黎静 Li Jing

The field of Chinese-American relations is en vogue these days because China’s increased economic power and perception that conflict between it and the United States is looming. The “China Threat” has spawned publishing boom in alarmist literature, but there has also been an increase in scholarship that shows the development of the Sino-American relationship through the 20th century. A recent improvement has been the inclusion of newly available Chinese sources to help us understand the Chinese perspective, such as Chen Jian’s China's Road to the Korean War (Jian) or Simei Qing’s From Allies to Enemies: Visions of Modernity, Identity, and U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1945-1960. But the field still focuses largely on state-to-state relations, especially when studying the PRC. Fortunately, there has been some work that explores economic and social connections. Land Without Ghosts: Chinese Impressions of America from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Present, by R. David Arkush and Leo O. Lee, presents the writings of a wide variety of Chinese who visited the United States. Around the same time, David Shambaugh’s Beautiful Imperialist: China Perceives American, 1972-1990 was as a major step in trying to understand how the Chinese perceived the United States after the Nixon-Mao rapprochement. These books represent the relatively small collection of works that focus on Chinese impressions of Americans. Helping to develop this field is Jing Li’s China’s America: The Chinese View the United States, 1900-2000, which presents a strong new perspective on how the Chinese people understood the United States. Looking mainly at Chinese intellectuals, he shows how they saw the United States as a model of modernity, but also with severe weaknesses. The Chinese marveled at American prosperity and power, but were skeptical of its corruption, instability and imperialist tendencies.

As Li explores how Chinese views of the United States changed over the course of the 20th century, she begins with some well-travelled territory. She starts with Chinese politicians like Liang Qichao, who largely praised the United States, Sun Yat-sen who adapted the American model to the Chinese system, and Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek, who largely rejected it in favor a more authoritarian system. She also includes intellectuals like Chen Duxiu and the May Fourth Movement. This section was interesting, but not breaking new ground.

As Li jumped ahead to the first decade of the People’s Republic, his research provides some good insight into how American-trained intellectuals were swimming against the political tide as they criticized the subjugation of science to ideology. They resisted making Russian the most studied language because most scientific work was being done in English or German. They grew increasing emboldened over the 1950's and became active participants in the 100 Flowers Movement. They were then targeted by the subsequent anti-rightist campaign. Li, unsurprisingly, says the Korean War drove China to embrace the learning from the Soviet Union slogan. In retrospect, we can see the seeds of the Sino-Soviet rift were sown in a war that the Soviets supported more rhetorically than materially while hundreds of thousands of Chinese were killed. But there were no tangible results from those seeds for almost a decade. Instead, the PRC brought in Soviet professors and textbooks and taught Russian as the first foreign language, while purging some of their most qualified scientists. The thrust of this section is intuitive, but Li shows some of the mechanics that drove the change.

The middle sections of the book, dealing with the latter 1950’s and 1960’s, are a little more muddled than the rest of the book. Li generally does a good job of tying changes in Chinese perceptions of the US to the larger events of the time. But when discussing the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, he becomes very focused on Mao to the exclusion of many other issues. To some degree, this should be expected as Mao was the driving force during most of the period. Unfortunately, the focus on Mao’s statement excludes discussion of the reaction to the propaganda and has only limited discussions of the effects of mobilization of the Chinese people. Strangely, he also glosses over some of the key issues that further hurt the Sino-American relationship. In particular, he does not discuss the first Taiwan Straits crisis and barely mentions the second. This is quite frustrating because each of those generated new resentment towards the United States and new campaigns against it.

This section does have some interesting insights however. I was surprised to see the attention that Mao paid to the U.S. domestic situation, including the recession of 1958 and the upheaval of the Civil Rights Movement, which he equated with class struggle. He went so far as to say that only rich whites were persecuting black, while poor whites were helping blacks. Like so many of Mao’s interpretations, he might have wanted to spend more time researching it.

Li hits his stride in the latter part of the book when the United States goes from an enemy to a friend. He shows how two decades of propaganda cannot be reversed overnight, so it had to subtly switch it position. It has to present the United States as desperate and willing to admit that its China policies had failed to avoid appearing revisionist. That switch, which radical elements led by Jiang QIng resisted to the end, led to people like Deng Xiaoping coming to power because they were practical and willing to bend to promote stability and growth. Qing, having caused so much suffering the Cultural Revolution, could not switch her position so she doubled down on the Cultural Revolution and lost.

The last four chapters were the most compelling and most innovative. He uses sources that are relatively untapped in English-language analysis, including publications and consumer information for the last two decades of the 20th century. Li first looks at The People’s Daily, a Communist Party run newspaper, and Dushu, a journal that explores ideas from the west. The contrast showed the difficult dynamic of Deng Xiaoping’s China, which encouraged economic growth and the exchange of ideas, but within limits. The waxing and waning of opinions reflected the power struggles within the party, even though Dushu was technical independent. Then Li switches to the post-Tiananmen era, where there was less political freedom, but a rising standard of living. Li shows that although the hyper-nationalist rhetoric coming from Beijing and from many publications inflamed China’s sense of victimization, there were still mixed views of the United States. The Communist leadership new that good relations with the United States was crucial for China’s growth, but also used U.S. missteps to enhance its legitimacy at home. The Chinese people deeply resented U.S. imperialist policies, but drew a distinction between the government and the people. They still appreciated and possible envied US culture, which was reflected in their purchases and advertising.

China’s America is easy to read but is a little uneven. It tells the story of the twentieth century without a lot of continuity, with each section largely standing by itself, especially when discussing the early part of the century. The analysis of the pre-Communism era covers little new ground and does not really set the stage for the rest of the book. It improves when discussing the early Communist period, but focuses too much on the top ranks of the leadership, especially Mao, and is in danger of oversimplifying the forces that influenced Chinese attitudes. The book’s strength is clearly in the last part. Li really hits his stride as he discusses the improvement in relations beginning the 1970s. There he shows the connections between the leadership’s decisions and the ways the rest of the country was changing its opinions of the United States. His juxtaposes government sources with private and semi-private publications, as well as consumer data, to construct a fascinating picture of a China trying to reconcile the United States as a model of modernity, an ally in achieving that modernity, and a rival that could corrupt or undermine that modernity.

Even though the book is not consistent in the quality of its analysis, it makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of China’s view of the United States in the late 20th century. I recommend it for anyone interested in how Chinese public opinion is shaped in recent decades or for those interested in recent U.S.-China relations. I intend to use the latter parts of the book in my own course to help my students explore how the current relationship was built on the Chinese side.… (mehr)