The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia

by James D. Bradley

From the bestselling author of Flags of our Fathers, Flyboys, and The Imperial Cruise, a spellbinding history of turbulent U.S.-China relations from the 19th century to World War II and Mao's ascent. In each of his books, James Bradley has exposed the hidden truths behind America's engagement in Asia. Now comes his most engrossing work yet. Beginning in the 1850s, Bradley introduces us to the prominent Americans who made their fortunes in the China opium trade. As they -- -good Christians all -- -profitably addicted millions, American missionaries arrived, promising salvation for those who adopted Western ways. And that was just the beginning. From drug dealer Warren Delano to his grandson Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from the port of Hong Kong to the towers of Princeton University, from the era of Appomattox to the age of the A-Bomb, The China Mirage explores a difficult century that defines U.S.-Chinese relations to this day.

Genres: History, China, Nonfiction, Politics, Asia, American History, War

371 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 21, 2014

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

James Bradley is an American author of historical non-fiction. His subject is the Pacific theatre of World War II.

Reviews

[Mal Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the conspiracy theories popular on the Far Right is that Franklin D. Roosevelt engineered the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to ensnare the US in World War II. Like so many Right-Wing fantasies, this story is nearly 180 degrees distant from the truth. (OK, many Left-Wing fantasies are, too.)

The power of the China Lobby

As James Bradley makes clear in The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia, FDR steadfastly resisted the aggressive, well-funded campaign of the China Lobby to force the U.S. government to embargo oil sales to Japan in the late 1930s. However, when the President was out of town for a week to meet with Winston Churchill early in 1941, future Secretary of State Dean Acheson and other powerful bureaucrats affiliated with the China Lobby contrived to put the embargo in place against Roosevelt’s express wishes. It was that action which triggered Japan’s decision to bomb Pearl Harbor and attack the Dutch West Indies (now Indonesia) to secure an alternative source of oil.

FDR and his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, had insisted at every turn that cutting off oil to the Empire of Japan would force the Japanese military to strike out southward. Inevitably, they calculated, had they agreed to an embargo, the US would have been drawn into war in the Pacific at the same time as the country was gearing up to take on the fight against the Nazis in Europe. While they didn’t discount the possibility of war with Japan even without an oil embargo, their hope was that it could at least be postponed for long enough for the Allies to prevail in Europe.

Three unnecessary US wars in the Pacific

These circumstances describe one of the principal conclusions that Bradley has taken from his study of US policy toward Asia in the twentieth century. The China Mirage argues that cultural and historical ignorance, political miscalculation, bitter bureaucratic infighting, and media manipulation led not just to US involvement in World War II but, by extension, in the wars in Korea and Vietnam as well. Bradley regards all three wars as having been unnecessary.

The China Lobby

In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act became law. As a result, nearly all Americans — including the country’s most senior officeholders — shared profound ignorance of Chinese reality. Bradley traces the roots of this ignorance to two sources: the wishful thinking of the many US Protestant missionaries sent to China in the last half of the nineteenth century, and a lavish public relations campaign on behalf of the Chinese government in the 1930s. The government, nominally headed by the self-styled Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, was in fact run by the wealthy and powerful Soong family, which headed a network of warlords and criminal gangs. Mayling Soong was Chiang’s wife; her older sister, Ailing, was the head of the family and directed affairs from behind the scenes. Ailing’s husband and brother held the two top positions in Chiang’s civilian government.

According to Harry Truman, later evidence showed that the Soong family had stolen $750 million of the $3.5 billion in American aid the Chinese government received to support its nonexistent war against Japan. Henry Luce apparently knew none of this; in fact, he knew practically nothing about conditions in China, other than what Chiang and his wife told him. Nonetheless, Luce used his powerful magazines, Time, Life, and Fortune, and his newsreel, The March of Time, to propagate the myth that Chiang was a democratic hero leading a heroic resistance against Japanese aggression. To spread the message further, and to lobby Congress and the White House, Luce and the Chiang-Soong syndicate created the China Lobby, which remained a dominant force in American foreign policy from the early 1930s to the 1960s.

The China Mirage

Compounding the challenge for American policymakers were the preconceived notions that dominated the thinking of key actors in the drama. Luce was the son of a Protestant missionary in China and carried with him throughout his life the conviction that Christianity and American values would spread throughout the vast expanse of the Chinese heartland and turn the country into America’s best friend in the world. To bring this about, all the US needed to do was help Chiang Kai-Shek defeat the Japanese. Similarly, FDR drank in a similar fantasy about China on the knee of his beloved grandfather, Warren Delano, who had gained not just one but two immense fortunes smuggling opium into China. These delusional beliefs constituted what Bradley calls The China Mirage. Since Chiang and the Soong family represented the pro-American China of their dreams, they easily swallowed the Generalissimo’s claim that he was fighting the fast-spreading Japanese invasion. In reality, Chiang avoided every opportunity to confront the Japanese. He was hoarding his resources for what he hoped would be a decisive civil war with Mao Zedong and his Communist forces — after the Americans chased away the Japanese. That was China’s, or at least Chiang’s, “American Mirage.”

“Who lost China?”

Another favorite topic on America’s Radical Right is the question posed by Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1949: “Who lost China?” McCarthy and his allies, notably including Richard Nixon and the luminaries of the China Lobby, such as Mayling Soong, Henry Luce, Henry L. Stimson, and Dean Acheson, argued that the US hadn’t tried hard enough to support Chiang Kai-Shek. In the course of pursuing this question, McCarthy, Nixon, and Luce singled out a small group of men known as the Old China Hands.

This was a handful of Chinese-speaking experts deployed by the State Department in China during World War II who conveyed to Washington a very different story than that told by the Chiang-Soong government. To anyone with eyes open in the Chinese hinterland, where the Old China Hands were deployed, the truth was blatantly obvious. Chiang was not fighting the Japanese, he and his government were boundlessly corrupt, and Mao was attracting followers by the tens of millions among the peasantry because Chiang’s troops plundered their homes at every opportunity. Mao was growing stronger militarily with every passing month while Chiang’s soldiers were deserting in large numbers. But virtually no one in Washington, DC, wanted to hear such things — and the men who were reporting them were later singled out by McCarthy and the China Lobby as those responsible for “losing China.”

Did America bungle US-China relations?

Sadly, one of the central themes in reports from the Old China Hands was Mao’s eagerness to collaborate with the US, not just to receive weapons but to obtain American capital to rebuild the shattered Chinese cities after the war. On numerous occasions throughout the 1940s, Mao pleaded with State Department and Pentagon officials in China to arrange a meeting for him with the White House. Naturally, any knee-jerk anti-Communist, even today, is likely to look at such statements as lies and manipulation. To those Americans with hours of direct, face-to-face experience with Mao himself, and months of experience living with his army, the requests seemed obviously heartfelt. Despite the misconception in Washington that Mao was a puppet of Stalin, the two men in fact despised each other. Mao was extremely eager to avoid dependence on the Soviet Union.

Grounding his argument in these facts, Bradley implies that the US might have spurned Chiang and the Soongs and allied itself instead with Mao. This, he seems to be suggesting, could have ended the war with Japan years sooner, avoided the worst of the Chinese civil war, and shifted the People’s Republic of China from its alliance with the Soviet Union and into the hands of the US. However, given the depth and persistence of anti-Communist hysteria in America that long predated the Second World War, all this seems highly improbable to me. I’m confident that both FDR and Harry Truman fully understood this. Supporting Mao would have been political anathema to the American public. Even had there been no China Lobby, I strongly suspect that Chinese history would have unfolded in much the same way as it did.

[Ralphz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Coming in, I wanted to really like this book. I was unsuccessful.

The China Mirage (get used to that term, Bradley uses it a lot) is pretty close to a screed. Bradley documents U.S. fascination with China, and implies that if not for that, World War II with Japan would not have been fought. Never mind that the Japanese had drawn up plans to fight the U.S., which they found necessary, back in the 30s.

This book is about the opening of China, and how it was a ruse and disastrous and that nothing good came of it. The U.S. was deluded, Bradley says, but its intent to "Christianize and Americanize" China (get used to those terms, too, he comes back to them again and again) was misguided. In fact, Bradley paints everybody from Teddy Roosevelt on up as naive and unaware of what China really was - but how could they, since they were restricted to small portions of the nation by the emperors? The West carved out "New Chinas" (another term of his all over this book but nowhere else that I can find) to begin trading, and destroyed China as a consequence.

Bradley takes delight in pointing out that many of the monied families in the U.S. got their riches (either directly or tangentially - extremely tangentially) from selling opium to the Chinese. In fact, according to Bradley, there is nary a person or institution or bank in the U.S. that doesn't have drug money on its hands. He reveals this like a bolt out of the blue - but any student of history has been reading the story for years now.

A big villain in this story is Christianity. If it weren't for those dang missionaries ... I got tired of this line of argument, the constant use of "foreign devils" to describe Westerners - that's Bradley talking, not the Chinese. Also, "sea barbarians." "New Chinas." "Christianize and Americanize." "China Mirage." If I had a dollar for each time he uses one of those terms, I'd have been a very rich man by the middle of the book.

By the way, I received this book from Goodreads as a First Read.

Anyway, if you read it, fine. If you don't, fine.

More reviews at my WordPress site, Ralphsbooks.

[Jane Chu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've long placed Chiang Kai Shek--along with Mao and Cixi--as the incompetent triumvirate that made China the mess it is today; I've also long been confounded by Taiwanese and Americans who fail to recognize Chiang for the damn fool he was. After reading this book, that disconnect finally makes sense. This book also helps me realize I'm not simply a grump for thinking most US China Watchers are charlatans and most DC politicians making China decisions are clueless, in fact that has been the sad reality of US-China relations since the Opium Wars and will probably get us into trouble again real soon. This is a must read for aspiring China Hands or anyone who fancies themselves a China Expert, if only for the humbling and cautionary value.

[Craig Fiebig · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was fascinated by the author's observation that every US failure of policy in China, the Pacific or Asia was rooted in the Harvard-educated advisor sitting at the presidents elbow. That's quite a track record. Still, this book is replete with so many historical errors that I have to question either veracity of the author's research or his intellectual integrity. He completely misunderstands the sources of the Korean War, mischaracterizing it as a small, local, civil war. The record of discussion between Kim, Stalin and Mao is fairly detailed and complete on this point yet absent in his analysis. His conjecture that war with Japan could have been avoided had we not embargoed oil resides among silliest of all 'blame-the-victim' analyses. He also refers to military hardware developed in the late 1950s as playing a combat role in the 2nd World War. In sum, he misses both big and little points by such a wide margin that one can't help but wonder about the balance of his effort.

[Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

There should be a warning placed on all government buildings urging US policy makers to stop trying to export the American way of life elsewhere. This practice, responsible for some of worst policy failures in this and previous century inevitably leads to failure. Iraq, Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, and now in this book, China.

James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers, lays out who lost China and like the culprit in Murder on the Orient Express, it is everyone. First there are the great fortunes that were made in the 19th century opium trade, to include most of aristocrats of New England. Among these practitioners was FDR's grandfather.

Asia was not really understood either by the general public or the people making US policy in the 19th century and a goal was to promote its Christianization and democratic ideals on up to 1949. These tasks were deemed feasible because as was the case, no one understood China, much as no one understands the Middle East today.

The missionaries, whose efforts were largely unsuccessful were the first wave, but US engagement worsened when it became entangled with Chiang Kai Shek and his venal in-laws, the Soong family. They were at a decided advantage, while people in the US knew nothing about China, other than missionary lore, the Soongs were able exploit American ignorance for financial gain. It is a pity that their skills did not extend to running the country.

The Soongs were able, using the fantasies spun by Pearl Buck and Henry Luce's publications, to manipulate the US foreign policy establishment to include FDR, Henry Stimson, Dean Acheson, Henry Morgenthau and Harold Ickes. The money flowed with an ease that confidence tricksters can only envy.

Eventually some Americans who did know something about China appeared on the scene. These were John Carter Vincent, John Davies and John Service. They understood how incompetent the Chiang Kai Shek "New China" government was. They spoke Chinese and observed conditions. These reports were ignored. Assessments indicating that Mao would win eventually later served to brand these diplomats as communists. The right has always been delusional when it doesn't get its way.

This book is engaging, but not perfect. I believe the author lacks a measure of depth in the intricacies of US foreign policy strategy, particularly involving the 1940s. A Eurocentric policy with the defeat of Hitler being the first priority was not in place when he alleges it is. He also has an annoying habit of reusing certain phases, Stimson is ironically referred to as "the first wise man," we are constantly reminded that FDR's fortune was based on the drug trade. It also is written in a somewhat breezy style which undermines the seriousness of the point the author is making. However if the lessons of this book are conveyed and understood and prevent further Chinas, Vietnams, Iraqs and Afghanistans, so much the better, he can bring this book out in the form of Japanese Anime for all I care.

[Alan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The glowing reviews aside, this is a somewhat shallow book. Worthy of note, though is the importance and relative inaccessibility for readers of Opium Wars and Russo Japanese and First Sion Japanese War. The Boxer Rebellion is more published.

Yes, Delano family got its money from opium trade. Liquor, guns, slaves, tobacco, shady land deals, and luxury egret feathers, whalebone, and fur are behind a bunch of "aristocratic" American families. If you are shocked, you need to read a little outside the textbooks and puff pieces.

[S. Barckmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

The China Mirage
History of American Disaster in Asia
by James D. Bradley


I really liked “The China Mirage” by James Bradley. I learned things and felt it was worthwhile reading. I say that now, because I need to point out much that is wrong with the book, (see below) or rather what some people, (such as serious historians) might say is wrong with it. I think this history is important though, (and it is forthrightly a history). The book is not a forbidding tome. In only 371 pages of narrative, along with well arranged notes and an appendix, it covers, rather breezily at times, the US’s relationship with Asia over the last 150-170 years.

James Bradley is perhaps best known as the author of “Flags of Our Fathers”, a book that was made into a movie by Clint Eastwood. His own father had taken the famous photograph of American soldiers raising the flag on Iwo Jima. Bradley tells this story at times with very broad strokes and at others, he sometimes plays fast and loose with the historical record. Much of the story he tells is focused on the proclivities and whims of political actors, (mainly two Presidents, who were both named Roosevelt.)

The book is a history of the “China Lobby” in the US. It at times reads slightly less hyperbolic than say Hunter Thompson’s political writings. Because Thompson’s drug-fueled, manic and psychotic accounts about the Presidential campaigns don’t exactly meet the high standards of journalism expected of a nationally syndicated writer, most people know that Hunter Thompson has to be read with your tongue inside your cheek sometimes. (See “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972”)

But just because Thompson doesn’t meet the standards of objective journalism does not mean Thompson is wrong. Because even though some of his hallucinations seem like repressed revelatory memories of the future, you can’t use him to make a serious argument about specific happenings - but taken with a satiric, wider view, you can easily say that Thompson had it all right.

My over-wrought point is that Bradley’s occasional historical malpractice does not mean he is wrong either.

Bradley doesn’t have Thompson’s comic gifts, and his book reads like an over the top high brow screed at the insanity he sees in our relationships with Asia. He is a good writer, the story he tells is compelling. He tries to cover a century and a half of history, mixing detail with breathtaking denouncements and summations. If you have ever been exposed to any academic understanding of the proper way to study history, in the manner that Thucydides’ great account of the “Peloponnesian War” models, you might find this book disappointing.

see Thucydides-method

Bradley doesn’t play fair, and doesn’t pretend to try. He has an agenda. The villains are both of the Roosevelt Presidents and a long line of (mostly) Harvard men who had no knowledge of China, had never been there, and who put total faith in what Bradley calls the Soong-Jiang Syndicate, ie. the Kuomintang (Guomindang) Party led by Chiang Kai Shek (Jiang Jieshi).

Bradley doesn’t examine or give fair consideration to serious contra-stories to the narrative he is trying to push. We hear nothing of the many cultural achievements under the Guomindang (or Kuomintang) and almost nothing of Mao’s Stalin-like purges. And Bradley sometimes makes bold assumptions without evidence, or just to be clever - (and sometimes snarky). Just one example - on page 320 he says,

“Roosevelt promised Stalin that he could have parts of China that Japan had taken in the Russo-Japanese War. Roosevelt told himself he would straighten the whole thing out with Jiang (Chiang Kai Shek) later.”

Now I suppose you could say that Bradley was merely “extrapolating” that Roosevelt must have “told himself” to make this policy contradiction square. But you can’t really say that “...told himself…” is empirical evidence.

He covers the many examples of corruption, betrayals and cruelty alleged against the Kuomintang, but, again, says nothing of similar well documented instances against Mao. We (...us serious readers who are searching for some kind of truth…) have to be armored against all kinds of propaganda, and this technique of only reporting one side of a struggle is what the modern mainland Chinese party (CCP) uses (even today in the Covid era) to sell China to the Americans. The technique is to point out the easily provable failings of the West while refusing to acknowledge China’s own obvious failings in a serious way.

This is why Bradley’s book has to be held to a different standard than for a more serious study. The argument for reading Bradley’s “The China Mirage” is that so-called serious studies have consistently missed the ‘Big Picture”. Bradley is trying to spotlight the “Big Picture”, to correct the propaganda imprint that the “China Lobby” has left on the American psyche. Perhaps he is highlighting this “Big Picture” by using the China Lobby’s own methods of exaggeration, avoidance, and hyperbolic conspiratorial projection.

Or maybe it is a way for “long form” writers like Bradley to have a chance to compete with the Twitterverse. If you agree with Bradley’s premise, (Which I do) then you will like the book. “The China Mirage” is not a boring book, it is highly readable. He puts you inside deliberations that are tragic-comic illustrations of extreme American hubris combined with profound ignorance. The book taught me things about how America twisted and convoluted itself into a long standing “Asia Policy” that was based on fantasy. That is something Twitter can never do.

The problem is that if you use Bradley’s book to put steel in your arguments that America screwed up Asia for generations by supporting the Kuomintang over Mao’s Communists in the war against Japan, (and later in their civil war,) then Bradley’s weak methods might become your weak points if you are not careful. A strong debater will shoot down unsubstantiated hyperbole in a “Point-Counterpoint” debate. So that is the caution to maintain when reading “The China Mirage”.

“The China Mirage” points out again and again that “The Emperor has no clothes”. The Emperor in this case is our Asia Policy for the last 150 years. “The China Mirage” is written as popular history, in the hope that a wider audience will understand how the US was duped, and how we seem to continue to be duped by the “China Lobby” and its (still) active descendants. There are many sub-themes in the book, but the overriding one is that in the mid-19th century, American Protestant missionaries sent back glowing letters about the “simple Chinese villagers” who were industrious, family-oriented, moral people who only needed to to hear the word of Christ to rise up and join the enlightened nations. At the sametime, Yankee sea captains and second tier British aristocrats were making fortunes selling opium to those same simple villagers. So those two social forces - missionary zeal and massive fortunes made from drug dealing in the largest market on earth combined to drive conflicting fantasies about an Americanized China.

In the mid-19th century, America’s stumbling intrusion into Asia began with Commodore Perry’s “Gunboat diplomacy” in Tokyo Bay. Japan quickly saw how the technological and industrial might of the West gave it such a military advantage over Asian countries. Small and insular, the Japanese used both their social unity, and unique laissez faire (low taxes) attitude toward commerce to quickly begin to “catch up”. By “social unity” I mean the many layered, strict hierarchical social discipline that had been imposed by the Tokugawa Shogunate 200 years previously, and that was still maintaining sway when Perry arrived. Japan went from international seclusion and feudalism to a unique form of an expansive paternalistic military-Industrial oligarchy within two generations. Underneath the new system however, the old feudal system persisted, disguised with Western bureaucratic forms, but still underlying society. And in the end these sub-rosa feudal attitudes and inhibitions trapped Japan in an aggressive, “Samurai” posture when facing the world.

Japan followed the example of the West by using colonialism to expand and capture natural resources. By the turn of the 20th Century, Japan had already defeated China in a war and taken Korea as a colony. Then Japan launched a surprise attack on the Russian fleet in Port Arthur, (on a Sunday morning), and defeated the Tsar’s empire pushing Russia out of East Asia.

But Japan did not want a long drawn out war, so they asked Teddy Roosevelt to mediate a peace treaty. He brokered the deal in Japan’s favor. Japan’s ambassador to the U.S. Baron Kaneko, who reported directly to Prince Ito (who was the power and brains behind the Meiji Revolution, which signalled Japan’s move to westernise.). Kaneko, like Roosevelt a Harvard man, worked a brilliant con on Teddy and his fellow alumnus. He understood Teddy and the US, while no one in the US government knew anything about Japan. Teddy envisioned Japan as the leader of Asia, and himself as Japan’s big brother. TR wanted full access to China’s market, and he didn’t want to share it with Europe. Japan could play the heavy, protecting Asia from European poachers, while letting the US in the back door.

The Japanese of course were not fooled. Diplomatically they made every signal that they agreed with Teddy’s vision, while they expanded and consolidated their colonies into China.

The story then switches to the rise of the Soong family. We learn how Charlie Soong arrived in the US as a laborer, became a Christian, and to avoid anti-Chinese violence on the West Coast, moved to North Carolina. A group of prominent Methodists, none of whom had ever met an Asian person before, took Charlie in. With their support, he studied English and ended up graduating from (what became) Duke University.

With his wealthy American Christians contacts in hand, he returned to China and started a publishing company. His main product was Bibles (translated into Chinese) and with his American friend’s support, he sold millions of Bibles to US Missionaries, (who were generously funded from Protestant churches in the US). Needless to say, Charlie got rich.

Charlie had six children. The most prominent were his three daughters, and a son, all of whom would graduate from prestigious US Universities. His children would form the backbone of a “dynasty” that would become enormously wealthy, be celebrated in the western press, and for a while, be the rulers of China.

The eldest was Ailing, the often invisible power behind the Kuomintang Party, Chiang Kai Shek, and all of his generals. She was by all accounts the leader, and the effective ruler of China. Ailing married H.H. Kung, a descendant of Confucius, an early supporter of Sun Yatsen, and a minister in his government. Kung was the richest man in the world in the 1930s. Ailing had previously been Sun Yatsen’s secretary, but she didn’t submit to his sexual advances, so she promoted her sister Qingling to be Sun’s principal assistant. Qingling did not rebuff Sun.

Qingling was the second daughter and she became Sun Yatsen’s very young wife and eventually heir to his legacy. After the Kuomintang’s bloody purge in 1927, (where many of Sun Yatsen’s closest followers were killed) Qingling rejected her family, and left Shanghai for Yan’an, Mao’s headquarters in Northern Shaanxi province. Qingling supported Mao and was on the podium in front of Tiananmen in 1949 when Mao proclaimed the founding of the PRC. She held a number of high, ceremonial posts in the CCP, suffered severe criticism and harassment during the Cultural Revolution and lived in Beijing until her death in 1981.

The youngest sister, and the most attractive was Mayling, (Madame Chiang Kai Shek). She was bartered off to Jiang by her elder sister Ailing in order to cement Jiang’s “legitimacy”. According to Bradley, (the official account differs) Jiang was married already, but his old wife silently accepted the arrangement.

The Soong family also included Harvard educated little brother T.V. Soong, who was the Finance Minister.

That in a nutshell was the Kuomintang leadership in 1930, after the massive purging of leftist “allies” in 1927, of whom an estimated 300,000 were killed.

Ailing was the brains of the gang and beautiful Mayling was the “front”. Mayling, as Madame Chiang Kai Shek, spoke with a beautiful southern-American accent and charmed the American power brokers who were “The China Lobby”. Bradley’s analysis of who “founded” the China lobby and how they became almost all powerful inside the American foriegn policy establishment is the central theme of the book. Those foriegn service officers, like John Service, who had lived in China during the war, spoke the language, and who had had contacts with Mao and his ministers before 1949 were drummed out of the State department by Joseph MacCarthy. The China Lobby used MacCarthy, but did not embrace him, because the China Lobby passed itself off as a high brow, Harvard kind of group, and while willing to use people like MacCarthy, otherwise wanted nothing to do with him.

The China Lobby had many members of the Press “on the payroll”, as Bradley put it, notables such as Theodore White, Joseph Alsop to say nothing of Henry Luce himself. Many supporters were in Academia, as well as some of the most important politicians who came after World War II, including JFK, Nixon, along with many influential members of Congress and the Senate.

The China Lobby created the “China Mirage”, which was the totally fabricated notion that China was on the verge of becoming a “Christian” nation that wanted to be like America. Neither side had a clear picture of what the “other side” was like or what they wanted. The China Lobby said that if the US helped the charming Mayling and her heroic husband, then the US could “change” China into a liberal Christian democracy, anti-Communist, and a reliable pro-American ally.

In reality, according to Bradley, Jiang and the Soongs were a gang of grifters who personally skimmed much of the billions of dollars the US would give them to fight the Japanese. Even after the Japanese were defeated in 1945, when the battle raged against Mao, corruption in the Guomindang ran rampant. Mao was winning every battle, but the China Lobby Press, (ie. TIME magazine and the other Luce publications) refused to cover the military debacle that the US was bankrolling.

Bradley says that the US fell into an unrealistic romance with an “oriental” version of Asia that never existed. He shows how the China Lobby continued to dominate the US’s Asian Foriegn policy long after Mao took power in 1949. Vietnam ended up playing out the same way that China did, where we propped up a Western educated Christian Vietnamese, (Ngo Dinh Diem) and his camarilla (Madam Nu) against a popular liberation front led by a charismatic leader(Ho Chi Minh). And even our most recent adventure in Afghanistan has many of the hallmarks of the “China Lobby”. We followed the same pattern of pumping billions in modern American weaponry (benefiting our own Military industrial complex while being paid for by taxpayers), while hoping that the supporters of our propped-up authoritarian grifter can fight off a popular, nationalistic insurrection.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s grandfather made his fortune selling opium in China as did many other founders of 19th century American fortunes, such as the Forbes family, the Perkins Family, the Cushings, and the Russell family - all of whom played a powerful part in portraying a peculiar portrait of China to the rest of the US.

One of the primary China Lobby heavyweights who came from the missionary side of the Americans in China in the 19th century was Henry Luce. His parents were missionaries and he was born in China himself. He founded and edited TIME as well as LIFE magazine(s).

China has always fired the imagination of the west. Popes, and emperors even neighbors like the Mongols who conquered China never seemed to get what it is about China that has this effect. Its vastness, its antiquity, the way it solved so many of the problems of civilization in such different ways from the manner that the west used, all have a way of getting into our heads and making us think that "if only..." they did this, or accepted that, then China could be - ???

In "The Quiet American" the American Alden Pyle fantasizes about a "Third Force" not Communist, not Kleptocracy but a true blue movement of patriotic, democratic honest brokers who could somehow come to power in a nation like Vietnam. If trying to understand how we got conned by the China Lobby, I would recommend reading Graham Greene's novel. Its as good an explanation as any.

Bradley believes, contrary to most historians, that if Roosevelt had trusted Mao, or at least had seriously engaged diplomatically with him, that the history of the CCP’s early rule after 1949 would have been different. Maybe no Korean War, no Vietnam war, and for China, more openness, less paranoia, no horrible internal decisions such as the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. While no one knows how the “what if” gambit would turn out, most historians think Mao would have turned China inward in any event. I am inclined to agree that Mao showed his radical agrarian, anti-democratic side early on in his history. And like most dictators, he couldn't admit he was wrong in large and important matters. But, the result might have been different on the margins, how much who knows.

But those kinds of predictions are not helpful, because they can not really be tested. Bradley’s prose is bitter at times, even cynical. Occasionally he is very funny. He has no domestic “partisan” agenda, as he makes clear that both Rs and Dems were equally in on the China Lobby. Most of his attacks are on the Roosevelts or their representatives. He has a lot of gossipy info and he “chains” events quite well, taking known events and putting in the transitions to help the reader understand “motivations”. As I said, sometimes it seems like a stretch.

In spite of all my reservations about the “process” Bradley uses, I give it five stars, because I essentially agree with him on every point, having come to similar conclusions from study and experience.

[Joel · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Note: I received a free copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads.)

There's a lot of interesting history in this book, which analyzes the ways in which American misunderstandings and lack of knowledge about China and Japan led the country into arguably unnecessary wars. The largest focus is on American support, beginning in the 1920s, for Chiang Kai-shek and his family, who were able to present themselves to America as modern, enlightened rulers who wished to Westernize China; the American government bought it, and funneled many millions of dollars to them to be promptly stolen.

Bradley has an agenda, though (for instance, as other reviewers have pointed out, he seems to hold a particular grudge against the Roosevelt family), which he doesn't bother trying to hide. That makes me immediately wonder what facts he may have chosen to leave out because they didn't particularly support his agenda. The points he makes often seem to be legitimate ones, but it's hard not to suspect him of selective reporting.

It's still a worthwhile book, most especially if it prompts readers into examining their own conceptions about foreign countries. The mistakes Bradley documents are ones which we could quite easily be repeating today. But, if you read it, make sure to have your critical-thinking cap on.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that will change your fundamental assumptions about the world we live in. It's a revelation in some respects. Bradley makes the case that Vietnam and Korea wouldn't have happened if we hadn't been hoodwinked by Japanese and Chinese propagandists and our own racial biases towards Asia. It all started with the Roosevelts. Teddy Roosevelt created the monster that was Japan and FDR refused to listen to reality about Chiang Kai-Shek. At the center of it all is Harvard University with all the deciders having graduated from its hallowed halls and used their collegiality to make things happen. FDR's wealth came from the Delanos which was basically drug money-opium. So I have to laugh at the karma of South American drugs coming across our borders after what we and the British did to the Chinese. Lots of interesting info in this book. You can see why China is the way it is after you look at how we have treated them.

[Max Nova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review and highlights at https://books.max-nova.com/china-mirage

Was the US government's disastrous Asia policy in the 20th century driven largely by misperceptions of reality and a concerted lobbying and PR effort from China? In "The China Mirage," James Bradley (author of "Flags of our Fathers") sets out a revisionist history of Sino-US relations that bears almost no connection to the history presented in the textbooks I read growing up. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's family fortune came from opium smuggling by his maternal grandfather, Warren Delano? Chiang Kai-shek (or, as Churchill called him, "Generalissimo Cash My-check.") was a fascist crook who swindled 3x more money out of the US than we spent on developing the atomic bomb?! Pearl Buck's wildly popular (and Pulitzer / Nobel winning) "The Good Earth" and Henry Luce's influential Time Magazine portrayed a China full of "Noble Chinese Peasants" waiting to be Christianized/Americanized - an imaginary China that reflected the hopes and dreams of a shadowy "China Lobby," but one that most certainly did not exist on the ground in the Middle Kingdom?? And we were making global-scale policy based on this make-believe?! Bradley gathers evidence from a wide variety of sources to trace a shocking narrative about how American blunders in Asia led to the "loss" of China and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.

I'm always skeptical of grand revisionist histories that involve murky conspiracies, and Bradley's loosely organized "China Lobby" doesn't quite get me all the way there on this one. But he does connect some fascinating dots. The cast of characters is essentially a bunch of Harvard and Yale bros (both Roosevelts, Russell, Stimson, Luce, Corcoran, McNamara, Kissinger) with several Bonesmen sprinkled in for good measure. The prominence of American universities in this whole saga beggars belief. Sun Yat-Sen's main funder, Charlie Soong was a Chinese Bible-publishing magnate who went to Duke and Vanderbilt. His daughter Ailing graduated from Wesleyan in Macon, Georgia and married a Yalie H. H. Kung who became China's richest banker. Her brother, T.V. Soong went to Harvard. And even earlier, Teddy Roosevelt's confidant and fellow Harvard alum Baron Kaneko played an integral role in securing Roosevelt's assistance to negotiate the Treaty of Portsmouth to end the Russo-Japanese war (and sell Korea out to the Japanese). And for a more modern Yalie connection, Bradley quips that "Secretary of State John Forbes Kerry’s great-grandfather was Francis Blackwell Forbes, who got rich selling opium in China."

[Kevin Keating · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This book opened my eyes to the fact that WW2 in the Pacific was created by the ignorance of the FDR administration, and lobbying by the China Lobby, which was ironically funded by American China-Aid dollars. Due to that corruption, we backed Chiang instead of befriending Mao. And Korea and Vietnam followed. I"m not a communist sympathizer, but it's clear we spent a ton of money backing the corrupt wrong horse (sound familiar?). Anyway, the book is well-documented with citations. Very interesting. And depressing.

[JW · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bradley has some kind of bug up his you-know-what and if I had the patience I might finish this screed to find out what it is.

Unfortunately he's more interested in repeating certain viewpoints he's decided are facts in the hopes of burning them into his readers' brains.

I'm all for alternative interpretations of history if they're presented fairly. Bradley doesn't do that. He draws a conclusion and repeats it over and over and over. Enough.

[Nathaniel Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought the book was well written, and pretty easy to read, unlike some NF history books. I was really amazed at the blunders past presidents made regarding our relationship with China, Japan and Asia at large, especially the two Roosevelts: Backroom government loans, shadow troops and armaments, dreadful deals, siding with the wrong team, etc. After reading this book, one has to really question why we get involved in any overseas conflicts.

[John (JP) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mirage is something that appears real or possible but is not in fact so. This is main premise of this book as in reviews and analyzes our interaction and interventions in China. The western powers primarily Britain, and America, tried to force open China's markets and chose their leaders. Evangelicals saw China as a ripe mission field. They believed with a little effort the Chinese would become card carrying Christians complete with western values. The fact that a few Chinese converted was the mirage. The reality was that outside those few, China was never open to Christianity nor western values

Buying the mirage over the reality cost American in particular and west in general dearly. Bradley contends that the end of WWII would have been different if me had chosen Mao Zedong to lead the fight against the Japanese. Chiang Kai-shek our chosen leader in WWII fit the mirage. He was ineffective on the battlefield as well as politically, but he fit the mirage. Mao Zedong in contrast was effective on the battlefield as well as politically. He would ultimately lead mainland China. Mao Zedong a buddhist nationalist didn't fit the mirage. The US China lobby convinced the State Department to ignore Mao's out reaches to America. The subsequent fight over who lost China cleared the State Department of diplomats who could have steered American foreign policy in a different direction. America might have realized that the nationalist tendencies of Mao in China and Hồ Chí Minh in Vietnam did not have to end in their becoming Communist. This is book's primary argument. It explores the issue of what could have been.

The book is useful to anyone interested in going to China. Missionaries interested in China will have their perspectives challenged. I certainly did.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loathed this book until about half-way through because it was more like a long, opinionated op-ed by a writer whose main literary tool is snark. Which surprised the heck out of me; Bradley has rec'd good reviews.

Still, I was glad I read it: there was a lot of information about WWII in the Pacific theater that I'd never heard of - the bombing of Tokyo, for example, which (suggested by Bradley) had a death toll exceeding Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined (not confirmed by a quick Google search).

Most disturbing, and interesting, was the chaotic dysfunction of the top echelon of the U.S. government. The people who actually knew China - at least per Bradley - ended up being hauled before HUAC. FDR didn't know that some of his top people sabotaged his strategy to avoid war with Japan. Chiang Kai Shek's people had a truly remarkable PR machine going.

All in all, the story was fascinating, but find another book to learn about the history between the U.S. and China, and the PTO in WWII. Bradley, at least IMO, simply isn't credible.

Any suggestions about such a book?

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had learnt China history as a child. However, mostly from the Chinese perspective (be it mainland or Taiwanese). It is therefore refreshing to read it from the American perspective. It's amazing how the Sung sisters are so instrumental in charming the American public through setting up the China lobby which painted the picture of Chiang Kai Shek as the The Christian China leader who will Christianize and Americanize China. According to Bradley, had America recognized the strength of Mao earlier and start dealing with him, America would not have been involved in the Chinese civil war and even World War 2.

In the same vein, he thought the Korean and Vietnam wars were avoidable. He also highly criticize the McCarthy doctrine, and the domino effect of communism. Bradley did not think that the communist countries were keen to spread their ideology so the 2 wars mentioned were fought in vain. This I think is debatable.

[Elizabeth Reichow · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree that this is an easy to follow account of Mr. Bradley's interpretation of events. It inspired me to read more on the topic. However, I wouldn't want to give credit to crazy McCarthy when he says this would be an epic fraud on the American people. Definitely need more research before I can have an informed opinion.

[Lennie Wynker · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent book that I would recommend to everybody interested in the relationship between the USA and Asia. The reason why this book is receiving "only" three stars is because I felt like Bradley was too taken with his own narrative. I doubt that all the Washington elite protected Chiang and the Chinese lobby just because of a mirage. Rather, I surmise that all of them, including FDR got a cut of the trillions of dollars freely given on behalf the Chinese lobby cause.

Obviously, it's harder to prove the point I mentioned, but I felt that this is an idea Bradley could have suggested, if not explored. The Good Chinese PR campaign was sold to the public and believed only by them. The elite or at least FDR little gang must have known what was what.

Also, the downfall of books such as these is that the author generally focus his research on only one specific thing, ignoring the rest. As a result, conclusions are reached about events or people that do not quite reflect reality.

Now, moving on to another subject, I must admit that I was shocked that in spite of the fact that the Chinese were not allowed to immigrate in the country, Chiang, Meyling and the rest had so much sway over the government. This proves that often power and money trump race. For me those two were the most vile. How could they lie in bed with the very people that hated their people and still be able to look at themselves in the mirror? I have no idea.

Keeping on the topic of race, I think that something could be said about double identity. It was surprising to me that the Japonese elite at some point tried to mimick the West or that two of Japon's leading men were best friends of Teddy Roosevelt. Yet, that did not mean that Teddy Roosevelt didn't feel like the white men were superior to Asians.

In the end, the more I read books of this type the more puzzled I become of people profess how great America is or how awful things are right now under Trump? The USA is as it has always been, an empire controlled by despots.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book, important although a bit aggravating (more on that). Non Fiction, history writing can often be very dry but not this book. There is a lot written, it seems about the build-up to World War 2 in Europe. This is the first book I've read about what happened in the Pacific (although there are probably many more).


One criticism is that at one point, about 3/4 through the book the author states that the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent quick invasion of Japan into the Malaya peninsula was not for world domination or Pacific domination but rather military acts for self-preservation. He had explained how the US refusal to sell Japan oil in 1941 basically put the Japanese in a position that they had to do what they did. I think that is a bit of a generalization. I think the Japanese did consider themselves the superior Asian race. Like other Asians, they wanted the colonialists out. Japan's emperor was divine; the Japanese were a super race and I think that heavily contributed to their actions in 1941. But I agree that oil played a part.

Bradley uses the word "mirage" all through the book, tying it all together. Interesting to read about how Franklin Roosevelt's grandfather Delano made all his money selling opium. The China that existed in the minds of most Americans was just a mirage. Roosevelt's idea of China was a mirage. Teddy Roosevelt had similar blindness.

Bradley has little good to say about the Roosevelts. Maybe that is because the focus of the book is their incompetency related to China. There is a strong sarcastic tone throughout the book and that was a bit irritating to me. Yet I still liked the book.

Bradley is very negative about those, MKs like Henry Luce, who had this idea that China was becoming a "Christian Democracy." Even Pearl Buck is one of those who campaigned for support of China. Chiang Kai Shek and his wife are portrayed not as true believers but just trying to get money from the US. Winston Churchill referred to him as"Cash my check."

The last few pages sum up the book very well.

And I wonder. How many wars in the last 100 years started in a large part because of oil?

[Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though instrumental in understanding the massive foreign policy blunders, and what led to them from the Opium Wars to post Korean War, the author makes a few blunders of his own:

- Argues that though we should never have taken for face value Chiang Kaishek and his China Lobby, we should have take Mao’s advice and partnership at face value
- The author omits how Mao played to the perceptions of the west and the USSR to manipulate extracting resources and aide by projecting that they were a backward people, guilt-tripping the west for past sins
- Arguing had we never sided with the Generalisimo and the China Lobby, we would have never fought WW2, Korea, or Vietnam

These are more than just simple omissions and I argue the author needs to review his arguments.

That said, the inside politics within Teddy, FDR, and Truman are incredibly fascinating and how the American propaganda machine worked against our own interests.

A mixed bag, but better to understand this book than skipping it.

[Jay · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was the dumbest book I have ever read on China. Bradley pulled off an amazing trifecta of managing to praise and defend Imperial Japan, the Chinese Communists, and the DPRK. While lavishing praise on Mao, he never once mentions the Cultural Revolution or the Great Leap Forward. He actively distorts the Sino-Japanese War and the National Revolutionary Army's fight against the Japanese, something that even today's Chinese Communist Party recognizes. While complaining about Americans' misunderstanding of Asians, he gives the majority of them virtually no say in the narrative and just paints them all as victims of the West. He also regularly quotes Edger Snow without the slightest hint of concern at Snow's reliability. Then there are just dumb errors, like writing that B-52s attacked Japan (it was B-29s). Seriously, the book reads like a bad undergrad paper where the student only used discredited propaganda sources.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you like Howard Zinn’s version of US history, this book is for you. I don’t, so this book was a terrible disappointment. If you believe the author, the US has been run by naive yet evil, manipulative politicians who can be hoodwinked by a smooth talker while also plotting subterfuge after betrayal.

The author, in apparent seriousness, claims that WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnamese War, the Chinese Civil War and the Cultural Revolution could’ve been avoided had the US not supported Chiang Kai-shek and supported the “criminally misunderstood” Mao Tse-tung instead (quotation marks mine).

This book is a stark contrast to Bradley’s FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, which was excellent.

[Laith · Rating 3 out of 5]

mao saying “Chiang Kai-Shek was my #1 weapon supplier” is hilarious. same as Zhou Enlai telling the american ambassador “you don’t have to give us weapons to fight Japan, the weapons you give to Chiang’s will end up in our hands”

book is kind of unfocused but paints a good picture of how americans viewed the revolution in china and the war of resistance against japan. avoids anti communist tropes but over-emphasizes the difference between stalin and mao. pretty good read

[Robert Melnyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book about the historical relationship between the United States and China, and how we have consistently misunderstood the Chinese society and their intentions. This misunderstanding has led to disasters in policy decisions which played a part in our involvement in WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Very interesting read.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read about the history of relations between the USA and China. Don't have enough knowledge to cite the facts but very interesting and want to learn more.

[Steve Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

I listened to the unabridged audiobook. Bradley introduces an interesting review of our foreign policy gaffes in north and Southeast Asia—much of which I was aware, and some I hadn’t ever encountered. However, he has tunnel vision, focusing on supporting a hypothesis he’s formulated: The War in The Pacific was avoidable.

Bradley seems somewhat unaware of the military and political dynamics of Europe during the 1930’s. It is the reverse of the Eurocentric charges he levels at Teddy and F.D.R. and their administration’s. At no point does he juxtapose the dual conflicts in order to provide a broader context of the dynamics leading up to the war.

The reader should note that Hitler’s reaction to the Pearl Harbor attack was jubilant, thinking the American threat to his conquest had been removed. He also envisioned Japan taking the Soviets on from the East. It wasn’t going to happen. What Hitler didn’t know was that the Japanese Sixth Army had been mauled by the Soviets and Mongolians at the battles of Khalkin Gol just prior to Germany’s invasion of Poland in September of 1939. This scotched Japan’s plans for an invasion of the USSR for war resources. The Soviets learned of this and shifted many of their units to the defense of Moscow after Germany invaded Russia...along with their brilliant commanding general, George Zhukov. This move was instrumental in stalling the success of Germany’s conquest.

Bradley doesn’t mention this.

Bradley’s knowledge of the Pacific war seems minimal. He calls Guadalcanal the first battle of the conflict for Americans, which isn’t true and ignores the conquest of the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island and the various naval battles that took place in the first six months of the war...and all these all following the first battle: Pearl Harbor. The Battle Of Midway preceded Guadalcanal by two months and was a stunning defeat for the Imperial Japanese Navy. Yet he writes in the third paragraph of Chapter 10 that this was “no one imagined American military’s first assignment in World War II would be fighting the Japanese on Guadalcanal...”.

Really? Tell that to the relatives of the 146,000 dead, wounded and captured American and Filipino soldiers, sailors, and Marines lost in the six month Philippines Campaign of 1941-42.

How is it he calls the U.S.S. Augusta a battleship, when it isn’t? How does a son of a naval veteran of the war not know that all fleet battleships were named after states? Look at the list of sunk battleships at Pearl Harbor...Arizona leading the list.

This all betrays a lack of reading of sources listing other variables leading up to the Pacific conflict. The rise of Japanese militarism is barely touched upon other than to state it was encouraged by Teddy Roosevelt. If Bradley had read Saburo Ienaga’s analysis of the war and the rise of Japanese fascism and the reigning military junta, would he have drawn different conclusions? Not once does he mention the term “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”, Japan’s imperialist euphemism for her late entry to the colonization game, is never mentioned once—her war crimes largely ignored.

Instead he shifts the burden of responsibility solely to American foreign policy, which was admittedly flawed when it came to understanding the power dynamics in China...but as to Japan’s Colonial intentions for Asia? They had become terribly clear. They wanted Asia and hegemony in the region, and they were going to get it.

Was Chiang Kai Shek as incompetent (and Mao Tse Tung competent) as depicted in the book? Perhaps, but if so then the Republic Of China’s claimed defeat of Japanese forces at Changsha and Guangxi is revisionist propaganda, as are the Japanese statistics listing hundreds of thousands of dead from the war in China. Did Mao’s people kill all of these?

Is this even worth reading? Yes, but with the understanding it is incomplete and terribly biased. Afterwards go to Bradley’s sources and work out from there. Bradley is a capable writer but not an historian or political scientist.

[Al Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a continuation of James Bradley's journey into the origins of both WWII in the Pacific and US historical interactions in Asia in particular. Picking up almost where The Imperial Cruise left off, Bradley begins with both a look at how US leadership has foundations in the early Opium Wars in China, and how it affected for over a century Americans perceptions of China at the governmental decision making level.

He then contrasts the opinions of Teddy with Franklin Roosevelt during their tenures in office regarding Japan and China. It is here that one of the central ideas Bradley presents takes hold: That part of the US support for Asian nations is in relation to how the US views that nations carrying of Anglo-Saxon (Aryan) and Christian ideals as requirements for modernity. According to Bradley's thesis, Japan during the time from after the Bonin War to the early first decade of the 20th Century was seen by Harvard educated American leadership as sharing Christian/Anglo Saxon ideals as the correct path to modernity. It was when Japan stopped sending it's leadership to Harvard and instead began to transition away from Christian/Anglo-Saxon based modernity that the relationship began to schism.

China by contrast filled the void of a "New China" dream, or "China Mirage" as Bradley posits. Starting with the scions of the Delano, Hearst, and other lines involvement in the Opium War which turned into Missionary movement in China, and continuing to exploitation of that American perception by American raised Soong family dynasts, Bradley charts how misperceptions of Asia led in his view to the initiation of WWII in the Pacific.

A "Who's Who" of Chinese and American movers and shakers are presented for the first half of the 20th Century, and many Cold Warriors such as Dean Acheson who cut their teeth during the run up to WWII are shown in the "China Mirage" as well. Bradley continues his thesis with showing how the Korean and Vietnam War was part of the same tragic-comic trajectory of misinformation regarding the "reality on the ground" in Asia.

As with Imperial Cruise, James Bradley has done an admirable job of removing most of the preconceptions in his research, and follows the clues in American perceptions and decision makers biographies very well. However, unlike Imperial Cruise Bradley makes serious errors that if not covered over with wonderful narrative style and in depth research on American connections would make this a 1 or 2 star rating at best. It is this fatal flaw which might relegate this book out of contention for a serious work of historical narrative.

The potentially fatal flaw is Bradley's glaring lack of research into the CCP side of the story. His footnotes ignore many recent research findings regarding Mao and his relationships with both the people of China, the USSR and Staling and Chiang. Further, Bradley ignores the deep connections many in all parts of the Chinese political spectrum had with Japan. And while decrying American ignorance regarding Japan and the reality of China, Bradley falls into the same "Mirage" with the CCP history, nearly repeating Edgar Snow's rosy but illusionary propaganda verbatim.

It is this omission of current knowledge on the CCP that is a tragedy for this book and sadly a warning that Bradley, for all of his past cutting edge research and writing, still can befall his own "Mirage" in order to simplify a narrative.

Otherwise, glaring errors with the CCP history aside, the book for the American and Chinese history is excellent, and the relationships between American politicians and the China Lobby of the 1930s and 1940s very illuminating to see that the "lobbyist culture" of DC is nothing new, and China then as now knows how to manipulate it.

Recommended only if you have a current understanding in the CCP historical facts to fill in the very large gaps in this subject by Bradley. Otherwise an excellent book.

[Jock Mcclees · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book shows why it is important to depend on people with expertise in a country or culture. Why we need to grow the State department and not shrink it and why Trump is so dangerous just winging it instead of consulting with people who have expertise.

The Chinese wanted nothing to do with anyone who was not Chinese. They considered everyone else barbarians. The British and others started trading illegally and particularly selling opium. A top aide to the Emperor sent a letter to Queen Victoria saying that opium was illegal in Britain and that therefore it was assumed she would understand that the Chinese felt the same way. Therefore, for the next year and a half if a Brit was found selling opium they would be expelled. After that, beheaded. The argument made sense. BUT, apparently the money being made in the opium trade was key to supporting the British Empire. So instead of conceding, the queen sent her Navy to attach China and win concessions from them. This was one of the conflicts called the Opium Wars. They won concessions to have trading communities for Europeans along the Chinese coast. The Americans got in on this as well.

It turns out the the early US fortunes were made in the China trade. I had heard of this, but what I didn't know and what people didn't publicize is that other things were traded but the fortunes were made with opium. Franklin Roosevelt's ancestor was (first name?) Delano (as in Franklin Delano Roosevelt). That is where their money came from. Teddy Roosevelt had a family connection somehow to China as well but I can't remember it.

I can't remember what the book said was the reasoning but the US wanted part of trading with Asia and sent Admiral Perry. (Can't remember why he went to Japan vs. China) He basically forced Japan into a trading treaty at gun point. Interestingly Japan dealt with it differently the other Asian countries. They decided to "Westernize". It was partly to get the technology so they could compete with the US and the West and wouldn't have to bow down to them. It was also to make them assume Japan was their friend and their gateway into the rest of Asia. Because the Japanese started sending people to the US to study and became fluent in English and the increase trade, Americans identified with them and felt that they would be the link that allowed the westernization, the democratization, the modernization, and the Christianizing of Asia. Japan rapidly industrialized from this point on and became an increasingly important trading partner with the US.

Amongst all the other things going on were Christian missionaries to Japan and China, particularly China. They felt that God had made this opportunity for American ministers to convert this huge population. As one person said, if China was a backwards tribe it might have worked but with a culture that predated the US and Europe the missionaries didn't stand much chance. At this time in the 1800s there was also a religious fervor that had taken over much of the US.

The missionaries and other Westerners thought they understood China, but most never made it outside of the Western conclaves on the coast and had no clue what was really going on in China. They wrote letters back to the US that were publicized telling about the odd ways of the Chinese and how successful the missionaries were in bringing Christianity to the Chinese which was completely bogus.

Some Chinese emigrated to the US, or were brought here as cheap labor. They worked on the transcontinental railroad. The most difficult parts in the Rockies, Europeans had been unsuccessful in building. Despite being smaller, the Chinese workers succeeded. They also tended to work harder and spend less and be more successful than Europeans in the US. In 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed. It was the first law passed in the US restricting immigration. Not only this, but all across the West where most of the Chinese were, people attacked and killed the Chinese and rounded up many others and shipped them back to China. Not one of our finer moments.

Despite never having been to China, because of family stories, both Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt thought they knew a lot about China. However, the stories were about times in the Western enclaves on the coast and they actually knew little. The few Americans who had actually spent time and could speak the language did not have influence or connections. We were flying blind in our relations.

Other Americans added to the obfuscation, probably more out of what they wanted to believe and not out of true evil intent. Two key figures were Pearl Buck and Henry Luce, both children of missionaries. Both believing they knew China, but like most of the other Westerners, they had a wildly distorted view of China from their interactions in the Western enclaves on China's coast. Also, both believing in the parents' desire for the Westernization and Christianization of China. Pearl Buck wrote a book that became incredibly popular about the noble Chinese peasant. Her flawed understanding and depiction meant most Americans thought they understood China and the Chinese. Then there was Henry Luce, owner/publisher of Time and Life magazines. Apparently to people in the know, Time published how Luce wanted to see the world and not facts.

Then there were the Soong's. Charlie Soong (not his original name) came to Boston as a teenager to work in Chinatown there. He ended up in the Carolina's and converting to Southern Baptist. In this he fit in perfectly with the American desire to convert Chinese. They entered him into Trinity College (now Duke) and then transferred to Vanderbilt (considered better at the time.) He went back to China as a missionary but grew tired of it and thought there were other ways to help the Chinese people. He got involved with a revolution against the Manchu and looking to go back to something related to the Ming dynasty from the 17th century. But then he started a printing company and found that the Southern Baptists were more than happy to pay him to print bibles to be distrubuted in China. This started the family fortune.

He had his kids all educated in the US. As part of the revolution he became friends with Sun Yat-sen who was the leading force of it. Chiang Kai-shek was a military commander and took over leadership of the nationalist movement in the mid-20s on Sun Yat-sen's death. One daughter married Sun who was already married and Charlie Soong disowned them both. Another daughter married Chiang Kai-shek and another married HH Kung, China's richest man. There were 3 sons, of which only TV Soong is talked about in the book.

Because of their Christianity, and perfect English, they were able to be a bridge between China and the US. I can't remember why but in the first part of the 1900s, the US poured lots of money into China and the Soongs oversaw it and of course got even more wealthy. They also knew how to appeal to the Christian conversion interests of the US and were able to use publicity and the Americans lack of a true knowledge of China to influence US policy to what they wanted.

Then there were the communists. They were following Russia's and Stalins lead and felt it was necessary to focus on urban areas. Mao realized that it was better to focus on the peasants in the country. Chiang (and sometimes the Russia influenced communists) tried to stop Mao. However, Mao used guerrilla warfare and brilliant strategy to win the 6 times Chiang sent armies to defeat Mao. It is worrying that at least so far in the book Mao has been portrayed only in a positive light with no negatives.

The book probably said but I can't remember why Japan decided to invade China. It probably was partly because the US had seen Japan as the intermediary that would let the US modernize Asia and helped encourage them even if inadvertently. The Japanese invaded in the mid 30s and Chiang realized he didn't have the forces to defeat them and gave up ground. He was also more interested in defeating Mao. It sounded like Chiang's regime was fairly corrupt and did little to help the average person. Mao on the other hand paid peasants for the food his recruits took. The soldiers weren't allowed to rape or pillage and there were also education campaigns and things like that that won the hearts and minds of the people.

Chiang did attack the Japanese one time with the intent to fail to try and draw the US into the war on their side. The Japanese had been the poster boy for US relations in Asia and US companies were making a lot of money trading with Japan. However, the Nanking massacre started to turn opinion against them, along with helpful propaganda from the Soongs.

Then the Soongs started a PR campaign in the US suggesting that we embargo Japan. The US supplied 75% of the petroleum to Japan and much of the steel. The campaign was done in such a way that people didn't realize that China/Soongs were behind it. The idea was that it would help China and that Japan wouldn't be crazy enough to attack the US. We ultimately did put an embargo on Japan and the end result was Pearl Harbor.

It is amazing how thoroughly the China lobby came to dominate and infiltrate into the US mind and government. China or the Soongs had many top Americans on their payroll and most people didn't realize it. One had been a top aide to FDR, one was a reporter/writer Alsop and there were many more. Plus there were a group of mostly Republicans (if I remember correctly) who had positions in Roosevelt's administration who wanted to support China and wanted to embargo Japan, not believing Japan would attack.

For some reason, while China had a number of people who had come to the US and studied in top universities, Japan had become more isolated and less connected. It wasn't clear why. TV Soong was a Harvard grad and he would have private meetings with FDR with nobody else in attendance. Policy would often change after these meetings. After reading this book, it makes it really clear why this and by analogy Trump meeting privately with Putin is a really bad idea.

FDR and others as well as the US population as a whole were strongly influenced by the efforts of the China lobby. From one on one meetings with top officials to Time articles and writings by Pearl Buck. The Soongs when they came here and spoke understood the American psyche and because they were Christian, they played into the whole myth that China would be converted to Christianity and would be great friends and trading partners going forward.

The Soongs and other Chinese were in it for money and control. TV Soong convinced FDR to give $500 million to China with no strings attached and no controls and it went straight to the Soongs. Mayling Soong's husband, Chiang kai Shek, had no interest in fighting the Japanese. They wanted one set of "barbarians" (the US) to take care of the other set of "barbarians" (the Japanese).

Americans had a completely skewed view of China but this was less true of the Europeans. FDR originally put China's army as most important after the US and then Britain and Russia. Later he moved Britain to #2 and China to #4. China's army was losing people as fast as they could conscript them and they were ill-armed, ill-trained and there was a lot of corruption. Also Chiang and the Soongs depended on a number of warlords and had to pay a lot to keep them on their side. At the beginning of the war 75% of Americans thought it was more important to defend the "noble" Chinese peasants than to help defend Britain. In Britain, they had a comedy or a comic strip (?) with a character Generalissimo Cash My Check as a take off on Chiang kai Shek.

Then there was Claire Chenault. He had been forced out of the US military because he was seen to poor strategy and decision making skills and poor leadership skills. He managed to get a job as a consultant to China (they didn't do a background check). He sucked up to Chiang and became another of his many Yes men. He and the China lobby were lobbying to get the US to send planes to China. Chenault's plans were completely unrealistic and the military shot it down. So the China lobby went around the military and straight to FDR in private meetings. FDR agreed to a private deal with few people knowing about it and getting US military to resign and then sign up to work for a Soong company and go to China. Even worse, FDR agreed to give not only fighter planes but bombers which were an offensive weapon with the idea that the Chinese/Chenault could bomb Japan and end the Chinese-Japanese war. (We weren't in WW2 yet). The Japanese became aware of all of this.

In a comedy of errors another mistake happened that helped lead to war. Japan and the US were trying to come to a trade agreement. The Japanese had few good English speakers unlike Japan and their ambassador had a limited grasp of English. He was trying to negotiate with Secretary of State Cordell Hull who was smart but had a heavy Southern accent and a speech impediment. A group from the Japanese military in the embassy put forward a potential plan or agreement. Hull, in diplomat speak gave a lot of caveats and said this was a starting point. In Japan they knew nothing of this since it was the military group in the US embassy who had created it. The ambassador sent it to Japan with little clarification. The Japanese called it the American Plan since they thought the Americans had proposed it and the ambassador did nothing to correct the misunderstanding. When Hull started proposing changes, the Japanese thought the Americans were negotiating in bad faith. Then to make things worse, the following happened.

The people who wanted to embargo Japan's oil tried several times to change legislation or agreements, sneaking changes in that were caught and deleted. FDR felt that since the US supplied 75% of Japanese oil that an embargo would start a war. And that the Japanese would attack their second source of oil, the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and conquer south Asia to control other commodities, some of which were also important to the US. He made sure to maintain the flow of oil to Japan. The US public, if they had known would not have been happy because of their being hoodwinked by the China lobby and feeling we were helping Japan in their attack on China. Then when FDR went secretly to Canada to meet with Churchill, Dean Acheson and also FDRs best friend Henry Morgenthau conspired against him. Basically committed treason. The State department and Treasury had approved sales of oil to Japan and Acheson and Morgenthau slow walked the details and effectively placed an unofficial embargo on the Japanese. It was a couple of months before anyone with the power to change this became aware of it because Acheson and Morgenthau were deceptive and lied about what they were doing.

When it was finally discovered, Hull and FDR felt they couldn't start sending oil again because someone would leak the information and the US populace would have been very much against it because of their views thanks to the China lobby. Japan felt that they were being encircled and that their economy would be destroyed and they had no choice but to go to war. Also, it was a matter of saving face. They decided to strike Pearl Harbor to destroy the US fleet so they could attack and take over southeast Asia with little interference. They had little interest in actually getting in a war with the US which they knew they would eventually lose. So thanks to Acheson and Morgenthau and others in their group, we ended up in a two front war unnecessarily.

Chenault and Chiang were still trying to get planes and they had gotten some old fighters. The Japanese were unaware and sent some bombers without a fighter escort. Chenault's fighters shot down 4 and damaged others. It was back page news. But then someone picked up on it and Henry Luce did a big story on this and made Chenault a hero even though the US Army still considered him incompetent. He came to the US and met with FDR and told him if he had 140 planes he could defeat Japan. General Stillwell, who was commander in China and spoke Chinese and knew the true situation tried to tell FDR that Chiang was corrupt and not to be trusted and that Chenaults plan was lunacy but FDR chose to believe Chenault because that is what he wanted to believe.

General Stillwell was in charge of China for the US military. He could speak Chinese and knew that Chiang was not to be trusted. John Service was in the embassy and could also speak Chinese and actually had meetings with Mao. Mao apparently wanted to work with the Americans. He had been rescuing downed American pilots and saving them from the Japanese.

FDR did another end around on the State department and sent a wealthy buddy named Hurley to China to report back to him. Hurley had negotiated some deal with Mexico and felt the Chinese were no different to deal with. He was clueless and had bought in to the Chinese lobby propaganda. He believed Chiang and the Soongs and didn't like what General Stillwell had to say and got FDR to fire him. Then FDR made Hurley the Ambassador to China. What a mistake. Mao's troops were the only ones fighting the Japanese and Hurley refused to talk to them. The military and embassy staff tried to go around Hurley to warn of the problems but one of Soongs people along with some in the US military intercepted the message before it reached Washington, reworded it to make Service and others look bad as well as changed the message from Mao that was included. As the book pointed out, we were already partners with Stalin so why the big deal about Mao. My personal opinion is that in part it was that the Soongs and Chiang were Christians combined with prejudice of the time against non-Europeans.

Mao and the embassy staff were saying that if the Americans worked with both Mao and Chiang that a civil war could probably be avoided. All saw Chiang's days as numbered. Mao apparently saw the US as the only country that could help China industrialize and modernize. What a wasted opportunity. Instead, when Service went back to DC to try and talk to some people, he went to a reporter's room that J. Edgar Hoover had illegally bugged. Service was arrested and went through McCarthy hearings and 7 investigations, all of which found him innocent. But Hurley had had his revenge. Hurley convinced FDR to stick with Chiang. FDR was failing at this point and would shortly die and wasn't very cogent. Truman came in and continued with things as is. Hurley and the US supported Chiang and spurned Mao. There was a Civil War and millions died. Chiang did lose, again. The US lost a potential ally or at least trading partner for decades to come.

Thanks to the McCarthy hearings all the top China experts in the State Department were fired. Dean Acheson screwed up again even though he kept moving up and eventually was Secretary of State. He and other Stimson acolytes followed the propaganda of the China lobby and the merchants and missionaries who had such a skewed view of China. For some reason they also kept thinking Russia was behind everything when they weren't.

Acheson arbitrarily dreamed up the 38th parallel for Korea. Korea just wanted to be free after Teddy Roosevelt had sold out the Koreans. There was a treaty between the US and Korea saying we would help protect them. Roosevelt then made secret deal with the Japanese giving them the OK to make Korea a colony. So after WW2 and the Japanese defeat the Koreans wanted to once again become an independent country. Kim made an incursion below the 38th parallel. Acheson and others, because they had such poor knowledge of the region, thought Russia had put the Koreans up to it even though that wasn't the case. We sent in troops and ended up with the Korean War unnecessarily.
Ran out of room - see The China Mirage file on my computer.

[Max Fudim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very easy to read while extremely informative

[victor harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

After a somewhat disjointed beginning where you sort out the cast of characters, it picks up momentum and shows how American misperceptions about China and Chiang steered America on a collision course with Japan. (A Mirage, if you will.) Now it certainly could be argued that Japan's expansionist tastes were insatiable and a clash was inevitable, but for the context of this review, the author's view will be addressed.
According to this narrative, the "China Lobby" represented by Luce at "Time" magazine and other powerful commercial interests exerted immense influence on American policy making by falsely portraying China as a potential Eden of capitalism and Christianity; in other words, an Asian version of America. This view received reinforcement with Pearl Buck's " The Good Earth" which awakened American interest in China and appealed to American nurturing sentiments. American-educated Chinese businessmen from the Soong commercial empire along with Chiang and Madame Chiang, had the ear of high-placed government power brokers. With a pro-China bias already in place, Japan's aggression and verified atrocities inspired U.S. sanctions which deprived Japan of much-needed oil resources and triggering the fateful decision to attack Pearl Harbor.
Contrary to popular perception and some myth-making, FDR did not want to lure the the U.S. into a war with Japan. The author shows in detail, that in fact, FDR wanted to avoid conflict in the Pacific and was not in favor of sanctions. He felt that it would only provoke the Japanese to react by seeking more acquisitions (Dutch East Indies) to enlarge their resource base. He was certainly correct on that count as it indeed transpired as he feared. FDR's primary focus was on Europe and the menace of Hitler. In 1940, while Japan had oil tankers off the coast of California, waiting to be filled, FDR was at a conference with Churchill (Atlantic Charter session) when his underlings (without FDR's knowledge or consent), sabotaged the oil transactions. This was the impetus for the belligerent factions who had increasing control over Japan's policy to eschew diplomacy. Over the course of the next year there would be some gestures to repair the damage but essentially the split was irreparable.
In the midst of all that wrangling, China remained the primary sticking point. The U.S. would not relent on the sanctions unless Japan withdrew and surrender its acquisitions. Japan turned a deaf ear to that conversation.
Unfortunately as the tensions simmered and the rupture led to war, the U.S. allied with Chiang while misreading and underestimating Mao. We were trapped trying to referee a civil war while contending with the Japanese. We would prevail in the war but part of the legacy was the contentious dealings with mainland China under Mao for the next three decades.
Whether one agrees with the author's position and I did think he was a little too sympathetic in his treatment of the ruthless and manipulative Mao, it is certainly engaging reading that offers a broader perspective than the usual good vs. evil bifurcation. As is often the case with history, the "truth" is more nuanced. Bradley does an excellent job tracing the evolution of American involvement in China, including the connection of FDR's relatives to their involvement in the prosperous opium trade in the 19th century. Trade and wealth that would be passed down through the generations and enable FDR to eventually assume the position of the highest office in the land and be ensnared in the diplomatic trappings of the China Mirage.