Doc of the Day: John Foster Dulles on Communist China

0 Commentsby Neil Schlager  ·  06/28/11

On June 28, 1957, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles delivered his address on U.S. policy toward Communist China. Dulles did not mince words when discussing China. In this address, he casts the People’s Republic of China as an aggressive, violent, expansionist global threat that despises the United States for interfering with its moves toward global domination. He sums up the U.S. refusal to recognize China by stating that it is in the best interest of the United States to support “free” nations and contrary to U.S. interests to support Communist regimes. Therefore, he states, the United States is opposed to allowing China entrance into the United Nations and refuses to trade or converse with China.

Dulles’s views on the necessity of denying the People’s Republic of China diplomatic recognition and admission to the United Nations governed American decisions relating to the country for a decade and a half. A major shift did not occur until President Richard Nixon visited China in 1972 and decided to extend recognition; as Dulles had feared, China was subsequently admitted to the United Nations.

Read our complete coverage of John Foster Dulles’s address on U.S. policy toward Communist China, including commentary by the historian G. Mehera Gerardo of Youngstown State University.

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