Bruce A. Elleman

it ensured that friction over the Taiwan Strait did not escalate into a full-blown war. In fact, the Taiwan Patrol Force did its job so well that virtually nothing has been written about it. U.S. Navy ships acted both as a buffer between the two antagonists and as a trip wire in case of aggression. The force fulfilled the latter function twice in the 1950s -- during the first (1954-55) and second (1958) Taiwan Strait crises --

The Taiwan Patrol Force, 1950-1979

High Seas Buffer

Following the Nationalist defeat on the mainland in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek and his followers retreated to Taiwan, forming the Republic of China (ROC). Tensions with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) focused on control over a number of offshore islands, especially Quemoy (Jinmen) and Matsu (Mazu). Twice in the 1950s tensions peaked, during the first (1954–55) and second (1958) Taiwan Strait crises. This small body of water—often compared to the English Channel—separates the PRC and Taiwan, and has been the location for periodic military tensions, some threatening to end in war. Today, relations between the ROC and PRC depend on quelling tensions over the Taiwan Strait. This work provides a short, but highly relevant, history of the Taiwan Strait, and its significance today.

Taiwan Straits Standoff

Why did the Chinese empire collapse and why did it take so long for a new government to reunite China? Modern Chinese Warfare, 1795-1989 seeks to answer these questions by exploring the most important domestic and international conflicts over the past two hundred years, from the last half of the Qing empire through to modern day China. It reveals how most of China's wars during this period were fought to preserve unity in China, and examines their distinctly cyclical pattern of imperial decline, domestic chaos and finally the creation of a new unifying dynasty. By 1989 this cycle appeared complete, but the author asks how long this government will be able to hold power. Exposing China as an imperialist country, and one which has often manipulated western powers in its favour, Bruce Elleman seeks to redress the views of China as a victimised nation.

Modern Chinese Warfare, 1795-1989

S.C.M. Paine

This book examines the nature and character of naval expeditionary warfare, in particular in peripheral campaigns, and the contribution of such campaigns to the achievement of strategic victory. Naval powers, which can lack the massive ground forces to win in the main theatre, often choose a secondary theatre accessible to them by sea and difficult for their enemies to reach by land, giving the sea power and its expeditionary forces the advantage. The technical term for these theatres is ‘peripheral operations.’ The subject of peripheral campaigns in naval expeditionary warfare is central to the British, the US, and the Australian way of war in the past and in the future. All three are reluctant to engage large land forces because of the high human and economic costs. Instead, they rely as much as possible on sea and air power, and the latter is most often in the form of carrier-based aviation. In order to exert pressure on their enemies, they have often opened additional theaters in on-going, regional, and civil wars. This book contains thirteen case studies by some of the foremost naval historians from the United States, Great Britain, and Australia whose collected case studies examine the most important peripheral operations of the last two centuries. This book will be of much interest to students of naval warfare, military history, strategic studies and security studies.

Peripheral Campaigns and New Theatres of Naval Warfare

Naval Power and Expeditionary Wars

Utilizes archival documents to argue against the perception that America turned its back on China during the Paris Peace Conference, a belief that convinced many Chinese to turn to Soviet Russia instead. The author contends that President Wilson did everything in his power to help China. Chapters focus on topics such as the origins of the United Front Policy, assertion of Soviet control over the Chinese Eastern Railway, the restoration of Russian territorial concessions, and Soviet Foreign policy and the Chinese Communist Party. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Secret History of Sino-Soviet Diplomatic Relations, 1917-1927

Diplomacy and Deception

China's recent economic reforms have opened its economy to the world. This policy, however, is not new: in the late nineteenth century, the United States put forward the Open Door Policy as a counter to European exclusive 'spheres of influence' in China. This book, based on extensive original archival research, examines and re-evaluates China's Open Door Policy. It considers the policy from its inception in 1899 right through to the post-1978 reforms. It relates these changes to the various shifts in China’s international relations, discusses how decades of foreign invasion, civil war and revolution followed the destruction of the policy in the 1920s, and considers how the policy, when applied in Taiwan after 1949, and by Deng Xiaoping in mainland China after 1978, was instrumental in bringing about, respectively, Taiwan's 'economic miracle' and mainland China’s recent economic boom. The book argues that, although the policy was characterised as United States 'economic imperialism' during the Cold War, in reality it helped China retain its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The Rise, Fall, and Restoration of the Open Door Policy

International Competition in China, 1899-1991

S. C. M. Paine

"For well over two centuries, the U.S. Navy has engaged in an ever broader array of nonmilitary missions. Although a fundamental raison d'etre of navies concerns hard power, in the twentieth century an awareness of the uses of soft power developed. For example, since ancient times protecting against piracy has been a common naval problem, while since the mid-nineteenth century equally important patrol missions, such as attempts to stop the illegal slave trade, have been conducted by the U.S. Navy. After the Cold War, many other nonmilitary missions became important, in particular maritime humanitarian-aid missions like the post-tsunami Operation Unified Assistance in Southeast Asia during 2004-2005 ... this volume presents nine historical case studies examining the use of navies in nonmilitary missions"--Preface.

Bruce A. Elleman

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