Diplomacy through militancy? The 1954--1955 Chinese offshore islands crisis: A case study in Sino-American brinkmanship

The purpose of this dissertation was to elucidate the origins of the Sino-American confrontation in the Taiwan Straits through a case study of the 1954-55 Chinese offshore islands crisis. With an exclusive access to China's documents and interviews with Chinese generals and diplomats, the research shows that the Chinese leaders misperceived the cold war in Asia and America's purposes in the Taiwan Straits. After Korea, Beijing intended to communicate with Washington to solve the problems left behind by the war, especially the Taiwan question. Unsuccessful in diplomatic efforts, Mao decided to send a strong signal by military means--shelling the Nationalist-held islands in order to draw world attention and bring more pressure on Eisenhower.; Using newly declassified American documents, the work explores the distortion of U.S. information processing and misunderstanding of the Chinese intentions. The American leaders convinced that a full-scale attack on Jinmen, to be followed by an invasion of Taiwan, seemed imminent. They had committed to the defense of the offshore islands, including nuclear-war preparation. The incoming information was rendered equivocal when filtered through anti-communist beliefs, partisan politics, and bureaucratic system. The misinterpreted information led to egregious and fateful miscalculation, which had brought the U.S. to the brink of war with China just one year after the Korean Armistice. The following decade saw three more major crises over the same islands.; The research finds that the crisis had a natural function of politics and ideology, serving both countries' domestic goals and international interests. Among other results, the crisis became a communication channel between the two countries which did not have diplomatic relations. The offshore islands became a forum for a government-to-government contact between the two rivals in the mid-1950s. Rather than fighting simply to eliminate the Communists or invade the islands, America and China needed to keep these islands in the hands of the Nationalists for their own specific political reasons, in particular ways, and with particular consequences, sometimes unintended. The crisis politics underlay a tense Sino-American relationship in the cold war.