[Lake]

>.America historically participated very little in China's past problems (opium wars etc).

The US was involved in the biggest civil war in the Chinese history, the KMT-CCP war.

[maui_hawaii]

Again, it depends on how you define "China". Back then the KMT was THE government of China, and it was recognized as such. The CCP were back in the mountains somewhere plotting revolution. If that is the standard we shall use, I say we find the next set of revolutionaries that are out in the mountains now in 2003 and support them.

If you define "China" as being larger than any political party, what is wrong with America's presence? What were we there for? Hint: It wasn't to fight Communists. That came later.

We were there fighting the Japanese.

The problem with your thinking is that it assumes that only a Communist Party Chinese is a real Chinese.

You see, the CCP only cared that THEY ruled China. Nothing else mattered/s. They could care less about Japanese. The CCP were a bunch of lying two bit propagandists who never fought the Japanese they hate so much.

They were/are defining "China" around themselves and their party. America on the other hand was not.

[maui_hawaii]

Offending the Communist movement is one thing. Fighting to defend "China" is something else entirely.

You would have fit in to the Red Guards just fine with that kind of thinking.

[maui_hawaii]

Chinese history must have started in 1949... or maybe I should say 1920's...when the CCP was born...