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{
    "localId": "750241",
    "label": "Foreign Affairs File, 1940-1953: China: Record of Round-Table Discussion by 25 Far East Experts with the Department of State on \"American Policy Toward China\":  October 6, 7 and 8, 1949",
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    "id": "750241",
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    "contentType": "document",
    "title": "Foreign Affairs File, 1940-1953: China: Record of Round-Table Discussion by 25 Far East Experts with the Department of State on \"American Policy Toward China\":  October 6, 7 and 8, 1949",
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    "seq": 196,
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    "ocrText": "CONFIDINTIAL\nLEMORANDULI OF NELSON I. JOHNSON\nON THE QUESTIONS DISCUSSED AT THE\nCONFERENCE ON CHINA\nThere are some thirty questions listed as for\nconsideration by the conference. These may be grouped\nsomewhat roughly by countries. Some can be divided\ninto two or more questions, numbers in parentheses are\noriginal numbers in conference list.\nCHINA\n1 (1) . To what extent should American Foreign\nPolicy in the Far East be directed toward saving China\nfrom a totalitarian regime?\nI find it difficult to understand whence\nAmerica received a mandate to save China from a regime\nthat is totalitarian, which I assume would be a Chinese\ntotalitarian regime as the question does not speak of\nsaving China from an invasion or from an attack from a\nnon-Chinese totalitarian regime. Totalitarienism, as\na kind of government for human beings, and in its\ndeveloped perfection supnorted by the dogma of infalli-\nbility, originated in the Orient. The Chinese concept\nof a State was a theocratic totalitarianism headed by\nan Emperor bearing the title Son of Heaven to indicate\ndivine connections. Chinese leaders trained in America,\nEngland and France broke with this kind of a government\nin 1911 and attempted to found a new government under a\nconstitution modeled on that of the United States. By\n1923, influenced by Russian advisers, they set up a new\nkind of totalitarian one party nationalist state which\nruled China down to yesterday. Apparently, it never\noccurred to us to take steps to save China from that\nother Russian-inspired totalitarian regime. Instead we\nrecognized and did business with it as a legitimate\nsuccessor to other Chinese governments.\nWe should not forget that an international\neffort to save Russia from totalitarianism in 1918\nprobably did more to fasten it on Russia than all the\nefforts of Lenin and Trotsky. Russian Communists won\nadherents as the only element in Russia active in the\ndefense of the homeland against alien invasion. Attempts\nto save France by neighboring states probably did more\nthan anything else to produce the totalitarian Napoleon.\nPerhaps the worst thing that could happen to Mao's new\ngovernment\nS. ARCHT DADS\nAND\nCONF IDENTIAL\nc SERVICE\" E"
}