A rape in Beijing, December 1946: GIs, nationalist protests, and US foreign policy

Through an exploration of the massive nationalist protests that responded t o the rape of a Chinese woman student in Beijing by American GIS in Decembe r 1946, this article argues that issues of gender have long had an impact o n the relations between the United States and other nations. In particular, this paper argues that rapes and other sexual misconduct by American GIs e xposed inevitable contradictions in military occupation settings between th e ostensible goals of U.S. policy of working with the people of foreign cou ntries, and the perception of large numbers of people in these occupied cou ntries that American soldiers tended to act more like enemies than allies. Moreover, this sexual misconduct by American soldiers led to tensions not o nly between Chinese and Americans but also between the U.S. State Departmen t and the military, and between State Department officials in Washington an d those on the scene in China. The U.S. ambassador to China at that time Jo hn Leighton Stuart, tried to mitigate the anti-American sentiment that the rape unleashed and inflamed, only to by stymied by insensitivity in the Sta te Department and ultimately in the U.S. military to the issues of rape, GI misconduct, and Chinese student nationalism.