ABSTRACT
This chapter explains transnational circulation of anticommunist imagery in Western countries, domestic issues and politics were a tremendous influence on political debates about and media perceptions of China during the early Cold War. Various American publications spoke of the 'bamboo curtain' which descended or was about to descend on China, and thereby likened the situation in the Far East with Eastern Europe and the Iron Curtain. The Chinese Nationalists and the Communists began their anti-Japanese alliance in 1937 but it was an alliance only in name, until 1945 some of the best Nationalist troops were used to blockade or fight the Communists instead of the Japanese. After the war, negotiations between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong were doomed to failure as both parties tried to gain control over territory that had previously been occupied by Japan. The Civil War between the Communists and the Nationalists raged on until the Communist victory and Chiang Kai-shek's escape to Formosa in December 1949.
