struggle punctuation of Chinese names.

Enthralling and Thought Provoking in 2021

This is a fascinating, skillfully crafted book.

It raises questions that confound us in 2021.

Should the United States try to persuade factions in an Asian nation gripped in a civil war to embrace liberal democratic Western values and collaborate to rule peacefully, in a coalition government?

Is that a fool’s errand? The quixotic dream of unrealistic outsiders?

More broadly, can we in the US—given our troubles—in the year 2021 sincerely promote liberal democratic Western values as the best path forward?

This book is a thoughtful rebuke to those who believe that there are simple answers to vexing problems, either abroad or in the US.

A very informative and engaging book

Really enjoyed this book. Educational and eye-opening. A different perspective but one easily understood. Highly recommend this book!

Interesting but incomplete

Kurtz-Phelan relates the history of general Marshall in China by the late 1940’s. His relationship with Chiang Kai Shek and about some discussions with Chou En-lai, it is instructive but lacks the entire idea of why there was a civil war in China in the first place. There were many grievances in China about land ownership by a class of people who had no interest neither in the country or its people, like Vietnam later. These problems were not part of neither Kurtz-Phelan or Gen. Marshall perspective for the future of China, but merely an anti-communist or geostrategic discussion about the cost of the potential military help.

A Previously Untold Story of a Failed Mission

The winners write the history, or in this case, the story that wasn't written (until now) because it wasn't a "win".

Just to be clear, this isn't a beginner book into the History of China; it is almost an esoteric look at one part with the expectation that the reader already knows the surrounding history. If, like me, you're in the nascent stage of your discovery into (even modern) Chinese history, you shouldn't start with this. Therein lies my one critique: I wasn't well equipped to fully appreciate Marshall's efforts and what he was up against and the author didn't really hand that understanding over. Outside of some key people, there's no insertion of tangential strategies, personalities, or anecdotes to solidify the presentation.

This is a great story about a man whose destiny charted him to be a footnote of WWII because he wasn't the winning field commander in Europe (Eisenhower) or the Pacific (Nimitz and MacArthur) despite being the glue holding the US Armed Forces together in two separate theaters with President Roosevelt. The introduction of this book alone, designates Marshall as America's 2nd Greatest General (behind Washington of course) and lays the groundwork for a firm understanding of the "realistic" expectation President Truman had for him. But, all for not, as China had it's own destiny under the paradigm of communism. But sending Marshall was the last US effort to thwart Soviet influence there.

So much about this book to appreciate, but mostly just an understanding of a mission that could've led to a different world that might have been.

I enjoyed the narration and had no issues listening at 3x speed.

A Must Read

Who lost China? To even begin to get a real understanding of the web of international politics and the beginnings of the Cold War you must understand Mao’s relationship with with Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek’s relationship with the West and General Marshall’s efforts immediately following WWII.

This books does an excellent job unpacking the Marshall plan, the subsequent missteps, and ultimately the competing forces in the post WWII world stage.

While this story is told from a perspective in defense of Marshall, it is not wrong or unfair when taken as a whole. Well researched and illuminating! Worth your time! Great VO performance!

Noble, failed effort to avert a tragedy

Following WW2, the Nationalists and Communists in China turned their guns on each other. U.S. Foreign policy could follow one of three approaches.
1. American Anti-Communists wanted to throw our support behind an aggressive Nationalist campaign for victory. This would have stretched Nationalist supply lines precariously thin, and invited the Soviets to overtly back the communists. There was a chance of Nationalist victory, but the smart money would be on the Communists. This approach couldn’t have been sustained for long. The American population, understandably weary after WW2, just wanted to let China sort out its own problems.
2. Most Americans wanted the U.S. out. This almost certainly would have assured Communist victory and led to the same tragedy that played out in actual history: 60 million deaths in the 1950’s and ‘60, and the horrors of the Uighur concentration camps today.
3. Negotiate a coalition government between the warring sides, giving Communists a seat at the table while eliminating the risk of a Communist takeover.
President Truman attempted the third and General Marshall came reasonably close to succeeding.

So why did Marshall fail? American anti-communists gave Chiang Kai-shek a false hope that the U.S. would support a military solution, causing Chiang Kai-shek to hold out for the opportunity to crush the communists. Chiang grossly overestimated the strength of his military position, while both Marshall and Mao recognized that the Nationalist apparent military victories position was more precarious than it appeared on the surface.

I don’t have the expertise to evaluate the strategic military claims, but it seems to me that, of people who opine on the subject, Marshall had the best military expertise and the greatest stake in the outcome, so I tend to trust his judgement.

The book is a well done, detailed account of 1945-1947. Marshall’s failure was a tragedy, but the book makes the case that the odds were against success, and he did the best that could be done with the resources available to him. While I don’t imagine a coalition government would have produced a Taiwan level success in China, it likely would have prevented 10s of millions of deaths in the 1950’s and 60’s. And perhaps we would be spared the horrors of the Uighur concentration camps of today.

The lesson for today is that through diplomacy, conditional offers of aid to incentivize good government behavior, and limited military support, the U.S. can try to nudge the world in a better direction. We will fail more often than we succeed, but if we don’t get in over our heads, we will live to make marginal improvements elsewhere - as Marshall did with the Marshall plan in Europe. By contrast, the book persuasively shows that full scale military and economic support for the Nationalist government would have been too costly in blood and treasure, and likely would have failed anyway. And even if unconditional all-in support did lead to Nationalist victory, it is unknown whether a Nationalist government - unconstrained by aid conditionality - would have been any less homicidal than the communists turned out to be.