This article examines the American origins of the notion of two Chinas by investigating the political and intellectual history of Cold War liberalism the years immediately after World War II. It approaches this narrative through the ideas and activities of three non-communist left liberals of the American Democratic Party: Arthur Schlesinger Jr., John Kenneth Galbraith, and Chester Bowles. These and other progressive liberals of early postwar America reinterpreted the ideology of Cold War liberalism as a tool to oppose not only communism but also all forms of totalitarianism-including rightwing authoritarianism. With this reinterpretation, they criticized the U.S. Cold War policy in East Asia and supported grassroots social revolutions of the region. In so doing, they articulated their version of two state solution for the China question, which made the liberals possible avoid both the Communist proletarian dictatorship and Nationalist rightwing despotism. This early Cold War era’s liberal solution made a long shadow in the history of America-China relations.