China Hands
Davies was one of the China Hands who specialized in China and the Far East in the State Department. He predicted that Mao Zedong's Communists would win the Chinese Civil War, and, after they did so in 1949, he advocated US relations with Communist China to forestall a Soviet takeover. These views ran counter to prevailing government policy and provoked the "China lobby". Supporters of Chiang Kai-shek were looking for those who had helped "lose" China and Senator Joseph McCarthy was looking for any Communists in government. Davies was attacked as both.