What was called by some â??the loss of Chinaâ?â??the unexpected victory in 1949 of the Chinese Communists over the American-backed Nationalistsâ??also destroyed the career of the diplomat John Paton Davies Jr. (1908-1999) as, in the 1950s, he and other like-minded â??China handsâ? were wrongly accused of having been responsible for the defeat. Daviesâ??s China reporting had certainly been pessimistic about Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist governmentâ??which Franklin Roosevelt was determined should take its place as one of the â??Big Fourâ? after World War IIâ??while consistently upbeat about the Communists, to whom, he forecast, â??Chinaâ??s destinyâ? belonged.
The charge, however, confused accuracy (the Communists did, in fact, win) with advocacy, needlessly sacrificing one of the ablest diplomats of his generation.
Davies was born in China to missionary parents and educated at the University of Wisconsin, Yenching University in Beijing (which was built by American philanthropy, abolished by the Communists, and whose architecturally distinguished Chinese-style campus now houses Peking University), and Columbia University. He served in consular posts from 1933 to 1940. In 1942, he was assigned by the State Department to serve with General Joseph W. Stilwell in Chungking (now Chongqing), the Chinese wartime capital.
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