WE SHOULD HAVE DEFENDED SOUTH CHINA IN 1949. One of the greatest strategic failures of the early Cold War was allowing Mao’s Communist forces to conquer the entire Chinese mainland without attempting to preserve a free, non-Communist South China under President Chiang Kai-shek. The Republic of China had fought alongside the Allies against Japan. Yet when the Chinese Civil War turned decisively against Chiang, the West accepted total Communist victory instead of asking the harder strategic question: could the Yangtze have become the defensive line of a Free South China? We later defended South Korea. We defended Taiwan. Both survived, prospered and became pillars of the Free World. Why was no comparable containment strategy seriously sustained for southern China? Chiang Kai-shek’s government had grave weaknesses—corruption, inflation, repression and military failures. But the alternative was not liberal democracy. It was Maoist dictatorship, collectivisation, political terror, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. A Free South China could have offered hundreds of millions of Chinese a different future and could have transformed the strategic balance of Asia. History cannot be rewritten, but it must be studied. Appeasement and strategic retreat have consequences. In 1949 the Free World should have done everything realistically possible to prevent all of China from falling under Communist rule. Defend freedom before it disappears. Contain dictators before they become stronger. Learn from 1949. Gunther Fehlinger-Jahn | Economist, Author & Chairman, Austrian Committee for NATO Enlargement | @GunterFehlinger | https://t.co/4HINhwpaSk #China #SouthChina #ChiangKaiShek #RepublicOfChina #Taiwan #ColdWar #History #FreeWorld #Communism #Asia #Freedom