The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America-China Relations History from 1776 to Present | US-China Diplomatic History Book for Students & Researchers

This book is about the co-evolution of the USA and China --- the intimate, and often surprising, ways that each nation shaped the development of the other. Author John Pomfret, who is deeply rooted in both nations, explains it thus:===Many Americans believe that their country’s ties to China began when Richard Nixon traveled there in 1972, ending the Cold War between the two nations.In fact, the two sides have been interacting with and influencing each other since the founding of the United States. It wasn’t just free land that lured American settlers westward. It was also the dream of selling to China.The idea of America also inspired the Chinese, pulling them toward modernity and the outside world. American science, educational theory, and technology flowed into China; Chinese art, food, and philosophy flowed out.Since then, thread by thread, the two peoples and their various governments have crafted the most multifaceted— and today the most important— relationship between any two nations in the world. Now is the time to retell the story of the United States and China. Today, these two nations face each other— not quite friends, not yet enemies— pursuing parallel quests for power while the world watches.No problem of worldwide concern— from global warming, to terrorism, to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, to the economy— can be solved unless Washington and Beijing find a way to work together.===Pomfret explains how the USA broke away from the British Empire in part so that our “Yankee Traders” could trade freely with China, which even in the 1700’s was viewed as a treasure house of silk, fine art, tableware, tea, and spices. We took possession of the Oregon Ports and Hawaii, as way stations to China, soon after 1800, at a time when we had not yet secured possession of our Trans-Appalachian West. If China had not existed, the USA might have remained a middling nation confined to eastern North America instead of becoming a global superpower. The lure of trade with China carried our flag to the Pacific Coast and then to the Orient. He explains that had the USA not become a global power, because of China, then China might have remained a collection of disunited petty fiefdoms carved up by the European empires.He explains how our cultures complement each other. China looks to the USA to strengthen its mastery of science, technology, and economic development. They admire our modern free-wheeling culture of innovation, and have a profound liking for Americans. The name for America as written in Chinese characters as “The Beautiful Country.” Likewise Americans have admired China’s ancient culture of wisdom, patience, and beauty. “The Middle Kingdom filled the role as a wiser, more exotic civilization than the well-oiled if somewhat antiseptic one that Americans were forging.”Both countries value a classless society with upward mobility for all people. This shared value made us allies when the European Empires, Russia, and Japan have threatened China’s independence. America was drawn into WWII when Japan attacked us after we insisted that it abandon its brutal attempt at conquest of China. In the 1970s the USA and China again became allies, after a period of dreadful relations, when China feared that the neighboring Soviets would launch a preemptive attack against China’s emerging nuclear program.Unfortunately, in the interim between these alliances, the USA was drawn into wars in Korea and Vietnam to contain Chinese Communist expansion. Even after periods of hostility, such as these, the “pursuit of the Great Harmony” between the USA and China resumed.I approached this book being somewhat knowledgeable on these points. My father, a foreign policy buff who had campaigned for President Nixon, taught me the nuances of American and Chinese relations during the time of Nixon’s great overture to China in the 1970s. Even so, this book provided a depth of knowledge about the interactions between Americans and Chinese that I was not aware of.The book is objective, without ideological axes to grind. It explodes myths, such as that the Chinese Communists bore the lion’s share of fighting against the Japanese in WWII, while the Chinese Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek were corrupt slackers. This was a myth that my father, a China buff, taught me. Pomfret says the reality is that the Chinese Nationalists did most of the fighting, thereby wearing themselves down to the point where Mao’s Communist could take over the country.Pomfret advises us to be objective in furthering our own best interests as our relationship with China continues to deepen: “In the pursuit of the Great Harmony, rapturous enchantment is not America’s ally; realism is.” At the moment, that means constraining China’s ambitions to extend its territory far out into the Pacific, thereby encroaching on our allies’ claims to islands and control of the sea lanes. It means coming to terms with our trade with China, which results in $367 billion trade deficits each year.Americans who want to thoroughly understand our relations with China during our 240 years as a nation will be educated by this book. China has always shaped our history --- mostly in positive ways, but also by the inevitable rivalries of two great powers. We may be nearing some choppy waters in our relations with China, in trade and territorial disputes in the Western Pacific. This book has arrived at an opportune time to help us understand how to negotiate with China to get through the choppy seas together.