An Opportunity to Withdraw from the UN Ignored 40 Years Ago
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

Forty years ago on October 25th, the United Nations General Assembly ousted the Nationalist Chinese and gave China's seat to the murderous communist government in Beijing. The transfer was marked with jubilation and dancing in the aisles at UN headquarters in New York. Representatives of the many pro-communist UN member states delightedly interpreted the UN's move as a huge slap in the face to the United States.

A mere three months before the UN had resoundingly confirmed its preference for communist dictators with its choice of Peking over the free Chinese in Taiwan, the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee published a 40-page report entitled "The Human Cost of Communism in China." Prepared by veteran China watcher Professor Richard L. Walker of the University of South Carolina, the report placed the number slain by the Chinese Communists over recent decades between 34 and 63 million human beings. And the killing had not stopped. Nor would it be stopped now that the Red Chinese possessed China's UN seat.

If ever there was a reason for the U.S. to withdraw from the world body, the ousting of the government led by the free Chinese was it. But America's leaders, always posing as anti-communists and lovers of freedom, accepted the UN's decision and ignored the insult given by a majority of the UN's America-hating diplomats.

Launched in 1945, the United Nations awarded important veto status over its Security Council resolutions to only five nations, the world leaders at the time. These were the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China. The Chinese possessor of this important power was, from the beginning, held by the anti-communist government led by Chiang Kai-Shek. Without any objection from the U.S. or the other holders of that veto, China's ability to block UN moves ended up in the hands of the blood-stained government in Beijing with the 1971 action. The UN as a whole had once again demonstrated its preference for tyranny over freedom.

As had so often been the case, this latest betrayal of the free Chinese by U.S. leaders should not have been viewed with surprise. In the 1940s, American diplomats had christened Mao Tse-tung's revolutionaries not as communists but as "agrarian reformers." The U.S. then welcomed the USSR's entry into the war against Japan only days before the Japanese surrender, thereby allowing Mao's forces to seize the huge supplies of weaponry that would then be used in the continuing civil war between the communist army and the free Chinese led by Chiang.

During that struggle for control of China, U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall cut off all aid to the free Chinese and Marshall even boasted that he had disarmed Chiang's forces "with the stroke of a pen." In 1949, the free Chinese fled to Formosa (now known as Taiwan) and transformed the island into a thriving economic power. But the betrayals by the U.S. continued when President Richard Nixon supplied coveted dignity to the Red Chinese with his visit to mainland China early in 1971. That the communists in China were supplying the North Vietnamese with the ability to kill American forces in Vietnam seemed to be no concern to our nation's leaders.

More betrayals came in 1979 when President Jimmy Carter cancelled our nation's Mutual Defense treaty with Taiwan. He also withdrew diplomatic recognition from Free China and awarded it to the Beijing government. After excoriating Carter over his kowtowing to the China during the 1980 campaign, newly elected Ronald Reagan backtracked from his pledge to stand by the free Chinese government in Taiwan.

Aided in many ways by the United States, Communist China has now become an economic power. Its intention to swallow the Free Chinese on Taiwan has never been altered. Meanwhile, the Beijing regime continues enforcing its abominable one-child-per-family policy including forced abortion and infanticide. Only religions approved by the government are permitted. And its production of goods for the West by millions of truly indentured servants who have none of the rights so common to workers in the West is overlooked by greedy importers and politically correct public officials.

October 25th is indeed a day to remember — but it is only one notable day in the decades-long and continuing betrayal of the Chinese people by U.S. leaders.