O'Brien, Neil L., “John William Powell and the 'China Weekly'/'Monthly Review', an American editor in early revolutionary China” (2001)

Title : “John William Powell and the 'China Weekly'/'Monthly Review', an American editor in early revolutionary China”

Author(s) : O'Brien, Neil L.

Year : 2001

Type : Dissertation

Subject : History

Keywords : political;culture;press

University : Washington State University

Language:Name : English

Support : Print

Abstract : This is a study of the editorial policy of the China Weekly Review /China Monthly Review, published in Shanghai by John William Powell during the Chinese Civil War and the Korean War. It is based principally on primary materials from that journal. The Review supported UniversityS. attempts to avert Civil War in early 1946 through creation of a coalition government. By 1947, it reflected increasing disillusionment with Guomindang policies, and growing sympathy for the demands of impoverished students and faculty for multi-party democracy and peace. The Review publicized Nationalist repression of the student peace movement, and of the 1947 Taiwan Revolt. As the Civil War shifted in favor of the Chinese Communists in late 1948, Powell and the Review counselled UniversityS. businessmen to remain in Shanghai and urged the UniversityS. government to establish working relations with the Communists, and later, to recognize the new regime. Staying in Shanghai to report changes engendered by the Revolution, the Review's staff accommodated themselves to the new orthodoxy, and to the regime's coordination of the press. During the Korean War, the Review opposed the expanding UniversityS. air war, becoming the foremost American purveyor of Chinese and North Korean allegations of American use of bacteriological weapons. The Review was also utilized by the Chinese People's Volunteers for political indoctrination of UniversityS. prisoners of war. After closing the Review for financial reasons in July, 1953, and returning to the United States, Powell, his wife Sylvia Campbell, and assistant editor Julian Schuman, were put on trial for sedition. As the government narrowed its focus to the bacteriological warfare issue, Powell and his lawyers countered by trying to prove the veracity of the charges, and seeking witnesses in China and North Korea. Adverse publicity led to a mistrial in January, 1959. Limitations in both the sedition, and treason statutes ended plans to renew prosecution. Powell and the Review had insisted that positive diplomatic and economic relations between China and the United States were both possible, and desirable. Dramatic events since the 1970's, the normalization of relations, and of trade and investment, seem to validate this belief.