U.S. Mediation Efforts in the Kuomintang-Communist Conflict: Challenges and Limitations in August 1946

The U.S. government sent a team to China after World War II to arbitrate the conflicts between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) to carry out the established policy of building a coalition government in China, including the CPC. For around a year, negotiations started. The period around August 1946 was a critical time node in the tripartite negotiations, and this paper mainly explores why the mediation of the United States in August 1946 did not achieve the desired results from the perspectives of the CCP and the United States. It can be seen that the failure of the US to achieve positive results in mediation during this period was the result of macro factors such as the difference between the established policies of the CPC and the US, as well as the "ideological misunderstanding" caused by the surplus materials of the Pacific War. In addition to the distractions caused by the war launched by the Nationalist Government, a direct analysis of Sino-US relations from the perspective of the CPC and the US shows that the differences in the policies of the two sides in August 1946 and the series of events affected by them prevented the US from achieving positive results in its mediation activities.