Loss of China
In American political discourse, the "loss of China" refers to the unexpected victory of the Chinese Communist Party over the U.S.-backed Nationalist Chinese Kuomintang government at the end of the Chinese Civil War. The defeat of Chiang Kai-shek's government was an immense shock to the American public, who subsequently saw the "loss" as a result of the Truman administration's supposed weakness towards communism. The "loss of China" was cast as a massive defeat for America in the early stages of the Cold War, and greatly contributed to the anti-communist paranoia that drove the Second Red Scare.
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