Toward arming China: United States arms sales and military assistance, 1921-1941

China's dependence on foreign supplies of arms and foreign military assistance provides the core of this study. By transcending the narrow confines of arms sales, it places U.S. assistance in a broad political context. How both the Chinese government and the United States government responded to the almost continuous military crisis affecting the Middle Kingdom during the 1920s and 1930s provides the theme. Issues included are the international arms embargo of the 1920s; a controlled arms sales in the 1930s designed to encourage China's political stability; China's needs following the Japanese invasion of 1937; the effects of the U.S. neutrality laws; and the coming of American Lend-Lease assistance to China in 1941. This project draws on both Chinese and English language documentation, archival and private manuscript sources at the Library of Congress; National Archives in Washington; the Hoover and Roosevelt Presidential Libraries; the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; and the Butler Library at Columbia University. This study argues that the arms embargo of the 1920s left the Chinese militarily unprepared to defend themselves in the ensuing years. Washington's exclusive sales of arms to Nanjing, though strengthening Chiang Kai-shek's control over China in the 1930s, was never intended to render positive assistance to China against the Japanese invader. Although both China and the United States shared some common objectives when coping with the crisis in East Asia, their interests veered in different directions. This study thus concludes that the pursuit of their respective interests became the source of conflicts and contradictions in Sino-American diplomatic relations during the years prior to Pearl Harbor and after.