The United States had tried but failed to mediate in the Chinese civil war, and it became clear that China would not play the role in the post-war international order as originally conceived in Washington. Attention in the State Department was already shifting to the desirability of rehabilitating the Japanese economy as part of the general program of reconstructing the economies of Western Europe. This was less a cold war issue than a matter of averting a damaging worldwide recession threatened by the enormous imbalance between American export to the rest of the world and its imports. At the same time Japan, in contradistinction to China, was seen as an economic centre of potential significance in altering the world balance of power. As in the case of occupied Germany, the State Department began to argue in late 1946 to early 1947 in favour of replacing the policy of punishment with one of rehabilitation. The relaunching of the economies of Germany and Japan was seen as essential if ‘the free areas of Europe and Asia’ were to ‘function vigorously and healthily’. By mid-1947 the American occupation policy in Japan had begun to change emphasis from seeking to eliminate the vestiges of the past that were associated with militarism and the capacity to prepare for making war towards encouraging economic development and political stability. The constitution that had been developed by the Americans, with its famous Article Nine that renounced war, was modified in practice to allow for what were called ‘self-defence forces’. The huge economic conglomerates, the Zaibatsus, such as Toshiba and Mitsubishi, began to be discretely encouraged; and the forces of the left found the policies of the American occupation distinctly less friendly.