Lanham; Boulder; New York; London: Lexington Books [imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc], 2018. xxxiii, 307 pp. (B&W photos.) US$110.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-4985-7005-3.
In an unprecedented move, in 2014 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) publicly admitted that, for over sixty years, it had used US government funds and expertise to unsuccessfully support rebels in mounting armed resistance in a number of countries around the world. This public admission of failure was rare for a notoriously secretive agency, and most of the archives of these programs remain classified. Despite this secrecy, after several decades of intensive detective work and filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and by drawing upon previously underutilized Chinese language sources, Roger B. Jeans has managed to bring one of these failed projects to light. In his new book, The CIA and Third Force Movements in China during the Early Cold War: The Great American Dream, Jeans outlines how, between 1949 and 1954, the CIA financed and trained Chinese “third force” groups based in Hong Kong, Japan, US-administrated Okinawa, and Saipan that were intended to destabilize the Communist government in China and provide an alternative to Chiang Kai-shek’s totalitarian governance in Taiwan.
The idea of a “third force” dated back to the 1920s, when a number of political parties appeared that rejected the visions for Chinese politics held by the Nationalists and Communists. As time went on, the influence of these third forces fluctuated. In 1949 most went into exile in Taiwan, where their political views were suppressed by Chiang’s government (xxi). Some dissidents managed to evade capture and assassination in Hong Kong, Japan, India, and the United States. These figures and their American counterparts are at the centre of Jeans’ fascinating narrative, which deftly navigates the challenges of a spotty and secretive historical record by drawing on memoirs, interviews, letters, propaganda publications, expunged government records, and photographs left by Chinese and American participants to provide us with a unique insight into the broader events around American attempts to influence a third force among different Chinese military leaders and intellectuals in exile.
The book is divided into eight chapters. After an introduction that situates the third force program in a broader Cold War context, chapter 1 describes how, even before the civil war ended in China, the covert-action arm of the CIA, the OPC (Office of Policy Coordination), attempted to locate generals in mainland China who could potentially serve as a third force. Although a number of these relationships fell through, two clear candidates for collaboration emerged and ended up leading third force attempts. Cai Wenzhi had held high positions in the Nationalist army and worked with the United States during the Second World War, and Zhang Fakui had been the commander in chief of the Nationalist army (12). In chapter 2, Jeans discusses how recruiting these men and other potential leaders was considered urgent during the Korean War, when the OPC hoped that third force guerillas on the mainland would distract the Chinese Communists and lead them to reposition their troops away from Korea. The main recruitment efforts took place in Hong Kong, then a British colony where political organization outside of official government channels was restricted. By the end of 1951, however, any guerilla forces on the mainland had been significantly weakened (47), so a new approach was needed along with the training of a militia under Cai Wenzhi. Chapter 3 outlines this approach in the creation of a third force committee in Hong Kong under Zhang Fakui, named the Fighting League for Chinese Freedom and Democracy. Zhang’s group would mostly engage in the production of propaganda, but was ridden by factionalism and politicking.
In chapter 4, Jeans goes into detail about the publication and distribution of CIA-funded propaganda through journals and newspapers on Hong Kong. Chapter 5 switches gears to cover the training of Cai Wenzhi’s troops in Japan, Okinawa, and Saipan. Since Cai and Zhang had parted ways, the “military movement” under Cai and the “cultural movement” in Hong Kong under Zhang were understood as distinct, but both funded by the Americans (116). These two chapters are especially fascinating due to the contrast in their approach and methodology. In chapter 4, Jeans draws on published archival materials and provides an excellent overview of the politics of editing and distribution in Hong Kong. Most of the materials in chapter 5 have never before been available, as details of CIA training of foreign forces are still classified. The interviews and photographs provided by Cai’s wife offer remarkable detail about the circumstances of troops trained as radio operators to be airdropped into mainland China. These details are rendered all the more poignant by the tragic and unsuccessful outcomes of Cai’s missions, which saw radio operators dropped into China disappear, or be caught and executed (129).
Chapter 6 details a CIA-backed mission where the human costs are part of the open historical record. In 1952, two American CIA agents, John T. Downey and Richard Fecteau, were captured on a covert mission and eventually spent two decades in prison after the US government refused to acknowledge the men’s CIA affiliation. The extreme lengths taken to cover up poorly planned missions are criticized by Jeans, who sees the case as representative of “everything that was wrong with the CIA’s third force efforts in the Far East during the 1950s” (147). After an overview of Nationalist and Communist criticisms of the third force—and especially, US support of it—in chapter 7, chapter 8 discusses the demise of the third force after the end of the Korean War due to lack of results, changing US policy and factionalism within third force groups. In the conclusion, Jeans elaborates on his criticisms of third force efforts by outlining fundamental challenges to them, including the lack of support for a third force in mainland China, lack of accurate intelligence information, the inadequacy of paramilitary training, disunity within the CIA and third force groups and most problematically, an ignorance of Chinese language and culture and a Eurocentrism in the CIA that made any success unlikely. In his epilogue, Jeans discusses how many of these same problems also impacted US involvement in Vietnam. He draws upon Graham Greene’s work to conclude with a damning assessment of CIA intervention overseas, stating that despite the legacy of China and Vietnam, the CIA has “never learned its lesson about the perils and costs of covert intervention in someone else’s country” (263).
Jeans has clearly illustrated this in his important study, which brings together historical fields including military and intelligence studies and Chinese and American cultural and political history, and will be of immense use to readers interested in the Cold War, Sino-American relations, and the complexities and immoralities of US empire.
Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa
Occidental College, Los Angeles, USA