How America 'lost' China
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2019
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After the end of WW2 the US feared its wartime ally, China, would become communist. In 1946 after the end of Japanese occupation China returned to a civil war which had been fought on and off for years. America saw China as a future ally in business and politics and sent General George Marshall to broker peace between the nationalists and the communists. But just as the communist leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, was advising the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong to enter into a truce, the British leader Winston Churchill gave his famous speech about an 'iron curtain' descending over Europe and the Cold War began to take hold. Daniel Kurtz Phelan tells Claire Bowes about this largely forgotten pivotal moment in world history.
Photo: General George C. Marshall in the War Department in Washington DC in 1943 (Getty Images)
Archive material: Courtesy of the George C Marshall Foundation
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC |
| 0:35.4 | Sounds. |
| 0:38.4 | Choosing what to watch. |
| 0:39.4 | Night after night. |
| 0:41.1 | The flicking through. The endless searching is a nightmare. We want to help you. On our |
| 0:46.7 | brand new podcast off the telly we share what we've been watching. |
| 0:50.3 | Cladie aider. Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming, lovely. |
| 0:55.0 | Off the telly with me Joanna Paige and me, Natalie Cassidy, |
| 0:59.0 | so your evenings can be a little less searching |
| 1:02.0 | and a lot more watching. |
| 1:03.5 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 1:05.5 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, |
| 1:08.5 | here's something you may not know. |
| 1:10.5 | My name's Linda Davies, |
| 1:11.9 | and I commission podcast for BBC Sounds. |
| 1:14.0 | As you'd expect at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality |
| 1:19.0 | featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.