China Misperceived: American Illusions And Chinese Reality

by Steven W. Mosher

A firsthand witness identifies and seeks to correct the numerous mistaken notions held by Americans about China

Genres: China, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Steven W. Mosher is an internationally recognized authority on China and population issues, as well as an acclaimed author, speaker. He has worked tirelessly since 1979 to fight coercive population control programs and has helped hundreds of thousands of women and families worldwide over the years.

In 1979, Steven was the first American social scientist to visit mainland China. He was invited there by the Chinese government, where he had access to government documents and actually witnessed women being forced to have abortions under the new “one-child policy.” Mr. Mosher was a pro-choice atheist at the time, but witnessing these traumatic abortions led him to reconsider his convictions and to eventually become a practicing, pro-life Roman Catholic.

Steven has appeared numerous times before Congress as an expert in world population, China, and human rights abuses. He has also made TV appearances on Good Morning America, 60 Minutes, The Today Show, 20/20, FOX and CNN news, as well as being a regular guest on talk radio shows across the nation.

Articles by Steve have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Reader’s Digest, The New Republic, The Washington Post, National Review, Reason, The Asian Wall Street Journal, Freedom Review, Linacre Quarterly, Catholic World Report, Human Life Review, First Things, and numerous other publications.

Steven Mosher lives in Virginia with his wife, Vera, and their nine children.

Reviews

[Alicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fascinating non-fiction book about China by Steven Mosher, written in 1990. He describes Nixon’s visit to China and also shows how the perceptions of American “China-watchers” (reporters and authors interested in China) changed over the years. It’s pretty eye-opening to see how many human rights violations Americans overlooked in their hopes that China was “improving”. Nixon even ordered the U.S. Information Agency not to publish or broadcast any criticism of China. Many American reporters gave in to the fear that if they wrote anything critical of China, they would not be allowed to visit China again. Mosher is one of the few who spoke (and still speaks) the truth about conditions in China, despite the consequences.

In 1972, “China’s economy was a shambles, a victim not only of the waste, fraud, and inefficiency of central planning, but also of the chaos and lack of incentive produced by the Cultural Revolution and its leveling schemes.” -p. 14

Reporters “endorsed the quintessential myth of the People’s Republic, namely, that the Cultural Revolution had successfully molded a new Maoist man. The theory that human nature could be radically transformed would be dealt a final, unequivocal blow in 1989, when millions of Chinese would be seen in the streets of Beijing demanding a society based not upon a radical egalitarianism, but upon a respect for individual human dignity and rights. Yet at the time of Nixon’s visit few doubted that this central objective of mao’s Revolution had been substantially achieved. In the cheerful, patient, industrious and, above all, orthodox Chinese they met, the correspondents discerned the collective face of fraternity and equality.” -p. 17

“Economic freedom and political liberty go hand in hand. A full range of political, civil, and religious rights is enjoyed by the citizens of almost all capitalist countries. Those who reside in socialist states like China, especially those nations that severely limit private economic activity, usually enjoy little more than a pretense of basic rights. The indivisibility of liberty is an empirical fact.” -p. 33

Most American reporters and China-watchers in 1982 “were enamored of Chinese communism’s chief spokesman...and were trapped in the amber of the paramount political myth of their generation: that government is best that governs most. This myth led them consistently to exaggerate CCP economic and military accomplishments, to minimize the party’s tyranny and censorship, and to purport its democratic tendencies… the establishment of the PRC in 1949 was the beginning of a thirty-year nightmare of purges and political campaigns, culminating in the Cultural Revolution, which caught up tens of millions of ordinary Chinese in the party’s cruel nets. Yet the (American reporters) seemed oblivious to all that...they clung with myopic stubbornness to the antiquated view that Yenan had been the birthplace of something splendid and new, a Chinese Camelot… All this constitutes a rather bizarre omission, like recalling the cute lion cub you once reared without mentioning that it grew up to devour your children.” -p. 63

After a Washington Post reporter praised Mao for taking better care of the environment than the USA did: “Leys is caustic. Celebrating the absence of pollution, waste, and traffic problems in China, he pointed out, was like praising an amputee because his feet aren’t dirty.” -p. 170

“It seemed reasonable to many that Chinese peasants, who for centuries lived in fear of famine, might choose freedom from hunger over the freedom to starve.” -p. 171

In 1981: “The calculated tradeoff between bread and freedom had been more costly than anyone had imagined. The entire ledger, indeed, might be said to be in the red. The communes and state-owned factories had produced not a bounty of food and economic development but famine and lingering backwardness. There had been not a temporary diminution of freedom, but a stark and decades-long oppression.” -p. 187

The sharp division “between the Chinese people and their Communist rulers, purchased at such a price by the people clarifies much... When (the CCP chief) maintains that the socialist system is superior, and attributes China’s continuing poverty solely to the size of its population, we recognize this for what it is: An attempt to blame the talented and industrious Chinese people for the failures of the party and system that he heads.” -p. 215

I highly recommend Steven Mosher books to anyone who is interested in China!

[JimS · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books that may have been dismissed at the time of its writing as being the work of a disgruntled or even ethically challenged academic. But with the passing of the years, it looks spectacularly prescient. Mosher was one of the first American academics allowed to take up residence in China to do research following the opening of relations in 1979. He got into some trouble with his home university, Stanford, and I believe got kicked out of his PhD program. The book is an attack on the American China watching community -- academics and journalists -- but most of all, it seems, on the dean of the China scholars at the time, John K. Fairbank. Fairbank wrote a book called China Perceived, which Mosher takes aim at with his title. Mosher's thesis is that there was a certain discourse in the U.S., call it a zeitgeist, that prevented clear thinking about China. This is seen in academic writing about China in the 1960s and 1970s and in the reporting during and after Nixon's trip in 1972. Mosher says almost all these people were blind to the Chinese reality of tyranny and totalitarianism. His case is compelling in the light of history. He also calls to mind in a strange way Edward Said, who developed the idea that Orientalism is a discursive strategy to control and contain an Other. Said of course was on the left, and Mosher is coming from a very right position. The similarity is that Said writes about how academics created a huge body of work that established a certain discourse, certain parameters, within which Others must be discussed. This is exactly what Mosher is saying happened in the case of the Sinologists that he rips. This book is worth taking another look at for anybody interested in Western representation of China.