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Notes -
I think Beinart was right in the Times that it’s a combination of residual Cold War “anti-Communism” (the GOP was fervently pro-Kuomintang rule until Nixon and many in the part were hostile to changing affiliation to Red China even then) and the fact that many 20th century Republicans were involved in the large American missionary movement in China (which Mao obviously put an end to), and that Chiang Kaishek was considered to be a civilized Christian, and residual Yellow Terror racial impulse, China is the first major non-white power since Japan to truly threaten the U.S., and even in WW2 the Japanese were the lesser partner to Germany once US war aims were clarified. (And even in the early 20th century before Pearl Harbor, US nativists were typically much more hostile to the Chinese than the Japanese migrants).
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