Chinag Kai-shek ruled according to the Chinese “Mandate of Heaven” principle: that any ruling dynasty is ordained for the role by demonstrating their ability to do so. In practice, this meant his Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang, needed no approval from the governed. Often, he squashed descent by force, meting out harsh punishments for public dissenters. Mao Tse-tung, in contrast, united the workers and peasants of the country and began a military campaign to overthrow the KMT.

On this day, December 7, 1949, the defeated Chiang Kai-shek established Taipei as the temporary Kuomintang government, until they can regain now communist-controlled mainland China.

China was the one glaring failure of the Marshall Plan: despite the tons of aid to Chiang Kai-shek, the Communists took over. General Douglas MacArthur, who oversaw the entire Eastern theater, called American policy in China “one of the greatest blunders in American diplomatic history, for which the free world is now paying in blood and disaster.” And in review of the situation, an upstart senator from Wisconsin named Joseph McCarthy was about to launch a sweeping investigation of communist infiltration in the United States.