Abstract
British policy towards China did not change significantly under a Conservative government: Britain would leave the door open for an improvement in political and economic relations between China and the West and try to moderate American thinking on China. This strategy depended above all else on an armistice being signed for the Korean War, which would, Britain hoped, allow economic and military measures against the PRC to be scaled down, and then perhaps, in the longer term, with an easing of Sino-American antagonism, open the way towards closer diplomatic and economic contact between China and the West. Unfortunately, the process towards peace in Korea was arduous and drawn out. As a result, Churchill’s Conservative government faced the same dilemma as Attlee’s Labour government: to acquiesce in an aggressive US approach towards China or to follow a moderate liberal line.
I do not regard Communist China as a formidable adversary. Anyhow you may take it that for the next four or five years 400 million Chinese will be living just where they are now. They cannot swim, they are not much good at flying and the trans-Siberian railway is already overloaded… I doubt whether Communist China is going to be the monster some people imagine.
Winston Churchill1
We have nothing to fear from Communist China: they are far too busy looking after 600 million people.
Clement Attlee2
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Notes
Also quoted in M. Dockrill, ‘The Foreign Office, Anglo-American Relations and the Korean Truce Negotiations, July 1951 – July 1953’, p. 102, in J. Cotton and I. Neary, eds, The Korean War in History, Manchester 1989;
and in P. Lowe, ‘The Significance of the Korean War in Anglo-American Relations, 1950–1953’, p. 5,. in J. Young and M. Dockrill, eds, British Foreign Policy, 1945–56, London 1989
Clement Attlee, ‘Britain and America: Common Aims, Different Opinions’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 32, no. 2, Jan. 1954.
M. Gilbert, Never Despair, W.S. Churchill, Vol. VIII, 1945–65, London 1988, pp. 680 and 918.
James Tang, Britain’s Encounter with Revolutionary China, 1949–1954, London 1992, p. 113.
F.C. Teiwes, ‘Establishment and Control of the New Regime’, p. 90, in R. MacFarquhar and J.K. Fairbank, eds, The Cambridge History of China: Vol 14, The People’s Republic, Part 1, The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1949–65, Cambridge 1987.
K.G. Lieberthal, Revolution and Tradition in Tientsin, 1949–52, Stanford, Calif. 1980, pp. 189–90
Also noted in C. MacDonald, Korea, the War before Vietnam, Oxford 1986, p. 158.
Rosemary Foot, The Wrong War: American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict, 1950–1953, Ithaca 1985, pp. 198, 224 and 232.
For the best account of the strain of rearmament see Alex Cairncross, Years of Recovery: British Economic Policy, 1945–51, London 1985.
Sidney Pollard, The Development of the British Economy, London 1992, pp. 354–6.
Clement Attlee, ‘Britain and America: Common Aims, Different Opinions’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 32, no. 2, Jan. 1954.
Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan: A Biography, London 1962, pp. 305 and 404.
Rosemary Foot, A Substitute for Victory: The Politics of Peacemaking at the Korean Armistice Talks, Ithaca 1990, p. 133.
J. Colville, The Fringes of Power — Downing Street Diaries, 1939–1955, London 1980, p. 658.
B. Bernstein, ‘The Struggle over the Korean Armistice: Prisoners of Repatriation?’, in B. Cumings, ed., Child of Conflict: The Korean-American Relationship, 1943–53, Seattle and London 1983, pp. 288–9.
S.E. Ambrose, Eisenhower — The President, Vol. II, 1952–1969, London 1984, p. 99.
Wenguang Shao, China, Britain and Businessmen: Political and Commercial Relations, 1949–57, London 1991, p. 102.
See B. Porter, Britain and the Rise of Communist China: A Study of British Attitudes, 1945–54, London 1975, p. 120.
See Mark Ryan, Chinese Attitudes to Nuclear Weapons: China and the United States during the Korean War, New York 1989, p. 54;
Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate for Change: The White House Years, 1953–56, London 1963, p. 180.
P. Boyle, in John Young, ed., Foreign Policy of Churchill’s Peacetime Administration, 1951–55, Leicester 1988, p. 35.
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© 1997 David Clayton
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Clayton, D. (1997). Stalemate and Restraint: November 1951–July 1953. In: Imperialism Revisited. Studies in Military and Strategic History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13829-6_9
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