Raymond P. Ludden (June 6, 1909 - December 12, 1979) was a United States State Department expert on China .
63-613: The United States Army Observation Group ( Chinese : 美軍觀察組 ; pinyin : Měijūn Guānchá Zǔ ), commonly known as the Dixie Mission ( Chinese : 迪克西使團 ; pinyin : Díkèxī Shǐtuán ), was the first US effort to gather intelligence and establish relations with the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Liberation Army , then headquartered in the mountainous city of Yan'an , Shaanxi . The mission
126-693: A Foreign Service Officer who was serving in the China Burma India Theater (CBI), called for the establishment of an observers' mission in Communist territory. Davies argued that the Communists offered attractive strategic benefits in the fight against Japan and that the more the US ignored them, the closer that Yan'an , the capital of Communist-held China, would move to Moscow. With the support of Davies' superior, General Joseph Stilwell ,
189-677: A Japan expert. All were Foreign Service Officers "on loan" to Stilwell from the State Department. Ludden held the rank of a field grade officer and served in Burma , where he was the first American to buy elephants to help in the construction of the supply route from India to China, and later in China as Stilwell's liaison to the 20th Bomber Command in Chengdu. Stilwell had for some time locked horns with Jiang Jieshi ( Chiang Kai-shek ) over
252-611: A better Chinese ally for the US than the Kuomintang. Davies believes that the US interests would have been better served allying with the Communists based on realpolitik considerations. Allying with the Communists would have prevented it from allying with the Soviet Union and lessened the risk and anxiety that the US and the rest of the world experienced in the Cold War . The Dixie Mission had consequences for individuals and
315-509: A certain extent in South Korea , remain virtually identical to traditional characters, with variations between the two forms largely stylistic. There has historically been a debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters . Because the simplifications are fairly systematic, it is possible to convert computer-encoded characters between the two sets, with the main issue being ambiguities in simplified representations resulting from
378-536: A diplomatic observer for both Stilwell and the American embassy in Chongqing. Over the next three months, he sent a series of reports to Chongqing and sparked controversy immediately. Service praised the Communists and compared them to European socialists, rather than the feared Soviet Union . Service credited the Communists for a clean and superior society, in stark contrast to the corruption and chaos that he saw in
441-572: A guerrilla bodyguard to the Communist Jin Cha Ji headquarters near Fouping. The other six members of the field group were Brook Dolan, Paul Domke, Walter Gress , Simon H. Hitch , Wilbur J. Peterkin (the group's leader), and Henry C. Whittlesey . The trip would last some four months and take them more than a thousand miles on foot and by mule through the dead of the Chinese winter with Japanese patrols in pursuit. Ludden's objective
504-511: A result, Ludden never fully told his side of the story. He spent the next several months on assignment in the United States while the controversy raged and the negotiations between Yan'an and Chongqing began to fall more and more apart. He was sent back to China following Hurley's resignation, and it was in the months to follow that he came to know several of the key players on both sides, especially Zhou Enlai . He remained in China until
567-673: A stage of private enterprise to eventual socialism without the need of violent social upheaval and revolution. After the Dixie Mission, Colonel Barrett reflected upon this position and wrote in his memoir: In addition, I had fallen to some extent, not as much perhaps as did some other foreigners, for the " agrarian reformer " guff. I should have known better than this, particularly since the Chinese Communists themselves never at any time made claim to being anything but revolutionaries – period. The history of China did not have
630-613: A standard set of Chinese character forms used to write Chinese languages . In Taiwan , the set of traditional characters is regulated by the Ministry of Education and standardized in the Standard Form of National Characters . These forms were predominant in written Chinese until the middle of the 20th century, when various countries that use Chinese characters began standardizing simplified sets of characters, often with characters that existed before as well-known variants of
693-668: A unified government between the Communists and the Nationalists. While Marshall spent most of his time in Chongqing , the Dixie Mission hosted Marshall in Yan'an so he could speak with the Communist leadership. Like Hurley, Marshall failed to develop a lasting compromise, and the Chinese Civil War resumed. Truman then sent another representative to China, General Albert Wedemeyer , who had commanded US troops in China during
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#1732765308268756-869: Is 産 (also the accepted form in Japan and Korea), while in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan the accepted form is 產 (also the accepted form in Vietnamese chữ Nôm ). The PRC tends to print material intended for people in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and overseas Chinese in traditional characters. For example, versions of the People's Daily are printed in traditional characters, and both People's Daily and Xinhua have traditional character versions of their website available, using Big5 encoding. Mainland companies selling products in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan use traditional characters in order to communicate with consumers;
819-493: The Chinese Commercial News , World News , and United Daily News all use traditional characters, as do some Hong Kong–based magazines such as Yazhou Zhoukan . The Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified characters. DVDs are usually subtitled using traditional characters, influenced by media from Taiwan as well as by the two countries sharing the same DVD region , 3. With most having immigrated to
882-422: The People's Republic of China in the 1970s opened a new chapter for the mission. For the first time, the mission, and its participants became the subject of serious scholarship.Many of the mission's participants were among the first Americans invited to visit China in 20 years. In China, the Dixie Mission is remembered as a positive time between the two nations and a symbol of Sino-American co-operation. In 2013,
945-772: The Kensiu language . Raymond P. Ludden Ludden was born in Fall River, Massachusetts , graduated from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service , and in 1932 went to China, where he served for seventeen years. He spoke Mandarin Chinese fluently. Ludden was interned by the Japanese in Shanghai the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor but was released the following year in what
1008-640: The Shanghainese -language character U+20C8E 𠲎 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-20C8E —a composition of 伐 with the ⼝ 'MOUTH' radical—used instead of the Standard Chinese 嗎 ; 吗 . Typefaces often use the initialism TC to signify the use of traditional Chinese characters, as well as SC for simplified Chinese characters . In addition, the Noto, Italy family of typefaces, for example, also provides separate fonts for
1071-697: The US Department of State , was responsible for political analysis, and Colonel David D. Barrett , of the US Army , performed the military analysis. Initially, they reported that the Chinese Communists might be a useful wartime and postwar ally and that the atmosphere in Yan'an was more energetic and less corrupt than in Nationalist-held areas. After the war, the Dixie Mission's reports and Service and Barrett were condemned by pro- Kuomintang factions in
1134-639: The US Supreme Court ruled in his favor. Davies was exiled from China, his field of expertise by Hurley. Then, he was hounded from a position in Russia to an inconsequential post in South America. Davies, forced from the State Department, founded the Estilo furniture factory which built award-winning furniture. Hurley accused Colonel David Barrett of sabotaging his diplomacy with the Kuomintang and
1197-578: The communist revolution in 1949 . Ludden later went through the loyalty-security hearings of the McCarthy period and was cleared, but because of the controversy surrounding his work in China he was left to finish out his career in Europe. He retired to Massachusetts in 1961 and spent much of the next fifteen years studying and analyzing what had happened and why. Ludden had seen firsthand how Hurley's policy of unconditional support for Jiang had undermined
1260-778: The American commander of the Burma India Theater, General Stilwell, who was removed from command in October 1944. The first members of the Dixie Mission arrived in Yan'an on 22 July 1944, on an Army C-47 . This team consisted of Colonel David D. Barrett , John S. Service , Major Melvin A. Casberg, Major Ray Cromley , Captain John G. Colling, Captain Charles C. Stelle , Captain Paul C. Domke, 1st Lieutenant Henry S. Whittlesey, and Staff Sergeant Anton H Remenih. The second half of
1323-582: The American government. After the war, in the debate over the " loss of China ", many put the blame on wartime China Hands . Service was fired from the State Department, and Barrett was denied a promotion to brigadier general . Prior to the Dixie Mission, the US considered military interventions into Communist-held China, such as an unimplemented idea of the Office of Strategic Services to send agents into northern China. The Dixie Mission began, according to John Paton Davies Jr. 's memo, on 15 January 1944. Davies,
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#17327653082681386-472: The Bolsheviks. Instead, socialism would come to China only after economic reforms that preserved capitalism to mature the society to a point that it would be prepared for a peaceful transition to a communist society. That belief was disseminated to the American people prior to and during the war by the popular authors Edgar Snow and Agnes Smedley . In his 3 August 1944 report, "The Communist Policy Towards
1449-527: The CBI Theater since August as part of an agreement between Wallace and Chiang to provide a liaison for Chiang to communicate directly with Roosevelt and to circumvent Stilwell. Successful in negotiating in the private sector, Hurley was sent to China to improve operations in the China Theater, which he extended to uniting the Nationalists and the Communists in a unified government. Hurley approached
1512-566: The Communists and the Nationalists without knowledge of either political group, and he believed that their differences were no greater than those between the Republican and Democratic Parties in the United States. The first postwar peace negotiation was attended by both Chiang and Mao in Chongqing from 28 August 1945 and concluded on 10 October 1945 with the signing of the Double Tenth Agreement . Hurley failed at reconciling
1575-459: The Communists pursue a slow gradual change in the economy, as some had believed in 1944. Regardless, 25 years later, Service believed that American co-operation with the Communists might have prevented the excesses that occurred under Mao Zedong 's postwar leadership. After the same number of years, John Davies, in his memoir, Dragon by the Tail , defended his belief that the Communist would have been
1638-403: The Communists to US readers. Chiang agreed after American Vice-president Henry A. Wallace made a state visit to Chongqing , the Nationalists' capital, in late June 1944. John Carter Vincent , an experienced State Department China expert, assisted Wallace in persuading Chiang to allow the US to visit the Communists in Yan'an without Nationalist supervision. In exchange, the US promised to replace
1701-420: The Communists. He succeeded in preventing Barrett from promotion to brigadier general even though Barrett's promotion was endorsed by the theater commander, General Albert C. Wedemeyer . Barrett was retained in the China Theater but placed in an inferior position. Misperceptions of the Dixie Mission contributed to the nationwide Red Scare in the 1950s and 1960s. Thawing relations between the United States and
1764-546: The Japanese, often in guerilla raids. The last significant Communist military campaign against the Japanese had occurred four years earlier in the successful Hundred Regiments Campaign by the Chinese Communist 8th Route Army. However, due to subsequent retaliatory measures by the Japanese, the Communists avoided further large campaigns and restricted their activities to guerilla warfare. On 7 November 1944, General Patrick Hurley arrived in Yan'an. Hurley had been in
1827-520: The Kuomintang," Service underlined his opinion of the Communists as such and stated: And the impressive personal qualities of the Communist leaders, their seeming sincerity, and the coherence and logical nature of their program leads me, at least, toward general acceptance of the first explanation – that the Communists base their policy toward the Kuomintang on a real desire for democracy in China under which there can be orderly economic growth through
1890-567: The Nationalist areas, which were controlled by Chiang. However, Service was accused of being biased by the Senate Committee of the U.S. Congress. After visiting Yan'an, Service advocated that the US should work with the forces opposed to the Nationalists, such as the Communists, but he did not advocate abandoning Chiang. That opinion was shared by John Paton Davies, a position that ruined both careers. Colonel David Barrett evaluated
1953-549: The Nationalists and Communists and blamed Dixie Mission staff, John Service and John Paton Davies, and others. Following the Japanese surrender, the Nationalists and the Communists resumed the Chinese Civil War , which they had set aside in the United Front to fight the Japanese in 1937. In December 1945, US President Harry S. Truman sent General George C. Marshall to China to negotiate a ceasefire and to form
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2016-555: The People's Republic of China, traditional Chinese characters are standardised according to the Table of Comparison between Standard, Traditional and Variant Chinese Characters . Dictionaries published in mainland China generally show both simplified and their traditional counterparts. There are differences between the accepted traditional forms in mainland China and elsewhere, for example the accepted traditional form of 产 in mainland China
2079-664: The Tail , that the mission was called 'Dixie', as a reference to its location within "rebel" Communist-held territory, by himself and his peers, a glib comparison to the territory of the Confederate States of America . [REDACTED] Communist Party / [REDACTED] Soviet Republic ( [REDACTED] Red Army ) → Liberated Area ( [REDACTED] 8th Route Army , New Fourth Army , etc. → [REDACTED] People's Liberation Army ) → [REDACTED] People's Republic of China Traditional Chinese characters Traditional Chinese characters are
2142-478: The US packed up operations in Yan'an and liquidated everything that could not be transported aboard a C-47 . On 11 March 1947, the last members of the Dixie Mission left Yan'an. Dixie Mission participants such as John Service were criticized for viewing the Communist leadership as socialist agrarian reformers , who claimed that China under their rule would not follow the violent path of the Soviet Union under
2205-469: The United States during the second half of the 19th century, Chinese Americans have long used traditional characters. When not providing both, US public notices and signs in Chinese are generally written in traditional characters, more often than in simplified characters. In the past, traditional Chinese was most often encoded on computers using the Big5 standard, which favored traditional characters. However,
2268-400: The United States had had China as a strategic partner in the region, nor would the monumental task of rebuilding China from the ground up after the war have played out as harshly as it did if China had in fact had the United States as a friend and partner. If peace and equality were the goals of American policy, he felt, the line between friend and enemy had been drawn in the wrong place. It is
2331-413: The United States. Many participants were accused of being communists, such as John Davies and John Service. Both were subjected to multiple congressional investigations, which consistently found that they were not Communist Party members, agents of foreign powers, or disloyal to the United States. That did not spare Service from termination at the State Department. He appealed this decision, and ultimately,
2394-408: The communists' military potential by observing war games between Communist troops and visiting war schools set up to train the Chinese officer corps. Barrett felt the Communists emphasized indoctrinating their soldiers over military training, but he believed that American advisors could train the Communist soldiers to become excellent fighters. The Americans were impressed by the Communists' attacks on
2457-510: The conduct of the war and had become increasingly interested in the possibility of working with the Chinese Communist forces in order to carry out a landing on the North China coast. Jiang had strenuously opposed the idea but finally relented under pressure from President Roosevelt and allowed Stilwell to send a U.S. Army observer section to the Chinese Communist base area in Yan'an. Ludden was chosen to be part of it. The observer section
2520-493: The inverse is equally true as well. In digital media, many cultural phenomena imported from Hong Kong and Taiwan into mainland China, such as music videos, karaoke videos, subtitled movies, and subtitled dramas, use traditional Chinese characters. In Hong Kong and Macau , traditional characters were retained during the colonial period, while the mainland adopted simplified characters. Simplified characters are contemporaneously used to accommodate immigrants and tourists, often from
2583-725: The mainland. The increasing use of simplified characters has led to concern among residents regarding protecting what they see as their local heritage. Taiwan has never adopted simplified characters. The use of simplified characters in government documents and educational settings is discouraged by the government of Taiwan. Nevertheless, with sufficient context simplified characters are likely to be successfully read by those used to traditional characters, especially given some previous exposure. Many simplified characters were previously variants that had long been in some use, with systematic stroke simplifications used in folk handwriting since antiquity. Traditional characters were recognized as
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2646-682: The majority of Chinese text in mainland China are simplified characters , there is no legislation prohibiting the use of traditional Chinese characters, and often traditional Chinese characters remain in use for stylistic and commercial purposes, such as in shopfront displays and advertising. Traditional Chinese characters remain ubiquitous on buildings that predate the promulgation of the current simplification scheme, such as former government buildings, religious buildings, educational institutions, and historical monuments. Traditional Chinese characters continue to be used for ceremonial, cultural, scholarly/academic research, and artistic/decorative purposes. In
2709-426: The memorandum successfully convinced the administration of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to put the plan into motion. The Roosevelt administration asked Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek for permission to send US observers to visit the Communists. Initially, Chiang was hostile to the proposal and delayed action. He consented after foreign correspondents whom he had permitted to visit Yan'an reported on
2772-983: The merging of previously distinct character forms. Many Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between these character sets. Traditional characters are known by different names throughout the Chinese-speaking world. The government of Taiwan officially refers to traditional Chinese characters as 正體字 ; 正体字 ; zhèngtǐzì ; 'orthodox characters'. This term is also used outside Taiwan to distinguish standard characters, including both simplified, and traditional, from other variants and idiomatic characters . Users of traditional characters elsewhere, as well as those using simplified characters, call traditional characters 繁體字 ; 繁体字 ; fántǐzì ; 'complex characters', 老字 ; lǎozì ; 'old characters', or 全體字 ; 全体字 ; quántǐzì ; 'full characters' to distinguish them from simplified characters. Some argue that since traditional characters are often
2835-455: The negotiations that were going on between Chongqing and Yan'an and alienated the Communists at that critical moment when they clearly had tremendous popular support and were reaching out to the United States. It was, he felt, a mistake of tragic proportion, the effects of which can still be felt today. The subsequent wars in Korea and Vietnam , he felt, would not have played out as they did if
2898-677: The official script in Singapore until 1969, when the government officially adopted Simplified characters. Traditional characters still are widely used in contexts such as in baby and corporation names, advertisements, decorations, official documents and in newspapers. The Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative in Southeast Asia regarding simplification. Although major public universities teach in simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications such as
2961-700: The original standard forms, they should not be called 'complex'. Conversely, there is a common objection to the description of traditional characters as 'standard', due to them not being used by a large population of Chinese speakers. Additionally, as the process of Chinese character creation often made many characters more elaborate over time, there is sometimes a hesitation to characterize them as 'traditional'. Some people refer to traditional characters as 'proper characters' ( 正字 ; zhèngzì or 正寫 ; zhèngxiě ) and to simplified characters as 簡筆字 ; 简笔字 ; jiǎnbǐzì ; 'simplified-stroke characters' or 減筆字 ; 减笔字 ; jiǎnbǐzì ; 'reduced-stroke characters', as
3024-405: The people, whether or not they had in fact turned away from Moscow and were pursuing their own uniquely Chinese vision of a socialist state, and whether or not they were sincere about wanting the friendship and support of the United States both during and after the war. Ludden's role with the Dixie Mission was to travel through enemy-occupied territory with a small field group of seven Americans and
3087-781: The predominant forms. Simplified characters as codified by the People's Republic of China are predominantly used in mainland China , Malaysia, and Singapore. "Traditional" as such is a retronym applied to non-simplified character sets in the wake of widespread use of simplified characters. Traditional characters are commonly used in Taiwan , Hong Kong , and Macau , as well as in most overseas Chinese communities outside of Southeast Asia. As for non-Chinese languages written using Chinese characters, Japanese kanji include many simplified characters known as shinjitai standardized after World War II, sometimes distinct from their simplified Chinese counterparts . Korean hanja , still used to
3150-609: The story of the Dixie Mission served as the historical basis for a new World War II novel, Two Sons of China , by Andrew Lam . It was released by Bondfire Books in December 2013. While referred to as "Dixie" or the Dixie Mission, the true name of the mission was the United States Army Observation Group to Yan'an. One war scholar attributes the name to the number of Southerners in the mission's personnel. John Davies declared in his memoir, Dragon by
3213-486: The team arrived on 7 August and consisted of Raymond P. Ludden , Lieutenant Colonel Reginald E. Foss, Major Wilbur J. Peterkin , Major Charles E. Dole, Captain Brooke Dolan , Lieutenant Simon H. Hitch, 1st Lieutenant Louis M. Jones, Sergeant Walter Gress, and Technician 4th Class George I. Nakamura. Later, other members, including Koji Ariyoshi , joined the mission. Service, while under Stilwell's command, served as
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#17327653082683276-636: The traditional character set used in Taiwan ( TC ) and the set used in Hong Kong ( HK ). Most Chinese-language webpages now use Unicode for their text. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommends the use of the language tag zh-Hant to specify webpage content written with traditional characters. In the Japanese writing system , kyujitai are traditional forms, which were simplified to create shinjitai for standardized Japanese use following World War II. Kyūjitai are mostly congruent with
3339-985: The traditional characters in Chinese, save for minor stylistic variation. Characters that are not included in the jōyō kanji list are generally recommended to be printed in their traditional forms, with a few exceptions. Additionally, there are kokuji , which are kanji wholly created in Japan, rather than originally being borrowed from China. In the Korean writing system , hanja —replaced almost entirely by hangul in South Korea and totally replaced in North Korea —are mostly identical with their traditional counterparts, save minor stylistic variations. As with Japanese, there are autochthonous hanja, known as gukja . Traditional Chinese characters are also used by non-Chinese ethnic groups. The Maniq people living in Thailand and Malaysia use Chinese characters to write
3402-518: The ubiquitous Unicode standard gives equal weight to simplified and traditional Chinese characters, and has become by far the most popular encoding for Chinese-language text. There are various input method editors (IMEs) available for the input of Chinese characters . Many characters, often dialectical variants, are encoded in Unicode but cannot be inputted using certain IMEs, with one example being
3465-399: The war, on a factfinding mission. Again, the Dixie Mission in Yan'an hosted the presidential mission. Wedemeyer reported that US interests were best served by continued support for the Nationalist government, but Truman suppressed the report because he wanted to see who would win and refused to expand aid the Nationalists to avoid being involved in the Chinese Civil War. After Wedemeyer's visit,
3528-587: The words for simplified and reduced are homophonous in Standard Chinese , both pronounced as jiǎn . The modern shapes of traditional Chinese characters first appeared with the emergence of the clerical script during the Han dynasty c. 200 BCE , with the sets of forms and norms more or less stable since the Southern and Northern dynasties period c. the 5th century . Although
3591-458: Was appointed in his place and right away pressed for a policy of unconditional support for Jiang. He also purged his staff of anyone who disagreed. When Ludden returned from Fouping and reported to Hurley in January 1945, Hurley was not interested in what he had seen and instead upbraided him for having gone to Fouping in the first place. It was, perhaps, a blessing in disguise. Although Ludden
3654-399: Was known informally as the Dixie Mission , and it had both military and political objectives. The military objectives, broadly, were to find out whether or not the Communist forces were in fact fighting the Japanese and whether or not they were in fact willing to fight under Stilwell's command. The political objectives were, again broadly, to find out how much support the Communists had among
3717-580: Was later awarded the Bronze Star, as were the other members of the field group. The Dixie Mission played-out against a backdrop of political intrigue within the American camp. Patrick Hurley , who had been sent by Roosevelt as a personal emissary to China in order to pressure Jiang into cooperating with Stilwell, had instead sided with Jiang and had Stilwell recalled. When the American Ambassador resigned following Stilwell's recall, Hurley
3780-506: Was launched on 22 July 1944, during World War II , and lasted until 11 March 1947. The goals of the mission were to investigate the Communists politically and militarily and to determine if the US would benefit from establishing liaison. Communist local governments had cooperated in rescuing American pilots downed in North China after bombing Japan, and the invasion of Japan might still have been launched from China, which would have involved landing American troops in China. John S. Service , of
3843-474: Was one of Stilwell's political officers, the months he spent in Japanese occupied territory had prevented him from producing much of a paper trail. His observations and analyses were kept safely in his head but for a collection of brief entries in a small journal. This, and the award of a Bronze Star, allowed him to remain largely in under the radar and avoid the persecution to which Davies and Service would later be put by Hurley and other supporters of Jiang. As
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#17327653082683906-479: Was then Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique ) as part of a diplomatic exchange arranged by the Swiss Red Cross . He volunteered to return to China and was subsequently detailed to Joseph W. Stilwell as a member of an elite political intelligence team. The other three members of the team were John P. Davies , a China expert and leader of the team; John S. Service , a China expert; and John Emmerson,
3969-466: Was to find out if the political observations made by Jack Service, John Emmerson, and other observers in and around Yan'an held true throughout the areas controlled by the Communists. This information would be a critical factor in Stilwell's decision whether or not to work with the Communists. On the way back to Yan'an, Henry Whittlesey and his interpreter were captured and killed by the Japanese. Ludden
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