U.S. Ambassador To China
On July 4, 1946, Stuart was appointed the U.S. Ambassador to China and, in this position, worked in concert with General George C. Marshall to mediate between Nationalists and Communists. After Marshall's departure from China in January 1947, he led the mediation efforts that changed from all-out support of the Nationalist government to mediating the coalition government, to negotiating an understanding with the Communist party When the Nationalist government fled Nanjing, and Communist forces entered the city in April 1949, Stuart maintained the U.S. Embassy in Nanjing. He sought accommodation with the Communist Party in an effort to maintain U.S. presence and influence in China, making contact through a graduate of Yenching University, Huang Hua, who became a member of the Nanjing Military Council.
In reaction to the State Department White Paper on China, Mao Zedong published a sarcastic article Farewell, Leighton Stuart! which included the following:
John Leighton Stuart, who was born in China in 1876, was always a loyal agent of U.S. cultural aggression in China. He started missionary work in China in 1905 and in 1919 president of Yenching University, which was established by the United States in Peking. He has fairly wide social connections and spent many years running missionary schools in China, he once sat in a Japanese gaol during the War of Resistance. On July 11, 1946, he was appointed U.S. ambassador to China. He actively supported the Kuomintang reactionaries in prosecuting the civil war and carried out various political Intrigues against the Chinese people. On August 2, 1949, because all the efforts of U.S. imperialism to obstruct the victory of the Chinese people's revolution had completely failed, Leighton Stuart had to leave China quietly.
Attempts to accommodate the Communist Party failed, with both sides unwilling or unable to make any concessions. As a result, Stuart was recalled to the U.S. on August 2, 1949, and formally resigned as Ambassador on November 28, 1952. After suffering a stroke that incapacitated him for the remainder of his life, Stuart died in Washington, D.C. in 1962. His obituary in The New York Times reported, "During his years as a missionary and educator, Dr. Stuart -- gentle mannered and humane -- was one of the most respected Americans in China."
The efforts of George C. Marshall and Stuart to mediate between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party are commemorated in the Zhou Enlai/Deng Yingchao Memorial Hall in Nanjing.
Stuart's memoirs, "Fifty Years in China," were only half completed when he was incapacitated by his stroke. The book was finished and published by officials of the U.S. State Department to advance an obvious political agenda, and the angry, pugnacious tone of its latter chapters betray Stuart's self-effacing modesty and refined manners evident in the first seven chapters.
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