China Hands
In the late 1940s, Fairbank was among the so-called China Hands, who predicted the victory of Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party and advocated the establishment of relations with the new government. Although Fairbank argued that relations with the new China would be in the American national interest, the China Lobby and many other Americans accused the China Hands of selling out an ally, promoting the spread of communism, and being under Soviet influence. During an intensification of the Cold War in 1949, Fairbank was targeted for being "soft" on communism and was denied a visa to visit Japan. In 1952, he testified before the McCarran Committee, but his secure position at Harvard protected him. Ironically, many of Fairbank's Chinese friends and colleagues who returned to China after 1949, such as Fei Xiaotong, Ch'ien Tuan-sheng, and Chen Han-seng, would later be attacked for being "pro-American," as the Chinese Communist Party took on a stance that was increasingly anti-Western in the 1950s and the 1960s.