Dong Wang’s outstanding volume offers uniquely a comprehensive treatment and a balanced assessment of Chinese and American perspectives in its masterful examination of the 240-year history of US-China relations. Many important lessons and insights offered along the way deepen understanding and urge moderation. They warrant careful consideration even from those on both sides now committed to zero-sum rivalry.
- Robert G. Sutter, professor of International Affairs, George Washington University,
Dong Wang’s thoroughly updated book is excellent—wide-ranging, carefully researched, clearly written. Unlike other histories of the United States and China, it skillfully presents the Chinese as well as the American sides of this complex, challenging, and consequential relationship.
- Terry Lautz, former vice president, Luce Foundation; chair, Harvard-Yenching Institute,
Dong Wang has impressed me in the past and does so again with this carefully revised edition of her accessible survey of US-China relations. She has improved an already excellent tale of two countries. It now includes a deft handling of the latest dramatic developments in an always interesting diplomatic and cultural relationship that has more dimensions and arguably more global significance than ever before.
- Jeffrey Wasserstrom, University of California, Irvine,
A masterful history. Dong Wang deftly sets the vicissitudes of two and a half centuries of Sino-American interactions in the context of the evolving identities of the two powers as both pursue national greatness and grapple with the challenges and opportunities of a globalizing world.
- Carla P. Freeman, Johns Hopkins University,
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: The Pacific Frontier and Qing China, 1784–1911
1 Yankee Merchants and the China Trade
2 Opium Wars and the Open Door
3 Chinese Immigration: Roots in the United States
4 American Protestantism: Roots in China
Part II: The United States and China in the Era of World Wars and Revolutions, 1912–1970
5 Revolutions, Nationalism, and Internationalization
6 The Pacific War and Red China
7 Deterrence and Negotiation: American-Chinese Relations at the height of the Cold War
8 Facing East and West: Agents of Encounter
Part III: Rapprochement, the United States as the Benchmark Setter, and the China Challenge, 1970–Present
9 Renewing the Bilateral Relationship, 1970–1989
10 The China Market and the Allure of the United States
11 Clashes, Cooperation, and Fluctuations in the Relationship
12 The Race: Changing Dynamics in the Economic, Social, and Cultural Arenas
Epilogue
Bibliography
About the Author
-The only text to examine the relationship from both Chinese and American perspectives
-Takes a long historical view
This series introduces new perspectives on Asia and the Pacific, historical and contemporary, offering local, regional and global perspectives on social, political, economic, and cultural change.
Series Editor: Mark Selden