China and the Balance of Power

Among the issues on which Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill differed, none was more pregnant with meaning for the future than their respective assessments of the coming international role of China. The American President saw China as a potential major power, a force that would bulk large in the postwar era, particularly in Asia. The British Prime Minister regarded China as an "emerging society," to use the vernacular of today, one certain to be beset by multiple internal problems for the foreseeable future and hence incapable of sustaining a consistent, forceful international position. In retrospect, one can say that vital