What do you think?
Rate this book
The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present
A remarkable history of the two-centuries-old relationship between the United States and China, from the Revolutionary War to the present day
From the clipper ships that ventured to Canton hauling cargos of American ginseng to swap Chinese tea, to the US warships facing off against China's growing navy in the South China Sea, from the Yankee missionaries who brought Christianity and education to China, to the Chinese who built the American West, the United States and China have always been dramatically intertwined. For more than two centuries, American and Chinese statesmen, merchants, missionaries, and adventurers, men and women, have profoundly influenced the fate of these nations. While we tend to think of America's ties with China as starting in 1972 with the visit of President Richard Nixon to China, the patterns—rapturous enchantment followed by angry disillusionment—were set in motion hundreds of years earlier.
Drawing on personal letters, diaries, memoirs, government documents, and contemporary news reports, John Pomfret reconstructs the surprising, tragic, and marvelous ways Americans and Chinese have engaged with one another through the centuries. A fascinating and thrilling account, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom is also an indispensable book for understanding the most important—and often the most perplexing—relationship between any two countries in the world.
--us.macmillan.com
From the clipper ships that ventured to Canton hauling cargos of American ginseng to swap Chinese tea, to the US warships facing off against China's growing navy in the South China Sea, from the Yankee missionaries who brought Christianity and education to China, to the Chinese who built the American West, the United States and China have always been dramatically intertwined. For more than two centuries, American and Chinese statesmen, merchants, missionaries, and adventurers, men and women, have profoundly influenced the fate of these nations. While we tend to think of America's ties with China as starting in 1972 with the visit of President Richard Nixon to China, the patterns—rapturous enchantment followed by angry disillusionment—were set in motion hundreds of years earlier.
Drawing on personal letters, diaries, memoirs, government documents, and contemporary news reports, John Pomfret reconstructs the surprising, tragic, and marvelous ways Americans and Chinese have engaged with one another through the centuries. A fascinating and thrilling account, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom is also an indispensable book for understanding the most important—and often the most perplexing—relationship between any two countries in the world.
--us.macmillan.com
704 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2016
220 people are currently reading
2348 people want to read
About the author
John Pomfret
50 books61 followersJohn Pomfret is an American journalist and writer. He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and raised in New York. He attended Stanford University, receiving his B.A. and M.A. in East Asian Studies. In 1980, he was one of the first American students to go to China and study at Nanjing University. Between 1983 and 1984 he attended Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies as a Fulbright Scholar, researching the Cambodian conflict.
He started his journalistic career at the Stanford Daily as a photographer, from where he was fired. After that he worked at a newspaper in Riverside County, California, and after a year was hired by Associated Press to work in New York, covering the graveyard shift.
After two years with the AP in New York, in 1988, he was sent to China as a foreign correspondent, thanks to his knowledge of Mandarin and Asian studies background. After that, he worked in several countries, including Bosnia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey and Iran. For over 15 years he covered the armed conflicts in these countries and the politics of the post-Cold War era. Currently, he is the editor of the Washington Post's weekend opinion section, Outlook.
During his career, he received several awards, including 2003's Osborne Elliot Prize for the best coverage of Asia by the Asia Society and 2007's Shorenstein Prize for coverage of Asia.
The experiences he had when he attended Nanjing University, and his perspective of the Chinese opening, are narrated in his 2006 book "Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China."
Pomfret won an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship[1]] in 2004 writing about education in China.
He speaks, reads and writes Mandarin, and also speaks French, Japanese and Serbo-Croatian. He lives near Washington, D.C., with his wife and family
pomfretjohn@gmail.com
He started his journalistic career at the Stanford Daily as a photographer, from where he was fired. After that he worked at a newspaper in Riverside County, California, and after a year was hired by Associated Press to work in New York, covering the graveyard shift.
After two years with the AP in New York, in 1988, he was sent to China as a foreign correspondent, thanks to his knowledge of Mandarin and Asian studies background. After that, he worked in several countries, including Bosnia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey and Iran. For over 15 years he covered the armed conflicts in these countries and the politics of the post-Cold War era. Currently, he is the editor of the Washington Post's weekend opinion section, Outlook.
During his career, he received several awards, including 2003's Osborne Elliot Prize for the best coverage of Asia by the Asia Society and 2007's Shorenstein Prize for coverage of Asia.
The experiences he had when he attended Nanjing University, and his perspective of the Chinese opening, are narrated in his 2006 book "Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China."
Pomfret won an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship[1]] in 2004 writing about education in China.
He speaks, reads and writes Mandarin, and also speaks French, Japanese and Serbo-Croatian. He lives near Washington, D.C., with his wife and family
pomfretjohn@gmail.com
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 96 reviews
April 6, 2017
Some Americans seem to have the impression that the U.S. relationship with China began in 1972 when Richard Nixon flew to Beijing. In The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, journalist and long-time Beijing resident John Pomfret puts this mistaken impression decisively to rest. In truth, the destinies of the two countries have been closely linked for more than a century—and began when the U.S. shed its identity as a British colony in 1776. As Pomfret writes, “America’s first fortunes were made in the China trade from 1783 until the early 1800s.” And American missionaries began arriving in the 1830s.
The world’s wealthiest nation
Few Americans are aware that in 1800 China was the world’s wealthiest nation. Its factories produced one-third of all the world’s goods. The world’s wealthiest businessman was a Chinese trader. And a single Chinese city—Guangzhou (formerly Canton)—harbored a population of one million people. That was the equivalent of one-fourth of the U.S. population. Though China’s relative position in the world economy declined rapidly in the course of the 19th century, the country still loomed large in the eyes of American business and represented the number one target of the fast-growing evangelistic faiths that dominated religion in the U.S.
The central importance of bilateral trade
Pomfret surveys the two-and-a-half centuries that have elapsed since English-turned-American traders first visited China. In fact, trade between the U.S. and China is one of the dominant themes of that history. Many great American fortunes were built on the opium trade, which dominated bilateral commerce throughout the 19th century. In more recent years, beginning in earnest in the 1980s in the wake of Deng Xiao-Peng’s economic reforms, trade has loomed large in the economies of both countries. Today, of course, the U.S. exports more than $100 billion annually to China—and imports $400 billion. “America has been China’s top trading partner since the 1990s,” Pomfret writes. “China surpassed Canada to become America’s top partner in 2015.”
Missionaries and education in U.S.-China relations
Two other themes emerge clearly in The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: the disproportionately large role played by American Protestant missionaries, and the importance of U.S. influence both in building China’s educational system and in educating millions of Chinese in American universities. As Pomfret writes, “During the heyday of American missionary activity from the late nineteenth through the early twentieth century, Americans funded a majority of China’s colleges and high schools and scores of . . . YMCA and YWCA centers as well as agricultural extensions, charities, and research institutes.” Even today, privileged young Chinese commonly seek out higher education in the U.S. Pomfret: “From Deng Xiaoping on, every Communist leader has sent at least one of his children to the US to study, including the Harvard-educated daughter of the current president, Xi Jinping.”
Throughout most of the 20th century, American-educated Chinese played outsized roles in their country’s history. In the closing years of the 19th century and the first several decades of the 20th, most of those who attended American colleges and universities were Protestants. The range of their studies was as broad as that of American students. In more recent decades, a large proportion of Chinese students in the United States have obtained degrees in science and engineering. As a result, they have helped China attain ever-growing prominence in the sciences. And those who have chosen to remain in the U.S. have played a role in building the American high-tech sector far out of proportion to their share of the population.
An intimate relationship despite outward hostility
Pomfret emphasizes that the current hostility between the U.S. and China is largely a recent phenomenon. Until the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, the U.S. was generally held in high regard in China despite episodes such as the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901 when American troops invaded China. While Britain, Germany, France, Russia, and Japan repeatedly carved out portions of Chinese cities where their own laws applied, the anti-colonial U.S. rarely collaborated. This helped Americans gain a reputation as friendy and respectful by comparison. American support for Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist government, the U.S. role in the Korean War, and the Communist Chinese government’s need to elevate a single foreign enemy as a scapegoat were principally responsible for souring the relationship. Outwardly, the two countries have been hostile in recent decades. However, in reality, the relationship in recent years has been more intimate than ever.
The high regard in which most Chinese held Americans was not reciprocated. America’s attitude toward China and the Chinese was dominated by racism throughout much of the last two-and-a-half centuries. It’s well known that immigrant Chinese laborers played a major role in building the transcontinental railroad, less widely recognized that the same was true of the Western mining industry. Yet, as Pomfret notes, the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 to combat the so-called Yellow Peril “resulted in an epidemic of mass roundups, expulsions, arson, and murder that spread from California to Colorado, from Washington state to the South. The scattered violence of the 1870s turned into a systematic purge.” The law was not repealed until 1943. “The vast federal bureaucracy designed to limit immigration to America,” Pomfret explains, “was originally created not in response to Mexicans [and now Muslims], but to the Chinese.”
A lively account of U.S.-China relations
Pomfret’s account of U.S.-China relations is lively. Working chronologically, he paints sketchy portraits of many of the fascinating characters who have dominated this still unfolding drama. All the familiar names are there, of course—from the Dowager Empress Cixi, Sun Yat-Sen, and Mao Tse-Tung to Pearl Buck, John Dewey, and Richard Nixon—but most of the people who played major roles are unfamiliar to American readers. There are a lot of them: The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom consists of 700 pages of densely written text.
There are many surprises in the book. For me, the biggest of these was the revelation that, contrary to generally accepted scholarly opinion, the Chinese resistance to the Japanese was not led by Mao’s Communists but by the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-Shek. The Red Army rarely engaged the Japanese, while the Nationalists lost hundreds of thousands of troops doing so. Another surprise was to learn that Barbara Tuchman’s laudatory biography of U.S. General Joseph (“Vinegar Joe”) Stillwell was based in large part on misinformation. Pomfret documents the general’s repeated strategic and tactical errors in “advising” Chiang Kai-Shek. Pomfret concludes that “Tuchman’s Pulitzer Prize–winning work on Joseph Stilwell was magisterial but deeply unfair.”
The title of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom reflects the English translation of the names by which the two countries are sometimes rendered in Mandarin. “The Beautiful Country,” of course, refers to the United States, as it was regarded by many Chinese visitors beginning in the 19th century.
About the author
John Pomfret speaks, reads, and writes Mandarin as well as several European languages. In an Afterword, he writes “As a reporter for the Associated Press, I was tossed out of China in 1989 following the June Fourth massacre. The government accused me of being one of the ‘black hands’ behind the protests. Later, as the China bureau chief for the Washington Post, I had my share of run-ins with China’s security services . . .” He researched The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom as a Fulbright senior scholar in China.
The world’s wealthiest nation
Few Americans are aware that in 1800 China was the world’s wealthiest nation. Its factories produced one-third of all the world’s goods. The world’s wealthiest businessman was a Chinese trader. And a single Chinese city—Guangzhou (formerly Canton)—harbored a population of one million people. That was the equivalent of one-fourth of the U.S. population. Though China’s relative position in the world economy declined rapidly in the course of the 19th century, the country still loomed large in the eyes of American business and represented the number one target of the fast-growing evangelistic faiths that dominated religion in the U.S.
The central importance of bilateral trade
Pomfret surveys the two-and-a-half centuries that have elapsed since English-turned-American traders first visited China. In fact, trade between the U.S. and China is one of the dominant themes of that history. Many great American fortunes were built on the opium trade, which dominated bilateral commerce throughout the 19th century. In more recent years, beginning in earnest in the 1980s in the wake of Deng Xiao-Peng’s economic reforms, trade has loomed large in the economies of both countries. Today, of course, the U.S. exports more than $100 billion annually to China—and imports $400 billion. “America has been China’s top trading partner since the 1990s,” Pomfret writes. “China surpassed Canada to become America’s top partner in 2015.”
Missionaries and education in U.S.-China relations
Two other themes emerge clearly in The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: the disproportionately large role played by American Protestant missionaries, and the importance of U.S. influence both in building China’s educational system and in educating millions of Chinese in American universities. As Pomfret writes, “During the heyday of American missionary activity from the late nineteenth through the early twentieth century, Americans funded a majority of China’s colleges and high schools and scores of . . . YMCA and YWCA centers as well as agricultural extensions, charities, and research institutes.” Even today, privileged young Chinese commonly seek out higher education in the U.S. Pomfret: “From Deng Xiaoping on, every Communist leader has sent at least one of his children to the US to study, including the Harvard-educated daughter of the current president, Xi Jinping.”
Throughout most of the 20th century, American-educated Chinese played outsized roles in their country’s history. In the closing years of the 19th century and the first several decades of the 20th, most of those who attended American colleges and universities were Protestants. The range of their studies was as broad as that of American students. In more recent decades, a large proportion of Chinese students in the United States have obtained degrees in science and engineering. As a result, they have helped China attain ever-growing prominence in the sciences. And those who have chosen to remain in the U.S. have played a role in building the American high-tech sector far out of proportion to their share of the population.
An intimate relationship despite outward hostility
Pomfret emphasizes that the current hostility between the U.S. and China is largely a recent phenomenon. Until the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, the U.S. was generally held in high regard in China despite episodes such as the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901 when American troops invaded China. While Britain, Germany, France, Russia, and Japan repeatedly carved out portions of Chinese cities where their own laws applied, the anti-colonial U.S. rarely collaborated. This helped Americans gain a reputation as friendy and respectful by comparison. American support for Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist government, the U.S. role in the Korean War, and the Communist Chinese government’s need to elevate a single foreign enemy as a scapegoat were principally responsible for souring the relationship. Outwardly, the two countries have been hostile in recent decades. However, in reality, the relationship in recent years has been more intimate than ever.
The high regard in which most Chinese held Americans was not reciprocated. America’s attitude toward China and the Chinese was dominated by racism throughout much of the last two-and-a-half centuries. It’s well known that immigrant Chinese laborers played a major role in building the transcontinental railroad, less widely recognized that the same was true of the Western mining industry. Yet, as Pomfret notes, the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 to combat the so-called Yellow Peril “resulted in an epidemic of mass roundups, expulsions, arson, and murder that spread from California to Colorado, from Washington state to the South. The scattered violence of the 1870s turned into a systematic purge.” The law was not repealed until 1943. “The vast federal bureaucracy designed to limit immigration to America,” Pomfret explains, “was originally created not in response to Mexicans [and now Muslims], but to the Chinese.”
A lively account of U.S.-China relations
Pomfret’s account of U.S.-China relations is lively. Working chronologically, he paints sketchy portraits of many of the fascinating characters who have dominated this still unfolding drama. All the familiar names are there, of course—from the Dowager Empress Cixi, Sun Yat-Sen, and Mao Tse-Tung to Pearl Buck, John Dewey, and Richard Nixon—but most of the people who played major roles are unfamiliar to American readers. There are a lot of them: The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom consists of 700 pages of densely written text.
There are many surprises in the book. For me, the biggest of these was the revelation that, contrary to generally accepted scholarly opinion, the Chinese resistance to the Japanese was not led by Mao’s Communists but by the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-Shek. The Red Army rarely engaged the Japanese, while the Nationalists lost hundreds of thousands of troops doing so. Another surprise was to learn that Barbara Tuchman’s laudatory biography of U.S. General Joseph (“Vinegar Joe”) Stillwell was based in large part on misinformation. Pomfret documents the general’s repeated strategic and tactical errors in “advising” Chiang Kai-Shek. Pomfret concludes that “Tuchman’s Pulitzer Prize–winning work on Joseph Stilwell was magisterial but deeply unfair.”
The title of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom reflects the English translation of the names by which the two countries are sometimes rendered in Mandarin. “The Beautiful Country,” of course, refers to the United States, as it was regarded by many Chinese visitors beginning in the 19th century.
About the author
John Pomfret speaks, reads, and writes Mandarin as well as several European languages. In an Afterword, he writes “As a reporter for the Associated Press, I was tossed out of China in 1989 following the June Fourth massacre. The government accused me of being one of the ‘black hands’ behind the protests. Later, as the China bureau chief for the Washington Post, I had my share of run-ins with China’s security services . . .” He researched The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom as a Fulbright senior scholar in China.
June 6, 2017
Good data and wonderful narrative. Compared to most Western median persons, such as Journalists and popular scholars, Pomfret is much more informed. However, even standing in the enlightened side in this China-U.S. dialogue, Pomfret nevertheless represents the most common Western reaction towards China: Frustration.
Frequently, you can almost hear him yelling: "we (U.S.) have been so kind to you, why can't you go where we expect you to go?" Such frustration, of course, is mostly about politics and caused mostly by the uncomfortable anomaly of Communist Rule in China, amazingly stable until today. In so many Westerner's minds, Fukuyama is still right in talking about the "end of the world," and the coming collapse of China is what they expect naturally happen.
To a large extend, most westerner media don't even get the basics right, yet Pomfret does well. Only a minority of experts understand how many Chinese view China, what Chinese leaders since 1839 really want and how Chinese state is different from Western tradition. And just a handful of them are sympathetic towards that view and goal.
The danger is that China's meteoric rise is unhistoric and China hasn't figured out the right path yet, probably doesn't have time to think about it yet. And such ignorance, the inevitable collapse of China Mirage in American public discourse, strong military presence in Asia, and anger after frustration could easily lead us to a conflict that hurts this whole world. Just like the Spartans' feeling towards Athenians in two and a half millennia ago, that Athenians are "unreasonable, and even ungrateful." This sense of frustration could ensconce Americans further into its own narrative. In this sense, Pomfret's work is one step forward compared to many others, but also enhanced the dangerous trap leading to catastrophic possibilities.
Frequently, you can almost hear him yelling: "we (U.S.) have been so kind to you, why can't you go where we expect you to go?" Such frustration, of course, is mostly about politics and caused mostly by the uncomfortable anomaly of Communist Rule in China, amazingly stable until today. In so many Westerner's minds, Fukuyama is still right in talking about the "end of the world," and the coming collapse of China is what they expect naturally happen.
To a large extend, most westerner media don't even get the basics right, yet Pomfret does well. Only a minority of experts understand how many Chinese view China, what Chinese leaders since 1839 really want and how Chinese state is different from Western tradition. And just a handful of them are sympathetic towards that view and goal.
The danger is that China's meteoric rise is unhistoric and China hasn't figured out the right path yet, probably doesn't have time to think about it yet. And such ignorance, the inevitable collapse of China Mirage in American public discourse, strong military presence in Asia, and anger after frustration could easily lead us to a conflict that hurts this whole world. Just like the Spartans' feeling towards Athenians in two and a half millennia ago, that Athenians are "unreasonable, and even ungrateful." This sense of frustration could ensconce Americans further into its own narrative. In this sense, Pomfret's work is one step forward compared to many others, but also enhanced the dangerous trap leading to catastrophic possibilities.
October 11, 2016
A thorough, comprehensive history of America and China’s long and influential relationship.
Pomfret describes how both countries exchanged influence via culture and trade, and how both countries came into conflict (especially during the early Cold War) When describing the rise of China as a power, Pomfret emphasizes the role played by the US (initially via trade, then by missionary work)
Pomfret emphasizes the importance of a peaceful relationship between the two powers and argues that the US is the only world power with enough leverage over Beijing; he generally argues that a combination of containment and engagement has served American interests best.
The narrative is dense but the story moves forward in a straightforward, chronological manner,although it seems a bit too dense at times. There are also a few typos.
Pomfret describes how both countries exchanged influence via culture and trade, and how both countries came into conflict (especially during the early Cold War) When describing the rise of China as a power, Pomfret emphasizes the role played by the US (initially via trade, then by missionary work)
Pomfret emphasizes the importance of a peaceful relationship between the two powers and argues that the US is the only world power with enough leverage over Beijing; he generally argues that a combination of containment and engagement has served American interests best.
The narrative is dense but the story moves forward in a straightforward, chronological manner,although it seems a bit too dense at times. There are also a few typos.
June 19, 2017
This book was a gift from a long time friend. Although we both tend to focus our reading on nonfiction, particularly history, I was not very excited by the subject but I picked it up out of obligation to my friend. Plus, I was not familiar with the author although I had served several years onboard the submarine USS Pomfret. That had to be some kind of sign, didn't it? By the time I finished the prologue I was committed and looked forward to the story or as it turned out, series of stories. The author has an easy, conversational style of writing that one doesn't normally find in a book that is based on such extensive research. The flow of the story encompasses political, economic and religious influences that shape relations between U.S. and China. But the book has a strong human perspective throughout with many individual stories and profiles of people some of whom are well know today but others who have been lost to history. It is a terrific true story and, in view of our present political situation and the stupid decision to reject the Paris climate accord another twist in the U.S./China relationship.
March 11, 2018
This is an incredible work on the relationship between the United States and China. It is a very fascinating read from the first chapter to the last. When one thinks about the United States and China even at the surface one realizes that the two countries are very different: on the one hand one is a new country and on the other hand the other is an ancient kingdom that have existed for thousands of years. On the other hand one country represents the modern West while the other represents Asia. Nevertheless the amount of intersection and interaction between the countries is incredible and have shaped the two country in crucial ways more than most people realize. Despite the differences the people from both countries have historically been fascinated with each other while also being fearful and misunderstanding each other.
I am amazed at the amount of interesting facts that the author John Pomfert gives us in the book; I imagine a lot of research went into this work. The contents of the book could have easily been made into several books focusing on different aspects of the relationship between the United States but I appreciated that all the details are gathered in one volume. The book explores the relationship between the two countries historically not just only politically but also economically, culturally and socially. The book also explores angles such as education, entertainment, food, religion, immigration and military assistance and antagonism. The author explores these topics in a way that left readers interested to find out more.
My favorite part of the book was the author’s discussion of China as a new republic before the Communist’s take over in 1949. This was a period that I know very little about although watching films reenacting this era fascinates me. Pomfert devotes a big portion of the book to this time period. I wasn’t aware just how much Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of China was shaped by America which he not only visited but also was educated at in Hawaii. American values and ideals shaped Sun although the author was also careful to point out that Sun Yat-sen did not always live up to those ideals. I also thought the book’s discussion of missionary activities and business during the early half of the 1900s was also fascinating; readers will be pleasantly surprised to learn just how much Christian missionaries shaped China towards the direction of modernity with things such as women education, modern medicine, etc. Yet at the same time the author didn’t just explore the impact to China during this era but also how America was impacted by China and the Chinese as well. Pomfert talks about the introduction of Chinese food to American taste, America’s financial benefit of selling tobacco to China in which China was the largest importer of American tobacco than all the other exports to other countries combined and TV shows such as Charlie Chan. I enjoyed the chapter discussing Chinese American in Hollywood and even the irony of Charlie Chan being played by a non-Chinese with American stereotypes of Chinese while at the same time Chinese American actors who are very Americanized is trying to play a white man pretending to be Chinese; I thought that is a window of the complexity of being a Chinese American living in the United States! The discussion of Chinese immigrants in America was also insightful of how far America has come with the past racism directed towards Chinese yet the book also note that there is a long history of Chinese American using the law and litigation to protect themselves in court.
The book’s coverage of China and US relationship during the rule of Chiang Kai-shek was also very good. Using information from recent historical findings the book presents a different picture of Chiang Kai-shek than what some in academia use to believe. I love the critical approach Pomfert took that is refreshing contrary to past American writers and historians that historically have been slanted against Chiang Kai-shek. For instance contrary to president Franklin Roosevelt and American politicians and military leaders who thought Chiang was not doing enough to fight the Japanese the author argued it was simply incorrect. Some Americans during that time and also later historians thought Mao was doing a better job fighting the Japanese. But the truth was that 90 percent of battle casualties against the Japanese were the Chinese nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek. More scandalously the book recorded how American secret operators working for the OSS was arrested by the Communists because they would have found out and at times did find out of Communist collusion with the Japanese. As a result of recent historical research through Chinese archives by Chinese historians we also know that the Communists had a disinformation campaign and they were surprised at how easy Americans were willing to believe them. Pomfert also note the double standard of how the United States treated the French will the fall of Paris versus the Chinese loss of Shanghai and Nanking. Tragically some Americans leftists favored Mao and the communists without the critical eye they have towards Chiang and proved to be “useful idiots” for the communists. Unfortunately the US gave many empty promises and disrespect to their ally Chiang Kai-shek during World War Two. I was especially grieved to learn of poor US generals who were racists and bad in their own strategy using American and Chinese soldiers that ended in strategic defeats only to falsely blame Chiang and the nationalists. This was probably one of the lowest point in how US treated China and reading this makes me wonder if this explain why the Communists thought badly of Americans that if this is how we treat our ally and consider how nice we treated the “enemy” Communists why it is better to not be friend with America. I think that history would play out again with the wrong message American presidents and policy makers gave in regards to how readily the US was willing to throw Taiwan and Japan under the bus if the US could just get China to be friendly towards them even when it is also at American expense and loss. Yet as tragic as the US relationship with Chiang was during World War Two and afterwards I was encouraged to read about the American “Flying Tigers” aviators who fought against the Japanese in support of China and also the covert operators under SACO. These were bright lights in the midst of so much wrongs that FDR and his leadership pursued with China.
Yet the book is nuanced, it is not a “blame America” propaganda. The book also noted just how bad Communist China can be at breaking their words and keeping their end of the bargain. This is true in business where China demand American business to give their Chinese national partners business secrets which the Chinese then go ahead set up competing Chinese companies using those information. I learned from this work of how China gave nuclear blueprints to Pakistan which unfortunately fell into the hands of Iran and North Korea. We can multiply example of the broken words and bad relationships on the part of China.
I really love the many intersection between China and US in the book from American Chinese contribution towards American industry and prosperity to the social phenomon of the John Birch Society being named based upon events in China. Again there were too many things that I learned for the first time as a result of reading this book. While I discussed much more events from several decades in my review I was also surprised at the book covering more recent contemporary current affairs. Read the book and see why the author notes caution but also gives measured praise for China also as well. Nuanced, informative and fascinating.
I am amazed at the amount of interesting facts that the author John Pomfert gives us in the book; I imagine a lot of research went into this work. The contents of the book could have easily been made into several books focusing on different aspects of the relationship between the United States but I appreciated that all the details are gathered in one volume. The book explores the relationship between the two countries historically not just only politically but also economically, culturally and socially. The book also explores angles such as education, entertainment, food, religion, immigration and military assistance and antagonism. The author explores these topics in a way that left readers interested to find out more.
My favorite part of the book was the author’s discussion of China as a new republic before the Communist’s take over in 1949. This was a period that I know very little about although watching films reenacting this era fascinates me. Pomfert devotes a big portion of the book to this time period. I wasn’t aware just how much Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of China was shaped by America which he not only visited but also was educated at in Hawaii. American values and ideals shaped Sun although the author was also careful to point out that Sun Yat-sen did not always live up to those ideals. I also thought the book’s discussion of missionary activities and business during the early half of the 1900s was also fascinating; readers will be pleasantly surprised to learn just how much Christian missionaries shaped China towards the direction of modernity with things such as women education, modern medicine, etc. Yet at the same time the author didn’t just explore the impact to China during this era but also how America was impacted by China and the Chinese as well. Pomfert talks about the introduction of Chinese food to American taste, America’s financial benefit of selling tobacco to China in which China was the largest importer of American tobacco than all the other exports to other countries combined and TV shows such as Charlie Chan. I enjoyed the chapter discussing Chinese American in Hollywood and even the irony of Charlie Chan being played by a non-Chinese with American stereotypes of Chinese while at the same time Chinese American actors who are very Americanized is trying to play a white man pretending to be Chinese; I thought that is a window of the complexity of being a Chinese American living in the United States! The discussion of Chinese immigrants in America was also insightful of how far America has come with the past racism directed towards Chinese yet the book also note that there is a long history of Chinese American using the law and litigation to protect themselves in court.
The book’s coverage of China and US relationship during the rule of Chiang Kai-shek was also very good. Using information from recent historical findings the book presents a different picture of Chiang Kai-shek than what some in academia use to believe. I love the critical approach Pomfert took that is refreshing contrary to past American writers and historians that historically have been slanted against Chiang Kai-shek. For instance contrary to president Franklin Roosevelt and American politicians and military leaders who thought Chiang was not doing enough to fight the Japanese the author argued it was simply incorrect. Some Americans during that time and also later historians thought Mao was doing a better job fighting the Japanese. But the truth was that 90 percent of battle casualties against the Japanese were the Chinese nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek. More scandalously the book recorded how American secret operators working for the OSS was arrested by the Communists because they would have found out and at times did find out of Communist collusion with the Japanese. As a result of recent historical research through Chinese archives by Chinese historians we also know that the Communists had a disinformation campaign and they were surprised at how easy Americans were willing to believe them. Pomfert also note the double standard of how the United States treated the French will the fall of Paris versus the Chinese loss of Shanghai and Nanking. Tragically some Americans leftists favored Mao and the communists without the critical eye they have towards Chiang and proved to be “useful idiots” for the communists. Unfortunately the US gave many empty promises and disrespect to their ally Chiang Kai-shek during World War Two. I was especially grieved to learn of poor US generals who were racists and bad in their own strategy using American and Chinese soldiers that ended in strategic defeats only to falsely blame Chiang and the nationalists. This was probably one of the lowest point in how US treated China and reading this makes me wonder if this explain why the Communists thought badly of Americans that if this is how we treat our ally and consider how nice we treated the “enemy” Communists why it is better to not be friend with America. I think that history would play out again with the wrong message American presidents and policy makers gave in regards to how readily the US was willing to throw Taiwan and Japan under the bus if the US could just get China to be friendly towards them even when it is also at American expense and loss. Yet as tragic as the US relationship with Chiang was during World War Two and afterwards I was encouraged to read about the American “Flying Tigers” aviators who fought against the Japanese in support of China and also the covert operators under SACO. These were bright lights in the midst of so much wrongs that FDR and his leadership pursued with China.
Yet the book is nuanced, it is not a “blame America” propaganda. The book also noted just how bad Communist China can be at breaking their words and keeping their end of the bargain. This is true in business where China demand American business to give their Chinese national partners business secrets which the Chinese then go ahead set up competing Chinese companies using those information. I learned from this work of how China gave nuclear blueprints to Pakistan which unfortunately fell into the hands of Iran and North Korea. We can multiply example of the broken words and bad relationships on the part of China.
I really love the many intersection between China and US in the book from American Chinese contribution towards American industry and prosperity to the social phenomon of the John Birch Society being named based upon events in China. Again there were too many things that I learned for the first time as a result of reading this book. While I discussed much more events from several decades in my review I was also surprised at the book covering more recent contemporary current affairs. Read the book and see why the author notes caution but also gives measured praise for China also as well. Nuanced, informative and fascinating.
April 5, 2019
This was a fascinating look at the difficult and complicated relationship the US and China have had over the past few centuries. Today trade with China is often in the headlines and there is a strong sentiment in the US that China 'cheats' the US by stealing trade secrets or through currency manipulation. But reading this book has given me a hint of how complex this issue is. There is quite a bit of history of China being cheated by both the British and the US and where allies allowed events like the invasion by Japan to occur without consequences. The book also describes the campaigns that both the US and Chinese governments have waged over the years trying to influence public opinion against the other country. Really interesting and very well researched!
June 21, 2019
This is an immensely dense book about the relationship between China and America. The nature of writing such an overview necessitates that the reader has some inkling of history - this becomes more obvious when dealing with the later chapters on World War I and after. I didn't know much about WWI and WWII history, and I felt a little confused about what was going on.
Some notes:
- I realise that I've never been clear why the "中" in "中国" has been translated as "Middle" instead of "Central" - i.e. why not Central Kingdom? It seems more in keeping with the idea that the Chinese want the world to be centred around them.
- Similarly, "国" was translated as "Country" and "Kingdom" in the title - both are correct, but I wonder why the author chose that translation to convey that America is a country and China is a kingdom.
- The author was ultimately a fan of US-China relations; I do like that he talked about both country's mis-steps. For example, US was clearly prey to a constantly shifting policy (especially as presidents and political winds shifted), and this was often to the detriment of the Chinese who relied on them. The detriment quite clear when the author talks about Chiang Kai-shek and Taiwan - Chiang Kai-shek fought the Japanese with limited help from the US, and the Chinese communists basically reaped the profits of that fight.
- There are a few themes that come out clearly - (a) the importance of trade and science and (b) the importance of religion - although the latter could also be a byline for values, with modern China "struggling" against Western values.
This is brought out in an early chapter on the 19th century:
- For the Chinese, America played a dual role as someone to look up to and someone to hate.
- There are also minor themes that a modern audience would be interested in. Chapter 5, in particular, deals with how an economic downtown amplified a distaste for the other - in an economic downturn, Americans became more racist against the Chinese (or the immigrant). Sounds familiar.
- Or take the talk about Chinese students coming to America and being affected by the education received there. There's mostly factual talk about the loss of "Chinese" identity - one that is briefly dealt with but not explored. But to fully explore that could bog down such an ambitious book.
- I loved the bit that China's relations with America wax and wane according to each side's political needs - although the author seems to charge a certain degree of naivete on America's part.
- Some excerpts are hilarious:
- I also appreciated finding out about China's contribution to the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
- The communist party really comes off badly here. That said, American flip-flopping isn't treated that kindly either. The Taiwanese come off as victims.
- As a personal view: I'm not sure why early Americans were so adamant that China should remain one country; in hindsight, breaking China up might have been better - and it is a shame that the reasoning for America's belief in keeping China whole wasn't explored.
Some notes:
- I realise that I've never been clear why the "中" in "中国" has been translated as "Middle" instead of "Central" - i.e. why not Central Kingdom? It seems more in keeping with the idea that the Chinese want the world to be centred around them.
- Similarly, "国" was translated as "Country" and "Kingdom" in the title - both are correct, but I wonder why the author chose that translation to convey that America is a country and China is a kingdom.
- The author was ultimately a fan of US-China relations; I do like that he talked about both country's mis-steps. For example, US was clearly prey to a constantly shifting policy (especially as presidents and political winds shifted), and this was often to the detriment of the Chinese who relied on them. The detriment quite clear when the author talks about Chiang Kai-shek and Taiwan - Chiang Kai-shek fought the Japanese with limited help from the US, and the Chinese communists basically reaped the profits of that fight.
- There are a few themes that come out clearly - (a) the importance of trade and science and (b) the importance of religion - although the latter could also be a byline for values, with modern China "struggling" against Western values.
This is brought out in an early chapter on the 19th century:
Issachar Jacox Roberts represented a major strain of thinking in America's hopes for China: that it could be converted in one miraculous stroke into a nation like the United States. Such hopes did not die with the Tennessee evangelist. Simultaneously, however, Americans with a different vision - of a China that was stable, strong, and open for American trade - were hard at work.
- For the Chinese, America played a dual role as someone to look up to and someone to hate.
- There are also minor themes that a modern audience would be interested in. Chapter 5, in particular, deals with how an economic downtown amplified a distaste for the other - in an economic downturn, Americans became more racist against the Chinese (or the immigrant). Sounds familiar.
- Or take the talk about Chinese students coming to America and being affected by the education received there. There's mostly factual talk about the loss of "Chinese" identity - one that is briefly dealt with but not explored. But to fully explore that could bog down such an ambitious book.
- I loved the bit that China's relations with America wax and wane according to each side's political needs - although the author seems to charge a certain degree of naivete on America's part.
- Some excerpts are hilarious:
During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, there were still a few voices in Washington opposed to a closer military relationship with China. In a June 4, 1980, White House meeting, Thomas Watson, US ambassador to the Soviet Union, told Cart and Brzenzinski that the tilt was a bad idea and urged an "evenhanded" policy vis-a-vis the Soviets and the Chinese. "It seems to me that the Chinese have a tendency to jump around from bed to bed," Watson warned. "And I think we ought to make sure that they are lashed down to our bed before we undertake actions which we might regret later on." Brzenzinski dismissed Watson's concerns. "You have to remember," he assured Watson, "we are very sexy people,"
- I also appreciated finding out about China's contribution to the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
But it was [P. C.] Chang's work in the drafting of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was to cap the life of a man born in China and educated in America. Marrying Western belief in the primary of the individual with Chinese concern for the greater good, Chang personified the dream of the Great Harmony between China and the United States.
More than any other participant in the two-year odyssey to write the declaration, Chang pushed the committee to make it truly universal. He urged his colleagues to study Confucian thought and incorporate its teachings into the document. "In intellectual stature he towers over any other member of the committee," wrote John Humphrey, the first director of the UN Secretariat's Division on Human Rights. But Chang could be diplomatic, too. He was, Humphrey wrote, "a master of the art of compromise."
The story of Chang's labors, along with those of the Lebanese Christian Charles Malik and the Indian feminist Hansa Mehta, demolishes the notion, circulated later in Asia and backed strongly by the Chinese Communist Party, that the Universal Declaration on Human Rights represents Western political values incompatible with those of the rest of the world.
- The communist party really comes off badly here. That said, American flip-flopping isn't treated that kindly either. The Taiwanese come off as victims.
- As a personal view: I'm not sure why early Americans were so adamant that China should remain one country; in hindsight, breaking China up might have been better - and it is a shame that the reasoning for America's belief in keeping China whole wasn't explored.
January 18, 2025
Before we question the three star rating, I need to point out that it’s an objectively good, really well written and researched book. That being said, it was dense, extremely long, and most of my thoughts and reflections on information can be boiled down to “oh hey, that’s cool.”
February 7, 2017
Pomfret's "The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom was published in 2016. The book presents a 240 year history of United States and China relations from 1776 to 2015. His research is full of insights about why China matters in today's world of economic and cultural challenges. Pomfret's references are extensive and very impressive. It is an important book for students and practitioners involved in global economics and public policy. Pomfret served as a correspondent for the Washington Post and authored well respected books and articles covering Asia and China history.
July 20, 2017
Five stars all the way. This is the single best political history of China I have read that flows and keeps you turning the pages. The research is excellent (do not under any circumstances skip the end notes) and the stories add some of the most insightful lessons. But the one that keeps chasing me and keeping me awake in the middle of the night was the comment by a Communist Party official (p. 457): "We're going to make America think we're their friends."
August 19, 2018
Although China is indisputably today among the world’s greatest powers — diplomatically, economically, and militarily – many Westerners are unaware of what an incredible transformation this represents in less than 70 years.
China’s long civil war, most of it waged at the same time that China was also fighting to repel Japanese invaders, ended in 1949 with the defeat of Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist forces. But it was a poor nation, its people and resources exhausted from decades of war. It was also still largely a rural, agriculture-oriented society. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, and aided in the early years by the Soviet Union under Stalin, China began to rapidly industrialize and urbanize, achieving the kind of makeover in mere decades that took most other nations a century.
If we are to understand China’s deep reservations about Western — and US — motives and intentions we must be mindful of the two centuries of interactions between China and the West before our present time. China is a very ancient society with around 5,000 years of history, and her memory runs deep.
Two excellent books by Robert Bickers that cover the often unhappy relations between China and the West from the early 19th century to the present day are The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, and Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination). And John Pomfret’s The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present is thorough study of the relationship between China and the United States from the late 18th century onward. Both authors provide useful historical information about, as well as many sympathetic insights towards, the way China was often treated as a consequence of Western assumptions about the West’s alleged superior culture, including the use of force.
Bickers reveals how the West in the 19th century — Great Britain being the chief offender — repeatedly insulted China by firing upon her territory, occupying large portions of her coastal regions around key trading ports, and forcing her to agree to commercial terms far more favorable to them than to China. While it is customary for nations to regard others’ diplomatic stations as representing their nations’ own soil, the British — soon followed by the French, the Dutch and the Americans — took over entire neighborhoods as if they were their own; Chinese streets, alleyways and boulevards therein often became dangerous for Chinese ignoring posted notices warning against “trespassing.”
To be sure, this behavior was typical of how, in the latter part of the 19th century, Western nations also behaved towards other nations they deemed “lesser” as they competed among themselves for commercial advantage and colonial possessions. This hardly made the offenses less so in the eyes of the Chinese, though.
In addition to the impact that trade backed up by force had on China, it quickly became a magnet for another, in many ways even more unsettling, intrusion: the arrival of Christian missionaries. Some of these came, with similar faulty assumptions about China’s alleged “backwardness,” to “save the heathen natives,” still others to both share their faith and study the differences between their own societies and China’s. They often had a positive impact by their habit of establishing schools for local children and interested adults and in offering health care services that clearly helped more isolated areas. But their proselytizing, combined with their ignorance of Chinese religious practices, also offended many, especially when they interpreted Chinese reverence for their ancestors as a form of idolatry, calling it ancestor-worship.
From the early 19th century onward, however, many foreigners who journeyed to China quickly learned to admire and respect it for its culture, arts, and remarkable historical longevity. Whether they were missionaries, traders, soldiers, or diplomatic personnel, they did all they could to act as a buffer against the more vile or forceful intrusions of their own governments.
Nonetheless, in many ways, China’s earliest experiences with “the West” were both unhappy and destabilizing – for Chinese authorities as well as some of their institutions. Ever since there has been a back and forth between those in China who admire at least some of the institutions and practices of the West and, therefore, who push for China to adapt them itself and those who loath substantial elements of Western values and institutions because they undermine valued traditions and threaten Chinese interests.
Since there is a similar contest in the West, too, between those who admire China and wish to develop all possible friendly relations with her and those who regard her as the preeminent threat to the “order” established by the United States. This helps explain the repeating alternating cycles of hot and cold in the relations between China and the West.
As both Bickers’ books, and Pomfret’s The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, make clear, the record in the 20th century remained a mixed one.
On the one hand, for example, the United States repeatedly sought to support Chinese independence from foreign interference, especially that posed by Japan. But, on the other, China’s delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference formalizing the end of World War I found that its pleas for assistance were overridden by the both West’s infatuation with Japan’s rapid rise and, because of Japan’s military power, inclination to appease Japan in order to keep the Pacific region stable. (Frances Wood and Christopher Arnander have examined the relations between China and the West during World War I in their book, Betrayed Ally: China in the Great War.)
Even the US’s much-praised Open Door Policy was designed as much to keep trade with China open to it on an equal footing with other great powers as to prevent predatory nations from reverting to their behavior earlier in the 19th century.
China also found that her own hopes during the Second World War for more vigorous Allied assistance in pushing back Japanese armies within her borders were subordinated to the West’s priorities, including Great Britain’s resource-squandering attempts to keep the Japanese out of other Southeast Asian countries in their hope to maintain their colonies there after the war’s conclusion.
Pomfret’s balanced account illustrates well the up-and-down cycle — moving from relative warmth to frosty chill, and then back to warmer again — between China and the United States.
• While many in both countries are regularly drawn to the beauties of the other’s landscapes, intellectual and artistic traditions, and people, others remain suspicious of the motives behind, and the intentions of, the other country.
• This has often been complicated further by the oft-lurching foreign and domestic policies of successive American governments that, because of the election cycles in the US, could initiate abrupt changes in behavior and interest from one administration to another.
• Furthermore, each country’s primary interests were driven, logically enough, by their own domestic situations, and often made friendlier relations between them difficult for current office-holders.
Following the Second World War, when China was one of the founding members of the United Nations — and one of the few permanent members of its Security Council — the success of the Chinese Communists in winning total control of China caused reactions in both countries: in the US, because of the mistaken understanding of “communism” as being monolithic, and in China, because communist intellectuals had always been suspicious of the capitalist system symbolized by the United States. Accordingly, both sides withdrew for years from attempts at efforts to arrive at a better understanding of the other, let alone succeed in forging cooperative arrangements between them.
It was both the rupture of the once formerly close relations between China and the Soviet Union — that gave China’s leaders an incentive to look for an effective counter-balance against potential Soviet attack — and the ongoing turmoil of the Vietnam war and the growing Watergate scandal — which prodded Nixon to find a game- (and attention-) changing maneuver — that led to the Chinese inviting Nixon to visit China to explore renewing relations and, surprising to all who knew Nixon as an avid anti-communist, to his accepting.
Old suspicions in both nations still linger today, and for good reason. Even before the election of the unpredictable Trump, China looked with concern over Obama’s announced “turn to Asia” which did not signal increased cooperation between the two nations as much as it took the form of what China interpreted as encirclement: for not only did the US attempt to strengthen relationships with other Asian and Southeast Asian nations, including its one-time enemy Vietnam, but it sought expanded permission to post troops and establish naval bases in many of them, while at the same time refusing to join China’s announced economic plans for greater trans-Asia development.
In turn, from the perspective of many in the US, China’s rapid economic and military progress represented a potential threat to its interests in the Pacific, especially the “freedom of the seas” the US has long regarded as a necessary condition for unfettered trade. Further, China’s ambitious efforts to construct man-made “islands” in the China Sea were interpreted by the US as hostile, effectively “militarizing” the Western Pacific.
China responded that these were defensive in nature and, by the by, noting that it is not China that has military bases around the world and a dozen carrier groups capable of projecting military power everywhere.
And so it goes. This reader deeply hopes that saner, calmer minds will win out on both sides. We have much more in common than divides us, including global issues that only cooperation among the great powers has a chance of resolving, including the climate change that threatens our children and the countless millions who inhabit the world’s coastlines and the epidemic of terrorism that is a direct consequence of wars and poverty, much of it caused — or worsened — by US unilateral interventions in recent decades.
China’s long civil war, most of it waged at the same time that China was also fighting to repel Japanese invaders, ended in 1949 with the defeat of Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist forces. But it was a poor nation, its people and resources exhausted from decades of war. It was also still largely a rural, agriculture-oriented society. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, and aided in the early years by the Soviet Union under Stalin, China began to rapidly industrialize and urbanize, achieving the kind of makeover in mere decades that took most other nations a century.
If we are to understand China’s deep reservations about Western — and US — motives and intentions we must be mindful of the two centuries of interactions between China and the West before our present time. China is a very ancient society with around 5,000 years of history, and her memory runs deep.
Two excellent books by Robert Bickers that cover the often unhappy relations between China and the West from the early 19th century to the present day are The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, and Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination). And John Pomfret’s The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present is thorough study of the relationship between China and the United States from the late 18th century onward. Both authors provide useful historical information about, as well as many sympathetic insights towards, the way China was often treated as a consequence of Western assumptions about the West’s alleged superior culture, including the use of force.
Bickers reveals how the West in the 19th century — Great Britain being the chief offender — repeatedly insulted China by firing upon her territory, occupying large portions of her coastal regions around key trading ports, and forcing her to agree to commercial terms far more favorable to them than to China. While it is customary for nations to regard others’ diplomatic stations as representing their nations’ own soil, the British — soon followed by the French, the Dutch and the Americans — took over entire neighborhoods as if they were their own; Chinese streets, alleyways and boulevards therein often became dangerous for Chinese ignoring posted notices warning against “trespassing.”
To be sure, this behavior was typical of how, in the latter part of the 19th century, Western nations also behaved towards other nations they deemed “lesser” as they competed among themselves for commercial advantage and colonial possessions. This hardly made the offenses less so in the eyes of the Chinese, though.
In addition to the impact that trade backed up by force had on China, it quickly became a magnet for another, in many ways even more unsettling, intrusion: the arrival of Christian missionaries. Some of these came, with similar faulty assumptions about China’s alleged “backwardness,” to “save the heathen natives,” still others to both share their faith and study the differences between their own societies and China’s. They often had a positive impact by their habit of establishing schools for local children and interested adults and in offering health care services that clearly helped more isolated areas. But their proselytizing, combined with their ignorance of Chinese religious practices, also offended many, especially when they interpreted Chinese reverence for their ancestors as a form of idolatry, calling it ancestor-worship.
From the early 19th century onward, however, many foreigners who journeyed to China quickly learned to admire and respect it for its culture, arts, and remarkable historical longevity. Whether they were missionaries, traders, soldiers, or diplomatic personnel, they did all they could to act as a buffer against the more vile or forceful intrusions of their own governments.
Nonetheless, in many ways, China’s earliest experiences with “the West” were both unhappy and destabilizing – for Chinese authorities as well as some of their institutions. Ever since there has been a back and forth between those in China who admire at least some of the institutions and practices of the West and, therefore, who push for China to adapt them itself and those who loath substantial elements of Western values and institutions because they undermine valued traditions and threaten Chinese interests.
Since there is a similar contest in the West, too, between those who admire China and wish to develop all possible friendly relations with her and those who regard her as the preeminent threat to the “order” established by the United States. This helps explain the repeating alternating cycles of hot and cold in the relations between China and the West.
As both Bickers’ books, and Pomfret’s The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, make clear, the record in the 20th century remained a mixed one.
On the one hand, for example, the United States repeatedly sought to support Chinese independence from foreign interference, especially that posed by Japan. But, on the other, China’s delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference formalizing the end of World War I found that its pleas for assistance were overridden by the both West’s infatuation with Japan’s rapid rise and, because of Japan’s military power, inclination to appease Japan in order to keep the Pacific region stable. (Frances Wood and Christopher Arnander have examined the relations between China and the West during World War I in their book, Betrayed Ally: China in the Great War.)
Even the US’s much-praised Open Door Policy was designed as much to keep trade with China open to it on an equal footing with other great powers as to prevent predatory nations from reverting to their behavior earlier in the 19th century.
China also found that her own hopes during the Second World War for more vigorous Allied assistance in pushing back Japanese armies within her borders were subordinated to the West’s priorities, including Great Britain’s resource-squandering attempts to keep the Japanese out of other Southeast Asian countries in their hope to maintain their colonies there after the war’s conclusion.
Pomfret’s balanced account illustrates well the up-and-down cycle — moving from relative warmth to frosty chill, and then back to warmer again — between China and the United States.
• While many in both countries are regularly drawn to the beauties of the other’s landscapes, intellectual and artistic traditions, and people, others remain suspicious of the motives behind, and the intentions of, the other country.
• This has often been complicated further by the oft-lurching foreign and domestic policies of successive American governments that, because of the election cycles in the US, could initiate abrupt changes in behavior and interest from one administration to another.
• Furthermore, each country’s primary interests were driven, logically enough, by their own domestic situations, and often made friendlier relations between them difficult for current office-holders.
Following the Second World War, when China was one of the founding members of the United Nations — and one of the few permanent members of its Security Council — the success of the Chinese Communists in winning total control of China caused reactions in both countries: in the US, because of the mistaken understanding of “communism” as being monolithic, and in China, because communist intellectuals had always been suspicious of the capitalist system symbolized by the United States. Accordingly, both sides withdrew for years from attempts at efforts to arrive at a better understanding of the other, let alone succeed in forging cooperative arrangements between them.
It was both the rupture of the once formerly close relations between China and the Soviet Union — that gave China’s leaders an incentive to look for an effective counter-balance against potential Soviet attack — and the ongoing turmoil of the Vietnam war and the growing Watergate scandal — which prodded Nixon to find a game- (and attention-) changing maneuver — that led to the Chinese inviting Nixon to visit China to explore renewing relations and, surprising to all who knew Nixon as an avid anti-communist, to his accepting.
Old suspicions in both nations still linger today, and for good reason. Even before the election of the unpredictable Trump, China looked with concern over Obama’s announced “turn to Asia” which did not signal increased cooperation between the two nations as much as it took the form of what China interpreted as encirclement: for not only did the US attempt to strengthen relationships with other Asian and Southeast Asian nations, including its one-time enemy Vietnam, but it sought expanded permission to post troops and establish naval bases in many of them, while at the same time refusing to join China’s announced economic plans for greater trans-Asia development.
In turn, from the perspective of many in the US, China’s rapid economic and military progress represented a potential threat to its interests in the Pacific, especially the “freedom of the seas” the US has long regarded as a necessary condition for unfettered trade. Further, China’s ambitious efforts to construct man-made “islands” in the China Sea were interpreted by the US as hostile, effectively “militarizing” the Western Pacific.
China responded that these were defensive in nature and, by the by, noting that it is not China that has military bases around the world and a dozen carrier groups capable of projecting military power everywhere.
And so it goes. This reader deeply hopes that saner, calmer minds will win out on both sides. We have much more in common than divides us, including global issues that only cooperation among the great powers has a chance of resolving, including the climate change that threatens our children and the countless millions who inhabit the world’s coastlines and the epidemic of terrorism that is a direct consequence of wars and poverty, much of it caused — or worsened — by US unilateral interventions in recent decades.
January 1, 2019
This is a wonderful volume on Sino-American relations since the beginning of the US. John Pomfret does an excellent job of choosing excellent stories to tell that demonstrate an aspect of China-US relations. We learn that in the late 1700s to early 1800s, China was quite important to US shipping. A recurring theme is the rising expectations on both sides being dashed when realistic policies come into play. The relationship certainly does seem to be fairly special over the entire course of its existence. We see China gets special attention from missionaries, from businessmen, and even from the US government at times. Pomfret focuses on US-China relations before 1900 on a mostly individual rather than governmental level, and then after about 1900 it focuses more on intergovernmental relations as the world wars, the rise of the Communists in China, and to the current day.
Pomfret writes in entertaining prose, and has numerous interesting people to talk about throughout the entire book. I never felt as if the book was going too long, and even hoped that it could extend a little farther to see Pomfret's views on the Trump administration. Pomfret writes quite realistically about the dashed hopes on both sides, and he highlighted for me the behavior that China was able to get away with since they were recognized by the US in the 1970s. I think Pomfret gives a balanced discussion while also emphasizing just how much the US and China have relied on each other, and how much US investment was helpful in raising the Chinese economy to its current size (though full credit for the economic boom must go to a variety of actors including the Chinese people and government itself).
Pomfret also gives a nice history of the Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang), that shows that while the Nationalists don't have a spotless record, it is much better than the impression given in most history books. Chiang Kai Shek and his Nationalists really were the ones who fought the Japanese, and they were not as well supported by the US and Western Powers as is taken for granted.
Overall, just a very enlightening read. I thoroughly recommend the book to anyone interested in the China-US relationship. It's fascinating and well-researched throughout.
Pomfret writes in entertaining prose, and has numerous interesting people to talk about throughout the entire book. I never felt as if the book was going too long, and even hoped that it could extend a little farther to see Pomfret's views on the Trump administration. Pomfret writes quite realistically about the dashed hopes on both sides, and he highlighted for me the behavior that China was able to get away with since they were recognized by the US in the 1970s. I think Pomfret gives a balanced discussion while also emphasizing just how much the US and China have relied on each other, and how much US investment was helpful in raising the Chinese economy to its current size (though full credit for the economic boom must go to a variety of actors including the Chinese people and government itself).
Pomfret also gives a nice history of the Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang), that shows that while the Nationalists don't have a spotless record, it is much better than the impression given in most history books. Chiang Kai Shek and his Nationalists really were the ones who fought the Japanese, and they were not as well supported by the US and Western Powers as is taken for granted.
Overall, just a very enlightening read. I thoroughly recommend the book to anyone interested in the China-US relationship. It's fascinating and well-researched throughout.
January 25, 2021
A Great Primer on U.S.-Chinese History that Helped Me "Place" the Relationship in 2021
I've been a student of China and the Chinese Language for about a year and a half now, and I really appreciated the way that this book provides a blow-by-blow look at U.S.-China relationship starting from its inception in 1776. Here are my key takeaways:
*TRIVIA: I liked picking up the following "fun" facts, among others:
-George Washington has been (on and off) a revered historical figure in China.
-One of the author's theses is that China and the U.S. have a long history of setting impossibly high expectations for each other and then failing to deliver on them. This book did a lot to help me understand that perspective, especially given Roosevelt's vacillating promises to assist China throughout World War II.
-I loved learning the history of basketball in China, especially the story of Yao Ming.
*JUMPING-OFF POINT: I recommend that readers approach this book as a primer. It doesn't go too deeply into any single topic (including big-ticket historical watersheds like the Cultural Revolution or Tiananmen Square), but instead walks readers step by step through the chronology of the countries' relationships. I started keeping a separate list of topics/people that I wanted to learn more about while I went through the book. Now that I'm finished, I personally want to do more research on:
-Adele Field (an inspirational missionary-turned-educator)
-Fu Man Chu and Charlie Chan (early Hollywood depictions of Chinese Americans)
-Red Star Over China (America's introduction to Mao Zedong)
-And various other essays and novels
*TIMING TOUGH TO KEEP TRACK OF: One of my pet peeves throughout the book was that, even though the story was written to tell the story chronologically, the author repeatedly tried to make points by jumping back in time and placing them out of context. (For example, one chapter might end in 1950 but the next chapter opens in 1940. It got confusing!) I don't know if this bothered anyone else, but it occasionally made it hard for me to keep track of when various things actually took place.
All told, I'm happy that I read the book and I'm looking forward to following up on the many intriguing leads that it brought to my attention!
I've been a student of China and the Chinese Language for about a year and a half now, and I really appreciated the way that this book provides a blow-by-blow look at U.S.-China relationship starting from its inception in 1776. Here are my key takeaways:
*TRIVIA: I liked picking up the following "fun" facts, among others:
-George Washington has been (on and off) a revered historical figure in China.
-One of the author's theses is that China and the U.S. have a long history of setting impossibly high expectations for each other and then failing to deliver on them. This book did a lot to help me understand that perspective, especially given Roosevelt's vacillating promises to assist China throughout World War II.
-I loved learning the history of basketball in China, especially the story of Yao Ming.
*JUMPING-OFF POINT: I recommend that readers approach this book as a primer. It doesn't go too deeply into any single topic (including big-ticket historical watersheds like the Cultural Revolution or Tiananmen Square), but instead walks readers step by step through the chronology of the countries' relationships. I started keeping a separate list of topics/people that I wanted to learn more about while I went through the book. Now that I'm finished, I personally want to do more research on:
-Adele Field (an inspirational missionary-turned-educator)
-Fu Man Chu and Charlie Chan (early Hollywood depictions of Chinese Americans)
-Red Star Over China (America's introduction to Mao Zedong)
-And various other essays and novels
*TIMING TOUGH TO KEEP TRACK OF: One of my pet peeves throughout the book was that, even though the story was written to tell the story chronologically, the author repeatedly tried to make points by jumping back in time and placing them out of context. (For example, one chapter might end in 1950 but the next chapter opens in 1940. It got confusing!) I don't know if this bothered anyone else, but it occasionally made it hard for me to keep track of when various things actually took place.
All told, I'm happy that I read the book and I'm looking forward to following up on the many intriguing leads that it brought to my attention!
January 25, 2023
I was interested in The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, by John Pomfret, because I’d really enjoyed Chinese Lessons, his narrative nonfiction look at the stories of five classmates and how their lives show greater changes in Chinese life.
The “beautiful country” of the title is Mei Guo, the Mandarin name for the USA, and the “middle kingdom” is Zhong Guo, the traditional Mandarin name for China. This book explores the complicated relationship between China and the United States, and uses Pomfret’s years in China to deepen this analysis. I’d already read some of his work about China and Chinese life in Chinese Lessons. This one is a bit drier, but still has that understanding from an American living in China for years.
The book offers insight and explanation of the history of the US-China relationship. This gives context to modern issues. Pomfret traces the two countries’ relationship back to the 18th century, when American merchants, missionaries. and explorers first began to engage with China. This was interesting to me because Yantai, where I first lived in China, had been one of the treaty ports, and also when I stayed in Shanghai, I visited the French Concession area. Looking at the historical relationships between China and the west, especially when China had closed borders, adds perspective to the current relationship. He also looks at how China saw America and Americans over the years. I liked this because it was informative about general trends without stereotyping.
Pomfret describes the US and China as nuanced societies, with a more complicated relationship than we usually hear in a headline (or tweet of a clickbait headline). It can be a little slow in places, because he explains carefully how he’s drawn his conclusions, but it’s worth it for the layered understanding in this book. This is a rare non-fiction book for me, a very interesting and engaging read for anyone with an interest in China.
The “beautiful country” of the title is Mei Guo, the Mandarin name for the USA, and the “middle kingdom” is Zhong Guo, the traditional Mandarin name for China. This book explores the complicated relationship between China and the United States, and uses Pomfret’s years in China to deepen this analysis. I’d already read some of his work about China and Chinese life in Chinese Lessons. This one is a bit drier, but still has that understanding from an American living in China for years.
The book offers insight and explanation of the history of the US-China relationship. This gives context to modern issues. Pomfret traces the two countries’ relationship back to the 18th century, when American merchants, missionaries. and explorers first began to engage with China. This was interesting to me because Yantai, where I first lived in China, had been one of the treaty ports, and also when I stayed in Shanghai, I visited the French Concession area. Looking at the historical relationships between China and the west, especially when China had closed borders, adds perspective to the current relationship. He also looks at how China saw America and Americans over the years. I liked this because it was informative about general trends without stereotyping.
Pomfret describes the US and China as nuanced societies, with a more complicated relationship than we usually hear in a headline (or tweet of a clickbait headline). It can be a little slow in places, because he explains carefully how he’s drawn his conclusions, but it’s worth it for the layered understanding in this book. This is a rare non-fiction book for me, a very interesting and engaging read for anyone with an interest in China.
January 13, 2025
Longtime China journalist John Pomfret regards the relationship between the United States and China as a grand, sweeping epic marked by many highs and lows. “If there is a pattern to this baffling complexity,” Pomfret writes in his 2016 history,* The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present, “it may be best described as a never-ending Buddhist cycle of reincarnation. Both sides experience rapturous enchantment begetting hope, followed by disappointment, repulsion, and disgust, only to return to fascination once again.”
Pomfret’s book is similarly epic, with over 600 pages of text followed by dozens more covering reference notes, the bibliography, and index. That length might make Beautiful Country appear to be an intimidating read, though Pomfret’s short chapters and straightforward prose ensure that it is not a difficult one.
READ FULL REVIEW
Pomfret’s book is similarly epic, with over 600 pages of text followed by dozens more covering reference notes, the bibliography, and index. That length might make Beautiful Country appear to be an intimidating read, though Pomfret’s short chapters and straightforward prose ensure that it is not a difficult one.
READ FULL REVIEW
August 12, 2021
A remarkable book. Pomfret's journalistic voice makes this an easy read despite its length. Excellent anecdotes and much modern significance.
The most memorable chapter depicts the Treaty of Versaille and the May 4th Movement. The democratic hope that Chinese people put in Woodrow Wilson, the sincere desire with which Wilson desired to fulfil these wishes, and the tragic quality of the inevitable failure are all palpable. Pomfret elaborates this with vivid details, such as Chinese demonstrators waving banners in Beijing reading "Woodrow Wilson: the n. 1 good person in the world." I can only speculate how much the following disenchantment with the democratic promises has reverberated throughout the following century of Chinese history.
The most memorable chapter depicts the Treaty of Versaille and the May 4th Movement. The democratic hope that Chinese people put in Woodrow Wilson, the sincere desire with which Wilson desired to fulfil these wishes, and the tragic quality of the inevitable failure are all palpable. Pomfret elaborates this with vivid details, such as Chinese demonstrators waving banners in Beijing reading "Woodrow Wilson: the n. 1 good person in the world." I can only speculate how much the following disenchantment with the democratic promises has reverberated throughout the following century of Chinese history.
July 5, 2022
An excellent history of the relationship between China and the United States ranging from the earliest days of America to the present uneasy symbiosis. Pomfret has expertly weaved a highly informative, readable, and interesting narrative here. As someone who has read very little Chinese history, I'm glad I picked this one up.
Some rare negative reviews criticize this book for a supposed pro-America bias. But, I frankly don't see how it's possible to reach that conclusion. The author spends a great deal of time discussing many of the United States' foreign policy missteps and the reprehensible actions taken against Chinese-Americans throughout American history (e.g., the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882). In my view, this book takes an objective approach to the history of both countries and how those histories are intertwined. Highly recommend.
Some rare negative reviews criticize this book for a supposed pro-America bias. But, I frankly don't see how it's possible to reach that conclusion. The author spends a great deal of time discussing many of the United States' foreign policy missteps and the reprehensible actions taken against Chinese-Americans throughout American history (e.g., the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882). In my view, this book takes an objective approach to the history of both countries and how those histories are intertwined. Highly recommend.
April 17, 2024
A very detailed and very well researched book on the relationship between the two countries since the United States became an independent country. A lot of information was presented in this book, but themes start to emerge in the nearly 250-year relationship between the two countries and Mr. Pomfret loves to highlight them. Overall, the book is not centered around either country’s histories and really is a give and take between the two. He dedicates most of the book to the WWII era, as there is about 15 chapters detailing the era of the Republic of China and what happens during the war. Mr. Pomfret also fluctuates between political and cultural history, with the political histories flowing much easier than the cultural histories.
One critique I have of the book is the non-linear format the book takes in the last 7 chapters or so, plus Mr. Pomfret I felt was trying to cram in as much information as he possibly could on a subject and era that is still unfolding between our very eyes.
Another issue is the two glaring editorial errors that happen in Chapter 25. Thankfully, it is only that chapter, but there are kind of big that makes me wonder why the publisher and editor did not catch it when going over the final proofs.
Overall, a fantastic book. Well worth the read but take some time to read it because it does not read fast.
One critique I have of the book is the non-linear format the book takes in the last 7 chapters or so, plus Mr. Pomfret I felt was trying to cram in as much information as he possibly could on a subject and era that is still unfolding between our very eyes.
Another issue is the two glaring editorial errors that happen in Chapter 25. Thankfully, it is only that chapter, but there are kind of big that makes me wonder why the publisher and editor did not catch it when going over the final proofs.
Overall, a fantastic book. Well worth the read but take some time to read it because it does not read fast.
May 30, 2021
At the beginning and the end of this book, the chronology can veer about, the references and names can confuse, and the argument can get lost. But in the middle, especially the part concerning the period from the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 to President Nixon's meeting with Chiarman Mao in 1972, the book can be majestic and surprising. On the whole, it is likely to be the best book out there on understanding America's long-term relationship with China.
The book shows the complicated relationship between Chinese 20th century revolutionaries and "the beautiful country," Meiguo. Sun Yatsen grew up in Guandong but studied in Honolulu, was baptized by an American missionary in Hong Kong, went back to Hawaii to form the "Revive China Society," and late became temporary President of the new Republican government, until it was overthrown by Yuan Shikai (who was advised by an American constitutional scholar, Frank Goodnow, that monarchy was necessary for China.) Sun later teamed up with Adolph Jaffe and the Communists, but at the same time, relied on T.V. Soong, the head of the American-educated Soong family, to head a new central bank in Hong Kong, even as he married T.V.'s sister, Qingling. She later accused Sun's successor, Chiang Kai-Sheck, of failing the revolution, but Chiang had already married Soong Mayling (he packed his previous wife off to the US, where she wrote a damning memoir about him), and appointed her sister's Ailing's husband, H.H. King, as prime minister. At the same time, in 1927, that he attacked the Communists using his old underworld connections, a few US business interests, in Shanghai. The next year the United States became the first power to recognize Chiang's government, and to give it full control of its old revenues and end "extraterritoriality." So America was tied up with every stage of the early Chinese revolution.
Of course, many Americans also became infatuated with Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists, and the author is appropriately unstinting about them. Agnes Smedley was a lover of a Soviet agent in China, and recruited spies just as she was writing for the New Republic and launching a petition about a false charge about Chiang murdering 24 Communists, the supposed "Longhua Maryts." (Stalin himself had actually had them killed in a factional dispute.) Edgar Snow's trip to Yanaan and his subsequent Red Star over China (1937) did not just establish Mao as a later day George Washington for readers in America, it was translated back into Chinese and became the premier vehicle for conning the Chinese themselves into believing in Mao's infallibility. Soviet agent Lauchlin Currie in the White House, and unwitting dupes like John Paton Davies, Owen Lattimore, Jack Service and others in the State Department, also managed to convince FDR that the Communists were basically democrats, and thus America pushed Chiang to ally with them, even as it provided them with radio and other equipment during the war against the Japanese. It was a fatal mistake for which we're still paying.
Although the book occasionally drags, I was more eager to read it than any I can remember for awhile. The story of China and America's relationship is longer and more intricate than I had thought and obviously has continued ramifications for today.
The book shows the complicated relationship between Chinese 20th century revolutionaries and "the beautiful country," Meiguo. Sun Yatsen grew up in Guandong but studied in Honolulu, was baptized by an American missionary in Hong Kong, went back to Hawaii to form the "Revive China Society," and late became temporary President of the new Republican government, until it was overthrown by Yuan Shikai (who was advised by an American constitutional scholar, Frank Goodnow, that monarchy was necessary for China.) Sun later teamed up with Adolph Jaffe and the Communists, but at the same time, relied on T.V. Soong, the head of the American-educated Soong family, to head a new central bank in Hong Kong, even as he married T.V.'s sister, Qingling. She later accused Sun's successor, Chiang Kai-Sheck, of failing the revolution, but Chiang had already married Soong Mayling (he packed his previous wife off to the US, where she wrote a damning memoir about him), and appointed her sister's Ailing's husband, H.H. King, as prime minister. At the same time, in 1927, that he attacked the Communists using his old underworld connections, a few US business interests, in Shanghai. The next year the United States became the first power to recognize Chiang's government, and to give it full control of its old revenues and end "extraterritoriality." So America was tied up with every stage of the early Chinese revolution.
Of course, many Americans also became infatuated with Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists, and the author is appropriately unstinting about them. Agnes Smedley was a lover of a Soviet agent in China, and recruited spies just as she was writing for the New Republic and launching a petition about a false charge about Chiang murdering 24 Communists, the supposed "Longhua Maryts." (Stalin himself had actually had them killed in a factional dispute.) Edgar Snow's trip to Yanaan and his subsequent Red Star over China (1937) did not just establish Mao as a later day George Washington for readers in America, it was translated back into Chinese and became the premier vehicle for conning the Chinese themselves into believing in Mao's infallibility. Soviet agent Lauchlin Currie in the White House, and unwitting dupes like John Paton Davies, Owen Lattimore, Jack Service and others in the State Department, also managed to convince FDR that the Communists were basically democrats, and thus America pushed Chiang to ally with them, even as it provided them with radio and other equipment during the war against the Japanese. It was a fatal mistake for which we're still paying.
Although the book occasionally drags, I was more eager to read it than any I can remember for awhile. The story of China and America's relationship is longer and more intricate than I had thought and obviously has continued ramifications for today.
September 18, 2021
The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom is a very extensive overview of the relationship between the United States and China. John Pomfret does a good job balancing the diverse debates and interpretations that characterize our long past. After reading a number of policy related articles and books, it was nice to simply enjoy a good narrative history that did not feel the need to persuade, and could simply exist as a product to convey information. I imagine for some people it may be uncomfortable, as it has the United States and China come to terms with their own mistakes.
At the same time, it appears as though there was a small amount of self-censorship on the part of Pomfret to avoid speaking with too much specificity on issues with the potential to anger a Chinese audience. If anything, this book feels designed to be read by both Americans and Chinese in order to cultivate a greater understanding of each other, so I feel no need to criticize that editorial decision. Enough is said to avoid any accusation of white washing or revisionism, and that's more than enough for me.
I recommend the book for anyone wanting to learn more about the relationship between China and the United States.
91/100 | A-
At the same time, it appears as though there was a small amount of self-censorship on the part of Pomfret to avoid speaking with too much specificity on issues with the potential to anger a Chinese audience. If anything, this book feels designed to be read by both Americans and Chinese in order to cultivate a greater understanding of each other, so I feel no need to criticize that editorial decision. Enough is said to avoid any accusation of white washing or revisionism, and that's more than enough for me.
I recommend the book for anyone wanting to learn more about the relationship between China and the United States.
91/100 | A-
April 21, 2017
I found this book trying much too hard to find a common ground between China & the USA and underplaying the USA's part in the colonizing of China, no question that China did plenty itself to undermine it becoming a modern country, the USA was, while bit less, complicate with GB and the other European powers and Jaan in also holding back progress in China...The book is nicely written, but is to scattered and as I said not an accurate account of the USA/China history...
December 16, 2016
Very interesting and well written book.
I learned a lot.
I learned a lot.
May 13, 2017
The book is too ambitious and too colored by the author's own framework.
January 18, 2019
Highly Recommended. Extensive, Balanced, Informative retelling of the interwoven history of America & China.
November 29, 2016
I learned a lot by reading this book
September 1, 2018
The American-Chinese Love-Hate Relationship over 200 Years
China in the 18th Century was the world’s wealthiest country, self-satisfied that culturally and economically it was superior to any other place in the known world. What may be surprising to readers of John Pomfret’s engaging history is that as early as 1783, once America gained independence, Yankee ships were engaged in trade with China. This began a love-hate, passive-aggressive relationship that endures to this day.
Pomfret argues that over more than 200 years, both sides have engaged in a lot of myth-making about the other. In the 19th Century, the US was viewed by the Chinese as more respectful of their culture and more benign than the leading European powers. American missionaries brought Christianity and education to China, and in 1902 China sent its first group of government-sponsored students to the US.
But the US also joined European powers in interfering in China’s internal affairs. In 1901, under the “Boxer Protocol” the US sent a regiment to North China. Commanders included George Marshall and Matthew Ridgeway. These troops had the highest rates of alcoholism and VD in the US Army.
The Treaty of 1903 sought to bring China into the modern world on terms favorable to the US, asking the Chinese to open their country to US investment, create a stable currency, and protect US trademarks — issues that Pomfret points out are still on the table today.
Sun Yat-sen, the first president of the Republic of China, who had sailed to Hawaii at the age of 13, embraced American culture and was the only Chinese leader to be truly conversant with both American and Chinese cultures. Unfortunately he was outmaneuvered by a Chinese army commander Yuan who assumed power. Rather than embracing reform in China, American legal scholar Frank Johnson Goodnow believed the China was not ready for democracy helped write a constitution giving Yuan dictatorial power.
Chinese leaders were also disillusioned with the Treaty of Versailles and significantly this marked the point that Mao Tse Tung turned away from the US to the Soviet Union, asserts Pomfret. Ironically, Chiang Kai-shek was another 20th Century Chinese leader to go to Moscow, study, and benefit from Soviet military aid. Chiang flirted with Communism but was really dedicated solely to personal power.
In the 1920s, Shanghai was considered the “Paris of the East” but was more like New York, says the author, embracing jazz and other American imports.
Japan’s invasion of China in 1937 knitted the two countries together. Once the US entered the war against Japan, America had an unrealistic view of the military aggressiveness of the Communists vs. Chiang Kai-shek’s forces. This was a matter of access. The Americans were able to view the Nationalists first-hand but were largely excluded from the Communist side. This led to the myth that the Communists were far more effective in fighting the Japanese than the Nationalists under Chiang, says Pomfret. In fact, both sides were husbanding resources that could be used in the civil war following Japan’s defeat. Mao prevailed, says Pomfret, when the US provided little material support to Chiang.
Pomfret is highly critical of what he sees as American naiveté in the post-war period. Americans are confident China will evolve into a society like our own, and time and again we are disappointed. The author argues that Nixon and Kissinger “gave away the store”, conceding Taiwan and providing intelligence on the Soviet Union without getting anything in return. Americans romanticized China’s strengths, overlooked its weaknesses, and demonstrated willingness to overlook human rights abuses.
Nowhere is the passive-aggressive relationship between the two countries more visible than in the matter of trade and global stature. The US careens from paranoid disenchantment to affable fascination and back again, notes Pomfret. On the Chinese side, a book entitled, “China Can Say No” became a best seller, arguing that China has become a superpower in its own right and didn’t need to subordinate itself to the United States.
Pomfret ends on a positive note, believing that both China and America view the maintenance of peace as the highest goal. It is in the interest of both countries to protect the vast web of their economic and social interests. Readers will learn a great deal about the US-China relationship in this well-written chronicle of the two countries’ historic interaction.
China in the 18th Century was the world’s wealthiest country, self-satisfied that culturally and economically it was superior to any other place in the known world. What may be surprising to readers of John Pomfret’s engaging history is that as early as 1783, once America gained independence, Yankee ships were engaged in trade with China. This began a love-hate, passive-aggressive relationship that endures to this day.
Pomfret argues that over more than 200 years, both sides have engaged in a lot of myth-making about the other. In the 19th Century, the US was viewed by the Chinese as more respectful of their culture and more benign than the leading European powers. American missionaries brought Christianity and education to China, and in 1902 China sent its first group of government-sponsored students to the US.
But the US also joined European powers in interfering in China’s internal affairs. In 1901, under the “Boxer Protocol” the US sent a regiment to North China. Commanders included George Marshall and Matthew Ridgeway. These troops had the highest rates of alcoholism and VD in the US Army.
The Treaty of 1903 sought to bring China into the modern world on terms favorable to the US, asking the Chinese to open their country to US investment, create a stable currency, and protect US trademarks — issues that Pomfret points out are still on the table today.
Sun Yat-sen, the first president of the Republic of China, who had sailed to Hawaii at the age of 13, embraced American culture and was the only Chinese leader to be truly conversant with both American and Chinese cultures. Unfortunately he was outmaneuvered by a Chinese army commander Yuan who assumed power. Rather than embracing reform in China, American legal scholar Frank Johnson Goodnow believed the China was not ready for democracy helped write a constitution giving Yuan dictatorial power.
Chinese leaders were also disillusioned with the Treaty of Versailles and significantly this marked the point that Mao Tse Tung turned away from the US to the Soviet Union, asserts Pomfret. Ironically, Chiang Kai-shek was another 20th Century Chinese leader to go to Moscow, study, and benefit from Soviet military aid. Chiang flirted with Communism but was really dedicated solely to personal power.
In the 1920s, Shanghai was considered the “Paris of the East” but was more like New York, says the author, embracing jazz and other American imports.
Japan’s invasion of China in 1937 knitted the two countries together. Once the US entered the war against Japan, America had an unrealistic view of the military aggressiveness of the Communists vs. Chiang Kai-shek’s forces. This was a matter of access. The Americans were able to view the Nationalists first-hand but were largely excluded from the Communist side. This led to the myth that the Communists were far more effective in fighting the Japanese than the Nationalists under Chiang, says Pomfret. In fact, both sides were husbanding resources that could be used in the civil war following Japan’s defeat. Mao prevailed, says Pomfret, when the US provided little material support to Chiang.
Pomfret is highly critical of what he sees as American naiveté in the post-war period. Americans are confident China will evolve into a society like our own, and time and again we are disappointed. The author argues that Nixon and Kissinger “gave away the store”, conceding Taiwan and providing intelligence on the Soviet Union without getting anything in return. Americans romanticized China’s strengths, overlooked its weaknesses, and demonstrated willingness to overlook human rights abuses.
Nowhere is the passive-aggressive relationship between the two countries more visible than in the matter of trade and global stature. The US careens from paranoid disenchantment to affable fascination and back again, notes Pomfret. On the Chinese side, a book entitled, “China Can Say No” became a best seller, arguing that China has become a superpower in its own right and didn’t need to subordinate itself to the United States.
Pomfret ends on a positive note, believing that both China and America view the maintenance of peace as the highest goal. It is in the interest of both countries to protect the vast web of their economic and social interests. Readers will learn a great deal about the US-China relationship in this well-written chronicle of the two countries’ historic interaction.
October 12, 2018
China (the Middle Kingdom) and the United States (the Beautiful Country) have long held each other in esteem and awe, setting high expectations for their relationship and the other's behavior, and both have repeatedly and consistently let each other down. At least that seems to be the thesis of Mr. Pomfret's deep and interesting dive into the history of the Chinese-US relationship. He supports much of it with thoughtful research and numerous vignettes that illustrate how China and the United States have for the most part treated or viewed each other differently than other countries.
Starting with trade in the mid-to-late 1700s, people from the Beautiful Country treated the Chinese differently than Europeans, and the Chinese reciprocated by viewing the US as different (and better) than European nations. Yet therein lie the seeds of disappointment: China would look for the US to support it against all aggressors and the US would view a strong China as in its best interests, but China's internal problems and external conflicts would lead it to fail to gain strength or provide a consistent and reliable partner for the US, while US strength (until into the 1900s), changing internal politics, and priorities would keep China at the bottom of the list of countries to support and promises to keep. Over time, their respective governments and people would also vilify each other while simultaneously trying to keep each other close and in a different, more symbiotic relationship than is expected of or normal to most nations. As the US grew stronger during and after WWII, it would perform much larger swings in behavior toward China, and China would simultaneously look to the US for salvation protection and for a useful foil to its nearby enemies and threats. Similarly, the US would support China's rise as a foil to the USSR while never committing enough to make lasting change in China. As China and US diverged politically and the US and Taiwan became more politically similar, China would start to use the US much more than the US would use China, although the deception, inconsistency, and fair-weather friendship continued on both sides. This complex relationship continues to provide mixed emotions on both sides: the US seeking a democratic China that allows free and fair trade while also seeking its stability as a market for US goods and capital, China seeking a market for its goods and education for its elite while also looking for the US to leave the Pacific and let China dominate that ocean's Asian half.
The book is on the whole well written and easy to read, but it does leave something to be desired. Some of the vignettes are stilted or seem to be thrown together without much to tie them together. The author also regularly includes background information and then fails to use it or explain its significance, such as listing the birth city of many individuals and the names of their parents but for the most part leaving the reader to wonder what that information intends to contribute to the narrative or thesis other than possibly to appear more credible. The author also spreads plenty of blame around for the many failures in the US-China relationship, but then does only a little to explain the competing priorities that led to the breakdown and why they were strong enough to lead to neglect or temporary abandonment of China-US relations. The author is obviously knowledgeable and the book need not focus on the countries in regards to their entire foreign and trade policies, but I would have appreciated a bit more than assertions that interests elsewhere dominated such that treaties/promises couldn't be kept or leverage couldn't be used. The middle section of the book discussing relations between WWII and the mid-1980s, seems to drag at points where the author introduces numerous characters while jumping across multiple decades with only loose themes to tie them together. However, anyone interested in China-US relations shouldn't let these small faults discourage them from reading a wonderful book on a complex relationship between two countries that think the world of themselves and hold unreasonably high expectations for each other.
Starting with trade in the mid-to-late 1700s, people from the Beautiful Country treated the Chinese differently than Europeans, and the Chinese reciprocated by viewing the US as different (and better) than European nations. Yet therein lie the seeds of disappointment: China would look for the US to support it against all aggressors and the US would view a strong China as in its best interests, but China's internal problems and external conflicts would lead it to fail to gain strength or provide a consistent and reliable partner for the US, while US strength (until into the 1900s), changing internal politics, and priorities would keep China at the bottom of the list of countries to support and promises to keep. Over time, their respective governments and people would also vilify each other while simultaneously trying to keep each other close and in a different, more symbiotic relationship than is expected of or normal to most nations. As the US grew stronger during and after WWII, it would perform much larger swings in behavior toward China, and China would simultaneously look to the US for salvation protection and for a useful foil to its nearby enemies and threats. Similarly, the US would support China's rise as a foil to the USSR while never committing enough to make lasting change in China. As China and US diverged politically and the US and Taiwan became more politically similar, China would start to use the US much more than the US would use China, although the deception, inconsistency, and fair-weather friendship continued on both sides. This complex relationship continues to provide mixed emotions on both sides: the US seeking a democratic China that allows free and fair trade while also seeking its stability as a market for US goods and capital, China seeking a market for its goods and education for its elite while also looking for the US to leave the Pacific and let China dominate that ocean's Asian half.
The book is on the whole well written and easy to read, but it does leave something to be desired. Some of the vignettes are stilted or seem to be thrown together without much to tie them together. The author also regularly includes background information and then fails to use it or explain its significance, such as listing the birth city of many individuals and the names of their parents but for the most part leaving the reader to wonder what that information intends to contribute to the narrative or thesis other than possibly to appear more credible. The author also spreads plenty of blame around for the many failures in the US-China relationship, but then does only a little to explain the competing priorities that led to the breakdown and why they were strong enough to lead to neglect or temporary abandonment of China-US relations. The author is obviously knowledgeable and the book need not focus on the countries in regards to their entire foreign and trade policies, but I would have appreciated a bit more than assertions that interests elsewhere dominated such that treaties/promises couldn't be kept or leverage couldn't be used. The middle section of the book discussing relations between WWII and the mid-1980s, seems to drag at points where the author introduces numerous characters while jumping across multiple decades with only loose themes to tie them together. However, anyone interested in China-US relations shouldn't let these small faults discourage them from reading a wonderful book on a complex relationship between two countries that think the world of themselves and hold unreasonably high expectations for each other.
October 28, 2018
Several disclaimers up front:
* Stars are not for quality (which deserves at least a 4) but to guide Goodreads' recommendation algorithm toward my personal reading preferences.
* I only read Part I (the first 9 chapters/136 pages), and I did so with very particular interests in mind (see below).
* This review is entirely my opinion and does not in any way reflect the opinions of my employer.
Whew! Now that all that's finally out of the way...
As stated, I only read the parts of this book relevant to my interests. I have a novel project on the back-back-back burner (argh, life!) set somewhere between 1898 and 1902. The main characters is a Chinese/Chinese-American woman (part of reading this was to find out whether this was even possible with the Chinese Exclusion Act) who is also a doctor. Chapter 7, "Bible Women", was exceptionally helpful in this regard.
What interested me most was China's apparent admiration for the States through the early 20th century (until one betrayal too many at the post-WWI Versailles Peace Conference), and how often that admiration was mutual. What a wasted opportunity! We're so used to seeing China as a rival these days, and I think we've even bought in to some of the 20th century communist party's propaganda that China was too stuck in its old ways to modernize without being dragged kicking and screaming. It's remarkable how many opportunities there were for things to turn out differently, if only the U.S. had gotten over its navel-gazing, on-again-off-again xenophobia, and conflicting desires for empire and isolation.
It was also refreshing to realize how many American missionaries--particularly single women, which I didn't even know was possible!--went over hoping to convert the Chinese to Christianity only to accept that it wasn't going to work and adjust their missions accordingly. Many ended up opening schools for women, hospitals, and medical schools. It's a stereotype now that many Chinese Americans and Chinese educated in America become doctors, but that tradition health care, and traveling to the States for advanced medical education, was nurtured by Americans. Which helps my theoretical novel immensely!
Anyway, while I can't comment on the content of the book as a whole, I will say that I had a little trouble following the timeline in Part II. Dates seemed to disappear right when I needed them for reference, and then leaped forward years at a time. At one point a chapter seemed to end in the middle of the Boxer Rebellion and didn't pick it up until at least a whole chapter later. That said, the quality of the writing was excellent. Pomfret certainly knows how to tell a good story...but he might be better suited to topic-themed chapters like "Bible Women" rather than strictly linear history.
As far as I read, this is a highly valuable book with a fascinating angle on a topic of critical importance in the 21st century. Pomfret provides a fair and balanced view of both countries' strengths and shortcomings, and any cynicism about America in this review is my own.
* Stars are not for quality (which deserves at least a 4) but to guide Goodreads' recommendation algorithm toward my personal reading preferences.
* I only read Part I (the first 9 chapters/136 pages), and I did so with very particular interests in mind (see below).
* This review is entirely my opinion and does not in any way reflect the opinions of my employer.
Whew! Now that all that's finally out of the way...
As stated, I only read the parts of this book relevant to my interests. I have a novel project on the back-back-back burner (argh, life!) set somewhere between 1898 and 1902. The main characters is a Chinese/Chinese-American woman (part of reading this was to find out whether this was even possible with the Chinese Exclusion Act) who is also a doctor. Chapter 7, "Bible Women", was exceptionally helpful in this regard.
What interested me most was China's apparent admiration for the States through the early 20th century (until one betrayal too many at the post-WWI Versailles Peace Conference), and how often that admiration was mutual. What a wasted opportunity! We're so used to seeing China as a rival these days, and I think we've even bought in to some of the 20th century communist party's propaganda that China was too stuck in its old ways to modernize without being dragged kicking and screaming. It's remarkable how many opportunities there were for things to turn out differently, if only the U.S. had gotten over its navel-gazing, on-again-off-again xenophobia, and conflicting desires for empire and isolation.
It was also refreshing to realize how many American missionaries--particularly single women, which I didn't even know was possible!--went over hoping to convert the Chinese to Christianity only to accept that it wasn't going to work and adjust their missions accordingly. Many ended up opening schools for women, hospitals, and medical schools. It's a stereotype now that many Chinese Americans and Chinese educated in America become doctors, but that tradition health care, and traveling to the States for advanced medical education, was nurtured by Americans. Which helps my theoretical novel immensely!
Anyway, while I can't comment on the content of the book as a whole, I will say that I had a little trouble following the timeline in Part II. Dates seemed to disappear right when I needed them for reference, and then leaped forward years at a time. At one point a chapter seemed to end in the middle of the Boxer Rebellion and didn't pick it up until at least a whole chapter later. That said, the quality of the writing was excellent. Pomfret certainly knows how to tell a good story...but he might be better suited to topic-themed chapters like "Bible Women" rather than strictly linear history.
As far as I read, this is a highly valuable book with a fascinating angle on a topic of critical importance in the 21st century. Pomfret provides a fair and balanced view of both countries' strengths and shortcomings, and any cynicism about America in this review is my own.
November 11, 2025
A terrific survey of the history of US-China relations that gives essential context for understanding the present dynamic between the two country. If you’re interested in China, I cannot recommend this book enough.
A few thoughts:
- I was surprised by the extent to which American interest in China has been driven by “heartland” states rather than the coasts. It seems that every American missionary, educator, or sino-phile comes from Missouri, Illinois, or some place like it. This seems to be the opposite of the present moment - where sino-skepticism is most firmly rooted in rural, conservative areas. I think it’s helpful to remind ourselves of the historic interest and friendship between the two countries and to hope that one day the spirit of openness returns.
- In light of that hope, it’s worth acknowledging how up-and-down US-China relations have been over the past 200 years. Eras of openness and collaboration are followed by periods of brinksmanship, which then become again eras of openness. The two countries are constantly yo-yo-ing between one another - driven by fascination, fear, curiosity, greed, and hope. The one thing that has stood constant is this: we cannot ignore one another. We are inextricably bound and always have been.
- The Chinese are better at long-term thinking, but the American project is irresistible. Presidential administration after presidential administration, the Chinese have gotten more from us than we’ve gotten from them. As the book notes, the Chinese think of “win-win” situations as involving two wins for them. They are hesitant to reciprocate magnanimity, and take American efforts towards conciliation as weakness. Yet, their own people can’t quit the idea of America. Despite decades of anti-Yankee propaganda, they eagerly embrace our films and music and sports and culture. That’s why the CCP has to censor the internet and police the media; the Shining City on the Hill is irresistible.
- To the extent we are in a competition with China, there is only one way we can win. We have to double down on what makes America great. Free enterprise and an entrepreneurial spirit, an open door to talented immigrants, an active civil society, freedoms enshrined in law, and ultimately a sense of optimism about what we can accomplish. We do not beat China by becoming China - or trying to stop their rise. We beat China by becoming the best version of ourselves. If we do that, we are unstoppable.
Reading this book made me at different points love and hate China, fear and embrace it. That has always been the way that it’s been. For many generations, America had the dream of a strong, unified China. Well, we got our wish. What we do with it will define the course of history.
A few thoughts:
- I was surprised by the extent to which American interest in China has been driven by “heartland” states rather than the coasts. It seems that every American missionary, educator, or sino-phile comes from Missouri, Illinois, or some place like it. This seems to be the opposite of the present moment - where sino-skepticism is most firmly rooted in rural, conservative areas. I think it’s helpful to remind ourselves of the historic interest and friendship between the two countries and to hope that one day the spirit of openness returns.
- In light of that hope, it’s worth acknowledging how up-and-down US-China relations have been over the past 200 years. Eras of openness and collaboration are followed by periods of brinksmanship, which then become again eras of openness. The two countries are constantly yo-yo-ing between one another - driven by fascination, fear, curiosity, greed, and hope. The one thing that has stood constant is this: we cannot ignore one another. We are inextricably bound and always have been.
- The Chinese are better at long-term thinking, but the American project is irresistible. Presidential administration after presidential administration, the Chinese have gotten more from us than we’ve gotten from them. As the book notes, the Chinese think of “win-win” situations as involving two wins for them. They are hesitant to reciprocate magnanimity, and take American efforts towards conciliation as weakness. Yet, their own people can’t quit the idea of America. Despite decades of anti-Yankee propaganda, they eagerly embrace our films and music and sports and culture. That’s why the CCP has to censor the internet and police the media; the Shining City on the Hill is irresistible.
- To the extent we are in a competition with China, there is only one way we can win. We have to double down on what makes America great. Free enterprise and an entrepreneurial spirit, an open door to talented immigrants, an active civil society, freedoms enshrined in law, and ultimately a sense of optimism about what we can accomplish. We do not beat China by becoming China - or trying to stop their rise. We beat China by becoming the best version of ourselves. If we do that, we are unstoppable.
Reading this book made me at different points love and hate China, fear and embrace it. That has always been the way that it’s been. For many generations, America had the dream of a strong, unified China. Well, we got our wish. What we do with it will define the course of history.
August 30, 2021
A richly detailed study of Chinese-American relationship from the founding of the United States to the present, a history that was and is fraught with "what-if's".
As with any book on a rapidly changing area, this book is (no fault of the author) already a bit out of date. With the recent belligerent behaviour of Red China, the brutal crackdown on free speech and personal freedom in Hong Kong, and the threat of an invasion of Taiwan by the Communist China, it seems that U.S.-Chinese relationship has moved on to yet phase.
The biggest mistake made by the United States is the belief, before the Communist victory in 1949, that "if America aided the Communists, they could be changed from hard-line Marxists-Leninists to friends of the United States." (page 327) China has, at least since 1949, never been and never will be a friend of the United States. For me, the most telling statement on Red China is, "For all the nasty authoritarianism of the Nationalist regime, it paled in comparison to what awaited China's intellectuals under Mao Zedong." (page 367) Indeed, the Nationalists under Chiang Kai Shek were Boy Scouts compared with Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping.
Even today, with everything that is happening before our eyes, there are some Americans who believe that a strong China is good for America and the world, or that China will one day open up and become a free and just society. Nothing can be further from the truth.
If the world does not wake up to the reality that is the People's Republic of China, the world might soon be faced with a bully and menace to world peace that it can no longer contain.
As with any book on a rapidly changing area, this book is (no fault of the author) already a bit out of date. With the recent belligerent behaviour of Red China, the brutal crackdown on free speech and personal freedom in Hong Kong, and the threat of an invasion of Taiwan by the Communist China, it seems that U.S.-Chinese relationship has moved on to yet phase.
The biggest mistake made by the United States is the belief, before the Communist victory in 1949, that "if America aided the Communists, they could be changed from hard-line Marxists-Leninists to friends of the United States." (page 327) China has, at least since 1949, never been and never will be a friend of the United States. For me, the most telling statement on Red China is, "For all the nasty authoritarianism of the Nationalist regime, it paled in comparison to what awaited China's intellectuals under Mao Zedong." (page 367) Indeed, the Nationalists under Chiang Kai Shek were Boy Scouts compared with Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping.
Even today, with everything that is happening before our eyes, there are some Americans who believe that a strong China is good for America and the world, or that China will one day open up and become a free and just society. Nothing can be further from the truth.
If the world does not wake up to the reality that is the People's Republic of China, the world might soon be faced with a bully and menace to world peace that it can no longer contain.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 96 reviews