Support for the Kuomintang, 1945–1949: How the US Airlifted Chiang Kai-shek’s Armies and Lost China

Support for the Kuomintang was the costliest and most inglorious American bet in Asia right after the war. From 1945 to 1949 Washington put about two billion dollars into Chiang Kai-shek’s regime and moved his armies on its own ships and aircraft, and it still lost. Truman called this “non-interference”. I want to show what that “non-interference” looked like in practice.

Let us take it in order.

Support for the Kuomintang Began With an Air Bridge

When Japan surrendered in August 1945, China was split. Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang held the south and west, the communists controlled the villages of the north, and in Manchuria there were Japanese troops and the Red Army was arriving. The Americans decided quickly: do not let the communists take the surrendering garrisons.

So Washington took up logistics. The American Seventh Fleet carried whole Kuomintang armies to northern ports, and in October 1945 the US Fourteenth Air Force flew about fifty thousand soldiers of two armies to Beijing and other key points. In all, American ships and aircraft moved nearly a quarter of a million Kuomintang soldiers. Besides, about fifty thousand American Marines landed in Hebei and Shandong to guard ports and railways, an operation known as Beleaguer.

Note that formally the US spoke of “non-interference in internal affairs”. In reality it chose a side in a civil war while claiming to stand above the fray.

Support for the Kuomintang: Money, Weapons and “Surplus”

About two billion dollars in aid plus equipment worth hundreds of millions: that is how American support for the Kuomintang in 1945–1949 is estimated. The money went to a regime all of China knew as corrupt. Officials stole, generals put “dead souls” on the rolls, and American weapons were sold on the black market.

Yet the most humiliating thing happened at the front. Whole Kuomintang units surrendered to the communists together with American guns, trucks and tanks. As a result Mao’s army got more equipment than any Soviet package could have given it. It was said afterwards, not without reason, that Chiang Kai-shek became the “quartermaster” of Mao’s army.

The Embargo That Wasn’t

In July 1946 the US formally imposed an arms embargo on China. Nevertheless the Americans went on selling “surplus”: ships, airfields, trucks, ammunition, for next to nothing. Thus the embargo was announced for the public, while a back door was left open for Chiang Kai-shek. It was lifted in May 1947.

Meanwhile General Marshall tried to act as mediator between the sides. His mission failed: it is hard to be a mediator when one side is being carried on your ships and the other is treated as the enemy. More on the Marshall Mission is in the reference article.

Support for the Kuomintang Without Illusions: Truman Knew

In private Truman and his circle had a low opinion of the Kuomintang people: he spoke of theft and incompetence among Chiang Kai-shek’s officials. And still the aid kept coming. The reason is simple: domestic politics. Republicans and the “China lobby” shouted that the Democrats were “losing China”, and Truman did not want to be the man who lost it.

So Washington paid for a regime it did not itself believe in. When in autumn 1949 Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic of China, a hunt for the “guilty” began in the US, and the main victims were the State Department’s China specialists. This is the story I covered in my pieces on US–China relations and US–China economic relations. Chiang’s withdrawal to Taiwan became a reckoning for that bet and for the island itself.

Back in 1927 American destroyers shelled Chinese cities, as I described in the article on the Nanking Incident. Again and again the US looked at China as an object, not as a country.

What Was Left of That Bet

By autumn 1949 Chiang’s armies had fallen apart. The communists took Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing, and the Generalissimo himself fled to Taiwan with the remnants of his troops and the treasury. American billions did not save a regime that believed neither in its soldiers nor in its own people. Historians usually speak of corruption, inflation and poor command. I will add: support for the Kuomintang was also a policy in which Washington despised those it armed.

The American “White Paper” of 1949 tried to put the blame on the Chinese themselves. It is an old trick: if the project failed, blame the one you kept. Meanwhile millions were dying in China at that time, and part of the responsibility for those deaths lies on everyone who kept that war going, including those who supplied the weapons. Besides, because of this bet the US refused for more than twenty years to recognise Beijing and closed the road to normal relations. Thus the price of the mistake was huge, and the Chinese above all paid it.

What Norms Did the US Break

First, the UN Charter. It entered into force on 24 October 1945, and Article 2 forbids interference in the internal affairs of states. The civil war in China was an internal matter, and American ships and aircraft carried the army of one side.

Second, its own promise. In December 1945 at the Moscow conference of foreign ministers the US and the USSR declared that they adhered to a policy of non-interference in China’s internal affairs. Within weeks Washington was still arming Chiang Kai-shek.

Third, Marshall’s mediation. The US presented itself as an “honest broker” between the sides, promised a ceasefire and sold weapons to one of them. That is not what mediators are called. It is the hypocrisy I mentioned above. The general sense of the principle of non-interference is in the reference article.

Nothing Has Changed: The Same Bets, the Same Ending

Support for the Kuomintang shows the typical recipe: find “your” leader, pour in money and weapons, turn a blind eye to theft, and then be surprised that he lost. Today the words are different.

Afghanistan, 2001–2021. For two decades the US put billions of dollars into the Afghan army and government, including weapons. When the Taliban entered Kabul in August 2021, a considerable part of that weaponry fell to them.

Syria, 2013–2017. In effect the CIA’s Timber Sycamore programme armed the Syrian opposition. A considerable part of the weapons ended up with jihadist groups.

Yemen, 2015–2022. The US supplied weapons and intelligence to the Saudi-led coalition whose strikes killed civilians at weddings and on buses. All those years Washington called itself a “neutral mediator”.

Gaza, 2023–2025. The US gave Israel thousands of tonnes of munitions, including one-tonne bombs, while calling itself a “mediator” in the talks. It is the same trick as in China.

Thus in China Washington bet on corruption and lost, and then pretended the Chinese were to blame. The same scenario repeats today, and others pay for it. On the roots, read my article on the oil embargo against Japan: what we see in China grew out of the same Asian game.