By Fu Longshan
In 1951, the United States orchestrated the signing of the “Treaty of San Francisco” and the “U.S.–Japan Security Treaty” on the same day, fundamentally reshaping the post-war order in East Asia. Meanwhile, in Beijing, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), less than two years after seizing power, was facing a regime crisis largely hidden from the outside world: Domestic instability, the strain of war, internal factional struggles, mounting Soviet pressure, and a profound deficit of legitimacy.
It was during this period that Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai displayed what would become a defining feature of CCP diplomacy: A sharp divergence between public rhetoric and private strategy.
While Beijing loudly promoted anti-American and anti-Japanese slogans in the name of national dignity, Mao and Zhou quietly sought to exploit the U.S.–Japan alliance to counterbalance the Soviet Union and safeguard their own regime. But how exactly was this achieved?
1951: The regime’s most precarious year
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On the surface, the CCP portrayed 1949–1950 as a triumphant era of “people’s liberation.” In reality, the new regime was deeply insecure. Party infighting, widespread repression, military exhaustion, and diplomatic isolation converged at once.
Historical records show that campaigns such as land reform and the suppression of “counterrevolutionaries” provoked intense backlash. Between 1950 and 1951, tens of thousands (by some accounts, hundreds of thousands) were executed. Classified internal reports later acknowledged that “indiscriminate killings occurred in many areas, causing panic within grassroots Party organizations.” Rural China was thrown into turmoil.
The Korean War further strained the CCP. Several senior commanders, including Peng Dehuai, privately complained to fellow cadres that “this is not aiding a brother nation, but selling our lives for the Soviet Union.” Internal documents described how the conflict left CCP leaders feeling that “national strength was being wrung dry.”
At the same time, cracks were emerging in Sino-Soviet relations. Though the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance projected a façade of unity, Joseph Stalin harbored deep suspicions toward the CCP. Soviet advisers were embedded throughout China’s planning agencies, military industry, and intelligence systems, giving Moscow leverage that deeply unsettled Mao.
Ming Jü-cheng, a China specialist and emeritus professor at National Taiwan University, later summarized the situation bluntly: “In the early years of the regime, CCP diplomacy was not anti-American — it was anti-Soviet.”
Zhou Enlai’s strategic judgment: A triangular game
According to Oral Histories of Chinese Diplomacy, Zhou Enlai repeatedly told senior Foreign Ministry officials between 1950 and 1951: “The Soviets want us to submit, the Americans want us to confront them, and the Japanese want us to hate them. None of the three are friends, but all must be studied.”
Zhou viewed all three powers as threats, but of different magnitude. The Soviet Union posed the greatest danger, as it could undermine the CCP from within. The United States was a secondary threat — powerful but geographically distant. Japan, defeated and under U.S. control, ranked lowest. This hierarchy would come to shape Beijing’s real diplomatic calculus.
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The San Francisco Treaty: Shock (and relief) in Beijing
The Treaty of San Francisco was signed on Sept. 8, 1951, and took effect on April 28, 1952. Japan signed with 48 Allied nations; neither the Republic of China nor the People’s Republic of China was included. On the same day, the U.S.–Japan Security Treaty formally incorporated Japan into the American Cold War military system.
Publicly, Beijing condemned the agreements as “a new stage of American imperialist aggression in Asia.” Internally, however, reactions were markedly different.
Internal meeting records and oral histories from 1949–1954 indicate that Mao Zedong offered a cryptic assessment: “The United States holding on to Japan is both bad and good. The good part is that Japan cannot be used by the Soviet Union.”
Mao feared that if Japan were absorbed into the Soviet camp, it would become “a second communist great power in East Asia,” completing the CCP’s strategic encirclement. From this perspective, the U.S.–Japan alliance restrained Japan—and paradoxically shielded the CCP by denying Moscow regional dominance.
The Treaty of San Francisco also left Taiwan’s sovereignty deliberately undefined, stating only that “Japan renounces all right, title and claim to Taiwan (Formosa) and the Pescadores.” This omission later became a cornerstone of international legal debate.
Mao Zedong’s private logic
Multiple overseas diplomatic recollections record Mao’s private remarks: “The United States is a distant enemy; the Soviet Union is a nearby enemy. The nearby enemy must be guarded against more carefully.” “When the United States allies with Japan, the Soviet Union cannot dominate alone.”
Historians see these comments as central to Mao’s thinking. Publicly anti-American, Mao was privately wary of Soviet domination. Ostensibly pro-Soviet, he feared Moscow’s leverage.
The U.S.–Japan security arrangement allowed Mao to mobilize anti-American propaganda at home while quietly relying on American power to contain the Soviet Union — an approach best described as feigned hostility paired with strategic exploitation.
Zhou Enlai’s quiet calculations
According to Oral Histories of Zhou Enlai’s Diplomacy, Zhou once remarked: “If Japan leans toward the United States, Stalin will feel uneasy. We then gain room to maneuver.” Another recollection quotes Zhou as saying: “The U.S.–Japan alliance is unstoppable. We need not block it — we should extract benefits from it.”
Those “benefits,” Zhou believed, lay in maintaining balance between Washington and Moscow—foreshadowing the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s.
Zhou reportedly told an internal Party meeting in 1956: “Diplomacy serves the Party’s leadership position first, not the national interest.” This statement, later included in Collected Historical Materials on Contemporary Chinese Diplomacy, underscored that CCP diplomacy has always prioritized regime preservation.
A dual-track diplomatic legacy
Historical evidence shows that CCP diplomacy has never been guided primarily by national interest, but by survival. Internal archives reveal that China’s entry into the Korean War was driven not by defense of sovereignty, but by Mao’s fear that refusing to fight would cause Stalin to withdraw support. Propaganda documents from 1951 explicitly stated that anti-American campaigns were designed to “unify thinking and stabilize the internal situation.”
Anti-Americanism was thus a governance tool. Beneath the surface, CCP leaders accepted that the U.S.–Japan alliance constrained Soviet power. This logic aligned perfectly with the CCP’s survival calculus, not with nationalist ideals.
In 1951, amid domestic unrest, war exhaustion, Soviet pressure, Japan’s reemergence, and a U.S.-led regional order, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai forged a dual-track strategy: Loud anti-American rhetoric for public consumption, paired with a quiet reliance on American power to contain the Soviet Union and preserve CCP rule.
