America

Views China : American Images of

title:
China Then and Now
author: Goldstein, Jonathan.
publisher: Lehigh University Press
isbn10 | asin: 0934223130
print isbn13: 9780934223133
ebook isbn13: 9780585201160
language: English
China—Foreign public opinion, American,
subject
Public opinion—United States.
publication date: 1991
lcc: DS706.A67 1991eb
ddc: 951
China—Foreign public opinion, American,
subject:
Public opinion—United States.
 Page 3

America Views China

American Images of China Then and Now
Edited By
Jonathan Goldstein
Jerry Israel,
and Hilary Conroy

 Page 4
© 1991 by Associated University Presses, Inc.
All rights reserved. Authorization to photocopy textual items but not
illustrations for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of
specific clients, is granted by the copyright owner, provided that a base fee of
$10.00, plus eight cents per page, per copy is paid directly to the Copyright
Clearance Center, 27 Congress Street, Salem, Massachusetts 01970. [0-
934223-13-0/91 $10.00+8¢ pp, pc.]
Associated University Presses
440 Forsgate Drive
Cranbury, NJ 08512
Associated University Presses
25 Sicilian Avenue
London WCIA 2QH, England
Associated University Presses
P.O. Box 39, Clarkson Pstl. Stn.
Mississauga, Ontario,
L5J 3X9 Canada
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American
National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials
Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
America views China : American images of China then and now / edited
by Jonathan Goldstein, Jerry Israel, and Hilary Conroy.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-934223-13-0 (alk. paper)
1. ChinaForeign public opinion, American. 2. Public opinion
United States. I. Goldstein, Jonathan, 1947- . II. Israel, Jerry.
III. Conroy, Hilary, 1919- .
DS706.A67 1991
951dc20 89-85466
CIP
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

 Page 5

Dedicated to
John F. Melby and Frank W. Gapp
Pioneers in the field of China reporting
and to
Colleagues at the John K. Fairbank Center
for East Asian Research
Bessere findet man nicht

 Page 7

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments 9
Introduction
11
Hilary Conroy, University Of Pennsylvania
Part I. The Image Is Formed
Asian Art and International Relations
31
Raymond G. O’Connor, University Of Miami Emeritus
Cantonese Artifacts, Chinoiserie, and Early American
Idealization of China
43
Jonathan Goldstein, West Georgia College/Harvard
University Fairbank Center
The Commercial Origins of American Attitudes toward
China, 1784-1844 56
Jacques M. Downs, University Of New England
American Board Missionaries and the Formation of
American Opinion toward China, 1830-1860
67
Murray A. Rubinstein, Baruch College Of The City
University Of New York
Part II. The Image Grows
American Diplomacy in China, 1843-1857: The Evolution
of a Policy 87
Raymond F. Wylie, Lehigh University
American Views of China, 1900-1915: The Unwelcome
but Inevitable Awakening 114
Jonathan G. Utley, University Of Tennessee
The Importance of Being Charley Chan
132
Sandra M. Hawley, San Jacinto College South

 Page 8
Carl Crow, Edgar Snow, and Shifting American
Journalistic Perceptions of China 148
Jerry Israel, Simpson College
Part III. Images of Contemporary China
The American View of China, 1957-1982: The Personal
Experience of a China-born Sinologist 171
Paochin Chu, San Diego State University
The China Syndrome: Some Thoughts and Impressions
after a 1979 Trip 183
David B. Chan, California State University At Hayward
Democracy Spring: Firsthand Impressions of China, 1979
193
France H. Conroy, Burlington County College
The View from Mao’s Tomb
210
Mark A. Plummer, Illinois State University
How Can We Evaluate the Economic Performance of the
People’s Republic of China?
220
Ramon H. Myers, Hoover Institution On War, Revolution
and Peace
The Economies of Island and Mainland China: Taiwan as
a Systemic Model 228
Jan S. Prybyla, The Pennsylvania State University
From China, with Disdain: New Trends in the Study of
China 244
Harry Harding, The Brookings Institution
Comparative Observations: American Images of China
and Japan 273
Hilary Conroy
Suggested Readings
288
Jonathan Goldstein
Contributors 298
Index 303

 Page 9

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
While it would require a vast amount of space to thank each and every
individual who made the production of this volume possible, the editors would
like to express special gratitude to Paul A. Cohen of Wellesley College and the
Harvard University Fairbank Center, who offered valuable criticism of earlier
versions of this manuscript; to France H. Conroy, who assisted with the
introduction; to West Georgia College History Department Chairman Albert S.
Hanser, who provided teaching schedules that facilitated the completion of this
volume; to the West Georgia College Learning Resources Committee, which
twice funded some of the basic research for this publication; to John E. Ferling
of West Georgia College and Sarah Lawall of the University of Massachusetts
at Amherst, experienced anthologists who made numerous suggestions that
speeded the production of this volume; to Darlene Bearden of West Georgia
College, who retyped numerous versions of articles; to Eugene Wu, director,
and the entire staff of Harvard Yenching Institute Library, and to Charles
Beard, director, and the entire staff of West Georgia College’s Irvine Sullivan
Ingram Library, which provided bibliographical assistance; and to Stephen H.
Cutcliffe and the entire staffs of Lehigh University and Associated University
Presses.

 Page 11

INTRODUCTION
Hillary Conroy
This volume was originally conceived as part of the “celebration” of the two
hundredth anniversary of the beginning of direct United States trade with
China in 1784 with the voyage of the Empress of China. But getting together
the contributions took the editors more time than anticipated. We are now
ready for public viewing, with one or two disclaimers. The first concerns the
“science” of imagery. Despite our title we are not really into that, although we
are aware of the arguments about it. Since Harold Isaacs published Scratches
on Our Minds: American Images of China and India, in which he held up
American misperceptions of Asia for all to see, the study of perceptions and
images had indeed come a long way. 1 It was stimulated by Akira Iriye,
beginning with his Across the Pacific: An Inner History of East Asian-
American Relations.2
However, Iriye’s very heavy emphasis on images, perceptions, and
misperceptions as vital factors in international relations, especially Japanese-
American, came in for heavy criticism along the way. This is vigorously
argued in Herbert Bix’s review article on Iriye’s work entitled “Imagistic
Historiography.”3 Bix argued that “imagistic historiography” misses the real
causes of international problems. It focuses on little things, such as whether
people see other people as they really are. It misses or avoids the real issues,
such as who has how big a slice of the economic pie or which nation is
grabbing land and exploiting its inhabitants. In short “imagistic
historiography” misses the old, the real stuff of international rivalries and
politics.
Then there has been the great controversy on “orientalism” generated by the
book of that name by Edward W. Said.4 In 328 pages of text and
documentation, Said accused the whole oriental studies profession of various
intellectual mistakes ranging from imperialism to sexism. Though his main
concern was the Middle East, with Western mishandling of Arabic Studies
predominantly

 Page 12
in focus, the implications for all Asian studies were sufficiently accusatory to
elicit a full symposium of refutation in the Journal of Asian Studies.
This was despite the fact, as the editor noted, that “Orientalism’s geographic
concerns” lay “outside the domain of the Journal.” 5 The Journal of Asian
Studies is generally limited to the scholarly studies of East, Southeast, and
South Asia, but does not include Western Asia. Said, himself, unfortunately
for his argument against imperialism, Eurocentrically refers to this region as
the “Middle East,” a point made by South Asia specialist David Kopf in his
contribution to the symposium.6 Kopf criticizes Said in several ways. He takes
issue with his statement, “Orientalism isand does not merely representa
considerable dimension of modern political-intellectual culture, and as such
has less to do with the Orient that it does with ‘our’ Western world.”7
Then he takes “historical Orientalism” from its beginnings with the formation
of the Asiatic Society of Bengal at Calcutta in 1784, through the controversy
surrounding Thomas B. Macauley’s “Minute on Education” in the 1830s, and
on to Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery of India, written while Nehru was
imprisoned by the British imperialists in the 1940s. And he finds that while
Macauley’s superior attitude toward Indian culture was indeed insulting, this
angered the real British scholars of India, the true Orientalists, a fact that
Nehru himself, dedicated nationalist though he was, knew and appreciated.
Thus, Kopf answers: “Nehru and other Indian writers were in fact impressed
with the Orientalists they knew of, whose contributions they used freely as
building blocks in their own reconstruction of history.”8 He warns the reader
that Said’s Orientalism is “not a work of historical scholarship.”9
Later on in the symposium, Richard H. Minear takes up “Orientalism and the
Study of Japan.” He is considerably more appreciative of Said’s approach than
Kopf and indeed finds that three leading Western scholars of Japan of
successive generations from the 1890s to the presentBasil Hall Chamberlain,
George B. Sansom, and Edwin O. Reischauerdo fit into at least some of Said’s
categories. He concludes that “Said has performed an important service for us
all,” for “even in the absence of overt Western domination, the attitudes
manifested in the discourse of Japan seems to resemble closely those of Said’s
Orientalists.”10
Another symposium concerned with Orientalism’s attack on Orientalists was
held at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study in 1981. Its results were
published under the title As Others See

 Page 13
Us. 11 Its editors, Bernard Lewis, Edmund Leites, and Margaret Case, were at
pains to present all sides of the controversary, and to a large extent they
succeeded. Thus Bernard Lewis compares westerners today to latter-day
Ottomans, wherein “masked by the still imposing military might of the
Ottoman Empire, the people of Islam continued until the dawn of the modern
age the conviction of their own Immeasureable and Immutable superiority of
their own civilization to all others.”12
Leites in his article entitled “Philosophers as Rulers: the Literati in Early
Western Images of Confucianism” observes that “the first Western image of
China” was from the Jesuits who were “much impressed,” but that later
“Evangelical Christianity . . . no longer needs China to be a model of humane
civilization.” And in the United States “after Jackson” the mood was so anti-
intellectual that Confucianism was considered absurd.13
Harold Z. Schiffrin gives special attention to Japan in “The Response and
Reaction of East Asia to Its Scholarly Study by the West,” his contribution to
the Princeton symposium. He observes that Western writers who are highly
critical of modern Japan, such as E. H. Norman and David Bergamini,14 are
more appreciated in Japan than in America.15 This would indicate, if not
prove, that Japanese studies “Orientalists” at least have not been
“Imperialistic” in their approach to Japanese history.
Finally, Carl Steenstrup in his contribution to the symposium, entitled
“Reflections on Orientalism,” finds Said’s book “deeply flawed and deeply
disturbing.” He thinks Said’s “venom” is overdone and that Said “scolds
indiscriminately” but that he has “forced Asianists to rethink their
methodologies.”16
In the light of all this, it is interesting that in his recent summary review of the
causes of Japanese imperalism, Britain’s senior Japanese history scholar, W.
G. Beasley, pays little attention to imagery. The causes of Japanese
imperialism, he concludes, were primarily economic ones stemming from
modernization. Secondarily (though very importantly also), “there was a
powerful strategic element in it, relating to the interests of what Schumpeter
would call an atavistic military aristocracy.”17
Perhaps the foregoing will help justify the decision by this volume’s editors to
try to avoid becoming mired in the controversies concerning imagery and
orientalism. What we have sought here are basically innocent perceptions, but
honest ones, unclouded by swirls of scholarly controversy.
As Professor Yen-p’ing Hao said in commenting on the papers presented at the
American Historical Association session that orig-

 Page 14
inally inspired the development of this book: “Thus, the American images of
Chinaor any other country for that matterwere conditioned partly by the
objective situation in China and more importantly by the needs and
experiences of Americans themselves. As time progressed, China appeared in
different guises in the American consciousness. No wonder it is sometimes
argued that the appropriate symbol of China is not the dragon but the color-
changing chameleon.” For this he cites Raymond Dawson’s book entitled The
Chinese Chameleon: An Analysis of European Conceptions of Chinese
Civilization. 18 Hao further observes that “an image is the result of an
interaction between the viewer and the view, with the viewer usually in
command.”
Before putting imagery aside, however, it should be noted that Lucian Pye, in
his Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority,
attempted to catagorize Asian cultural traditions from Pakistan to Japan, at
least as they affect politics and power in that vast area.19 He felt impelled to
do this, he says, partly because the mainstream of his own field of political
science during the 1960s and 1970s had come to hold an untenable set of
assumptions derived from dependency and development theories. The
assumptions lumped Asia, Africa, and Latin America all together into
something called the “Third World” or “Lesser Developed” countries. In fact,
he argues, not only are the Asian countries very dissimilar to Africa and Latin
America, they are very different from each other.
Pye then takes up various countries of East, Southeast, and South Asia to
examine their similarities and differences. He finds in general that in East Asia
three different varieties of Confucianism are still very much alive, helping to
explain the varying degrees of success at modernization of Korea, Taiwan, and
Vietnam (forms of “aggressive” Confucianism, chapter 3); China (with “an
illusion of omnipotence,” chapter 7), and Japan (a marvelously workable
combination of “competition and consensus,” chapter 6).
Under the heading “The East Psychoanalyzed,” Lloyd I. Rudolph, political
science professor at the University of Chicago, reviewing Pye’s book for The
New York Times, criticized the study on the grounds that it “resuscitates a
psycho-cultural version of oriental despotism, a paradigm that has afflicted
Western perceptions of Asia since Aristotle.” And, he says, after Pye’s first
four chapter’s “ruminate” on Asians as “races apart” the remaining chapters
“offer accounts of 13 Asian countries replete with reductionistic appraisals of
people and events and selective evidence that demonstrates the dominance of
paternalistic authority and

 Page 15
dependent relations from the Indian to the Pacific Oceans.” He concluded that
“Mr. Pye’s version of Oriental despotism leaves one at a loss to account for
national transformations in Asia over the last 40 years.” 20
The present author reviewed Pye’s book more favorably. While admitting that
Pye’s “characterizations of the several Asian cultures and their power system
products are, after all, stereotypical,” I defined his analysis as “controversial in
that excellent way of being stimulating, fascinating, thoughtful, and unlike
most books by political scientists, immensely readable.”21
A reverse, though not perverse, attempt at image-conscious discourse is that of
Hitotsubashi (Japan) University’s Tadashi Aruga, entitled “The Meaning of
American History: Japanese Views.” In general Aruga finds Japanese
historians of the United States to have had a positive view of American history
until the 1960s when, beginning with Yonosuke’s Nagai’s Katai suru America
(Disintegrating America) there has been the opposite, although Akira Iriye
writing for a Japanese audience sought to give reassurance of the “strength of
American Liberalism.”22
But the concern of our volume is American images of Asians, not their images
of America, and a final word on the problem of being scientific about images
is provided by Roger Pulver in his article entitled “Japan: A Key to
Understanding the Western Mind.” Starting with a few absurd quotationse.g.,
Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jap has no business savvy” and Charles Baudelaire’s
“The Japanese are monkeys”he goes through Western images of Japan with a
vengeance: “apt pupils” to “regimented conformists” to “industrial monsters,”
but socially made up of “female Madame Butterflys and male chauvinist
samurai.” All were very real in the American mind, and, Pulver argues, to a
considerable extent were promoted by the Japanese government for entirely
pragmatic reasons at various stages of Japan’s modern history.
May I there leave “imagery” as, perhaps, a developing aspect of political and
social science, but not one in which historians should attempt to impose too
much order of analysis?23
In the essays that follow, we editors have allowed as much free rein as possible
to our various contributors, whose handling of both approaches and
impressions are quite diverse.
The four essays in “The Image is Formed” bring out both the positive and the
negative in the earliest American attitudes toward China. They explore the
“idealization” from fascination with Chinese art and culture, but also the
increasing disdain as traders and missionaries got close up to the realities of a
declining empire.

 Page 16
Raymond G. O’Connor opens by broadly considering “Asian Art and
International Relations.” He notes the traditional role that respect for Chinese
aesthetics (particularly Chinese characters) played in gaining respect within
East Asia. But if China was able to practice “aesthetic colonialism” in Korea,
Southeast Asia, and in part Japan, this was far from the case when the West
discovered the Middle Kingdom. Americans half-disparaged “the hideous
shapes to which [the Chinese] pay devotion,” half-found escapist amusement
in a cult of “chinoiserie” that gave many Americans their first and only
knowledge of distant China.
Jonathan Goldstein angles in more closely on the American public’s first
visual image of “the gateway” to China, which, both literally and ideationally,
was Kwangtung province. He accounts for the “never-never land of cloudlike
rocks, exotic plants and airy pavillions” that came to represent China for most
Americans, based on the designs on canvas, glass, or wood that first traveled
from Kwangtung to the United States. The early image omitted any hint of the
squalor of Cantonat least until 1846, when the camera would arrive partially to
displace the earlier representations.
With Jacques M. Downs’s essay, the focus shifts to the “commercial origins”
of American attitudes toward China in roughly the same period (1784-1884).
Downs relates how, taking their “civil religion” with them, American
merchants braved “a time in exile” in China as they represented their
companies and sought quick fortunesall the while trying not to sacrifice their
integrity, an apparently difficult feat in China. It became even more difficult as
the drug trade grew. Up until then, Downs finds American merchants to be
“not racists, not imperialists,” but perhaps “classists,” respecting some
Chinese while looking down on others; but as Americans, like the British,
became involved in drug trafficing, the question arose, “What kind of people
was it to whom it could be appropriate to sell narcotics?”
Concluding the first section, Murray Rubinstein studies the other early
Americans in China, the missionaries, who first arrived in 1830. His focus is
how they helped shape American opinion. These Protestants inherited a
positive legacy of Catholic-Confucian mutual respect that dated back to
Matteo Ricci in the sixteenth century, but the “guarded admiration” toward the
Chinese of the first American missionaries turned by 1860 to contempt of
these “perishing heathen.” Rubinstein studies how the missionaries’ images
became the American public’s images as the former acted as an early kind of
“China watchers,” keeping small-town America

 Page 17
informed of the progress toward “the Christian opening of China.” Since the
project was doomed to frustration, the reports tended to be negative: human
life as cheap, degraded, and godless; Confucianism as “empty humanism.”
The missionaries sowed the seeds of the idea that America could lead them out
of all thisby force, if necessary.
Part II, “The Image Grows,” picks up where Downs and Rubinstein leave off,
with an essay by Raymond F. Wylie on the origins of official diplomatic
relations arising out of both the needs of American merchants and the
aggressive idealism of the missionaries. In fascinating detail, Wylie chronicles
American diplomatic efforts from 1843 to 1857; not noble, but sometimes
following the United States’ own interests in championing a strong and open
China. The commercial and missionary constituencies converged in wanting
China to allow foreigners to operate freely and in wanting to head off British
attempts to get privileged status. Therefore, United States policy vacillated
between pushing for a strong, unified China to guarantee the open door and
threatening to strike a deal with Great Britain to force “the rascally Chinese”
to stop resisting Western commercial and Christian interests. The latter line of
thinking got as far as a plan to seize Taiwan as an American base from which
to “advance the cause of humanity, religion, and civilization.” Approved by
naval and diplomatic leadership, this plan was nixed by President James
Buchanan as the states neared civil war.
Jonathan G. Utley’s “American Views of China, 1900-1915,” jumps to
Theodore Roosevelt. In between had come the first sizable Chinese
immigration, the influential Bret Harte poem “The Heathen Chinee,” and the
rapid awakening of Japan. Images of the Chinese portrayed violence and
treachery in the wake of the Boxer Uprising. After the Boxers were
completely crushed, these quickly gave way to images of frail, undisciplined,
cowardly Chinese. Fears of “the yellow peril” were spawned, but not of an
aggressive China: Japan’s 43 million would provide the evil spearhead, and
China’s 426 million the waves to overwhelm white civilization. Progressive
Era architects tried to move against such a dreaded eventuality by suggesting
China could be saved by massive reformrapid Westernizationturning the
Chinese masses from “peril” to “market.” And the 1911 revolution made them
look like prophets, for a time.
Sandra M. Hawley turns to the role of popular culture in shaping the image,
starting with “yellow peril” personified, Dr. Fu Manchu, and progressing to
the still alien but more lovable Charlie

 Page 18
Chan. Just as images on glass and cloth had shaped the popular view of China
a century before, so images in forty-nine films, growing out of six books and a
comic strip, shaped the view in the first half of the twentieth century. In his
adventures, set in exotic yet familiar Hawaii, Chan showed “intelligence, good
humor, diligence, and loyalty.” One Bostonian admirer remarked, “The
Chinese are my favorite race . . . so clever and competent and honest among
the lazy riff-raff of the Orient.” Hawley sees Chan’s somewhat sympathetic
portrayal as a kind of necessary bridge between the malignant Fu Manchu and
peasants who capture our hearts in Pearl Buck’s writings in the 1930s.
Jerry Israel picks up with the changing image from the 1920s to the 1930s and
1940s, but from another perspective: the journalists’ eye, from Carl Crow to
Edgar Snow. He demonstrates how these two products of the Missouri School
of Journalism, twenty years apart, inhabited in effect two different Chinas
prophetic of the 1949 split: Crow the open door China of Shanghai’s
International Settlement; Snow, the “Red China” of Yenan. Crow, who came
from missionary roots and doubled as a promoter of American products, wrote
on the Chinese as common-sensical, loyal customers, tracing their upright
philosophy back to “Master Kung.” His China of businessmen, clerks,
servants, and rickshaw boys had no “misery, wretchedness, poverty, or
revolution;” Snow’s China was the reverse. Although not a communist, Snow
became convinced that only Mao could lead resistance to the Japanese whom
Snow feared the most; he saw a chance for radical reform in China if the
United States helped, Israel explains, but watched the chance go down the
drain as Washington listened more to Patrick Hurley than John Stewart
Service, more to Chiang Kai-shek than Mao Tse-tung.
Part III, “Images of Contemporary China,” contains first-hand observations.
Two “China hands” of the period in which Jerry Israel leaves off deserve
mention before going on to the work of the contributors. Foreign service
officer John Melby, whose unpublished memoirs were inspirational in the
genesis of this volume, witnessed the parade of personalities that led to United
States’ misunderstanding of China in the 1940s. Melby recalls the flamboyant
flier Claire Chennault, “obsessed with the notion that air power would defeat
Japan” and totally dedicated to Chiang as he fashioned giant airstrips around
Chengtu and Kweilin; and the sinister Milton “Merry” Miles, who worked
with Tai Li, the most notorious of Chiang’s secret police out of “Happy
Valley” near Chungking. Both Chennault and Miles reported “directly to

 Page 19
the White House.” Later Miles and Tai Li would be the objects of a mass
campaign staged by the Communists in condemnation of their ruthlessness.
But as the most erratic of the misplaced personalities whom President
Roosevelt selected as his “special representatives,” Melby chooses Major
General Patrick Hurley and writes as follows: “He [Hurley] arrived in China in
early 1944 having not a clue as to where he was, with instructions to patch
things up between Chiang and the Communists. . . . Journeying to Yenan first,
he persuaded an astonished Chairman Mao Tse-tung to sign a Communist
proposal he had written up himself for Chiang’s consideration, which included
an almost verbatim copy of the American Bill of Rights . . . Mao knew that
Chiang would never accept it [and], when Hurley jubilantly returned to
Chungking, he was greeted with ridicule. Reacting in embarrassment, he did
his first flip-flop, angrily charging that he had been betrayed in the north.”
Later, Melby concludes, Hurley’s invective would reinforce public suspicion
against other American China hands, helping to spark the witch-hunt of
McCarthyism.
The other China hand similarly involved in this volume’s genesis, journalist
Frank Gapp, recalls how the International Settlement in Shanghai began to
crumble around him in August 1937. His ground-level account recalls both the
bitter anti-Japanese sentiments of the period and China’s nadir of haplessness
and vulnerabilitya scant twelve years before Mao would proclaim at the Gate
of Heavenly Peace, “China has stood up.” Gapp writes from the front: “Now
refugees poured into the Settlement. . . . They came in hordes, and found
shelter in alleys and nooks, and at night slept in the hallways of commercial
buildings . . . Late in the afternoon a report came in that [a Chinese plane] had
dropped several bombs accidentally on the very corner where I had been
standing a few hours earlierNanking Road and the Bund.”
Two and a half months later, Japanese General Iwane Matsui called a news
conference. “He was blunt,” Gapp recalls, saying simply “Now I am master of
Shanghai.” The Japanese authorities began censoring all mail, and confiscated
an entire edition of China Weekly Review (Gapp was assistant editor) dealing
with “the rape of Nanking.” Japanese ”ronin” entered the settlement and
“seized prominent Chinese and took them back to Hongkewthey were never
heard from again and the Settlement authorities were helpless to deal with the
problem.” A few years later, Matsui would be executed as a war criminal as
the United States occupied Japan and the Communists took over China.

 Page 20
This brings in the 1950s and China-born Sinologist Paochin Chu’s reflection,
“American View of China, 1957-1982.” When Chu arrived in New York on a
cargo ship in 1957, he was wined and dined by the local pro-Taiwan faction;
but it was the quiet meetings where he met Mrs. Edgar Snow, Felix Greene,
and others working for United States-People’s Republic of China (PRC)
normalization that impressed him more. Yet it was not until the late 1970s and
1980s that he could talk publicly and positively about the PRC and not receive
“stiff faces and frozen civility.”
David B. Chan, who began his teaching career in a small Midwest college
during the McCarthy era, also recalls how difficult anticommunism made the
teaching scene until the 1970s. However, by 1979 an opposite problem has
emerged: many of Chan’s students and colleagues have become “euphoric”
about “People’s China,” while Chan, who visits ordinary villages in his native
Guangdong province, sees poverty, corruption, and hypocrisy. He concludes
that our misunderstanding of China hasn’t improved in the last quarter century,
the pendulum has only swung toward the other extreme of adulation. Vividly
contrasting his own raw experiences with the cooked-up sights and sounds of
the model communes that other 1979 visitors were shown, Chan discusses the
peculiar “inability to be objective about China,” which has led the American
perspective through one excess after another since 1784.
France H. Conroy’s memoir, also of 1979, may be one of those excesses. His
group of “progressive journalists” was hosted by the Propaganda Department
of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. His left-insider’s
view of China during the spring of Democracy Wall and normalization
provides a strong contrast to Chan’s sobering reports, although Conroy, too,
detects a negative side. Indeed his subsequent visits in 1985 and 1989 yield
more problems, less optimism for any “new society,” and questions as to
whether Western-style solutions are really helping.
By the late-1980s, American China-watchers are supposed to have achieved a
new maturity and objectivity, perhaps avoiding the pendulum swings of earlier
eras. Have they? Several appraisals of China’s economic progress reflect a
healthy diversity of viewpoint in American imagery of China. Mark A.
Plummer uses a reflection on Mao’s tomb as a take-off point for a reappraisal
of the PRC’s four-decade history. He speculates as to how shocked the
chairman would be were he to awaken: China back in the “primary state” of
socialism, Deng Xiaoping in charge, Liu Shaoqi honored in his tomb’s
anteroom, his wife in prison, and Kentucky

 Page 21
Fried Chicken replacing protraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin in
Tiananmen Square. Plummer reviews the changes from the Maoist 1950s to
the pragmatist 1980s, then notes that China still officially adheres to Mao’s
“Four Cardinals Principles.” It is as if communism in China, instead of being
abandoned, is being handled in the same way as Mao’s tomb: “closed for
repairs.”
Ramon H. Myers is more direct. Suggesting five standards by which to
evaluate economic performance, he looks at China through hard social
scientist’s eyes. He compares the 1952-1978 and post-1978 periods. What he
finds is a disappointing economic performance for the earlier period, then only
modest improvement with post-1978 market reforms, not strong enough to
pull out of a quarter century of stagnation.
With Jan S. Prybyla, what could be the latest pendulum swing is pushed
further. China (mainland) was wrong; Taiwan “island China”) right. The PRC
needs to jettison altogether the idea of “one country, two systems,” i.e.,
capitalist zones amidst “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” What it needs
is ”capitalism with Chinese characteristics,” which has been almost perfected
by Taiwan and could, with difficulty, be transplanted. The PRC Soviet-type
economic system, like others around the world, has irreparable systemic
problems, from skewed growth to disincentives due to the neglect of
consumption. Taiwan’s dynamism, by contrast, has been remarkable, and
seems now to be culminating in political liberalization.
Harry Harding ends on a more cautious note, getting back to the problem of
rapidly changing images. He reviews the reports on China of the 1970s
generation of American visitorswhat was it that they liked so much?and
illuminatingly juxtaposes these reports next to the much more negative reports
of the 1980s. He raises several questions: How much have the negative reports
resulted from the demise of the foreign guest tour system and thus of creature
comforts for the American visitors? Has it soured their mood as they send
back reports, while having little to do with the Chinese people’s welfare? Also,
how much should Americans be hesitant to transport their own norms when
evaluating another country? The 1970s observers were wary of this, the 1980s
observers not. Harding suggests caution all around. Otherwise today’s truth
may again become tomorrow’s myth.
To round out the volume, I try to step back to the broader perspective afforded
by comparison: images of China versus images of Japan. Though originally
there was no discrimination in the American mind, only the image of a
generalized “Oriental

 Page 22
type,” as Americans began to distinguish, it seems that first one group then the
other was in favor. The Japanese were “alternately admired and detested, but
usually respected.” The Chinese were “both loved and pitied, yet not generally
admired or respected.” From Perry’s opening to the early twentieth century, it
was generally the Japanese who evoked more positive descriptions: polite,
hard-working, competent. But whenever Japanese ambition began to threaten
Americans directly, the Japanese “virtues” seemed less positive; at such times
the Chinese, submissive and needy but unthreatening, became the more
attractive. By 1931, Japan’s threatening side was dominant; fear turned to
outright hatred during the war. But a few months into the occupation, a sudden
reversal took place: Japan was suddenly nonthreatening, prone and needy;
China, then showing courage and hard work but of the wrong political stripe,
suddenly drew American resentment. The 1970s and 1980s would witness still
another reversal. In general, however, Japan was respected for achievement,
China pitied for tragic happenings.
This concludes the volume, but hardly this vast and fascinating topic. What
have we left out’? Quite a bit, which is why we direct readers to the substantial
list of suggested readings. One very recent publication deserves mention here;
and then two additional observations in closing, lest our last section, “Images
of Contemporary China,” leave too much the impression that America knows
best.
First, the publication: it is called “Mutual Images in U.S.-China Relations” and
is the product of a 1988 Woodrow Wilson Center symposium involving
Michael Hunt, David Shambaugh, Warren Cohen, and Akira Iriye. 24 Its
conclusion is quite similar to this volume’sthat images have been
ambivalentbut the symposium extends this to Chinese images of the United
States. For example, David Shambaugh points out, “Chinese thought has
always made a fundamental distinction between those who rule by
benevolence (wangdao) and those who must rely on force to subjugate others
(badao).” He adds, “In Chinese eyes, America has displayed both
tendencies.”25 Akira Iriye in his concluding commentary suggests that “the
storehouse of images” available in each country for perceiving the other
doesn’t change much, but some of the images are given “privileged status” at
certain times, others at other times, depending on “the state of war, peace, or
situations in between.”26 This is certainly supported by our own volume’s
findings.
Moving to what we may have left out, first we wonder if a truly “mature”
image of China ought not to give more due to

 Page 23
things Chinese, and in particular Confucianism, than our Part IV might
indicate. Of course, Confucianism drew mostly criticism from missionary and
business types alike until recentlyexcepting Ezra Pound, who in the 1920s
developed an earthy, Yankee appreciation of it that we neglected to mention.
27 However, since 1972 scholarship has been emerging that indicts this
dismissal of Confucianism as one-sided. Thomas A. Metzger’s Escape from
Predicament: Neo-Confucianism and China’s Evolving Political Culture28 and
Roy Hofheinz and Kent Calder’s The Eastasia Edge29 have proposed that
Confucianism may in the long run be more positive than negative in the
socioeconomic sphere; while Herbert Fingarett’s Confucius: The Secular as
Sacred,30 Tu Wei-ming’s Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative
Transformation,31 and David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames’ Thinking Through
Confucius32find Confucianism promising as a post-modern religiophilosophy.
We suggest, then, that a “mature” image of China today ought to include not
only Westernization and market reforms as hopeful signs, but also the
reanimation of the best aspects of the native value system.
Secondly, heeding Iriye’s “storehouse” theory, we ask whether 1980s
American interests (mostly material) have led to our hiding away one image of
China that Americans knew well in the 1970s: China as Third World leader.
Although certain regions of the mainland may be potential Taiwans, the PRC’s
staggering population and poverty makes it more like a Taiwan attached to an
India. With world food, population, and resource problems heightening, the
South versus North crunch seems still ahead; and Chinaunlike Taiwan, Hong
Kong, South Korea, and Singaporestill looms as a natural leader of the South.
At any rate, this seems like a good candidate for mainstream American
observers’ current blindspot,”33 and we editors leave these as open questions.
Notes
1. Harold Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds: American Images of China and
India (New York: John Day, 1958).
2. Akira Iriye, Across the Pacific: An Inner History of East Asian-American
Relations (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1957); Iriye, After Imperialism: The
Search for a New Order in the Far East (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1965); Iriye, Pacific Estrangement: Japanese and American Expansion,
1897-1911 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972): Iriye, Power and
Culture: The Japanese-American War, 1941-1945 (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1981). See also Iriye, “Images and Diplomacy in Sino-
American Relations,

 Page 24
in Michael Hunt, et al., “Mutual Images in U.S.-China Relations,”
Occasional Paper No. 32 (Washington, D.C.: Wilson Center, Asia Program,
1988), 37-42.
3. Herbert Bix, “Imagistic Historiography,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian
Scholars, no. 3 (July-September 1975): 51-58.
4. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
5. Robert A. Kapp, “Editor’s Note,” Journal of Asian Studies 39 (May 1980):
463; Robert A. Kapp, ed. “Review Symposium: Edward Said’s Orientalism,”
481-517.
6. David Kopf, “Hermeneutics versus History,” Kapp, ed. “Review
Symposium,” op. cit., 496.
7. Said, Orientalism, 12; Kopf, “Hermeneutics versus History,” 497.
8. Kopf, “Hermeneutics versus History,” 496-506.
9. Ibid., 499.
10. Richard H. Minear, “Orientalism and the Study of Japan,” Journal of
Asian Studies 39 (May 1980): 507-17, especially 515-17.
11. Bernard Lewis, Edmund Leites, and Margaret Case, eds., As Others See
Us. Mutual Perceptions, East and West, a special issue of Comparative
Civilizations Review, nos. 13-14 (Fall 1985 and Spring 1986).
12. Ibid., 15.
13. Edmund Leites, “Philosophers and Rulers: The Literati in Early Western
Images of Confucianism,” in Lewis, et al., As Others See Us, 203-12.
14. Norman’s study Japan’s Emergence as a Modern State was first published
by the Institute of Pacific Relations (New York, 1940) and was reprinted in
John W. Dower, ed., Origins of the Modern Japanese State (New York:
Pantheon, 1975). Bergamini’s is Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy (New York:
William Morrow, 1971; Pocket Books, 1972).
15. Harold Z. Schiffrin, “The Response and Reaction of East Asia to Its
Scholarly Study by the West,” in Lewis, et al., As Others See Us, 253-65.
16. Carl Steenstrup, “Reflections on ‘Orientalism’ from the Angle of Japan-
Related Research,” in Lewis, et al., As Other See Us, 52.
17. W. G. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism, 1894-1945 (Oxford: Claredon
Press, 1987), especially 258. See also Hilary Conroy, “Lessons from Japanese
Imperialism,” Monuments Nipponica, 21, no. 3-4, 334-45.
18. Raymond Dawson, The Chinese Chameleon: An Analysis of European
Conceptions of Chinese Civilization (London: Oxford University Press, 1967).
19. Lucian Pye, Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of
Authority (Cambridge: Harvard University Belknap Press, 1985).
20. New York Times, 9 February 1986.
21. American Academy of Political and Social Science, The Annals 488
(November 1986): 197-98.
22. Tadashi Aruga, “The Meaning of American History,” Hitotsubashi Journal
of Law and Politics 15 (1987): 1-11.
23. Said’s Orientalism reared its ugly, or perhaps merely controversial, head
againat my own University of Pennsylvaniain 1988-89, when the Department
of South Asia Regional Studies adopted “Orientalism and Beyond:
Perspectives from South Asia” as the theme for its annual seminar series.
Some of the seminar topics included: “Orientalist Empiricism” by David
Ludden, “Castes of Mind” by Nicholas Dirks, ”Affirmative Orientalism in
India: Expanding the Boundaries of Said’s Cultural Geography” by Richard
Fox, and “Beyond Orientalism” by Ronald Inden.
24. Occasional Paper No. 32 (Washington, D.C.: Wilson Center, 1988).

 Page 25
25. David Shambaugh, “Conflicting Chinese Images of America During the
People’s Republic of China.” Occasional Paper No. 32, 21.
26. Akira Iriye, “Images and Diplomacy in Sino-American Relations,”
Occasional Paper No. 32, 39.
27. See Ezra Pound, trans., Confucius: The Great Digest, The Unwobbling
Pivot and the Analects (New York: New Directions, 1969).
28. Thomas A. Metzger, Escape from Predicament: Neo-Confucianism and
China’s Evolving Political Culture (New York: Columbia University Press,
1977). See also the discussions in Journal of Asian Studies 39, no. 2 (1980).
29. Roy Hofheinz and Kent Calder, The Eastasia Edge (New York: Harper and
Row, 1972).
30. Herbert Fingarett, Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (New York: Harper
and Row, 1972).
31. Tu Wei-ming, Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985).
32. Roger R. Ames, Thinking Through Confucius (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1987).
33. See, for example, France H. Conroy, “China, the Soviet Union and the
West; The Changing Ideological Terrain as a Factor in Pacific Community” in
Roy Kim and Hilary Conroy, eds., New Tides in the Pacific: Pacific Basin
Cooperation and the Big Four (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987), 99-
124.

 Page 29

PART I
THE IMAGE IS FORMED

 Page 31

Asian Art and International Relations

Raymond G. O’Connor
This essay is a preliminary report on an investigation of one dimension of
international relations, namely, the role of visual art objects in forming
impressions of an alien people. Different cultures usually generate distinctive
art styles, and art constitutes a method of communication that eliminates the
intermediary, those whose reports on foreign lands tend to be colored by their
own preconceptions or interests. Perceptions and attitudes can be important
and, at times, decisive in determining relations between and among nations
and peoples. The objects produced by the various societies have had
repercussions of far-reaching consequences and have contributed to the
misconceptions leading to misunderstanding and eventual conflict. My
investigations have embraced the spectrum of non-Western art and its impact
on opinion in diverse culture groups. In this essay my speculations will be
confined to Asian visual output, for it possesses certain characteristics that
differ from art originating in other parts of the globe.
The most common methods of intercultural contact have been trade, warfare,
exploration, and inadvertance. Inadvertance, the lost mariner, may have been
responsible for the transmission of Asian art to a portion of what became
known as the “Western World,” a transmission that is said to have occurred
some three thousand years ago. Basing his contention primarily on trait or
motive similarities between Chinese and pre-Columbian art, Paul Shao
maintains that Shang Chinese voyagers visited Meso-America as early as the
beginning of the Olmec culture, around 1200 B.C. Embracing the trans-Pacific
diffusionist interpretation of the transmission of art styles, Shao also finds
correlations in the art of China and that of the Mayans from about the third to
the ninth centuries A.D. 1 Imitation may be the ultimate in flattery, although
similarities of visual images are not conclusive evidence of outside influence.
Academics have thrived on the

 Page 32
argument over whether human beings at certain stages of development tend to
create similar art forms and myths, or whether they are borrowed from some
other group, a single source as it were. But indigenous visual products were an
early method of communicating what was unique in one society to another.
The language barrier was overcome. 2
Assuming that the trans-Pacific diffusionist theory is valid, any regular trade
between these countries is unlikely, given the state of ocean transport and
instruments of navigation. But trade was the great stimulus for contacts
between Europe and Asia, trade in beautiful objects and eagerly sought
condiments. Alexander’s foray into India may not have been inspired by such
crass motives, and the major impact of this venture may have been to provoke
the creation of “graven images” of Hindu and Buddhist deities, with the prime
example of Western influence being the Graeco-Roman Ghandaran sculptures
of Buddha.3 According to one source, “The antients [sic] made a notable
distinction of [art] styles, into Laconic [an early Greek entity] and Asiatic,”
and “Orient” meant nations lying east of the Roman Empire.4 Thus early
categorizations and terms were conceived to reflect perspectives and torment
subsequent classifiers of geographical space.
The first significant infusion of East Asian art into Europe apparently occurred
in the first and second centuries A.D., when Rome at its height sought the
elegant silks of China. Transported by caravan from Chang’an to Antioch on
the Mediterranean along the tortuous “Silk Road,” these fabrics appealed to
the luxury appetites of the elite, and even some iron items were included in the
cargo. On one occasion, the Roman Emperior Marcus Aurelius sent emissaries
to the Chinese court. Trade between Rome and India was considerable but
imports consisted largely of raw materials.5 The effect of these interchanges
on the attitudes of the respective civilizations toward each other is not clear.
Trade was conducted by intermediaries, and the lack of direct contact, except
for a few possible encounters, makes unlikely any consequential perceptions.
The land route between Europe and the Far East was virtually severed from
the seventh to the eighteenth centuries by Islamic militant expansion. Arab
seafarers mastered the sea route to China, sailing from ports in the Persian
Gulf and hugging the coasts of what are now Iran, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka,
and Sumatra, and passing through the Strait of Malacca before reaching
Canton. Arab visitors to China were awed by its art. A ninth-century Arab
merchant wrote that “the Chinese may be counted

 Page 33
among those of God’s creatures to whom he hath granted, in the highest
degree, skill of hand in drawing and in the arts of manufacture,” and a
fourteenth-century Arab visitor thought, “The people of China of all mankind
have the greatest skill and taste in the arts.” He concluded, “As regards
painting, indeed, no nation, whether of Christians or others, can come up to
the Chinese, and their talent for this art is something extraordinary. 6 Such
praise reflected admiration for at least one dimension of Chinese civilization
and revealed a degree of objectivity, for Muslim art was eclectic. It emerged as
an amalgam of the styles that prevailed in the conquered countries and the folk
crafts of those people who embraced the faith. But Islamic art came to have an
identifiable character of its own that was imposed on many lands.7
The subcontinent of India fell prey to this cultural invasion with the Islamic
occupation that began in the eighth century and burgeoned in the eleventh to
the sixteenth centuries. India had long had contacts with the Middle East, from
Iran to Egypt and Mesopotamia, due to favorable winds that simplified
seaborn commerce.8 Indian products included bronze and brass items, silks,
cottons and leatherwork, and some transshipment occurred.9 The Mogul
Empire that ruled much of India for centuries not only introduced Muslim
styles in art and architecture but destroyed much Hindu and Buddhist
sculpture and painting, for depicting religious figures was anathma to the
Muslim faith.10 This destruction of indigenous art forms, forms that were
symbols of existing religions, made this collision of cultures even more
humiliating to the subjected Indians, and resulting perceptions continue to this
day.
In East Asia the spread of Chinese art to Korea and Japan began before
Buddhism came to those countries. Evidently the art of China was well
received in both countries and created a favorable impression of the
originating nation. This popularity and commonality of art styles aided in the
unification of Korea and Japan by providing a bond to overcome factional
rivalry, and it improved relations with their formidable neighbor.11 The Three
Kingdoms in Korea (57 B.C.-668 A.D.) gave tribute to Chinese rulers and
imported religion as well as the arts and crafts of China.12 One authority
points out, however, that while some have considered Korean art merely a
“provincial variation of Chinese art,” the Korean “insistence upon
communication by other than verbal, or written, means has tended to load the
art forms with more than ordinary significance.”13 Although this “more than

 Page 34
ordinary significance” may have been lost on many outside viewers, it
projected a version of the Korean ethos and esthetics that helped foreign
observers distinguish these peoples from those of other East Asian cultures.
The full impact of Chinese and Korean art on Japan coincided with the
introduction of Buddhism to that country in the sixth century, when scriptures
and Korean Buddhist images were presented to the Imperial Court. Coming at
a time when Japan was being unified, the government welcomed and
supported this infusion of culture, which further enhanced relations among the
three East Asian nations. “Among the reasons Buddhism was accepted [in
Japan] was its novel visual appeal,” one writer contends, for “Shinto lacked
the philosophy to formulate an anthropomorphic art.” 14 When I visited Japan
during the occupation and entered the then Imperial Museum, a notice on the
wall in impeccable Spencerian English script asserted that there was no
indigenous art of Japan, that all of its art forms were borrowed. The notice has
long since disappeared, and the confession has been refuted by evidence
displayed in the now Tokyo National Museum and elsewhere.
Korean and Japanese acceptance of Chinese art styles and symbols indicated a
respect and admiration for what were regarded as manifestations of a higher
civilization, and promoted clear ties among these nations. Yet Japan continued
to have a virtual “love-hate” attitude toward Chinese culture, a somewhat
dialectical relationship associated in part with the language.15 Although some
Japanese art is difficult to distinguish from that of China, Japanese artists and
craftsmen have made substantive modifications of foreign work and have
created new media of expression. The visual art of Japan well conveys its
unique life and culture, and the Zen images, often in the abstract, combine
with the calligraphy to express a non-Western spirit and way of thinking.16
The spread of Chinese art and Buddhism throughout East Asia produced a
similarity of art styles which, to many Westerners, reflected what seemed to be
one culture pattern and, therefore, one classification of peoples. The art forms
accompanying the introduction of Buddhism into China, Korea, Japan, and
other Asian countries, offered a visual image of an alien culture that written,
oral, or doctrinal communication could not provide. Chinese merchants
continued to distribute wares abroad, as they had since at least the Han period
(206 A.D.-220 A.D.), by land and by sea. Consisting primarily of silks and
procelains, they were carried as far as the Philippines, where Sung items have

 Page 35
been found. A Chinese vessel sunk off the coast of Korea in the thirteenth or
fourteenth century contained more than 13,000 ceramic pieces. 17
“Through the medium of the Chinese written language,” according to
Professor E. G. Pulleyblank, “Chinese culture has extended beyond China to
other East Asian countriesKorea, Japan, Vietnamand has deeply influenced
them, particularly but not exclusively at the level of high culture.”18 The
esthetic quality of Chinese calligraphy had a great appeal even when the
meaning of the characters was not known. The almost infinite variety of the
various scripts permitted the calligrapher considerable latitude in self
expression, and work of the masters was readily acknowledged and easily
recognized. The “classical period” of Chinese calligraphy came during the
“internationalist” T’ang dynasty (618-907 A.D.), whose rulers adopted the
doctrine of ”the empire is open to all” over that of “the empire belongs to one
family,” and relations with foreign lands and peoples were encouraged.19 In
806 A.D. the monk Kukai brought esoteric Buddhism to Japan from T’ang
China and founded the Shingon School, whose teachings were revealed in the
mandalas, sculptures, temple implements, and paintings.20
But the enthusiastic reception of Indian and Chinese art by other Asian
countries, and the consequent impact on relations among them, was not
repeated by Westerners. Most Europeans were contemptuous of the native
cultures of Asia, for the art did not meet their esthetic standards. The Jesuit
Father Matteo Ricci, in China around 1600, noted “The Chinese use pictures
extensively, even in the crafts, but in the production of these and especially in
the making of statuary and cast images they have not at all acquired the skill
of Europeans.” Ricci concluded, “They know nothing of the art of painting in
oil or of the use of perspective in their pictures, with the result that their
productions are lacking any vitality.”21 Much of the Asian subject matter,
usually representing “heathen” religious concepts, was repugnant to
Europeans. The erotic Hindu sculptures, especially those of the Shiva “cult,”
offended Western sensibilities. The sexual act as a manifestation of ecstatic
religious experience, as portrayed in Tantric Buddhism as well as in Hinduism,
violated Christian precepts and, to Westerners, seemed to reveal a depraved,
almost subhuman nature. The profound beliefs expressed by the artists and
craftsmen through these visual objects were lost on the foreigners, who saw
only the superficial and the obvious, without an awareness of, or even an
interest in, the iconography. Europe-

 Page 36
ans were not offended by the portrayal of religious figures as such, as were the
Muslims. But they were offended by what was depicted as religious and divine
by this “pagan” society. Further, Europeans were confused by what they saw
as worship of “idolatrous” images instead of the gods themselves. 22
Confronted by displays of what they considered immoral and superstitious,
Europeans questioned whether Asians could be treated as equals in the world
community.
The first direct contacts between Europe and Asia took place in the thirteenth
century when China, under the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1260-1368 A.D.),
opened its doors to the outside world. Until then, the Near or Middle East had
been “the meeting point of western preconceptions and actual observations” of
the Far East.23 But the reports of the first European travelers to China itself
tended to reflect the purpose of their particular mission. Friar John de Plano
Carpini and Friar William Rubruck, sent by the Pope in the thirteenth century
to investigate prospects for conversion to Christianity, reported that conditions
were favorable although they provided little additional information. The
Venetian Marco Polo who followed was a trader, and while he did describe the
opulent court of Kublai Khan, the people, and the countryside, his primary
emphasis was on commercial opportunities.24
No significant exchange followed these preliminary contacts, for when the
Yuan dynasty was succeeded by the Ming in 1368, China resumed a
xenophobic stance. Increasing hostility between the rising Ottoman Empire
and Christian Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries further
interrupted European trade with the Far East and prompted a desire to reach
the “riches of Cathay” by sea. Inspired by a variety of motives and aided by
new technology, European oceanic enterprise found the route and exploited
this source of goods and condiments not available at home. The first seaborn
Chinese porcelains to come directly to Europe in any quantity were brought by
Vasco da Gama on his return from his epochal voyage (1497-99). The
Portuguese then enjoyed a monopoly of this trade until replaced by the Dutch
East India Company, which carried porcelain to Europe in huge quantities, as
did the later British East India Company.25 The nobility and the rising middle
class of Europe were avid consumers of the elaborate ceramics and lavish
skills that filled the holds of company vessels. The image of Asia in the minds
of these elitesthose who could afford the commoditees and who controlled the
governments and economies of the more powerful European stateswas

 Page 37
formed by these visual objects from the mysterious East that adorned the
homes of the old and the new aristocracy.
Western customers began sending sketches of designs to be depicted on their
porcelains, and the often quaint and childlike portrayals of Europeans and
other Western-inspired subjects that came back from China titilated the
Western gentry, who often made fun of them. Recently one authority wrote,
“Among the most curious and interesting objects to be found in Chinese
export porcelain are some amusingly naive figures depicting Europeans in
costumes of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” 26 Actually, terra
cotta caricatures of foreigners had appeared as early as the T’ang dynasty and
in no way indicated a lack of skill, merely a bit of humor lost on the
Westerners.
Europeans and Americans did not share the Asian love of ceramics as a major
art formas not merely pretty and functional objects, but as a medium for
conveying ideas and emotions, of expressing the ultimate in creativity by
transforming clay through fire with skill and esthetic sensibility into a
masterpiece to be caressed and enjoyed with ecstacy.27 A seventeenth century
Englishman wrote of seeing “prints of landskips, of their idols, saints,
pagoods, of most ougly, serpentine, monstrous and hideous shapes to which
they paie devotion: pictures of men, and countries, rarely painted on a sort of
gumm’d calico transparent as glasse; also flowers, trees, beasts, birds &c;
excellently wrought on a kind of sleve-silk very naturall.”28 While
acknowledging technique of execution, this Englishman found some of the
subject matter repellent and saw it as a reflection of a primitive society
dominated by superstition. Moreover, the ethereal atmosphere, spatial
relationships, and subtlety of line in Chinese painting, especially in the
landscapes, was beyond Western comprehension. Conditioned by the lushness
of the representational convention featured by the various continental schools,
Westerners viewed this artistic output as mere sketches by untutored dabblers.
The products of East Asia first reached the Americas by what has been called
“The longest uninterrupted commercial navigation line in history,” the route
plied by Spanish galleons from Manila to Acapulco that continued from 1573
until 1815. The Philippines were the entrepot where Asian and Spanish traders
met, and silver became the medium of exchange for goods of the Orient.29
Many of these items were transshipped from Mexico to Spain and helped form
the European impression of East Asia, as well as having an impact in the New
World.
The exotic nature of Chinese or pseudo-Chinese objects ap-

 Page 38
pealed to Europeans and became the vogue in the eighteenth century. Known
as “chinoiserie,” it spread from household items to architecture, and the fad
reached the eastern portion of the United States where it developed fully in the
early nineteenth century as a sort of “esthetic colonialism.” American colonists
received their first impressions of Asia from England, and the upper classes,
especially those of New England and the middle colonies, copied the
chinoiserie fashion. After the colonies gained independence, American ships
ventured to the Far East without British restrictions. Carrying ginseng, furs
from the Pacific Northwest, sandalwood from the Hawaiian Islands, and, later,
opium from Turkey as mediums of exchange, American vessels brought home
cargoes of Chinese products that found a ready market among all social
classes. This direct exposure to the visual art and crafts of China gave
Americans their first and, for many, their only knowledge of that distant land.
30 The image formed was one of a fantastic, uncivilized nation of strange
people who lived on the opposite side of the globe, a fitting location for such a
weird society.
Western perceptions of Asia were augmented by new art forms when
Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry and his “black ships” opened Japan to
the world in 1854. Perhaps the first significant impression on Americans was
made six years later when a Japanese delegation visited the United States to
sign the Treaty of Amity and Commerce. Dressed in their elaborate robes and
wearing swordsboth examples of Japan’s finest art workthe delegates
exemplified the fantasy that parochial Americans associated with Asia.31 But
one Japanese art medium was received with enthusiasm by European avant
garde painters, namely, the colorful woodblock prints, “ukiyo-e,” often used
for packing objects sent to the West. Public enthusiasm extended to Japanese
decorative arts, and the term “Japonisme” joined chinoiserie to designate the
rage for Asian art that swept the Western world in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.32
Many Westerners found certain Japanese objects repulsive. The grotesque
temple guardian figures, the hideous Bugaku and Noh masks, and the esthetic
veneration of the Samurai sword gave the impression of a fierce, warlike
society which seemed to glorify brutality and armed conflict. Much of
Japanese painting, like the Chinese, distorted reality, and the bright colors of
woodblock prints did not compensate for some of its subject matter. As James
Michener observed, “No art of which we have record produced more sex
pictures than ukiyo-e.”33 Obscenity, depravity, and fight-

 Page 39
ing were characteristics many observers found in the art of Japan,
characteristics that coupled with the “heathen” religious sculptures to reveal a
nation with beliefs and aspirations wholly incompatable with those of the
West. Public showings of Japanese and Chinese art at exhibits and
international fairs that began in the mid-nineteenth century provided direct
exposure to authentic examples of Asian creativity, although whether it evoked
an understanding or even an interest in these countries is questionable. But a
wider audience did view these visual objects first hand, and people of diverse
classes in Europe and America were able to see evidence of these ancient
civilizations. Reactions varied from a fascination with the objects representing
these exotic lands to contempt and cultural condescension.
The nineteenth century Western interest in the novelty of Asian Art was
accompanied by a devotion among collectors, connoisseurs, and museum
curators to Asian art for its own intrinsic qualities. The scholary study of the
techniques, objectives, and iconography of the art forms in authentic pieces,
rather than the commercial export items, brought a new appreciation of these
visual objects if not of the societies that produced them. Lavishly illustrated
“coffee table” books appeared to interpret this strange art to the cognoscenti
and bring its esoteric message to the cultural aristocracy. Old Chinese bronzes
became the ultimate of collecting snobbery, and the sensuous appeal of
exquisite jade pieces made them, along with the customary ceramics, highly
prized in auction lots.
World War II brought Asia into Western perspective in a greater and more
dramatic way than ever before. Subsequent political and economic
developments have emphasized the role that Asian countries have played and
continue to play in world affairs. Recent decades have seen the West hosting
glamorous exhibits of art from Asian nations, at considerable expense to the
host institution, to be witnessed by a substantial number of attendees. No
doubt the motives of attendees were varied, as would be their reactions. Were
they spurred by curiosity or understanding, a desire to make the inscrutable
East more scrutable? Were they both fascinated and repelled, as had been
earlier Westeners? And would viewing the ancient art of these countries
provide clues to contemporary behavior? Cultural exchanges are designed to
bring nations closer together, and art has been a factor in the dialogue between
the cultures of East and West. But such exchanges may provoke a negative
reaction. Art can express what words cannot, and these “images of the mind,”
so different from those of the Western

 Page 40
world, reflect clashes in beliefs, values, and practices that, perhaps, can never
be reconciled. The criteria for judging are simply antithetical.
This paper has tried to deal with one of the many factors responsible for
creating an image of an alien people and the perceptions that emerged.
Tentatively, it appears that Asian art has proved beneficial to relations between
and among Asian countries. But the conceptualization of Asia through its art
by the Western conditioned mind and eye has proved detrimental to relations
between the two worlds of the East and the West.
Notes
1. Paul Shao, Asiatic Influences in Pre-Columbian American Art (Ames: Iowa
State University Press, 1976); Paul Shao, The Origin of Ancient American
Cultures (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1983). See also Audrey McBain,
“Reflections of Bronze Age China in Pre-Columbian American Art,” Arts of
Asia 14 (May-June 1984): 88-96.
2. Paul Tolstoy, “Diffusion: As Explanation and as Event,” in Noel Barnard,
ed., Early Chinese Art and Its Possible Influence in the Pacific Basin (New
York: Intercultural Arts Press, 1972), vol. 3, Oceania and The Americas, 823-
841. Tolstoy mentions “a contact inferred between cultures,” 823.
3. G. B. Sansom, The Western World and Japan: A Study in the Interaction of
European and Asiatic Cultures (New York: Knopf, 1951), 12; Dietrich Seckel,
The Art of Buddhism, translated by Ann E. Keep (New York: Greystone Press,
1968), 29; David L. Snellgrove, ed., The Image of the Buddha (Paris:
Kodansha International, 1978), 47. For Ghandara see ibid., 59-76.
4. Oxford English Dictionary, “style” quoting Chambers Encyclopedia, 1752
ed., and entry “Orient”; John Onians, Art and Thought in the Hellenistic Age:
The Greek World View, 350-50 B.C. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1979);
Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (New York, Dial Press, 1974), 429.;
Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (New York: Modern
Library, n.d.), 848.
5. Robert Erick Mortimer Wheeler, Rome Beyond the Imperial Frontiers (New
York: Philosophical Library, 1954), 115-75; Michele Pirassoli-t’Serstevens,
The Han Dynasty, translated by Janet Seligman (New York: Rizzoli, 1982),
126-27, 161; E. H. Warmington, The Commerce Between the Roman Empire
and India, (2d ed., (London: Curzon Press, 1974). Among the imports listed
by Warmington are animals and animal products, plants, minerals, and steel
swords.
6. Quoted in Michael Sullivan, The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art from
the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day (Greenwich, N.Y.: New York
Graphic Society, 1973), 46.
7. M. S. Diamond, A Handbook of Mohammadan Art, 2d ed., (New York:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1944), 7, 20.
8. Henrich Zimmer, The Art of Indian Asia, compiled and edited by Joseph
Campbell, 2d ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 1:42.
9. Richard Ettinghausen, “The Man-Made Setting: Islamic Art and Architec-

 Page 41
ture,” in Bernard Lewis, ed., The World of Islam: Faith, People, Culture
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1976), 60.
10. Basil Gray, ed., The Arts of India (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981),
95-189; Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1977), 104-5.
11. Namio Egami, et al. The Beginnings of Japanese Art (New York,
Weatherhill/Heibonsha, 1973), 62-63; “Introduction,” Art Treasures From
Japan: Catalogue of Exhibit in the United States, 1965-1966 (n.p., n.d.), 19.
12. Takashi Hatada, A History of Korea, translated and edited by Warren W.
Smith, Jr., and Benjamin H. Hazard (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 1969),
23; Robert E. Fisher, “The Buddha Image in Korea,” in Pratadapaditya Pal, et
al, Light of Asia: Buddha Sakyamuni in Asia Art (Los Angeles: Los Angeles
County Museum, 1984), 175.
13. Evelyn McCune, The Arts of Korea: An Illustrated History (Rutland,
Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1962), 19, 24.
14. J. Edward Kidder, Jr., The Art of Japan (New York, Park Lane, 1985), 42;
Amy G. Poster, “The Buddha Image in Japan,” in Pal, et al. Light of Asia:
Buddha Sakyamuni in Asian Art, 183.
15. David Pollack, The Fracture of Meaning: Japan’s Synthesis of China From
the Eighth Through the Eighteenth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1986).
16. Tasuichi Awakawa, Zen Painting, translated by John Bestor (Tokyo:
Kodansha International, 1970), 9, 17.
17. Chung Yango-mo, “Ceramic Wares Recovered Off the Coast of Korea.”
Arts of Asia 11 (July-August 1981): 105.
18. E. G. Pulleyblank, “The Chinese and Their Neighbors in Prehistoric and
Early Historic Times,” in David N. Keightley, ed., The Origins of Chinese
Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 411.
19. Howard J. Wechsler, Offerings of Jade and Silk: Ritual and Symbol in the
Legitimation of the T’ang Dynasty (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
20. Pierre Rambach, The Secret Message of Tantric Buddhism (New York,
Rizzoli, 1979), 29.
21. Quoted in Sullivan, The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art from the
Sixteenth Century to the Present Day, 48.
22. “In the early period of European explorations of Asia, travellers saw
Hindu sacred images as infernal creatures and diabolic multiple-limbed
monsters.” Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters: History of European
Reactions to Indian Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), vii. “The
motive of a couple, often engaged in an overt sexual act, was employed freely
on the external walls of a temple and is still regarded as an auspicious
symbol.” Pratapaditya Pal, The Sensuous Immortals: A Selection of Sculptures
From the Pan-Asian Collection (Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum
of Art, 1978), 81; “Tantra is a cult of ecstasy, focused on a vision of cosmic
sexuality.” Philip Rawson, The Art of Tantra, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1978), 7. Nor was eroticism absent in China. ”The oldest
manuals on Taoist sexual methods date from the Han period (206 B.C.-A.D.
220).” Michel Beurdeley, et al, Chinese Erotic Art, translated from the French
by Diana Imber (New York: Chartwell Books, 1969), 7.
23. June Taboroff, “Orientalists,” Aramco World Magazine, November-
December 1984, 27.

 Page 42
24. Leonardo Olschki, Marco Polo’s Precursers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1943), 6, 38-39; The Travels of Marco Polo, The Venetian,
revised from Marsden’s Translation and edited with introduction by Manuel
Komroff (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1926).
25. Jorge Graca, “The Portuguese Porcelain Trade with China,” Arts of Asia 7
(November-December 1977): 45; Elinor Gordon, “Concerning a Number of
Apprehensions,” in Elinor Gordon, ed., Chinese Export Porcelain: An
Historical Survey (New York: Universe Book, 1977), 13-14.
26. Joseph T. Butler, “Chinese Porcelain Figures of Westerners,” in Gordon,
ed., Chinese Export Porcelain: An Historical Survey, 90.
27. Cecile and Michel Beurdeley, A Connoisseur’s Guide to Chinese
Ceramics, translated by Katherine Watson (New York: Leon Amiel, n.d.), 6-7.
The Jesuit Father Joao Rodrigues wrote increduously of “a kind of
earthenware bowls . . . which is prized beyond all belief” by the Japanese.
Quoted in They Came to Japan: An Anthology of European Reports on Japan,
1543-1640 Compiled and annotated by Michael Cooper (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1965), 261.
28. P. J. Marshall and Glyndwr Williams, The Great Map of Mankind:
Perceptions of New Worlds in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1982), 86. Also see 86-87, 172-73 for English perceptions.
29. Patricia Justiniani McReynolds, “Asian Ivories in Mexico and the Galleon
Trade,” Arts of Asia 13 (July-August 1983): 100-103.
30. George H. Danton, The Culture Contacts of the United States and China:
The Earliest Sino-American Culture Contacts, 1784-1844 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1931). See especially 18, 29.
31. The cultural myopia was reciprocated. See Masao Miyoshi, As We Saw
Them: The First Japanese Embassy to the United States, 1860 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1979).
32. Siegfried Wichmann, Japonisme: The Japanese Influence on Western Art
in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York: Harmony Books, 1981), 6, 8.
33. James A. Michener, The Floating World (New York, Random House,
1954), 202. “Japanese mythology is surprisingly rich in the number of its
references to acts of creation, courtship, sexual intercourse, defloration, and
feats of magic.” Michael Czaja, Gods of Myth and Stone: Phallicism in
Japanese Folk Religion (New York: Weatherhill, 1974), 205. “Right-minded
Europe at that moment only saw it [erotic Ukiyo-e] as a demonstration of sin
which braved taboos and smacked of heresy, whereas it was not at all out of
the ordinary for the Japanese.” Gabriele Mandel, Shunga: Erotic Figures in
Japanese Art, translated by Alison L’Eplattenier (New York: Crescent Books,
1983), 5.
34. Geoffrey Hudson, “The Historical Context of Encounters between Asia
and Europe,” in Raghavan Iyer, ed., The Glass Curtain between Asia and
Europe (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 60-61; “Incomprehension
reaches tragic proportions in the confrontation of the Western tradition with
the civilizations of Asia.” Denis Sinor, ed., Orientalism and History, 2d ed.,
(Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1970), introduction, xv.

 Page 43

Cantonese Artifacts, Chinoiserie, and Early American

Idealization of China
Jonathan Goldstein
Introduction
This essay is an attempt to describe the early American visual image of what
Professor Murray A. Rubinstein has termed “the gateway,” Kwangtung
province in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 1 Kwantung and its
component anchorages, especially the city of Canton, Whampoa, Lintin, and
Macao, were not only literally but also ideationally the gateways for early
American access to China. In those two centuries Kwangtung craftsmen
emblazoned images of China on artifacts that were exported to Europe and
America. Upon reaching American shores many Chinese motifs influenced
domestically manufactured artifacts. The altered designs on these artifacts are
known generically as chinoiserie. Both Chinese images and American versions
are historically significant because from approximately 1786 to 1846
Kwangtung was the only part of China to which Americans had commercial
access. The visual image of China produced in Kwangtung therefore became a
significant component of the American visual image of all China.
This paper focuses on the nature of the visual image of the gateway. A more
ambitious task not attempted here would be to assimilate early American
visual imagery of China with nonvisual input. Those two components
contributed to an overall early American impression of the Middle Kingdom.
An even more ambitious task would be to explain how broadly based attitudes
and impressions came to affect United States governmental policy toward
China and toward Chinese immigrants to the United States. These broader
historical concerns are referred to in my book Philadelphia and the China
Trade. This essay explores some simi-
© 1987 by Jonathan Goldstein.

 Page 44
larities between early American and subsequent visual images of China, but
does not attempt to specify the relationship between early images and later
attitudes and policy.
In 1785 the Baltimore-built and New York and Philadelphia-financed Empress
of China initiated an ongoing Sino-American trade entirely in United States
ships. 2. The material culture of the early American China trade came to the
fore in numerous bicentennial exhibits held in 1984 and 1985, in concurrent
publications, and in lectures.3 The commemorative exhibits included and/or
depicted artifacts from China and Western representations of them. The
exhibits and events also publicized baronial stateside residences with interiors
and sometimes exteriors wholly or partially constructed in what was
considered Chinese style, occasionally with Anglo-Chinese gardens alongside.
From this material culture some generalizations can be drawn about the early
American image of “the gateway.”
Scholarship That Informs Our Understanding of China Trade Material Culture
Before proceding with those generalizations, one should credit the many
scholars who laid the intellectual underpinning for our understanding of the
material culture of the China trade. Peter Marshall, Glyndwr Williams, Philip
Curtin, and Jay Botsford scrutinized the general impact of non-Western art on
European society.4 Laurence P. Roberts specifically examined the impact of
Chinese and other East Asian and Pacific artistic influences on Europe.5
Patrick Conner’s Oriental Architecture in the West discussed Persian,
Egyptian, Moorish, and Chinese influences on American architecture.6 Clay
Lancaster devoted a series of publications first appearing in the 1940s to the
specific influence of Chinese forms on American architecture.7
In the dozen years immediately preceding the 1984-85 exhibitions, H. A.
Crosby Forbes and Carl L. Crossman continued the pioneer scholarship of
Clay Lancaster. Forbes and Crossman documented and analyzed the imagery
of “China” and “Chinese” on handicrafts imported to early America. Forbes’
history of Chinese export silver, his published article, and exhibitions he
arranged for Milton, Massachusetts’ China Trade Museum revealed images of
China upon “vast quantities of export wares” imported into early America.
According to Forbes, “the artisan community at Canton with its porcelain and
enamel painters, its painters in

 Page 45
oils and watercolors, its weavers and embroiderers, its silversmiths and other
metal workers, its carvers, gilders and cabinet makers, produced more goods,
of consistently high quality and good taste, in greater variety over a longer
period of time, than any other artisan community the world has ever known.” 8
Crossman, conducting his research simultaneously but largely independently
of Forbes, documented additional instances of the introduction of Chinese
motifs in early America. In his book The China Trade, in several articles, and
in exhibitions he mounted at the Peabody Museum of Salem, Massachusetts,
Crossman demonstrated how Chinese people, landscapes, flora, fauna, and
historical and mythological scenes were depicted upon stone, shell, metal,
horn, ivory, glass, clay, wood, paper, and fabric and thereby “entered” early
American homes. According to Crossman, millions of yards of Chinese silk,
much of it elaborately decorated with Chinese floral motifs, reached the
United States in the nineteenth century, along with hundreds of thousands of
decorated fans and thousands of sets of chessmen, each man painstakingly
carved from white or red-dyed ivory.9
Forbes and Crossman concluded that the image of China on Chinese-made
artifacts was often created in a bucolic manner. A refined, elegant, and often
mythical China bore little semblance to reality. Nevertheless, it was those
images that became part of the American impression or understanding of what
China was.
Archaeological research has provided additional data on the presence of
decorated Chinese export objects in early American homes. Digs in
Philadelphia’s Society Hill district and at Colonial Williamsburg have
unearthed numerous types of Chinese export porcelain in varied
socioeconomic contexts: rich homes, poor homes, tavern sites. These artifacts
indicate that the China trade was not only a commerce in finer decorative arts
but in less expensive popularly consumed artifacts. The China trade affected
and influenced all classes and was not the sole province of the elite.10
Archaeological evidence is especially important when one takes into account
that the importation of China trade goods to the colonies up to 1784 was to
some extent illicit, over and beyond those commodities transshipped from
Great Britain. Quantities of porcelain and other goods were smuggled in from
St. Eustatius in the Dutch West Indies and elsewhere. Understandably, such
transactions were rarely noted in documents.11
While many China trade artifacts have been unearthed in Pennsylvania and
Virginia and others have been studied and publicized by Forbes and Crossman,
an even more extensive array of such

 Page 46
objects was displayed in the 1984-85 gallery exhibitions. The exhibits
corroborated the revelations of Forbes and Crossman, reconfirmed by
archaeological evidence, that Kwangtung artisans were not only competent but
versatile. In addition to producing high-quality porcelain and silk of their own
native styling, they developed a vigorous industry duplicating Western-style
objects and designs from prototypes. By 1750, enamelling workshops were
moved from remote Ching-tê Chen to the port city of Canton, far more
accessible to westerners. At Canton, Western monograms, crests, and pictorial
etchings could be readily reproduced on ceramics. Designs from prints were
copied on canvas or glass in Canton by the end of the eighteenth century.
Canton carpenters used both native and imported woods in their reproduction
of prototypes. 12
The popularity of Chinese designed and replicated goods in early America
may have derived from the fact that such products were decorated in a fashion
widely different from what was common in the early American marketplace.
The American taste for Chinese goods appears to have coincided with and
perhaps been inherited from European upper classes. The exotic seems to have
held a charm for Americans and Europeans alike. The fascination was at least
partially rooted in dissatisfaction with dominant baroque and classical modes.
In art and in social behavior, one means of relieving the monotony of
classicism was the introduction of novel customs like tea drinking with its
refreshingly outlandish sets of imported ornaments. Americans further
enlivened classical motifs in their homes with the introduction of imported
Chinese wallpapers, artifacts, and European chinoiserie that created a romantic
illusion of China. Examples of Chinese objects can be found in virtually all
James River manors in Virginia of the eighteenth and first half of the
nineteenth centuries, as well as in merchant homes of Philadelphia,
Providence, Boston, Salem, and Newburyport of the same era.13
Americans, as has been already mentioned, did not restrict themselves to
imported Chinese products or to European chinoiserie in their efforts to satisfy
a longing for the romantic and exotic. Concurrent with the importation of
Chinese goods and European chinoiserie artifacts, two distinct forms of
cultural borrowing occurred in the development of decorative arts in America
and were reflected in the 1984-85 exhibits. There were attempts to
domestically manufacture objects with Chinese designs. And efforts were
undertaken not only to decorate the inside of American structures,

 Page 47
but also to construct a building’s entire exterior in the Chinese style.
Influence of China Trade Artifacts on European and American Decorative Arts
With respect to American-produced chinoiserie, the 1984-85 exhibits revealed
that American artisans began to graft onto their products either Chinese
designs or European romanticizations of them. This stylistic development was
prevalent in American furniture, silver, textile, and wallpaper production.
Lithography and watercolor painting produced documents depicting Chinese
people and Chinese-style buildings. In each case the trends were not particular
to one geographical region of the United States and appear to have been
nationwide.
The catalog for the 1985 Peabody Museum of Salem exhibit “After the
Chinese Taste” documented the influence of Chinese forms and surface
decoration on American furniture makers, including an imitative lacquered
surface decoration known as “japanning.” This term was a misnomer in that
most of what japanners were copying came from China. Japanned furniture
from England first appeared in American markets in the 1690s. Since New
York and Boston seem to have been the most important markets for these
foreign products, it is not surprising to find that they were also the cities where
American japanned furniture was mainly produced. 14 Distinct images of
Chinese were painted up and down a tall japanned pine clock made in Boston
about 1750 by Gawen Brown, and across a Baltimore armchair of Renshaw
and Barnhard of approximately 1805.
Like japanned products, early American silver, textiles, and wallpaper bore
imaginary Chinese figures and imagery. Lithographs and watercolors faithfully
depicted real Chinese and Chinese-style structures. Chinese floral motifs
encircled some of S. Kirk and Sons’ Baltimore-made silver mustard pots,
waste bowls, tea services, candlesticks and coffee pots. This decoration seems
to have been directly inspired by almost identical design found on Chinese
export silver. The Peabody Museum catalog traced much of this inspiration to
the influence of Jean-Baptiste Pillement (1728-1808), who published A New
Book of Chinese Ornament in 1755. Pillement’s “Chinese” motifs appeared on
the English printed wallpaper in the Jeremiah Lee Mansion, Marblehead,
Massachusetts, 1768, and on the American printed wallpaper in General Henry
Knox’s home in Thomaston, Maine.15

 Page 48
Perhaps the most impressive Chinese figure in early American iconography
was done without reference to Pillement. This was the large mezzotint of the
Hong merchant Houqua seated amid the palatial grandeur of his villa. It was
engraved by John Sartain of Philadephia, allegedly after a portrait made in
Canton. 16
Pagodas, those unmistakable “Middle Kingdom” motifs, were interspersed
with sailing ships and New England-style churches on a jacquard coverlet of
about 1840. Pagodas were featured in the Philadelphia lithography of Lucas
and Newsam and watercolors by David Kennedy and Benjamin Evans. The
tower also appeared, perhaps as a result of Pillement’s inspiration, on a Ford
and Tupper silver kettle of 1825. It was shown rising next to a Philadelphia
family’s monogram.17
Grandiose Buildings in the Chinese Style
It was in architecture where the pagoda motif specifically, and the style of
chinoiserie in general, found its most grandiose expression. As with so many
other aspects of the history of taste, eighteenth and nineteenth century
Americans followed the China-loving fancies of their European cousins. By
the end of the seventeenth century, Europeans had erected their first Chinese-
style monument, the “Trianon de Porcelain,” at Versailles. In 1761, a 163 foot
tall pagoda was erected in London’s Kew Gardens. The number of Chinese
landscapes and garden pavilions increased in Europe following publication of
Thomas Chippendale’s Gentleman and Cabinetmaker’s Directory in England
in 1754.18 This book appears to have stimulated the use of Chinese forms on
woodwork decoration both inside and outside of early American buildings.19
Examples of the usage of Chinese exterior architectural forms, as opposed to
artifacts around the house, included the University of Virginia colonnades; the
Valcour Aimé pagoda in Louisiana; a painted pagoda in the garden at “Mt.
Pleasant,” Philadelphia; John Notman’s Mount Holly, New Jersey, “Chinese
Cottage”; and John R. Latimer’s Wilmington, Delaware, manor.20 Far and
away the most grandiose Sinitic structures were the domiciles of returning
China traders Andreas van Braam Houckgeest and John P. Cushing, and the
commercial property erected by Peter Browne. No discussion of the impact of
Chinese fashions in early America would be complete without at least a brief
description of these three structures.
Andreas van Braam Houckgeest’s residence, “China’s Retreat,”

 Page 49
was built in Croydon, Pennsylvania, in 1796 and was a landmark on the west
bank of the Delaware River until its destruction in 1970. It was topped by a
small pagoda and wind bells, while indoors was a seventeen-figure Chinese
diorama, which included pagodas, bridges, ponds, streams, trees and human
figurines. Chinese house servants maintained the residence, and the imported
furnishings included over two thousand drawings of China. The total effect of
this romantic recreation was perhaps best summarized by Philadelphia
publisher Moreau de Saint-Mèry, who wrote, after a visit to “China’s Retreat”:
The furniture, ornaments, everything at Mr. Van Braam’s reminds us of China. It is
impossible to avoid fancying ourselves in China while surrounded by living Chinese
and by representations of their manners, monuments, and arts. 21

John Perkins Cushing’s “Belmont,” was constructed in Watertown,

Massachusetts, in 1834 and ran a close second to “China’s Retreat” in terms of
its ability to create the illusion of China. Not only did John P. Cushing
surround himself with Chinese servants and house furnishings. He also erected
greenhouses with rare Chinese fruits and trees, including the first gingko trees
imported to the United States. Boston legends describe the hospitality at
Belmont, where “annual Fourth of July parties featured Chinese firecrackers
and fireworks, crystallized ginger and mechanical toys.”22
Perhaps the most complete adaptation of Chinese architectural style in North
America was the hundred-foot high pagoda with Chinese pavilion and garden
constructed in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, in 1827 and 1828. This creation,
sometimes referred to as “The Temple of Confucius,” was the inspiration of
Philadelphia attorney Peter Browne. The tower was an exact replica of a
Canton pagoda familiar to Western visitors. Browne’s “Pagoda and Labyrinth
Garden,” as the complex was also known, probably combined refreshment
facilities and botanical displays with some sort of entertainment, all of which
blended to give patrons the illusion of being transported to China.23
The evidence of imported artifacts, chinoiserie and architecture reveals that, as
early as the mid-eighteenth century, American colonists were imitating their
European cousins in attempting to create their own romantic visions of Cathay.
They had erected villas, gardens, amusement parks, and other public displays
that were at least partially Chinese in appearance or contents. As

 Page 50
in Americans’ adoption of small-scale Chinese-style artifacts, the usage of
large-scale displays was nationwide and undertaken by some of the most
distinguished early American designers.
There was one final process by which a romanticized visual image of China
was transmitted: through the so-called “museums of Chinese curiosities.”
These creations may be partially considered the product of a genuine
American interest in things Chinese. Like other forms of material culture,
some of these museums were also inspired by commercial motives. Although
advertised as “edifying” collections, these displays also served to amuse and
titillate onlookers. Returning China trader Nathan Dunn opened his “Chinese
Museum” to the Philadelphia public in 1839. Over one hundred thousand
Americans paid to see Dunn’s assemblage of gaily costumed Chinese
mannequins arrayed beneath silk banners and lanterns. Over 50,000 copies of
his Descriptive Catalogue were sold in the first few months of the exhibit.
Dunn wished to capitalize on European receptivity toward romanticized and
idealized images of China and the Chinese. Consequently, in the early 1840s
he moved his display to London, where it was installed in a pagoda that John
Notman had specifically designed for Dunn. Also in the 1840s, John Peters, a
member of Caleb Cushing’s United States diplomatic mission to China, set up
a second Chinese museum in Philadelphia, later moving it on to Boston. Also
a money-making institution, Peters’ museum offered an ”extensive view of the
Central Flowery Nation.” It appears to have been even larger than Dunn’s,
containing sixty full-size figurines to Dunn’s fifty-three. 24
The original and longest-lived of the “cabinets of curiosities” was that of the
East India Marine Society of Salem, Massachusetts, established in 1799 and
now the Peabody Museum of Salem. Originally a repository for artifacts
collected by Salem sea captains, the “cabinet” featured, like the other
museums, mannequins in Chinese attire. Nineteenth-century accounts record
amusement and entertainment as viewers’ impression of the display. One
onlooker described the collection as a “subject of wonder.”25 Another saw it
as a “source of amusement to visitors of all classes.”26 A third recalled that it
was
an experience to step from the prosaic street of New England into that atmosphere
redolent with the perfumes of the East. That arcade of sitting and standing figures
became real friends of mine. Mr. Blue Gown and Mr. Queer Cap must be greeted
whenever I went to the Museum.27

 Page 51

Conclusion: An Early American Vision of “The Gateway”

To that viewer and other early Americans the museums, villas, parks, gardens,
and smaller decorative objects offering visual images of China possessed a
“mysterious attraction.” Fairy-like beings cavortedon porcelain, furniture,
carvings, textiles, and paintingsin a never-never land of cloud-like rocks,
exotic plants, and airy pavilions. Where, in this romantic vision of Cathay, was
the poverty, squalour, stagnation, starvation, exploitation, and misery also part
of the real China? The popularity of “Chinese” objects in early America tells
us as much about ourselves as about China. The material culture of the old
China trade is evidence that a fantasy world could be conjured up through
commercial interest and could become part of an American conception of
China. Westerners essentially made the decisions about what was borrowed
and worked into the American image of China.
No attempt has been made here to deal with an American visual image of
China after the mid-nineteenth century. In 1846 the first Sino-American treaty
went into effect and significantly increased American access to China. Our
conceptions of China changed as many gateways, or trading ports, opened in
addition to Canton. However, one final thought can be offered concerning
post-1846 imagery. The mid-century introduction of photography to China
offered Americans an alternative to the romantic vision suggested by earlier
artisans. It was not so much the process of photography as the way it was
used. Tourists and news photographers thronged a widely opened China and
snapped scenes that denied the earthly paradise pictured on saleable decorative
artifacts. These scenes were reproduced in private collections of photos, in
mass-marketed stereopticon cards and, most widely, in the printed mass media.
28 Although Western woodcuts had occasionally communicated unpleasant
Chinese scenes to Americans before the mid-nineteenth century, it was the
mid-century development of mass media techniques in the United States,
especially the high-speed, steam-driven “pulp” media press, which made
possible swift dissemination of photographs of explicitly unpleasant subject
matter previously omitted from most romantic decor.
The romantic vision of China has not been totally displaced by the camera for
it continues to be evoked by Chinese and American artisans today. These
image makers are subsidized by a flourishing trade in “Chinese” art items, at
Chinatown curio shops and Friendship Stores. However, since the mid-
nineteenth century, the romantic image of China on artifacts has had to coexist

 Page 52
with the stark reality of photography, which can vividly depict the harsh life of
another China.
Notes
1. Professor Rubinstein used the term “the gateway” in connection with the
October 31, 1987, Mid-Atlantic regional Association for Asian Studies panel
“Visions of the Gateway: Western Perceptions of Kwangtung Province in the
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” The panel was held at Lehigh
University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and was chaired by Professor
Rubinstein. The author wishes to thank Peter Pih of West Georgia College,
Jane Leonard of the University of Akron, and William Sargent of the Peabody
Museum of Salem for criticism of this paper and Darlene Bearden, Beth
Beggs, and Lisa Chase of West Georgia College for secretarial assistance.
2. On The Empress of China voyage, see Jonathan Goldstein, Philadelphia
and the China Trade, 1682-1846: Commercial, Cultural, and Attitudinal
Effects (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press,
1978), and Philip Chadwick Foster Smith, The Empress of China
(Philadelphia: Philadelphia Maritime Museum, 1984).
3. In 1984 and 1985, ten Empress of China commemorative museum
exhibitions were mounted, numerous related publications were issued, and
lectures were held in the eastern United States. Among larger museums, the
Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) hosted the exhibit “Philadelphians and
the China Trade, 1784-1844.” The PMA and the Philadelphia Maritime
Museum sponsored an exhibit entitled “The Canton Connection: Ships,
Captains and Cargoes.” An illustrated catalog was published by the PMA of
the objects in both PMA exhibits. The Peabody Museum of Salem,
Massachusetts, shortly after its 1984 merger with the Milton, Massachusetts,
China Trade Museum, mounted the exhibits “Directly from China: Export
Goods for the American Market, 1784 to 1930” and “After the Chinese Taste:
China’s Influence in America, 1730-1930,” with illustrated catalogs for each
exhibit. Also in 1984, exhibitions at least partially focused on early Sino-
American trade in New York City at the Museum of the City of New York, the
American Museum of Natural History, and the Berry-Hill Galleries, and in
Washington, D.C., at the National Portrait Gallery. Smaller museums also
commemorated the Empress bicentennial: the Searsport, Maine, Penobscot
Maritime Museum and Atlanta’s High Museum of Art held small exhibits of
China trade artifacts. The High Museum additionally sponsored a “Patterns of
Trade” public lecture series with presentations by China trade scholars Arlene
Palmer Schwind, Philip C. F. Smith, and Ross E. Taggert. Jean Gordon Lee,
Philadelphians and the China Trade 1784-1844 (Philadelphia: Philadelphia
Museum of Art, 1984); Philadelphia Museum of Art brochure “China Trade,”
1984; Ellen Paul Denker, After the Chinese Taste: China’s Influence in
America, 1730 to 1930 (Salem, Mass.: Peabody Museum of Salem, 1985);
Christina H. Nelson, Directly from China: Export Goods for the American
Market, 1784-1930 (Salem, Mass.: Peabody Museum of Salem, 1985);
“China’s Trade Mark: An Exhibit,” Washington Post, 6 April 1984; Margaret
C. S. Christman, Adventurous Pursuits: Americans and the China Trade 1784-
1844 (Washington, D.C.: National Portrait Gallery, 1984); David S. Howard,
New York and the China Trade, (New York: New-York Historical Society,
1984); “High Museum of Art (Atlanta) January Schedule,” 1985.

 Page 53
In addition to the museum exhibitions, at least one scholarly symposium
was held to celebrate the bicentennial of Sino-American trade relations. The
panel “The Cultural Dimensions of American-Chinese Relations, 1784-
1984” was held at the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
(SHAFR) Tenth Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., 2 August 1984. Letter,
William H. Becker to SHAFR membership, 16 January 1984, and
conference program. The Empress’ voyage was also commemorated in
January 1984 when Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang visited Washington, D.C.
The premier recalled the pioneering voyage in his speech at the official
ceremonies. USA Today, 22 February 1984.
4. Peter Marshall and Glyndwr Williams, The Great Map of Mankind:
Perceptions of New Worlds in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1982); Philip Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and
Action, 1780-1850 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964); and Jay
Botsford, English Society in the Eighteenth Century as Influenced from
Overseas (New York: Octagon, 1965).
5. Laurance P. Roberts, “The Orient and Western Art,” in Arthur E. Christy,
ed., The Asian Legacy and American Life (New York: John Day, 1942).
6. Patrick Conner, Oriental Architecture in the West (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1979), chap. 12.
7. Clay Lancaster, “Oriental Forms in American Architecture 1800-1870,” The
Art Bulletin 29, no. 3 (September 1947): 183-93; and Lancaster, “Oriental
Influences in American Architecture” in The Oriental Impulse in America
(Williamsburg, Va.: Colonial Williamsburg, 1969). Lancaster specifically
described the Chinese impact in “The Chinese Influence in American
Architecture and Landscaping,” Nineteenth Annual Washington Antiques Show
1974 (catalog), 33-36, 92-99.
8. H. A. Crosby Forbes, “The American Vision of Cathay,” in Nineteenth
Annual Washington Antiques Show 1974 (catalog), 49, 51-54; H. A. Crosby
Forbes, John Devereaux Kernan, and Ruth S. Wilkins, Chinese Export Silver,
1785 to 1885 (Milton, Mass.: Museum of the American China Trade, 1975).
9. Carl Crossman, The China Trade (Princeton: Pyne Press, 1972), 192, 206,
244. See also: Crossman, “China Trade Paintings on Glass,” Antiques 95
(March 1969), 376-82; Crossman, “The Rose Medallion and Mandarin
Patterns in China Trade Porcelain,” Antiques 92 (October 1967): 530-36;
Crossman, “Chinese Export Porcelain and Other Objects of the China Trade
1785-1840,” in The Oriental Impulse in Early America (Williamsburg, Va.:
Colonial Williamsburg, 1969), 11- 13; Crossman, A Design Catalog of
Chinese Export Porcelain for the American Market (Salem, Mass.: Peabody
Museum, 1964).
10. Excavations at Colonial Williamsburg and Philadelphia have revealed
substantial Chinese porcelain in eighteenth-century contexts. Shards with
elaborate overglaze-decorated floral patterns, particularly pink famille rose
coloration, have been found on tavern sites and property of craftsmen and
shopkeepers in Williamsburg. On the other hand, crudely or simply decorated
pieces have been unearthed in Philadelphia, especially at a dig nicknamed
“Franklin’s trash pit.” Such cheap varieties were often imported for their value
as ballast on tea ships, and became weekday dishes for lower social and
economic classes. Barbara Liggett, Archaeology at Franklin’s Court
(Harrisburg, Pa.: McFarland, 1973): Ivor Hume, Pottery and Porcelain in
Colonial Williamsburg’s Archaeological Collections (Williamsburg, Va.:
Colonial Williamsburg, 1969).
11. Even on those few occasions when mention does occur, such as in smug-

 Page 54
glers’ correspondence, rarely is a distinction drawn between a genuine
Chinese item such as porcelain and imitation wares simultaneously
produced in such European factories as Delft, Bow, Worcester, Liverpool,
or Caughley. A similar vagueness appears in legitimate documents.
Benjamin Franklin, for example, referred to the first appearance of “China”
in his house about 1730, but it is unclear from his reference whether he
meant genuine porcelain from China or imitation. Letters: Thomas Richè to
George Clifford, 18 September 1762; to Q. Hodshon, 7 October 1762,
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Richè Letterbooks, 1750-
71; Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, edited by
Leonard Labaree, Ralph Ketcham, Helene Boatfield, and Helene Fineman
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 145.
12. Forbes, “American Vision,” 53; Claire LeCorbellier, China Trade
Porcelain (New York: Metropolitan Museum, 1974), 7-8; Crossman, China
Trade, 117, 221-22; Hume, Pottery, 39-40.
13. B. Sprague Allen, Tides in English Taste (1619-1800) (New York: Pageant
Books, 1958), 1:234; Lancaster, “Chinese Influence”; Hugh Honour,
Chinoiserie (London: J. Murray, 1961); Crossman, China Trade, passim.
14. Denker, Chinese Taste, 3.
15. Denker, Chinese Taste, 4-5, 14-15, 37; Dorothy Rainwater, “House of
Kirk: America’s Oldest Silversmiths,” Spinning Wheel, October 1965, 11;
Samuel Kirk and Son: American Silver Craftsmen (pamphlet).
16. Goldstein, Philadelphia, 38, illustration opposite p. 36.
17. Forbes, Chinese Export Silver, passim; Rainwater, “Kirk,” 11; Kirk
(pamphlet).
18. Lancaster, “Chinese Influence”; Honour, Chinoiserie, passim; Crossman,
China Trade, passim.
19. Denker, Chinese Taste, 5-7; Lancaster, “Chinese,” 92-93; Lancaster,
“Oriental Forms,” 183-93; Conner, Oriental, 173-74.
20. South Carolina Gazette (Charleston), 1 April 1757; A. J. Downing, A
Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (New York and
London: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 345; Joan Thill, “A Delawarean in the
Celestial Empire.” (M.A. thesis, University of Delaware, 1973), 271-77;
Denker, Chinese Taste, passim.
21. Harold Eberlein and Cortlandt Hubbard, Portrait of a Colonial City:
Philadelphia, 1670-1838 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1939), 478; William
Birch, The Country Seats of the United States, no. 19 (Springfield, Pa.: W.
Birch, 1808); Andreas van Braam Houckgeest, Voyage de l’Ambassade de la
Compagnie des Indes Orientales (Philadelphia: M. L. E. Moreau de Saint-
Mery, 1797), :iii-xvi; Ruth Seltzer, “The Best of Two Old River Houses,”
Evening Bulletin (Philadelphia), 10 December 1957, 58; Marion Rivinus and
Katharine Biddle, Lights Along the Delaware (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1965),
71; Edward Barnsley, History of China’s Retreat (Bristol, Pa.: Bristol Printing
Comany, 1933); William Davis, The History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania
(Doylestown, Pa.: Democrat Book and Job Office Print, 1886), 133; William
Birch, “Autobiography,” Society Miscellaneous Collection, Historical Society
of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Janet Thorpe, “Chinoiserie in America with
Emphasis on the Van Braam Houckgeest Collection,” (term paper, Institute of
Fine Arts, New York University, May 1964), 14-16; M[argaret] Jourdain. ”The
China Trade and Its Influence on Works of Art,” Apollo 34 (November 1941):
111. A watercolor painting of “China’s Retreat” by Birch is in the Library
Company of Philadelphia.
22. Lancaster, “Chinese,” passim; Forbes, “American,” 51-52.

 Page 55
23. William Chambers, Designs of Chinese Buildings (London: published for
the author, 1757), plate V; Old Landmarks and Relics of Philadelphia
(Philadelphia: R. Newell & Son, 1876); Ellis Oberholtzer, Philadelphia: A
History of the City and Its People (Philadelphia: S. J. Clarke, 1912), 2:198;
Lancaster, “Chinese,” 34, 93.
24. Enoch Wines, A Peep at China, in Mr. Dunn’s Chinese Collection
(Philadelphia: Printed for Nathan Dunn, 1839), vi-viii; Forbes, “American,”
52-53; Casper Souder, The History of Chestnut Street (Philadelphia: Sunday
Dispatch, 1858), 148-49; Henry Shinn, History of Mount Holly (Mt. Holly,
N.J.: privately printed, 1957), 157; Hummel, “Dunn,” 39. See also John
Peters, Miscellaneous Remarks upon the Chinese (Philadelphia: G. B. Zieber,
1847); Forbes, “American Vision. 53.
25. Essex Register (Salem, Mass.), 9 October 1826. There were also several
American Indian figures.
26. James Buckingham, Eastern and Western States of America, (London:
Fischer, 1842). 1:270-75.
27. Caroline King, When I Lived in Salem, 1822-1866 (Brattleboro, Vt.: S.
Daye Press, 1937), 29-30.
28. William Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ in Canton before the Treaty Days
(London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1882), 113; Crossman, China Trade, 46;
Forbes, “American Vision,” 55.

 Page 56

The Commercial Origins of American Attitudes toward China,

1784-1844
Jacques M. Downs
The major concerns of early American politics were problems of foreign
relations. In fact, down to the First World War, the United States’ primary
interest in its relations with most other countries was commerce. Trade figured
very importantly even in our relations with Britain, France, and Spain, and
who else but merchants and missionaries knew anything about Asia, Africa,
the Pacific, Latin America, or the Mediterranean?
It is therefore remarkable that so few diplomatic historians of the era have
consulted mercantile records. Until the late nineteenth century, our only
official representatives in large areas of the globe were commercial
consulstraders who happened to be living in countries where the U.S. needed
agents. Most consular business was maritime (i.e., commercial). Our
commercial archives bear abundant testimony to the vital importance of
foreign trade in our development as a nation. Unless historians show more
interest, these records are likely to be destroyed. Although business records
can be a vitally important source of data for early American history, they are
rapidly being lost. In the last decade several collections have been fed into the
incinerator.
These commercial letters and record books give one a special perspective on
the preeminently mercantile origin and thrust of American policy. Our
relations with China, as with many other nations, began as something private
and commerciala special interest, which more or less imperceptibly became
the national interest. Even the missionariesthe largest noncommercial group of
Americans in Chinaat first accepted attitudes not far different from those of
traders. In large part, these attitudes ultimately became policies that were the
basis of America’s approach to China for many years. Early in this century
Tyler Dennett wrote that

 Page 57
modern American policy in Asia is largely a body of precedents which have
accumulated from decade to decade since the close of the war of the American
Revolution. These precedents have a remarkable consistency due in large measure to
the unchanging geographical and slowly changing economic and political conditions
under which American trade with Asia has been conducted. 1
We usually condemn the influence of special interests in the making of policy,
and rightly so, but were merchants’ views any different from those of the rest
of the country? Or, more realistically, did anyone else care? If, as seems
probable, the rest of the country was largely unconcerned, are we raising
subversive questions about the ability of a democracy to conduct foreign
relations?
As businessmen, Canton traders thought like businessmen. They were
“economically rational.” They had traveled halfway around the globe, with
large amounts of other people’s property under their fiduciary control.
Business had to be first in their loyalties. Anything else would have been
unethical. Their correspondence and memoirs are full of reaffirmations of this
theme. Commonly, in a commercial letter, a merchant mentions an event, then
assesses its effects on the market and on his own business. To twist a banal
quotation attributed to Calvin Coolidge, “The business of Canton was
business.” To be sure, noneconomic motives existed, but economic self-
interest remained a powerful drive. In China, as elsewhere, this drive was
reinforced by the traders’ view of their primary dutyto preserve, and if
possible, to increase the property with which they had been entrusted.
Thus Canton traders tended to favor, to oppose, or to be indifferent to the
Opium War, the abolition of the “Canton system,” or the establishment of
diplomatic relations with China, as they saw these events affecting trade,
especially their own. There may be a direct line of development from Robert
Bennet Forbes’s famous refusal of Captain Elliot’s appeal to join the British in
abandoning Canton in 1839 to late-century railroad leaders’ defense of
antisocial corporate policy by reference to managements’ duty to its
stockholders.2 The reasoning was the same in both cases, and precedent can be
as important in business as it is in diplomacy or law. They were concerned that
financial trust should not be sacrificed to other considerations, whether of
honor, patriotism, the long-run benefit of the community, or sometimes even
of morality and legality.
The mercantile residents had come to Canton for only one reason. They were
single-minded men, there to make a fortune and

 Page 58
take it home as soon as they possibly could. They regarded their stay in China,
however comfortable, as a time of exile, for which they expected to be very
well compensated. In fact, the average stay was about seven years from arrival
to retirement for a well-connected young man fortunate enough to get himself
placed in one of the four big companies. In seven years, most could earn
$100,000, a substantial fortune at that time. As always, the moral problem was
how to accomplish this admirable end without compromising one’s integrity.
The exploitive mercantile attitudes that Rutherford Alcock and Louis Mallet of
the British Foreign Office cited in later years were very similar to the views of
many Americans in this early period. 3 All intelligent men knew and some
deplored what the drug trade was doing to China, but the traders managed to
overlook it. Yet these men were not monsters; they were sincere, earnest, often
sensitive, Christian gentlemen.4
The traders were also not racists. To be sure they held the lowest class of
Cantonese in contempt, but they disdained the lower classes elsewhere as well.
Moreover, they often had great respect for at least some aspects of Chinese
culture, as the furnishings of their homes testify. To Ch’ing officials, they
offered the grudging respect that accompanies fear, and many were close to
Chinese merchants. It is only remotely possible that the ferocity of California
mobs in the late century originated in the disparaging words of early China
traders.5 Traders’ attitudes were complex. The opium trade itself was a creator
of hard attitudes, but one also finds considerable sympathy for the Chinese in
the correspondence of drug merchants. Then, of course, there were people like
the partners of Olyphant & Co., who were very outspoken against the opium
trade and were pillars of the China Mission. Their views were
indistinguishable from those of the missionaries. Yet somehow all of these
people agreed on most of the important elements of United States commercial
policy.
The American expatriate community’s opinion was more important to
American relations with China than the corresponding British China-coast
opinion was to British diplomacy. Unlike Britain, the United States had no
corps of intelligent, professional, civil servants with a clear conception of the
national interest. Historian Nathan Pelcovits has depicted the struggle for
control of policy between these wise British bureaucrats and the ignorant,
selfish, and feckless old China hands. Because they were well-placed, well-
informed, and logical, British civil servants were able to produce a sensible
policy after the Opium Wars had made it unavoidable.6 In Jacksonian
America, “rotation in office” pro-

 Page 59
duced no counterpart to these sagacious British statesmen. For many years our
old China hands met no real resistance to their simple, often self-serving
demands.
Later in the century, missionaries would create a somewhat different concept
of American national interest in China, but in those early days merchants and
missionaries pulled together.
American governmental inertia operated against the early adoption of any
official China policy. The dispatch of the Cushing mission came in response to
community demand, and the resultant treaty gave the Canton resident
merchants and missionaries more rights and privileges than they had dared
hope for. The United States was very lucky that there was as yet no cry for
“extended sovereignty.” While British merchants tended to be commercial
imperialists, most Americans still held true to the anti-imperial ethic of their
revolution. Indeed, most of the American commercial correspondence of that
period condemns the British for attacking China, for barbarities during the
war, and ultimately for their empire itself. By and large, American merchants
thought the British traders who called for a “forward policy” headstrong,
greedy, bloodthirsty, and very foolish. 7 The English newspapers, the Canton
Press and more especially John Slade’s Canton Register served to alienate the
resident Americans by their intemperate stand. Nevertheless, some younger
American merchants and at least one senior trader, Joseph Coolidge (who had
been manhandled by Chinese soldiers), agreed with the British on the
necessity of punishing the Chinese. It is interesting to note the ambivalence of
old opium traders like Warren Delano and Augustine Heard, who sympathized
with the Chinese, while reiterating the belief that China had to be taught a
lesson. As the war dragged on and Commissioner Lin’s isolation of the foreign
community receded into the past, more and more Ameicans expressed
opinions like Heard’s:
Whatever faults the Chinese may have . . . bad treatment of commercial foreigners is
not one of them & they appear to . . . me to have the right side of the question in
their quarrel with the English.8
Still later, he commented more pointedly:
The Chinese have been severely punished and I think most unreasonably dealt with.
They have been obligated to relinquish the policy that has guided them for centuries
and promise everything that their invaders required.

 Page 60
He then predicted that the time would come when the Chinese would throw off
this foreign “yoke.” 9
Possibly American altruism toward China may not have been the legacy solely
of the missionary movement. Some credit belongs to the merchants and to
their ideologythat “civil religion” in which Americans of that era took such
pride. There may also have been some sympathy toward China among the
British civil servants that Pelcovits mentions, such as Frederick Bruce and
Robert Hart. Both influenced Anson Burlingame, the U.S. minister to China
who was also to lead China’s 1868 diplomatic mission to the United States and
Europe. Without that influence, Burlingame might be hard to explain.10
Another fact emphasized by the commercial correspondence is that most
treaty-port institutions were developed in old Canton before the war. The
treaties made it possible to spread these institutions up the coast. In this chain
of communities, appeared people from Cantonboth Western and Chinesewho
replicated the practices and attitudes of the old system. It took the experience
of another decade and another war to create an entirely new order. Even then,
many of the elements of that new order were holdovers from old Canton. The
Cohong could not survive, and the foreigners had to be given a hand in the
governance of the new ports. But the Cohong had been moribund for many
years anyhow, and the foreigners had managed to exert considerable influence
even during the life of the old Canton system.
But what about the opium trade itself, that “long-continued, systematic,
international crime?” This question is so entangled with whatever subject one
addresses in early Sino-American relations that it is hard to treat any other
subject independently. Historian Michael Greenberg’s statement that the traffic
in Indian opium to China was “probably the largest commerce of the time in
any single commodity [sic]”11 is only marginally stronger than the Hunt’s
Merchants Magazine’s assertion a century earlier that the amount paid for the
drug was “probably the largest sum given for any raw material supplied by one
nation to another,” except for American cotton exports to Britain.12 By the late
1830s, opium was the basis of East-West commerce. It balanced the payments
and was the economic foundation of the Canton foreign community. Anyone
who traded to China without bringing in silver from abroad was somehow
implicated. Even the missionaries who cashed their drafts; accepted
transportation up and down the coast; and received mail, contributions, and
other types of support from opium traders, benefitted from the drug traffic and
therefore

 Page 61
sustained it in some degree. Everyone needed it. Commercial records give
special emphasis to this illegal commerce and more particularly to aspects of
the question frequently overlooked by historians who have not used
commercial records. For example, although they may employ quotation marks,
traditionial historians refer to the Opium War’s “opening” of China. If the
conflict did, indeed, “open” China, it did so in a very special sense. Even a
cursory study of the trade makes one acutely aware that, commercially
speaking, China was already “open.” Other goods had followed opium to
Lintin and the other “outside anchorages,” until that “outside” business often
exceeded the legitimate commerce at Canton. Moreover, as the coastal trade
developed, the same dynamic began to operate elsewhere. The Opium War
merely legitimated what the opium trade had already accomplished.
It has been argued that the really new element following the war was Hong
Kong, a foreign possession on the coast. Yet Macao had been there for nearly
three hundred years, and anyway, from the perspective of the smugglers, Hong
Kong was merely a more secure, dry-land version of Lintin. Even before the
war, Hong Kong had been one of the “outside anchorages,” especially during
typhoon season. The first European buildings on the island were godowns for
goods that could not go upriver. The crown colony quickly became the best
smuggling base in Asia. Just as Chinese duties and regulations had driven the
trade to the outside anchorages, so new restrictions encouraged the trade to
abandon Canton for the free port of Hong Kong. The treaty-ports served much
the same purpose, and all were located near coastal smuggling stations.
Opium may have been the catalyst in Chinese-American relations just as it
was in the trade. According to some accounts, the Americans disliked the
British during the early years of the trade. Britain was still the traditional
national enemy then. Americans fought her twice in the first forty years of
their existence. British commanders in the Eastern seas were incredibly
arrogant during the maritime wars of the first fifteen years of the century.
Americans and Chinese were sometimes forced to support each other during
this turbulent era in the face of some remarkably cavalier actions of British
naval officers. Apparently only once, during the Lady Hughes incident of
1784, did Americans join hands with their transatlantic cousins against the
Chinese, and that alliance was very brief. 13
The opium trade changed all this. Some supercargoes noticed that there was a
perceptible cooling of Sino-American friendships

 Page 62
during the 1820s and 1830s, the period of explosive growth in the drug trade.
14 Opium was involved in every incident involving diplomatic action by the
American consul. The Lydia, 1815, the Wabash, 1817, and the Emily were all
opium vessels. Although Swisher has argued that in the second of these cases,
Americans were treated to a demonstration of swift, honest Chinese justice,15
why should they have appreciated it? A growing number of them were drug
smugglers, and Chinese justice was mobilizing against them. Only a few years
afterwards, an American seaman was judicially strangled and his ship ordered
out of the river. The cumulative result of these confrontations was to divide the
Americans from the Chinese and to bind them to their former enemies.
To take part at all in the Indian drug trade, Americans had to cooperate with
the British, and the brotherhood of drug traffickers in the growing community
of the foreign ghetto muted the hostility between them. As this illegal trade
increased, the Americans as well as the British became increasingly aware of
Chinese law. No one is more conscious of the rigors of the law than a criminal,
and many traders of both nationalities were on the wrong side of Chinese
justicehence Canton’s English publications’ frequent discussion of the
advantages of legalizing the opium trade and of introducing extraterritoriality
into China.
When the Americans left the opium trade, their brief reconciliation with the
British came to an end. Effective enforcement seems to have changed
American sentiment. When the government’s anti-opium campaign reduced
demand so substantially that it made the trade both less profitable and more
odious, Russell & Co., the largest American firm, abandoned it. The partners
in the firm began speaking of the narcotics business as “disreputable,” just as
their fathers had suddenly seen the immorality of “trafficking in human flesh”
when the international slave trade was outlawed in 1808.16 Implicit in the
traders’ belated recognition of the dishonorable nature of opium dealing is the
idea that they had known it all along. They noted as much in their memorial to
Congress in 1839.17 Russell & Co. did not reenter the traffic until the British
expedition had crushed the Chinese policing system, and Wetmore never sold
the drug again. Merchants were always conscious of their reputations. As
Thurman Arnold was to show in a somewhat different context a century later,
a threat to a businessman’s reputation can be a most effective means of
obtaining his obedience to the law. But as long as they could get away with it,
and as long as the trade paid so handsomely, traders could ignore their
consciences and the denunciations of missionaries.

 Page 63
For the Chinese, opium was simply the issue. When the Elliots first met Ch’i-
shan at Taku, all the latter wanted to talk about was opium. 18 As Tan Chung
has pointed out, what produced the Opium War was “the opium trade
offensive against China and the increasing Chinese protest against it.”19 Had it
not been for the drug commerce, it is conceivable that East-West relations
might have continued much as they had for the previous fifty to seventy-five
years. And yet, the drug traffic could not have been abandoned without
seriously dislocating world commerce. Without opium, the China trade
certainly could not have continued on anything like the volume of the previous
quarter century. But to China, opium was an unmixed evil, and it is difficult to
imagine any alternative to the course the Ch’ing government adopted. The
drug was corrupting the Chinese people, demoralizing its soldiery, draining its
specie, and raising the cost of living. It was undermining the authority of the
Manchu government, the integrity of its finances, and even what has come to
be called its credibility. From the Chinese standpoint, the massive expansion
of the trade was indeed an offensive, conducted not by a single nation, but by
all sea-borne foreigners.
Given the difficulties involveda long coast with many islands and inlets, the
technical superiority of even private foreign vessels (and their arms) over
anything the Chinese navy could put on the water, the obsessive demand for
the narcotic, and the corruption of the lower levels of the mandarinateCh’ing
officials probably did about as well as they could. From 1837 onward, police
vigilance increased so markedly that Western boats, using the storeships as a
base, had to deliver the drug themselves. The reluctance of the Chinese to
attack foreign craft made them safer than the old smug boats, most of which
had already been seized and broken up. Even the junk trade was curtailed by
the government’s enforcement drive. As William Jardine himself wrote shortly
before his departure for home,
The present persecution of Opium dealers & Opium smokers is not much more
severe than on some previous occasions; but it pervades every province throughout
the Empire, a circumstance never before known to have occurred.20

The question of legalization was a red herring. Even granting the traders’
ignorance of Chinese politics, it is hard to see what inducement they thought
legalization could have held for China. Probably few thought much about it at
all. Everyone was aware

 Page 64
of the pernicious effect of the drug on the Chinese economy and government,
and the physiological results of addiction were common knowledge. The
opium trade was just too damaging for China to permit it to continue, much
less to legalize it.
Governor Teng’s campaign was so effective that Elliot feared the trade would
fall into the hands of the worst elements in China (a prophetic concern).
Smoking had been cut drastically. Jardine estimated that a three-fourths cut in
consumption had taken place by the end of 1838, and he predicted that if the
campaign were to continue for a year, the reduction would become permanent.
21 China had eliminated most of the Chinese dealers and brokers. The
“scrambling dragons” were gone, but westerners had replaced them. If China
was serious about stopping the opium trade, the next step had to be some
measure against the foreigners directly. Here was the development that drug
traders had often acknowledged would eliminate the tradeeffective
enforcement of the law and the elimination of demand. No one had ever
claimed that foreigners had a right to compel China to accept opium. What
else could China have done? The question was now simplified: were the
British ready to acknowledge that the Chinese were sovereign in their own
country, even if that recognition meant great and permanent damage to the
world commercial and banking system? By 1839, clearly that price was too
high. Opium’s economic value, as Fairbank has said “outweighed its moral
turpitude.”22
No traders at this time could have been ignorant of this situation. For a modern
historian to change the name of the conflict to the “First Anglo-Chinese War”
is an evasion. It was an opium war. One can understand the Chinese sense of
outrage. Not only was the conflict fought for a depraved goal, but it continued
a commerce and a way of life as insulting as it was injurious to China. An
opium merchant had to define his market in a special way. What kind of
people was it to whom it was appropriate to sell narcotics? How could the
proud Chinese bear to watch the transformation of the golden ghetto of the old
Canton system into a exclusive suburb dominated by a foreign, commercial
elite? Moreover, now the foreign enclave was spreading along the coast to the
treaty-ports. To these foreign footholds, Chinese were admitted only on the
foreigners’ termsi.e., subservience. Fairbank’s use of the ricksha to symbolize
the culture of the treaty-ports is striking.23 It was indeed a hybrid
creationWestern bicycle tires and Chinese effort, but it was more than that: It
employed superior Western technology to convert the Chinese into a beast of
burden for the white man . . . and for money.

 Page 65

Notes
1. Tyler Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 3-
4. Earl Swisher says that from 1844 to 1860 “most of the problems of the
period are traceable in the trade and in so far as a policy was formulated
during the period, that policy grew out of the experience of the American
traders.” “The Character of American Trade with China, 1844-1860,” in
Kenneth W. Rea, ed., Early Sino-American Relations, 1841-1912 (Boulder,
Colorado: Westview Press, 1977), 133-34. See also Caleb Cushing’s statement
quoted in “The Treaty of Wanghia,” in Rea, ed., Early Sino-American
Relations, 83.
2. “I replied that I had not come to China for health or pleasure, and that I
should remain at my post as long as I could sell a yard of goods or buy a
pound of tea. . . .” Robert Bennet Forbes, Personal Reminiscences, 2d ed.
(Boston: Little, Brown 1882), 149-150. Thomas Cochran, Railroad Leaders
(New York: Russell & Russell, 1965), 202-17. See especially George H.
Watrous’ statement (p. 214), “After all your first duty and mine also is to the
property with which we are respectively connected and we have no duty or
right, even to sacrifice that for anything or anybody.”
3. Nathan Pelcovitz, Old China Hands and the Foreign Office (New York:
American Institute of Pacific Relations, 1948), passim. As one British
Shanghai resident noted to Sir Rutherford Alcock: “In two or three years at
farthest I hope to realize a fortune and get away . . . and what can it matter to
me if all Shanghai disappear afterwards in fire or flood? You must not expect
men in my position to condemn themselves to prolonged exile in an unhealthy
climate for the benefit of posterity. We are money-making, practical men. Our
business is to make money, as much and as fast as we canand for this all
modes or means are good which the law permits.” John K. Fairbanks, Trade
and Diplomacy on the China Coast, 1842-1854, one-volume ed. (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1964), 161, n.c.
4. See my article, “Fair Game: Exploitive Role-Myths and the American
Opium Trade,” Pacific Historical Review 16, no. 2 (May 1972): 133-49.
5. Pace Stuart Creighton Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant (Berkeley & Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1969).
6. Pelcovitz, Old China Hands, p. 19ff.
7. There are many sources for this generalization. Probably among the most
easily available are the Heard Papers at Baker Library, Harvard Business
School, Boston Mass., the Delano Papers at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library,
Hyde Park, New York, and the “Russell & Company” Papers at the Library of
Congress. For a surprising testimony from an unlikely source, see Paul Sieman
Forbes, “Journal,” 10 May 1841, Forbes Papers, Baker Library. Yet all
American residents were offended by Lin’s isolation of the foreigners, and
some were dismayed by the surrender of the opium, but
thereafterparadoxicallymost tended to approve of Elliot’s measures.
8. Augustine Heard to George Hayward, 10 May 1842; Heard Papers, Baker
Library.
9. Augustine Heard to A. F. Seebohm, Hamburg, 11 May 1843, Heard Papers,
Baker Library.
10. David Anderson, “Anson Burlingame, American Architect of the
Cooperative Policy.” Diplomatic History 1, no. 3. (Summer 1977): 242 ff.
Although Anderson seems to believe that the influence of Burlingame was
greater on Bruce than vice versa, he makes it clear that the two men were on
very close terms. Burlingame wrote to Seward just before Christmas. 1843,
“My colleagues are

 Page 66
all my warm friends,” (p. 243). 1 think one may assume that influence
worked in both directions.
11. Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800-42
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), 104.
12. Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine 3, no. 6 (December 1840): 471.
13. Josiah Quincy, The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw (Boston: William
Crosby and H. P. Nichols, 1847), 186-195. Shaw’s letters to General Henry
Knox are even harsher on the English than are the edited Journals. See Knox
Collection, Massachusetts Historical Society.
14. B. P. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” 3d voyage (3 September 1835), Peabody
Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, 2:89.
15. Earl Swisher, “Extraterritoriality and the Wabash Case,” American Journal
of Internal Law 45 (1951): 564-71.
16. Downs, “Fair Game,” 145, n. 31.
17. “Memorial of R. B. Forbes and Others,” House Exec. Doc. no. 40, 26th
Cong., 1st sess. The petition seems to have been the work of Warren Delano.
See his letter to Frederick A. Delano, 18 May 1839; Delano Papers.
18. James Matheson to John Thacker, London, 1 October 1840, James
Matheson’s Private Letterbook, Jardine Matheson Archive, Cambridge.
19. “Interpretations of the Opium War (1840-42): A Critical Appraisal,”
Ch’ing-shih wen-t’i 3, supplement 1 (1977): 44.
20. To Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, Bombay, 1 January 1839, William Jardine’s
Private Letterbook, Jardine Matheson Archive.
21. Ibid.
22. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 133.

 Page 67

American Board Missionaries and the Formation of American

Opinion toward China, 1830-1860
Murray A. Rubinstein
In 1830 the general American attitude toward the Chinese was one of guarded
admiration, but by 1860 it had shifted to one of contempt. American
missionaries in China played a part in bringing about this change. Their
writings and their speeches convinced many Americans that the Chinese were
“perishing heathen.” This paper will examine missionary commentaries and
explore how they were related to the processes of attitude changes from 1830
to 1860.
Missionary perceptions of China and the impact of such perceptions have been
dealt with by Raymond Dawson and Stuart Creighton Miller. In The Chinese
Chameleon, Dawson examined a variety of missionary images and suggested
that nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries helped to negate the positive
image of China, which earlier Catholic missionaries had popularized. 1
Dawson’s canvas was a large one, a virtual history of Western images of
China. Stuart Creighton Miller worked on a smaller canvas; his book, The
Unwelcome Immigrant, was an examination of nineteenth-century American
images of China.2 Miller intended to show that the negative imagewhich
missionaries, merchants, and diplomats created and which the American
media popularizedwas accepted by many Americans who then became
convinced of the cultural inferiority of the Chinese. Both of these books were
essentially image studies. They were examinations of how missionaries and
other Westerners saw the Chinese and described them in private reports and in
published books and articles. Miller was the more ambitious in his attempt to
link image with actionto demonstrate that American acceptance of

 Page 68
the hostile image produced anti-Oriental sentiment and restricted immigration.
An image is only a part of the communications process. It is a message that is
sent from one individual or group to another. A missionary image does not
occur in a vacuum; it can be examined only within the context of a total
communications system. Miller examined the media, which served as the
carriers or transmitters of the image but did not focus upon the way the image
was received. He assumed that the public read the newspapers and accepted
the image of China these papers presented. Communications systems are
closed environments, however, which consist of sources, messages, channels,
receivers, and effects. 3 One should study the entire system to be able to
understand the specific problems of effect and impact. This is the aim of my
examination of the way the missionary image of China was transmitted to the
American audience.
Three distinct groups were integral parts of the communications network that
was created to transmit the missionaries’ image of China. The first was the
mission itself, which served as the source of the message. The second was the
board, which acted as gatekeeper and edited the missionaries’ image. The final
group was the American Protestant public, who received the image and
reacted to it.
The South China Mission of the American Board was the source of
information and images. The mission began its operations in 1830 in the port
of Canton. The members of the mission, Elijah Coleman Bridgman, David
Abeel, Samuel Wells Williams, Peter Parker, Edwin Stevens, and Samuel
Brown, worked hard to create a base for a large scale missionary enterprise.
They first studied the Chinese language. With the language at their command,
they translated tracts, prepared gospel and Bible lessons, established schools,
operated clinics, distributed books and pamphlets, and preached to the Chinese
of Canton and Macao. They also set up an English language press and
published materials for the Western community of South China and for the
American public. The missionaries considered theirs to be a “mission of
preparation.”4
When war came in the wake of the Sino-British conflict over opium, the
missionaries moved to safer quarters at Macao.5 They returned to Canton in
1841 before the signing of the Treaty of Nanking.6 In the next few years, the
missionaries expanded the American Board presence in China by helping to
establish mission stations at Foochow, Amoy, Ningpo, and Shanghai.7 The
South China Mission did not expand during this second period in its

 Page 69
history, which coincided with the Treaty Port Era (the years 1842 to 1860). It
was a time of confrontation between Chinese and Western communities. Riots
and outbreaks of anti-Western hostility were common. 8 The South China
missionaries continued to work along lines established in the 1830s.9 They
lobbied for a Christian opening of China (i.e., a time when missionaries could
feel free to roam China at will, spreading the good word) and they operated as
China watchers, keeping the board and the American public aware of
conditions on the huge continent.10 They wrote letters, prepared formal
reports, and kept personal and institutional records. They published books,
pamphlets, and magazines about the China scene. These materials contained
information and insights that were extracted by the board and reworked,
eventually forming a distinct missionary image of China.
Personal letters from the missionaries to the board’s Foreign Secretary were
the most common communications. The missionaries had been told to send
back information. Bridgman, the first American missionary to China, was
informed, “It will be desirable that you make as full communications
respecting the character, condition, manners, and rites of the people, especially
so far as these things are affected by religion.”11 He and Abeel, his companion
during the first years in China, wrote many letters that gave the board detailed
pictures of conditions in Canton.12 The next year, 1831, Bridgman was alone,
yet he found time to continue sending home long descriptive letters.13 Later
missionaries also wrote home frequently. Some described their day-to-day
lives, while others dealt with their specific activities.14 Stevens and Williams
often wrote about excursions they had gone on and sights they had seen.15 The
letters formed a rich reservoir of material that could be tapped by those
wishing to understand China and by those who wished to make a case for
further Christian expansion in East Asia.
The missionaries also wrote detailed reports. In 1836 they organized a formal
mission, elected officers, and decided to prepare detailed, carefully structured
statements, which they planned to send to the board twice a year, in May and
September. They then summarized the work of the previous six-month period
in a long letter ending with a demand for additional missionaries and more
funds.16 By the 1840s the semi-annual meetings became impractical and were
replaced by full-scale annual conclaves held in September, the beginning of
the trading season. The reports of these meetings reached the United States
three months later, in late December.17 During the 1850s the missionaries
changed

 Page 70
their procedure again. They decided to meet in May so that the annual report
they prepared could be accompanied by a budget request that would reach
America in August. The board would then be able to use the South China
Mission’s annual report in its own annual report. This procedure was followed
for the rest of the decade. 18
These mission reports were historically significant documents. They contained
descriptions of each type of activity and summarized both accomplishments
and problems. They also indicated the state of mind of each member of the
mission.19 Finally, they contained brief descriptions of China and the Chinese
that gave the board a sense of what the people were like. The reports were
materials the board could use for future planning as well as for publicizing the
work of the mission.
The missionaries also sent the board their diaries and journals. Bridgman and
Abeel were the first of the journal keepers. Bridgman’s contained information
on his trip to China and his first years at Canton.20 Abeel’s dealt with his
journeys to Southeast Asia.21 In the mid-thirties, Stevens, Williams, and
Parker kept similar daily records. Stevens’s was an account of his expeditions
along the China coast. Williams’s dealt with his voyage to Japan.22 Parker
wrote detailed descriptions of his operations in the Opthalmic Clinic in
Canton.23 The missionaries as a body also kept a journal for the mission. This
was begun in the mid-thirties and was kept for the next sixty years.24
The missionaries also provided the board with published materials that had
been printed on the mission’s presses at Canton and later at Macao. A number
of works were prepared during these decades. Among them were A Chinese
Christomathy in the Canton Dialect (Macao, 1844), Easy Lessons in Chinese
(Macao, 1842), Chinese Topography (Macao, 1844), A Chinese Commercial
Guide (Macao, 1844, and Canton, 1848), and A Tonic Dictionary in the
Canton Dialect (Canton, 1856).25 These works were written for the Western
merchants in Canton. Copies of each book were also sent to America and
served to introduce some Americans to Chinese language, literature, and the
particulars of the China trade.
The Chinese Repository was the most important work the board missionaries
published in China. Its editor was Bridgman and its publisher was Williams,
but other missionaries and laymen contributed articles and information.26 The
first monthly issue of the magazine appeared in 1832, and the last was printed
in 1851. During the first two years the format was quite rigid. Each issue
contained specific sections on set topics, and missionary affairs

 Page 71
were emphasized, though the missionaries had stated the secular nature of the
magazine. 27 A looser format was adopted in 1834, and the only fixed section
was the last one, entitled ”Journal of Occurences.” Although the magazine
covered a wide range of subjects, Sino-Western confrontations were the
dominant concern. Over three hundred articles discussed the diplomatic
situation and problems related to trade.28 There were also background articles
dealing with such subjects as history, geography, politics, and society.29 The
missionaries were also keenly interested in the language and literature of the
Chinese. Ninety separate articles on these topics were listed in the full index
Williams prepared in 1852.30 Religious matters were dealt with at length.
Over two hundred pieces appeared on such subjects as the medical mission,
the book translation effort, the Morrison Education Society, and the Ultra
Gangetic missionary enterprise.31 Paganism, the indigenous religious
structure, was also studied, and a variety of articles on Buddhism,
Confucianism, and Taoism were included in the Repository.
The missionaries wrote letters and reports to keep the board informed of their
progress and to make the board aware of the problems they faced. Published
material that was sent to the board had a wider audience. The missionaries
were providing their superiors with detailed background material to help them
understand the full extent of the challenge posed by China.
Each missionary had his own individual perception of China and this
perception could be seen in his letters. Each missionary could also articulate
his own vision in articles and books. Some did so during this early period.
David Abeel, who had his journal published, was one of these.32 Others, such
as Williams, preferred to wait until their particular visions had crystalized.33
Still others never defined their visions in their lifetimes; it was done by those
who memorialized them. Bridgman and Parker were in the latter category.34
But many missionaries were too busy dealing with the day-to-day business of
running a mission to define their impressions, leaving this task to the members
of the board’s Prudential Committee.
The transmission mechanism was the mails. Missionaries had friends in the
Western communities who were sympathetic to the cause of Christian
expansion. These merchantsD. W. C. Olyphant was the most
accommodating35took the missionaries’ letters, journals, and publications with
them and had them delivered to board headquarters. The foreign secretary
wrote his replies, and the messages were sent back to China by merchant

 Page 72
vessel. The time involved in this exchange of letters was over six months, a
lapse that explains one cause of mission-board tensions. 36
The American Board played the role of “gatekeeper” in this communications
network.37 The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was
the first American society to fund, organize, and direct the work of American
Protestant missionaries in foreign countries. A group of conservative
Congregationalist ministers had established the Board in 1810, in response to a
letter from a group of students at the Andover Seminary. These students
volunteered to serve as missionaries if a coordinating society were set up to
support them. The ministers answered the students by establishing the
Board.38 Two years later the Board had collected sufficient funds to send the
first small group of students as missionaries to India. In 1830, the year the
South China Mission began to function, the Board’s officers could point with
pride to the establishment of mission stations in India, the Sandwich Islands,
the Levant (the Mid-East), and among the Cherokee Indians of Georgia.39
The Board fitted Perry Miller’s definition of bureaucratized benevolence.40 In
the years from 1830 to 1860 it organized and directed an ever-growing number
of missions. Its China enterprise expanded. Stations in other areas were
established.41 The Board raised funds for the support of this far-flung
benevolent empire. Auxiliary societies set up in its first decades provided a
steady source of funds, year after year.42 And the Board acted as propagandist
for the cause of missions. It ran a publishing house that produced upwards of
eighty thousand books and pamphlets per year.43
Though Presbyterians and members of Dutch Reformed churches had
supported enterprises during the first three decades, the Board was
Congregationalist at heart. It was theologically conservativeorthodox
trinitarian was the formal termand its leaders stressed concepts such as
Millenarianism, Active Benevolence, and Obedience to Christ’s Last
Commandment. Each of these ideas had been worked out by Jonathan
Edwards and had been further developed by Edwards’ disciple, Samuel
Hopkins. New England School theologians, men such as Timothy Dwight of
Yale, had helped found the Board.44 The Board’s missionaries believed they
were working to bring the millenium closer by converting the heathen peoples
of the non-Western world. The Board tried to promote the work of its
missionaries by informing its supporters in the American churches about
conditions in the out-

 Page 73
side world and describing the efforts of its dedicated, self-sacrificing
missionaries. Before the Board officers could publish their messages, however,
they had the task of editing and excerpting volumes of material. In so doing,
they acted as gatekeepers.
Gatekeepers is a term used by Kurt Lewin to describe those editors of
midwestern newspapers who chose stories for their newspapers from the many
items coming into their press rooms on the news service wires. 45 Those
officers of the Board who edited and prepared the Missionary Herald and
other Board publications served in that role. They had vast amounts of
material at their disposal, as anyone who works with the Board’s archives soon
discovers. They had to sort and extrapolate this material and fit it into a
magazine of about forty pages per issue. In their desire to create a climate of
interest in China as a mission field, rather than to develop one particular and
distinctive image of China, they chose colorful, emotion-provoking material
that often pictured the Chinese at their worst. The suffering and hardship of
the “perishing heathen” was depicted again and again in the pages of the
Herald.
Various types of South China Mission materials were chosen for inclusion in
the periodical. The Respository was often used as a source of articles.
Bridgman’s introductory article from the first issue of that magazine was
printed, and the Herald editors noted the importance of the new Canton-based
publication. In that same year an article on geography and a description of
Canton were published in the Herald.46 In 1834 more articles on geography
and others on such topics as Buddhism and Chinese printing47 were taken
from the missionaries’ magazine. The 1835 volume of the Herald included
two Repository articles: one on Robert Morrison, the London Missionary
Society missionary to China, and one on Chinese grammar. The Herald’s
editors continued to make use of the Repository during the last years of the
decade, but took fewer articles with each passing year. By the 1840s the Board
and the missionaries argued over the importance of the Repository48 as a
source of articles. The Prudential Committee eventually refused to publish
Repository articles, and turned instead to the unpublished material the
missionaries sent homejournals, personal letters, and formal reports.
The missionaries’ letters and journals appeared in the Board’s magazine.
Formal letters were particularly valuable because of their standardized formats
and their comprehensive coverage of the mission’s activities. A semi-annual
report first appeared in the May 1838 issue of the Herald.49 The Herald for
March 1840

 Page 74
contained another such report, one that had been written in the first months of
the opium crisis. 50 During the war years, the editors made use of the letters of
individual missionaries to give their readers a feel for the events.51 After the
war they used the more formal letters. A report by Williams was included in
the May 1845 Herald, and one by Bridgman appeared in January 1847. A
report on missionary efforts during the Taiping Rebellion was printed in the
December 1857 Herald.52
The Herald’s editors chose mission materials carefully. They wished to
demonstrate certain themes, such as the unusual mix of degradation and
elightenment that the missionaries found in China. They wished to defend the
use of military force against a blindly despotic heathen state. They wished to
show that the Chinese were intelligent and would accept the word of Christ if
the message was announced clearly and frequently. They also wished to show
that the missionaries were flexible enough to use a variety of methods in their
enterprise. No one image of China emerged in the pages of the Herald.
Instead, a sort of mosaic was created out of the scattered bits and pieces of the
missionary writings and publications.
The Missionary Herald was originally called the Panapolist. It became the
Panapolist/Missionary Herald in the second decade of the nineteenth century,
and finally the Missionary Herald in the 1820s. Between 1830 and 1860
twenty-two thousand copies of the Herald were distributed each year. It
averaged about four hundred fifty pages per year over this span. From 1830 to
1845, each yearly volume contained four hundred eighty pages, while in the
following fifteen years, from 1846 to 1860 the number of pages per yearly
volume gradually dropped to about four hundred.53 Changes in layout of the
magazine reduced the number of pages but increased the content.
The format changed little from year to year. The first and longest section of
each issue contained reports from the various mission fields. Letters, reports,
and journals from many mission stations were used in this section. The second
section was devoted to domestic matters. A third section contained
information about the work of other mission societies, while a fourth was
given over to brief notices and snippets of information about the missions. The
fifth section was a listing of financial contributors to the Board for a given
month. Next to each name was the amount the individual or the group had
given. The Board used the fifth section to give recognition to those who
actively supported the cause of missions. This, then, was the Herald as it
would appear

 Page 75
to a reader in the 1830s, 1840s, or 1850s. 54 It was, in its own way, an average
readers’ window to a world he would probably never see.
The missionaries and the Board had means other than the written word for
reaching their public. Networks linking missionary and the home public were
developed. These new networks involved the spoken word. They linked
preacher with congregation, and lecturer with audience. Missionaries often
returned to the United States. Some came back to retire from their fields;
others, to recuperate from serious illness. Some, like Williams, Bridgman, and
Parker, simply wanted to take a furlough. Whatever the reasons for their
return, each had an opportunity to speak directly to an American audience, and
many found themselves in demand as speakers. The furloughs of two members
of the South China Mission demonstrate this interpersonal network.
Peter Parker returned to the United States in December 1840 and went back to
South China in the fall of 1841. He spent the months of his furlough in almost
ceaseless activity. Three days after he landed in New York, he spoke at the
Tabernacle Church. Edward V. Gulick, Parkers’s modern biographer, noted
that Parker “was chagrined to find that he spoke poorly” and suggests that the
missionary “was undoubtedly still groping for a readjustment to America.” He
further suggests that ”his culture shock must have been accompanied and
compounded by nervousness over the new role of itinerant propogandist.”55 In
the months that followed, Parker seems to have conquered his nervousness; for
he spoke before groups of clergy and friends in New Haven, before a
congregation in Washington, D.C., and before members of the Senate and the
House at the joint session of Congress. Early the next year, he went on a series
of short engagements to Philadelphia, New York, and New Brunswick. He
married in late March and spent his honeymoon on the lecture circuit. His
bride had to listen to her husband talk about China in New Haven, Springfield,
and Framingham. One of his most impressive performances was before the
Medical Association of Boston, where he spoke at a heavily attended special
meeting.56 He then spent a few months in London, and when he returned to
the United States, was reunited with his bride. Soon thereafter he arranged
their passage to China.
Samuel Wells Williams left China in late 1844, and for the better part of the
next year, he made his way slowly toward Europe and America. For the
adventurous Williams this was a grand time; his letters to family and friends
reflect his wonder and excite-

 Page 76
ment. 57 He reached New York in October in 1845 and immediately found
himself the center of attention, as had been his friend Parker before him. He
spent the next year traveling through the states of the Northeast and the
Midwest. He found that people wanted to hear him speak, and he soon
organized speaking tours that took him to many cities. His personal account
book for the years 1844 to 1848 provides information about his itinerary, as
well as insight as to his parsimony and attention to detail. In early 1846 he
traveled to his family home at Utica and then made visits to Cleveland,
Oberlin, Buffalo, Rochester, and Geneva and Rome, New York. Later in the
year he visited New York City, Washington, D.C., and Plattsburgh, New
York.58 His son and biographer, Frederick Wells Williams, described his
father’s tours. It was his opinion that “there success was considerable, owing
both to his extended and accurate knowledge of the subject and the general
interest which the recent war and opening of the country had excited in the
minds of all intelligent persons.”59 A son is not an unbiased observer,
especially a son who succeeds his father as professor of Chinese studies at a
major university. But there is some evidence to support Frederick Wells’s
assertion. A letter written to Samuel Wells Williams by a number of prominent
citizens of Rochester demonstrates the interest the missionary had excited.60
Williams’s lectures were so well organized that the missionary printer and his
associates thought they could be easily turned into a valuable book. Williams
spent the better part of his next year in America reworking these lectures and
then looking for a publisher. He found one only when some of his merchant
friends agreed to defray the costs of publication.61 The book was Williams’s
magnum opus, The Middle Kingdom, a work generally recognized as the most
influential Western text written on China during the nineteenth century.62 In
this instance the spoken word became the written word, and even more
Americans were able to learn about China.
But just what was the missionary board image of China? There was no single
image, for each missionary had his own vision of China. It was this personal
vision that was conveyed in the missionary letters and lectures. And a
composite image began to emerge. China was described as a beautiful land
that had been despoiled by its inhabitants. The countryside was scenic and
sometimes spectacular. The cities and the villages were just the opposite. The
villages were collections of filthy hovels. The cities were decaying areas with
walled inner centers and sprawling outlying

 Page 77
suburbs. City streets were winding and narrow passages through which flowed
a flood of human traffic. The missionaries, it seems, could never become
comfortable with the sheer numbers of Chinese. Their reiterated use of the
flood metaphor indicates their discomfort.
The Chinese themselves were portrayed as a superior type of “perishing
heathen.” Missionaries wrote about the Chinese love of education, their
concern for the family, their belief in the essential goodness of man, and their
stress on morality and proper conduct. Then these American Protestants went
on to present the negative qualities of the nation. The Chinese were notorious
gamblers, destroying their families with their love of games of chance. They
were a lascivious, depraved people who treated their women with contempt.
These flaws in the Chinese character, American readers learned, stemmed
from the hollow nature of Chinese religion. There was no belief in God, and
by Western missionary standards, no morality. As might be expected, the
religious structures the Chinese had developed came in for the harshest
criticism. Confucianism was an empty humanism. Taoism was a form of
philosophical gibberish that had degenerated into superstitious nonsense.
Buddhism was an imported, effete from of paganism. Even worse, in the
missionaries’ view, was the Chinese combination of all three of those religions
into one amalgam that they called the San Jyau, the Three Teachings.
This, then, was the missionaries’ China, a beautiful land of stinking, crowded
cities, populated by learned but corrupt and degenerate heathens.
But what of the missionaries’ audience? How did the messages from the
missionaries and the board affect the American public’s regard for China? I
have described the two elements in two interrelated communications systems.
Now is the time to deal with the receiver of those communications and to
consider their effect.
The audience itself was a segment of the American public composed of church
leaders and church members. In Elmo Roper’s scheme of concentric circles of
influence, the church leaders would be categorized as the “lesser
disseminators” while their congregations would be termed “participating
citizens.” Beyond them lay the outermost circle of the ”politically inert.” 63
The American public had been attuned to religious currents and was
constantly made aware of those waves of religiosity associated with the
Second Great Awakening. Ray Allen Billington has shown how this public
was reached during the decades of the Protestant Crusade.64

 Page 78
The missionary effort was aided by audiences already conditioned to this
crusade and its accompanying anti-Catholic and antiforeign demonstrations.
But to say that the shift in American attitudes toward Chinafrom comparative
ignorance colored by romance to shocked and disparaging pitywas simply a
side effect of the Protestant Crusade does not fully explain the reasons and the
manner of the change.
The explanation I propose is that the missionaries sent the board volumes of
material containing multiple images of China. The board reviewed that
material and extrapolated more defined images of China. They presented this
version to the church leaders, the “lesser disseminators” and the “participation
citizens” in the pages of the Missionary Herald. In so doing, they created an
interest in missions and in China. They also convinced those readers who
could be convinced by the opinions of distinguished clergy that China was a
rather terrible place populated by an intelligent but morally corrupt heathen
citizenry. When the missionaries came home, they spoke to the congregations
who had read about China. They talked about the land, the government, the
people. They discussed language, culture, land, religion. They tried to be
sympathetic, and later protested that they were trying to correct erroneous
impressions. 65 They also naturally tried to make a case for expansion of the
mission effort. Parker talked at length about medical missions, while Williams
discussed the work of the mission press in what must have been exhausting
detail. The sermons they preached and the lectures they gave reinforced that
view conveyed in the Missionary Herald and the Chinese Repository.
Joseph T. Klapper’s discussion of the use of different media was directed
toward modern situations but his conclusions are applicable here. He
concluded that the use of one type of media, reinforced by face-to-face
contact, proved to have a decided effect upon the target audience.66 I
hypothesize, then, that the missionary image thus affected a change in
American attitudes; but only when the printed word was reinforced by the
spoken word, presented in the lectures and sermons of missionaries home on
leave. There are two types of evidence that can be brought to bear in support
of this thesis. One is literary evidence: letters and journals that describe
audience response or reaction. The letter from citizens wrote: “Believing that
the lectures would be both interesting and profitable to our fellow citizens, we
would respectfully request that you deliver the same course in Rochester.”67
There was a similar letter from Caleb Cushing, the American diplomat who
negotiated the Treaty of Wanghsia. Cushing com-

 Page 79
mended Williams on his decision to engage in a lecture tour and assured him
of the value of the effort. 68 Cushing and the good citizens of Rochester were
“lesser disseminators.” They recognized the privilege of being able to hear
informative lectures delivered by an expert, and felt that public opinion could
thus be influenced. A second type of evidence of this image manipulating is
the contribution list included in each issue of the Missionary Herald. A
preliminary study of those contribution lists for the period 1830 to 1860
indicates that in those months when the missionaries were in America,
contributions from the citizens visited did increase.69 Letters from the
missionaries to the board during this period and from missionaries to friends
and audiences at home support this financial evidence.70 Edward V. Gulick’s
analysis of Parker’s lectures focused upon missions but supports my argument
about the impact of the speeches. He stated: “Their [the public’s] reception of
his message also says a good deal about them. Whereas the very idea of
missions had been repugnant to Americans of an earlier generation, missions
were now widely acceptable. . . .71 One might add that the idea of missions
was acceptable because the American public was now familiar with mission
work on publications like the Herald, and this familiarity intensified when the
missionaries came home to address their public.
The change in American attitudes toward China occurred as Americans
grasped the missionary image of China as it was conveyed in Board and
mission publications, restated and amplified by returning missionaries. South
China missionaries presented the public with written and spoken images that
played an undeniable part in shaping the attitudes of that audience.
Notes
1. Raymond Dawson, The Chinese Chameleon (London: Oxford University
Press, 1967).
2. Stuart Creighton Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1969).
3. Studies of communications networks are included in the following: Reed H.
Blake and Edwin O. Haroldsen, A Taxonomy of Concepts in Communication
(New York: Hastings House, 1975); F. Gerald Kline and Phillip J. Tichenor,
eds., Current Perspectives in Mass Communication (Beverly Hills, Calif.:
Sage Publications, 1972); Wilbur Schram and Donald F. Roberts, ed., The
Process and Effects of Mass Communication (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1972); Charles S. Steinberg, ed., Mass Media and Communication
(New York: Hastings House, 1972); Allan P Pred, Urban Growth and the
Circulation of Information

 Page 80
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973). Studies of the effects of
communication include the following: Carl I. Hoveland, Irving Janis, and
Harold H. Kelley, Communication and Persuasion (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1953); Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarfeld, Personal Influence
(Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press of Glencoe, Inc., 1955); Joseph T. Klapper, The
Effects of Mass Communication (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press of Glencoe, Inc.,
1960).
4. This first phase of the Board’s mission is covered in the following: Peter
Ward Fay, The Opium War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1975); Paul A. Cohen, “Christian Missions and Their Impact,” in John K.
Fairbank, ed., The Cambridge History of China, vol. 10, Late Ch’ing, 1800-
1911 Part I (London: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 543-90; Kenneth
Scott Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (London: Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1929), 209-81. It is examined in some
detail in Murray A. Rubinstein, “Zion’s Corner” (Ph.D. diss. New York
University, 1976).
5. Frederick Wells Williams, The Life and Letters of Samuel Wells Williams,
Ll.D. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1889), 118.
6. Bridgman to Anderson, 5 April 1841 in A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol. 1a. The South
China Mission correspondence is contained in the collection of materials on
the American Board of Commission for Foreign Missions that is housed at the
Houghton Library, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts (hereafter
abbreviated as A.B.C.). The series used in the preparation of this essay were
A.B.C. 16.3.8, A.B.C. 16.3.11, and A.B.C. 2.01, vol. 1-20.
7. “Journal of the South China Mission,” in A.B.C. 16.3.11; Clifton Jackson
Phillips, Protestant America and the Pagan World (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1969), 195-98.
8. The Sino-Western confrontation is examined in Frederick Wakeman, Jr.,
Strangers at the Gate (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966). The
classic work study of the treaty-ports is John King Fairbank, Trade and
Diplomacy on the China Coast (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953).
The American role in diplomacy is examined in Te-kong Tong, United States
Diplomacy in China, 1844-60 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964).
9. “Journal of the South China Mission,” A.B.C. 16.3.11. The Journal is a
detailed record of events prepared by the members of the South China
Mission. It is an excellent brief introduction to the mission’s history.
10. The American Board lobbied for the rights of Christians, and the
missionaries took an active role in diplomatic affairs. See Frederick Wells
Williams, Life and Letters, chaps. 8-10, and Tong, United States Diplomacy,
chaps. 13-16.
11. Prudential Committee to Elijah Coleman Bridgman, “Letter of
Instructions,” A.B.C. 2.01.
12. Two such letters are Bridgman to Evarts, 21 Oct. 1830, A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol.
1., and Bridgman to Evarts, 13 Nov. 1830, A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol. 1.
13. Bridgman, “Journal,” 25 Feb 1831, A.B.C. 16.3.8.
14. These letters are in A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol. 1, la, 2. Some examples are:
Bridgman to Anderson, 17 Jan. 1832, A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol. 1.; Williams to
Anderson, 27 Feb. 1834, A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol. 1.; Parker to Anderson, 21 June
1836, A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol. 1.; Bridgman to Anderson, 19 Feb. 1846, A.B.C.
16.3.8, vol. 2.; Boney to Anderson, 20 May 1858, A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol. 2.
15. Two examples are Stevens to Anderson, Nov. 1835, A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol. 1.,
and Williams to Anderson, 29 Nov. 1836, A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol. 1.
16. South China Mission (Bridgman) to Anderson, 7 April 1836, A.B.C.
16.3.8, vol. 1, was the first of these reports. Some other examples are: South
China

 Page 81
Mission to Anderson 24 April 1837, A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol. 1.; South China
Mission to Anderson, March 1838, A.B.C. 16.3.11.
17. The first of this type of annual report was Parker to Anderson, 1 Sept.
1846, A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol. 2.
18. The initial end of season annual report was Williams to Anderson, 1 June
1855, A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol. 2.
19. An example is “Annual Report, 1849,” South China Mission to Anderson,
Dec. 1, 1849, A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol. 2.
20. Elijah Coleman Bridgman, “Journal,” A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol. 1.
21. David Abeel, “Journal for 1830-1831,” A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol. 1.
22. Edwin Stevens, “Journal of Expeditions, 1835, 1836,” A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol.
1., and Samuel Wells Williams, “Journal of Expedition to Japan,” 1837,
A.B.C. 16.3.8, vol. 1.
23. Excerpts of Parkers’ journals were used by George B. Stevens in his
biography of the missionary physician. See George B. Stevens, The Life,
Letters, and Journals of the Rev. and Hon. Peter Parker (Boston:
Congregational and Sunday School Publishing Association, 1896). The
modern study of Parker’s career is Edward V. Gulick, Peter Parker and the
Opening of China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973).
24. South China Mission, “Journal,” A.B.C. 16.3.11.
25. These titles are listed in Alexander Wylie, Memorials of Protestant
Missions to the Chinese (Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press, 1867), 71, 78-
79.
26. The Chinese Repository, 20 vol. (Canton, 1832-51).
27. The Chinese Repository, vol. 1 (1832-1833), vol. 2. (1833-34).
28. The Chinese Repository, vol. 20 list of articles, xxv-xxxviii.
29. The Chinese Repository, vol. 20 list of articles, ix-xix.
30. The Chinese Repository, vol. 20 list of articles, xxii-xxv.
31. The Chinese Repository, vol. 20 list of articles, xliii-liii.
32. David Abeel, Journal of a Residence in China and the Neighboring
Countries from 1829-1833 (New York: J. Abeel Williamson, 1836).
33. Samuel Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom (New York: Charles
Scribners Sons, 1848).
34. Eliza J. Bridgman, The Life and Labors of Elizah Coleman Bridgman
(New York: A.D.F. Randolph, 1864); Stevens, Life/Parker.
35. D. W. C. Olyphant was a New York merchant who ran a trading concern in
Canton. He was one of a small group who requested that the American Board
send missionaries to China. He provided Abeel and Bridgman with passage to
Canton and housed them. Over the years he helped the South China Mission in
other ways such as underwriting the cost of The Chinese Repository.
36. The dialogue between the South China Mission and the American Board is
examined in Rubinstein, “Zion’s Corner,” chap. 9.
37. George A. Donahue, Phillip J. Tichenor, Clarice N. Olien, “Gatekeeping:
Mass Media Systems and Information Control” in Kline and Tichenor, eds.,
Current Perspectives, 41-69.
38. James A. Field Jr., America and the Mediterranean World (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1969), 84-86.
39. Board activities in this period are examined in Phillips, Protestant
America, chaps. 2-4.
40. Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace,
and World, 1965), chap. 2.
41. Phillips, Protestant America, chap. 6.

 Page 82
42. Rufus Anderson, Memorial Volume of the First Fifty Years of the American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Boston, 1861), 178-84.
43. These figures are an average of the yearly statistics published in The
Missionary Herald in the years from 1830 to 1860.
44. The best introduction to the New England School is in Sydney E.
Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1972), chap. 25.
45. Donahue, Tichenor, and Olien, “Gatekeeping,” in Kline and Tichenor, eds.,
Current Perspectives, 41-69; Blake and Haroldsen, Taxonomy, 109-10.
46. The Missionary Herald 29 (1833): 72-74, 144-45.
47. The Missionary Herald 30 (1834): 189-91, 234-37.
48. Rubinstein, “Zion’s Corner,” chaps. 9, 10.
49. South China Mission, “Semi-annual Report,” The Missionary Herald 34
(1838): 169-71.
50. South China Mission, “Semi-annual Report,” The Missionary Herald 36
(1840): 81-82.
51. For example; Bridgman, “Letter,” The Missionary Herald 37 (1843): 471-
73; Bridgman, “Letter,” The Missionary Herald 39 (1843): 119-20; Pohlman,
”Letter,” The Missionary Herald 41 (1845): 52-53.
52. Williams, “South China Mission Report,” The Missionary Herald 41
(1845): 155-57. Williams, “South China Mission Report,” The Missionary
Herald 53 (1857).
53. The averages for page-per-volume were arrived at after page counts and
tabulations of The Missionary Herald for the years 1830 to 1860.
54. This is the format of a typical issue of The Missionary Herald. Each yearly
volume contained two special issues. In the January issue a review of the work
done at each mission station was published. In November was published an
account of the Board’s annual meeting.
55. Gulick, Peter Parker, 96.
56. Ibid., 97-101.
57. Samuel Wells Williams to William Frederick Williams, 20 March 1845,
folder 1845, box 1, “Williams Family Papers,” Manuscript Division, Sterling
Library, Yale University, New Haven. Samuel Wells Williams to Elijah
Coleman Bridgman, March 12, 1845, folder 1845, “Williams Family Papers.”
58. Samuel Wells Williams, “Account Book for Expenses,” 1844-48, box 22,
“Williams Family Papers.”
59. Williams, Life and Letters, 146-47.
60. Citizens of Rochester, New York, to Samuel Wells Williams, March 1846,
folder 1846, box 1, “Williams Family Papers.”
61. Williams, Life and Letters, 155-60. The details concerning the writing and
publication of The Middle Kingdom are to be found in folder 1847, box 1, and
folder 1848, box 1, “Williams Family Papers.”
62. William J. Brinker, “Commerice, Culture And Horticulture: The
Beginnings Of Sino-American Relations,” In Thomas Etzold, Ed., Aspects Of
Sino-American Relations Since 1784 (New York: Franklin Watts, 1978), 13-
14.
63. Elmo Roper, “Forward,” in Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarfeld, Personal
Influence (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press of Glencoe, 1955), xvii-xix.
64. Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade (New York: Macmillan
Company, 1938).
65. Samuel Wells Williams, “Introduction,” The Middle Kingdom (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1848).

 Page 83
66. Klapper, Effects of Communication, 106-12.
67. Citizens of Rochester, New York, to Samuel Wells Williams, March 1846,
folder 1846, box 1, “Williams Family Papers,”
68. Caleb Cushing to Samuel Wells Williams, 26 Jan. 1847, folder 1847, box
1, “Williams Family Papers.”
69. “List of Contributors,” The Missionary Herald 25-56 (1830-1860).
70. For example: Williams to Mrs. Harriet Wood, 10 Aug. 1844, folder 1844,
box 1, “Williams Family Papers.”
71. Gulick, Peter Parker, 101-2.

 Page 85

PART II
THE IMAGE GROWS

 Page 87

American Diplomacy in China, 1843-1857:

The Evolution of a Policy
Raymond F. Wylie
In recent years scholarly attention has focused on Sino-American relations in
the postwar period and especially on the process of normalization of ties since
1979. This is not surprising, since to many it seemed that the United States and
China were in effect “getting to know” each other after a lengthy period of
Cold War hostility. In this context, the diplomatic record of the mid-nineteenth
century is both interesting and relevant to the present age. It was during the
period from 1843 to 1857 that the United States and China first entered into
official diplomatic relations with each other. This was a period of
experimentation for both countries, but by 1857 American policy toward
China had been set for many years to come. The earlier period, then, provides
a valuable historical perspective on Sino-American rapprochement in the
1970s and 1980s.
Most historians concerned with this subject accept the years 1844-1860 as the
correct periodization, the logic being that these two years (1844 and 1860)
represent the operative dates of the Treaty of Wanghsia and the Treaty of
Tientsin (signed in 1858) respectively. 1 These two years are certainly of
critical importance in the history of Sino-American relations, but they do not
appear to delineate a definite period in the evolution of United States policy
toward China. The decision was taken by Washington in 1843 to establish
formal diplomatic relations with China. This was the important date, and the
treaty that followed in 1844 was merely the result of that decision. Similarly,
the second treaty, of 1858 (1860), was the result of an important decision that
had been taken by Washington in 1857. So, from the point of view of the
evolution of U.S. policy toward China, and this is the point of view taken here,
1843 and 1857 are the years that delineate one period from another. Prior to
1843, the United States really

 Page 88
did not have a policy toward China; from 1843 to 1857, it worked to establish
one; and the policy decided upon in the latter year served as a guide for
ensuing decades.
Ignoring minor themes, there appear to be three main issues that faced
American statesmen concerning relations with China during the period under
discussion. One was policy making. What policy should the United States
adopt toward China, and how should this policy be adapted to meet the
requirements of a rapidly changing situation? Another concerned U.S.
relations with the European powers active in Asia, especially Great Britain.
Should the United States follow Britain’s lead, cooperate with her, maintain a
position of neutrality, or even go so far as to oppose her in the Far East? The
final problem involved the actual implementation of American policy toward
both China and the European powers. Were the State Department, the
diplomatic and consular services, and the navy adequate to the new
responsibilities involved in maintaining official relations with the world’s
largest empire? These were the three main problem areas successive U.S.
administrations had to deal with during this early period in SinoAmerican
relations. In this chapter, I wish to examine how the United States dealt with
these crucial issues from 1843 to 1857, years which in retrospect stand out as
the formative period in the evolution of United States policy toward China.
U.S. Policy Making
American-Chinese relations originated in commercial intercourse between the
two nations and remained at that level for many years. After the Revolution of
1776, Americans were eager to seek new markets abroad, and trade with
China appeared to hold much promise for the future. As members of the
British empire, the American colonies had been excluded from Asian trade by
the monopoly of the British East India Company, but after independence they
were free to seek trade wherever they wished. And so in 1784 Robert Morris
and others financed the voyage of the Empress of China from New York to the
Chinese port of Canton. For the next half century the China trade fluctuated,
but in general it remained profitable enough to permit its continuation. These
early American merchants had only a commercial interest in China. Provided
the trade was left undisturbed, they were reluctant to become involved in
political developments along the China coast.

 Page 89
While the first American merchants had set out for China in 1784, it was not
until 1830 that they were joined by their missionary brethren, who came to
preach the gospel and, at the same time, propagate Western culture. The
missionaries soon grew restive under the restrictions placed on their work by
the Chinese authorities, and they tended to support any measures that would
lead to greater freedom of action. They sincerely believed that China, faced
with the challenge of the Western Christian nations, must either “bend or
break.” Nor did they shink from the possible use of force to achieve their aims.
As David Abeel, a leading American missionary of the period, put it, “God has
often made use of the strong arm of civil power to prepare the way for his own
kingdom.” 2 Given this frame of mind, the missionaries tended to support
Britain’s policy of armed coercion against China to “open” the empire to the
Western powers. The missionaries’ aggressive attitude was given greater
significance by the fact that many of them came to occupy places of
importance in U.S. diplomatic and consular services in China. Dr. Peter
Parker, the outstanding missionary in the diplomatic service during this period,
actually served a term as commissioner.
In spite of this pioneering effort on the part of merchants and missionaries, the
U.S. government did not show a great deal of interest in China. Before 1815,
American merchants at Canton had petitioned Congress requesting the
appointment of a salaried consul and other diplomatic personnel, but the
request had been ignored. In spite of this general lack of interest, in 1822
President James Monroe gave a letter addressed to the emperor of China to an
American merchant, and John Quincy Adams, as secretary of state, addressed
a letter to the governor-general of Kwangtung province. It is unknown,
however, whether either letter was accepted by the Chinese authorities.3
President Andrew Jackson was personally interested in the China trade, which
he mentioned in his annual message of December 1831. In 1832, moreover,
the U.S. government authorized the Edmund Roberts expedition to the Far
East for the purpose of securing treaties with several Asian powers and
protecting the interests of American merchants in that area. The Roberts
expedition was a sign of the slowly awakening interest of the U.S. government
in Asian affairs, but this interest was not to find concrete expression until the
Opium War of 1839-42.
“Meanwhile,” writes Tyler Dennett, “American policy in the Far East merely
meant the policy of the Americans at Canton . . . [who] had but one desireto
keep the trade open to Ameri-

 Page 90
cans on terms as favorable as, or more favorable than, those enjoyed by their
competitiors who were chiefly British.” 4 (Thus it was that the United States’
later “Open Door” policy toward China (1899-1900) originated in the attitude
of the early American merchants engaged in the China trade.) However, these
practical men of commerce were faced with the immediate problem of how to
keep the “door” open in the mid-nineteenth century, thus ensuring their
participation in the trade. There were three possible alternatives: to rely on the
United States to keep the door open, to cooperate with Britain for the same
purpose, or to look to China itself to maintain equality of trade for all foreign
nations. The merchants put little faith in the first alternative because their own
government did not exhibit much interest in the China trade, and in any case
the nearest U.S. naval base was on the Atlantic coast, the other side of the
world. Cooperation with England was equally out of the question for two
reasons. In the first place, the British were the Americans’ chief competitors in
the trade, so they could hardly be expected to defend the Americans’ position.
Second, Anglo-American relations had been unstable since the Revolution of
1776 and were further exacerbated during the War of 1812. Minor clashes
between British and American ships in the China seas were frequent in the
decades prior to 1840. During these disputes, lack of adequate naval protection
forced many American captains and merchants to appeal to the Chinese
authorities to protect their rights within Chinese territory and coastal waters.
On 14 October 1805, for example, American merchant-consul Edward
Carrington wrote to Captain Ratsey of H.M. Brig Harrier: “Should the
demand which I have made to you not be complied with, I shall make a formal
representation and appeal to the Chinese Government of this unprecedented
and outrageous violence against the rights of nations.”5
This practice of appealing to the Chinese authorities for protection from the
British led eventually to the policy of encouraging a strong and unified China
as the best guarantee that the “open door” would be maintained. Allied with
this was a strong desire on the part of the Americans to disassociate
themselves in the minds of the Chinese from the more aggressive behavior of
the British. Although this positive attitude toward Chinese authority declined
somewhat after 1820, it was still noticeable at the time of the Opium War. In
the March 1843 issue of Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine, a writer (referring to the
opium trade) maintained that “China has a perfect right to regulate the
character of her imports.”6 And one of the leading China merchants described

 Page 91
Britain’s action against China as “one of the most unjust wars ever waged by
one nation against another.” 7 When Imperial Commissioner Ch’i-ying
indicated to Commodore Lawrence Kearny in 1842 that American merchants
were to be given the same trading privileges as the British, most of the
merchants at Canton felt their policy of respecting the authority of the Chinese
government had been proven sound.
Due to the lack of government interest in China and the late arrival of the
missionaries on the scene, the American merchants at Canton played the major
role in the early stage of Sino-American relations. These merchants were
encouraged by circumstances to formulate a fairly well-defined policy toward
China: maintenance of an “open door” with respect to trade, promotion of a
unified and strong China as the surest means of keeping the door open, and
disassociation from Great Britain. Merchants were appointed to serve as U.S.
consuls at Canton, their opinions were sought on all aspects of the Far Eastern
scene, and they were the only Americans to maintain fairly close and constant
contact with the distant Chinese empire. It was not surprising, then, that the
China policy of the American traders at Canton was in time to become the
China policy of the U.S. government itself.8
The transformation of the American merchants’ policy toward China into
official government policy was the direct result of the Opium War of 1839-42.
By the end of the 1830s American interest in China had broadened
considerablytrade was progressing steadily, the growth of the cotton industry
stimulated dreams of a huge Chinese market, and returning missionaries had
been actively disseminating knowledge about China and the Chinese.
Presidents Martin Van Buren, William Harrison, and John Tyler all watched
the Opium War with interest, and Peter Parker (on home leave during 1840-
42) had many interviews with them. At this time, the general opinion in the
United States was that the Anglo-Chinese war was “another item in the sad
catalogue of [British] outrages on humanity.”9 In a lecture to the
Massachusetts Historical Society in December 1841, John Quincy Adams
ventured to justify the British attack on China, but he was decidedly in the
minority.10
With war in the offing, a group of agitated American merchants at Canton had
petitioned Congress on 25 May 1839 with a three-point request: limited
cooperation with Britain and other nations to force the Chinese to sign a treaty,
the appointment of an official agent to negotiate a commercial treaty with
China, and the dispatch of a naval force for the protection of American lives
and property.

 Page 92
But in early 1840 a group a China merchants in Boston and Salem, far
removed from the scene of action and correspondingly cooler headed,
delivered a counter petition to Congress warning against any hasty action that
might antagonize the Chinese and damage the trade. They suggested that only
a naval force be sent, without power to interfere in the war or to negotiate with
the Chinese. Congress agreed and sent Commodore Lawrence Kearny to
China, and no further action was taken. 11
On 30 December 1842, after the news of the signing of the Anglo-Chinese
Treaty of Nanking had been received, President John Tyler requested Congress
to approve the dispatch of a resident commissioner to China to attend to both
commercial and diplomatic affairs. After a lively debate, Congress gave its
approval on 3 March 1843, calling for the appointment of “a citizen of much
intelligence and weight of character” whose compensation would correspond
to “the magnitude and importance of the mission.”12 The most articulate
opposition to sending a mission to China was expressed by Senator Thomas H.
Benton, who remarked in the House on 8 March 1843 that China was “not
within the system, or circle, of American policy” and that therefore “we have
no need of a minister to watch and observe her conduct.”13
President Tyler’s request to Congress for a mission to China is a milestone in
the development of Sino-American relations. It should be duly noted,
however, that the decision to send a mission to China was the direct result of
the Opium War and the Treaty of Nanking, and not of internal American
developments. As Tong Te-kong points out, neither major political party
favored any particular policy toward China, and U.S. diplomacy in China was
virtually independent of domestic politics.14 Had there been no Anglo-
Chinese war, the American merchants engaged in the China trade would
probably have been content to continue the trade on a nontreaty basis. But
fearing that Britain was going to acquire a privileged trading position as a
result of the war, the American merchants put pressure on their government to
negotiate a treaty with China assuring them of the same trading rights as were
accorded the British. Washington’s action on this matter was also encouraged
by Peter Parker, who felt that the missionary effort in China would fare better
under the aegis of a formal treaty. And so the Cushing mission was dispatched
to inaugurate official diplomatic relations between these two Pacific nations.
Establishing diplomatic relations with China was one thing; maintaining them
on a satisfactory basis in the ensuing years was quite another. In these early
years of the republic the machinery

 Page 93
of diplomacy was still relatively primitive and not adequate to its
responsibilities. This was certainly true with respect to the management of
Sino-American relations. During the period 1843-57, none of the U.S.
presidents (with the exception of James Buchanan) was well informed about
or interested in China. With this presidential lack of interest, more power was
vested in the secretaries of state, but here the situation was scarcely better.
This period was one of tremendous instability in the State Department, during
which the secretaryship changed hands no less than eight times, or thirteen
times if the ad interim appointments are included. 15 And most of the
individual secretaries were too preoccupied with domestic politics, European
and South American diplomacy, and personal presidential ambitions to devote
much time to developments in China.
Nor was the Department of State itself adequate to the tasks it was called upon
to perform. During this period the State Department contained seven bureaus,
and Chinese affairs were placed under the charge of the second of the three
clerks assigned to the diplomatic bureau. But the department was very small in
relation to its responsibilities; in 1849 Secretary John M. Clayton reported that
his department was staffed by twenty-four clerks, one regular and two
assistant messengers, two extra clerks, seven packers, and a laborer. In August
1856 the department was reorganized to include a total of fifty-seven persons,
but during the period under consideration it remained “smaller than a first-
class United States consulate at the present time [1964].”16
Considering the inadequacy of the State Department and the apathy of the
secretaries of state, it is not surprising that much power devolved on the
individual commissioners who went to China. In fact, they were invested with
a great deal of “discretionary power,” which ambassadors to European capitals
would seldom have enjoyed. For instance, Secretary William L. Marcy wrote
to Commissioner Humphrey Marshall on 7 June 1853: “As it is impossible to
anticipate here what will be the condition of things there, no specific
instructions in regard to your official conduct can be given. Your own
judgment must be your guide as to the best means to accomplish the desired
object.”17 This vesting of discretionary power in the hands of individual
commissioners was no doubt also due to the slowness of communications
between the United States and China at this time, but it hardly made for
effective diplomacy. This is even more true when we consider the fact that all
but one of the commissioners had no previous experience in diplomacy, that
none had much previous

 Page 94
knowledge of China, and that they rarely stayed in China for more than a year.
The insufficiency of U.S. diplomatic machinery with regard to China is
equally apparent in the organization of the consular service. Until 1854, when
regular salaried consuls began to be substituted, all American consuls in China
were merchant-consuls; that is to say, merchants first and consuls second. The
appointment of a merchant-consul was considered to be a local responsibility
and the State Department was often ignorant of even the names of its official
representatives. The inadequacy of the consular service is strikingly illustrated
in the observation of Charles William Bradley upon his arrival at Amoy as
United States consul in 1849. Bradley noted that the British consulate there
consisted of ”a Consul, Vice Consul, First Assistant, Second Assistant,
Interpreter, Assistant Interpreter, Medical Attendant, Chinese Writer, Linguist,
and many minor servants . . . and of a vessel of war from that government
being constantly stationed in the harbour. . . .” Embarrassed by his own
modest establishment (i.e., himself), Bradley consoled himself by appointing
his son, Charles W. Bradley, Jr., to the position of vice consul. 18
Confusion over jurisdiction between different branches of the government also
hindered the development of effective diplomacy in China. For instance, the
commissioner, the secretary of the legation and the different consuls all
worked and reported independently to the State Department, and this led to
numerous clashes between the different officials.19 But the most important
area of friction concerned the relationship between the commissioners to
China and the commodores of the U.S. naval squadron in the China seas.
United States naval vessels had been active in Asian waters since the early
years of the nineteenth century; in the absence of any official diplomatic
officers, however, they had been under the direct control of the Department of
the Navy. But lack of coordination between the State Department and the
Navy Department often hindered the effective implementation of policy.
The Beginnings of Diplomacy
Before discussing the record of U.S. diplomacy in China during the years
1843-57, some attempt should be made to bring into focus the Americans’
image of themselves and their attitudes toward their two chief “antagonists,”
China and Great Britain. Amer-

 Page 95
ican self-confidence had been building for years, but it was in the 1840s that
this confidence found expression in the concept of “Manifest Destiny.” In their
drive to the Pacific, Americans wanted to accomplish more than the mere
occupation of territory; they wanted to introduce civilization to barbarous
lands. Caleb Cushing, later the first U.S. commissioner to China, shared this
desire. In a speech to the House of Representatives in 1838, he expressed the
hope that when the settlers should reach the Pacific, they would “carry along
with them the laws, education, and social improvements, which belong to the
older states . . . worthily fulfilling the great destiny reserved for this exemplar
American Republic.” 20
Given this self-image, it was perhaps inevitable that more imaginative
Americans would not regard the Pacific Ocean as putting a natural limit to the
“great destiny” of the republic. On the contrary, in 1850 William H. Seward
described the Pacific as a beacon, inviting the United States “to extend the
sway of peace, of arts, and of freedom, over nations beyond the seas, still
slumbering under the mingled reign of barbarian superstition and unalleviated
despotism.”21 This civilizing mission was happily combined with a mission
more prosaic but equally close to the hearts of many Americansunfettered
trade. And so it was that an expanding and evangelical America came face to
face with China, the oldest existing empire in the world. Americans had a
mission, both Christian and commercial, and they were not going to be
deterred by Chinese lack of interest and hostility. As an officer of one of the
opium clippers remarked, “We were fully prepared for a brush with the
rascally Chinese and determined not be put out of our course by one or two
mandarin boats.”22
Toward the British the Americans had an ambivalent attitude; they recognized
England as the seat of Anglo-Saxon civilization, but at the same time they
were suspicious of her intentions and resentful of what they considered her
Machiavellian methods. But in spite of their reluctance to resort to the use of
force to further their interests in China, most Americans were not prepared to
be excluded from the privileges that Britain might acquire at the cannon’s
mouth.23 The British Foreign Office was well aware of this and in fact
pursued a deliberate policy of trying to unite all of the Western powers dealing
with China into a “common front” vis-à-vis the Chinese. As an inducement,
the British offered equal participation in whatever privileges their action might
secure; that is to say, the British were quite willing to maintain the “open
door” in China.24 This British strategem proved effective

 Page 96
and “it became ingloriously, yet very profitably, the role of the United States
pacifically to follow England to China in the wake of war, and to profit greatly
by the victories of British arms.” 25
On 8 May 1843 Caleb Cushing was appointed United States commissioner to
China and given the full powers of envoy extraordinary and minister
plenipotentiary. His mission had one main purpose, as Secretary of State
Daniel Webster pointed out in his instructions to Cushing: to make a treaty
“such as has been concluded between England and China.” The fundamental
principle underlying the proposed treaty was that American interests would be
best protected by recognizing China as a sovereign power and concluding a
formal treaty based on the equality of the two nations. In addition, Webster
told Cushing to establish clearly the difference between Great Britain and the
United States and to assure the Chinese that the United States, unlike Britain,
had no colonial ambitions in Asia. Thus Webster spelled out the three key
concepts in early U.S. policy toward China: desire for equality of trade,
respect for Chinese sovereignty, and disassociation from Great Britain.26
By the time Cushing arrived in China in 1844, however, the primary aim of his
mission had already been accomplished. As part of his general policy of
appeasement following the Opium War, Imperial Commissioner Ch’i-ying had
already secured approval from the emperior to grant the Americans the same
trading privileges as had been accorded the British. There has been some
controversy as to whether Commodore Lawrence Kearny actually extracted
the “most-favored-nation” promise from Ch’i-ying as early as 1842, but there
seems little doubt that the policy was formulated independently by the Chinese
themselves.27 In any event, the Chinese believed that the granting of equal
trading privileges without discrimination in favor of any one nation might
serve to restrain other nations from resorting to force for the obtaining of
concessions.28
As to U.S. recognition of Chinese sovereignty, Cushing’s attitude was rather
ambivalent. On the one hand, he suspected Ch’iying of regarding China as
superior to the United States and expressed the hope that the Chinese official
would “see the evident propriety of adhering to the form of national
equality.”29 On the question of China’s jurisdiction over Americans who
committed crimes in China, on the other hand, Cushing was careful to get the
Chinese to grant the privilege of extraterritoriality. That is, American citizens
who committed crimes in China were to be tried and punished by their own
courts and own laws, and not

 Page 97
those of China. This was a rather serious infraction of China’s sovereignty, but
Cushing was quite firm on the issue. 30
After concluding the Treaty of Wanghsia on 3 July 1844, the first of the
United States’ “unequal treaties” with China, Cushing left for home. He
reported to the secretary of state: “I recognize the debt of gratitude which the
United States and all other nations owe to England, for what she has
accomplished in China. From all this much benefit has accrued to the United
States.”31 This is very interesting, for in a speech to the House of
Representatives on 16 March 1840, Cushing (referring to the Opium War) had
attacked “the base cupidity and violence which have characterized the
operations of the British individually and collectively in the seas of
China. . . .”32 Cushing’s change of heart represented an attitude that was to
become prominent in later U.S. diplomacy in China: If British aggression
endangered American interests in China, the United States was hostile to
Britain; but if this same aggression were to promise an improvement in
America’s position in China, Britain could count on at least the United States’
moral support.
This point of view was clearly expressed by Alexander Hill Everett, Cushing’s
successor as commissioner to China. Shortly after Everett’s arrival in China in
October 1846 (a protracted illness had delayed him), the British attacked
Canton in an attempt to secure the right of entry within the city walls. The new
U.S. commissioner feared that this attack on Canton was the first step in a
long-range plan by British to dominate, and even possibly annex, all or part of
the Chinese empire. As Everett had received few instructions from the State
Department, he drafted a lengthy report to Secretary James Buchanan
outlining his ideas on a proper policy toward China. British domination of
China, he argued, would upset the Western balance of power and “seriously
endanger the independence of even the most powerful [of the Western states],
including the United States.” Therefore, Everett concluded, Russia, France,
and the United States all had a direct interest in “preventing the Chinese
empire from being swallowed up in that of Great Britain, or even from coming
more immediately under her influence.”33
This being the case, these three nations should come to an agreement as to the
nature of the present crisis in China, define their interests as clearly as
possible, and then decide upon a common course of action. If adequate
agreement were reached, the three powers could then undertake “a temperate,
but, at the same time firm and serious appeal to Great Britain . . . and induce

 Page 98
her to reconsider her projects against the independence of the Celestial
Empire.” There was even reason to believe, Everett wrote, that such action
“might secure the independence of China for an indefinite future period. . . .”
34 Unfortunately, Everett died soon after drafting this proposed policy, and the
issue was not given much attention in Washington. Besides, the Anglo-
Chinese imbroglio quickly subsided, and American fears as to British
intentions were put to rest for the time being.
After Everett’s untimely death at Macao, the site of the United States legation,
John W. Davis was appointed to replace him. Davis was given few specific
instructions as to U.S. policy toward China and he himself did not feel
inclined to formulate his own ideas to any great extent. Nevertheless, Davis’s
term in China is noteworthy for two reasons. Davis arrived in China in August
1848, just when an important change was taking place in Chinese policy
toward the Western powers. After the Opium War, Ch’i-ying and Huang En-
tung had carried out a policy of appeasement to curb Western belligerence. But
after the British attack on Canton in 1847 indicated that London was not to be
put off by appeasement, Peking swung in favor of a “hard line” of
nonintercourse with the Western nations. Accordingly, Hsü Kuang-chin and
Yeh Ming-ch’en were dispatched to Canton to handle China’s relations with
the various Western powers, and a policy of virtual nonintercourse was put
into effect immediately. Indeed, Tong Tekong has written of Hsü and Yeh that
“in reply to foreign requests, they simply wrote a few lines if they cared to
reply at all.”35 As a result, successive United States commissioners had great
difficulty in contacting high Chinese officials, and the desirability of adopting
a “more aggressive” policy in dealing with the Chinese became increasingly
apparent to the Western powers.
The second development of importance during Davis’s term was the
establishment of U.S. consular courts in accordance with the terms of the grant
of extraterritoriality in the Treaty of Wanghsia. In 1845 President Tyler had
asked Congress for appropriate legislation to set up consular courts, but the
matter had quickly lapsed for “want of time and the pressure of other
important business.” Under prodding by Secretary of State Buchanan,
however, Congress finally passed the necessary bill in 1848. This act gave the
commissioner and consuls in China complete power to hear charges against
and to try all citizens of the United States accused of crimes, both civil and
criminal, committed in China. On 29 November 1849 Buchanan issued The
Regulations for the Consular Courts of the United States of America in China.
Due

 Page 99
to Washington’s neglect, however, years were to pass before these consular
courts became effective in the performance of their duties.
After Davis’s resignation in May 1850 the U.S. legation in China was left
without a commissioner for nearly three years. Peter Parker was appointed
chargé d’affaires, and he managed Sino-American relations until the arrival of
Humphrey Marshall in March 1853. This three-year interval witnessed the
outbreak of the Taiping Rebellion, a gigantic upheaval that was to last until
1864 and shake the Chinese empire to its very foundations. Like John
Bowring, the British consul at Shanghai, Parker felt that the rebellion gave the
Western nations a good opportunity to extend their treaty privileges.
Consequently, Parker wrote to Secretary of State Daniel Webster on 22 April
1851, calling for the reversal of Everett’s plan of joint action to restrain
Britain. Parker proposed instead “an important modification of . . . [Everett’s]
dispatch,” namely inviting “the Government of Great Britain . . . to cooperate
with those of Russia, France, Spain and the United States, and not the latter to
combine against her.” 36 When he heard that Commodore Matthew Perry was
to go to Japan, Parker immediately requested that the East Indies Squadron be
used in China to enforce American claims. Webster took no action on either
proposal, however, and there the matter rested until the arrival of Marshall.
Like his predecessors, Colonel Humphrey Marshall received no specific
instructions as to U.S. policy toward China. While Marshall agreed with
Parker that the time was opportune to extend Western privileges in China, he
did not favor cooperation with the British in an aggressive move. Rather, he
maintained that the Western powers should pursue a policy of “absolute
neutrality in good faith” until such time as joint Western intervention should
bring the civil war to an end. But the British had decided to fish in troubled
waters, for they had come to the conclusion that more concessions could be
gained from the rebels than from the imperial government.37
Marshall soon came to the same conclusion, but increasing British secret
activity on the Yangtze River, combined with a decided British coolness
toward Marshall himself, led the American commissioner to fear that Britain
was seeking “an opportunity of assuming the protectorate of the young
[Taiping] power . . . ” and that such a move might lead ultimately to the
dismemberment of the Chinese empire.38 Disillusionment with the Taipings
and suspicion of British (and French) intentions led Marshall to the

 Page 100
conclusion that “the highest interests of the United States are involved in
sustaining China . . . rather than to see China become the theatre of
widespread anarchy, and ultimately the prey of European ambition.” 39
Marshall did not completely write off the possibility of dealing with the
Taipings, but he advised Secretary of State William L. Marcy that emphasis
should be placed on maintaining and even extending relations with the
imperial government.
As far as treaty revision was concerned, both the British and the Americans in
China were agreed that definite action should be taken. But whereas Parker
advocated close American cooperation with Britain in a move against China,
Marshall felt that the United States should play an independent role in
formulating a new treaty. Consequently, in 1853 the British Foreign Office
went over Marshall’s head by making direct overtures to Washington, where
they succeeded in convincing the Department of State that Great Britain was
interested in gaining greater access to China “not exclusively for its own
subjects but for all nations.” Consequently, on 7 June 1853 Marcy wrote
Marshall that “the end proposed [by the British] commends itself to the
approval of the President and he directs you to do what you can within your
proper sphere of action, towards its accomplishment.” However, Marcy
cautioned Marshall not to join the British in any aggressive action, but to keep
“only cordial relations and free conference with them” and to use his “own
judgment to accomplish the desired object.”40 Although these instructions
were the first explicit statement of U.S. policy toward China since the Treaty
of Wanghsia, Marshall chose to use his “own judgment” by ignoring Marcy’s
directive altogether and going his own way.
Indeed, Marshall’s relations with the British had deteriorated to such an extent
by the fall of 1853 that any kind of cooperation on his part was virtually
impossible. The American commissioner was suspicious of British intentions
in China, disliked the means they employed to achieve their ends, and was
quite outspoken in his opinions. But Marshall was running into difficulties
from even his own colleagues in China. In the summer of 1853, for instance,
Marshall had a serious quarrel with Peter Parker over the extent of the
commissioner’s authority over the secretary of the legation, namely, Parker
himself.41 Edward Cunningham, the vice consul at Shanghai, openly defied
Marshall’s instructions concerning the payment of customs duties to the
Chinese and informed the American merchants that they were free to disregard
the commissioner’s orders. This was a serious case of insubordination

 Page 101
on the part of Cunningham, but he was supported by the merchants, and so on
4 January 1854 Marshall was forced to concede the issue and accordingly
reversed his position.
Marshall’s authority as commissioner was being challenged from another
branch of his own governmentthe navy. When Commodore Matthew Perry
arrived to take command of the East Indies Squadron, he worked on the
assumption that he could control the squadron regardless of the
commissioner’s wishes. After much acrimony over the use of the ships,
Marshall wrote Marcy on 20 May 1853 that Perry’s behavior “amounts to the
assumption of a right to supervise the action of the Commissioner and to
render the cooperation of the naval force of the country solely dependent upon
the approval of the course of the Commissioner by the naval commander.”
Finally, on 30 October of the same year, Marshall wrote Marcy that “the
government at home should establish some absolute regulation defining the
‘prerogative’ of the naval commanders . . . [for if] the view of the commodore
obtains, there will be no sphere of action for civil officers, except as assistants
to the naval diplomatists.” 42 Marcy sympathized with Marshall’s point of
view, but it was not until the appointment of Robert M. McLane as Marshall’s
successor that the State Department took firm steps to resolve the issue.
Emergence of a Policy
Robert M. McLane, who arrived in China in March 1854, was the first United
States commissioner to receive comparatively specific instructions concerning
policy toward China. Secretary of State Marcy wrote McLane on 8 May 1854
that he was to attempt to negotiate a new treaty with the imperial government,
recognize and deal with whatever government or governments in China were
able to maintain stability, and cooperate with Great Britain “in a proper way to
get liberal concessions of commerce. . . .”43 Marcy also took steps to bring the
various agencies of the government under the control of the commissioner. On
16 November 1853 he wrote McLane that all correspondence between the
secretary of the legation (i.e., Parker) and the State Department should be
transmitted through the commissioner. In the same letter, Marcy informed
McLane that henceforth the consular service was to be subject to the
supervision of the commissioner and that consuls were not to act
independently of the commissioner’s wishes.44
Perhaps the most important step Marcy took was to clear up

 Page 102
the question of jurisdiction over the naval squadron in the Far East. He
obviously won the cooperation of the Department of the Navy, for on 28
October 1853 the secretary of the navy wrote Perry that “the President trusts it
will not seriously incommode your operations in regard to Japan to co-operate
with our Commissioner [to China]. . . .you will on receipt of this
communication, immediately dispatch one of the war steamers of your
squadron to Macao, to meet the Hon. R. M. McLane, our Commissioner to
China, to be subject to his control until other orders reach you.” Perry was
furious, but accepted the new orders. “I have no alternative,” he wrote the
secretary of the navy on 14 January 1854, ”though I cannot but express the
deep disappointment and mortification to which I am subjected.” 45
With this new authority in the diplomatic, consular, and naval spheres,
McLane was in a much better position than his predecessors to carry out a
positive policy toward China. Shortly after his arrival in China, he came to the
conclusion (as had Marshall) that nothing much could be expected of the
Taiping rebels and U.S. interests would best be served by negotiating directly
with the imperial government. The two outstanding issues were treaty
revisionwhich included free navigation by Americans of the Yangtze River,
free movement by Americans anywhere in the empire, and permanent
residence at Peking for a U.S. ambassadorand the settlement of “local
problems” at Shanghai, which included the issues of customs administration
and municipal government.46
Strictly speaking, the issues at Shanghai were Anglo-Chinese problems, but
Charles Bowring, the British consul at Shanghai, had persuaded McLane to
support the British position. In the ensuing negotiations the Chinese
authorities gave in to the British demands. As a result, the Chinese ultimately
lost control of their own customs service and witnessed the spectacle of
autonomous foreign enclaves growing up on the coast of China. These were
serious infringements on China’s sovereignty, but McLane supported the
British in the hope of improving the United States’ trading position in China if
and when Britain should force further concessions from the Chinese.
Having settled the Shanghai problems to their satisfaction, McLane and
Bowring entered into a “cordial co-operation” in order to press for treaty
revision. The two envoys thereupon carried out a joint sea expedition to
northern China, hoping to put pressure on the imperial court at Peking, but this
“unprecedented peak” in Anglo-American cooperation produced no results.
The

 Page 103
Chinese had no intention of revising the treaties along the lines the foreigners
desired and so maintained their policy of virtual nonintercourse. Discouraged
in his efforts at treaty revision, McLane wrote Marcy on 19 November 1854
that the United States had three possible alternatives: to maintain neutrality in
the civil war and patiently await the return of normalcy, to enter upon a “new
line of policy” by militarily enforcing existing rights and then extending them,
or to respond to the imperial government’s desire for assistance in suppressing
the Taiping Rebellion. Should the Chinese persist in their opposition to treaty
revision, McLane expressed his preference to adopt alternative number two
and launch a program of “quasi hostility.” “I would recommend in such a
contingency, that the [major rivers of China] . . . be placed under blockade by
the united forces of the three treaty powersGreat Britain, France, and the
United States . . . ” until the Chinese agree to an acceptable treaty revision. 47
In actual fact, however, McLane’s proposals were impractical for two reasons.
As far as Britain and France were concerned, the Crimean War was raging and
this effectively handicapped their efforts in the Fast East. As for the United
States, squatter sovereignty, the Kansas-Nebraska issue, and the worsening
problem of slavery absorbed the country’s attention. The nation was bitterly
divided and in no mood to consider a war in far-off China. In his reply to
McLane’s proposals (26 February 1855), Marcy noted that both he and
President Franklin Pierce were sympathetic to McLane’s general point of view
as to treaty revision. “I think however,” Marcy wrote, “I can anticipate that he
[Pierce] will have serious objections to uniting with Great Britain and France
in what you call the aggressive policy. . . .Such an association would not at all
suit the present feelings of this country.”48 And so McLane’s proposals for an
“aggressive policy” were rejected by Washington. But McLane had no
intention of carrying out this policy himself, for within a week after
formulating it he decided to return to the United States.
The man chosen to replace McLane was none other than Peter Parker, the
missionary doctor who had served as secretary of the legation ever since the
days of Caleb Cushing. He had a wealth of experience of both China and the
diplomatic service in China, for his combined service as chargé d’affaires and
commissioner was longer than all the terms of the different commissioners put
together. In spite of these obvious qualifications, his missionary zeal,
aggressive attitude toward China, and ignorance of American-European
diplomacy combined to render him ill-equipped

 Page 104
to formulate a China policy appropriate to the interests of his country. Indeed,
Parker’s policy of virtual “adventurism” in dealing with China forced
Washington, which had been rather passive in its concern with China up to
that time, to take policy formulation out of the hands of the resident
commissioners. In fact, Parker’s term as commissioner marked the turning
point in the formulation of U.S. policy toward China. 49
Secretary of State Marcy gave Parker essentially the same instructions as
McLane had received: to work for treaty revision and to cooperate with the
other Western powers within certain limits. With the blessing of the State
Department, Parker stopped off at London and Paris on his way to China to
consult with foreign ministers Lord Clarendon and Count Walewski on the
possibilities of joint action. Parker was favorably received at both capitals and
continued on to China confident that a joint project was feasible. Indeed,
during the interview at London, Clarendon had expressed the firm conviction
that “not only do our consciences approve, but the whole world must
commend our policy.”50 After arriving in China in late December, 1855,
however, Parker found the British and French envoys surprisingly cool to his
proposals for joint action against the Chinese. But Parker’s plans received new
encouragement from the British attack on Canton in October 1856, which
resulted from a heated quarrel over the status of a Chinese merchant vessel
flying the Union Jack. The so-called Arrow War that resulted led to the British
occupation of Canton and a sudden revival in Bowring’s interest in the
possibilities of American and French cooperation against the Chinese.
Accordingly, Parker wrote Marcy on 12 December 1856 proposing a definite
course of action: a joint expedition by Britain, the United States, and France to
north China to force the Chinese to concede to treaty revision. If the
expedition were to prove unsuccessful, the British should occupy Chusan, the
French Korea, and the Americans Formosa (Taiwan) until such time as
favorable terms were had from the Chinese. In language that is particularly
quaint, Parker proposed a “concurrent policy with England and France in
China, not an alliance, but independent and distinct action, yet similar,
harmonious, and simultaneous.”51
Parker’s proposal that the United Staes should occupy the island of Formosa,
an integral part of China, was much more than a mere tactical move to bring
about treaty revision. In 1854 Commodore Perry had sent a fact-finding
expedition to Formosa and at the same time had spoken of the necessity of
extending the

 Page 105
“territorial jurisdiction” of the United States to Formosa. Parker, who shared
Perry’s interest in the fate of the island, was greatly influenced by the opinions
of Gideon Nye, Jr., and W. M. Robinet, two American merchant-adventurers
who were active in Formosa. On 10 February 1857 Nye wrote to Parker
suggesing the desirability of some kind of American protectorate over all or
part of the island. Parker agreed, and forwarded Nye’s letter to the State
Department, expressing the hope that “the government of the United States
may not shrink from the action.” On 2 March of the same year Robinet also
wrote Parker, suggesting that if outright annexation were impossible, “it would
advance the cause of humanity, religion, and civilization” if the U.S.
government would give protection to Americans who should erect an
independent government on Formosa. Much enthused by the whole idea,
Parker wrote the secretary of state on 10 March 1857 pointing out that in his
opinion Formosa “may not long remain a portion of the empire of China . . .
and in the event of its being severed from the empire politically, as it is
geographically, that the United States should possess it is obvious, particularly
as respects the great principle of balance of power.” 52
By the fall of 1856 and the spring of 1857, therefore, events in China were on
the point of getting out of hand, and Washington was called upon to take some
decisive steps concerning relations with China. As William B. Reed, Parker’s
successor, was later to inform the secretary of state, the archives of the
legation showed that Parker, “to a certain point, encouraged Sir John Bowring
(and others) in the most extravant expectations of cooperation on our part, to
the extent even of acquisition of territory.”53 And although Parker’s specific
proposals for the annexation of Formosa did not reach Washington until the
summer of 1857, the authorities there had been aware for some time of Perry’s
and Parker’s interest in the island. But the issue was given immediate urgency
by press reports that alleged that both the United States consular service and
the naval squadron in the area had directly participated in the British assault
on Canton. An immediate investigation was ordered, which clearly
established, at the very least, that the sympathies of the American colony were
plainly with their British kinsmen.54
On top of all this, the authorities in Washington were being pressed by various
interest groups to take a firm stand in China. The British and French
representatives in the capital were urging American participation in a joint
effort, and the China merchants in the United States (whose attitude toward
China had been gradu-

 Page 106
ally shifting) came out in favor of such cooperation. On 2 April 1857 Gerald
Hallock, the editor of a commercial paper, wrote Marcy that “if any one of the
three nations were to undertake the negotiation alone, John Chinaman might
be tempted to resist.” 55 As far as the missionaries were concerned, their
general attitude was well reflected in the aggressive opinions of Peter Parker
himself. In spite of these multiple pressures urging war, however, President
Pierce and Secretary of State Marcy refused to be drawn along. In the first
place, they did not believe that the United States’ relations with China, while
far from satisfactory, warranted war. In the second place, they fully realized
that the threat of civil war in America itself precluded any possibility that
Congress would approve involvement in a conflict in distant China.
Accordingly, Marcy wrote Parker on 27 February 1857, rejecting the letter’s
advocacy of aggressive action as a “last resort.” “The ‘last resort’ means war,”
Marcy declared, “and the Executive branch of this government is not the war-
making power.” Having decided against close cooperation with Britain and
France in a move against China, Pierce and Marcy took pains to ensure that
their successors would pursue the same policy. Their efforts were successful,
for on 5 April 1857, after leaving office, Pierce wrote Marcy: “I was glad to
receive your note of the 3rd inst., and to learn that our policy in regard to
affairs in China is not to be departed from.”56 This concern on the part of
Pierce and Marcy is of some importance, for it is the only instance to date of a
former president’s concern over the continuation of his China policy by his
successor.
Unlike most of his predecessors, President James Buchanan had served a term
as Secretary of State and was relatively well informed as to the situation in
China. As a result, Buchanan took control of foreign policy and was not
inclined to seek out the opinions of the merchants and missionaries as to the
correct policy toward China, as his predecessors had done. Being in general
agreement with the policy of Pierce and Marcy, Buchanan on 10 April 1857
formally rejected the British and French overtures seeking American support
in a joint venture in China. And shortly thereafter, on 22 April William B.
Reed was appointed to replace Parker as United States Commissioner to
China. For the first time since Cushing’s tenure, the Commissioner was also
invested with the powers of Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary,
and was thus in a position to sign a new treaty should the opportunity arise.
Indeed, on the desirability of negotiating a new treaty with

 Page 107
China, Buchanan was in complete agreement with Peter Parker. Unlike Parker,
however, Buchanan did not feel that the situation warranted aggressive action
against the Chinese. In the “most detailed instructions since Cushing,”
Buchanan and Secretary of State Lewis Cass spelled out three main areas of
policy that were to be Reed’s primary concerns: relations with the Chinese,
both the Ch’ing dynasty and the Taiping rebels; policy toward the various
European powers active in China; and the readjustment of the U.S. diplomatic
and consular services in China. Cass acknowledged to Reed that “your
position is a delicate one and will require the exercise of your best discretion,”
57 but he made it quite clear to the new commissioner that his efforts in China
“must be confined to firm representations, appealing to the justice and policy
of the Chinese authorities, and leaving to your own Government to determine
upon the course to be adopted, should your representations be fruitless.”58
With respect to policy toward the Chinese, Cass told Reed that it mattered
little as to which side won the civil war then in progress, for both sides were
equally bound to existing obligations vis-à-vis the United States. In the
meantime, with no prospects in sight of de facto recognition of the Taipings,
diplomatic relations with the imperial government should be continued and
extended if possible. Finally, American claims against the Chinese according
to the terms of the Treaty of Wanghsia should be pressed and the treaty itself
should be revised. As far as relations with the European powers were
concerned, Cass felt that since U.S. interests in China were similar to those of
Britain and France, Washington should offer them “peaceful cooperation.” But
he reminded Reed that the United States was not at war with China, and,
contrary to Parker’s point of view, had no desire for territorial aggrandizement
or political influence in China. Accordingly, the American commissioner was
not to join with Britain and France in any military actions against China.
Concerning the branches of the U.S. government active in China, Cass
informed the consular service (as had Marcy before him) that they were to
carry the commissioner’s wishes into effect. Finally, the Navy Department
agreed on a plan to put the U.S. squadron in the China seas under the control
of the Commissioner as far as was practicable.59
It should be pointed out that Buchanan’s and Cass’s refusal to employ force to
bring about treaty revisions was by no means absolute. While they were
willing to appeal “to the justice and policy” of the Chinese authorities on
outstanding issues between

 Page 108
the United States and China, there were limits to their patience. In a dispatch
to Reed concerning the use of force against China, Cass acknowledged that “it
is possible that this alternative may yet be forced upon us by the continued
refusal of China to do justice to our citizens, or in the possible but improbable
contingency to which you allude that the Chinese authorities should decline to
admit the United States to an equal participation in such privileges as may be
granted to the belligerents at the close of the present contest.” 60
Thus Cass made it quite clear that the United States was prepared to respect
Chinese sovereignty, and to refrain from aggressive action against China, only
on condition that the United States shared in the concessions China might be
forced to yield to Britain and France. As it turned out, this is exactly what
happened. Decisively beaten in 1858 and 1860, China was forced to concede
extensive privileges to Britain and France, and United States Commissioners
Reed and John E. Ward immediately stepped from the wings to claim the fruits
of China’s defeat. During the Anglo-French assault on the Chinese forts at
Taku, the U.S. naval squadron on the scene displayed a studied neutrality, but
an unexpected disaster revealed the true feelings of the Americans present.
Immediately after British Admiral Sir James Hope fell wounded, U.S.
Commodore Josiah Tattnall ordered some of his vessels to Britain’s assistance.
Justifying his aid to the British, Tattnall simply exclaimed: “I must either help
Hope or return to the Powhaten [Tattnall’s flag ship]. I can’t stand here and see
them shot to pieces. . . .Blood is thicker than water.”61 Apparently Washington
agreed, for the secretary of the navy, on being informed of the incident,
decided to consider Tattnall’s action as entirely appropriate and not a violation
of American neutrality.62
An Ambiguous Legacy
Before concluding my account, it might be interesting to discuss briefly the
Chinese view of the United States and the individual Americans who came to
China during this period. In general, most educated Chinese felt that America
was “maritime, uncultivated, and primitive,” In a memorial to the emperor,
Imperial Commissioner Ch’i-ying reported: “The location of the United States
is in the Far West. Of all the countries it is the most uncivilized and
remote. . . .the said country is in an isolated place outside the pale, solitary and
ignorant.” Although the Chi-

 Page 109
nese generally regarded all “foreign barbarians” as “inscrutable,” they
believed in the early stages that they might be able to play off the Americans
against the British and French. Americans were thought to “resent the English
barbarians and revere China,” but on one occasion at least an official
concluded that “the Americans ordinarily speak respectfully but are taking
advantage of the present situation to make demands . . . .absolutely no faith
can be placed in them.” Finally, in comparing the British and the Americans,
one perceptive commentator observed that “the English barbarians’ craftiness
is manifold, their proud tyranny is uncontrollable; Americans do nothing but
follow their direction.” 63
This is, essentially, the general conclusion which I have arrived at in the
course of this essay. Up to the time of the Opium War, United States contacts
were mostly of a commercial nature, although the missionaries were fast
becoming a new force on the scene. In the face of government apathy, the
American merchants were forced to formulate their own policy toward China
in the interests of trade. The three key elements in their policy were
maintenance of equality of trade, respect for Chinese sovereignty, and
disassociation from Great Britain. After the Treaty of Nanking was signed in
1842, Washington was called upon by the American merchants to negotiate a
treaty with China granting privileges similar to those given the British. It is not
surprising, then, that in his instructions to Caleb Cushing, Secretary of State
Daniel Webster took the China policy of the American merchants to be the
official China policy of the United States government.
The decision of President John Tyler in 1843 to inaugurate diplomatic
relations with China opened a new phase in Sino-American relations. But the
decision to sign a treaty with China had been encouraged by the pressure of
external factors, and so Washington entered upon this new venture with little
forethought or preparation. Almost immediately, the inadequacies of the
diplomatic machinery set up to deal with China became readily apparent. After
much trial and error, in the early 1850s Washington began to take steps to rein
in and control the various branches of the United States government active in
China. The State Department partially liberated itself from the opinions of
interest groups such as the merchants and missionaries, the commissioners
were given less “discretionary powers,” the consular service was brought
under more effective control, and the relationship between the commissioner
in China and the commander of the East Indies Squadron was more clearly
defined.
In the years after the Treaty of Wanghsia, a profound change

 Page 110
occurred in U.S. policy toward China. The principle of equality of trade in
China was firmly adhered to, as both merchants and statesmen agreed that
America’s commercial interests in China were of paramount importance. It
was the U.S. attitude toward Chinese sovereignty, however, that contained the
horns of a dilemma. As long as the Americans thought that Great Britain
intended to dominate China and exclude the United States from its share of the
trade, it was in their interest to restrain Britain and “sustain” China. If,
however, the Americans became convinced that Britain did not intend to
exclude the United States from the China trade, and that respect for Chinese
sovereignty only helped China exclude all Western nations from more
extensive privileges, then U.S. policy would have to be reassessed. American
interests in China were almost purely commercial and they could best be
served by forcing China to open wide her “door” to foreign penetration of the
economy. This desire happily coincided with the hopes of the rapidly growing
missionary element in China, who equally desired the “opening” of China to
the blessings of Western religion and civilization.
And so it was that the Americans began to reconsider their attitude toward
Great Britain, a nation which they had been accustomed to regarding with
mixed emotions of respect and suspicion. The Americans realized that the
British were determined to “open” China by means fair or foul, so they had to
make a choice between helping China, cooperating with Britain, or
maintaining neutrality. Frankly realizing that their interests in China were
essentially the same as those of the British, and assured that the British did not
intend to exclude them from China, the Americans decided on a policy of
cooperation. But this was to be “peaceful cooperation” only, for the U.S.
government felt that America’s interests in China were not sufficiently
important to warrant war. Besides, the clouds of civil war were gathering over
their own skies and the nation was in no mood to consider military adventures
in distant lands. So, while Daniel Webster instructed Caleb Cushing in 1843 to
impress upon the Chinese the essential difference between Great Britain and
the United States, in 1857 Lewis Cass told William B. Reed to cooperate with
the British in the furtherance of common aims. The policy formulated by
Buchanan and Cass in 1857 marked the watershed between two historical
periods in the evolution of United States policy toward China, for it ushered in
the “era of cooperation” in Western relations with China.
The ambiguity in United States policy toward China was not

 Page 111
lost on acute American observers as it worked itself out during the following
generation. In an article in the Atlantic Monthly in May 1887, for example, A.
A. Hayes observed that U.S. policy toward China has been to crawl behind the
British guns, and come forward at the end of war with our bills for missing
dressing gowns, slippers, pipes, and even “loss of peace of mind.” 64 This of
course is an exaggeration but like most exaggerations, it contains an important
kernel of truth.
Notes
1. See, for example, Tong Te-kong, United States Diplomacy in China, 1844-
1860 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964).
2. Ibid., 73. For an interesting account of early American attitudes toward
China, see William J. Brinker, “Commerce, Culture, and Horticulture: The
Beginnings of Sino-American Cultural Relations,” in Thomas H. Etzold, ed.,
Aspects of Sino-American Relations Since 1784 (New York: Franklin Watts,
1978), 3-24.
3. Tyler Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia (New York: Barnes and Noble,
1922), 76-77, 89.
4. Ibid., 70.
5. Ibid., 83.
6. Ibid., 105.
7. Tong, Diplomacy, 72.
8. S. F. Bemis, A Diplomatic History of the United States, 4th ed. rev. (New
York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1960), 344.
9. Paul H. Clyde and Burton F. Beers, The Far East: A History of the Western
Impact and the Eastern Response, 1830-1965, 4th ed. rev. (Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), 72.
10. J. W. Foster, American Diplomacy in the Orient (Boston and New York:
Riverside Press and Houghton, Mifflin, 1903), 73.
11. Dennett, Americans, 99-104.
12. S. F. Bemis, ed., The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy
(New York: Pageant Book Co., 1958), 5-6: 61.
13. Tong, Diplomacy, 29.
14. Ibid, 28-30.
15. Paul H. Clyde, United States Policy toward China: Diplomatic and Public
Documents 1839-1939 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1940),
appendix 1, 314-16.
16. Tong, Diplomacy, 31.
17. J. M. Callahan, American Relations in the Pacific and the Far East 1784-
1900, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science,
ser. 19, nos. 1-3 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1901), 167.
18. Tong, Diplomacy, 33-34.
19. John K. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The Opening
of the Treaty Ports, 1842-1854 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953,
1964), 2:63.
20. Claude M. Fuess, The Life of Caleb Cushing (New York: Harcourt, Brace,
1923), 1:246-47.

 Page 112
21. Dan E. Clark, “Manifest Destiny and the Pacific,” Pacific Historical
Review 1, no. 1(1932): 8-9.
22. Dennett, Americans, 127.
23. W. C. Costin, Great Britain and China 1833-1860 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1937), 28-29.
24. Earl H. Pritchard, “The Origins of the Most-Favored Nation and the Open
Door Policies in China,” Far Eastern Quarterly 1, no.2 (February 1942): 166.
25. Dennett, Americans, 159.
26. Clyde, Documents, 9-12.
27. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 1:196.
28. L. H. Battistini, The United States and Asia (London: Atlantic Press,
1956), 15.
29. Foster, American Diplomacy, 85.
30. Kuo Ping-chia, “Caleb Cushing and the Treaty of Wanghia, 1844,” The
Journal of Modern History 5, no. (March 1933): 44-45.
31. Foster, American Diplomacy, 87.
32. Costin, Britain and China, 120-21.
33. Tong, Diplomacy, 88-89.
34. Ibid., 88-90.
35. Ibid., 95.
36. Ibid., 115-16.
37. Costin, Britain and China, 161.
38. Tong, Diplomacy, 128.
39. Clyde, Documents, p. 26.
40. Tong, Diplomacy, 133-35.
41. Ibid., 142-43.
42. Chester A. Bain, “Commodore Matthew Perry, Humphrey Marshall, and
the Taiping Rebellion,” Far Eastern Quarterly 10, no. 3 (May 1951): 263-67.
43. Tong, Diplomacy, 146-47.
44. Ibid., 35.
45. Bain, “Perry,” 269-70.
46. H. B. Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire (1910),
(Taipei: Literary Star Book Store, 1966): 414-15.
47. Tong, Diplomacy, 170-71.
48. Ibid., 172.
49. Parker’s career, including both missionary and diplomatic phases, is traced
in Edward V. Gulick, Peter Parker and the Opening of China (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1973).
50. Costin, Britain and China, 195.
51. Tong, Diplomacy, 195.
52. Ibid., 203-6.
53. Callahan, Relations, 98.
54. Foster, American Diplomacy, 227-28.
55. Tong, Diplomacy, 196.
56. Ibid., 199-200.
57. Bemis, Diplomatic History, 375.
58. Clyde, Documents, 40.
59. Tong, Diplomacy, 211-14; Clyde, Documents, 39-42.
60. Bemis, Diplomatic History, 370-71.
61. Callahan, Relations, 107.

 Page 113
62. F. H. Michael and G. E. Taylor, The Far East in the Modern World, rev. ed.
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), 139.
63. Earl Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians: A Study
of Sino-American Relations, 1841-1861, with Documents (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1953), 39-54.
64. A. A. Hayes, “China and the United States,” The Atlantic Monthly (Boston
and New York: Houghton, MifflinThe Riverside Press, 1887), 59: 587-88.

 Page 114

American Views of China, 1900-1915:

The Unwelcome but Inevitable Awakening
Jonathan G. Utley
At the 1904 St. Louis World Fair, President Theodore Roosevelt sent a
telegraphic message that circled the globe in only twelve minutes, dramatic
evidence of how small the world had become. Like it or not, the United States
had to participate in that world. Steam power had removed the image of
security the oceans had provided. Gone were the nineteenth-century days
when Americans could concentrate on acquiring and developing a continent.
Increasingly, now, foreign questions thrust themselves on the American
people. What worried many Americans was that the world of the twentieth
century was much less stable than that of the nineteenth century. Everything
was changing and changing rapidly. Thus it was with both a sense of
exhileration and apprehension that many Americans looked toward the
twentieth century.
In this context Americans examined Asia and particularly China. That nation
housed one-quarter of humanity. If the world was changing rapidly would not
China also change? It seemed inevitable that China would eventually awake.
When it did, could it challenge the world order the West had created? Late in
the nineteenth century several American writers warned their countrymen of
the pending contest between East and West. Josiah Strong termed it “the final
competition of races.” Brooks Adams warned that the transportation
revolution had created a formidable challenge to the United States, for “even
now factories can be equipped almost as easily in India, Japan and China as in
Lancashire or Massachusetts, and the products of the cheapest labor can be
sold more advantageously in European capitals than those of western cities.”
This warning by a member of the famous Adams family pointed out that an
awakening Asia would have to be con-

 Page 115
trolled or it would overwhelm the West. The leading spokesman for a strong
navy, Alfred Thayer Mahan, advised his readers that “civilizations on different
planes of material prosperity and progress with different spiritual ideas, and
with very different political capacities, are closing together.” Few Americans
doubted who would ultimately triumph in this struggle for world dominance,
for they assumed that the white race was more fit to rule than the yellow race.
Nevertheless, it was a challenge that had to be met. 1
China emerged from its slumber with a vengeance in 1900 as a militant
antiforeign group called the Boxers sought to cleanse China of external
influence by killing the foreigners. Although the uprising ultimately failed, it
succeeded in killing many foreign nationals, destroying much of their
property, and riveting Western attention on China for two months as the
Boxers laid siege to the foreign legations in Beijing (Peking), a siege that was
lifted only after 55 days. In rapid succession the American people despised,
feared, laughed at, and pitied the Chinese.
The Boxer Uprising proved to Americans what they had already believed, that
the Chinese were not a trustworthy people, that they valued duplicity and
deceipt rather than honesty. Bret Harte fixed this idea in the American mind
when he published his popular poem commonly called “The Heathen Chinee.”
Harte’s character, Ah Sin, is a Chinese who claims not to understand how to
play cards, a claim he made “with a smile that was childlike and bland.” But
one could not trust the Chinese. According to Harte:
In the scene that ensued
I did not take a hand,
But the floor it was strewed
Like the leaves on the strand
With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding,
In the game “he did not understand.”
In his sleeves, which were long,
He had twenty-four packs,
which was coming it strong,
Yet I state but the facts;
And we found on his nails, which were taper,
What is frequent in tapers,that’s wax.
Which is why I remark,
And my language is plain,

 Page 116
that for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
That heathen Chinee is peculiar,
Which the same I am free to maintain.

Harte published this poem in 1870 and it proved so popular that it was
reprinted, sometimes illustrated, and continued to appear as late as 1900. 2 The
Boxer Uprising only reinforced this image of the duplicitous Chinese, for the
Chinese government had spoken of its friendship and pledged protection of
foreigners while it failed to restrain the Boxers. Thus it was understandable
how a cartoonist could depict China as the Jekyll and Hyde of nations, which
stood erect offering solemn pledges of safety for the members of the foreign
legations yet simultaneously crouched with evil countenance holding an
assassin’s knife and arsonist’s torch. Betrayal and deception were presented as
Chinese national characteristics.
In addition to anger for China’s duplicity, Americans feared the power
unleashed by the Boxer rebellion. Americans had stereotyped the Chinese as a
violent people who loved to inflict pain, and this image flourished during the
violent days of the rebellion. American cartoonists drew Boxers as giants
breaking from their chains or awakening from their sleep. These frightening
creatures chased westerners through the streets ready to kill them with long
knives. But no sooner were the Boxers silenced than this image was replaced
by another image long supported by popular stereotypes. Though most
Americans considered the Chinese violent and vicious, they also considered
them cowardly and undisciplined. So cowardly were they that the common
term for cowardice was “yellow.” So incapable of military discipline were
they that a smaller number of well-trained troops could disperse the Boxers
and restore peace to China. No longer did cartoonists draw hulking,
threatening Chinese. Now the Boxer was dwarfed by the powers. It was the
large military foot that brought the Boxer to “the end of his rope” in one
cartoon when the foot stood on the queue (the long pigtail) of the Boxer who
cries out in pain and drops his knife. The ultimate humiliation of the defeated
Chinese is shown in a cartoon where the powers use his queue as a clothesline
on which they hung their flags.3 (See illustrated section.)
It was not long before Americans began to look upon the Chinese not simply
as defeated but as a frail people facing the unreasonably harsh demands of the
powers. As the powers made those demands the American attitude toward the
Chinese became almost

 Page 117
sympathetic. The Chinese were no longer characterized as disarmed Boxers
but rather as weak children or frail old men. The real Boxers, one cartoonist
noted, were the powers who were nailing China into a coffin preparatory to
partitioning it. Obviously, China needed a friend if it was going to survive, and
it found that friend in United States Secretary of State John Hay. In this
moment of peril Hay informed the powers that the United States preferred a
solution to the China problem that would avoid any lessening of China’s
political or territorial integrity. Hay was calling for the Open Door in China. It
was the mutual suspicion among the powers, rather than Hay’s diplomatic
efforts, that forestalled the partition of China and preserved the Open Door.
Nevertheless the American people were pleased that their nation had come to
China’s defense. It made no difference to them that China was the object of
American diplomacy, a pawn to be acted upon, rather than a participant in
determining its own fate. It was not important that Hay held little respect for
the Chinese and spoke of the “Chinks.” This was not the age of equality, and
Americans could agree that the Chinese were an inferior people whose fate
was to be decided by the ruling nations of the world, of which the United
States was clearly one. 4
Thus 1900 witnessed an expression of all the popular views Americans held of
the Chinese. Unleashed they were to be feared while peaceful they were not to
be trusted. Though dangerous because of their numbers, they were hardly a
match for the industrial nations of the world. Underlying all of this was an
assumption of China’s inferiority and backwardness, conditions that justified
preventing China from controlling its own affairs.
This unequal relationship was a product of the nineteenth century, when the
powers established extraterritoriality (by which China could not prosecute
foreign nationals) and maritime customs control (by which China could not
control foreign imports). Most Americans understood the necessity for such a
system since Chinese ways were barbaric and the all-pervading corruption
made justice impossible. Even Americans friendly to China noted how corrupt
the legal system was. One dared not stop to give aid to a man lying in the
street lest the intervention make the benefator liable to a suit by the family of
the afflicted man. Once charged, a local official might extract a substantial
bribe to keep the case from coming to trial. Even a fair trial would be
impossible, for the Chinese “generally set little or no value upon truth, and this
has led to the use of torture in their courts of justice; for it is argued that where
the value of an oath is not understood, some

 Page 118
other means must be restored to extract evidence.” This view, put forward in
the scholarly eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, reveals the
dominant views of the time. That corruption characterized the Chinese, was
apparent from the encyclopedia’s description of the maritime customs as “the
one department of finance in China which is managed with probity and
honesty, and this it owes to the fact that it is worked under foreign control.” 5
Such views dominated the popular American image of China and the Chinese.
In 1904-5, American treatment of the Chinese in the United States prompted
some Chinese retaliation in China. The issue was Chinese exclusion from the
United States. That Congress would renew the exclusion legislation was a
foregone conclusion. But that it should be expanded to include humiliating
restrictions on the “better sort” of educated Chinese who sought to continue
their education in the United States and the successful merchants who sought
to trade in the United States was too much for the Chinese, who instituted a
somewhat limited boycott of American goods in China. Though Americans
continued to view the Chinese as inferior, there was considerable sympathy for
the Chinese in this case. Commercial interests recognized that better treatment
of Chinese in America was not only justified on grounds of justice but
benefited American trade. Two leading periodicals of American commerce,
the Commercial and Financial Chronicle and the Journal of Commerce,
portrayed American restrictions on Chinese immigration as insulting to China.
Outside the commercial circles there was an acceptance of the justness of
China’s cause. It was “a rule that works both ways” one cartoonist noted. If the
Americans wanted to give the boot to Chinese, then the Chinese could give the
boot to American goods.6
Less apparent to the typical American than the somewhat ineffectual boycott,
but more far reaching as a symbol of the awakening China, was that nation’s
attempt to regain control of its own internal economic development by
reasserting control over its railroad system. The noted correspondent Thomas
F. Millard explained this to his American readers. While still too early to say
that China was fully awake, he wrote, “it is certain that she has opened her
eyes and is taking notice of what is going on in the world about her.” Millard
believed that the force shaking China awake was the foreign presence,
particularly the foreign concessions. Awakened to the importance of the
railroad for the development of China and aware of how foreign powers had
used the railroad concessions to their advantage rather than to China’s, Millard
saw that China would insist upon retaining “substantial

 Page 119
control” of the railroads of China. “It is safe to say that hereafter no important
commercial or industrial concession will be willingly granted by the Chinese
Government in which the government does not reserve the right to take it over
under equitable conditions.” Beyond that, China was intent upon regaining
control of the Canton-Hankow railroad concession from the American-China
Development Company. Though the primary stockholder, financier J. P.
Morgan was prepared to sell (at a handsome profit), President Roosevelt and
the State Department opposed the sale, terming it as a blow to American
interests in China. Not only would the consummation of the sale remove the
United States from an important railroad line but it would be the removal of
the Americans at the insistance of the Chinese. That was not Roosevelt’s view
of how the world should be governed. This assertion of Chinese independence
boded ill for the maintenance of the old system. 7
Some China watchers sought to alert the American people to China’s
awakening. Arthur Judson Brown published his warning to the nation in his
1904 book New Forces in Old China: An Unwelcome but Inevitable
Awakening. Johnson was drawn to his topic as bystanders are drawn to a
building on fire. “There is something fascinating and at the same time
something appalling in the spectacle of a nation numbering nearly one-third of
the human race slowly and majestically rousing itself from the torpor of ages
under the influence of new and powerful revolutionary forces.” This
transformation of old, conservative, and exclusive China was brought by three
great forces of the modern world: Western trade, Western politics, and Western
religion. Taken with the transportation and communication revolutions, Brown
noted that the intrusion of the West into China was bringing about a
transformation of Chinese life. As the commercial forces reached into China
they created new wants among the Chinese, which stimulated new markets.
But this influx of western investment and goods led to an exploitation of
China and the subsequent irritation of the Chinese. Brown argued that the
Chinese, having been mistreated by the West, struck back in the Boxer
Uprising. Defeated by the foreign powers, the victors extracted terms from
China that left it humiliated and shook it from its slumber. Brown conceded
that for 1904 Japan seemed to have held the primary place in the American
perception of the “Yellow Peril” and that China was looked upon as weak and
helpless and thus no menace to the West. But what of tomorrow? “It takes a
nation of 426,000,000 phlegmatic people longer to get under way than a

 Page 120
nation of 43,000,000 nervous people (Japan) but when they do get started,
their momentum is proportionately greater.” Brown warned that China had
plenty of men who could fight if properly led. Nor should the West feel
comfortable behind the vast distances that separate it from Asia, for if the
West can reach Asia why not Asia the West? Brown yielded to the popular
view that the Chinese were incapable of organizing themselves and charged
that Japan would provide the leadership. “It certainly needs no argument to
prove that if 426,000,000 Chinese are once fairly committed to the skillful
leadership of the Japanese, a force will be set in motion which could be
withstood only by the united efforts of all the rest of the world.” China was
already developing, he warned; it was importing guns and training its army.
The coming of the Western powers pushed China to change, and would they
stop before tossing out the Western powers?
Yesterday, Chaldea, Egypt, Asyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome! Today England,
Germany, Russia, Japan, the United States! Tomorrow. What? What, indeed, if not
some of these now awakening nations! It is by no means impossible that some new
Jenghiz Khan or Tamerlane may arise, and with the weapons of modern warfare in
his hands, and these uncounted millions at his command, gaze about on the pygmies
that we call the powers. 8

Not all Americans interested in China were comfortable with Brown’s

apacolyptic tone. Some preferred Millard’s more judicious and sophisticated
analysis of the situation in China.9 But Millard’s sober-minded analysis came
to the same conclusion Brown’s rhetorical assertions did. Japan appeared to
have sought to direct the awakening of China against the West. These were not
simply speculations, Millard claimed, for he had “positive evidence of the
existence of a systematic and well-developed plan of Japan to control and
manipulate” Chinese public opinion. Part of Millard’s evidence was the
activities of Chinese language newspapers published in China under Japanese
charter. Such newspapers enjoyed the benefits of extraterritoriality and were
thus exempt from Chinese censorship. As a result, they carried subtle
antiforeign articles that emphasized how badly the westerners treated the
Chinese and how much Japan resented this treatment. The only solution, the
articles would suggest, was to eliminate the power of the westerner in China.
In addition to the newspapers, according to Millard, literally thousands of
Japanese Buddhist missionaries and businessmen

 Page 121
lived in China and distributed large numbers of antiforeign posters, cartoons,
and circulars. So orchestrated and concerted were these propaganda efforts
that they could not have been the result of individual Japanese initiatives but
had to be planned and directed from Tokyo. The real menace of such agitation
was visible in the more remote areas where Japanese agents circulated
propaganda “of an absolutely incendiary character, couched in the same
general antiforeign spirit that the Boxer movement took in.” The effectiveness
of this rabble rousing, Millard believed, could be found in the Chinese boycott
of American goods. Under normal circumstances, the boycott would have
been, in the words of the United States Minister to China “a flash in the
political pan.” It was Japanese efforts that made the boycott drag on, Millard
believed. Central in this Japanese strategy were the ”Japanese students,”
young Chinese who studied in Japan and returned to China to serve Japan
either openly or surreptitiously. Millard worried that they formed “a mobile
and intelligent element perfectly adapted to certain political uses in China’s
present stage of development.” These “Japanese students” would pack the
meetings of the Chinese commercial guilds and outvote the more reasonable
Chinese and shout down the Chinese who, having studied in the United States,
wished “to present fairly the American side of the matter and point out the
futility” of a boycott. Without this Japanese sponsored anti-foreign agitation
the boycott would have been scarcely a ripple.
Brown and Millard both sought to dispel the old popular myths of a helpless
China incapable of military discipline, opposed to modernization, and
uninterested in political regeneration. Such old views prevented Americans
from seeing that China was changing and that it would be guided in that
change either by Japan, which was antiwestern, or by the western powers.
Neither writer was prepared to argue that the Chinese would accomplish a
regeneration of their country without some outside guidance and in this
respect both authors reflected the basic perception of the Chinese as inferior.
But aside from that, neither sought to denigrate the Chinese. While many of
their customs appear strange to us, Brown reminded his American readers, so
do many of our customs appear strange to them. Millard admitted to once
holding an “adverse disposition” toward the Chinese but the more he became
acquainted with them the more he developed “a sincere liking and admiration
of the Chinese people.” He recognized that one could not easily identify social
characteristics with a race, but he considered the Chinese “industrious,
reliable, law-abiding, good

 Page 122
humored, capable, and tolerant.” Brown, in keeping with his missionary
background, viewed the Chinese in more religious terms: “back of the almond
eyes and under a yellow skin are all the faculties and possibilities of a human
soul. The Chinese is not only a man, but our brother man, made like ourselves
in the image of God.” Brown felt that the Japanese challenge in China had to
be met by American missionaries. Millard favored more secular methods that
would guide the “good qualities” of the Chinese along the “path of modern
progress.”
The United States Minister to China, E. H. Conger, expressed the same view
in 1898 when he acknowledged that the great powers might preserve China as
it stood, but to what end?
If real progress is to be made mines opened, railways constructed resources
developed, markets created, and business established, Orientalism must effectually
give way to Occidentalism. In my judgment this is bound to occur. It may and it may
not be soon, but the sooner it comes, the better for China, as well as for those who
seek her development and the trade which will follow.

Americans were quite sincere when they spoke of the necessity of China’s
abandoning orientalism for occidentalism. Orientalism was backward and
China needed to be cleansed of it. As one cartoonist depicted it, the powers
would wield the broom of civilization to sweep out of China not only the
Boxers, but every vestige of antiprogress, superstition, war gods, bigotry,
violence, and antiforeign feelings. Purged of these negative forces, China
could be remade in the image of Western civilization. 10
Of course, there were those commercially minded Americans who looked
upon China as a market and the Chinese as consumers rather than as people.
The Buffalo Express put it bluntly in 1900 when it declared “there are
400,000,000 active stomachs in China, and each cries for food three times a
day.” Lest anyone think this was a humanitatian appeal to feed the starving
millions of China, the Express published a drawing of a Chinese man joyfully
devouring a bowl of food and captioned the photograph “a fine opening in
China for American Wheat and Corn.”11 Other commercial interests may have
been more interested in the number of feet requiring slippers or the number of
heads requiring hats or even the number of lanterns requiring kerosene. But in
spite of such materialistic views, the development of the China market could
not be separated from the spiritual regeneration of the Chinese people and the
instilling of western values through education.

 Page 123
Historian Jerry Israel has demonstrated how the values of the Progressive Era
at home were reflected in China as well. (See Israel’s article in this volume).
Just as the social gospel and settlement houses moved people to perfect society
at home, so did it move Americans to perfect society in China. Not only must
dams be built but such archaic and inhumane practices as foot binding,
slavery, torture, and massive corruption had to be stamped out. China would
be remade by the combined efforts of Western businessmen, missionaries, and
educators. 12
If the magnitude of such an undertaking did not capture the imagination of all
Americans, it proved of interest to many. In the fall of 1911 alone, eight
significant books on China were published. It was not difficult for interested
Americans to find information on China, which ranged from the more
analytical works of University of Wisconsin political scientist Paul Reinsch to
several travelogues. Among these books was Edward Alsworth Ross’s The
Changing Chinese: The Conflict of Oriental and Western Cultures in China.13
In many respects, Ross reflected the view that China was a backward country
that was awakening, and when it did it posed a conflict with Western
civilization of epic proportions. But unlike many other writers of his day, Ross
viewed the Chinese as strong, good natured, polite people who had not
achieved the level of intellectual sophistication demonstrated by the West
because of an oppressive social structure. If the typical Chinese was inferior to
the typical westerner, Ross argued, it was not the result of anything inate but
strictly the result of a society which was weighted down by a constant looking
back at its ancient heritage and thus opposed to change. Removed from this
stultifying environment, he argued, the Chinese would rise to the intellectual
equal of the white. Where Chinese had been able to do just that their
intellectual growth had been remarkable. Reflecting the popular view that it
was the environment rather than inherent characteristics that determined a
person’s status, Ross argued that one or two score years of western education
the Chinese would occupy throughout China the tasks only whites then
performed. Ross based his argument on observations during his travels in
China. On his journey he asked forty-three white men who had good cause to
have the “feel” of the Chinese mind whether they found the intellectual
capacity of the yellow race equal to that of the white race. All but five
answered yes.
This was a new challenge to the West. For three centuries, Ross asserted, the
white race had been expanding and confronted not a single race that

 Page 124
could successfully dispute their military superiority, contribute to their civilization,
or dispense with their direction in political or industrial organization. Now, after
three centuries of such experience, during which the white man has grown
accustomed to regarding himself as the undisputed sovereign of the planet, he makes
the acquaintance of peoples in Eastern Asia who are, perhaps, as capable as the
whites and who threaten to spread into areas he has staked off for himself. In any
case, it begins to appear that the future bearers and advancers of civilization will be,
not the whites alone, but the white and the yellow races; and the control of the globe
will lie in the hands of two races instead of one.

Here in more intellectual form were the warnings of Mahan that two
civilizations were fast closing together and of Strong that a “final competition
of races” was approaching. But here too was the ever-present belief that if
China was going to ascend to its rightful role in the world, it had to abandon
oppressive orientalism for progressive occidentalism. Ross spoke highly of the
Chinese and showed no serious apprehension about China’s rise to world
prominence. But he reflected this basic ethnocentrism when he explained that
before China could hope to develop intellectually it had to undergo both
massive economic and social reform. On the one hand the Chinese would have
to “build railroads, open mines, sink petroleum wells, harness water-power,
erect mills, adopt machinery, reforest their mountains, construct irrigation
works, introduce better breeds of domestic animals and plants, and apply
science to the production of food.” But all of this would be to no avail if the
population simply increased to absorb the growth in the economy. “It is
equally ncessary, therefore, for the Chinese to slacken their multiplication by
dropping ancestor worship, dissolving the clan, educating girls, elevating
women, postponing marriage, introducing compulsory education, restricting
child-labor and otherwise individualizing the members of the family.” In short,
Ross called for China to abandon its emphasis on familism for an emphasis on
individualism that was a more sophisticated expression of E. H. Conger’s call
for China to abandon orientalism for occidentalism.
No matter how hard they might try, Americans could not bring themselves to
accept China as it was. The Chinese could retain their traditional patience but
they must change almost everything else. They must adopt the Western
concept of progress and accept the liberal values of the West. Unlike the
earlier writings of Millard and Brown, Ross did not fear the awakening China.
Millard and

 Page 125
Brown feared that what seemed to them an anti-Western Japan would guide
the Chinese masses, while Ross argued that the emergent China would be a
westernized one thus less threatening to the West. Where Brown worried about
a militant China that would attack the West, Ross pictured a developing China
that would share in the control of the globe.
A probable reason for the popularity of Ross’s work is that it gained a
prophetic tone because of its timing. It appeared at the time of the 1911
Chinese revolution that overthrew the Manchu Dynasty. This revolution struck
some Americans as the type of progressive step China had to take, a giant
stride out of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century, a move from
Asian despotism to western republicanism. The contrast was demonstrated by
a cartoonist who showed young China in Western dress and driving a sports
car forcing off the road the old China with its traditional dress and queue,
riding on a dragon. 14
Though some Americans doubted the Chinese were capable of establishing a
republic until they had been educated to intricacies of such a sophisticated
form of government, other Americans were products of an optimistic age and
were confident that the 1911 revolution heralded a new day. The Nation was
an exponent of this optimistic position.15 “Asia has taken center stage,” The
Nation editorialized. “What is now going on in China is bound to transcend in
importance all our tariff revision and Presidential speculations, all of Lloyd
George’s insurance schemes, all Franco-German bickerings and adjustments.”
In The Nation’s view, when historians looked back at this period they would
find that, in spite of radium, wireless, and the airplane, the significant change
would be the awakening of China. Those who had said that the Oriental mind
rejects liberty and demands despotism had been proven wrong. The revolution
demonstrated this by showing that the true awakening of China was not in the
form of a great standing army as the champions of the “Yellow Peril”
predicted. Nor did China’s awakening come through the economic
regeneration as others insisted it must. Instead, it came through the force of
ideas. The education of thousands, not the arming of millions, had transformed
China. The Chinese desire for “honest administrators, honest judges, schools,
libraries; in other words, Progress” had brought the regeneration of China.
There seemed to be a sense of relief among some China watchers in the United
States. For some years they had been waiting for the slumbering giant to
awaken, and they had been apprehensive. Now it appeared that the Chinese
were taking a peaceful course

 Page 126
rather than a militant one. Arthur Judson Brown rushed into print another book
on China in which he praised the new China as a far better place and admitted
that it was a much better result than he could have hoped for in his 1904 study
of the awakening China. As a reviewer of Brown’s work reminded his readers,
China was undergoing a swift and thorough educational, political, and
religious transformation, and the American people had misjudged the
character of the Chinese people. 16
Such euphoric views must be kept in context. If some China watchers and
other informed segments of the American public saw the 1911 revolution as a
turning point in the conflict between East and West, those people reflected
only a small segment of the nation. China watchers were an important part of
public opinion because they were likely to articulate their feelings to foreign
policymakers. Nevertheless most Americans did not read Ross, Reinsch, or
Brown, or even editorials in The Nation. Understanding of the popular or mass
image of the Chinese requires examination not of informed writings but of the
popular literature and the motion pictures of the day. Here the old stereotypical
views of the Chinese persisted.
No fictional character personified the “Yellow Peril” and the old prejudices
against the Chinese better than Dr. Fu Manchu, the supervillain created by Sax
Rohmer (whose real name was Arthur Sarsfield Ward.)
Imagine a person tall, lean and feline, high shouldered, with a brow like
Shakespeare and a face like Satan, close-shaven skull and long magnetic eyes of true
cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern Race,
accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present,
with all the resources of a wealthy governmentwhich, however, has already denied
all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being and you have a mental
picture of the yellow peril incarnate in one man.
Rohmer, a journalist turned novelist, began publishing his Fu Manchu novels
in 1913. They were serialized in the popular magazines of the day, Collier’s,
Scribner’s, and Lippincott’s. They sold in novel form. They proved to be
exceedingly popular, standing the test of time. Rohmer continued to write
through the 1950s.17
Rohmer’s plots were fantastic, unreal, not to be believed by anyone. Mystery,
intrigue, and murder by the most devious and mysterious methods crowd his
pages. Though far fetched, the stories nevertheless seem plausible. The
characters in Rohmer’s

 Page 127
novels bear clear similarities to real characters in public life. While the reader
is not likely to believe that the details of the story were true, Rohmer’s
message had its impact as it was stated again and again. Fu Manchu “is the
advance agent of a movement so epoch-making that not one Britisher, and not
one American in Fifty-thousand has ever dreamed of it.” Do not disbelieve, he
warns his readers: “The phantom yellow peril today materializes under the
very eyes of the Western world you scoff, sir; and so do others. We take the
proffered right hand of friendship nor inquire if the hidden left holds a knife.
The peace of the world is at stake.” China’s friends might claim that the
American people had misjudged the Chinese, that they were not the devious
and dishonest people that Bret Harte made famous in “The Heathen Chinee,”
but how convincing could this claim be when confronted by the tales of Sax
Rohmer? He fed the prejudices of the American people and reenforced the
stereotypes that Americans who thought little about China thought reasonable.
Rohmer’s method was to equate evil designs with the Chinese. When
confronted by a diabolical plan worked out in great detail and much intricacy,
he would comment on how “oriental” it was. When describing a secret door
that became invisible to detection upon closing, the workmanship being so
intricate, he would note how Chinese it was. In this way it was not necessary
to believe the plot of the novel to absorb the stereotypes of the evil Chinese.
Lest these messages prove too subtle for his readers, Rohmer was not above
stopping his narrative to deliver a clear message. In The Insidious Dr. Fu
Manchu Rohmer has his hero, secret agent Nayland Smith, tracking down Fu
Manchu, who is in the process of killing off all the westerners who might try
to alert the West to the Yellow Peril. Fu Manchu has just killed Sir Crichton
Davey (an expert on the Chinese threat in Tibet) through the use of a rare and
lethal centipede called the Zayat Kiss. At this point Rohmer breaks into the
narrative of his novel to inform his readers that no white man appreciates the
unemotional cruelty of the Chinese.
Throughout the time that Dr. Fu Manchu remained in England, the press preserved a
uniform silence upon the subject of his existence. This was due to Nayland Smith.
But as a result, I feel assured that my account of the Chinaman’s deeds will, in many
quarters, meet with an incredulous reception.
I had been at work, earlier in the evening, upon the opening chapters of this
chronicle, and I had realized how difficult it would be for

 Page 128
my reader, amid secure and cozy surroundings, to credit any human being with a
callous villainy great enough to conceive and put into execution such a death pest as
that directed against Sir Crichton Davey.
One would expect God’s worst man to shrink from employingagainst however vile
an enemysuch an instrument as the Zayat Kiss. So thinking, my eye was caught by
the following:
EXPRESS CORRESPONDENT
New York
“Secret service men of the United States Government are searching the South Sea
Islands for a certain Hawaiian from the island of Maui, who, it is believed, has been
selling poisonous scorpions to Chinese in Honolulu anxious to get rid of their
children.
“Infanticide, by scorpion and otherwise, among the Chinese, has increased so
terribly that the authorities have started a searching inquiry, which has led to the
hunt for the scorpion dealer of Maui.
“Practically all the babies that die mysteriously are unwanted girls, and in nearly
every case the parents promptly ascribe the death to the bite of a scorpion, and are
ready to produce some more or less poisonous insect in support of this statement.
“The authorities have no doubt that infanticide by scorpion bite is a growing
practice, and orders have been given to hunt down the scorpion dealer at any cost.”
Is it any matter for wonder that such a people had produced a Fu Manchu? I pasted
the cutting into a scrapbook, determined that if I lived to publish my account of
those days, I would quote it therein as casting a sidelight upon Chinese character. 18
How many thousands of readers put down the book after reading such a
passage understanding that the book was fiction, that Fu Manchu did not exist,
but also equally convinced that they had acquired a “sidelight” on the Chinese
character? The stereotype that the American people carried with them was
much more likely to be Rohmer’s than Edward Alsworth Ross’s depiction of
the Chinese as strong, good natured, and polite.
The influence of the evil Chinese depicted by Sax Rohmer is revealed in the
motion picture industry. In the earlier films the Chinese characters are
modeled after Bret Harte’s Heathen Chinee or portrayed as incompetent
inferiors. The 1904 film Heathen Chinese and the Sunday School Teachers
was inspired by Bret Harte’s classic poem, while the 1903 film The Chinese
Rubbernecks included a lengthy chase of long-queued Chinese laundry-men.
Occasionally, as in That Chink at Gold Gulch (1910) the Chinese are depicted
with some favorable attributes. But the ap-

 Page 129
pearance of Rohmer’s novels established a Chinese character the American
people could understand. 19
The first Fu Manchu-type character to appear in cinema was called Long Sin
and was presented to the motion picture audience clothed in rich oriental
costume, “reclining on a divan smoking a strange looking pipe and playing
with two pet white rats. Each white rat had a gold band around his leg, to
which was connected a gold chain about a foot in length, and the chains ended
in rings which were slipped over Long’s little fingers. Ordinarily, he carried
the pets up the capacious arm of each sleeve.” By the middle teens the
American film industry had stereotyped the Chinese as lustful, vicious, and
immoral. So bad had it become that the Chinese government lodged a protest
with the United States government, but to no avail. Rather than abandoning
the evil Chinese character, the film industry embraced it. In the popular serial
The Exploits of Elaine, the evil Chinese called Wu Fang became a standard
character. The name Wu Fang not only had the proper sinister tone to be
popular but it had a touch of reality as well, for the former Chinese minister to
Washington was named Wu T’ing-fang.20
In some respects, then, there was a contest between those who would entertain
and those who would inform. The entertainers were less concerned about
reality than the commercial success of their product. The informers were
concerned that the American people understood what was happening in China
and would be prepared to guide and support the Chinese as they struggled to
raise themselves out of the depressed state they found themselves in. But old
stereotypes do not die easily. The writing of Brown, Ross, and their type may
have influenced the informed minority of Americans, but it had little impact
on the way the masses perceived China and the Chinese. Reenforced by Fu
Manchu and other dramatic characters of his type, Americans did not forget
the lesson Bret Harte had taught them and their parents in his 1870 poem “The
Heathen Chinee.” The impact of this image was still apparent in 1916, nearly a
half century after Harte’s poem first appeared, when The Literary Digest
summarized an article originally appearing in The New York Tribune. Under
the title “Movie Ways That are Dark,” the Digest examined the status of the
Chinese motion picture industry. “If nothing else shows that ‘the heathen
Chinee is peculiar,”’ the Digest began its story, “his taste in motion-pictures
would give it away boldly.” The basic problem with Chinese actors, it seems,
was that they could not act. If the director wanted the actor to act happy and
content

 Page 130
he must feed the actor so that he would be content and happy. In one respect,
however, the Tribune story concluded that the Chinese actors were exemplary.
“They never forget their queues.” 21
Such crude attacks reflect the popular perception of the Chinese. On that level
the popular perceptions differed dramatically from those of the small number
of informed Americans who recognized that the Chinese were children of God
just as were the Americans and who reminded their readers that the Chinese
were innately good people who warranted understanding help. But like their
cruder counterparts in the mass media, these informed individuals looked
down upon the Chinese, arguing that they had to give up their Oriental ways
for the ways of the West. These friends of China did not talk of the insidious
Chinese as did Sax Rohmer nor of the infantile or silly Chinese as did many
Americans. But in their minds, progress was measured by how Western China
was becoming. Whether crudely stated or sophisticatedly articulated,
ethnocentrism was the underlying characteristic of the American perception of
the Chinese throughout this period.
Notes
1. The views of Strong, Adams, Mahan, and others are in Walter LaFeber, The
New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898 (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1963), chaps. 2, 3.
2. Charles Swain Thomas, ed., Poems and Stories of Bret Harte (Cambridge,
Mass: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1912), 13-14.
3. Robert McClellan, The Heathen Chinee: A Study of American Attitudes
Toward China, 1890-1905 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1971),
passim. For cartoons depicting the Chinese in the Boxer Uprising, see various
issues of The Literary Digest, vol. 21, particularly 28 July 1900, 94; 11 Aug.
1900, 152; 25 Aug. 1900, 212; 1 Sept. 1900, 242; and 6 Oct. 1900, 394.
4. A sense of the values underlying American foreign policy in this era can be
seen in Howard K. Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to
World Power (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1956), and David H. Burton,
Theodore Roosevelt: Confident Imperialist (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1968), passim.
5. Arthur Judson Brown, New Forces in Old China: An Unwelcome but
Inevitable Awakening (New York: F. H. Revell Company, 1904), 25-33;
Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition (Cambridge and New York:
Encyclopedia Britannica “at the University Press”), 6:184-87.
6. For a discussion of the type of treatment the Chinese found offensive, see
Ng Poon Chew, The Treatment of the Exempt Classes of Chinese in the United
States (San Francisco: Chung Sai Yat Po, 1908), passim. A sample of cartoon
reaction is in The Literary Digest 31 (1 July 1905): 4, and (8 July 1905): 39.
The views of the business community are discussed by Paul A. Varg,

 Page 131
The Making of a Myth: The United States and China, 1897-1912 (East
Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1968): passim. See also Delber
L. McKee, Chinese Exclusion versus the Open Door Policy, 1900-1906:
Clashes over China Policy in the Roosevelt Era. (Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1977), passim.
7. Thomas F. Millard, “The New China,” Scribner’s Magazine, 39 (February
1906): 240-50.
8. Brown, New Forces, 310ff.
9. Millard, “The New China.”
10. The Literary Digest 21 (14 July 1900): 34. For Conger’s views and those
of like-minded Americans in China, see Michael H. Hunt, Frontier Defense
and the Open Door: Manchuria in Chinese-American Relations, 1895-1911
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973), chaps. 2-3. To
categorize Japan as anti-Western at the turn of the century is perhaps an
overstatement. Japan had enjoyed close ties with Bismarck’s Germany, had
formed an alliance with Britain in 1902, and on the surface was very friendly
to the United States, although Akira Iriye has conceded that the seeds for
future estrangement were already sown, and Charles New has considered
Japan’s Western ties to be an uncertain friendship.
11. The Literary Digest 21 (29 Dec. 1900): 793.
12. Jerry Israel, Progressivism and the Open Door: America and China, 1905-
1921 (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), passim.
13. Edward Alsworth Ross, The Changing Chinese: The Conflict of Oriental
and Western Cultures in China (New York: Century Co., 1911), passim.
Payson J. Treat’s combined book reviews appear in The Dial 52 (I Feb. 1912):
87-90.
14. The Literary Digest 43 (28 Oct. 1911): 721; Ross, Changing Chinese,
passim.
15. “The Changing Orient,” The Nation 94 (4 Jan. 1912): 7-8.
16. The Literary Digest 45 (19 Oct. 1912), 683-84; Arthur Judson Brown, The
Chinese Revolution (New York: Student Volunteer Movement, 1912), passim.
17. The quotations cited below are taken from Sax Rohmer (pseud.), The
Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (New York: McKinley, Stone, and MacKenzie,
1913).
18. Ibid., 120-22.
19. David Manning White and Richard Averson, The Celluloid Weapon:
Social Comment in the American Film (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), 31-32;
Eugene Franklin Wong, On Visual Media Racism: Asians in the American
Motion Pictures (New York: Arno Press, 1978), 56-57, 72-73, 76-77.
20. Raymond William Stedman, The Serials: Suspense and Drama by
Installment (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), 38-41.
21. “Movie Ways that are Dark,” The Literary Digest 53 (30 Dec. 1916):
1757.

 Page 132

The Importance of Being Charlie Chan

Sandra M. Hawley
In searching for the sources of American ideas about China and the Chinese,
one of the important places to look is the mystery fiction of Earl Derr Biggers,
starring Charlie Chandetective extraordinaire, Honolulu resident, half-mocked,
half-mocking descendant of Confucius.
Charlie Chan’s durability and widespread popularity are unrivaled by other
fictional Orientals. Although only six books featuring the Hawaiian-based
detective were published from 1925 to 1932 (Biggers died in 1933), Charlie
Chan’s renown equals that of fictional detectives like Hercule Porot and Nero
Wolfe. The Charlie Chan books were all serialized in The Saturday Evening
Post, published in hardcover editions, and reissued in paperback in 1974-75. 1
In addition, Charlie Chan was featured in a comic strip, a radio show, a
Broadway play, and some forty-nine full-length films. Students of American
popular culture have called him “a national institution” and “very much a part
of American folklore.2” This popularity and longevity indicate that the
Chinese detective touched a chord in the American public. Half a century is a
good run for any character.
More important than longevity is his effect on images of the Chinese in
American fiction. The appearance of Charlie Chan was a turning point in
American portraits of and attitudes toward the Chinese people, a perceptible
shift in American stereotypes of the Chinese. The older “heathen Chinee”
began to yield to a new, more favorable version of the Chinese: a portrait just
as stereotyped and racist, but much more human and appealing. Charlie Chan
was the key figure in this transformation: he embodied concepts that became
widespread and influential.
Images and perceptions of other people and other cultures reach the American
public in a variety of ways: scholarly studies, travelogues, news articles, films,
fiction, and most recently television. From this flow of information, accurate
and otherwise, people

 Page 133
tend to select the images that best suit their own needs as well as their own
understanding. In many instancesparticularly in the case of modern European
nationsthe amount of information is so vast that enormous selectivity is
required, and an image to fit every preconception can be developed. In many
ways, the process of image formation follows what might be called a
“percolator” process; ideas generated by specialists trickle down into the
popular culture, often after being distilled through several filtering layers of
high-school and college textbooks and classes.
In the case of China, however, this “percolator” mechanism tended to break
down at the upper levels because of a limited flow of information; fictional
images became much more important and influential. In American folklore
and popular culture, China was long considered “inscrutable”; images of
China have been wildly varied, almost schizophrenic in their content, in large
part because of the extremely restricted flow of information through formal
channels. 3
Given the lack of information generally available, Americans formed their
ideas and images of Asia from any sources they could find, and in large part
from the kaleidoscope of images available in fiction and film.4 The process of
creating such images involved considerable feedback. Images too far out of
line with what people believed or were willing to accept would not succeed.
Thus anyone creating fictional characters had either to adopt prevailing
stereotypes or to select a new image that was acceptable even if not widely
used.
The popularity of Oriental characters in fiction during this period was
probably to some degree the result of this desire for information about the
mysterious East. The Saturday Evening Post, the most popular and widely read
magazine of the period and the site of Charlie Chan’s debut, responded to the
demand for and appeal of stories with an Asian flavor. From 1920 to 1941 the
Post published a short story with an Asian cast or setting at the rate of one
every other month. The magazine serialized twenty-one novels with Asian
characters or locale, approximately one a year. Only the perennial American
favorite, the western, appeared with greater frequency and consistency.
In the 1920s, the dominant stereotype of the Chinese was a variation of the
traditional “heathen Chinee” theme. Readers apparently still enjoyed a
delicious thrill of horror at the idea of the truly diabolical Chinaman.
Atrocities, mayhem, torture, and sadism were usually the result of the
“warped” Oriental mind and culture and set the tone for these stories. In one
Post, a

 Page 134
Chinese merchant tried to smuggle a lovely young girl into the country as his
bride. When his partner’s wife betrayed the girl to immigration authorities, the
merchant took his vengeance by pouring molten gold down the woman’s
throat. 5 In another story, published in 1924, one Chinese family had already
strangled three new-born daughters. When the wife of the eldest son gave birth
to yet another useless girl, the youth strangled the baby and attempted to kill
the wife guilty of bearing a girl.6 One of the most spectacularly villainous
Chinese who appeared in the Post was Li Chang. He sought to avenge his
father’s death in a blaze of filial piety. Discovering that the entire crew of a
ship was responsible for his father’s death, Li Chang concocted a truly fiery
revenge. First, he managed through devious and unscrupulous Oriental
methods to infest the crew with lice. Then, playing the innocent and helpful
friend, he gave the crew gasoline with which to douse and delouse themselves.
When he was sure that ship and crew were thoroughly soaked, Li Chang set
fire to them, eliminating lice, ship, and crew in a spectacular blaze.7
The most thoroughly diabolical of Charlie Chan’s predecessors was Fu
Manchu, the brilliant but mad scientist and archvillain. Like Charlie Chan, Fu
Manchu appealed to the American imagination: his literary life spanned thirty-
five years, from the first Fu Manchu thriller in 1913 to the fortieth and last in
1948. Fu Manchu movies began appearing in 1929 and have been made as
recently as 1981, while the Fu Manchu mustache became part of both folklore
and football. Paperback reissues of the Fu Manchu novels appeared in 1984.
As a villain in popular fiction, Fu Manchu had no peer in malevolence or
malignancy until James Bond began encountering some of his more bizarre
foes. The Chinese scientist was tall, gaunt, with cat-green hypnotic eyes. He
could read minds and control the aging process to the point that he enjoyed
near-immortality. Opium addiction was almost his only human trait. Even his
daughter, the irresistibly lovely Fah Lo Suee, was merely an adjunct to his
schemes and was eventually consigned to a furnace in which Fu Manchu was
casting gold according to an ancient Oriental formula.
However awesome Fu Manchu was in and of himself, he was even more
terrifying because of the power he both wielded and represented. He was the
leader of the Council of Seven, the dreaded and deadly Si Fan, which sought
to rule the world in the name of the yellow race. Death by rare disease,
mysterious poison, loathsome insect, or other vile means awaited the luckless

 Page 135
soul who attempted to thwart Si Fan. ”I hold the key which unlocks the heart
of the secret East,” exulted Fu Manchu. “Holding that key, I command the
obedience of an army greater than any ever controlled by one man. My power
rests in the East, but my hand is stretched out to the West. I shall control the
lost grandeur of China.” 8 In his campaign to vanquish the white race and rule
the world for the Orient, Fu Manchu could call upon a spectacular assortment
of traditional and exotic creatures of horror. Dacoits and other murder cults of
Asia did his bidding, as did African zombies and a menagerie of ferocious and
cunning beasts. In many ways, Fu Manchu was the embodiment of a white
racist’s nightmare.
Despite the dominance of this stereotype, there were some alterations in the
image of unalloyed evil and malevolence even before the appearance of
Charlie Chan. In 1922, The Saturday Evening Post published a short story,
“Scout Wong,” which presaged the coming shift of images. Young Wong, a
resident of Chinatown, sees an American Boy Scout troop drilling and,
enthralled by the spectacle, resolves to become a Scout himself. When he
approaches the troop, the white Scouts mock him, calling him “Yellow Belly”
and assuring him that no such inferior person could ever hope to become a
Boy Scout. Undaunted, Wong discovers a discarded copy of the Boy Scout
Handbook and teaches himself the code and rules. The climax of the story
occurs as the Scout troop is dining in the banquet hall of the restaurant in
which Wong works. Flames sweep up through an open air duct and threaten to
trap the Scouts, but Wong blocks the opening of the duct with his “yellow
belly” and permits the troop to escape. He thus becomes simultaneously a hero
and a Boy Scout.9 The tone of “Scout Wong” is patronizing, but Wong does
save the white Scouts. Most of his predecessors would rather have shoved
them down the air duct directly into the flames.
The American reading public was thus somewhat prepared for the debut of
Charlie Chan in The House Without a Key, serialized in the Post and then
published in book form in 1925. Earl Derr Biggers based his fictional
detective on an actual Chinese member of the Honolulu police force, one
Chang Apana.10 Biggers was probably also responding to an American
willingness to tolerate a more sympathetic portrayal of the Chinese. The
Charlie Chan films were in fact deliberately designed to refute or at least
challenge the Fu Manchu image, according to their original producer.11
Physically Charlie Chan was a great deal less prepossessing than Fu-Manchu,
and probably therefore a great deal easier to

 Page 136
accept as a nonvillain. “He was very fat indeed, yet he walked with the light
dainty step of a woman. His cheeks were as chubby as a baby’s, his skin ivory-
tinted, his black hair close-cropped, his amber eyes slanting.” 12 Not only
unprepossessing, but downright disarming, Charlie Chan was “an
undistinguished figure in his Western clothes.” The expression in his eyes was
”a look of keen brightness that made the pupils gleam like black buttons in the
yellow light.”13 Size and the suggestion of softness were important in the
description of Charlie Chan. Earl Derr Biggers deliberately eschewed the
traditional lean and hungry look for detectives to present his Oriental hero as a
portly if graceful figure. The heavy-set individual is by tradition kindly, jolly,
friendly, neither a threat nor a menace. Chan’s size also enables the author to
emphasize other characteristics commonly attributed to Asians, especially
impassivity and stoicism. After all, who ever heard of a fat detective with the
bursting nervous energy of a Holmes? In addition, his size also made Chan the
ideal candidate for comparison with the Buddha, a relatively harmless touch of
Orientalia. At various times Charlie Chan is described as a plain Buddha, an
impassive Buddha, a serene Buddha, as immobile as a stone Buddha, and, with
magnificent disregard for historical accuracy a grim and relentless Buddha.
The pleasingly plump detective’s English is rather peculiar, a mixture of
adroitly-used polysyllables and mangled syntax, several steps above pidgin but
still exotic. A typical statement might be: “That are wrong attitude completely.
Detective business made up of insignificant trifles.”14 One verb is missing
completely, the other the wrong number and person, yet the vocabulary is
accurate! In Chan’s dialect there is an element of condescension as well as the
need to portray Charlie Chan as unusual and Oriental. Biggers carefully points
out that Charlie Chan’s English is different from and better than that of most
other Chinese, just as Chan himself is superior to many of the Chinese
portrayed in the novels. When Charlie Chan must play the role of a servant to
solve a crime, he reluctantly but ostentatiously adopts a vulgar pidgin: “Maybe
you wantee catch ‘um moah fish, boss?” He bemoans the necessity of doing
this: “All my life I study to speak fine English words. Now must strangle all
such in my throat, lest suspicion rouse up. Not a happy situation for me.”15 To
sharpen the language distinctions, Chan’s wife speaks broken pidgin, while his
children show off their Western-style slang, often to his disgust. However, the
gum-chewing, wise-cracking Number One and Number Two Sons of the
movies do not appear in any of the novels.

 Page 137
Biographical information on Charlie Chan is scant. He is almost totally a
creature of the Hawaiian and American present, with little of the Chinese past
about him. He was born in China, apparently in a small village, and lived in a
“thatched hut by side of muddy river.” 16 At an unspecified age he migrated
from China to Hawaii, where he worked as a house-boy for a rich white family
before joining the Honolulu police force.17 Of his personal life we know
equally little; he has a wife, whose name is never mentioned, and by the
midpoint of the third book eleven children, eight of them sons. “Good luck
dogs me in such matters,” he modestly says; “of eleven opportunities, I am
disappointed but three times.”18 Beyond this, there is no attempt to show
family life in the novels, no portrait of Charlie Chan as the Chinese patriarch.
The family provides a convenient prop, an occasional reminder of Charlie
Chan’s Chineseness, and a touch of humanity. The number of children seems
less a sign of any particular sexual prowess than a shadow of the idea of the
prolific Chinese hordes and perhaps even the fear prevalent in the United
States in the twenties that Orientals would take over the world simply through
outbreeding the whites.
There is little of China itself in any of the books. Other than casual discussions
in which his early life history unfolds, Chan mentions China only twice. At
one point, trying to persuade an aged servant to give evidence so that he can
“see again the village where you were bornwalk again the soil where your
bones are to rest,” he speaks fondly but briefly of China.19 At another point,
recalling the peaceful land of his youth (which would make him over a
hundred years old if Biggers adhered strictly to Chinese history), Charlie Chan
remarks: “China is sick now. But as some one has so well said, many of those
who send sympathy to the sick man die before him. That has happened in
China’s pastit will happen again.”20 Far removed from China itself, Charlie
Chan can be Chinese without being overpoweringly alien.
A somewhat warped element of Chinese culture is present in Charlie Chan’s
frequent resort to proverbs. Although the “Confucius says” tag of the movies
is mercifully absent in the books, and Confucius himself is mentioned only
three times in total, counterfeit proverbs abound. “As all those who know me
have learned to their distress, Chinese have proverbs to fit every possible
situation,” Chan rather deprecatingly remarks.21 There is no attempt to present
or explore Confucian philosophy or Chinese culture beyond the counterfeit
proverbs. In some ways Charlie Chan’s being Chinese seems little more than a
convenient if some-

 Page 138
what exotic gimmick. Superficially Charlie Chan may appear Chinese, but he
is fundamentally stripped of any genuine Chinese culture.
The reader remains highly conscious, however, of the fact that Charlie Chan is
Chinese. There are frequent references to the detective’s being typical of what
is expected of the Chinese, whether it be psychic powers, inscrutability, or
diligence. At several points, Biggers takes care to present Chan in a mild,
almost gift-shop Chinese setting. For example, the Chan family home on
Punchbowl Hill is furnished with Chinese objects: carved teakwood tables,
elegant porcelain vases, crimson and gold Chinese lanterns, silk paintings, and
a dwarf tree. In this setting Chan greets his visitor, wearing a long scholar’s
robe, trousers, and felt slippers; he is “all Oriental now, suave and ingratiating
but somewhat remote.” 22 However, this is the only time the detective appears
in traditional Chinese costume and he is seen in his own home only twice.
Otherwise his dress and milieu are Western.
Bits of Chinese and quasi-Chinese philosophy worked into the books are often
presented as antithetical to, and better than, Western ideas and values. One
consistently recurring theme is the virtue of patience and the idea that the
Chinese more than any other race, especially the American race, recognize and
esteem the virtue of patience. In a typical situation, an American girl urges
Charlie Chan to move quickly to close a case. He demurs: “Patience . . .
always brightest plan in these matters. Acting as champion of that lovely
virtue, I have fought many fierce battles. American has always the urge to leap
too quick. How well it was said, retire a step and you have the advantage.”23
According to Chan, this attitude toward patience springs from a deeper
Chinese philosophy about life and man’s place in the universe. “Chinese
knows he is one minute grain of sand on seashore of eternity. With what
result? He is calm and quiet and humble. No nerves, like hopping, skipping
Caucasian. Life for him not so much ordeal.”24
Charlie Chan also expresses a complimentary “Chinese” view of life: “Coarse
food to eat, water to drink, and the bended arm for a pillowthat is an old
defintion of happiness in my country.” It is, in fact, a statement made by Yen
Hui, Confucius’s disciple. The westerner’s ambition and impatience have no
place in the real scheme of things. “Manwhat is he? Merely one link in a great
chain binding the past with the future. All times I remember I am link.
Unsignificant link joining those ancestors whose bones

 Page 139
repose on far distant hillsides with the ten childrenit may now be elevenin my
house on Punchbowl Hill.” 25
Biggers tended to use such comments less as statements in their own right or
as expositions of Chinese philosophyto which they are only tenuously
relatedthan as foils for contrast to the usually less worthy Western customs and
ideas. Sometimes, Chinese and American culture are directly comparedby
Americansand Chinese culture is usually judged superior. For instance, a very
proper lady and former Bostonian comments, with no more than the expected
amount of condescension: “The Chinese are my favorite race. The Chinese are
the aristocrats of the East. So clever and competent and honest, carrying on
among the lazy riff-raff of the Orient. A grand people, Mr. Chan.” Biggers
doesn’t let this opportunity pass. Chan replies: “Appreciation such as yours
makes music to my ears. We are not highly valued in the United States, where
we are appraised as laundrymen, or maybe villains in the literature of talkative
films. You have great country, rich and proud, and sure of itself. About rest of
world it knows little, and cares extremely less.”26 This awareness of two
different worlds is very much present in all six of the Charlie Chan books and
betrays Chan into his only expression of arrogance, personal or cultural, as he
greets a young and rather haughty New Englander: “Mere words cannot
express my unlimited delight at meeting a representative of the ancient
civilization of Boston.”27
Tied in with but not always directed at Charlie Chan are comments on the
basic characteristics of the Chinese people. Some are banal, some
condescending and some outright racist. For example, the reader is told that
Chinese are night-owls, at their best after the sun sets.28 Chinese are also
assumed to be particularly suited to be detectives. A Scotland Yard man
praises Chan for unraveling an especially intricate mystery: “Sergeant, my
hearty congratulations. But I know your people, and I am not surprised.”29 In
another situation, after Charlie Chan has again solved an enticing mystery, his
superior pats him on the backliterallyand remarks, “A great idea,
Charlie. . . .The Oriental mind . . . Rather subtle, isn’t it?”30
Biggers’ racially tinged comments are few and mild considering American
racist attitudes during the 1920s; he seems deliberately to act as a missionary
for a more enlightened view of other races. When open racial prejudice does
occur, it is put down immediately, and with such finality that Biggers is
obviously using it as a set-

 Page 140
piece situation. Furthermore, racial prejudice is generally the property of the
more unsavory characters in the books, either the villains or the uncouth and
uneducated. For example, a generally boorish Englishman, and a murderer to
boot, berates his Chinese cook for exhibiting “all the worst qualities of a
heathen race.” Charlie responds, “A heathen race that was busy inventing the
art of printing when gentlemen in Great Britain were still beating one another
over head with spiked clubs.” 31 In fact, virtually the only times Charlie Chan
expresses anger occur when racial slurs of this sort are expressed. Yet another
supercilious Englishman, seeing the Chinese detective arrive to investigate a
murder, exclaims, “Good Lord! What kind of place is this? Why don’t they
send a white man out here?” At this, “a rare light flared suddenly in Charlie’s
eyes” and he replied “in icy tones” that “the man who is about to cross a
stream should not revile the crocodile’s mother.”32 Despite the somewhat
Delphic quality of the instant proverb, it is clear that neither author nor
character regard race as a hinderance to intelligence.
Hawaii, the setting for the first novel and for Chan’s permanent home, was
simultaneously remote and friendly, exotic and familiar, Asian and Westernan
ideal locale for a westernized Chinese detective. The Hawaii of Earl Derr
Biggers and Charlie Chan is somehow dangerous to traditional European
values, a place in which the white man must work consciously and strenuously
to maintain traditional morality. It enjoys the “semi-barbaric beauty of a
Pacific island” and is “too lurid to be quite respectable.” Hawaii is “too sweet”
according to one Bostonian who spent thirty years in the islands, “a little too
much like Heaven to be altogether safe.”33
But this essentially alien, deceptively dangerous quality makes Hawaii the
ideal setting for Charlie Chan. Like the islands, he is basically different, alien,
perhaps even dangerous, but like the islands he is so pleasant that he cannot be
seen as a threat. The islands are the crossroads of the Pacific, where Asian and
European races, customs, and cultures meet, compete, and mingle. Charlie
Chan is likewise a mixture of cultures, ideas, and values. As Hawaii is neither
completely Oriental nor completely American, so too Charlie Chan is caught
between the two cultures and tries to find his way through them. He is deeply
troubled about becoming too American. The difficulty of remaining Chinese in
a non-Chinese and pervasively American setting such as Hawaii is particularly
vivid to Chan as he looks at the younger generation of his family, either his
younger cousin or his own children. When

 Page 141
he uses a particularly reprehensible bit of slang, he apologizes: “Pardon vile
slang, which I acquire from my children, now being beautifully educated in
American schools.” 34 Charlie Chan is both pleased and embarrassed by his
cousin Willie Chan who was “attired in the extreme of college-cut clothes [and
who] was an American and emphasized the fact.” Willie Chan is one of the
chief suppliers of slang in Charlie Chan’s life and also “captain All Chinese
baseball team and demon back-stopper of the Pacific.” His customary greeting
is a breezy ”pleased to meetchu.”35
There is considerable ambivalence in Charlie Chan’s attitude toward the
Americanization of younger Chinese. He is pleased that his eleventh child will
have American citizenship; “An American citizen, a future boy scout under
the American flag, he should have an American name.”36 Charlie Chan’s full
Chinese name is never mentioned. Yet the Americanization of his older
children is a source of perplexity and even annoyance. The oldest are depicted
as problems. Henry, smoking cigarettes, wearing college-cut clothes, using
slang, “had been Americanized to a rather painful extent.” Rose has deviated
so far from Chinese tradition that she openly questions her father’s judgment.
Making the final transition between China and America, she plans to leave
Hawaii to attend college stateside. Charlie Chan “had always been proud of
the fact that they were all American citizens. But, perhaps because of this very
fact, they seemed to be growing away from him. The gulf widened daily. They
made no effort to remember the [Confucian] precepts and odes; they spoke the
English language in a way that grated on Charlie’s sensitive ear.” Strongly
conscious of his family and his traditions, Chan tries to envision his mother’s
reaction to these Americanized children. “His mother would not have
approved, Charlie knew. She would have mourned for the old ways, the old
customs. He mourned for them himselfbut there was nothing he could do
about it.”37
Part of Charlie Chan’s ambivalence toward the Americanization of his
children derives from the fact that he himself is part of the process of
Americanization. He constantly tests himself to see how much he has become
American and how much that has changed him. This kind of probing makes
him more acceptable to American readers for two reasons. First, it implies that
the American culture is innately so good and so all-pervasive that it can
envelop even a tradition-minded Chinese. Second, Charlie Chan with his
partially alien children and his own sense of changing values and identity was
also a figure with whom Americans could sympathize, especially during the
pervasive iden-

 Page 142
tity crisis brought on by the changing styles and values of the twenties.
Charlie Chan is keenly aware of what he considers dangerous signs of this
Americanization in himself. “I will confess my shame. It seems I have
circulated too long with mainland Americans. I have now, by contagion,
acquired one of their worst faults. I too suffer curiosity.” 38 Interestingly,
Charlie Chan views as faults characteristics that Americans tend to value such
as curiosity and ambition. If not tragic flaws, they are at least devastatingly
non-Chinese characteristics. Trying to explain his inability to interrogate an
elderly Chinese servant, Chan admits that “a gulf like the heaving Pacific lies
between us. Because he, although among Caucasions for many more years
than I, still remains Chinese. As Chinese today as in the first moon of his
existence. While II bear the brandthe labelAmericanized.” Chan is suddenly,
accutely aware of his own dilemma, and of its cause. “I traveled with the
current. I was ambitious. I sought success. For what I have won, I have paid
the price. Am I an American? No. Am I then a Chinese? Not in the eyes of Ah
Sing.”39 At one point, discontent because of inaction, the Chinese detective
muses to himself, “Can it be that Oriental character is slipping from me owing
to fact I live so many years among restless Americans?” He concludes that
“cool, calm Oriental gets too much like mainland Americans from circling in
such towering society.”40 In fact, it appears that even some of his eating habits
have become Americanized. Charlie Chan orders tea with “three lumps of
sugar and the breath of the lemon in passing”! These American characteristics
are not necessarily happy ones for Charlie Chan, or for anyone else in his
opinion. Impatience is particularly insidious in its effects upon the American.
“His temples throb. His heart pounds. The fibers of his body vibrate. With
what result? A year subtracted from his life.”41
In the last Charlie Chan novel, Keeper of the Keys, Biggers sets up a deliberate
contrast between the Americanized detective and an old Chinese servant who
has resisted Americanization and who clings to his old ways and pidgin
English. In comparison to Ah Sing, Charlie Chan appears more American than
the stereotyped servant. However, Charlie Chan is rarely seen with other
Chinese. They are either servants in the stereotype of Ah Sing or else residents
of Chinatown. Even more rarely does Charlie Chan speak Chinese. In the first
of the six novels, he speaks his native language only once. Despite Biggers’s
references to such “Chinese characteristics” as imperturbability and psychic
powers, Charlie Chan is not really very Chinese.

 Page 143
Unlike Fu Manchu, a mysterious and exotic Oriental, Charlie Chan is purely
American in his work. He is a detective who could as easily be a resident of
New York or Cleveland as of Honolulu. Hercule Poirot, Nero Wolfe, and
Gideon Fell (a Belgian, a Montenegran, and an Englishman) are detectives in
the same style as Charlie Chan. All employ classical methods of reasoning and
logic to solve crimes. As Russell Nye points out in his discussion of American
popular culture, Charlie Chan and these other detectives lived and worked in
“an essentially rational world in which crime could be solved by the man of
logic.” 42 As a detectiveand it is important to remember that the Charlie Chan
books are primarily detective fiction, not social tractsCharlie Chan operates in
a Western world of reason. He does not resort to Chinese jiggery-pokery or
sleight of hand; he does not have to. Nye also points out that Charlie Chan is
the first fictional detective who is in fact a professional policeman rather than
a talented amateur. Disguises and amazing feats of physical prowess have
almost no place in the world of Detective Sergeant Charlie Chan. Chan does
go undercover once to gather evidencehe is masquerading as a Chinese
cookand resorts to an occasional wristlock on a subject, but his methods are
generally nonviolent and almost totally intellectual. Furthermore, the crimes in
which he becomes involved are not mysterious murders in the depths of
Chinatown. They are murders in the midst of quite respectable white society.
This question of Chinese identity is one to which Biggers returns again and
again, worrying it this way and that. In one novel he transports Charlie Chan
from Hawaii to the mainland, but then continually sends him into Chinatown
on the mainland. It is as if the author does not want to forget, and does not
want his readers to forget, that Charlie Chan is Chinesebut that he also does
not want this to get in the way of telling the story. Interestingly, the other
major Oriental character in the series, a Japanese assistant detective named
Kashimo, is the butt of racial and slapstick humor as none of the Chinese
characters ever is. Kashimo’s specialties seem to be hissing, fouling up
evidence, and generally making life difficult for Charlie Chan and the
Honolulu Police Department. The Chinese detective is even permitted an
occasional jab at the Japanese. At one point, Charlie Chan observes that
“cooking business begins to get tiresome like the company of a Japanese” and
at another states that a twist of the wrist to disarm a suspect is “one thing I am
ever able to learn from Japanese.”43
Charlie Chan is thus an intelligent and likeable individual who

 Page 144
is superficially Chinese but could just as easily be American in many of his
most basic traits. Sometimes the Chinese veneer is little more than a facade to
create an exotic atmosphere, while at other times it is used to convey
information or pseudo-information about Chinese attitudes and to contrast
them to American ideas, usually to the detriment of the American ways. There
is thus a tremendous paradox in the Charlie Chan books. Charlie Chan himself
is Chinese, but his methods and his milieu are American. The Chinese
characteristics make him more interesting, but they are not the dominant factor
in the life or being of Charlie Chan. They are more than window dressing but
considerably less than the whole person. There are enough Chinese
characteristics to provide color, but not so many that they overwhelm the
reader or remove Charlie Chan from the reader’s experience or
comprehension. When American and Chinese characteristics are compared, it
is usually the American rush against the Chinese calm, American ambition
against Chinese acceptance and serenity. These comparisons made Charlie
Chan and his culture more appealing to the individual reading the novels for
relaxation and enjoyment. Earl Derr Biggers was a careful and cautious
craftsman. The Charlie Chan books are vehicles for Biggers’s messages, but
they are small messages much more concerned with the American condition
than with the Chinese. Proper Bostonians, improper Bostonians, and
Englishmen of several degrees of propriety mingle with Americans in Charlie
Chan’s life, but there is not a single rapacious warlord or treacherous spy or
even lovely sloe-eyed, boundfoot femme fatale in this essentially Western
world.
Charlie Chan’s outstanding characteristicsintelligence, good humor, diligence,
loyaltyare valued in both Chinese and American cultures. He is Chinese only
to the point to which it begins to hinder the plot or force the reader to stretch
his mind, and then he becomes very much Americanized. The qualms about
Americanization are interesting and express a valid point of view widely
shared by the older generation of Chinese in America, but the main point
seems to be that Americanization is impossible for the oldest generation of
Chinese, incomplete for the generation of Charlie Chan, and inevitable for the
youngest generationnot only inevitable, but also eagerly and profitably seized
by the children themselves. In many ways Charlie Chan, as he realizes, is
himself American.
Stereotyping and unconscious assumptions about race unquestionably appear
in the Charlie Chan books. Many of the ideas about Chinese culture are
skewed more or less violently, and even

 Page 145
the admiration expressed for certain “Chinese” characteristics is often tinged
with a patronizing or condescending attitude. One could argue endlessly
whether a somewhat favorable stereotype is in the long run more or less
harmful than a totally negative stereotype, but the argument is pointless. Both
stereotypes are dangerous because they distract from reality, substitute slogans
of understanding, furnish a comfortable illusion of knowledge when ignorance
is the case, and mitigate against efforts at genuine understanding.
Nonetheless, stereotyped or not, the introduction of Charlie Chan marks a very
real change in American images of the Chinese. Neither so villainous as Fu
Manchu nor so condescendingly drawn as Scout Wong, Charlie Chan is a
human being, with a family of whom he is proud (even if they occasionally
dismay him), two cultures which he cannot completely reconcile within
himself, a job that he performs superbly, and a set of problems and dilemmas
that make him an appealing and sympathetic figure. It is only a few years from
the publication of the first Charlie Chan serial to the publication of Pearl
Buck’s intensely sympathetic and astonishingly successful The Good Earth.
The Good Earth, with its heroes gallantly struggling and ultimately succeeding
against overwhelming odds, might not have been readily accepted by a reading
public whose primary image of the Chinese to that time had been the
barbarous though fascinating Fu Manchu. Chan was the necessary bridge.
In many ways, the portraits of China and the Chinese in American fiction
resemble a stratified cross section of the earth; layer rests upon layer, image
succeeds image. But in a strange way, just as the archeologist or geologist can
view many strata simultaneously, so the student of images of China can see the
overlapping and sometimes interwined stereotypes, one dominating a
particular period but none totally erased, neither the malignancy of Fu Manchu
nor the dauntless and occasionally tiresome patience of Pearl Buck’s peasants.
Charlie Chan occupies a vital place in this layering of images. He himself is a
transitional figure, but there is a very clear demarcation between the image he
presents and the images before and after him. 44
Charlie Chan is the most significant Chinese character in American fiction of
the twenties. His success ultimately came less from his Chinese nature than
from his essentially American attributes. Ironically, the most sympathetic
Chinese of the periodand one of the most successful ever createdis
sympathetic and successful largely because he is no longer very Chinese.

 Page 146

Notes
1. The six original novels are The House Without a Key (1925), The Chinese
Parrot (1926), Behind That Curtain (1928), The Black Camel (1929), Charlie
Chan Carries On (1930), and Keeper of the Keys (1932). Specific editions
cited appear in subsequent notes.
2. Russell Nye, The Unembarrassed Muse: The Popular Arts in America (New
York: Dial Press, 1970), 229, 250, 401; Harold R. Isaacs, Images of Asia:
American Views of China and India (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 119.
The work originally appeared as Scratches on Our Minds (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1958).
3. Isaacs, Images of Asia, passim.
4. Isaacs’ study, Images of Asia, seems to bear out this assumption.
5. High Wiley, “Jade,” The Saturday Evening Post, 27 March 1920, passim.
6. Harold Mcgrath, “The Pagan Madonna,” The Saturday Evening Post, 2 Oct.
1924, passim.
7. Frederic F. Van De Water, “Yellow Cargo,” The Saturday Evening Post, 26
April 1924, passim.
8. Sax Rohmer, Island of Fu Manchu (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co.,
1941), 68.
9. Richard Cornell, “Scout Wong,” The Saturday Evening Post, 18 March
1922, passim.
10. Nye, Unembarrassed Muse, 250.
11. Isaacs, Images of Asia, 119-20.
12. Earl Derr Biggers, The House Without a Key (New York: Bantam, 1974),
60.
13. Earl Derr Biggers, The Chinese Parrot (New York: Bantam, 1974), 17.
14. Biggers, The House Without a Key, p. 163.
15. Biggers, The Chinese Parrot, 53, 55.
16. Ibid., 119.
17. Ibid., 11.
18. Earl Derr Biggers, Behind That Curtain (New York: Bantam, 1975), 58.
19. Earl Derr Biggers, Keeper of the Keys (New York: Bantam, 1975), 171.
20. Earl Derr Biggers, Charlie Chan Carries On (New York: Bantam, 1975),
134.
21. Biggers, Keeper of the Keys, p. 200.
22. Biggers, Charlie Chan Carries On, 134; The House Without a Key, 192-
93.
23. Biggers, Behind That Curtain, 117.
24. Biggers, The Chinese Parrot, 180.
25. Biggers, Behind That Curtain, 17.
26. Biggers, Charlie Chan Carries On, 132-33.
27. Biggers, The House Without a Key, 74.
28. Earl Derr Biggers, The Black Camel (New York: Bantam, 1975), 84;
Biggers, Behind That Curtain, 96-97.
29. Biggers, Behind That Curtain, 242.
30. Biggers, The House Without a Key, 243.
31. Biggers, The Black Camel, 53.
32. Ibid., 67; cf. Biggers, Keeper of the Keys, 128.
33. Biggers, The House Without a Key, 1, 4, 35.
34. Biggers, Keeper of the Keys, 155-56.
35. Biggers, The House Without a Key, 156.

 Page 147
36. Biggers, Behind That Curtain, 55.
37. Biggers, The Black Camel, 111-14.
38. Biggers, Behind That Curtain, 68.
39. Biggers, Keeper of the Keys, 87.
40. Biggers, Charlie Chan Carries On, 4; Biggers, Behind That Curtain, 107.
41. Biggers, Behind That Curtain, 125.
42. Nye, Unembarrassed Muse, 257, 250.
43. Biggers, Charlie Chan Carries On, 120; Biggers, The Black Camel, 52 58-
59; Biggers, The Chinese Parrot, 171, 235.
44. For a general discussion of the formation of images of China, cf. Isaacs,
Images of Asia, and also Raymond Dawson, The Chinese Chameleon (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1967).

 Page 148

Carl Crow, Edgar Snow, and Shifting American Journalistic

Perceptions of China
Jerry Israel
In a 1924 profile, Herbert Croly suggested that the diplomat-banker-publisher
Willard Straight, had he lived, would have found fulfillment at the helm of a
chain of influential news magazines. 1 Straight, who died of pneumonia at age
thirty-eight in 1918, had already made progress in that direction as founder of
Croly’s The New Republic and figured largely in the economic and reform
aspects of America’s Open Door policy in Asia. In the next several decades he
might have occupied a place usually associated with the American publisher-
king Henry Luce. Some twenty years younger than Straight, Luce, the China-
born missionary’s son, had a chronological headstart in perceiving and
reporting American images and interests found in China.2 Approximately
when Croly was eulogizing Straight, Luce and Briton Hadden were creating
the news magazine called Time. Like Straight, Luce was more than just a
publisher.
Despite Russo-Japanese War service with the Associated Press, Straight came
to journalism very near the end of his short life via The New Republic in
1913.3 Progressive Era writers like Croly, Walter Lippmann, and Walter Weyl
expressed Straight’s hopes and frustrations as representative of railroad,
banking, and diplomatic interests in China and Manchuria.4 Commercial-
financial ambition and missionary-reform fervor characterized the Open Door
policy in action in the period of Straight’s career.5
Henry Luce, whose roots were deep in the Protestant missionary movement in
China, jumped into journalism right out of Yale. When Straight died and Luce
chose journalism, the economic component of American China policy was
holding firm, but formal missionary enthusiasm was suffering a decline.
Having trans-

 Page 149
formed themselves under the banner of a social gospel from evangelical to
educational crusaders, missionaries slowed their efforts.
Such a decline resulted from conditions in the church at home and new
realities in China. In the United States the Protestant missionary movement
was weakened by a “Fundamentalist-Modernist” debate, by confusion over the
role of missionary in either of these theological alternatives, and by financial
fatigue. In China, Chinese Christians pressed for control of their churches, for
the end of paternalism, and for the end of protection of the missionaries under
an unequal treaty system. A new pessimism among missionaries was sounded
by Methodist secretary Frank Gamewell when he observed: “We cannot
evangelize China, we cannot cure China’s multiplied diseases, we cannot
educate her multiplied millions or feed them. That is to say, there is a limit no
matter how far we go to what we can do.” 6
Another interest group emerged to pick up the slack from the legacy of
missionary reform activity. It was “secular journalists” who become the new
publicists for American images of China and the Chinese. Missionariesthe old
publicistsoften reported the news for the people back home. Reporters and
editors, representing private secular American interests, moved into this
critical position. The journalist as press agent performed one of the essential
missionary tasks, spreading the good news to Chinese, not now of Jesus but of
America. By daily preaching and teaching, mission workers in the field had
been concerned with converting individual Chinese to Christianity or at least
preparing them for it. Newspapermen continued the commitment to
conversion, but this time substituted the consumption of Christian goods as the
desired end product. The businessman and banker, rather than weakend by the
marked-time of their missionary partner, were reinforced by the even more
avid cooperation of secular image makers.
But as there would be two Chinas in the midtwentieth century, so there were
two journalistic American images of China. Carl Crow’s work serves as a
mirror into the China of the Open Door while Edgar Snow’s writing moves
closer to the China of the Cold War. Crow’s China was the treaty-port
Shanghai. His Chinese were wise and westernized. Snow’s China was the
caves of Yenan (Yan’an). His Chinese were red and revolutionary.
Carl Crow, like Snow later, was a product of the “Missouri” school of
American journalism. The University of Missouri turned out a large number of
image makers. Crow went through the early twentieth-century Progressive Era
“muckracking” the cor-

 Page 150
ruption of American cities. He gave The Saturday Evening Post its quota of
exposure in such gems as “Cutting Up the Big Ranches” and “Checkmating
the Meat Trust.” Crow followed other Missourians to China in 1911 and
worked as a reporter and then propagandist for George Creel (another
Missourian) and the World War Committee on Public Information. Crow
divided the rest of his life between Shanghai and New York. The first two
decades were spent as China’s first press agent. The last saw him telling
Americans about China in a series of humorous books, the best of which was
400 Million Customers. 7 The Crow philosophy and style reflected a
commitment to things American. He dismissed the older Western view of the
Chinese as a heathen, unregenerate, depraved, inscrutable people and
converted them into entrepreneurial, frugal, common-sensical, untiring, and
loyal customers.
Crow’s books, published by Eugene Saxton and Cass Canfield at Harper’s
between 1937 and 1945, included, in addition to 400 Million Customers, a
study of Confucious called Master Kung and six other Asia books with a
political and anti-Japanese tone, especially I Speak for the Chinese (1938) and
China Takes Her Place (1944). Many Americans, diplomats, broadcasters,
publishers, and advertisers sought out Crow’s advice for their images of
China. He was invited to lecture and dine by Dale Carnegie. He was asked his
opinion by such China-hands as “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, T. A. Bisson, Walter
Judd, and Henry Luce on such topics as elementary school texts, the
Generalissimo and Madame Chiang (Jiang Jieshi), and China’s proposed
exhibition at the New York World’s Fair.8 Crow’s advice was sought by
advertisers and journalists on personnel and policy decisions affecting Asia.
His images were transmitted by radio broadcasters such as network analyst
Upton Close; KMOX (St. Louis) sunrise commentator H. W. Flannery; and
newsmen on WLW (Cincinnati) and WTIC (Hartford) who borrowed from
Crow’s writings for their China information.9
Two efforts of Crow’s early journalistic career foreshadowed his emergence as
a Shanghai press agent. First was his publication in 1913 (with many
subsequent editions to follow) of A Traveler’s Handbook for China. This book
was designed to “bridge the gap” for those new to the Chinese scene, like
Crow himself.10 The other was his work as China coordinator of the war
propaganda efforts of another Missourian, Creel, in spreading American news
throughout the world. While interpreting the two worlds to each other, or at
least to himself and to other newcomers to China,

 Page 151
Crow found a home. Crow thought the work of the Creel Committee a bit
tedious and bureaucratic and wanted very much to be a “blood and thunder”
war correspondent, a chance he barely missed during the Chinese revolution of
1911 but got finally in the late 1930s. Nevertheless he had found a vocation.
At the end of official work he wrote: “I had either to return to America or find
something to do in China. I wanted to remain where I was and there appeared
to me to be a business which fitted me exactly. The obvious thing for foreign
merchants to do in order to sell goods to the Chinese was to advertise in the
Chinese newspapers. I became an advertising agent, establishing the first
agency in China.” 11
Just how extensive were Crow’s contracts as the only American-Chinese press
agent? The following only partial list suggests the ingenuity and success of
Crow as publicist for American businessmen in a relatively underdeveloped
part of the world. Records exist of fairly close relations between Carl Crow,
Inc., and the Buick Motor Division of General Motors (later eulogized in the
once-muckraker’s last completed book, a history of Buick’s home town, Flint,
Michigan); the Hurley Machine Division of Electric Household Utilities
Corporation; the Farmers Union Grain Terminal Association; the Schenley
Distillers Corporation, as well as a number of chambers of commerce and
trade associations.12 In addition, Crow was frequently asked to help pioneer
new business ventures in such commodities as jade carvings and seed
importing.13 One Philadelphian suggested that Crow publish a book of
Chinese recipes and diet suggestions.14
Crow, who admired the job done by “America’s Globe-Trotting Salesmen,”
was even more taken with the goods he remembered or had heard about at
home.15 In one of his most reflective statements, Crow observed that the
traveling American was early recognized because he was always searching out
a familiar face, always sad and baffled. The lonesome American found solace
in his native land’s material productivity, widely distributed around the globe.
Crow wrote: “During the past few years I have visited more than twenty
different countries and was never far away from a shop which stocked one or
more American products. In a mudwalled village I found a can of Del Monte
fruit salad. In a single shop I saw on the shelves Chiclets, Sloan’s Liniment
and Kodak films and bought an ice cold bottle of Coca-Cola. One may travel
all over the world and never get far away from a supply of Gillette blades,
Palmolive Soap, Pond’s Cold Cream, Kolynos Toothpaste and dozens of other
well-known American products.”16

 Page 152
Some of his writing concerned Japanese aggression and was done for the
Writers’ War Board or the American Committee for Non-Participation in
Japanese Aggression. 17 Much of it was published in Reader’s Digest. Crow
repeatedly utilized themes such as Japanese atrocities and drug traffic after the
intensification of Sino-Japanese hostilities in 1937.18 He shared an animus
with an old Shanghai crony, Samuel Blythe, for what the latter referred to as
”the machinations of the yellow bastards from Japan.” Crow quite clearly
allowed a more sympathetic Japan-hand like Julean Arnold to suggest that the
reader “would get the impression that you harbor an animus toward the
Japanese.19
Crow was, in many ways, still the “local” boy, accessible for example to the
requests of Reader’s Digest for a piece critical of “government departments
like Nelson Rockefeller’s that are responsible for ‘administration by press
releases’ and the prodigal spending of huge sums in an effort to buy
goodwill.”20 When Walter Judd or Harry Price of the American Committee for
Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression wanted more atrocity stories, or
rebuttals of Walter Lippmann’s call for negotiations with Japan, Crow
produced, sometimes for a fee, usually on schedule.21 In one such glaring
example, Clifton Fadiman, then of the Writer’s War Board, suggested to Crow
in October 1944 that the possible end of the war in Europe might lead to a call
for a “softer” treatment of Japan. “It is the War Board’s intention to show up
these arguments” announced Fadiman. Crow was assigned the task of
producing a document for American Legion Magazine. It was to be a thousand
to fifteen hundred words, in simple English, a tough, hard-hitting job by a
person who knows and who was able to show up the “Grew” line. Grew was a
long time advocate of more temporate treatment of Japan in the U.S.
Department of State.22
Crow had had official experience with such political journalism on the Creel
Committee and got a new taste of it with the Office of War Information. From
this post he fired off suggestions for stories to magazines and tracked down
tips on Japanese industry.23 But his tenure of “power” was short-lived. Like
other prewar journalists he was bypassed by newer men, and mercifully
allowed by his chief, the younger Asian scholar, Owen Lattimore, to resign to
devote full time to a book on American business habits.24 Crow could take
some pride in “the time when we were fighting the war all by ourselves before
MacArthur and Eisenhower got going.”25 But he might have more properly
agreed with his Creel

 Page 153
colleague Edgar Sisson who noted that “my motion is new men for new wars.”
26
Crow’s China had no misery, wretchedness, poverty, or, as already noted,
revolution. There was also much that was Shanghai-international in his
images. The China Crow observed was that of the treaty-port westerner. The
Chinese he knew or reached were servants, clerks, businessmen, rickshaw
boys, or those who read newspapers (perhaps 5 percent, or 20 million). Crow
thought of himself as a friendly, democratic American, not as a privileged,
threatening white. He looked for “Four Hundred Million Customers” but
perhaps perceived “Four Hundred Million Number One Boys.”
In the chapter “Straights and Flushes,” Crow reported on the preparation of
Chinese rules for American poker. In response to this, Crow set up in his
office an American laboratory and schoolroom of poker-playing to inductively
arrive at pragmatic translations appropriate for each situation. He tried to win
“so as to give my pupils confidence they were being taught by a master.” In
time the rules developed proved workable in a real game situation with five
previously non-poker playing Chinese.
Crow took great pride in the widespread popularity of poker in China and his
“rules” soon surpassed even the Creel Committee translations of Woodrow
Wilson’s speeches as all-time bestsellers. The international impact was
potentially still more significant. One of Crow’s friends noted that “the
introduction of poker into China and its general adoption as an indoor sport
would be a great civilizing influence, would serve to break down the
provincialism of the people and provide them with a common interest.”
The local American origins also prevailed. “I learned to play poker in Fort
Worth,” Crow remembered, “and have always played the orthodox game. The
Chinese are the only people who play orthodox poker as it was played in
Texas thirty years ago.”27
Crow was a man who created many household images Americans held about
the Chinese. Based on twenty-five years’ experience, Crow also provided the
material that other influential opinion makers used to draw the pictures of
China in the American mind during the Second World War.
Edgar Snow’s influence as a chronicler of Chinese communism has been
widely observed.28 Other large parts of his career have been ignored through
too much subjectivity or too little documentation.29 Snow, among the first to
challenge the Crow-Open Door images of American business and reform in
Asia, is often labeled

 Page 154
a “propagandist,” and surely his own romantic rhetoric supports such charges.
30 But this characterization is one-dimensional. It removes Snow from his
place with Crow in the mainstream of American journalists in Asia and makes
him symbol, ideologue, or press agent for something strange and foreign. Red
Star Over China was certainly “the right book, on the right subject, published
at the right time.”31 Still, Snow is more than Mao’s “Columbus,” ”Boswell,”
or “Marco Polo,” as he has been described.32 Such views transmit the
impression of Snow as a blank slate, or Rip Van Winkle, waiting to be
awakened by his meeting with Chinese communism. According to such
reasoning, Red Star was his only well-known book, and his singular
importance to some scholars was whether he reported the Reds to be “genuine
communists,” or “agrarian reformers.”33
Like Crow’s, Edgar Snow’s work reflected images brought from home and
others developed in China before he came in contact with the Communists. As
Snow’s first wife, Helen Foster Snow, has written, “Ed was directly in line of
inheritance as Mr. America of his time.”34 Citing the link to other Missouri
journalists, Mrs. Snow, known in her own China days as Nym Wales, has
observed that “he was the protege of J. B. Powell, owner of the China Weekly
Review, who had been the protege of T. F. Millard, who brought JBP [Powell]
to be editor.” Powell, in turn, “gave Ed a job as editor.” Millard had been a
supporter of the early stages of the Chinese revolution, and Powell was a
strong ally of Chiang Kai-shek and the Guo Min Tang in the late 1920s.
Helen Snow concluded: “Ed took this only a step further and became Mao’s
Mr. America. We were non-communists,” she asserted, “and Ed represented
Middle America in person.” From his wife’s evaluation, Edgar Snow was
probably neither a heretic nor a visionary. Considerable stability anchored the
Missouri journalistic tradition in China. But the images of Carl Crow made
less sense to Edgar Snow than did the changed image of the China of the Cold
War.
More than a year before his fateful visit to the caves of the Communists in
Northwest China, Edgar Snow told his wife Nym that “now I know why
people like W. H. Donald, Punam Weale, Tom Millard and other
newspapermen mixed up in China’s internal affairs in the past.”35 In less than
a decade Snow had fallen heir to the legacy of journalists building images and
influencing policy. As James Thomson has noted, “In the thirties Americans
traveled to Asia as the private representatives of a multitude of institu-

 Page 155
tionsas the variegated reflection of a pluralistic society.” 36 In particular, if the
traveler was like Crow or Snow, from Missouri, he arrived in the Pacific with
a letter in hand from Walter Williams, dean of the University of Missouri’s
School of Journalism. Missouri graduates edited publications in Tokyo,
Tientsin [Tianjin], Peking [Beijing], and Shanghai, and an ex-student could
always pick up a job.
The line of succession began with Millard, Missouri class of 1887, who had
worked his way from The St. Louis Republic and The New York Herald to the
Orient. In 1917, Williams dispatched his alumnus and colleague, John B.
Powell, class of 1910, to work for Millard. Ten years later, Williams sent
Edgar Snow to Powell.37 Having allotted six weeks to China on his year-long,
round-the-world junket, Snow was tempted to stay longer to help edit The
China Weekly Review. He did not return from Asia until thirteen years later. In
that time, Snow assisted Powell; wrote for The Saturday Evening Post,
Fortune, Look, The New York Sun and The London Daily Herald; reported on
China’s northwest famine, the Formosa massacre, and the Indochina agrarian
revolt; married Nym; taught at Yenching University in Peking; had his
exclusive first-person scoop of Mao Tse-tung [Mao Zedong] at the post-long
march Red Army hideout; witnessed Japan’s victories in Asia; and wrote The
Far Eastern Front and The Battle for Asia in addition to Red Star Over
China.38
Snow commented that when his Asian career began, “Powell and Millard
doubtless found in me some sentiments latent in many mid-westerners.” If not
unique, Snow’s first twenty-two years had been representative. Born in Kansas
City in 1905, Snow had the usual midwesterner’s part-time jobs as harvest
hand and railway worker before entering Kansas City Junior College and the
University of Missouri. Although he did not graduate from Missouri, Snow
got additional newspaper training at Columbia University before catching a
Japanese ship out of Honolulu en route to East Asia with Williams’ letter in his
pocket. Indeed, as he was later to comment, “I could have been anyone of my
generation of America moving westward.”39 Still his was a new generation.
As Nym Wales noted, the days of the “old China hand”of big investments,
missionary-business ties, and gunboat diplomacywere coming to an end.40
Gradually, a younger set of “new China hands,” many of them born in the
twentieth century, was emerging. Though both groups existed side-by-side in
the 1930s, the subtle transformation from Crow’s world to that of Snow had
begun. By analyz-

 Page 156
ing those aspects of Snow’s experience that set him apart from the old China
and the old China hands, one sees why what Snow found in the Yenan caves
made sense for him.
Edgar Snow was young and inexperienced in his China days, exuberant,
reckless, and only thirty-two when Red Star was published. As he put it,
“When I first arrived in Shanghai I was every youth, full of curiosity and wide
open to the world.” He was born the year the Russo-Japanese War ended, only
six when the Republic of China came into being, ten at the time of Japan’s
Twenty One Demands, fourteen when nationalist Chinese protested pro-
Japanese provisions of the Versailles Treaty on 4 May 1919, and a twenty-year
old undergraduate when Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan) died. Contrasts with
the lives of Crow, Powell, Joseph Grew, Patrick Hurley, Douglas MacArthur,
George Marshall, and Joseph Stilwellall born in the early 1880sare obvious.
They were acting out roles in a drama in which they had a vested interest.
Snow was involved in something new and different, free from any long-
standing obligations.
Other factors fostered a free and easy Snow style. Where most of those before
him had come to China inspired by a missionary impulse, however
secularized, Snow was genuinely “indifferent to sectarian religion of any
kind.” 41 His paternal roots went far back to the antipapist Snows of Kentucky.
His own father had married an Irish-German Catholic with priests on both
sides of the family. Though confirmed in his mother’s faith, Edgar, the
family’s youngest child, received the full force of his father’s growing
dissatisfaction with the religious compromises of courtship. Edgar
remembered listening on Sunday afternoons to well-chosen lines from Robert
Ingersoll or others on the Index. He reported losing his faith when he noticed
that communion wafers, baked in ordinary coal stoves, could be consumed by
altar boys without retribution. Thus he arrived in China, perhaps searching for
something to replace his childhood dogma, but without any ties to formal
religion. Indeed he became highly skeptical of the missionary movement. He
was not above taking a cheap shot at the stereotyped tract-carrying missionary
with his shiny alpaca coat, baggy trousers, dusty shoes, gleaming, crossed
eyes, and funny speech pattern. Snow’s view of the failure to evangelize China
was unusually frank. “After more than a century of effort,” he measured, “the
net result today is but 700,000 communicants claimed by Protestant Christian
crusaders.” Even counting rice Christians “protesting the faith with the hope of
snapping up an occasional square meal,” Snow felt the rate of progress was
such

 Page 157
that “we may hope to see China a Protestant Christian nation some 500
centuries hence.” 42
Nor did Snow find comfort in the other traditions of western life in China,
particularly in the port city. More a “political ulcer” than a “splendid evidence
of American influence,” Shanghai was to Snow a materialistic, futile place.
Selling things to make money, he reported, was the chief American pastime in
the city: “The business man goes to market sewing machines, hot water bags
or what you will; the missionary goes to sell the Bible. And both use high-
powered American merchandising tactics.” Snow found Shanghai a caricature
of the United States at its most tawdry. “There in the most polyglot city in
Asia,” he wrote shortly after arriving, “the roving American finds all the
comforts of home: Clara Bow and Buddy Rogers, the radio and jazz bands,
cocktails and correspondence schools, night clubs and cabarets, neon lights
and skyscrapers, chewing-gum and Buicks, wide trousers and long skirts,
Methodist evangelists, and the Salvation Army. And there too, he finds such
peculiar American institutions as Navy wives, shot-gun weddings, Girl Scouts,
Spanish-American war veterans, a board of censors, day-light hold-ups,
immaculate barbershops, a Short Story Club, wheat cakes, and a Chamber of
Commerce.”43
In place of Shanghai, the western treaty-port city, Snow came to be at home in
China’s heartland. He traveled and reported about “the feudal city of
Yunnanfu,” and took the “grand, 8,000 mile railway tour” from Ningbo to
Hankow, from Nanjing to Harbin, and from Peking to the Great Wall and
beyond, to Manchuria, and to Korea.44 Especially in regions of famine and
death west of Peking, Snow saw a country in which the real revolution had not
yet begun. During the late 1930s, Peking became his home and he found it,
unlike Shanghai, to be “incomparably the grandest and most interesting capital
in Asia.”45
He shared this Peking home with Nym Wales, and their marriage added
another element to Snow’s new and different perception of China.46 They had
met in Asia and never been in the United States together. She was his
“frequently tormenting, often stimulating, and always energetically creative
and faithful co-worker, consort and critic” during the China years. Her work,
including her own follow-up visit to the Communists in 1938, provided
competition and stimulation. The marriage itself, tempestuous and romantic,
dissolved when both left China in the 1940s. Yet while together, the Snows
were independent agents, developing and re-enforcing their new package of
China images.
The pattern emerges then that Edgar Snow, within a decade

 Page 158
of his arrival in Asia, was ready to challenge the bases of traditional American
views of China rooted in the missionary and treaty-port culture. In their stead,
his images would rest on a youthful romance with a less-known China. Snow
was prepared, not unlike China, for a bout with communism and revolution
that also challenged the long-standing Western views. As early as 1931 Snow
had noted that the Communist story would be a good one to tell the world. 47
Despite his experiences, a good part of the Snow imagery, even in Red Star,
still was supported by the “middle American” values he had brought with him.
Part of Snow remained with the people he knew among “China’s tawny hills.”
“But I was not and could not be one of them,” he knew. “A man who gives
himself to be the possession of an alien land lives a Yahoo life. I was an
American.”48 At the heart of Snow’s writing about his different and exciting
China stood the belief in what and how America could do for Chinaa premise
that linked Snow to his Missouri predecessors.
Despite his scorn for Shanghai’s “neon” version of American material
comfort, Edgar Snow did feel that American values had an important place in
China. He remarked on the physical similarities between the two nations in
terms of continental size and space. He enjoyed the easygoing sense of humor
of both societies. In particular, Snow felt America, by extending the doctrines
it stood for at home and by spreading the values of its heritage, could take the
offensive in China.49 While starting from an anti-colonial base, Snow’s
proposals echoed what other Americans had advocated. The United States, for
better or worse, was “deep in the power game in the East,” and therefore,
Snow was sure that there was an “important and progressive role for American
aid.”50 In his other two early books from China, The Far Eastern Front (1933)
and The Battle for Asia (1941), which deserve some attention alongside Red
Star over China, Snow made effective use of the imagery Americans had often
used in China. “The door is no longer open but a-jar,” he observed, but the role
of American trade could not be denied in the “greatest future market on
earth.”51
During World War II, Snow even swelled with pride at the technological “little
Americas,” which he had scoffed at in Shanghai but now enjoyed. Suddenly,
the “razors, meals, movies, pool tables, table tennis, swing bands, radio
stations,” not to mention, Bob Hope, Jack Benny and Charlie McCarthy were
not disturbing anachronisms but homely reassurances. In days when he still
could tolerate J. B. Powell’s friends in the Kuomintang, Snow wrote

 Page 159
that “with so many Harvard men at Nanking, Americans should expand with
pride.” He noted that it was “China’s misfortune that Chiang Kai-shek did not
go to Harvard.” 52
The chief obstacle to America’s role, and thereby a major determinant of
Snow’s perceptions, was the menace of Japanese expansionism. Like other
Americans, but perhaps more so because he had no memory of Japanese-
American harmony, Snow could be alarmist enough throughout his career
about Japan’s ambitions. Arguing against American withdrawal from the
Philippines in 1939, Snow proposed that he couldn’t conceive of trading
“Uncle Sam’s farewell” for the approach of “Master Samurai.”53 All over
Asia he saw the same pattern: imposition of Japanese culture, destruction of
native industry, removal of all natural resources; and transition to a Japanese
market. He wrote fearfully about these moves in pieces such as “Japan Builds
a New Colony,” “Japan Digs In,” and “The Japanese Juggernaut Rolls On.”54
Snow visualized Japan letting “the people survive in a macabre state” and
living off “the half-dead body of China like a vampire.”55 In a geographical
domino thesis, not unlike that which other Americans would apply later to
communism, Snow’s imagery ran wild. He foresaw the “enslavement” of Asia
to the “new imperialism” of the Japanese “Frankenstein.” If China fell, he was
sure, the Taiwanese, Koreans, Manchurians, and Mongols would know
“permanent subjugation” and “nothing could save the other eastern people.”
The Filipinos, Indochinese, Malayans, Indonesians, Siamese, Burmese, and
Indians all would fall.56
While it was common for Amercians to be wildly anti-Japanese, especially in
the late 1930s, Snow’s Japan phobia should not be underestimated. William
Neumann pointed out the very important schism in American postures towards
Japan, especially in the 1940s, between hard-line reconstructionists like Snow
and others like Joseph Grew and Douglas MacArthur, who argued for a milder
form of behavior, a moderate postwar reconstruction.57 Snow searched about
for a reasonable alternative to Japan and found the Chinese Communists.
MacArthur, finding Snow’s alternative impossible, turned back to a rebuilt and
reformed Japan for Asian partnership. Accused by MacArthur of being part of
a Russian spy ring in China as early as 1945, Snow attacked the supreme
commander as being “soft” on Japan. Snow could not see how those who
refused to compromise their fears of Japan could be “traitors” to MacArthur.
Did the end of the war “wipe clean the slate of Japan’s atrocities in China, or
make Pearl Harbor the product of blameless intentions?” Snow asked.58
The search for an alternative to Japan colored everything Edgar

 Page 160
Snow did, thought, and felt about Asia. It changed his impression, for
example, of the Generalissimo. To Snow, in 1934, Chiang Kaishek had been
“weak China’s Strong Man.” As late as 1938, even after Snow’s visit to Mao,
Chiang was still “China’s Fighting Generalissimo.” At the 1938 writing, Snow
found Chiang’s leadership secure, dynamic, and progressive; his personal
courage great; and the benevolent influence of his wife very strong. 59 By the
mid-1940s, as the choice narrowed for postwar Asia to a viable China or a
rebuilt Japan, Snow came more and more to detest Chiang, who stood in the
way of the former. The new “meglomaniac” Generalissimo was seen as a tool
of the landlords, surrounded by sycophants. Americans who trailed after the
Nationalists’ cause received equal scorn. Snow took special aim at General
Patrick Hurley, that “unfortunate Colonel Blimp in our China tragedy.” By the
war’s end, Snow was denied passage from Manila to China by direct orders of
the Nationalist Government in Chungking [Chongqing].60
The perception of the impossibility of a postwar peace led either by Japan or
by the Nationalists took Snow further toward accepting Communist victory in
Asia. As noted by Tang Tsou and Harold Isaacs, his emergence in 1944 and
1945 as an advocate of a somewhat “softer” image of the Chinese Communists
as “agrarian reformers” was tied to Snow’s search for a workable and
marketable alternative. The more Japan became an option, the more Snow
painted a favorable picture of the Red revolutionaries and the more also he
came to be able to accept the support of the Soviet Union as an anti-Japanese
ally.61
As early as 1936 Snow suggested the possibility of Russia as a barrier to
Japan’s advance in inner Mongolia.62 Increasingly in Red Star (1938), The
Battle for Asia (1941) and People On Our Side (1944), Snow perceived the
Chinese question in Asian and global terms. “The position now occupied by
Chinese Red Army is strategically the tinderbox of Central Asia,” he wrote in
1937, “and around the fate of the Red Army turns the fate of East Asia.” By
1941 Snow foresaw that “Japan will meet Europe in the plains of Asia and
wrest from her the mastery of the world,”63 The United States, despite its hold
on most of the world’s capital and its need for external markets, could not get
ready quickly enough. “We have no real continental strategy operating against
her,” Snow wrote of American military posture towards Japan in 1942, ”we
have a naval strategy, but no land strategy. We have a pacific front, but no
Asiatic front.”64 If Japan was to be confronted, he observed in a rejection of
the traditional coastal city

 Page 161
Open Door approach, it must be on the Asian mainland. Thus the Soviet
Union became the key during and after World War II. Snow, in fact, spent
most of his war correspondence days in Russia, not China. He glorified Soviet
life and sacrifices, and felt the Soviets knew and liked Americans. By 1945, he
was confident that the Soviet Union would eventually destroy Japan’s present
and future ambitions in Asia. 65
Thus, by war’s end, Snow was convinced that the Chinese communism he had
first found interesting and attractive in the 1930s, with large doses of postwar
Soviet and American support, was the only hope for Asia and perhaps the
world. It was neither surprising nor subversive that given this view he
attempted to make “the Reds” more palatable to American audiences.66 In
1938, American support for Japan seemed out of the question and prospects
for a coalition among warring Chinese parties was still possible. By 1945, a
reformed Japan was suddenly again viable to some Americans, and
compromise in China was not. Snow’s images underwent no radical nor
conspiratorial change, as MacArthur suggested in 1945. Rather, Snow’s
perceptions continued to fit what were to him the only acceptable alternatives
for China and for America.
Edgar Snow did try, even during World War II, to bring about an American-
inspired reform movement in China short of a full Communist victory. Perhaps
the most ignored and highly illustrative aspect of his career as an American
journalist in China was his role in the formation of a united wartime
organization called the Chinese Industrial Co-operatives, or Indusco, for short.
Along with diplomats, engineers, conservationists, political scientists, social
workers, educators, and missionaries, American journalists shared a part in the
secular and spiritual effort to “reform” China. Indusco, the brain child of
Snow, Nym, and their New Zealander friend Rewi Alley, stood for the long-
held reform ambitions of “human rehabilitation, economic progress and
democratic education “67
In the laboratory of war, the Snows and Alley saw the chance to create a new
society. Indusco’s drafters felt the Chinese could be made to combine speedy
reconstruction with productive refugee relief, the training and mobilization of
labor, the building of an economic base for political democracy, and the
construction of the means of defending China’s outlying regions from
Japanese conquest. Instead of concentrating new industries in a few vulnerable
Western-based cities, Indusco would work through thousands of small, semi-
mobile industrial units built in places inaccessible

 Page 162
to Japanese motorized troops and carefully camouflaged and secured for
China’s total protracted resistance. Finally, the whole adventure was to be truly
cooperative among workers, consumers, and the Chinese government.
Blueprints divided the country into three districts. Highly mobile units would
operate behind Japanese lines. More substantial industries would be developed
between these lines and rear areas. Finally, in the safe provinces, mining and
production would begin along with the fostering of other social by-products
such as training schools, co-op hospitals, lunch rooms, printing houses, war
veterans’ and war orphans’ vocational centers, clinics, nursery schools, and
language study schools for illiterate workers. As Snow put it, where
“Lawrence brought to the Arabs the destructive technique of guerrilla war,
Indusco was to bring to China the constructive technique of guerrilla
industry.” The idea was to “teach coolies not only how to manipulate machines
but also how to manipulate ideas in common cause with group ends.”
The whole project worked rather well for a while. Under Alley’s driving
leadership as China’s “blitz-builder,” and with a $2-million loan from
Nationalist leader T. V. Soong [Song] to Alley and Snow, Indusco factories
made medical supplies, uniforms, hand grenades, electrical equipment,
wagons, tents, stretchers, and blankets. In addition, they began such activities
as glass making; coal, iron, and gold mining; leather tanning, sugar and oil
refining, and textile and chemical production. Some felt that Indusco, with its
principle of worker cooperation, was the Nationalists’ last best hope.
Nevertheless, elements of the Chungking cabinet, especially Finance Minister
H. H. Kung, found Indusco operating dangerously outside the government’s
bureaucracy and cut off its funds. With it died Edgar Snow’s vision of
American-inspired reform in China. Indeed it was perhaps one of the best and
last such efforts. The failure of Indusco combined with Snow’s earlier
perceptions of China and his consistently anti-Japanese posture to bring him
all the way from Missouri to Shanghai to become Chinese communism’s “Mr.
America.”
The career of Edgar Snow continued forward from the days following
Communist victory in China in 1949 to his own death on the eve of the
historic visit of Richard Nixon to China in 1972. It is ironic that the man who
did most to try to foster American support for the Chinese Communists would
be ostracized and forced to live abroad during the Cold War and only begin to
gain favor and recognition at the time of his death. Snow maintained his
working knowledge of China and Communism and

 Page 163
attempted, even from a political and geographical distance, to make sense of
them in the American context. He returned to China in 1960, 1965, and 1970
and was planning to go again to cover the Nixon trip for Life magazine. He
wrote several books on China and published many articles in The Nation after
The Saturday Evening Post dropped him.
Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai regarded Snow as their “Mr.
America.” His reports of the Chinese feeling that the “door is open” and his
appearance atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace in October 1970 were signals for
a thaw in American-Chinese relations. Yet Snow was increasingly estranged
from his homeland. While he won an infrequent award, maintained a few
friends and memberships, and did some university work; he hardly
participated in Cold War American life. It was a cliché to say at the time of
Snow’s death that Americans “should have listened to him sooner.” His impact
on American policy is more realistically assessed when one recalls that
Secretary of State Dean Rusk granted Snow only a ten-minute audience upon
Snow’s return from one China visit. 68 Most of Snow’s later years were spent
with his second wife Lois Wheeler, his son Christopher, and daughter Sian in a
new home in Switzerland.69 He was a relic, a China-hand grown old, bypassed
by some Americans who wondered why he wasn’t secluded in Peking with
those other strange friends of Chinese communism like Anna Louise Strong,
Israel Epstein, or Snow’s old crony Rewi Alley.
After the Geneva conference in 1954, Snow observed that “Congressmen
convinced themselves they once owned China before Dean Acheson and
Owen Lattimore gave it to the Reds.” Some felt that Vietnam was now theirs
to keep, give away, or perhaps blow up. “It is hardly possible,” Snow
summarized “to destroy Ho’s (Ho Chi Minh’s) leadership of the Vietnamese
Revolution by the practical means available to General Motors. The war can
be enlarged [and] prolonged indefinitely. Ho would not be destroyed.”
Americans, Snow reminded, had won their independence by revolution and
guerilla warfare but forgot the terms of such a war.71
Snow put it all together in what he called a “Tru-Deal” for Asia. By this he
meant for the United States to recognize the People’s Republic in Peking; to
refuse to aid colonial powers; to promote United Nations’ scholarships; and to
revise aid programs in order to make capital, credit, and machinery available
to emerging countries. No “native reactionaries” like Chiang or Bao Dai could
maintain the status quo no matter how many guns,

 Page 164
planes or hydrogen bombs were used. 72 “Mao’s Mr. America” looked toward
a world in which the United States would continue to play an important, if
somewhat redefined, role.
Still, Snow eventually sensed, and so perhaps through him did Mao, an
ultimate truth about himself and his country that none of his Missouri
predecessors such as Carl Crow had been able to see. The United States had to
get back to its own priorities at home to save itself and its mission in the
world. Backward nations, in a hurry, searched about for their own alternatives
while America’s pursuit of Cold War aims abroad left grave questions piled up
at home that aroused little admiration or emulation. “No foreign policy is
greater,” Show concluded in his autobiographical Journey to the Beginning,
“than the success of the domestic system which inspires it.73
Thus a part of Edgar Snow’s legacy, like his ashes, rest in the China he loved.
The remainder went back “where the Hudson enters the Atlantic to meet
Europe” for it had, after all, been America which “fostered and nourished
me.”74 Or as his friend Mao had written about the shared experience of
Snow’s countrymen, “Americans are not Asians and sooner or later must go
home.”75
Notes
1. Herbert Croly, Willard Straight (New York: Macmillan Company, 1942),
354-64.
2. Luce’s massive role in American-East Asian relations needs exploration.
See W. A. Swanberg, Luce (New York: Scribner’s, 1972). I have gained much
from reading Luce’s interview in the John Foster Dulles Oral History Project,
Princeton University Library, Princeton, N.J.
3. The Willard Straight Papers at Cornell University are rich and have been
culled by Charles Vevier, The United States and China, 1905-1913: A Study of
Finance and Diplomacy (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,
1955); and Helen Dodson Kahn, “The Great Game of Empire: Willard D.
Straight and American Far Eastern Policy” (thesis, Cornell University, 1968).
4. See Charles Forcey, The Crossroads of Liberalism: Croly, Weyl, Lippmann
and the Progressive Era, 1900-1925 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1961).
5. See my “For God, for China and for Yale: The Open Door in Action,”
American Historical Review 75 (February 1970): 796-807.
6. On missionaries see Paul Varg, Missionaries, Chinese and Diplomats: The
American Protestant Missionary Movement in China, 1890-1952 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1958).
7. The Carl Crow Papers are at the Western Historical Manuscripts Collection,
University of Missouri Library, Columbia, Missouri. I am indebted to Mrs.

 Page 165
Nancy Prewitt and her excellent staff for assistance in using the Crow
collections. In addition, Crow’s own writings provide much information.
400 Million Customers (New York: Harper and Brothers) was published in
1937.
8. In Crow Papers: W. Colston Leigh to Crow, 10 Nov. 1973; Homer Croy to
Crow on the Carnegie invitation; Ethel I. Salisburg to Crow, 3 May 1938;
Nelson T. Johnson to Crow, 17 May 1938, 27 Aug. 1938; Raymond Moley to
Crow, 24 April 1943; Alison Stilwell to Crow, 31 Aug. 1941; Walter H. Judd
to Crow 26 Feb. 1940; see T. A. Bisson review of Crow’s China Takes Her
Place in Book of the Month Club Bulletin, Crow Papers. Vincent Then to
Crow, 15 Jan. 1941; Co Tui to Crow, 20 July 1939; Pearl Buck to Crow, 13
Feb. 1942, Crow Papers.
9. Upton Close, “Close-up of the News,” 30 Jan. 1944; H. W. Flannery to
Harper and Brothers, 4 Jan. 1938; Eldon A. Park to Crow, 24 May 1943;
Herbert Moore to Crow, 12 Feb. 1940; important letter of F. B. Warren to
Crow, 28 Aug. 1944; George Sokolsky to Crow, 21 May 1944; H. B.
Kaltenborn to Crow, 7 Dec. 1937, John A. Brogam to Crow, 5 Sept. 1940, all
in Crow Papers.
10. Crow, The Travelers’ Handbook for China (Shanghai: Hwa-Mei Book
Concern, 1913).
11. Crow, “President Wilson’s Eyes and Ears,” in “Silhouettes,” Crow Papers;
Crow, “A War Correspondent at Last,” Crow Papers.
12. In Crow Papers: Frank Webb to Crow, 6 Nov. 1944; Don Patterson to
Crow, 17 May 1944; Gordon Roth to Crow, 5 Feb. 1945; Zena Kaufman to
Crow, 20 Feb. 1945; H. F. Seitz to Crow, 8 May 1940; C. H. Dolan to Crow,
27 March 1940; John E. Jouett to Crow, 25 March 1940.
13. Gladys Hoover to Crow, 29 Dec. 1937, Crow Papers.
14. Howard E. Law to Crow, 3 Aug. 1938; J. Hare and Partners to Crow, 12
Aug. 1937, Crow Papers.
15. Crow, “America’s Globe-Trotting Salesman,” Harper’s 177 (September
1937), 412-19.
16. Crow, “When the American Travels,” Crow Papers.
17. See H. E. Yarnell to Crow, 14 Dec. 1939, Crow Papers. On American
Committee see Donald J. Friedman, The Road from Isolation (Cambridge:
East Asian Research Committee, Harvard University Press, 1968). There is
also much material on this group in the papers of the missionary Robert Speer
at the Princeton Theological Seminary Library.
18. Crow to H. J. Anslinger, 2 Feb. 1939, Crow Papers.
19. S. A. Blythe to Crow, 27 Nov. 1937; Julean Arnold to Crow, 15 Jan. 1937,
Crow Papers.
20. John T. Beaudouin to Crow, 1 Oct. 1941, Crow Papers.
21. Mrs. Harry Price to Crow, 17 Jan. 1940; Crow general letter, 1945, Crow
Papers.
22. Clifton Fadiman to Crow, 6 Oct. 1944, 19 Oct. 1944, Crow Papers.
23. Crow to De Witt Wallace, 13 Oct. 1942; Owen Lattimore to Crow, 3
March 1943, 3 April 1943; Crow papers. Also Edward C. Carter to George E.
Taylor, 28 March 1946, Institute for Pacific Relations Papers, Columbia
University Library, New York, box 208.
24. Owen Lattimore to “The Staff,” 26 July 1943, Crow Papers; Lattimore to
W. W. Norton, 14 April 1944, W. W. Norton Papers, Columbia University
Library; memo Robert E. Sherwood to Lattimore, 24 Jan. 1943, Crow Papers.

 Page 166
25. Crow note, 13 Sept. 1943, Crow Papers.
26. Edgar Sisson to Crow, 1939, Crow Papers.
27. From Crow, 400 Million Customers, 186-90.
28. See for example Warren I. Cohen’s America’s Response to China (New
York: John Wiley and sons, 1971), 142, 170. Also Dick Wilson, The Long
March 1935: The Epic of Chinese Communism’s Survival (New York: Viking
Press, 1971).
29. John Fairbank has observed that Snow’s writing had a “fairly definite
quality” about it and scholars can reconstruct then a fairly accurate account
even without substantial personal manuscript availability. See Fairbank’s
review of Snow’s The Other Side of the River in The Atlantic Monthly 211
(January 1963): 34-36. Fortunately, Snow wrote for publication constantly,
and in a highly personal, almost autobiographical, style.
30. See, for example, Anthony Kubek, How the Far East Was Lost: American
Policy and the Creation of Communist China, 1941-1949 (Chicago: Henry
Regnery Co., 1963), pp. 371 ff. and Time 76 (25 July 1960): 60.
31. Characterization of this kind can be found in the excellent Kenneth E.
Shewmaker, Americans and Chinese Communists, 1927-1945: A Persuading
Encounter (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971).
32. Such images are used by Theordore White, James Thomson, and John
Fairbank among others. See Time 99 (28 February 1972), 45; Thomson’s
While China Faced West: American Reformers in Nationalist China, 1928-
1937 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), xiii, and Fairbank’s
review cited above.
33. The significance of this debate, though probably exaggerated by most
authors, will be discussed later in the essay. Examples of such discussion can
be found in Shewmaker, Americans and Chinese Communists; Harold Isaacs,
Scratches On Our Minds: American Views of China and India (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1958), 162-63, and Tang Tsou, America’s Failure in China, 1941-
1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 231-33.
34. Helen F. Snow to the author, 25 June 1974. I am grateful to Mrs. Snow for
the train of thought upon which this chapter is largely based.
35. Edgar Snow, Journey to the Beginning (New York: Random House, 1958).
139.
36. Thomson, While China Faced West, xiii.
37. See Lewis Gannett’s review of Journey to the Beginning in the Nation 187
(15 Nov. 1958), 363-64. Also John B. Powell, “Missouri Authors and
Journalists in the Orient,” Missouri Historical Review 61 (October 1946): 45-
55, and Snow, Journey to the Beginning, 24.
38. See Current Biography, 1941, 804-5.
39. Snow, Journey to the Beginning, 3.
40. Nym Wales, “Old China Hands,” The New Republic 96 (1 April 1967): 13-
15.
41. See Snow on religion, Journey to the Beginning, 12-14.
42. Snow, “The Americans in Shanghai,” American Mercury 20 (20 Aug.
1930): 438.
43. Ibid., and Snow, Journey to the Beginning, chap. 4.
44. Snow, “Gateway to Oldest Asia,” Travel 66 (November 1935): 11-13;
Snow, Journey to the Beginning, 4-7.
45. Snow, Journey to the Beginning, 119.
46. Ibid., 102, 258, and Nym Wales’s introduction to The Chinese Communists

 Page 167
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Co., 1972).
47. Snow, “The Strength of Communism in China,” Current History 33
(January 1931), 521-26.
48. Snow, Journey to the Beginning, 238-41.
49. See Snow’s review of Pearl Buck’s My Several Worlds in The Nation 179
(13 Nov. 1954): 426, and Snow’s “How America Can Take the Offensive,”
Fortune 23 (June 1941): 69.
50. Snow, “Is It Civil War in China,” Asia 29 (April 1941): 166-70.
51. Snow, The Far Eastern Front (New York: Harrison Smith and Robert
Haas, 1933).
52. Ibid., 160.
53. Snow, “Should the United States Stay in the Philippines,” Asia 39
(September 1939): 492-96.
54. These articles were all in The Saturday Evening Post 206-8 (1933-36).
55. See Nym Wales’ article, “Japan’s Vampire Policy,” Reader’s Digest 33
(September 1938): 61-62.
56. Snow, “Chiang’s Armies,” Asia 60 (November 1940): 569-82.
57. William Neumann, America Encounters Japan: From Perry to MacArthur
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963), 295.
58. Snow in The Nation 168 (February 1949): 202-3.
59. Snow, “Weak China’s Strong Man,” Current History 39 (January 1934):
402-8, and “China’s Fighting Generalissmo,” Foreign Affairs 16 (July 1938):
612-25.
60. Snow’s break with the Kuomintang is traceable through his “What We
Could Do about Asia,” The Nation 170 (28 Jan. 1950): 75-79; his review of
Robert C. North’s Moscow and Chinese Communists in The Nation 172
(November 1953): 406-8; Time 46 (17 Dec. 1945), 58; Publishers Weekly 148
(15 Dec. 1945), 2623; and New York Times, 7 Dec. 1945.
61. My thinking in this area has been shaped by Neumann and by James
Peck’s “America and the Chinese Revolution,” in Ernest May and James
Thomson’s American-East Asian Relations: A Survey (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1972) and by Wolfgang Franke’s A Century of Chinese
Revolution, 1851-1949 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970).
62. Snow, “Japan at the Gates of Red Mongolia,” Asia 36 (January 1936): 9-
13.
63. Snow, “Direct from the Chinese Red Area,” Asia 37 (February 1937): 74-
75. Snow, The Battle for Asia (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1941).
64. Snow, “Must We Beat Japan First?” The Saturday Evening Post 215 (24
Oct. 1942), 215.
65. Trace through the The Saturday Evening Post 215-17 (1943-45).
66. See Snow, “Soviet Society in Northwest China,” Pacific Affairs 10
(September 1937), 266-75.
67. On Indusco (which needs a complete study), see Nym Wales, “Can China
Re-Mobilize,” Antioch Review 4 (December 1944), 553-68; Snow,
“Showdown in the Pacific,” The Saturday Evening Post 213 (31 May 1941), 4;
Nym Wales, “China’s New Line of Industrial Defense,” Pacific Affairs 12
(September 1939), 285-95; Snow, Battle for Asia, chap. 6; Journey to the
Beginning, 198-203; and Time 35 (22 April 1940): 32.
68. See obituaries in New York Times, 16 Feb. 1972, and in The Nation 204
(28 Feb. 1972), 261. Also see the articles in Life, 30 April 1971, 7046-48,

 Page 168
and 30 July 1971, 22-27.
69. Snow’s second marriage may have been as important to his career as his
first. His relationship with women needs further examination. On Lois, see her
writing, China on Stage: An American Actress in the People’s Republic. (New
York: Random House, 1972); “China: Insights into its Vigor, its Enduring
Beauty and Women,” Vogue 158 (December 1971), 36-39, and “The Cultural
Revolution is Over, But Mao’s Melodies Linger on,” Saturday Review of the
Arts 55 (November 1972): 36-40.
70. Snow, “The New PhaseUndeclared War,” The Nation 175 (10 March
1951), 220-23.
71. Snow on the Geneva meetings in The Nation 178 (24 April 1954), 350-52.
72. Snow, “What We Can Do About Asia,” The Nation 170 (28 Jan. 1950: 75-
79.
73. Snow, Journey to the Beginning, 442-23.
74. Lois Wheeler Snow, “The Burial of Edgar Snow,” The New Republic 170
(26 Jan. 1974): 9-11.
75. Snow, “Mao and the New Mandate,” The New Republic 160 (10 May
1969): 19.

 Page 169

PART III
IMAGES OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA

 Page 171

The American View of China, 1957-1982:

The Personal Experience of a China-born Sinologist
Paochin Chu
It was a dark and snowy January morning in 1957 when I walked out of the
Greyhound Bus Terminal at Twenty-eighth Street in New York City after a
two-and-a-half month voyage from Taiwan that began on a World War II
liberty cargo ship. Thus ended my only vacation since the Marco Polo Bridge
incident in 1937, when at the age of eleven, I began to shoulder the rifle of a
guerrilla-student in the war of resistance against Japan. With a few borrowed
dollars and without friends or status, I plunged into the sea of job hunters.
Hours stretched into days of hard work, the only life I had in New York. The
opportunity for making friends was so rare and so exciting that I refused
almost no invitation.
One day several young men from Taiwan and I found ourselves in a luxurious
car, being taken to a magnificent uptown house. Passing through a large
garden and flowering pathway, we entered a formal hall lit by a chandelier. All
kinds of traditional banquet foods were on the long table.
We tried our best to enjoy these dishes although we had not yet developed our
appreciation of Western foods such as butter, cheese, and olives. Our eating
was interrupted by the loud voice of the host. A prestigious Congressman
appeared and began to speak. Finally, I figured out with my poor English that
this well-known politician was giving a speech attacking Chinese communism.
When the show was over, we were rushed back to our headquarters, the Sino-
American Amity Center on beautiful Riverside Drive.
Not long after this, I was fortunate to be able to go to Philadel-

 Page 172
phia to attend the Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania.
On another chilly evening in Philadelphia, I was informed by my friend Wang
that Professor Li was asking students to attend a meeting at his home to hear
Felix Greene’s talk about his recent trip to mainland China. Mainland China
was still mysterious and very much feared by me, and to have anything to do
with it made me feel guilty, a feeling not unlike the guilt of stealing office
supplies or smoking pot. Nevertheless, my love for China and concern about
my relatives drew me to the meeting. I went that night ready to take whatever
consequences might follow, including a record with the FBI and Taiwan’s
security authorities.
The meeting was held at Dr. Li’s home. There were around forty folding
chairs, and within fifteen minutes they were filled by people from all walks of
life, not just Penn students and Chinese youths. We heard Mr. Greene’s
experiences in mainland China, and I was moved by his pleas that Sino-
American friendship should be normalized and commercial and cultural
exchanges between these two countries should be restored.
During those years, I attended many other similar meetings (sometimes held in
reception rooms of the student dorms) and talked with other speakers,
including Mrs. Edgar Snow, who had been with Snow in China during the
anti-Japanese war and who published a book on women of the Chinese
mainland. Many years have passed since then, but I still have the greatest
respect for Dr. Li and those visitors who dared to speak what they saw as the
truth at great personal risk.
When I passed my preliminary exams, I began looking for a teaching position,
setting up my file at the University Placement Service, sifting through the
professional journals, and trying not to miss any interviews at the various
academic conventions on the East Coast. In 1967 I was lucky enough to
receive an academic appointment in southern California. As soon as friends
learned I was heading for the West, they warned me that southern California
was the stronghold of the Young Republicans and hence anti-Communist
views. They warned me to speak as little as possible. I thanked them for their
friendly concern.
After those first busy years of teaching new courses in an American college
and completing my Ph.D. theses in 1970 under pressure of the ”two years or
out rule,” I received calls and invitations from many civic groups who wished
to hear about China. I tried to appear as often as possible, to discharge my
duties of commu-

 Page 173
nity service, which counted as 20 percent of the credit for my tenure and
promotion.
In 1973 I was invited by a Society of Friends (Quaker) meeting to speak on
“China Today” in a naval town. When I first appeared I received an
overwhelming welcome from a meeting largely made up of naval captains and
commanders. In a hall with at least two hundred dignitaries, I became the focal
point of attention. They showered me with smiles and inquired of my studies
in Taiwan. Many of them had stayed in Taiwan during their tours of duty in
the 1950s and 1960s.
After the enthusiastic introductory words of the president, I began to describe
the century-long story of China’s modernization from the Opium War in the
1840s to the socialist system in the 1970s. At my conclusion, I urged the
normalization of relations between these two traditional friendly nations
because of the benefits normalization, including strategic, commercial, and
cultural advantages to both sides. Even before I completed by speech, I
noticed the changed faces of my friends and the presiding leaders. Questions
were numerous and heated, and I tried my best to answer in a scholarly and
objective manner. When my speech was finally over, I returned to my seat
between the president and the vice president. I found long faces without even a
gesture of courtesy. As I walked out, I found the warm clouds of affection
gone and the hall frozen into a stiff and cold atmosphere. Although saddened, I
felt no regret, because I had discharged my duty as a sinologist. I had prepared
myself for rejection long before my appearance.
In later years, I gave similar speeches to many groups. I was not surprised at
the consequences of my speeches. Fortunately, there had never been loud
shouts from the audience to “shut up my mouth” nor threats that they would
never send their children “to my school of Pinkos,” as some of my colleagues
experienced. Nor have I ever received any administrative warnings from the
school authorities or from my peers in my department. I think it may be the
influence of basic human rights as described by the Constitution and also that
the American people are used to political controversies. Or maybe the long
friendship with the Chinese people and the common sense of restoring cordial
relations with a billion Chinese made some Americans see the wisdom of
normalization long before politicians acted.
By the 1970s the Cold War atmosphere seemed to be changing. China was
getting more and more attention on campuses and in

 Page 174
society. Our Chinese Students Association began to organize political debates
and show movies from mainland China, such as “Red Detachement of
Women” and “The East Is Red.” Naturally I, as their faculty adviser, helped
present events like these. The movies attracted enthusiastic audiences. Nearby
campuses also hosted movies and political debates concerning normalization
of Sino-American relations. Gradually, the conciliatory voice was no longer a
single aberration but rational talk free from intimidation.
The shock of the visit to China and subsequent Shanghai Communique of the
anti-Communist President Nixon and National Security Adviser Kissinger
finally broke the ice between these two peoples in 1972. Formal diplomatic
relations were established in 1979, and China was subsequently granted most-
favored-nation tariff treatment. Chinese-American trade rapidly increased
from several hundred million dollars to $6 billion and included American
Boeing airplanes and Chinese oil. The influx of students from China suddenly
picked up momentum from several dozens sifting through Hong Kong or
unnamed routes during the late 1970s to eight thousand arriving under
government scholarship or private sponsorship between 1979 and 1982.
Official Chinese delegations came and left the United States regularly.
“Closed-door” China opened more than 122 cities for the more than 7 million
tourists. It even established special institutions to train hotel service personnel.
For many Americans a China tour became a symbol of social status. I know of
professors in unrelated disciplines who began to offer courses about China or
the Chinese revolution after only a two-week tour of China.
After two recent trips to China to visit the homeland where I was born and had
grown up and to see my sisters whom I had not seen for thirty-two years, I
came back finding myself among the speakers. Again I have been busily
hopping from one campus to another and to numerous civic organizations,
giving speeches and showing my slides on China today. Instead of stiff faces
and frozen civility, I am treated with real enthusiasm and warmth. Clouds of
fear and suspicion have been replaced with trust and friendship. When I begin
to look back, I can hardly believe that what faced me in the past existed at all.
I am still not sure whether the permanence of Parmenides is the real nature of
things or whether the ongoing change of Heraclitus is. At least for the time
being, I hope permanence is the real nature of things no matter from what
anglenational, economic, academic, or personal.

 Page 175
ROMANTICIZED IMAGES OF CHINA

Bucolic and romantic decor are images of China and Chinese conveyed
to early Americans on this lacquered Chinese-export wooden tea chest.
Elongated octagon, about 1815, 14 1/2 inches high, 17 7/8 inches long,
13 1/16 inches deep. Top of the hinged, flat lid and seven slides are decorated
with inlaid mother-of-pearl floray sprays featuring peonies, Hand of Buddha
citrons, and peach blossoms. Front decorated with two men carrying fishing poles
and fish on either side of a basket. Overhanging tree, water in background.
STEVEN GIRARD COLLECTION, GIRARD COLLEGE, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

Bucolic and romantic themes also characterize this rose

medallion Chinese-export porcelain plate commissioned
by General Ulysses S. Grant, elected President in 1868.
Similar decor also characterized cheaper grades of porcelain
viewed by early Americans. Diameter 20.3 cm. The cipher
USG is surrounded by melon-shaped reserves.
PEABODY MUSEUM OF SALEM.
 Hong merchant typical of the “real” as opposed to
“idealized” Chinese viewed by early American on
artifacts. This “calling card portrait” is attributed to
Spoilum, one of the first Chinese painters to work’
in the Western style, active from about 1785 to
1820. Oil on canvas, mounted, 26 1/2 x 20 inches.
STEVEN GIRARD COLLECTION,
GIRARD COLLEGE, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

 Page 176
FRAMES OF CHINESE LIFE

Chinese worked under a foreigner’s supervision in the

tea-tasting rooms of George H.Macy and Company, 1A
and lB Nanking Road, Shanghai, about 1900. The drape
overhead was rigged to fan the air on hot summer days.
PEABODY MUSEUM OF SALEM.

Two foreign professors pose with a Chinese colleague

and their students. “Professors and students of the
Peking University, China.” Stereopticon slide produced
by Stereo-Travel Company, New York City, 1910.
PEABODY MUSEUM OF SALEM.

SINOPHOBIA
 Breaking the Speed Laws.
Shiras In the Pittsburg Gazette Times.
From The Literary Digest 43 (28 October 1911): 721.
COURTESY OF JONATHAN UTLEY.

 Page 177
SINOPHOBIA

By the late 1890s, labor-management tensions in the American West and anti-
Western violence in China combined to fan the flames of Sinophobia in the United
States. While the nineteenth-century American visual image of China as bucolic
and/or pro-Western remained in tourist photos and salable artifacts, many
blatantly racist anti-Chinese stereotypes circulated in the “pulp” press.
Reminiscences of a Ramble through the Chinese Quarter of New York,
1875-1880. Frederick Barnard, New York City. Wood engraving,
13 3/4 x 8 7/8 inches. This engraving originally appeared in an unidentified
American popular magazine. It was included in a album of popular prints
pertaining to China and the Chinese, collected by Thomas F. Hunt.
PEABODY MUSEUM OF SALEM.

 Page 178
SINOPHOBIA

Illustrated by G. F. Keller in P[ierton] W. Dooner, Last Days of the

Republic (San Francisco: Alta California Publishing House, 1880).

 Page 179
SINOPHOBIA

From The Literary Digest 21 (14 July 1900): 34.

COURTESY OF JONATHAN UTLEY.

 Page 180
ANTI-SINOPHOBIA

Although Sinophobia was widespread and ultimately resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act
of 1882, some Americans denounced that racist tendency. Thomas Nast, artist, cartoonist,
and municipal reformer, was a strong advocateof fairness toward Chinese immigrants
a cause that he espoused in several cartoons. The caption of this cartoon quotes the
figure of Columbia: “Hands off, Gentlemen!America means Fair Play for All Men.”
The Chinese Question, 1871. Drawn by Thomas Nast (1840-1902). Harper’s
Weekly, 18 February 1871, 149. Wood engraving on paper, 13x9 1/8 inches.
PEABODY MUSEUM OF SALEM.

 Page 181
IMAGES OF SINO-AMERICAN FRIENDSHIP IN THE 1930s AND 1940s,
AND OF COMMUNIST CHINA

Chiang Kai-shek on the cover of Time, 11 December 1933.

COPYRIGHT 1933 TIME INC. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION.

Mao Tse-Tung and Chu Teh congratulate Colonel David D. Barrett

on receiving the Legion of Merit. On Mao’s right is Brooks Atkinson,
for many years the drama critic of The New York Times, then (1944)
on the staff of the United States Information Service in Yenan.
DAVID BARRETT COLLECTION, SAFE, HOOVER
INSTITUTION ARCHIVES, STANFORD UNIVERSITY.

 Page 182
IMAGES OF SINO-AMERICAN FRIENDSHIP IN THE 1930s AND 1940s,
AND OF COMMUNIST CHINA

Editorial cartoon by Paul Conrad in the

11 March 1972 Chicago Tribune.
COPYRIGHT 1990 LOS ANGELES TIMES SYNDICATE.
REPRINTED BY PERMISSION.

Mao Tse-Tung on the cover of Time, 1 December 1958.

COPYRIGHT 1958 TIME. INC.
REPRINTED BY PERMISSION.

 Page 183

The China Syndrome:

Some Thoughts and Impressions after a 1979 Trip
David B. Chan
The English historian George Macaulay Trevelyan wrote: ”History cannot
prophesy the future; it cannot supply a set of invariably applicable laws for
guidance of politicians; it cannot show by deductions of historical analogy,
which side is in the right in any quarrel of our own day. It can do a thing less,
and yet greater than all of these. It can mould the mind itself into the capability
of understanding great affairs and sympathising with other men.”
Twenty-five years ago when I first began my teaching career and introduced
the subject of China to the rather naive and innocent students in a small
Midwest College, China was perceived as a remote and exotic country that
was unfortunately being perverted by a group of Communists who were
turning a traditionally peaceable people into a nation of “blue ants” and slaves.
This Communist ogre, with orders from Moscow, was the new “yellow peril”
as Americans were told constantly by newspapers, journals, and demogogic
politicians. And if there were any doubts about this portrait of “Communist
China,” Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, a rather self-righteous but
“principled” man, went on television from time to time, with maps and a
pointer in hand, to instruct the American people about the tentacles of Chinese
communism reaching into Southeast Asia and threatening the peace of East
Asia and the entire world. My students’ impression was that China was a
friend and ally of the United States just a few years back, and that Harry
Truman and all those “communists” in the State Department had abandoned
our greatest friend and Christian gentleman Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) in
1949. How difficult it was for a historian to try to change such misconceptions
(if not prejudices) and to present to my innocent and misinformed students a
historical understanding of the great revolutionary trends in modern Chinese
history. And how challenging

 Page 184
it was to counter Henry Luce and the American press in general that Chiang
was neither a true friend nor a Christian gentleman. China had become a
monstrous ogre, an object of suspicion and hate until 1972.
Unfortunately, since those youthful years in the Midwest, I feel that our
understanding and knowledge of China continue to be appallingly limited if
not perverted into another directionat least for the time being. After President
Nixon’s trip to China in February 1972, China was no longer the great menace
of the 1950s and 1960s, but a friend (and once more a potential ally) anxious
to learn the secrets of American capitalism for the “four modernizations.” In
the period after 1972, the press bombarded Americans with articles about an
elightened and pragmatic leadership (viz. Deng Xiaoping’s visit to the United
States in January 1979); the difference between Russian and Chinese
communism (the latter less severe); the Chinese solutions of multitudes of
problems from the miracles of acupuncture to the recycling of human dung
into new energy. The Chinese variety of socialism was seen as the new
panacea for crime, unemployment, prostitution, homosexuality, famines,
alcoholism, and the like.
This sudden exuberance is explainable by a most peculiar phenomenon,
especially in American circles: the inability to be objective about China, an
attitude that is pervasive among laymen as well as scholars. China either
seduces or repells. It is a country that creates excessive enthusiasm or
excessive disillusionmenta love-hate relationship with the United States that
may date back to the first U.S. voyage to China in 1784. Hence, there are
sometimes profound misinterpretations and misunderstandings. China is either
the monstrous “yellow peril” of difficult and inscrutable people, as interpreted
by Dulles and others, or the land of art, poetry, and porcelain, as interpreted by
scores of sinophiles, “old China hands,” and ex-missionaries, who are still
nostalgic about the past. Both are misconceptions, but I suspect that it is the
cultural and exotic interpretation that Americans prefer to espouse, accounting
for the disillusionments and misunderstandings of the past and present.
Such misconceptions have a historical basis and go as far back as the Middle
Ages, when the Roman Catholic Church looked upon the tolerant Mongol
ruler Kublai Khan as perhaps another John the Baptist, the precursor of
Christianity in China. Unquestionably, the Venetian Marco Polo and other
medieval travelers stimulated the imagination of Europeans about the fabulous
wealth to be gained in “Cathay,” a dream that has persisted to the present

 Page 185
day. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Jesuits who served the
Chinese court extolled China in every aspectpolitical, cultural, economic, and
socialas an empire that was more brilliant and admirable than the defunct
Roman Empire of antiquity. Such exuberance influenced the thinkers of
eighteenth-century Europe and carried over to the founding fathers of the
American republic: Franklin, Jefferson, and John Adams.
American enthusiasm can be epitomized in the nineteenth century by President
Abraham Lincoln’s appointment of Anson Burlingame as Minister to the
Chinese Empire. Ignoring Washington’s warnings in the first president’s
farewell address, Burlingame became such a sinophile that he started to
represent Chinese interests rather than American interests to such an extent
that upon Burlingame’s retirement in 1867, the Chinese government appointed
him “Imperial Envoy” to the Western world. In the twentieth century, there are
several examples, but most interesting was the case of Paul Reinsch, President
Wilson’s “evangelical Christian” ambassador. Like Burlingame, Reinsch
served the interests of China, and when the Chinese students in 1919 protested
the Versailles Treaty decision to give the former German concessions in
Shantung to Japan, he resigned his ambassadorship and joined the student
protest.
In the recent past, especially after 1972, American academics and school
teachers, with or without a knowledge of the Chinese language, are
particularly vulnerable and gullible in extolling ecstatically the marvels of
Chinese socialism, sometimes to the embarrassment of the Chinese
themselves. Hence they persist in an exaltant refrain, probably with an
unconscious guilt that Americans were overly anti-Chinese prior to 1970.
Unconscious or not, it is little wonder that school teachers and academics
return to America in an enraptured state: the school teachers, scorned as
second-rate citizens, harassed by parents and administrators, reduced to the
level of genteel poverty; and the academics, whose positions are at best
ambivalent, respected and rejected in a society that worships crass materialism
and wealth. As “honored guests” and “foreign friends,” they are wined and
dined, taken to schools, universities, model communes, and factories; and they
are allowed to converse freely (but with carefully selected Chinese who praise
the achievements and merits of China under communism). But these “honored
guests” are so gullible that they are unable to distinguish public relations and
theater from reality. Many appear to be uncritical and euphoric to the point of
ridiculousness. In a society that traditionally has respected and wor-

 Page 186
shipped its teachers, many downtrodden American pedagogues seem to feel
their worth for the first time, experiencing in China a heady feeling of stature
and status that they could never experience back home. Hence, these “foreign
friends” return to America with their exaggerated praises.
Now my students are supposedly more sophisticated and cosmopolitan;
unfortunately, they are no more knowledgeable of China than my provincial
midwestern students of twenty-five years ago. “History of Modern China”
attracts a few history majors (history is “unsalable”). The course also enrolls
accounting, computer science, and business administration majors who are not
only fulfilling upper division general education requirements, but who might
learn something from the course to confirm preconceived notions that China is
still that exotic land with vast natural resources and riches, not with a mere
400 million customers as Carl Crow wrote some forty years ago, but with a
billion potential customers! And even if business ventures are not
contemplated, a trip to the People’s Republic of China might be interesting,
besides being the “in” thing these days.
That our understanding of China has not improved in twenty-five years was
illustrated to me during a recent trip to China. Riding the fast train from Hong
Kong to Guangzhou (Canton), I was struck once more and impressed with this
incredible naivete and ignorance. This love-hate relationship was vividly
illustrated by a group of visiting American university students with their
mentor, presumably a China “expert” who also boarded the Hong Kong-
Guangzhou Express. The male students were smartly dressed, in grey flannel
slacks, white shirts and ties, reminding me so much of the clean-cut fraternity
boys that I encountered twenty-five years ago in the Midwest. The heat and
humidity were merciless, and the boys were sweating profusely, especially
before boarding the air-conditioned train. The girls were slim and graceful,
attired beautifully in the latest fashions.
As the train passed the border between Hong Kong and Guangzhou, the
personnel of the train not only changed, but also the South China landscape.
Lush green rice paddies, bamboo, rows and orchards of ripening brownish-red
lichees, scraggly pine trees in the hills, villages, fish ponds, and water
buffaloes greeted the eye of the tourists, most of whom had settled back to
relax for the three hour ride to Canton. But not so our handsome students, who
preferred to get up from their seats to take pictures of the Chinese attendants
and soldiers. Then the students draped their arms around them as if they were
long lost brothers. The

 Page 187
students’ sweaty underarm odors must have reinforced the Chinese prejudice
that “barbarians” do smell horribly. Then, with their smattering of crudely
learned classroom Chinese, they chattered incessantly and praised and quoted
the late Chairman Mao (now passé)! When not exercising their smattering of
Chinese, they burst into songs such as “The East is Red” and “I Love Tian An
Men Square,” encouraging the Chinese attendants to participate in an orgy of
music, still with their sweaty and smelly arms around the Chinese. One
willowy and dull looking blond girl spoke and sang in a squeakish falsetto as
if she were the lead lady in a Beijing opera. They amused (or perhaps
embarrassed) the Chinese whom they tried to befriend in this typically
American exuberance to win friends and influence people. They must have
convinced themselves that the Chinese like America and Americans and are
interested in democracy and the American way of life. An English couple on
board was horrified.
This exuberance of youth is innocent and perhaps excusable enough, but the
sins of our great pundits (including the students’ mentor), the so-called China
watchers in our great universities are unpardonable. Having spent long hours
reading some very lengthy tomes on Mao Zedong, Maoism, Mao in history,
and the like, I have come to the conclusion that most of these “experts”
(mostly political scientists) know very little. And with their discussions at
professional meetings of the riddles of Maoist ideology, they indicate that they
have only a shallow understanding of China. For example, until recently, their
analysis of the why and wherefores of the Cultural Revolution, not to mention
some of their discussions of Mao Zedong, are tantamount to “bunk,” to use a
phrase coined by Henry Ford. Some publications will continue to be bunk
until our experts cease to be American chauvinists and measure everything
Chinese with American norms. Even more important is the use of the
historical methods of searching, sifting, analyzing, synthesizing, comparing,
and corroborating the multitudes of sources confronting them. But to do so
requires a knowledge of the Chinese languagenot the standards of an
eighteenth-century Chinese scholar to be sure, but certainly a spoken
knowledge and at least an elementary reading knowledge. Without these
linguistic skills, there can be no understanding of China’s history or people.
The historical sources are often overwhelming, and the Chinese have
developed subleties of expressions and allusions over the centuries that
sometimes imply trenchant criticisms of society and politics. The crux of our
understanding is not just language, but an area that is sometimes ignored

 Page 188
by scholars of contemporary China, that is, a serious study of Confucianism
and the Confucian classics (preferably in Chinese), supposedly swept away
during the Cultural Revolution as part of the feudal past. But Confucianism
was never dead in a historical-minded society such as China’s, a fact that some
of our scholars should never have forgotten. The law of the continuity of
history operates in China as in other countries.
Rather than touring the cities and major attractions during the recent trip, I
decided to stay with peasants in villages in South China. In this age of
technology, this seems like an old-fashioned notion that a historian should
come into contact with the people and environment that he talks and writes
about. But for a person accustomed to the amenities of modern civilization, the
experience at first can be disconcerting. The lack of running water, the
incredible sticky heat, stench, and thousands of mosquitos at night would have
driven an American academic out of his mindor perhaps make him wonder
whether the glories of the Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-907) were anything like
this. But such an experience was memorable and insightful, and certainly more
valuable than the experience of those who stay at the New Peking Hotel,
interviewing only government bureaucrats and ignoring the views and feelings
of the people.
I learned that, as a contrast to all the exhaltations and “marvels,” the problems
that confront China are immense and historicproblems sometimes admitted by
the Chinese leadership, but curiously often ignored by Americans, especially
academics. These are not the great national problems of the “four
modernizations,” but the more mundane and age-old problems of corruption in
the local bureaucracy and regional differences and antagonisms.
One learns constantly of the avarice, arrogance, and cunning of the local
bureaucrats, some of whom are indiscriminately dubbed as “northerners”
taking advantage of the relatively richer south. No doubt there is an element of
truth in these charges, which makes it all the more disappointing that in the
years since “liberation,” the so-called correct line of thought has not eradicated
or minimized such “bourgeois” practices.
The arrogance of bureaucrats (perhaps ubiquitous throughout the world) was
keenly illustrataed to me on one occasion while I waited for a ferry to cross a
small river to visit another locality. There was a jeep with a group of these
“northerners,” most likely lower Chang Jiang (Yangtze) valley Chinese (and
hence technically not northerners) standing apart among the crowd, smoking
and conversing in what I thought was a thick Jiangsu accent. As is

 Page 189
usual at such junctures in China, vendors converge upon the travelers. One
was a wrinkled and dark-complexioned old woman, with a bamboo pole on
her right shoulder that supported two baskets of lichees, hawking her product
in a soft and rather pathetic voice. Suddenly, before the arrival of the ferry, a
tall man from the jeep, with a condescending expression approached her and
helped himself to two handfuls. He said, “Do you think I am afraid to eat your
lichees?” He did not pay for them, and the crowd looked at him impassively
and helplessly. I wondered what might have transpired in their thoughts. This
type of larceny is more reminiscent of Chiang Kai-shek’s China than some of
the glowing accounts of Mao’s China as described in so many books in our
libraries.
The animosity toward these so-called northerners is such that fights and
beatings are endemic in buses in the major centers of the south. This pettiness
is extended to those southerners who married “northern” girls (or vice versa),
for these are considered as renegades who deserve to be victimized when
occasions arise. Besides, there were constant complaints that “northerners”
have saddled the top bureaucratic jobs in such phases of administration as
government, railway, and trade.
This disturbing pugnacity is extended even to language on the local level.
Speaking to a small group of elementary school teachers, I used Mandarin
Chinese to discuss what little I knew about elementary education from the
experiences of my own children. A few minutes into my discussion, a rather
hefty young lady with an expression of disdain on her face asked whether I
could continue in Cantonese rather than Mandarin. I replied in the affirmative
and continued, realizing that it was not ignorance on her part that prompted
her to request a dialect change, but tenacious regional feelings. It was
somewhat disturbing that after thirty years since “liberation,” the problem of
language is still with Chinafor regional dialects encourage the persistence of
regional feelings that could hamper China’s national unification and
meaningful modernization objectives, at least during this century. I could not
help but to be reminded of a paper delivered at a professional meeting by a
prominent scholar concerning the unity of thought through Maoist-Leninist
ideology, and I wondered once again about such impassioned interpretations
that were generally accepted in the early and mid-1970s.
In numerous conversations with peasants, I learned of their past and present
bitterness and grievances: the rapaciousness of the Guo Min Tang period, the
cruelties committed by the Commu-

 Page 190
nists after “liberation,” and especially during the 1960s. It is not that there is
any desire to return to those hoary days of the Guo Min Tang, but there is a
desire for a betterment of their lives. Although Mao’s revolutionary
uniqueness was based upon the peasantry, the peasant is still at the bottom of
the social ladder, working the land as his ancestors had done for centuries past.
His prospects for self-improvement are bleak; and any chance for the
betterment of his children’s lot through education beyond the elementary level
is almost hopeless now that the population has reached the staggering I billion
mark. Despite the admonitions of the government, some peasant families
continue to have five or six children, contributing to their own burden as well
as to the nation’s.
Random conversations about the Cultural Revolution revealed lingering
bitterness from a period that was probably more responsible for discrediting
“ideology” and confidence in political institutions than anything else. Its
motivations are being studied, though they are not yet fully comprehensible;
and its excesses and damages to China’s intellectual leadership are
inestimable. On the local level, there were constant charges of indiscriminate
killings, of innumerable dead bodies that could be seen floating down the
river, of wanton destruction of cultural relics (some of which I saw), and the
forceful confiscation of last bits of jewelry and “artistic” items (charged as
being from the “feudal past”) by local cadres. Although these charges are not
new or revealing, I thought of the students on board the Hong Kong-
Guangzhou Express when one old peasant woman exploded and said: “I hated
those revolutionary songs. They [”Red Guards” presumably] made me stand in
front of a portrait of Chairman Mao before each noon meal to sing one of
those songs before allowing me to eat. And since I could not read or carry a
tune, they taunted me and forced me to stand until I fainted from heat
exhaustion.” Another older lady in her eighties, holding a staff on her right
hand, nodded slightly. In a whispering tone she said: “They say it was the
‘Gang of Four’; but it was the ‘fat one’ that brought about so much misery for
us during that period.” Some peasants even pushed the beginning of their
period of difficulties back to 1958 with the Great Leap Forward movement.
One day I decided to tour the southern countryside on bicycle. With the
company of a few companions, I started the somewhat long trip southward
from Guangzhou on an unpaved but good two-lane road. We loaded the bikes
with lichees, bananas, bread, and sweetish Chinese soda pop for the journey. It
was hot and

 Page 191
humid; and I was fortunate that my companions urged me to purchase a
peasant hat. Sudden rain storms would force us to seek cover in roadside bus
stops or even latrines. On one of these occasions, a bus filled with foreigners
roared passed us, splashing rainwater all over the wayside shelter. One of my
companions looked at the bus, cynically laughed, and said, “They are taking
those ‘foreign devils’ to see that model commune again!”
We ourselves eventually passed that “model” commune, and I expressed a
desire to see that particular one. It turned out that this “model” commune was
not significantly different from others that I had seen on a previous trip. It was
immaculate and tidythe descriptions of which are described so often in the
literature on contemporary China. But what was significant in this instance
was my experience in the commune headquarters, a massive rectangular
concrete structure that was bereft of any style or artistic merit. We entered the
building, but we were coldly received by the youngish cadres until I showed
them my calling card, which indicated my position in the United States. Their
attitude quickly changed. We were served tea in the sitting room and offered
fans to cool ourselves from the sweltering heat. Some of the doors were
already warped, and the paint and varnish were either chipped or peeling. On
the second floor, there was a large meeting hall, with wicker chairs
surrounding a long table, ash trays on the table, and the usual spittoons on the
floor. On the north side of the elongated room were portraits of Marx, Engels,
Lenin, and Stalin; on the opposite wall was a portrait of the late chairman. One
of the cadres went into a long (and rehearsed) speech usually delivered to
“foreign friends”: the nature of the locality, past inequities, present amenities
and statistics that are tiring and tortuous to visitors. When the lengthy babble
was over, one of my companions looked toward the north wall and said softly,
”One of these days we will tear those portraits down.” I replied facetiously and
said: “Fine. Why not put up portraits of the greatest Chinese who ever
livedConfucious and Lao Tzu?” We looked toward the south wall, and there
was silence. There is no doubt that times have changed since 1976, and faded
slogans and portraits everywhere become meaningless (if they ever were
meaningful to the sophisticated Chinese). And ideology, if mentioned, is either
ignored or cursed.
After about a month’s stay in China, one wonders about the seemingly
insoluable problems that confront this ancient land: population growth, lack of
capital, lack of managerial and organizational skills, and bureaucratic
bungling. Then there is the ques-

 Page 192
tion uppermost in the concerns of the people: the fate of China after Deng’s
death. Moreover, modernization, if pursued somewhat along Japanese patterns,
means a certain amount of westernization and the adoption of Western values,
all of which would put the political future of China in flux and uncertainty.
Above all, it should be remembered that the peculiar pendulum in United
States-China relations could swing toward the direction of hatred or contempt
once again very easilyespecially when chauvinistic Americans come to the
realization that the Chinese don’t really want to be like Americans, or when
American merchants discover that China is not “the Great Cathay of towns of
silver walls and golden doors” extolled by William of Rubruck, a medieval
traveler. Or the leadership in China, which is still flexible, could change. Then
we might witness again some American press, politicians, and toadying
academics conjuring another “yellow peril.” Hence, the present euphoria
should be tempered with an understanding of China on its own terms and not
in accordance with narrow American standards. To gain this understanding, it
is best to take the historical approach, in the Trevelyan sense, in studying this
great civilization and people.

 Page 193

Democracy Spring:
Firsthand Impressions of China, 1979
France H. Conroy
Preface, 1989
With the addition of an Afterword, I have left this essay “as is,” a memoir of a
trip to China at the height of the democracy movement in the spring of 1979.
Since its interest is primarily as a time piece, it would be foolish to retouch it
to fit later developments. The persona who narrates itwide-eyed, small-town
American suddenly a guest among Communistsis actually quite true. No
matter how much we who were China sympathizers in the 1970s may have
already promoted the ideas of Mao in our activism and writings, for each of us
the first trip to the PRC was always a watershed event; the anticipation of it
brought as much anxiety as thrill. We wondered if we would really like a
communist country, or if the long-awaited, first-hand experience would,
ironically, put a damper on our enthusiasm. I, in particular, was struck by the
precariousness of my situation: hosted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
in a traveling group led by the American Maoist party newspaper. As our
CAAC jet from Zurich passed over the Sinkiang desert and I heard our leaders
discussing the possibility of making a special request to visit the “war zone”
where People’s Liberation Army troops were battling the Vietnamese
“invader,” I wondered how I had gotten into such an unlikely situation. But as
it turned out, our CCP hosts had more wisdom than our adventurous American
Maoists; we didn’t visit any war zones, but experienced a month of
invigorating political discussion and social observation. The following is what
I wrote when I returned.

 Page 194

Overall Impressions, 1979

Is democracy budding in Communist China? Do orchids bloom in a desert?
Does the sun rise in the west?
Every American fourth grader knows that communism and democracy don’t
mix. The principle is one of the pillars of a red-white-and-blue education, a
truth passed along as self-evident in every class from geography to gym. To
dispute it could be cause for an FBI investigation.
Yet the news in 1979 from China set some Americans to wondering. Reports
from many sources indicated that citizens in that communist land were
engaging in free-wheeling political debates on “big-character posters”
plastered to “democracy wall” and other public fences in downtown Beijing.
Passers-by on Shanghai streets and students on college campuses were
chatting candidly with American journalists about everything from Mark
Twain and Charlie Chaplin (whose film Modern Times was touring China) to
human rights. Chords of Beethoven and Gershwin were floating out of
conservatory windows where three years ago only a few “approved
revolutionary works” could be heard. On misty Shanghai evenings couples
could be spotted kissing on newly claimed lovers’ lanes. Whatever happened
to “proletarian austerity”? It all seemed quite startling to the typical American
boy raised to equate communism in China with 1984, Big Brother, red ants,
and smiling robots.
I traveled to China in 1979 as a “young journalist” guest of the sort of Chinese
Americans had been taught to fear the most: Communist Party members. I was
to spend the most time in China with a particularly sinister-sounding bunch of
party members, the “propagandists.” This is what the party’s leading writers
and journalists call themselves.
I approached the trip with mixed expectations. To the “typical American boy”
side of me it seemed like a dubious, if not crazy, venture; but to the scholar in
me, it came as a kind of culmination. For years (as a doctoral student and
young journalist and teacher) I had researched Mao Zedong and the Chinese
Communist Party. In my investigations I had been particularly fascinated by a
period in the early 1940s when it appeared to a wide variety of American
visitors in Mao’s “liberated zones” that the “reds” were becoming
“democrats.” Edgar Snow, the American journalist, wrote in 1941 that even
missionaries who formerly saw nothing but evil in the Reds now returned from
brief visits singing the praises of the “liberals” of Yenan, who overnight had
“abandoned Communism

 Page 195
in favor of democracy.” A U.S. State Department delegation reached similar
conclusions a few years laterand was fired for it upon returning to Washington.
Such findings opened my mind at least to the possibility of a strong
democratic current within Chinese communism. Yet I retained many doubts,
especially concerning this ominous-sounding field called “propaganda.”
So when I left for the People’s Republic on 28 February aboard a Chinese
Boeing 707, I was full of questions, many of which were shared by millions of
Americans. Is the democracy movement genuine? Or is “democracy” just
being used as a temporary tool in a power struggle between two factions of a
Chinese elite? How far does the “new freedom” really go? Could I find
freedom of conscience here? What about the Communist Party: Is the
democracy movement in opposition to it or is the party itself encouraging
democracy? Is it possible to get to know Chinese Communists as individuals,
or do they all say the same thing?
I traveled with a delegation of thirteen writers and journalists, all of whom had
some background in Chinese affairs. We were granted almost unlimited
freedom to conduct interviews and pursue candid, informal discussions with
leaders in the party’s propaganda field: journalists, critics, novelists, poets,
radio and television producers, actors, and actresses. Included were people at
the top of their fields, the Chinese equivalents of the Cronkites and Brinkleys,
Restons and Buchwalds, Steinbecks and Fondas. Our hosts were the staffs of
the People’s Daily, China’s largest newspaper; the China Broadcast
Administration Bureau for all-China radio and television; the most prominent
literary association; the leading film studio; and the Central Committee
Propaganda Department itself, whose function was to “give guidance” in all
these fields.
The words “propaganda” and “guidance” scream Orwell. Say them to almost
any American creative writer and you will get that reaction. But to close the
book already would be premature. What do the Chinese really mean by the
word propaganda? What does the guidance really consist of? This seemed to
be at the heart of the question of the “new democracy.” After all, no matter
how free-spirited a few wall posters might be, if the basic character of the
governing political party is repressive, if “guidance” means ”faceless
bureaucrats” uttering Orwellian edicts and slinking around spying on people,
how deep can the democracy really be?
I will present my impressions in two parts. The first: “Sights and Sounds,”
from the passing parade of life in the streets; The

 Page 196
second: “The Party.” What did we learn about the mysterious Chinese
Communist Party?
Sights and Sounds
China surprises the senses. The eyes and ears and skin are treated to a
cloudburst of the unexpected, a bath of new sensations and a tempest of
contradictions. Have you ever seen hundreds of shadowy cars swishing along
a center city boulevard in the middle of the night with their headlights out?
How about top national political leaders bustling around forty-degree
buildings in three layers of long underwear? Ever see a rush hour with 10
million people on bicycles? They are all common fare in People’s China.
Contradictions: China abounds with them. Here is a country where you can
still get thick 78-rpm recordsbrand new; where the automobiles off the
assembly lines look like 1947 Studebakers; where it is cheaper to fix
something, almost anything, than buy a new one. This is a society that is poor
and yet has done away with poverty; that is very old, yet so refreshingly young
it makes American society seem beaten down by comparison. Stirring, like an
April morning, with sprouts of democracy and science, this China is at the
same time still heavy and stagnant with autocracy and frozen minds. Its people
are at ease, lively and candidbut on the next block they are clammed-up,
evasive and speak in pat, dry clichés.
Such striking contradictions in sights and sounds are the reason why there is
so much disparity in the testimonies of American visitors returning from
China. In a sense the visitor can find evidence of whatever he came looking
for. One of my colleagues who visited China in February wrote pages and
pages dwelling on China’s “seediness”: the nasty smell of the outhouses, the
dusty alleys where children played, the overcrowded and outmoded housing,
the cold inside homes and workplaces, and the few modern improvements.
News magazines like Time have run photo stories to document the same
things. Are they accurate? Has socialism failed?
Another colleague, a Chinese who supports Taiwan, told me before I left how
Chinese society had been “frozen” for the last thirty years. He said that the
universities, formerly thriving with cosmopolitan intellectuals (among them
his own family), were

 Page 197
now barren and lifeless, cut off from the mainstream of the world’s learning;
and that the technology of the whole mainland was far behind Taiwan, where
“every family has their own TV.” He described a Chinese populace pent-up
with resentment and who would condemn communism in a minute were they
not held mute by fear.
Other friends and colleagues have always returned from China with a totally
different picture. Consisting mostly of humanitarian liberals and leftists but
occasionally including an idealistic conservative, these people would paint
China as a very bright society. They would tell of carts heaped high with
cabbages and fish leaping out of ponds; of barefoot doctors who cured all
health woes; of liberated, pig-tailed women driving combines and captaining
fishing boats; of ruddy-cheeked intellectuals side-by-side with peasants in
“open-door” education; of coalminers enjoying evening classes in philosophy;
and of earnest leaders in work clothes who “served the people.” China in their
stories seemed like a socialist paradise.
Before my trip I tended to side with the bright China view. I knew that the
American government and press had done a “job” on China in the forties and
fifties and suspected they were still doing so, though in less ranting terms. So
when I arrived in Beijing, my first surprise was to find myself gazing at many
of the negative things that I had not believed.
The poorness: much of the society, thirty years after the revolution, looked like
it was still camping out. Most houses were tiny, cold, and without indoor
plumbing. The lighting was scanty; the number of furnishings meager.
The backwardness: I couldn’t help thinking, “What have they been doing for
the last thirty years?” We toured the headquarters for all-China radio and
television; the facilities looked like those on an American university campus
whose endowment had run out. We toured a Shanghai shipyard; the hard hats
the workers wore were made of wicker. We passed through many miles of
agricultural lands; never have I seen so many hoes and donkeys.
The barrenness: We spent a day at Shanghai’s Fudan University. Immediately I
noticed the desolation my pro-Taiwan colleague had talked about. Everything
a Western intellectual loves was lacking. The books and periodicals were few
and dated; the most advanced science exhibit was on neon lights and looked
sophomoric; and there were amazingly few students, considering we were in a
country of 900 million people.

 Page 198
The isolation: I could see how a cosmopolitan person could feel depressingly
out-of-touch here. The television news was a week late. There were no
newspaper stands on the corners. China’s equivalent of the Sunday New York
Times had only six pages.
We asked for explanations of these things wherever we went. Our hosts in
each place were open about admitting that conditions were “still quite
backward.” But their explanations themselves seemed backward. This is when
I most noticed the robot-like qualities that some Western observers have
ridiculed. It seemed like every problem China had today was attributable to
the “treachery of the Gang of Four” (Mao’s estranged wife Jiang Qing and
three colleagues, arrested in 1977). Their “insidious political line” had made
China “lose ten years” during the Cultural Revolution, which everyone now
characterized as a period of “feudal autocracy,” “anarchy,” and “all-around
dictatorship.” The phrases flowed out identically at each factory, campus, or
studio: an odd, unconvincing, programmed jargon. I felt like knocking on the
speakers’ heads to see if there were real persons inside. Where had they been
during these ten years? If everything was so cut and dried, why hadn’t
anybody done anything about it?
The most disturbing aspect was that three years before, while the Cultural
Revolution was still in progress, visitors were told that everything good about
China had come during the Cultural Revolution and that it was the preceding
years that were the source of all evil. From this it was easy to get the
impression, as many of China’s detractors have, that the Chinese do complete
flip-flops in their stories just to suit whatever is the current line that comes
down from the top. This would mean that the current flurry of talk about
democracy could end in a moment at the wave of a baton.
The dark aspects of China were quite real, and they especially jumped out at
someone like me who had been influenced by the glowing stories of the many
humanitarian and left-wing people who visited China during the Cultural
Revolution. But they were far from the whole story. Where was the bright
China that visitors from Shirley MacLaine to Wallace D. Muhammad had
found? It was there, too; by turning the kaleidoscope of one’s own perspective,
everything fell into a different place.
The poverty became almost a positive thing. It is hard to glorify poverty in a
north Philadelphia ghetto or a Manila shantytown. The daily reality of
dilapidated housing, filth, malnutrition, rundown schools, and the like defies
transfiguration. But poverty

 Page 199
in China is different. For one thing, it is shared by everyone remarkably
equallyfrom the top party officials on down. We saw evidences of this
wherever we went. But even more important, it is a poverty without disease,
hunger, and rats; without evictions, boarded-up windows, and turned-off heat;
without layoffs, drugs, “hustles,” and muggings. Many houses are old and
small, but they are almost universally well-tended, patched, and swept. And
new construction, though slowed for the decade 1966-76, is now booming; in
some cities we saw scaffolding on almost every block.
Rent is a dollar a month; health care virtually free. Outside of some
troublesome smog from the coal furnaces, Beijing is a picture of health. At
dawn thousands of people grace the sidewalks with the fluid movements of
traditional shadow boxing. Others sweep and scrub the already spotless streets,
as if cleaning their own kitchens.
The lack of household furnishings and other goods in a way comes across as a
healthy thing, too. With social cooperation and security, the Chinese get along
admirably with less, and the lack of gluttony is refreshing. The department
store around the corner from the Beijing Hotel is hardly the Cherry Hill (New
Jersey) Mall, but who wants it to be? The stocks of peach-colored and
lavender mandarin jackets, giant thermoses, fur hats, bulky televisions, and
long underwear are adequate. It is pleasant to be able to go somewhere in the
world where the goods haven’t taken over from the people.
Backwardness? Again it can be looked on in a positive light, both aestetically
and ecologically. A society that can get along with bicycles instead of cars?
Many Americans would be envious. A technology that operates on preserving
rather than replacing? It sounds like an ecologist’s dream. The shortage of
large cranes and bulldozers? The people make up for it with impressive
teamwork and enthusiasm. Moreover, the Chinese are in the enviable position
of having most of the process of modernization in front of them, with the
successes and failures of the advanced nations to learn from; and of having no
great urgency, no desperate sectors of the population that might preclude a
deliberate pace. China is a very “together” society on the verge of coming into
the modern worldat a time when many Americans might like to have much of
the last hundred years back, without the Love Canals, Three-mile Islands, and
South Bronxes.
In addition, there are the new features of China since 1977.

 Page 200
It would be one-sided to speak any longer only of the sense of desertedness
and bleakness at the universities. There are powerful remnants of this. But I
also found a renaissance-like inquisitiveness sprouting among the rapidly
growing campus population. In 1979 I found that hundreds of new periodicals
were being ordered from abroad. And I found that every yuan available was
going toward updating science equipment.
It would be one-sided, too, to speak only of hearing stereotyped jargon. I heard
my fill of this, but I also found an increasing number of Chinese expressing
themselves more forthrightly, especially by writing wall posters. I spent many
hours hanging around “democracy wall” and other poster sites, reading posters
and talking with the crowds through interpreters. The viewpoints ranged much
more widely than I had expected from reports in the American media. There
were several criticisms of Mao, but even more expressions of love for him and
his close political associate, Zhou Enlai. There were many personal grievances
against mistreatment by local governments or party committees, but just as
typical was a poster saying, “China is now like spring, the thawing of a frozen
society” and calling for “harmony, peace, democracy and love.” Another
poster advertised a privatedly produced maverick literary journal called Fertile
Land.
Finally, it would be one-sided to speak of the moon-like sense of isolation in
China. I, too, felt it. But from another perspective, this isolation is
understandable; for a hundred years before 1949, China’s experience with the
Western powers was one of being raped by them. A period of antiforeign
sentiments was natural. And now there is no longer a deliberate policy to keep
out “things foreign,” though only a trickle is currently available. To be sure,
there were no Playboys for us to read or Forty-second Streets to explore, but I
could have walked into a Shanghai theater any evening and seen Ali McGraw
in Convoy, or turned on my television sets and watched an old British spy
movie or an English lesson. During the three weeks I viewed a delightful (if
sometimes demure) variety of plays, operas, and cultural shows borrowing
from many foreign and traditional Chinese styles, all for a few pennies each.
The highlight was a joint concert of the Boston Symphony and Peking Central
Philharmonic orchestras 19 March, a vivid symbol of the abandonment of the
kind of communism that bans Beethoven. The crowd responded with
contagious enthusiasm to both Beethoven’s Fifth and the playful Chinese
revolutionary tune, “Theme from the White-haired Girl.”
Yet when added up, what impressions about democracy can

 Page 201
be gathered from the sights and sounds of China? Hardfast conclusions are
still oddly elusive. For one thing, the testimonies of the senses tend to report
only on “negative freedom,” or “freedom from.” Can the Chinese do as they
please? This is one question. But do they control their own government? This
is quite another. Secondly, the question of genuineness in democracy seems to
have led to an even deeper issue: the genuineness of the People’s Republic
altogether. The rote answers about the Cultural Revolution strain credibility.
Does China chronically lie to itself, its own people, and the rest of the world?
Is it forced to lie because its political-economic system has failed, as the
poverty and backwardness might indicate? Or is the political-economic system
succeeding, as the social cooperation, health, and enthusiasm might indicate?
Can China’s leaders afford to ”go democratic” because the people on the
whole approve of the direction of the country since 1949, especially now that
the grievances of the Cultural Revolution are being redressed?
Only a deeper look into the Chinese Communist Party itself could shed light
on these questions.
The Party
What are these thirty million people like who flow in and out of the crowds,
the neighborhoods, the factories, and universities of China as members of the
Chinese Communist Party?
Seated in the periphery of the airy conference room, Ma Sunglin, age fifty,
looks motherly in her blue polka-dot tunic, wrinkled at the bottom where it
merges into a soft lap. Her hair, still black and pulled back in casual pigtails,
frames a pleasant, warm face, with slightly pudgy red cheeks and a furrow of
attentiveness across her forehead. Her eyes dart back and forth as she follows
every word of the conversation. One of five women in a Chinese delegation of
thirteen, she has raised a family and now sparkles with independence and
intellectual stimulation. At the break she approaches me and asks about her
favorite authors: Mark Twain and Michael Gold. “Are they read much in the
United States? What do people read?” As we chat, I am surprised by how
much she already knows about America and her inquisitiveness to learn more.
Li is seventy. In the 1930s he had studied anthropology at Harvard. Now he is
using his knowledge to guide research on minorities at the National Minorities
Institute of the Chinese Communist

 Page 202
Party in Beijing. That he is a casual and simple fellow, in rumpled clothes and
with a laughing face, hides the thoroughness of his scholarship, which comes
through as he relates the years of research he has spent among the Tibetan,
Chuan, Uighur, and other minority peoples of China. There is a sea of
humanity in this man. With transparent affection he shows us a dance class of
teenage Tibetan girls recreating an acrobatic, centuries-old dance. We are sad
when it is time to leave.
Chu sits upright and holds her pencil upright, too, in the style of traditional
calligraphy. She is a beautiful woman, her soft, blushing features set off by a
light blue Mao jacket with braided buttons and a pink scarf around the collar.
Unceasingly her pencil flows across the pages; again and again her lips move
with animated tones, first in Chinese and then in English. A picture of
concentration, she shows no sight of strain from the mental gymnastics of her
job. Yet she is more than a translator and a party member. As she guides us
through Beijing’s Forbidden City one Sunday, we begin to learn about Chu the
person, Chu the prototype of the modern, democratic Chinese. As an English
student in London during China’s Cultural Revolution, she was watched by an
Orwellian “Big Sister.” The elder party member forbade her to watch British
television or go out at night. “In our party we still have some people like that,”
she adds with a sigh. “What do you call themstooges? But much fewer now.
We are winning the struggle against this kind of mentality.”
I could go on with such descriptions. I met many party members, all unique
individuals. A few used what westerners might consider to be clichés; but with
patience, one could dig beneath these to the person. Of course, how much does
this prove? Even a totalitarian regime could have a few charmers speaking for
it.
Yet it is important to look for patterns; and the patterns that kept repeating
themselves in the party people I met, from Beijing to Yenan, were personality
traits like inquisitiveness, scientific-mindedness, humor, openness, modesty,
the ability to be self-critical, and the ability to listen. These were strikingly
opposite to the traits I had heard attributed to Communists during my
upbringing.
Yet such party members were not elected, I determined through persistent
questioning. The party was not democratic in this sense, and was not even
moving in this direction. The members were chosen more as Americans would
select members of an honor society: by recommendations from peers and the
final decision from already existing members. Beginning in 1979 state office

 Page 203
holders, such as People’s Congress representatives, were to be elected by
secret ballot. Supervisors on the factory floors are also elected. But party
members, no. So although I had come across “democratic personalities,” I was
still looking for concrete democratic features in the system itself. I first found
what I was looking for during a lengthy interview with the editors and staff of
the People’s Daily.
The People’s Daily did not use to be democratic in any sense of the word. It
had a dismal reputation during the Cultural Revolution, a reputation that fit the
American stereotype of “Communist propaganda.” During this period, the
paper was controlled tightly by a small clique led by the Gang of Four. As one
staff reporter put it, “We printed only the good news about Chinaand much of
this we made up.” Reporters were expected to describe China as a “socialist
paradise,” and contrary words raised suspicion that one was a “capitalist
roader.” Also, reporters were expected to double as spies for the Gang. And
readers who wrote letters to the editor expressing criticisms found their letters
turned over to the Department of Internal Security, the Chinese FBI.
But being a “propaganda organ” today has come to mean something quite
different at the People’s Daily. The atmosphere of pat phrase-slinging and
know-nothing rosiness has gone out the window. I found the staff keenly
aware, for example, of the built-in problems of being a “party organ,” and the
stigma that this places on its newspaper for Westerners.
“When I was in the United States last year,” a leading editor told us, “the
editor-in-chief of a large American newspaper told me that if the Democrats or
Republicans put out a newspaper, nobody would read it. People would
consider it pure propaganda!” Yet he went on to explain why he didn’t think
the Daily staff was guilty of putting out propaganda in that derogatory sense of
the word any longer (they continue to use the word propaganda because to
them it means only “that which is propagated”); and why he thinks that being
“guided” by the party enhances rather than diminishes the paper’s democracy.
He argued as follows: The party, now that it is taking up scientific and
democratic approaches, is in a better position to represent the people of China
than a small elite of journalists and publishers could ever be. Democracy
means that the people have control; the party’s guidance is how the people
control the paper. Only if the party loses touch with the people is there a
contradiction.
An example: The party’s most recent “guidance” was a recommendation that
the Daily train its reporters according to the philo-

 Page 204
sophy, “Seek truth from facts.” This phrase, first used by Mao in Yenan in
1942, is directed against the practice of a reporter coming into a situation with
fixed or dogmatic ideas, such as a rigid party line, and as a result not seeing
what is really there. Instead reporters are now being encouraged to “turn over
every stone in seeking out an all-sided picture of China, the bad news as well
as the good, the dark side as well as the bright.”
One member of our delegation asked, “What about the reporter who does
‘seek truth from facts’ and is fired or arrested by some autocrat still lurking
within the party?”
“To prevent this from happening,” an editor explained, “to guarantee against
the reemergence of a Gang of Four, the party itself must be made subject to the
law.”
One editor summed up the tricky road to free press and free speech like this:
“In the process of bringing China to democracy, some problems will come up.
China was feudal for thousands of years. How to exercise our democratic
rights but respect the democratic rights of others will take practice. But every
citizen of China must be equal before the law. In this way we can prevent a
privileged elite from arising. We are not in favor of using arrests to combat
wrong ideasif those ideas do not violate the law, such as blocking traffic.”
Our delegation asked for further clarification on the relationship between the
party and the paper. A leading editor explained: “Through the reports of
correspondents who seek truth from facts, the party can collect the views and
practical experiences of people all over the country. Based upon these, it can
work out policies scientifically. Through the newspaper it can then propagate
these policies. The people can try them out. Then the reporters go back and
report on how the policies are working. Do people think they are correct or
not? Based on this information, the party can make corrections. The process
keeps repeating.”
The editor did not define “working out policies scientifically.” Nor did he
explain which corrections the party made after negative feedback on how
policies were working. However, the staff members pointed out some signs
that their attempts to make the People’s Daily a people’s paper were
succeeding. For one thing, letters to the editor have increased dramatically:
over two thousand arrive a day, full of frank and helpful criticisms, now that
readers know that the letters won’t be turned over to the security police. Also,
there are now many columns of print devoted to shortcomings in the first
thirty years of socialism in China, even debating provocative questions: “Why
did Japan recover so quickly and China’s

 Page 205
economy develop so slowly? Is socialism maybe not as good as capitalism?”
Debates and audience participation are also blossoming in radio and
television. During discussions with the staff of the China Broadcast
Administration Bureau, the most striking example I heard concerned the TV
broadcast of a Japanese film on prostitution called “Brothel 18.” The TV
station held a debate on the merits of showing the film after many viewers
called in to say that they were shocked. Through the debate, many people were
won over to the educational value of the film. Finally it was shown for a
second time.
Next our delegation went to the top: the Central Committee itself, to try to
determine the type of thinking behind these democratic phenomena. We met
for over twelve hours with leaders of the propaganda and other departments.
They all said different things, but there were common themes. Here is a
summary:
On methods: “Emancipation of the mind” must be achieved through spreading
the methods of science and democracy throughout the land. There are still
strong remnants of feudal, slavish thinking in our country. Just as Galileo had
to break the bonds of medieval dogmas, the party has to lead the Chinese
people in ridding themselves of the unscientific ways of thinking that hold
back modernization. On the other hand, we need an atmosphere of stability
and unity to accomplish this. Democracy does not mean anarchy. So some
measures, following proper legal procedures, must be established to prevent a
handful from misusing the new freedom to try to undermine our whole system.
On the Cultural Revolution: Among our people there are many different
views. Over 700 million people experienced the Cultural Revolution; each has
a strong impression of it, since it concerned his or her life for ten years. Each
of the “socialist new things,” such as “barefoot doctors” or “open-door
education,” must be evaluated individually. The entire population should take
part in that assessment and it should extend not only to the ten years of the
Cultural Revolution but to the entire thirty years of experience that the
Chinese people have of socialism. Some things have worked well; some have
not. Now is a time to “bring it all out.” Due to the sudden freedom, our view
may not be all-sided enough now. Therefore, our final assessment should be
postponed.
On Mao: “Mao’s contributions are immeasurable. However, Mao never
wanted to be deified, as the Gang of Four tried to do to him, meanwhile
wheeling and dealing behind his statues. Unquestionably the shortcomings of
the Cultural Revolution were

 Page 206
not only the work of the Gang; Mao, too, made some mistakes. We must be
careful and prudent in assessing them. We will always hold that Mao’s
achievements outweigh his faults.
On themselves: We have problems, and we don’t have all the answers. We are
experimentors; we have been since 1949. There is no blueprint for building a
modern socialist country. Give us your suggestions. We want to learn from the
best in other societies.
The most heartening to me of all the remarks were the last ones: the modest
appraisal by the Central Committee members of their own work. In 1979 no
longer were we seeing a China of flip-flops, of the current period always being
“all good” and the previous period “all bad.”
On our delegation’s last day in China we met with eight outstanding novelists,
short story writers, and poets. It was a fitting climax to a journey that began in
a cloud of doubts about censors and soulless literature, because here I found
out that the Chinese Communist writers, even the ones in the official
party-“guided” literary association, don’t like such things either.
At a point in our discussion when everything was beginning to sound a bit too
rosy, a particularly unabashed poet brought the room to silence: “Yes, we now
have a fine atmosphere of democracy in literature and artbut not enough yet!”
He roared these last words, waving his finger in the air as if to scold any
fellow writers who might tend to get complacent.
“The party’s guidance? It does not mean censorship,” a veteran literary critic
jumped in. “The party cannot act as a censorship organ. It can raise
suggestions or criticisms, but our editorial board has the final decision.” He
said this loudly and brazenly, like a freed slave in Mississippi testing his new
civil liberties.
Then a young short story writer, Liu Xinwu, took over the stage. Since I am
using his name, I will not quote him directlymany of the Chinese requested
this, since the winds might always change. But, paraphrased, he told this tale: I
experienced the Cultural Revolution as a literature teacher. Many great works
and writers were forbidden. It was very miserable for one who loves literature
to part with it. In 1975 things turned a little better. Chairman Mao issued an
instruction condemning the Gang of Four’s censorship of a play called
“Pioneers.” This was a great inspiration to writers, even amateurs like myself.
Under very difficult conditions of repression, Mao played a very good role. At
this time I secretly wrote something. But then the criticism of the “right
deviationist wind” (led by the Gang) began. Even my drafts still left in my
drawers were apt to be targets. I destroyed

 Page 207
some of them.
In the thawing atmosphere of 1977, Liu wrote a beautiful love story called “A
Place for Love.” The title meant that there was a legitimate place for romantic
love in the lives of communists. It was the first love story published in China
in more than a decade. Broadcast over the radio, it reached millions of people.
Surely this story is one of the reasons why young lovers are now kissing in
Shanghai and Beijing parks.
To me the story symbolized the change in the character of Chinese
communism that I had seen: the rise of something fragile, tender, and new, the
budding of democracy.
Afterword: 1985 and 1989
In 1985 I made a return visit to China, not as a guest of the party, but as a
private individual touring and doing research, accompanied by my family.
What had happened in the six intervening years to the new “buds” of
democracy?
First, what had impressed me in 1979the sense of social connectedness,
organization, and uprightness overseen by an all-pervasive wise and caring
partyhad virtually vanished. The buds of democracy in 1979 under the
watchful nurturing of a parternalistic party meritocracy had I thought been the
buds of a new democracy, a Communist democracy, with a more genuine
implementation of party phrases from the past like “people’s control,” “from
the masses, to the masses,” and “let 100 flowers bloom.” By 1985, the sense
that there might be unique Chinese Communist contributions to the world’s
concept of democracy had given way to a sense that the Chinese might simply
be embarking on the same road as othersthe democracy of the market,
characterized by individualism, free-expression, diversity, and sometimes
chaos. Perhaps my view of such a great contrast on the second trip was partly
shaped by my no longer being an “insider,” whisked by party officials around
customs lines, pampered with all arrangements made for meeven on one
occasion, when I became ill, hospitalized in the best hospital in Shanghai with
no question of any charge. Six years later my family and I fended for
ourselves, struggling with avaricious taxi drivers and rude airline clerks and
staying in often ill-tended quarters with unhelpful staffs. What previously had
been a scrupulously planned society, at least from the foreign guest’s
standpoint, had now become a Hobbesian battleground. Where was the party
that we

 Page 208
counted on as the voice of reason and caring to intervene in our behalf as we
were victimized by a succession of entrepreneurs and unhelpful bureaucrats?
As a visitor responding on the level of sights and sounds, that is, the
perceptual level, I liked the China of 1979 better than the China of 1985. But I
have been tempered in my rush to judgment by the reports of my closest
Chinese friends from 1979, generally people like Lin, Li, and Ma who shaped
my image of the “new Communist person,” the post-Hobbesian human being
who devoted his life to “serving the people.” Invariably, these friends would
say that the situation in the mid 1980s was better. While worried about the
moral vacuum that had opened up when the Maoist emphasis on putting China
before self was shattered, these Chinese friends universally preferred the more
lively, open, and free-wheeling atmosphere of the mid 1980s. As one put it:
“Yes, in this atmosphere of ‘to get rich is glorious’ it may be only the ‘sucker’
who continues to work more selflessly to serve China. But for now, I am
content to be that ‘sucker.’ Later perhaps a new moral ecology can emerge in
China.”

In early April 1989, before the death of Hu Yaobang and before the memorial
service that began the student protests; before the May 4 Movement’s
seventieth anniversary commerations and before the historic visit of Mikhail
Gorbachev; before the martial law declaration and before the turning back of
Beijing-district troops by peaceful citizens; and most of all, before the terrible
bloodbath of June 3 and 4: before these events that were to change China
dramatically, the author made a last visit to Beijing to attend a remarkable
gathering, instantly made unrepeatable by the crackdown. This was a people-
to-people conference called “Seminar on Economic Cooperation and
Development in the Pacific Area,” held in an atmosphere of tranquillity and
openness at the Friendship Hotel. It was the fruition of years of dreaming and
planning by the Interchange for Pacific Scholarship (IPS) of California joined
by the Pacific Rim Economic Institute of the People’s University of China.
The seminar invited scholars, businesspeople, and officials from countries
around the Pacific, regardless of ideology, to meet in China to share views on
cooperation in the region.
Beijing that week was alive with blooms, commerce, and chatter. Tiananmen
Square was bustling with only tourists and passersby. Construction and
modernization were visible everywhere. Economics seemed to be on
everyone’s mind. From television’s nightly financial reports, to emerging
commercial ties with Taiwan and

 Page 209
South Korea, the talk was of how soon the PRC might be able to follow in the
paths of the “Four Little Dragons,” South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and
Singapore. The other discussions were about domestic economic problems:
inflation, the main problem that brought different sectors together in criticism
of government policy; and “profiteering,” the cry from many that the Deng
Xiaoping’s slogan “some will inevitably get rich first” had turned out all too
often to mean that those with political influence will get rich, or get privileges,
first. This was the only hint of the crisis that was to come. (Another view of
this time is available in a remarkable new book, A Day in the Life of China:
April 15, 1989, edited by David Cohen for Collins Publishers’ “Day in the
Life” series.)
The events of June 3-4 and after were indeed shocking, for this observer as for
others. Several interpretations have already been offered by American
scholars, most prominently the old view mentioned at the beginning of this
paper: Communism is irredeemable. To such a position the author would
submit two observations that may not fit so well: first, that the Tian An Men
demonstrators sang the “Internationale” and showed respect to the portrait of
Mao; second, that it was Mao himself who warned that Deng represented a
new elite within the Party, noting particularly his fear of mass movements.
These points would seem to complicate the simple anti-Communist framework
for understanding China’s latest turn. “What would Mao have thought?” seems
an open question.

 Page 210

The View from Mao’s Tomb

Mark A. Plummer
Chairman Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) died on 9 September 1976. A year of
frenzied construction, involving thousands of workers diverted from other
projects and tens of thousands of volunteers from schools, offices, and
factories, led to the completion of the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall.
Constructed in Tian An Men Square, which dwarfs Moscow’s Red Square in
size, the building is reminiscent of Lenin’s tomb. Mao’s body is interred there
in a crystal coffin draped in the red flag of the Communist Party of China. 1
Upon entering the building, one is confronted by an enormous, white marble
figure of Mao, seated as if to survey the present site of the government, the
Great Hall of the People, which stands to the west of the tomb and the
traditional capital situated to the north beyond the Tian An gate in the
Forbidden City of Chinese emperors. Since Mao’s death and the arrest of the
Gang of Four, there have been significant changes in the leadership, ideology,
economy, and social control system in Mao’s creation, the People’s Republic
of China.
As Ross Terrill has observed, Mao is the Marx, the Lenin, and the Stalin of the
Chinese revolution.2 As its Marx, he analyzed the ills of a feudal Chinese
society; as its Lenin, he led the revolution that succeeded in creating the
People’s Republic of China; and as its Stalin, he exhibited obsessive fears,
idiosyncrasies, and oppressive behavior. In a remarkable resolution adopted in
1981 by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the party
acknowledged Mao’s greatness as a thinker and a revolutionary while decrying
his role since about 1957. The ill-fated Great Leap Forward (1958-61) and the
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76) are officially described as
“setbacks.” Mao in his later years became conceited, arrogant and smug and
his Cultural Revolution was a “gross error,” according to the party’s official
history.3
Mao probably launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966 because

 Page 211
he feared that the regular party apparatus had lost its revolutionary zeal and he
wished to insure that China would continue in his image after his death. He
unleashed millions of “born red” (children or grandchildren of workers,
peasants, or soldiers) teenagers who traveled around the country,
commandeering trains and wrecking everything they perceived to be
bourgeois. Buddhist temples and prerevolutionary historic sites were
destroyed. Art forms such as the Peking Opera were suppressed. Universities
were closed and professors stripped of their possessions and humiliated.
Eventually Mao had to rein in the disruptive Red Guards. Apparently the price
extracted by Lin Biao was that he would be named Mao’s heir-apparent in
return for using the People’s Liberation Army to quell the disruptions. Lin,
however, died mysteriously in a plane crash in Mongolia in 1971 after
reportedly planning a coup against Mao.
The leadership struggle that followed saw moderates such as Zhou Enlai
(Chou En-lai) and radicals under Jiang Qing, Mao’s fourth wife, competing to
influence the feeble Chairman Mao. Jiang Qing and the Gang of Four were the
usual winners, and they enforced their “red over expert” philosophies. The
1980-81 trial of the Gang of Four convicted them for having “framed and
persecuted” 729,511 people and for being responsible for the deaths of 34,800.
4 The suffering was even greater than the indictments indicated. Almost every
urban Chinese has a horror story about how he or she was treated during the
Cultural Revolution. The greatest crime of this proletarian revolution was to
have a bourgeois ancestor or to have had any contact with the West. Seventeen
million city youth were sent to the countryside for from one to ten years, and
thousands died as a result of the harsh conditions.
Within four weeks after Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping organized a
coalition of leaders who arrested the Gang of Four. As the transitional leader,
Chairman Hua Guofeng was pictured with Chairman Mao on large posters that
quoted Mao, “With you in charge I am at ease.” By 1981, however, the
portraits of Hua were gone from Tian An Men Square. All billboard pictures
of Mao were removed save the one on Tian An Men where Mao had
proclaimed the beginning of the People’s Republic.
Before the death of Mao and the arrest of the Gang of Four, the economy was
centrally controlled but egalitarian in the extreme. Given a choice between
ideology or production (the Red versus expert argument), idealogy usually
won. All rank was ostensibly abolished in the army and in the government,
and the cadre

 Page 212
(government employees) were ordered to learn from the peasants by working
in a commune for a year or longer. There were no incentive systems in the
factories beyond exhortation. The peasants in the communes continued to
plant crops in much the same way they had done for centuries, but they were
subject to disruptions when orders came from above that directed
extraordinary outputs, often of unsuitable crops.
A rationing system that provides a basic supply of rice, cooking oil, pork, and
cotton at low, controlled prices has been a basic apparatus of the government
throughout most of its history. Rationing continues sporadically on products in
short supply, but the government is moving toward allowing market forces to
replace administrative control of the distribution of basic necessities. 5
Individual farmers under the new “responsibility system” may sell their
products, beyond a certain amount committed to the government, in “free
markets.” Some farmers, usually those with fertile plots near the major cities,
have become rich. A system of incentives to factory workers has been
introduced. A work-point system that results in bonuses for additional
production is being used and workers who are lazy are threatened with firing.
Few have been fired, however, as the concept of job tenure remains strong.
Some workers prefer the security of the “iron ricebowl” to the opportunity to
earn more money.
Free markets, street hawkers, and cooperatives (which are really small
businesses for profit) have returned to China since the death of Mao.
Consumerism is beginning to have an impact on the economy. Although the
average annual income is only about $250, controlled prices combined with
the new incentive systems leave many Chinese with some disposable income.
While television sets were limited to a few hotels and offices in 1978, a decade
later there was a forest of antennas in the cities and in the adjacent villages.
Owning a television fulfills one of the “Big Four” aspirations shared by most
Chinese. While only 500,000 sets were made in China in 1978, 14.5 milloin
were produced in 1986, and in 1987 sales reached 23.3 million. Fourteen
million washing machines, 4 million refrigerators, and 16 million cassette-tape
recorders were also purchased in 1987.6 The “Big Four” represent a rapid
escalation of aspirations from the “three things that go around” (bicycles,
sewing machines, and watches) of the early 1980’s. Clothing is becoming
more colorful, especially for children, and the basic uniform of white or blue
shirts with baggie pants is being supple-

 Page 213
mented by a variety of more stylish wearing apparel and a smattering of
business suits.
The standard of living is rising in China in accordance with the plans of the
new leadership that is stressing the production of more consumer goods.
However, inflation, so long absent from China, has returned, thus threatening
to stifle the new consumerism. It is also questionable whether China’s ”market
socialism” is compatible with the central planning that continues. 7 Consumer
aspirations, fueled by legalized advertisements and more knowledge about the
standard of living outside China, may outstrip production. If so, the fragile
political consensus may be broken, and some of the Maoist economic
doctrines may be reinstituted.
The planners of the Four Modernizations (in agriculture, industry, science and
technology, and defense) recognize that the fastest way to modernize is by
importing foreign technology. To do so, China must obtain vast sums of
foreign currency quickly. In their attempts to obtain hard currency, the
planners are willing to overlook most Maoist proscriptions, even when the
new policies allow foreign “pollution” and create greater inequalities among
its citizens.
Under Mao, China’s published economic statistics were always hidden behind
meaningless percentages and goals. The modernizers, however, have joined
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The Chinese
government invited the World Bank to investigate its economy, and the bank
economists were apparently given access to the essential hard data. The result
is a nine-volume report published in 1981, which suggests that China is on the
right track to modernization. The report recommends further decentralization,
price reform, energy conservation (surprisingly, the bank economists found
China short of fuel), and an increased emphasis on light industry. It also
recommended that China borrow more money from abroad, a recommendation
the Chinese government, both Mao and post-Mao, has been slow to adopt
because of its long standing policy of self-sufficiency. The report seems to
suggest, however, that the government’s goal of reaching a $1,000 annual per
capita income by the year 2000 is probably unobtainable, even if China holds
its population growth to its 1.2 billion goal.8
Although decision making is being decentralized and personal freedoms have
increased since the death of Mao and the arrest of the Gang of Four, most of
the social control apparatus, much of it adapted from the Russian model,
remains in place and a

 Page 214
few restraints have been added or reconstituted. Some observations follow
concerning the information system, the controls through the work unit,
religious freedom, the latitude given to the farmers, the birth control system,
and the legal system.
The amount of information the Chinese are allowed to have has vastly
increased since Mao’s death. It is now acceptable to have a short-wave radio
and to listen to foreign broadcasts. Foreign news magazines are allowed in
China, and the advent of television news has increased the information
available to the Chinese. The Chinese press remains, however, under
government control. Movies continue to be selected by cautious censors,
although they allow a vastly greater variety than when Madame Mao virtually
stopped all film distribution (except in her private viewing room) to the
Chinese people. The Democracy Wall, where “big character” protest posters
could be plastered in 1979, was replaced by commercial billboards, and the
“Big Four” constitutional rights to “speak out freely, air their views fully, hold
great debates, and write big-character posters” was deleted in the new
constitution. Unauthorized newspapers that were tolerated in 1979 disappeared
soon after the arrest of Wei Jingsheng for his critical article in Tansuo
(Explorations). In 1982 a Chinese trade journal editor (who was a member of
the Communist Party) was given a five-year sentence for having told a foreign
journalist the place, date, and agenda of a party meeting. The same year an
American graduate student was arrested and deported for having read certain
“internal documents” pertaining to agriculture planning. In 1987, Yang Wei, a
student who returned from the United States, was convicted for having
conducted “demagogical propaganda” by contributing to China Spring, a
periodical published in America by mainland Chinese who advocate
abolishing “The Four Cardinal Principles” in the Chiinese Constitution
(adherence to the socialist road; the people’s democratic dictatorship;
Communist Party leadership; and Marxism, Leninism, and Mao Zedong
thought) in favor of Democracy. 9
Most Chinese are organized through their factory, commune, or office into the
danwei or work unit system. They are assigned to their work unit after they
finish the appropriate schooling and screening and they are unlikely to ever
work any other place. The work unit is responsible for issuing housing
assignments, travel permits, and health insurance. Without the unit, a Chinese
cannot obtain a city residence permit, and without the permit he cannot obtain
a ration card. The party secretary in the unit usually determines who is to
obtain what accomodations and has

 Page 215
the major role in allowing marriage and divorce among the workers. The
Chinese say: “The shoe fits very tight,” that is, accommodations come very
slowly to those who are uncooperative.
Chinese work places and living quarters are usually built behind walls. This is
traditional to China, but when going from one office or housing unit to
another, people must sign in with a gate keeper who may forward the
information to their danwei. Chinese who wish to visit foreigners in their
hotels or in more permanent quarters are also often required to register, and
there is a general reluctance to do so. Although casual contact on the streets
and in the parks is allowed, there is a great fear on the part of the regime of
“Western Pollutants” (indulgence in material enjoyment, depravity, and
crime), 10 and some Chinese newspapers have warned that many foreign
tourists and students are spies.
During the Cultural Revolution and Mao’s campaign to “Drive out the ‘Four
Olds’: old habits, old ideas, old customs, and old cultures,” most of China’s
churches and mosques were vandalized by the Red Guards and closed by the
government. The religious leaders were exiled and most were abused, and
many were beaten to death. After Mao’s death many of the churches were
restored. The reopened churches are well attended by the young adults and old
parishioners who are trying to fill the void created by the “lost generation” of
the Cultural Revolution. The reopened churches must belong to the Patriotic
Associations, which assure the state that no foreign connections will be
maintained.11 The Pope’s appointments of bishops are not recognized. The
constitution stipulates that Chinese citizens shall ”enjoy freedom of religious
belief” and shall not be compelled to “believe or disbelieve in religion.”
Although the official religion of China is atheism, there are about 6 million
registered Christians (about equally divided between Protestant and Catholic)
and several million more members of the “silent” or “home” churches.
Moslems exceed the number of Christians in China, especially in the west.
The Chinese government appears to be supportive of the restoration of
churches, mosques, and temples. Official publications state that 200,000 bibles
have recently been printed in China. No party member, however, is allowed to
be religious.12
Almost 80 percent of Chinese population is rural. Soon after the founding of
the People’s Republic, Mao pushed collectivization. Private ownership of land
was abolished, often violently. The collectives were organized into Communes
(in 1980 there were fifty-two thousand communes with an average of twenty-
six hundred households in each),13 subdivided into production teams

 Page 216
(averaging twenty-six households). The production team often corresponds to
a village. In general Mao favored placing most of the responsibility for
decision making at the commune level. During the Great Leap Forward (1958-
61) he tried to turn the communes into self-sustaining entities complete with
“backyard furnaces” to produce iron. He also pushed the policy of “everyone
sharing the meal in the same big pot,” thereby deemphasizing the role of the
lower units and the family. He also ordered the transfer of governmental power
from the counties to the communes. No private plots were allowed outside the
courtyards. In the words of Mao’s successors, agriculture was characterized by
“unrealistic production commands and absolute egalitarianism which
smothered the peasants’ zest for farm labor.” 14
Since the death of Mao, there has been a reversal in agricultural policy. The
responsibility for decision making has been pushed down to the production
team. The party claims that more than 90 percent of the production teams use
some form of the responsibility system, which allows contracts to be made
with households and even individual laborers.15 The households are allowed
to sell the fruits of their labor, beyond the contracted amount, on the open
market. Thus the peasants are encouraged to make their own decisions
concerning the crops to be grown and the method of maximizing their profits.
The national annual per capita income for the peasants has risen from 135
yuan in 1978 to 424 yuan (U.S. $115) in 1987. The gains may be attributed to
the contract system, sideline occupations, and increased food prices.16
There is some resistance to these changes by cadre who argue that most
projects are better achieved collectively and that certain social concerns are
made more difficult to ameliorate by the new individualistic behavior. They
are, of course, reluctant to give up their economic power to the individual
households and their political power to the revitalized county governments.
Some old-line cadre see the new line as a move toward class polarization and
capitalism, but the modernizers, in the name of increased production simply
turn Marxism on its head. They boldly assert that the widening income gap “is
essentially a manifestation of the difference in people’s physical ability and
labour skills. This difference is unavoidable in a socialist society and need not
be feared. It shows the way to become prosperous by one’s own sweat.”17
Although food production has been increased by the new incentives and
methods, China continues to be concerned because of Mao’s Malthusian
mistake. In 1957, Ma Yinchu, a distinguished

 Page 217
economist and president of Beijing University proposed a birth-control
program. Because Mao believed the masses were China’s greatest weapon, Ma
was disgraced and dismissed. By the time Ma was rehabilitated by the
modernizers in 1978, more than 300 million people had been added to the
Chinese population. By the time of Ma’s death (at age 100) in 1982, China had
1 billion mouths to feed. By 1987, China’s population had increased another
64 million and was growing at an annual rate of 1.24 percent. 18
The modernizers have embarked upon a stringent, sometimes cruel policy of
birth control. Contraceptives and sterilization are made available without cost.
Economic incentives (higher pay and bonuses for having only one child,
penalties for having more), surveillance (sometimes leading to forced
abortions), the new marriage regulations (postponing marriage until age 28 for
men and 25 for women) have been introduced. Even if the one family-one
child goal can be reached, and there is considerable doubt that it can, the
Chinese population will be 1.2 billion in the year 2000. Although the 20
percent of the population that lives in the cities may conform, the 80 percent
that live in the rural areas may not. Most peasants continue to believe the old
adage, “The greatest filial impiety is failure to produce male offspring.” The
new production for profit systems also encourages larger families. If the
peasants are forced to comply with the new population policy, the party will
have to pay a political price for depriving them of children.19
On 1 January 1980, a set of codified laws was proclaimed in the People’s
Republic of China to replace the arbitrary administrative law that had been
used by Mao and the Gang of Four to the grief of millions of Chinese during
the Cultural Revolution. The modernizers, who had suffered under the system,
wanted to assure the nation that the atrocities of the “bad ten years” could not
be repeated. Ironically, the first highly publicized trial after the law was
proclaimed was for the Gang of Four. The trial and other unrelated events soon
made it apparent that the new laws, although they seemed similar to laws in
the West, would not be implemented in the same way. When Deng Xiaoping
announced in advance of the trial that no one would be executed, when it was
revealed that most of the judges had suffered at the hands of the Gang of Four,
when the defense attorneys failed to interview their clients or challenge the
witnesses, and when the verdict was delayed until the party could make a
decision, many people began to doubt that the new laws would be taken
seriously. Although the new laws represent a step forward, the

 Page 218
Public Security Ministry continues to have broad discretionary powers to
detain anyone. The Chinese Gulag has been reduced in size, but it continues to
hold thousands of people. 20
If Mao could be awakened from his crystal coffin in Tian An Men Square, one
wonders if he would be shocked. He would see that his old nemesis whom he
twice purged, Deng Xiaoping, had “reinterpreted” scientific socialism and
placed China back into the “primary state of socialism” rather than the final
stage, as Mao once proclaimed. He would see that in 1987 the Thirteenth
National Congress of the Communist Party had attacked his partisan’s
principles for their “dogmatism” and their “ossified economic” theories.21 He
would note that Liu Shaoqui, his one-time second in command, whom he
“hounded to death” in 1969, had been posthumously rehabilitated and honored
in an anteroom of the tomb. He would learn that his wife was in Qin Cheng
prison where so many of his political enemies had once been held. He would
observe that the huge portraits of Marx and Engels, and Lenin and Stalin, had
been banished, even when the Communist Party held its Thirteenth Congress,
an event coincidental to the opening of a large Kentucky Fried Chicken
restaurant at the other end of the square.
Mao’s tomb was built with great enthusiasm, but the new leadership soon
regretted its construction. Yet, once in place, they found it almost impossible
to remove without indicting themselves. They temporized by sporadically
closing the tomb “for repairs.” Similarly, the Chinese accepted Mao’s unique
brand of revolution and Socialism with great fervor but many came to regret
the consequences. Yet, they found Mao’s legacy difficult to dismantle so they
appear to be temporizing by adopting certain economic expediencies that can
be explained as “repairs.” It remains to be seen whether the mausoleum and
Mao’s legacy will be repaired, remodeled, eroded, or replaced.
Notes
1. A brief description of Tiananmen Square may be found in John
Summerfield, Fodor’s People’s Republic of China (New York: Urasia Press,
1981), 191-93.
2. Chicago Tribune, 5 July 1981.
3. “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the
Founding of the People’s Republic of China,” adopted by the Sixth Plenary
Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
on 27 July 1981, in Resolution on CPC History 1949-1981 (Beijing: Foreign
Languages Press, 1981), 37, 46, 56.

 Page 219
4. The trial combined the Gang of Four (Jiang Qing Clique) and the Lin Biao
Clique (charged with the attempted assassination of Mao), but most of those
“framed and persecuted” were charged to the Gang of Four. See A Great Trial
in Chinese History: The Trial of the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing Counter-
Revolutionary Cliques, Nov. 1980-Jan. 1981 (Beijing: New World Press,
1981), 20-21.
5. Beijing Review 30, no. 50 (14-20 December 1987): 11; Robert Delfs, “Piggy
in the Muddle,” Far Eastern Economic Review 138 (17 December 1987): 100-
101. Shanghai residents may purchase one kilogram of pork per month at Rmb
3 (U.S. $0.81).
6. Bian Fa, “ReformChina’s Second Revolution,” China Reconstructs 36
(October 1987): 19. Beijing Review 31, no. 4 (25-31 January 1988): 30.
7. Lynn Diane Feintech, China’s Four Modernizations and the United States
(New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1981), 58.
8. See Robert Delfs, “A New Kind of Planning,” Far Eastern Economic
Review 113 (14 Aug. 1981): 48-50.
9. Article 45 in the 1978 Constitution of the People’s Republic of China
(Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1978); “Constitution to Be Revised,”
China Reconstructs 31 (July 1982): 28. Associated Press, 14 June 1982; “U.S.
Teacher Ordered to Leave China.” Beijing Review 25, no. 21 (14 June 1982):
7; Beijing Review 30, no. 52 (28 Dec. 1987-3 Jan. 1988): 12-13.
10. Beijing Review 24, no. 36 (7 September 1981): 3.
11. John Hersey, “A Reporter at Large (China, part II),” The New Yorker 17
May 1982, 50, 60. See also Richard Bernstein, From the Center of the Earth
(Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1982), 171-86.
12. “Notes from the Editors: Religious Belief,” Beijing Review 25, no. 24 (14
June 1982): 3. The 1978 Constitution (Article 46) states: “Citizens enjoy
freedom to believe in religion and freedom not to believe in religion and to
propagate atheism.” No right to propagate religion is included. The draft
constitution (1982) statement on religion is Article 35. See Beijing Review 25,
no. 19 (10 May 1982): 34. Beijing Review 30, no.52(28 Dec. 1987-Jan .3,
1988): 18-19; Louise do Rosario, “A Small Concession,” in Far Eastern
Economic Review 139 (21 Jan. 1988): 29.
13. See Jurgen Domes, “New Policies in the Communes: Notes on Rural
Societal Structures in China, 1976-1981,” Journal of Asian Studies 41
(February 1982): 253-67.
14. Beijing Review 25, no. 25 (21 June 1982): 3.
15. Beijing Review 25, no. 24 (14 June 1982): 21.
16. Bian Fa, “Reform,” China Reconstructs 36 (October 1987): 17.
17. Statement by Economic Editor Jin Qu in Beijing Review 25, no. 25 (21
June 1982): 4.
18. China has only about half as much cultivated land per capita as it did in
1949. Half its population is under age 21 and as it matures the food demands
will increase. See Population and Other Problems (Beijing: Beijing Review
Special Feature Series, 1981), 16-21; Beijing Review 30 (23-29 Nov. 1987):
11.
19. There are indications that the peasants are being allowed to have a second
child if the first is a daughter. The “little emperor” or spoiled single child has
become a widely discussed problem in China as a result of the birth-control
policy.
20. See Fox Butterfield, China Alive in the Bitter Sea, (New York: Times
Books, 1982), 342-69.
21. Beijing Review 31 (25-31 Jan. 1988): 18.

 Page 220

How Can We Evaluate the Economic Performance of the

People’s Republic of China?
Ramon H. Myers
Suppose one wanted to evaluate the economic development performance of
the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for the past four decades to make
comparisons with other developing countries? 1 What standards should be
used? Can scholars agree upon some normative concepts and standards to
evaluate the economic performance of societies so different in their stages of
economic development and with different policies, cultures, and institutions?
Evaluating Economic Growth
Most experts generally agree that modern economic growth takes place when
the annual growth rate of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita begins to
accelerate on a sustained basis over long periods of time. At the same time,
resources shift from lower to higher value-added activities; economic activity
in the sectors of agriculture (A), manufacturing and construction (M), and
services (S) begins to dramatically change; population growth accelerates; and
the ratio of foreign trade to GDP customarily rises. Structural change occurs in
the form of different sectoral contribution to the growth of GDP and
employment.
Countries that have experienced modern economic growth experience a
transformative period when economic structural change takes place and the
annual growth rate of GDP accelerates include England during the period
1760-1860, France and Germany between 1860 and 1914, the Soviet Union
between 1928 and 1960, and Japan between 1870 and 1914. Some experts
have called this unique turning-point phase the period of trend acceleration or

 Page 221
economic transformation. Whichever term one uses, it conveys the
characteristics whereby a country’s economic growth pattern dramatically and
irreversibly alters. This period of transformation will vary from country to
country, depending upon complex historical circumstances.
Economists can raise some questions about this unique period in a developing
country’s history. First, did the rate of economic growth fluctuate, accelerate,
and then slow down; or did it accelerate on a sustained basis? The economic
growth performance will greatly differ between countries depending on which
of these patterns predominated.
Second, what were the sources of GDP growth? In other words, did labor and
capital stock productivity accelerate, fluctuate, or rise and then fall?
Economists can measure such trends by selecting indices to monitor the factor
productivity over time. Another measure of the sources of GDP growth is that
of total factor productivity, in which the factor inputs of land, labor, and
capital are measured, aggregated, and compared to the growth of GDP. If
output per unit of total factors rises over the period in question, one can
interpret that to mean resource productivity rose to account for part of the
growth of GDP that took place. If total factor productivity had declined, one
would interpret that trend to mean the economy was becoming unproductive
and only the growth of inputs had really accounted for the growth of GDP, a
performance indicating considerable waste of scarce resources.
Third, economists can ask whether the trend of income distribution became
more unequal, more equal, or remained unchanged. By ranking households
according to income size and share of total incomes, we can derive a measure
called the Gini coefficient to determine how income distribution changed.
Fourth, economists can ask how population welfare is improving by
measuring the trend of real wages for the three economic sectors, by
measuring the change in total household spending for food and drink over
time, by estimating the trend for major goods consumed per capita, and by
measuring changes in diet, medical care availability, and educational
opportunity, for example. All of these measures, when taken together, provide
some general indicators with which to judge whether the living standards of
the people are improving, remaining the same, or declining.
Finally, economists can ask to what extent destruction of the physical
environment has taken placesuch things as the smog content of urban air, soil
erosion, and pollution of rivers and lakes.

 Page 222
These five standards and their various statistical measures or indices provide
quantitative evidence for describing the performance of an economy
experiencing trend acceleration or economic transformation. Although there is
no single measure that can sum up the five standards, this obstacle should not
deter attempts to use these standards to make some general judgments about a
developing country’s economic performance.
The Case of the People’s Republic of China, 1952-1978
Turning now to the example of the People’s Republic of China, let me briefly
discuss how my first four standards would evaluate the performance of that
developing country in the first three decades of its history, namely from 1952
to 1978. I ignore the fifth standard for economic performance because of the
difficulty of obtaining reliable information for the entire country. I choose the
cutoff year of 1978 because the Chinese Communist Party “line” changed very
dramatically after Deng Xiaoping took over the reins of power.
Prior to 1978 the annual growth rate for output per capita first accelerated
during 1952-57 and then declined in the subsequent periods, 1957-65 and
1965-78. These rates of growth were 7.3 percent, 5.3 percent, and 5.1 percent,
respectively. The same trend was observed for Shanghai, except that during
the third period, output per capita, while higher than in the second period, was
still lower than during 1952-57. Although these figures show high output per-
capita growth rates, the annual fluctuation of GDP was extremely severe
during these years. For example, the annual rate of GDP growth was negative
in the early and mid-1960s, and it declined sharply in the late 1950s, the late
1960s and the early to mid-1970s. Sharp fluctuation of GDP represents a great
loss of output and resources for society.
Typically, the service sector expands its contribution to GDP over time as the
economic transformation deepens, but in the case of the PRC, its sectoral share
of GDP steadily declined after the 1952-57 period. At the same time, there did
not occur any shift of labor from the agricultural sector to the manufacturing
and service sectors, a phenomenon that typically occurs because developing
countries successfully allocate more labor to urban manufacturing and
services. Yet these same developments had occurred in regions like Shanghai
before 1937.
Turning to capital and labor productivity, for the years 1949

 Page 223
to 1976 various studies have shown that the productivity of capital declined. In
fact, less output was being produced from each new unit of capital in the
1958-62 period than in 1953-57, and this pattern worsened during the years
1966-70 and 1970-75. 2
Surveys of labor productivity in the stated-owned industrial enterprises of
Shanghai, Nanking, Soochow, Nantung, Wuhsi, and Nanchang also revealed
that labor productivity had declined between 1971 and 1978. As for total
factor productivity, Anthony Tang’s estimates for the agricultural sector
indicate that productivity growth in the rural sector might very well have been
zero during much of the period except for land.
As for income distribution, my measures are fragmentary. But taking these
results in their entirety, some experts like Martin King Whyte have concluded
that after the early 1950s income distribution remained relatively unchanged,
with differences between the urban and rural sectors continuing to exist,
especially between social strata.3 Because of the limited intersectoral flow of
resources, consumer goods rationing, and the slow expansion of real income
per capita, income distribution probably remained fairly constant between
1953 and 1978.
But how equal had income distribution become after the great land reform of
1949-52, in which rural and urban property rights had been radically
redistributed? A recent report shows that the Gini coefficient for urban worker
income distribution was 0.185 in 1977 and 0.237 for rural income distribution
in 1978.4 These are among the world’s lowest Gini coefficients, but low Gini
coefficients characterize Marxist-Leninist regimes because they strongly stress
egalitarianism.
What about consumer welfare? Life expectancy increased as public health
measures slowly improved, rising from 36 years in 1950 to 64 years in 1979,
whereas the average for low-income countries in 1979 was only 51 years and
61 years for middle-income countries. Likewise, the adult literacy rate rose
from 20 percent in 1949 to 66 percent in 1979, and primary school enrollment
as a percentage of school-age children rose from 25 to 93 percent, although it
declined sharply after 1966-67. But perhaps 10 to 15 million people died
needlessly during land reform and the socialization of the country during
1949-58, and maybe another 20 million or more died from famine and
malnutrition-related disease between 1958 and 1961, when harvests failed
because of ill-conceived party-state policies.
Only modest living standard improvement for consumers occurred between
1957 and 1981. Urban worker household real in-

 Page 224
come doubled over this near-twenty-year period at roughly a 3.5 percent
annual growth rate, but rural household income rose only 82 percent over the
same period. Meanwhile, the income gap between the two sectors had slightly
widened by the late 1970s. Because expenditures also kept pace, the savings
ratio, already high in the early period, did not rise over the period. Meanwhile,
the percentage of household spending for food remained about the same for
urban and rural workers. The regime even had to initiate consumer rationing in
1954, and rationing continued throughout the period. In fact, the average per
capita consumption of grain and cooking oil declined between 1957 and 1965.
Average per-capita consumption of sugar and cloth remained virtually
unchanged during 1952-65. To sum up, I observe little substantial
improvement in consumer welfare for the Chinese people after the mid-1950s.
The Post-1978 Period
In 1978, the party decided to do something about the economy and try to raise
productivity. Party leaders admitted that the previous thirty years had been a
period of enormous waste of scarce resources; far too much capital had been
produced and inefficiently utilized; consumer welfare had been needlessly
sacrificed to produce excess capital, which was merely wasted; worker
productivity was low because labor was not properly rewarded; enterprises
had little incentive to innovate; the service sector was in disarray. 5 In brief,
there had been wasted years, and Mao Zedong’s misguided policies were
blamed.
After 1978, economic growth picked up and output growth became more
stable, with net domestic product growing at an annual rate of 5.8 percent
between 1978 and 1982. There were modest indications that labor productivity
was slowly rising for the first time since the early 1950s. As for income
distribution, a slow tilt toward inequality in the countryside seemed to be
taking place, but this was a very modest change: the Gini coefficient had only
risen from 0.237 in 1978 to 0.264.
The most impressive improvement occurred in consumer welfare. Urban
income increased much more rapidly than in the subsequent period, partly
because of higher wage bonuses for urban industry, but mainly because of the
spurt in rural income unleashed by the decollectivization policies that had
materialized by 1981-82. A great boom in rural housing construction took
place in the

 Page 225
1980s. Per-capita consumption of goods and services rose impressively,
especially in the cities like Shanghai. All of these developments reflected a
sharp break with the pattern of economic development of the previous period.
These changes can be summarized in table 1, listing my four economic
standards and denoting the type of standard change that occurred by a plus or
minus sign for the two designated periods.
Conclusion
The PRC certainly did not experience long term trend acceleration after 1952,
and the economic performance of that huge country was mixed. If economists
try to judge that performance by four general economic standards, it is clear
that for the first three decades, production greatly fluctuated, productivity
remained low or declined, and economic welfare indicators for living
standards, as judged by consumption of key goods and services, did not rise
impressively. Income distribution did become more equal, but that
achievement came as the result of a great land reform in which many landlords
and wealthy farmers were dispossessed of their property and even killed.
Income distribution did not become more equal as a result of economic
growth, as it did in the newly industrializing countries of the Pacific Basin
after World War II.
After 1978 the PRC leadership charted a new policy course. The government
gave more private property rights to farmers and allowed them to engage in
more contracting with each other to rent land and hire labor. The government
also encouraged the increase of private service enterprises and even some
private manufacturing. But the expansion of the private sector, even after a
decade, has been extremely modest. In fact, the regime has publicly claimed
that state and collective-owned enterprises will continue to dominate in the
economy. Even so, the leadership proposes to relax controls over these
socialist enterprises and allow them more freedom to contract with each other
and produce only a few commodities under central planning.
The consequences of these new economic reforms have been rather impressive
in the short run. Rural income and output rapidly rose, as did the living
standards of rural people. But by the late 1980s inflation and scarcity of
commodities were becoming widespread, and rapid price increases exceeded
the wage gains made

 Page 226
by urban workers. Whether labor and capital productivity will continue to
grow on a sustained basis still remains a serious question for the new
leadership that came to power after the Tienanmen incident of 1989.
An Evaluation of Communist China’s Economic Performance:
1952-78 and 1978-83
1952-78 1978-83
Four Economic Standards Value Value
change change
1. GDP per capita:
Rises ( + )
Declines ()
() / (0)a ( + ) / (0)a
Fluctuates (0)
2. Sources of GDP growth:
A. Partial productivity change (labor and
capital):
Rises ( + )
Declines () () (0)?
Remains unchanged (0)
B. Total productivity change:
Rises ( + )
Declines ()
Remains unchanged (0) () (0)?
3. Income distribution:
More equal ( + )
Less equal () ( + ) urban
( + ) / (0)
Remains unchanged (0) ( + ) rural
4. Welfare change:
A. Engel coefficient:
Rises ( + )
(0) urban (0) urban
Declines ()
( + ) rural () rural
Remains unchanged (0)
B. Goods and services per capita:
Rises ( + )
Declines ()
( + )/ (0) ( + )
Remains unchanged (0)
aFirst value reflects overall long-term trend; second value indicates
serious fluctuations over significant short-term periods.
bFirst value reflects initial change; second value indicates long-term
trend.

 Page 227
After 1978 the Communist Party introduced new economic reforms to reverse
the economic stagnation that had beset the Chinese economy during the
previous decades. Whether those economic reforms will be continued and can
reverse that trend and maintain stable, high per-capita output growth rates
achieved through rising factor productivity is still the critical problem for the
Communist Party to solve in the coming decade.
Notes
1. This essay draws heavily upon my essay “How Can We Evaluate
Communist China’s Economic Development Performance,” Issues and Studies
23, no. 2 (February 1987): 122-55. This was a special issue devoted to the
theme of Chinese modernization and the methodology of evaluation.
2. Shigeru Ishikawa, “China’s Economic Growth Since 1949An Assessment,”
The China Quarterly 94 (June 1983): 256, table 5, col. 4.
3. Martin King Whyte, “Inequality and Stratification in China,” The China
Quarterly 64 (December 1979): 684-711.
4. Li Chengrui, “Economic Reforms Bring Better Life,” Beijing Review 28,
no. 29 (22 July 1985): 22.
5. Probably the best economic survey undertaken by Chinese economists can
be found in Ma Hong and Sun Shangqing, eds., “Studies in the Problems of
China’s Economic Structure,” Foreign Broadcast Information Service, China
Report: Economic Affairs, JPRS-CEA-84-064: 1-2 (3 Aug. 1984): 1:1-289,
2:299-578.

 Page 228

The Economies of Island and Mainland China:

Taiwan as a Systemic Model
Jan S. Prybyla
The Economies of Island and Mainland China
The Historical Record
Under the scrutiny of every major indicator of performance, the economy of
Taiwan over the last three decades and a half has been a resounding success, a
triumphal march from poverty to prosperity. In real terms, between 1952 and
1985 product growth on Taiwan has been nearly twice that on the mainland
(table 1). 1 On a per-capita basis (at current prices) the situation from 1960
through 1987 developed as shown in figure 1.
When other dimensions of growth are taken into account, the comparison is
less favorable to the mainland than table I and figure 1 suggest.
1. Taiwan growth has been the addition of useful output. A sizeable part of
mainland growth has been useless because the goods produced were of poor
quality, of the wrong assortment, in the wrong locations, or not needed. This is
a system-related problem of coordination shared by all centrally planned
”Soviet-type” socialist economies without exception. Example: in 1987,
despite an acute shortage, 30 million bicycles were in government warehouses
because they could not be sold. They could not be sold because they did not
work.
2. Despite Taiwan’s sensitivity to economic fluctuations beyond
© 1988 by Jan S. Prybyla. This article has been published in the December 1988
volume of Issues & Studies (Taipei) and is published here with the permission of
that journal.

 Page 229
Table 1
Indexes of Gross National Product (GNP) and National Income (IN),
Taiwan and the Mainlanda

1952 = 100
Taiwan Mainland
Year Gross National Product National Income
1952 100 100
1985 1,544.2 820.2

Sources: Taiwan: Taiwan Statistical Data Book 1987. Mainland:

Statistical
Yearbook of China 1986.
aTaiwan: 1981 prices. Mainland: “comparable prices.”
bNational income mainland definition. This consists of the sum
of values-added by the “productive” (material) sectors of the
economy and is roughly equivalent to net material product.

the island’s shores (especially in the United States), Taiwan’s growth has been
relatively smooth. Mainland long-term growth, on the other hand, has been
very uneven. This unevenness includes one megasized depression (1959-62),
resulting in a population drop of 13 1/2 million in two years (1960 and 1961)
according to official figures. The actual drop was probably greater. 2
3. Taiwan’s growth has been balanced, with industry, agriculture, transport,
communications, commerce and other service trades working in tandem. By
contrast, in line with the Soviet-type system’s developmental philosophy,
growth on the mainland has been highly skewed, resulting in larger inter- and
intrasectoral imbalances. Among the more important have been neglect (a) of
consumption in favor of accumulation, (b) of agriculture and light (consumer
goods) industry compared with heavy industry, and (c) of investment in
“nonproductive” construction (e.g., housing) relative to “productive”
construction (factories). These imbalances had disincentive effects on the
labor force and thus on labor productivity, confirming Milovan Djilas’
characterization of the Soviet-type socialist economy as “a non-market,
bureaucratic economy . . . where all real values, including the value of work,
are lost.”
4. Taiwan’s growth has been modernizing (“going up market”) in three senses:
(a) the growth has been intensive, that is, attributable mainly to improvements
in factor productivity; (b) it has raised the technological level of the economy
(from tennis shoes to cus-

 Page 230

Figure 1
Gross National Product/National Income Per Head*
Source: The Economist, March 5, 1988
*Taiwan: gross national product Mainland: national income, mainland definition.

 Page 231
tomized computer chips) so that today Taiwan is on the verge of joining the
select community of the world’s high-tech producers; and (c) the growth has
restructured the composition of domestic product and employment, away from
agriculture, toward industry, commerce, financial, and other services. After
1956 and until 1980, this modernizing process of growth was much less
evident on the mainland. Output growth was (a) obtained mainly by extensive
means, that is, through addition of factors (especially labor and capital)in
terms of domestic product, there was an annual decline of factor productivity
between 1957 and 1982 of 1.1 percent; 3 (b) the technological level of the
economy stayed stagnant; and (c) despite industrial advance, both the
domestic product and employment of the mainland remained deeply marked
by agriculture, while the share of commercial and other services (the tertiary
sector) was in retreat (table 2). In 1985 on the mainland, 63 percent of the
labor force was employed in agriculture, down from around 80 percent in
1952. In 1985 on Taiwan, 17.5 percent of the labor force was in agriculture,
down from 56 percent in 1952.
5. Last, but by no means least, the benefits of growth have been equitably
shared in Taiwan, increasingly so as the pie grew larger.4 While the inequality
of income distribution on the mainland is low, in fact, one of the lowest in the
world,5 three qualifications should be noted: (a) partly because of the
comparatively sluggish product growth over the years, partly because of a
low-incomes policy pursued during the Maoist period, the relative equality
Table 2
Sectoral Origin of Net Domestic Product (Taiwan)
and Net Material Product (Mainland)

(Percentage shares)
Taiwan Mainland
1952 1985 1952 1985
Agriculture 35.7 6.9 57.7 41.4
Industry 13.5 40.2 19.5 41.5
Construction 4.4 5.0 3.6 5.5
Transporta 3.8 5.5 4.3 3.5
Commerce 23.9 15.3 14.9 8.1
Otherb 23.9 27.1
Sources: As in Table 1.
aTaiwan: Transport and communications.
bBanking, insurance, real estate, government services, other
services.

 Page 232
of income on the mainland amounts to poverty equally shared; (b) as with
product growth, there have been fluctuations in the degree of inequality in the
distribution of income, depending on changes in institutional property
relations in agriculture and industry and in policy regarding growth; (c)
enormous inequalities between the privileged class of power-holders and
everyone else have always existed on the mainland in regard to the distribution
of the material “rents” extracted by the privilegentsia of party cadres and state
apparatus bureaucrats from the public assets under their control, and the
nonmaterial perquisites accruing to them from the political power monopoly
of the Communist Party. When dealing with autocratic regimes, especially the
really thorough communist autocracies, this “power income” aspect of overall
income distribution is of particular significance. After all, at the time of his
death, Mao was reportedly earning less than 500 yuan ($250) a month.

Taiwan has become one of the world’s leading traders; the twelfth largest
trading country in the world in 1987, and the fifth most important trading
partner of the United States. Per-capita foreign trade, which was $38 in 1952,
came to $3,304 in 1986 (current prices). For a variety of reasons, including
bouts of xenophobic self-imposed self-sufficiency, mainland China has been
slow to emerge from its cocoon and take advantage of wealth-promoting
international specialization (table 3). Taiwan’s trade since the mid 1970s has
been consistently in surplus, resulting in accumulations of huge foreign
exchange reservesin 1987, at $75 billion, the world’s second largest after
Japan. Since its emergence as a trader on world markets in the early 1980s, the
mainland has had varying trade surpluses and deficits reflected in wide
fluctuations of its foreign exchange reserves.
Taiwan’s rate of natural population increase fell slowly from 3.3 percent in
1952 to 1 percent in 1986. This decline (like that of Japan earlier) was the
spontaneous byproduct of modernizing economic growth, voluntary decisions
made by urbanized families to have fewer children. The mainland, after
following see-saw policies on the issue, reduced its rate of increase from 2.3
percent in 1953 to 1.4 percent in 1986. The decline was due in large measure
to the implementation of Draconian birth-control measures (the one child per
family policy), which has earned mainland China criticism from many
quarters for violation of basic human rights.

 Page 233
Table 3
Foreign Trade
(US$ billion)
Taiwana Mainlandb
Year Total Exports Imports Balance Total ExportsImportsBalance
1952 0.31 0.12 0.19 -0.07 1.94 0.82 1.12 - 0.30
1960 0.46 0.16 0.30 -0.14 3.81 1.86 1.95 - 0.09
1965 1.01 0.45 0.56 -0.11 4.25 2.23 2.02 0.21
1970 3.00 1.48 1.52 -0.04 4.59 2.26 2.23 0.03
1975 11.26 5.31 5.95 -0.64 14.75 7.26 7.49 - 0.23
1980 39.54 19.81 19.73 0.08 37.82 18.27 19.55 - 1.28
1985 50.82 30.72 20.10 10.62 69.61 27.36 42.25 - 14.89
1986 63.96 39.79 24.17 15.62
Sources: Taiwan: Taiwan Statistical Mainland: Statistical Yearbook of
Date Book 1987 China 1986
aCustoms statistics.
bFigures before 1980 are from Ministry of Foreign Trade.
Figures after 1981 are from Customs Statistics, according to the
Statistical Yearbook

The Record Since 1979

Three years after Mao’s death, mainland China began to move away from the
Maoist variant of the Soviet-type economy and, indeed, perhaps from the
Soviet-type centrally planned system itself (although the jury is still out on
that one). This movement has had three major components: (a) an incentives-
related change of policy regarding the neo-Stalinist priorities (or goals) of the
economya movement away from the three imbalances discussed earlier toward
emphasis on consumption, agriculture and light industry, and “nonproductive”
construction; (b) an institutional reform stressing markets and de facto
privatization of property rights, particularly in agriculture, but since 1984 also
in industry and the urban sector in general (albeit more hesitantly, against
strong opposition), involving attempts to introduce elements of factor and
financial markets; and (c) an opening up to the world market, including
relatively generous provisions for foreign investments on the mainland.
Looked at another way, the change since 1979 represents a shift of
developmental strategy from near-autarchy to a combination of import
substitution and export promotion with growing emphasis on the last.
Perceiving a not-too-distant threat to its traditional exports from the
mainland’s

 Page 234
rapidly growing involvement in world trade (and the mainland’s comparative
advantage in labor costs), Taiwanwhich has a long record of correctly and
quickly anticipating trends in the international economyhas initiated steps in
the early 1980s to upgrade the structure of its economy toward higher value-
added, high technology goods and the development of financial services
(partly perhaps in anticipation of the likely decline of Hong Kong in the 1990s
as one of East Asia’s leading financial centers). To blunt the protectionist blow
from abroad (especially from the U.S.), Taiwan has also begun to moderate (if
not yet give up) its longstanding policy of export promotion-cum-import
substitution by taking various measures of import and capital export
liberalization. 6 These economic steps were accompanied by political
liberalization of genuine democratic content, exceeding quantitatively and
qualitatively the political adjustments made by the mainland since the
Thirteenth Congress of the Communist Party in 1987. In this way, Taiwan’s
image as a model not only of materially successful but of politically
progressive development is brightened.
The data on GNP/national income per person in Taiwan and on the mainland
(figure 1 above) suggest that since 1979 (when mainland economic changes
took off) Taiwan has more than held its own. In fact, the gap has grown larger
than ever before. Nevertheless the growth performance of the mainland
economy since 1979 has been creditable (table 4), approaching the dynamism
of the four East Asian tigers (Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore).
Taiwan’s precautionary steps appear well founded assuming that the mainland
changes will continue in the general direction they have taken so far.
With the adoption of the open door policy, mainland China rapidly increased
its foreign trade turnover. Between 1979 and 1986 mainland exports rose 2.3
times and imports 2.7 times. During the same period Taiwan exports rose 2.5
times and imports increased 1.6 times (table 5). This has resulted in the
already mentioned massive accumulation of foreign exchange reserves (the
bulk of them held in U.S. dollar securities), a “mountain of gold” that is
causing Taiwan more trouble than perhaps it is worth by, among other factors,
fueling protectionist sentiments in the United States (figure 2). Some academic
economists on Taiwan have argued for a reduction of the reserves (through
import liberalization, relaxation of restrictions on private investments abroad,
and encouragement of domestic consumption), an argument that seems
increasingly valid to government policymakers.7 Neobul-

 Page 235
Table 4
Annual Growth Rates of Real Gross National Product (Taiwan)
and National Income (Mainland)a
(Percent)
Year Taiwan Mainland
1979 8.46 5.0
1980 7.13 0.4
1981 5.71 2.5
1982 3.30 6.4
1983 7.88 8.3
1984 10.52 11.7
1985 5.08 3.5
1986 11.64 1.4
Sources: Taiwan: National Conditions of the Republic of China,
Autumn 1986, 1987. Mainland: Statistical Yearbook of China 1986;
Beijing Review 9 February, 1987, 24; ibid., 2 March 1987, 20.
aTaiwan: at 1981 constant prices. Mainland: At current prices adjusted
for annual inflation rate; national income defined as in table 1.

lionist sentiments, however, die hard, and the advice to keep the reserves large
in case of military emergency remains persuasive to some in positions of
influence. The mainland’s problem since the late 1970s has been to prevent
recurrent massive hemorrhaging of its hard currency reserves (such as
occurred in 1978-80 and again in 1984-86. The 1978-80 problem was caused
primarily by ignorance. Liberated from Mao’s “all-round” self-sufficiency,
mainland buyers acted like children in a candy store, necessitating a painful
retrenchment and the cancellation of several large import-based investment
projects. The 1984-86 seepage was due mainly to the center’s loss of control
over hard currency imports by local authorities and enterprises, a phenomenon
spurred by the system’s chronic investment hunger. 8
As noted earlier, while the long-run (1952-86) quantitative (growth) record of
Taiwan is much better than that of the mainlanddomestically and in terms of
external trade, on an overall as well as a per-capita basisthe more significant
difference between the two economies is in the area of qualitative
performance, particularly as regards the quality of goods and services
produced (the proportion of useful to total output), the attention paid to
consumer welfare (which is what economies are supposed to be about), and
the modernization of growth (the contribution to growth of improvements in
factor productivity through technological invention and innovation). Much of
the effort of the mainland’s

 Page 236

Figure 2
Foreign Exchange Reserves
Source: The Economist, March 5, 1988.

 Page 237
Table 5
Foreign Trade
(US$ billion)
Taiwana Mainlandb
Year Total Exports Imports Balance Total Exports Imports Balance
1979 30.87 16.10 14.77 1.33 29.33 13.66 15.67 - 2.01
1980 39.54 19.81 19.73 0.08 37.82 18.27 19.55 - 1.28
1981 43.81 22.61 21.20 1.41 44.02 22.01 22.01 0
1982 41.09 22.20 18.89 3.31 41.63 22.35 19.28 3.07
1983 45.41 25.12 20.29 4.83 43.62 22.23 21.39 0.84
1984 52.42 30.46 21.96 8.50 53.55 26.14 27.41 - 1.27
1985 50.82 30.72 20.10 10.62 69.61 27.36 42.25 - 14.89
1986 63.96 39.79 24.17 15.62 73.80 30.90 42.90 - 12.00
Sources: Taiwan: National Conditions of the Republic of China,
Autumn 1986, 1987; Taiwan Statistical Data Book 1987. Mainland:
Statistical Year-book of China 1986; Beijing Review,2 March 1986, 25.
aCustoms statistics.
bFigures before 1980 are from Ministry of Foreign Trade. Figures after
1981 are from Customs Statistics, according to the Statistical Yearbook
of China 1986.

economic reformers since 1979 has been directed at reducing this quality
difference between mainland and island growth. The success to date has been
greater in agriculture than in industry. Spectacular output increases in
agriculture have been obtained with a smaller labor force and the use of a
smaller farm area than previously. Some 80-100 million farm workers have
been made superfluous and most of them have been absorbed by rapidly
expanding rural industries. Increases in industrial output, on the other hand,
have been obtained in the old wayprimarily through additions of capital and
labor. Between 1978 and 1983, factor productivity in state sector industry
declined. A 28 percent growth of net output was obtained by a 49 percent
increase of capital and a 17 percent increase of labor. 9
The qualitative difference between Taiwan and the mainland is due in critical
measure to a difference of systems. Centrally planned socialist economies
have in the past exhibited fast rates of domestic product and foreign trade
growth, but they were, and remain, inferior to the market system in three
qualitative respects: they are enormously wasteful (much useless, substandard,
unwanted outputor massive static inefficiency); they neglect demand, treating
the consumer as a means rather than the end of economic activity; and they
suffer from arthritic technologi-

 Page 238
cal innovation and diffusion which, together with consumer neglect, contribute
to low factor productivity (including widespread labor apathy). These
disabilities are traceable to the system’s defective institutional arrangements of
information, coordination, motivation, and property. 10 These defects can be
overcome by structural reform, that is, by a change of system. Taiwan provides
a model for such systemic turnaround.
Taiwan as a Systemic Model
It is argued in some quarters that Taiwan cannot serve as a model of exemplary
economic (and political) growth because it is too small, because it has a
peculiar history, because it received generous U.S. aid, or for any number of
other reasons that allegedly make it a ”special case.” Such argument is
erroneous. Of course, no model can be transferred bodily without some
adjustment and modification. Even on that score it could be contended that
Taiwan and the mainland have a common history, culture, and language,
which should make model transfers easier than in other instances where these
commonalities are lacking.
What matters most, however, are the systemic arrangements, the economic
institutions (legally sanctioned and protected ways of allocating scarce
resources among competing alternative uses) that deal with information about
relative marginal costs and utilities in the system (i.e., scarcity relationships),
the coordination of allocative decisions, the motivation of the system’s agents
(the incentive structure), and the nature and distribution of property rights to
goods and services and the products of those goods and services. These
institutional arrangements, through which economic policy is pursued, are
based on an economic philosophy comprised of positive and normative
principles: economic theory and economic ethics. An economic system is
essentially a set of interrelated, internally consistent ideas about what should
be done, by whom, for whom, and howideas embodied in the rule of law. It is
a logical whole. Individual parts cannot be lifted out of context and grafted
onto another, different, perhaps opposite system. If intersystemic transfer is to
take place, one system must be substituted for another. Moreover, such total
substitution necessitates the transfer of the sociopolitical environment within
which the system that is adopted has been conceived and nurtured. It is
impossible, for example, for a centrally planned economyif it is to benefit
from the market system’s superior institutional

 Page 239
arrangements with respect to static and dynamic efficiency and material
plentyto (a) use bits and pieces of the market and some privatization of
property, but reject the market as an organic whole; (b) adopt the institutions
of the market system, but reject the market philosophy in either its theoretical
or ethical form (e.g., adopt the market system, but use a Marxist theory of
value to explain it, and “socialist morality” to sustain it); and (c) adopt market
institutions and philosophy, but reject the sociopolitical culture (social and
political pluralism and freedom, the marketplace of ideas) that gave rise to
those institutions and philosophy. One has to buy the whole package or
nothing. And that is the fundamental reason why voluntary, peaceful
intersystemic transfers are so difficult to accomplish.
I would suggest that in the case of island and mainland China, where the
superiority of the island system has been so clearly demonstrated over nearly
four decades, the transfer of the Taiwan model to the mainland, while certainly
not easy, is perhaps relatively easier than the adoption, say, of Western
European capitalism by the Soviet Union. That seems to be so not only
because of the already mentioned shared history, language, and culture, and
the dire straits to which socialist economics (pushed to its extreme by Mao)
had brought the mainland, but to the fact that Taiwan’s market system has
absorbed those elements of the Confucian tradition and Sun Yat-sen’s Three
Principles of the People that are compatible with and supportive of the
dominant free market institutions and free market philosophy. 11 In this sense,
Taiwan’s market system has truly Chinese characteristics, besides being
effective in providing the people with an abundance of goods and facilitating
the emergence of an increasingly pluralistic and democratic society and polity.
What the mainland has to come to terms with, if it is serious about overcoming
its three great disabilitieschronic shortages, static misallocations, dynamic
inefficiencyand their many negative derivatives (e.g., apathy, sloth,
bureaucratism, corruption) is capitalism with Chinese characteristics, which is
what Taiwan has to offer, and as a natural extension of it, political democracy
with Chinese characteristics. Such acceptance on the part of the mainland
(certainly difficult, but not impossible on the longer view) would produce the
only viable solutionnot of “one country, two systems,” but of one country, one
system.
Before looking more closely at the Taiwan model of a market economy with
Chinese characteristics, one contributory factor of Taiwan’s success must be
mentioned. Although U.S. aid and

 Page 240
the U.S. military shield were important in that they permitted the system to
take root and develop in the early years, more important by far has been the
easy access to the huge American market provided by the United States to
Taiwan since the beginning and to this day. This liberality, greater than that of
any other developed capitalist country or region (e.g., Japan, Western Europe),
had made it possible for Taiwan’s export promotion policy to succeed and has
been a key element in enabling the market system of Taiwan to show what it
can do. If reciprocity is secured, there is no reason why this liberal attitude
should not continue in a wider context of one China, one (market) system.
Taiwan is a model of a market system with private property as the dominant
form of ownership and state intervention in behalf of the market and private
property. The underlying philosophy is that of individual economic freedom,
voluntary transactions, and competition. Taiwan subscribes with Confucian
decorum to Adam Smith’s dictum that “consumption is the sole end and
purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended
to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.” The
presence of an interventionist government is sometimes cited to dispute the
free market-private property characterization of Taiwan’s economic system.
This, however, is based on a misunderstanding. Capitalism is what people
(perhaps with the exception of the Russians) do when you leave them alone.
The essence of laissez-faire is precisely to leave people alone to do their
buying and selling and to maximize their satisfactions and their profits as best
they see fit on the basis of information supplied by workably supply-demand
responsive market prices. Laissez-faire never meant the absence of
government from the picture. It meant the limitation of the government’s
economic functions to certain tasks needed (1) to protect competition and
private property rights, including the provision of a legal order (protection of
contracts), external defense (critical in the case of Taiwan), money, and public
goods; (2) to tackle externalities (through the market mechanism where
possible); and (3) to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. 12
It does not preclude the government from taking steps to initiate and
encourage the process of economic growth and development through, for
example, land reform that encourages more widespread private ownership of
land, research and development expenditures designed to promote an up-
market restructuring of the economy, even temporary (but they must be
temporary) policies of “sheltered growth” for infant industries, export
promotion, support

 Page 241
for education (provision of equal opportunity for all at the start), and
correction of highly skewed, politically explosive income disparities where
these are due to market imperfections. That the government on Taiwan has
acted in the promarket, proprivate property spirit is evidenced, among other
factors, by the fact that whereas in 1952 the state owned 57 percent of
industrial output, by 1962 its share had fallen to 46 percent, 19 percent by
1972, 14 percent by 1982, and 10 percent today. 13 By contrast, the first
economic function of government on the mainland has been to severely limit
and control when it was not bent on destroying the market and private
property, an attitude that has changed only recently but has not been totally
reversed. The government of Taiwan encouraged development through its
policies of import substitution (1950s), export promotion (1960s, 1970s)and,
more perilously from the U.S. perspective, export promotion-with-import
substitution through the mid 1980s. It set an example for others to follow in
creating a climate favorable to foreign (export-oriented) investment on the
island and lately has begun a process of import liberalization, encouragement
of domestic consumption and investment, liberalization of capital exports, and
technologically upward restructuring of the economy. In general, the
government’s policies have been pragmatic, guided by capitalistic financial
discipline and the principle of market economics in command of politics.
Taiwan’s market institutions and market philosophy dovetail into Sun’s key
principles of “people’s livelihood” (attention to consumption), “land to the
tillers” (note Taiwan’s exemplary land reform, which provided one of the
foundations of the island’s industrialization), government intervention to
facilitate intersectoral capital transfers from land (traditional use) to modern
industrial uses, and the view that international trade and financial relations (the
international cash nexus) are not inherently exploitative (rejection of
dependency theory; welcome extended to foreign investment and
multinationals).
I believe it is by now understood on the mainland, certainly by the brighter
academic economists and some economist-officials, that much can be learned
from Taiwan. What is not so clearly understood is that to do its work properly
in solving the mainland’s structural problems, Taiwan’s systemic model has to
be adopted in its entirety, including the system’s economic philosophy and
environmental political culture of pluralism and expanding democracy. Even if
understood, such a package deal is extremely difficult for a monopoly
autocratic party staffed by a multimillion-member

 Page 242
privilegentsia to accept. Partial transplants will not do, and wholesale rejection
of the model will mean that the mainland’s structural defects will continue to
stall the economy, frustrate consumer aspirations, and lead to competitive
decadence with other reform-resistant socialist economies. The Chinese
characteristics of Taiwan’s capitalist model may ease somewhat the painful
decisions that mainland leaders have to make on what to do with their obsolete
and unworkable centrally planned system with Soviet characteristics. In any
event, the Taiwan model is available for the asking: its institutions, its positive
theory, and its economic ethics. Who knows, it might yet be adopted by the
mainland out of sheer historical necessity, under growing popular pressure.
For Taiwan the first task ahead seems to be to continue on its way toward
greater riches. Snooty governments may not diplomatically recognize but
cannot ignore a country with a per-capita GNP of $17,000 or thereabouts,
which Taiwan will reach by the year 2000. Taiwan’s second task is to maintain
social peace and political stability, while modernizing its polity in a
democratic directiona difficult but not impossible assignment. Its third task is
to avoid being lured into ever more intimate economic relations with the
mainland without concrete evidence, carefully inspected, that each step in the
growing intimacy is attended by market-oriented structural changes of the
mainland’s economic system. Without such common-sense caution, Taiwan,
for all its riches and temporal success, could slide into a tragic (for itself), one
country-one system situationthe system being socialism with Soviet
characteristics.
Notes
1. The validity of Table 1 rests on an enormous act of faith in the veracity and
technical competence of the China mainland figures. Given the checkered
history of mainland China’s statistical services, the belief may well be
misplaced. The quality of Taiwan’s statistics is equal to that of the most
advanced market democracies.
2. State Statistical Bureau, Statistical Yearbook of China 1986 (Oxford, New
York, Tokyo: Oxford University Press, 1986), 71.
3. K. C. Yeh, “Macroeconomic Changes in the Chinese Economy during the
Readjustment,” The China Quarterly 100 (December 1984): table 6, p. 711.
The average annual growth of labor productivity in agriculture from 1957
through 1978 has been estimated at 0.2 percent (almost nothing), 2.8 percent
in construction, and 1.2 percent for services; ibid., table 4, p. 706.
4. Yuan-li Wu, Income Distribution in the Process of Economic Growth of the
Republic of China (Baltimore: University of Maryland School of Law,

 Page 243
Occasional Papers/Reprints Series in Contemporary Asian Studies, 2,
1977).
5. Irma Adelman and David Sunding, “Economic Policy and Income
Distribution in China,” Journal of Comparative Economics 11, no. 3
(September 1987): 444-61.
6. Jan S. Prybyla, “United States-Republic of China Economic Relations since
the Taiwan Relations Act: An American View,” paper presented at a
Symposium on ROC-US Relations under the Taiwan Relations Act: Practice
and Prospect, Institute of International Relations, Taipei, 5-6 April 1988.
7. S. C. Tsiang, “The ROC’s Balance of Trade Problems and Trade Dispute
with the U.S.,” Economic Review, The International Commercial Bank of
China, Taipei, no. 241, January-February 1988, 1-4.
8. “If you can wangle an investment project you also become a more
important factory with bigger bonuses, even if the production from the new
investment is not needed.” “One Awful Communist Example,” The Economist,
2 April 1988, 40. The investment allocation, incidentally, is a free gooda
nonreturnable grant from the state.
9. Gene Tidrick, “Productivity Growth and Technological Change in Chinese
Industry,” World Bank Staff Working Paper, no. 761, Washington, D.C., 1986.
10. Jan S. Prybyla, Market and Plan Under Socialism: The Bird in the Cage
(Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1987).
11. Like the so-called Protestant ethic, Confucian teachings are supportive of
the work ethic required by the market system. Sun Yat-sen’s teachings do not
constitute a complete economic system, institutionally or philosophically.
They can be used as supplements to the existing economic systems of
socialism and capitalismmore logically to the latter. A. James Gregor with
Maria Hsia Chang and Andrew B. Zimmerman, Ideology and Development:
Sun Yat-sen and the Economic History of Taiwan (Berkeley: University of
California, Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, 1981).
12. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, book 5; Milton and Rose Friedman,
Free to Choose (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 29-33;
Friedman rejects protection of infant industries as a legitimate function of
government in a market system.
13. The 10 percent, however, includes such strategic goods as steel, petroleum,
petrochemicals, electric power, and shipbuilding. The Economist, 5 March
1988, 13.

 Page 244

From China, with Disdain:

New Trends in the Study of China
Harry Harding
“It’s time to get beyond the American infatuation with the ‘new’ China.”
advertisement for Richard Bernstein, From the Center of the Earth: The Search for the
Truth about China (Little, Brown), in New York Times Book Review, 25 April 1982
Americans always seem to be busy clearing up misconceptions about China.
In an attempt to get beyond one set of misunderstandings, however, they often
create new ones to take their place. They substitute today’s “truth” for
yesterday’s myth, only to discover that today’s “reality” becomes tomorrow’s
illusion. This is why American attitudes towards China have undergone the
regular cycles of romanticism and cynicism, of idealization and disdain, that
were so well described twenty-five years ago in Harold Isaacs’ classic,
Scratches on Our Minds. 1
Over the past ten years, American attitudes towards China have experienced
another swing of the perceptual pendulum. The idealistic rhetoric of the
Cultural Revolution, together with the dramatic improvement in Sino-
American relations, created a period of pronounced fascination with China
that lasted through most of the 1970s. The Maoist vision of egalitarianism,
populism, and selflessness seemed attractive to many Americans. After twenty
years of hostility, the possibility of renewing a friendly relationship with
© 1982 by the regents of the University of California. Reprinted from Asian Survey,
22. no. 10 (October 1982): 934-58, by permission of the regents. This article is a
revised version of a paper presented at the Eleventh Sino-American Conference on
Mainland China, held in Taipei in June 1982. The author is grateful to the
participants in the conference for their constructive suggestions.

 Page 245
a quarter of mankind appealed to still more. A “China fever”or, as Lucian Pye
described it, a kind of “Marco Poloitis” 2swept the United States. Its
symptoms were not only the enraptured accounts of life in the PRC by the
early American visitors, but also the tidal wave of Chinoiserie that deluged
everything from art museums to hair salons and from interior design to high
couture.
Today, in the early 1980s, China is not the rage that it was a decade ago.
American museums now feature exhibitions of Alexander the Great rather
than Chin Shi Huang; Americans draw their fashion inspiration from the
patterns and colors of their own Southwest rather than from Mao jackets and
mandarin collars; and they worry more about crises in the Middle East,
Europe, and the South Atlantic than about their relations with China. A lecture
by the latest “been-to” no longer draws the crowd it once did, and enrollments
in many college courses on China have fallen precipitously.
As Americans recover from their “China fever,” their earlier idealization of the
PRC is giving way to something more cynical. An advertisement in the New
York Times Book Review for the memoirs of the first Time-Life correspondent
in Beijing offers us “China without illusions.” It promises that the book will
”get beyond the American infatuation with the ‘new’ Chinapast the carefully
cultivated images of the Travel Service tours, the spellbound rhapsodies of the
returned pilgrims” in its “search for the truth about China.”3 The new image of
China that is now emerging is stated most succinctly by the title given to an
article in Harper’s by an American who recently returned from a year teaching
English in Zhengzhou: “China Stinks.”4
This reassessment of China is, on the whole, a welcome phenomenon. Many
Americans are indeed beginning to move beyond idealization to gain a more
dispassionate and objective understanding of the PRC. And yet there is some
reason for concern that the reassessment may yield a revised image of China
that is, in its own way, nearly as one-sided, extreme, and distorted as the one it
has replaced. Ten years ago American travelers went “to China with love.”5
Now, they return from China with disdain. And this may produce not a healthy
realism about China, but rather a debilitating contempt. If so, reevaluation of
China may simply set the stage for another round of infatuation and euphoria a
decade hence, again in the name of “clearing up misunderstandings” about
China.

 Page 246

Changing Images of China

American images of China in the 1970s are to be found in a wide range of
literature, from essays in the New York Times to articles in China Quarterly,
and from scholarly volumes published by academic presses to commercial
books aimed at much wider audiences. Some of these writings were trip
reports, produced by the delegations and individual travelers who visited
China in the first years after the “ping-pong diplomacy” of 1971. 6 Others
represented the attempts of prominent American and European China
specialists to explain the ideals, goals, and policies of the Cultural Revolution
to a somewhat skeptical Western audience.7 Still others were efforts to
summarize China’s model of socioeconomic modernization and to assess its
applicability to other developing countries.8
This diverse literature presented no single interpretation of the PRC. Some
authors were highly critical of the Cultural Revolution; others were guarded.9
But the most prevalent view was highly positiveso much so, in fact, that it
constituted a virtual celebration of the goals, programs, and accomplishments
of China and its people under Communist rule.
The current reappraisal of China is also reflected in a broad spectrum of
writings, which began to appear after the death of Mao Zedong and the purge
of the Gang of Four in the fall of 1976. There has been a renewed attention to
human rights in China, as shown by Peter Moody’s scholarly analysis of the
suppression of political dissent, the major exposé of political imprisonment in
China compiled by Amnesty International, and Susan Shirk’s recommendation
that U.S. policy towards the PRC take into account Beijing’s violation of basic
civil and political rights.10 There have been careful efforts to measure the
performance and effectiveness of China’s socioeconomic system and to
compare them with the record of other Asian developing countries.11 And,
above all, there have been the new first-hand accounts, some by short-term
visitors, but mostly by the journalists, scholars, and teachers who were now
able to spend a year or two in China.12
Once again, these books and articles reached divergent conclusions about
contemporary Chinese politics and economics. But the dominant mood has
been one of disappointment and disillusionmenta discovery that China did not
achieve all that had been claimed for it in the 1970s and a realization that the
Chinese social order is seriously flawed. If Americans concluded in the 1970s
that Communism had succeeded in China, the most

 Page 247
common judgment in the early 1980s is that Communism has failedand failed
rather badly.
The differences between euphoria of the 1970s and the cynicism of the 1980s
can, in my judgment, be summarized under five different headings.
First, in the 1970s China was described as an egalitarian society that had
provided an adequate standard of living for all its people. Under a Communist
system shaped by Maoist values, the Chinese were said to have virtually
eliminated the economic differences between leaders and led, between skilled
and unskilled workers, and between cities and countryside that marred the
record of countries that had followed either the capitalist or Stalinist roads of
development. By requiring physical labor and military training for everyone
and by encouraging popular participation in politics and administration, the
party was ensuring that each citizenwhether cadre or peasant, worker or
intellectualwould have an equal role to play in China’s socialist society. At the
same time, the basic necessities of lifefood, medical care, education,
shelterwere provided at minimal charge and in adequate amounts to every
citizen. There were, according to these accounts, no slums, no beggars, no
hunger, no crime, and no flies in the new China.
More recently, however, Americans have rediscovered the fact that some
Chinese earn more than others and that virtually every walk of life has been
organized around a complex graduated salary scale. They have learned that
there is a serious disparity in incomes between rural and urban areas and an
even wider gap between the most advanced agricultural regions and the
poorest communes. 13 They have seen the arrogance and disdain with which
Han officials treat members of China’s national minorities.14 They have begun
to write about inflation, unemployment, and inefficiency in the Chinese
economy. And, above all, they have come to realize that the Chinese
themselves see enormous differences in social and economic status between
workers and technicians and between peasants and any type of urban resident.
As a second theme, China was described in the 1970s as a participatory and
populist society. In most other modern societies, both capitalist and
communist, politics had become enmeshed in bureaucratic routine, and
officials had become alienated and detached from the people they led. China
was seen as an important exception to this general trend. With the Cultural
Revolution, the Chinese Communists were attempting to find ways of reviving
direct contact between leaders and led, exercising popular control

 Page 248
over the bureaucracy, promoting direct mass involvement in decision making,
and thus preventing the formation of the “new class” of bureaucrats that Djilas
had identified as one of the major flaws of mature communism.
Few Americans went so far as the Japanese Sinologist Atsuyoshi Niijima, who
wrote on a visit to China in 1968: “I could literally hear my heart pounding.
Right here, I thought, I was witnessing a commune statethe state withering
away.” 15 But many Americans did see the May Seventh cadre schools,
revolutionary committees, and the “three-in-one combinations” as ways of
bridging the gap between elites and masses and of ensuring direct popular
participation in politics. Many Americans took seriously the idea that, during
the Cultural Revolution, the ordinary people of China were selflessly
concerned with ultimate political goals and actively involved in setting state
policies. As one political scientist put it, China had created ”flexible
institutions which are responsive to popular interests, encourage direct mass
participation, and are capable of controlling development on the basis of
values meaningfully determined by the people.16
In their reassessment, in contrast, Americans have begun to emphasize the
underlying elitism of the Chinese political system: the enormous gaps in status
and power between officials and the public, the chronic use of petty corruption
and personal connections to obtain favors from the bureaucracy, the
perquisitesbetter food, housing, resorts, and so onavailable to high ranking
cadres, and the attempts by officials to pass on their privileged positions to
their children.17 In Fox Butterfield’s words, “In purely monetary terms, it is
true, the Communists still maintain the appearance of their old egalitarianism.
All salaries are limited. But money by itself is not a good measure; the real
differences are the hidden privileges, prerogatives, and perquisites that go with
political status: the better housing, the chauffeur-driven cars, the special food
stores, and the ability to travel. It seemed to me that the Chinese obsession
with rank is at least as blatant as the snobbery of New York debutante
society.”18
Moreover, Americans have begun to write not of a flexible administrative
structure operating on the basis of direct contact between cadres and “the
masses,” but rather of an inflexible and cumbersome bureaucracy. James
Kenneson, for example, has described it this way: “The leader (of each basic-
level unit) is responsible, fiscally and ideologically, to a vast hierarchy of
officials towering over him all the way to Peking, each level further removed
from the realities at the bottom, each level afraid to take

 Page 249
problems to a higher level for fear of being criticized for not solving them
themselves, yet also terrified of making a wrong decision. This structure is as
unwieldy as a medieval assault tower, and results in a tremendous cost in
efficiency and time.” 19 Butterfield makes the same point even more
succinctly: in China, he writes, “avoiding responsibility has been raised to a
national art form.”20
Third, the accounts of the 1970s often depicted China as a highly committed
and virtuous nation, populated by some 800 million new socialist men and
women. The Cultural Revolution was described as China’s way of preventing
the alienation and anomie that characterized other modernizing societies. By
requiring regular political study, the Communist Party was said to be building
dedication and commitment to a common set of political goals and values. By
rejecting the selfish tendency to seek material gain for oneself or one’s family,
it was promoting service and sacrifice to the society at large.
Thus, American visitors saw in China a sense of harmony and unity, vigor, and
dedication, which they contrasted with the elitism, competitiveness, and moral
uncertainty of their own society. James Reston of the New York Times likened
the spirit of China to that of the American frontier in the nineteenth century.21
The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars wrote that their most vivid
impression was one of “vitalitythe enthusiasm, the humor, and the tremendous
commitment of her people to this new China.”22 And one of Shirley
MacLaine’s traveling companions put it this way: “It’s just that in China I see
all these people working as one person. They’re so selfless, and it defies
everything I’ve ever known, personally or in business. It’s heavy, you
know? . . . If I could stop thinking about myself, I could function better.”23
The current reappraisal is altering this image of China as a nation of new
socialist men and women. Chinese leaders today are described not as
committed statesmen, but rather as politicians who are interested only in their
own personal power and that of their factions, and in whose hands policy
options and matters of state become merely rhetorical symbols that can be
manipulated to further those ends.24 The Chinese people themselves, far from
being described as vital and committed, are now depicted as apathetic and
cynical. In one account of life in China, physical exercises are done in a
“comically desultory fashion,” political study is “regarded with almost
universal dread,” and “getting a soft job and doing as little as possible are the
universal ambitions.”25
Indeed, Fox Butterfield has gone so far as to suggest that “the

 Page 250
ubiquity and intensity of the control apparatus have generated tremendous
psychological pressures on the Chinese, creating mental strains that few
Westerners can imagine.” In the old image of China, everyone was happy and
at ease; now, Americans are told of a society in which a significant segment of
the population suffers from “nervous tension, depression, and anxiety.” 26
Fourth, in the 1970s many Americans used the most glowing terms to describe
both Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution he led. Mao was depicted as a
Chinese philosopher-king: a poet, statesman, strategist, and sage who was
grappling with some of the most profound social and moral issues of modern
times. Writing a scholarly obituary of Mao in 1976, Michel Oksenberg
compared the Chairman to Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill, Charles
deGaulle, and Franklin Roosevelt. At about the same time, Edward Friedman
argued: “By the example of his struggle [Mao] communicates the vigor of
hope, the vitality of possibility, the vision of justice. . . .Had he lived longer, he
probably would have pioneered yet brighter trails on steeper mountains.”27
The Cultural Revolution, in turn, was described as the most important and
innovative example of Mao’s concern with the pursuit of egalitarian, populist,
and communitarian ideals in the course of economic modernization. As I have
argued elsewhere, through most of the 1970s the prevailing interpretation was
that the Cultural Revolution was motivated by Mao’s inspiring vision of a fair
and just society, that its programs were effective measures for achieving this
vision, and that its human and economic costs were both necessary and
tolerable.28 If the Cultural Revolution had a shortcoming, it was merely that it
had not completely realized its ambitious goals. One China specialist readily
admitted that “Mao’s assault did not succeed in totally eliminating privatism,
self-interest, and elitism from Chinese society.” But, he immediately asked,
“should Mao be condemned for trying?”29
Today, in contrast, Mao and the Cultural Revolution are described in very
different terms. Writing in the New York Times Magazine, A. M. Rosenthal,
executive editor of the newspaper, has described the late chairman as a man
“possessed of a lunatic destructiveness,” and has likened him not to
democratic statesmen, but to Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot.30 In the later years of
his life, Rosenthal tells us, “Mao destroyed the intellectuals, wiped out the
universities and set China back, who knows, perhaps twenty years, perhaps
half a century. . . .The simple fact is that Mao’s fanaticismand how painfully
often we still underestimate the power of fanaticism, the connection between
Stalin and Hitler

 Page 251
and Mao and Jonestownwrecked what there was of China’s economy.” 31
The Cultural Revolution, once described as an innovative effort to create a
new political order in China, is now portrayed as a period of “chaos and
destruction” that produced “one of the worst totalitarian regimes the ancient
land had ever seen.”32 One scholar who had earlier praised Mao’s intentions
during the movement has more recently criticized the “abominations in the
1968 theory and practice of the Chinese Cultural Revolution left, of Maoism,”
and has concluded that these abominations caused the “red banner” of Chinese
communism to be “colored with the spilled blood of so many innocents,
heroes, and martyrs.”33 Fox Butterfield has likened the Cultural Revolution to
the Holocaust and, in a careful assemblage of official Chinese accounts of the
human costs of the movement, has estimated that 100 million people were
“affected” and between 400,000 and 850,000 were killed during it.34
Finally, in the 1970s China was described as a model of socioeconomic
developmentnot only for other developing countries, but possibly even for the
United States itself. Many scholars acknowledged the shortcomings of the
PRC, and the difficulty of transferring the Chinese model elsewhere. But the
common assumption was that, under Communist rule, China had achieved a
record of accomplishment that made it worthy of at least selective emulation
abroad. In Michel Oksenberg’s phrase, the latter half of the twentieth century
had become “the post-Chinese revolutionary era,” in which the Chinese
revolution would likely have a global impact comparable to that of the French
Revolution of the late eighteenth century, or the Russian Revolution of the
early twentieth.35
More recently, scholars have begun a comparative reassessment of China’s
social and economic performance, matching available information against
stated goals and programs, and comparing Chinese achievements against those
of other Asian countries. Nick Eberstadt’s series in the New York Review of
Books, for example, has indicated that China had done a great deal in the
promoting of education, literacy, nutrition, life span, equality, and women’s
rights, but that its record placed it in the middle of the developing countries in
Asia, rather than at the very top. The growing awareness of China’s actual
socioeconomic record, when coupled with the increasing willingness of
Chinese leaders to criticize their own economic system, has virtually ended the
earlier discussions of the “Chinese model.” In Jan Prybyla’s words: “When the
dust

 Page 252
settled in early 1981, people stopped talking about the ‘Chinese model’
because the model had been largely dismantled. . . .Instead of ‘Is the Chinese
developmental model transferable to other countries?’ the question now
became: ‘What developmental model can the Chinese borrow to get them out
of their bind?’ 36
One of the most striking features of the present reassessment of China is the
degree to which the same phenomena are described in very different terms
today than they were a decade ago. One obvious example is the treatment of
poverty and backwardness in China. In the 1970s many observers
acknowledged that China was still a poor, developing country. And yet, as
Paul Hollander has pointed out, the prevailing interpretation was that this
poverty was spiritually ennobling, since it meant that Chinese were not
possessed by the wasteful and acquisitive consumerism of the United States.
Indeed, there was a common supposition that, in poverty, the Chinese might
still have a higher “quality of life” than in the more industrialbut competitive
and pollutedenvironment of the West. In Hollander’s words, China was
“undeniably a poor nation, but its poverty was of an elevating, not debilitating,
nature.”37 Now, China’s poverty is simply debasing. Fox Butterfield has
described, in graphic terms, the struggle among beggars over the scraps of
food left in a restaurant in Xi’an by a group of foreign tourists.38 James
Kenneson describes daily life in China as “dull,” “barren,” “sparse,” and even
“brutal .”39
Consider a second example. Crossing the Chinese frontier at Lowu, between
capitalist Hong Kong and communist Guangdong, has always been a good
litmus test of American attitudes towards China. In her survey of the earliest
reports by short-term visitors to China, Sheila Johnson noted that a contrast
was usually drawn between the “large neat fields of the communes” in the
PRC and the “messy villages and fields of Hong Kong’s New Territories.”40
The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars described the “physical shock”
they experienced at the transition from “noisy, pushy, and crowded Hong
Kong” to “gentle” Guangzhou, where the people were “purposeful but
relaxed” and where there were “no raucous horns or street vendors shouting
vainly for a sale.”41 Now, the same juxtaposition produces dramatically
different reactions. To A. M. Rosenthal, Guangzhou seemed “shabby” while
Hong Kong was “shining”; to James Kenneson, the “dull and lusterless eyes”
of the people of China were “such a contrast to the eyes of Hong Kong.”42
Or take the question of sexuality in China. In the mid-1970s,

 Page 253
Joel Fort, a celebrity psychiatrist from San Francisco, could win ardent
applause from a student audience at Stanford by proclaiming that there was no
rape or premarital sex in China and that this was so because Chinese youth,
unlike their American counterparts, sublimated their libidinal energies towards
service to the nation. At about the same time, Shirley MacLaine and Norma
Djerassi noted in their trip reports that, once arrived in China, they discovered
they no longer needed makeup or deodorant, for they had entered a society
that, unlike the United States, was not obsessed with sex or personal
appearance.
Today, in contrast, China’s sexual mores are viewed from a totally different
perspective. Now it is Chinese leaders, not Americans, who are said to be
neurotic about sex. A. M. Rosenthal, for example, has noted with some dismay
that a large proportion of the young women in a Shanghai reformatory had
been sent there for “having affairs with boys.” He has described Chinese
celibacy as the result not of traditional culture or revolutionary values, but
rather of a deliberate program of “desensualization” and ”neuterization”
undertaken by the party itself. He has concluded: “It seems to me that leaders
who try to desensualize their people, who try to make them as drab as
possible, who find display of sexuality of any kind offensive, have problems
of their own.” 43
Finally, Americans now read very different descriptions of the city of Beijing.
The Concerned Asian Scholars noted that they “must have seemed dazed, a
little distracted” upon arriving in a city that they had been “reading about,
talking about, and dreaming of for years” but had never visited. Recovering
from their momentary bewilderment, however, they likened the city to one of
the most beautiful of the European capitals: “Peking was lush, verdantParis,
but with still wider boulevards and even more trees.”44
About nine years later, looking at the same broad boulevards that reminded the
Concerned Asian Scholars of Paris, John Fraser of the Toronto Globe and Mail
came to a very different conclusion: “Chang An Avenue, the main
thoroughfare, and Tien An Men Square itself are dismal disappointments. The
vast acres of pavement bordered by huge, ugly Stalinist buildings seem
designed to reduce human beings to miniscule proportions.” And he described
the reaction of a Canadian diplomat upon first arriving in the city: “There was
no downtown that the diplomat could recognize as suchno sense of the vitality
and mystique that marks an exciting city. As his tour came to its harsh
conclusion in Tian An

 Page 254
Men Square, he hunched lower and lower in the seat of the car. Finally, he
looked around him and surveyed the interminable panorama. ‘This city sucks,’
he said.” 45
Changing Intellectual Assumptions
It is not only American images and evaluations of China that have changed
since the early 1970s. At an even more basic level, there has also been a
significant transformation in many of the intellectual assumptions that
Americans have brought to a description and analysis of the PRC. Consider
three interrelated assumptions, prevalent in the 1970s, which are no longer
commonly accepted: first, that Western values and norms were inappropriate
to an assessment of China; second, that this was because Chinese had
fundamentally different aspirations than did Westerners; and third, that what
really mattered about China was the worthy set of goals that its leaders were
pursuing.
In the 1970s many Americans assumed that they could correctly understand
China only if they suspended their own Western standards of moral and
political judgment. In the past, the argument ran, they had misunderstood
China largely because they had examined it with their own prejudices and
values, and had therefore ignored its achievements and exaggerated its
shortcomings. Blind fear of communismthe result of a Cold War mentalityhad
led them to ignore the fact that Chinese leaders sought to pursue societal goals
that were every bit as respectable as those drawn from the liberal Western
heritage.
Accordingly, the time had allegedly come for a sympathetic understanding of
China, on China’s own terms. As Paul Hollander has characterized it, the
analytical task of the 1970s was to “dispel misinformation, lay to rest hostile
stereotypes, clear up misunderstandings, ‘break through the walls of
ignorance’ and correct misconceptions.”46 And to do so, in the words of an
American China specialist, Americans had to begin “by examining [and
presumably rejecting] our own assumptions and perspectives.”47 In the place
of such Western values as individual liberty, reward according to merit, and
consumerism, they should apply the collectivist, egalitarian, and ascetic values
drawn from Maoist ideology.
Americans now seem more willing to apply their own values and principles to
an assessment of China. In particular, Americans feel justified in asking hard
questions about the state of individual liberty and human rights in China, even
though the Chinese leader-

 Page 255
ship itself continues to deny the applicability of such “bourgeois” concepts to
their own country. Accordingly, much of the new assessment of China has
focused on the absence of the right to dissent, the right to individual justice,
and the right to privacy. Americans now emphasize the extent to which the
state places tight restrictions on the dissemination of information, personal
mobility, and political protest. 48 They have started to question a legal and
administrative system that distributes both benefits and punishment on the
basis of a person’s class background or political behavior, rather than on the
basis of individual merit.49 They have begun to pay greater attention to the
range of activities that are monitored and controlled by an individual’s place of
work, and by his residential committee, under a system that “institutionalizes
every neighborhood snoop in the country.”50 When subjected to these new
standards of evaluation, China has suddenly seemed much less praiseworthy
than it did ten years ago, when the only relevant yardsticks were believed to be
the Maoist values that China’s leaders themselves would find acceptable.
A second, and related, assumption was that the Chinese care about very
different things that Americans do. (To a degree, this supposition is embodied
in the very title of the China Council’s survey of Chinese culture and society,
The China Difference.)51 In fact, there were two variants of this argument. The
first, more general version was that poor people such as those in China care
only about economic values and are not particularly concerned with such
things as liberty, or even justice. The more specific version was that Chinese,
perhaps more than people in other developing lands, had no tradition of
democracy or privacy or liberty or individualism, and therefore that the
violations of such values in the PRC were of little consequence. Either way,
since the Chinese were seen to be different from Americans, it was easy for
American intellectuals to maintain their enthusiasm for a political system in
which few would have wanted to live themselves.
Today, in contrast, Americans have begun to ask whether Chinese are really
that different from themselves. Susan Shirk, for example, was one of the first
to reject the notion that Chinese do not value individual liberty as much as
Americans. “Whatever the impact of cultural preferences on contemporary
policy choices,” she has written, “it is not only presumptuous but also
incorrect to assume that the Chinese do not care about individual rights.”52
Addressing the same issue, John Fraser has complained: “I had been warned
by all the experts to assimilate the enormous

 Page 256
differences and cultural contrasts between ourselves and the Chinese people
before attempting to find any common ground. I now know this was exactly
wrong, and that the reverse was the correct order: the ties that bind us all
together mean more than any barriers.” 53
Third, in the 1970s Americans assumed that China should be evaluated
primarily by reference to the worthy goals that its leaders were avowedly
pursuing. They often tended to assume that the idealistic policy
pronouncements of the Chinese leadership were instantly translated into social
and political reality: that if Chinese leaders said that “women hold up half the
sky,” then Chinese women had achieved full equality with men; or that if they
were trying to make officials accountable to the “masses,” then they must
actually have done so. Moreover, they also allowed those ends to justify the
means that were used to pursue them. In looking at the Cultural Revolution,
for example, they tended to dismiss the violence and chaos as incidental and
unimportant in comparison with the noble values that the movement was
designed to achieve. They confused, in other words, policy with performance,
and intentions with outcomes, even though they carefully made such
distinctions when they criticized their own society.
More recently, Americans tend to discount official policy statements as
rhetoric and insist on looking at China’s actual social, economic, and political
performance before reaching any judgments about the PRC. And they no
longer assume that the ends China’s leaders have chosen have justified the
means they have employed or that the “noble vision” of Mao and his followers
warranted virtually any sacrifice demanded in its pursuit. To the contrary,
many of the observers currently writing about China have quite clearly
concluded that the accomplishments, whatever they were, were not worth the
price. As A. M. Rosenthal puts it, “[I]t is neither rational nor compassionate to
look at what the Chinese Communist system did accomplishin health, literacy,
life expectancy, cleanlinessand say, yes, this was worth the millions of lives
lost, the prison camps, the prison state, the war against China’s brain, spirit,
and intellect, that it could never have been achieved at a lesser price.”54
Towards an Explanation of the Reappraisal
Why has there been such a striking reassessment of China over

 Page 257
the last several years? The more critical images of China are only partly the
result of changes in China itself. Perhaps more important, they are also the
consequences of changes in the political and intellectual climate in the United
States, changes in the role that China plays in American foreign policy, and
changes in the terms under which westerners are able to visit the PRC.
As Merle Goldman has argued, in some ways the earlier American euphoria
about China “may have had more to do with American politics than with
Chinese politics.” 55 It was directly related to America’s own “cultural
revolution” in the late 1960s and early 1970sa period of intellectual and
political ferment that grew out of the civil rights and antiwar movements.
Reflected in everything from popular music to scholarly writing, the principal
theme of this period was intense criticism, and often outright rejection, of the
American socio-political order and the principles on which it was based,
including capitalism, competition, individualism, and material progress. Many
Americans came to doubt whether their own society brought a better life, or, if
so, at what cost.
The ideological assumptions prevalent in the United States in those years
affected American attitudes towards China in a number of ways. For those
who rejected the political values underlying the American socio-political
order, there was a corresponding predisposition to favor societies, like China,
that were organized around the opposite principlesthat promoted socialism
rather than capitalism, harmony over competition, collectivism over
individualism, and egalitarianism over modernization.
For those who questioned, but did not quite reject, Western liberal values, the
process was somewhat more subtle. The assumption was that it would be a
kind of intellectual imperialism to criticize China for adopting a different set
of values than the United States and that China’s path was just as morally
justified as America’s. A society organized around collective principles, in this
analysis, was just as good as one based upon individualism. Moreover, such a
society might choose to pursue such things as liberty and justice at levels of
social analysis other than the individual. Accordingly, when China “stood up”
internationally in the early 1950s, it was achieving liberty for the nation if not
for every citizen; and when it allocated services and life chances according to
a person’s family background, it was promoting justice for social classes if not
for the individuals of which those classes were composed.
Most generally, the crisis of intellectual confidence in the United States made
it difficult to make relative moral judgments. Even

 Page 258
if China irrefutably fell short in such areas as individual liberty or individual
justice, that was not sufficient grounds for moral criticism. Since the United
States was not perfect either, the argument ran, Americans had no right to
criticize China’s shortcomings until they had eliminated their own. According
to this state of mindwhat Paul Hollander has called the “who-are-we-to-
lecture-others attitude”a society that violated human rights slightly was no
better than one that violated them egregiously. 56
One important reason for the reassessment of China, then, has been the recent
change of intellectual climate in the United States. If the euphoria about China
in the 1970s was closely related to the criticism or rejection of liberal Western
values by many American intellectuals, today’s disillusionment with the
People’s Republic has been reinforced by the relegitimation of those same
social and political values. Whether one looks at the liberals’ promotion of
human rights or the neo-conservatives’ criticism of totalitarianism, it seems
clear that, across the political spectrum, American intellectuals have renewed
their faith in such “bourgeois” values as individual liberty, privacy, and justice.
Moreover, it is now considered appropriate, as was not the case ten years ago,
to apply these values to an appraisal of China. In the 1970s, Americans were
reluctant to criticize a collectivist society for its neglect of individual liberty.
Today, in contrast, A. M. Rosenthal has concluded that what is wrong with
China is its disregard of precisely this value: “There simply is nothing more
important [about any political system] than how people are governed and
whether under freedom, and whether freedom counts. . . .”57
The international political context has also affected American attitudes
towards China. As several scholars have already noted, much of the American
idealization of China in the 1970s was related to the opposition to the war in
Vietnam and to the euphoria surrounding the Sino-American rapprochement.
To a large degree, it is important to recall, the official American rationale for
U.S. involvement in the Vietnam conflict was to turn back a tide of “people’s
wars” and “national liberation movements” sponsored by Beijing. If the war
was wrong, as so many Americans came to believe, then that rationale had to
be discredited. And one way of doing so was to show that China was no
enemy of the United States, but rather a peaceful country, understandably
resentful of American attempts at isolation, preoccupied with its own internal
affairs, and trying to build a just and fair society. Calls for a new
understanding of China, in other words, were integrally linked to a criticism of
American conduct in the Vietnam war.58

 Page 259
Moreover, once the Nixon initiatives toward Beijing began to bear
fruitthrough ping-pong diplomacy, the secret Kissinger trip of July 1971, and
then the president’s own visit in February 1972the usual logic of detente began
to apply: if the United States and China could find common ground on
international issues, then the Chinese must not be adversaries. And if they
were not adversaries, then their socio-political system must not be so bad
either. Indeed, the logic ran, China and the United States (and Vietnam and the
United States, for that matter) had become enemies only because, out of fear
and ignorance, Americans condemned anything that called itself communist,
without realizing that the Chinese were as eager for peace, modernization, and
social justice as Americans were.
Now that Americans have withdrawn from Vietnam, played their “China card”
against the Soviet Union, and normalized their relations with Beijing, the anti-
war rationale and the logic of detente have lost their force as determinants of
attitudes toward the PRC. Today, in fact, Americans are discovering the limits
on their relationship with Beijing in a variety of areas: the limits on forging
further security ties with China, the limits of Beijing’s flexibility on the
Taiwan issue, the limits to Sino-American trade, the limits on scholarly
exchanges with the PRC, and the limits of China’s alignment with the United
States on a variety of other international issues. And having discovered these
international limits, Americans now feel freer to address the limits, so to
speak, of Beijing’s domestic performance: the limits on individual rights, on
bureaucratic efficiency, on economic modernization, and so forth. If, as I
believe to be the case, American attitudes towards another society are closely
correlated with the state of our official relations with the government of that
society, then the emergent tensions in Sino-American relations over the past
two years can help explain the second look that we are taking at Chinese
domestic affairs.
Third, Americans must also remember the sources and experiences that shaped
their reassessment of China in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At the height of
the Cultural Revolution, China was closed to most foreigners and virtually all
Americans. Information about the movement came almost exclusively from
the official press and from Red Guard newspapers and wallposters, all of
which stressed the noble aims and lofty accomplishments of the Cultural
Revolution. The tenets of Maoist doctrineself-reliance, selflessness,
egalitarianism, populism, and so forthwere expressed with an enthusiasm and
self-confidence that discouraged skepticism and encouraged uncritical
acceptance. In

 Page 260
contrast, refugee accounts that exposed the darker side of China’s society and
politics were often rejected as biased and unrepresentative. 59
Once the Cultural Revolution began to subside, China opened its doors to the
outside worldbut only part way. Travel was restricted to short-term escorted
visits, under a program of what can be described as “revolutionary tourism.”
Visitors to China were organized not into tour groups but into “delegations”;
they were not allowed to wander freely around the country but were confined
to a fixed itinerary; and they were taken not only to cultural monuments such
as the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs, but also to a wide range of grass-roots
Chinese institutions for “briefings” on contemporary Chinese society.
In his Political Pilgrims, Paul Hollander has written an extremely useful
summary of the “techniques of hospitality” employed by the Chinese (and the
Russians before them) as part of revolutionary tourism.60 Occasionally, these
techniques included outright misrepresentation and distortion. More
commonly, however, travelers to China were simply flattered by being
introduced to leading Chinese officials; given opportunities to meet and talk
with “ordinary” Chinese workers, peasants, and students; ministered to by
warm and friendly guides who showed a genuine concern for their comfort
and well-being; treated to the best hotels and meals that China had to offer;
asked for their understanding of China’s shortcomings and their suggestions as
how China might overcome them; insulated from any evidence of the worst
poverty in the country; and kept busy from dawn to dusk with a program that
was both interesting and varied. Such techniques were able to hide many of
China’s defectsbureaucratic inefficiency, lack of personal liberty, lack of
privacy, and the likewhile displaying the country’s accomplishments to
greatest advantage.
“Revolutionary tourism” had two additional advantages. Because visitors were
treated as guests, rather than simply as commercial touristsindeed, because
their travel expenses were frequently paid for or subsidized by the
Chinesethey often felt it would be rude if they returned home with too harsh
an account of what they had seen. As Merle Goldman has put it, “Since we
were guests of the Chinese, we would be considered impolite if we were
critical.”61 Second, it was widely believed that the Chinese were likely to
deny visas to foreigners who said “unfriendly” things about the country. To
preserve their welcome in China, some visitors were noticeably more reticent
about China’s shortcomings in public than they were in private conversation.

 Page 261
Today, in contrast, the ways in which Americans can visit China are also
undergoing a major change. Like other foreigners, they now go to China to
conduct some kind of businessbe it teaching, research, journalism, diplomacy,
or commerceand stay there for longer periods of time. They are becoming
long-term residents, rather than revolutionary tourists. And, as such, they re
beginning to see features of China that revolutionary tourism usually
obscured.
At first, the long-term visitor may react to China with much the same,
romantic attachment as the short-term visitor of the early 1970s. John Fraser,
for example, admits that he “succumbed to Sinophilia” for about a year before
becoming disillusioned with the PRC. “I confused love of the people with love
of the system, accepting all the frustrations imposed to divide foreigners and
Chinese people with equilibrium, while studiously ignoring certain troubling
little details that emerged every now and then.” 62 Gradually, however, the
“techniques of hospitality” begin to break down, and China begins to present a
much less favorable face to the long-term foreign resident.
To begin with, the visitors gradually became aware of the impossibility of
informal conversation and friendship with Chinese. This difficulty was not
readily apparent under the program of “revolutionary tourism,” which
uniformly provided an abundance of opportunity for contact with “ordinary”
Chinese in visits to factories, universities, and communes. Although these
exchanges were obviously quite formal occasions, the visitors’ inability to
move beyond them to strike up more personal and informal relations could
readily be attributed simply to shortages of time. Moreover, the Travel Service
or Friendship Association guides made a special effort to have informal
conversations with each visitor, thus producing a sense of intimacy that
suggested that true friendships were possible.
The longer-term visitor, however, is neither scheduled so tightly nor enveloped
so completely by his hosts. With more free time available, he wants to have
contacts with a wider range of Chinese and pursue deeper friendships with the
Chinese with whom he works. And here, the restrictions on contacts between
Chinese and foreigners begin to grate: the isolation in a “foreign ghetto,” the
obstacles to inviting Chinese to his home for a family meal, the difficulties in
being invited by Chinese to their homes for an informal conversation. During
more liberal periods, such as late 1978 and early 1979, these restraints were
loosened and friendships between foreigners and Chinese did form. Even so,
as Fraser

 Page 262
puts it, “each consummated friendship was an act of conspicuous courage”and
became an act of foolhardiness once the regime decided to discourage such
friendships a few months later. 63
What is more, the foreigner with business to conductand a protracted period of
time in which to pursue itbecomes more frustrated with bureaucratic delay and
inefficiency than the short-term visitor. Under revolutionary tourism, or even
its more recent commercial variant, the visitor is essentially following the
Travel Service’s agenda, which is usually implemented with efficiency and
dispatch. Few tourists request major changes in the itinerary, but if they do, the
Travel Service’s failure to comply can again be attributed to the short notice
given. The longer-term teacher, businessman, or journalist, in contrast, has his
own goals and priorities in China and becomes indignant when the Chinese do
not accommodate him readily. It is not surprising, therefore, that longer-term
visitors of the late 1970s and early 1980s have commented on bureaucratic
inefficiency much more frequently than did the short-term tourists of a decade
ago.
The problems with long-term stays in China are exacerbated when visitors
come with unrealistic expectations to begin with. James Kenneson, for
example, acknowledges that he went to China ready to be impressed: “We
went to China half wanting to find a place to live till we died. We went with
hoping minds, not just open ones. . . .” Kenneson’s faith in humanity, it would
seem, had come to rest entirely on the quality of life in China. And when
reality began to shatter these naive expectations, its impact was devastating:
“Whatever we had of faith in human nature or of hope for a humane future is
far, far dimmer now. Our lives have been ripped raggedly in half.”64
Finally, of course, Americans must consider whether their changing evaluation
has been caused by a changing China. It certainly hasbut in a rather
paradoxical way. If anything, China has actually changed for the better since
the purging of the Gang of Four. There is somewhat more liberty, more justice,
more dissent, more stability, and slightly higher standards of living. And yet,
despite these improvements, the American image of China has, by and large,
changed for the worse.
This paradox can quite easily be explained by the rise of dissent and self-
criticism in China since the death of Mao Zedong. To begin with, Chinese
leaders themselves are now criticizing the irrationalities, inefficiencies, and
injustices of their own system. Indeed, in few other countriesexcept perhaps
the United States

 Page 263
in the 1960shave political leaders moved so quickly and so completely from
self-admiration to self-flagellation as in post-Mao China. China’s new leaders
have criticized virtually all the ”newborn things” that Western observers
praised during the Cultural Revolution decade: the idea that a new elite could
emerge within the party, the need for rustification of cadres and intellectuals,
the denigration of individual incentives, the establishment of rural small-scale
industry and cellular economic systems, and so forth. Even while continuing
to call for party leadership and the dictatorship of the proletariat, they have
criticized the absence of democracy, legality, and cultural creativity in their
own country. And they have begun to acknowledge the rigidities and waste of
their own centrally planned economy.
Even more, as controls on political expression have been relaxed, protest and
dissent have emerged as significant and visible features of Chinese political
life. The April Fifth movement of 1976, Democracy Wall of late 1978, and the
“Beijing Spring” of 1979all these have had a dramatic impact on American
images of China. For one thing, they provided irrefutable evidence that the
Chinese peoplecontrary to the conventional wisdom of the early and mid-
1970sdo in fact value such things as individual liberty and political freedom.
They also suggested that some Chinese see liberal democracy, as practiced in
the United States, as an appropriate institutional model for China. Most
important of all, the ultimate suppression of all three movements underscored
the severe limits on sustained dissent in China and the inability or
unwillingness of Chinese leaders to undertake any fundamental liberalization.
To a large degree, these movements created a kind of “revolution of rising
expectations” among Western observersthe hope that China might finally be
moving in the direction of greater political freedom for its people. The
suppression of the April Fifth movement shattered those expectations and
produced a profound disenchantment in the West with the Chinese political
system. 65
China’s own self-criticismby party leaders and young dissidents alikehas had a
searing impact on the West. It has made it much easier for Americans to write
unflattering accounts of China and, conversely, more difficult to write
favorable ones. Paul Hollander has noted the similarities between the
reassessment of China in the 1980s and a comparable reappraisal of the Soviet
Union in the 1950s: “As in the Soviet Union, the self-delegitimation of the
regimeits admission that many of its earlier policies were

 Page 264
incorrect, and many of its earlier leaders were vicious and
incompetentchanged the climate of opinion in the West. As Adam Ulam noted
with reference to the Soviet Union, once the facade of total self-assurance and
uncritical self-adulation began to crumble, the receptivity of Western
intellectuals diminished.” 66
What is more, the economic, political, and intellectual liberalization that have
occurred in China since 1976 have made the PRC resemble an authoritarian
regime more than a totalitarian one. And, as a general principle, American
intellectuals tend to admire totalitarian systems much more than they do
authoritarian ones.67 In totalitarian systems, injustices are more completely
hidden and dissent is more thoroughly suppressed, thus making it appear that
there are more widespread violations of human rights in authoritarian systems
than in totalitarian ones. In totalitarian systems, moreover, those violations of
human rights are justified by an all-embracing ideology, which purports to
explain why individual liberty and economic welfare must be sacrificed to
higher ends. Authoritarian systems, in contrast, lack such consummatory
political values and thus the self-assurance of totalitarian regimes. As a result,
many intellectuals often see less merit in the bureaucratic stability of the
authoritarian system than in the revolutionary mobilization of the totalitarian
regime.
Towards an Assessment of the Reassessment
What is one to make of the reassessment of China that is now occurring in the
United States? On balance, it is a welcome and long overdue phenomenon: a
process that is stripping away much self-delusion about the PRC and enabling
Americans, as Donald Zagoria urged seven years ago, to see “China by
daylight.”68 Americans are beginning to distinguish goals from achievements,
rhetoric from reality, and programs from outcomes. They are also beginning to
regain confidence that some of their own values can, when sensitively applied,
serve as fair and appropriate yardsticks for evaluating the performance of the
PRC. Indeed, perhaps the most appropriate criticism of this reevaluation of
China is that it did not take place much sooner.
At its best, this reassessment is producing works that measure China’s
accomplishments and shortcomings accurately and place them in a
comparative perspective. Nick Eberstadt’s work on economic and social
welfare in China, for example, is a careful and persuasive attempt to assess the
levels of nutrition, education,

 Page 265
literacy, and equality achieved by the Chinese, and to compare them with the
levels attained elsewhere in the Third World. China’s performance, by these
standards, is respectable, but not extraordinary. It does not, Eberstadt
concludes, warrant the adulation that it received in the mid-1970s. 69
Some of the journalistic accounts are also extremely valuable. Fox
Butterfield’s recent book on China combines anecdotes of daily life in China
with the author’s own analysis of Chinese politics, society, and economics.
Butterfield interlaces his description of China with comparisons to Taiwan and
the United States. And, while generally critical of the performance of the
Communist Party, he offers a relatively balanced assessment of China’s
successes and failures.70
But when the reassessment is performed by less skillful, and less objective,
hands than Eberstadt’s or Butterfield’s, there is the danger that the American
public may replace one set of illusions with another that, while less pernicious,
is only slightly more accurate. For, to a disturbing degree, there are similarities
between the current reappraisal of China and the original romanticization of
the PRC in the 1970s.
First, there remains a persistent tendency to make sweeping moral judgments
about China. In the 1970s Americans looked at smiling faces and clean streets
and pronounced China wonderful; today they discover poverty, inefficiency,
and political constraints and conclude that “China stinks.” In neither period
have they been content merely to describe China; there is something about the
country that compels them to evaluate it as well. And when they do so, they
are prone to reach absolute and simplistic conclusions. They appear unable to
see China as a complex society, in which some features are worthy of approval
and others demand criticism.
To a large degree, in fact, China is being used as a scapegoat for American
misconceptions. James Kenneson, for example, has concluded that China was
a vile and brutal place largely because he had gone there laboring under the
assumption that it was the last, best hope for mankind. Fox Butterfield begins
his book on China by pointing out that he had to “unlearn” some of the myths
about the country that he carried with him to Beijing: the myths that China is
an egalitarian society, that Mao was able to create a new socialist man, and
that the party has destroyed tradition and revolutionized Chinese society. What
is being reassessed and discredited in these accounts is less China itself than
the delusions that we brought to China in the first place.71

 Page 266
Second, there remains a conviction that the only way to remedy
misunderstanding is to turn it on its head. In the 1970s, Americans believed
that they had to present an image of an idealized Chinaa China without flaw or
blemishin order to clear up the unfavorable conceptions they had held about
China in the past. As a result, they exaggerated Beijing’s accomplishments,
while either rationalizing, ignoring, or explaining away China’s shortcomings.
As Merle Goldman has described the failure of American intellectuals to
respond to the persecution of their Chinese counterparts during the Cultural
Revolution, “We knew, but we didn’t want to believe.” 72
Today, many Americans also believe that they must argue that China has
totally failed in order to correct the naiveté and euphoria of the Cultural
Revolution decade. Where Cold War images were set right through
idealization, idealization is being remedied through denigration. As a result,
Americans now discount many of the achievements of the PRC since 1949,
including a reasonable rate of economic growth, a respectable record of
providing basic human services to the largest population on earth, and an
impressive degree of economic equality.
Nor have they gotten over their perpetual romanticism about China. In both
their euphoric and their pessimistic moods, they repeatedly express their
admiration and affection for the Chinese people. References to a writer’s
“expansive love affair” with the Chinese; to their “natural ease” and
“wisdom”; or to the “beauty and radiance that comes from good health,
confidence, and pride” are just as likely to be found in writings of the early
1980s as in the early 1970s.73
But when Americans pass beyond these sweeping characterizations of China
and look more carefully at particular segments of the Chinese population, they
tend to be more fickle. In the euphoria of a decade ago, as in similar periods in
the past, they idealized the hard-working and honest common folk who toiled
in the factories and tilled the fields: the “masses” of ordinary Chinese whose
exploits and sacrifice filled the pages of People’s Daily and Beijing Review.
The persecution of intellectuals, if not denied altogether, was described in the
most euphemistic language, as in the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars’
description of physical labor and thought reform in May Seventh Cadre
Schools as opportunities for a “revolutionary sabbatical.”74
In today’s more cynical climate, Americans have idealized not the worker or
peasant, but the oppressed intellectual and the dissident of Democracy Wall.
Many of the recent journalists’ accounts

 Page 267
of China are, quite explicitly, written from the viewpoint of the young Xidan
protester. In contrast, the ordinary peasant, who constitutes some 80 percent of
China’s population, plays little role in the recent reassessment of China.
According to the index, for example, the word “peasant” appears exactly once
in Simon Leys’ Chinese Shadowsand that one reference literally represents a
casual aside within a parenthetical insertion. 75
Fourth, Americans still seem to be convinced that seeing is believing. In the
1970s, when the door to China opened a bit, they assumed that the
understanding acquired by the short-term delegations was more accurate than
that obtained through more painstaking but less direct research. One’s
credentials for analyzing China rested, to a large degree, on how many times
one had been there, for it was somehow better to have heard the party line
directly from a cadre at the Hangchow tea brigade than to have read it in
Beijing Review. (I remember vividly the ease with which a young graduate
student humiliated a senior Sinologist in the early 1970s simply by
announcing that he had spent twenty-four hours in the North China city that
the professor had spent half a career studying but had never visited.) As a
result, the favorable images produced by “revolutionary tourism” immediately
became more credible than the less favorable ones produced by scholarship at
a distance.
Just as the short-term visitors of the early 1970s appeared unaware of how
little they could learn about China in two weeks, so too do the longer-term
sojourners of today seem unaware of obstacles that they face in their attempts
to understand the People’s Republic. Even a twelve-month stay in China can
introduce a foreigner to only a fraction of the country and its people. What is
more, the constraints on the long-term visitor may produce a view of China
that is as biased in its own way as were the favorable images of the country
generated by the intense hospitality of the organized tour.
When travel to China was restricted to carefully controlled, meticulously
organized guided tours, for example, Americans received glowing descriptions
of the country. Now that Americans are able to stay longer but encounter the
frustrations of dealing with a bureaucracy whose main purpose is something
other than facilitating their particular enterprise, the public suddenly hears that
China is “inefficient” and “disorganized.” One suspects that, in both cases, one
has learned more about the treatment of Westerners than about the average life
of the ordinary Chinese. The fact that China does not “work” for foreigners
does not necessarily

 Page 268
mean that it does not “work” for Chinese, just as China’s attractiveness to the
early “revolutionary tourists” said little about the daily life of the ordinary
Chinese.
Moreover, even longer-term visitors are denied access to important segments
of the Chinese populationto peasants, to middle-level cadres, to the military, or
to leftistsand can forge real friendships with few others. 76 And yet, the
authors of the recent journalistic accounts of China have rarely acknowledged
the resulting contradiction between their claim to have new insights on
Chinese society, on the one hand, and their complaint that they can form few
candid relationships with ordinary Chinese, on the other. They resent being
isolated in their “foreign ghettoes” (a description of which is placed at the
beginning of virtually all their books), and yet they insist that their experiences
in Beijing have enabled them to delve deeply into the heart of daily Chinese
life.
Even so, the reevaluation of China is rapidly becoming the latest intellectual
fad, expressed in the same self-righteous and self-satisfied tones as in the early
1970s. Once it was “in” to romanticize the PRC; now, it is equally chic to
debunk it. The message may be completely different, but the self-confidence
of the messenger is virtually identical. In fact, it is often the same journals
(and occasionally the very same people) that once glorified China that are now
earnestly telling us that it’s time to cast aside the very illusions that they
helped create.
Now, as then, Americans are told to expect novel new insights about China.
Once again, they are promised that they are about to hear “the truth” about the
PRC and that this new image of China is going to surprise, even shock, them.
As before, the villains of the piece are said to be an earlier generation of
Western China watchers whose lack of objectivity produced only
misunderstanding and illusion; and the heroes are the current breed of
objective observers who are ripping down every ideological and institutional
obstacle to bring us the truth.77 In the early 1970s, Americans were lucky to
have a new wave of younger Sinologists who were rejecting the anti-
Communist and anti-Chinese biases of their predecessors and gaining a
sympathetic understanding of the People’s Republic. Today, they are equally
fortunate that yet another group of analysts has been able to get over the
earlier infatuation with Maoism, break through “China’s great wall of silence,”
and provide “uncensored stories and startling revelations” about the PRC.78
Finally, I am troubled by the degree to which, once again, Ameri-

 Page 269
cans have fallen in line with official Chinese interpretations of their own
society. When the Chinese said the Cultural Revolution was a good thing and
that China had discovered a new path to economic development, most
Americans readily agreed. Now that they say Mao made mistakes and that the
Chinese economy is inefficient, Americans agree with that judgment too.
Where they once idolized Mao for his noble attempt to revolutionize China,
now they wish Deng Xiaoping well in his valiant battle to liberalize it.
Perhaps this is an innocent coincidence rather than a cause-and-effect
relationship, but I would feel a lot better if, for once, Western observers would
say something about China that differs significantly from what the Chinese are
saying about themselves. Like the Ming and the Tang before them, the Mao
and the Deng dynasties have both had their own official court historians. There
is little need for Westerners to perform that task for them.
Let me not be misunderstood. I am not disputing the enormous contributions
that the reassessment of China has made to American understanding of the
PRC. Least of all am I calling for more apologies for the Communist Party.
Rather, I am urging that, in their disillusionment with China, Americans avoid
making the same mistakes that got them “illusioned” in the first place. The
answer to uncritical acceptance of the official Chinese praise of the Cultural
Revolution is not to accept, equally uncritically, the official condemnation.
The remedy for fuzzy-minded idealism is not fuzzy-minded cynicism. Instead,
Americans should strive for an independent, systematic, and comparative
assessment of China in all its contradictions and complexity. Only such an
approach can help dampen the pendular swings between unwarranted
admiration and excessive denigration that have marred American
understanding of China in the past.
Notes
1. Harold Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds: American Images of China and
India (New York: John Day, 1958).
2. Lucian Pye, “Building a Relationship on the Sands of Cultural Exchanges,”
in William J. Barnds, ed., China and America: The Search for a New
Relationship (New York: New York University Press, 1977): 116-23.
3. New York Times Book Review, 25 April 1982, 18.
4. James Kenneson, “China Stinks,” Harper’s, April 1982.
5. Sheila K. Johnson, “To China, With Love,” Commentary, June 1973, 37-45.

 Page 270
6. The trip reports of the 1970s are reviewed in Paul Hollander, Political
Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China, and
Cuba, 1928-1978 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), chap. 7,; and in
Johnson, “To China, With Love.”
7. See, for example, Richard Baum with Louise Bennett, eds., China in
Ferment: Perspectives on the Cultural Revolution (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1971); Victor Nee and James Peck, eds., China’s Uninterrupted
Revolution: From 1840 to the Present (New York: Pantheon, 1975); and John
G. Gurley, China’s Economy and the Maoist Strategy (New York: Monthly
Review, 1976).
8. A prominent example is Michel Oksenberg, ed., China’s Developmental
Experience (New York: Praeger, 1973).
9. Some examples of the more critical works about China that appeared in the
1970s are Johnson, “To China, With Love”; Stanley Karnow, “China Through
Rose-Tinted Glasses,” Atlantic, October 1973; Simon Leys, Ombres Chinoises
(Paris: Union Generale d’Editions, 1974), translated as Chinese Shadows
(New York: Viking, 1977); Donald S. Zagoria, “China by Daylight,” Dissent
22, no. 2 (Spring 1975): 135-47; Bao Ruowang, Prisoner of Mao
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), 27-33.
10. Peter Moody, Opposition and Dissent in Contemporary China (Stanford:
Hoover Institution Press, 1977); Amnesty International, Political
Imprisonment in the People’s Republic of China (New York: Amnesty
International, 1978); and Susan Shirk, “Human Rights: What About China?”
Foreign Policy 29 (Winter 1977-78): 109-27.
11. Nick Eberstadt, “Has China Failed?” New York Review of Books, 5 April
1979, 33-40; 19 April 1979, 41ff.; and 3 May 1979, 39-43. A revised and
abridged version of this series appeared as “Did Mao Fail?” The Wilson
Quarterly 4, no. 4 (Autumn 1980): 120-31.
12. The ones I have found most useful in preparing this essay include John
Fraser, The Chinese: Portrait of a People (New York: Summit, 1980); Roger
Garside, Coming Alive (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981); A. M. Rosenthal,
“Memoirs of a New China Hand,” New York Times Magazine, July 19, 1981,
12-18ff., and 26 July 1981, 18-26ff.; Fox Butterfield, China: Alive in the
Bitter Sea (New York: Times Books, 1982); and Kenneson, “China Stinks.”
13. On inequalities in China, see in particular Butterfield, China, chap. 3; and
Eberstadt, “Has China Failed?”
14. Both Luttwak and Fraser emphasize this point. See Luttwak, “Seeing
China Plain”; and Fraser, The Chinese, chap. 7.
15. Atsuyoshi Niijima, “The Establishment of a New Commune State,”
Chinese Law and Government 4, nos. 1-2 (Spring-Summer 1971): 44, 49.
16. Richard M. Pfeffer, “The Pursuit of Purity: Mao’s Cultural Revolution,”
Problems of Communism, November-December 1969, 25.
17. This aspect is emphasized in Leys, Chinese Shadows, and Luttwak,
“Seeing China Plain.”
18. Butterfield, China, 88.
19. Kenneson, “China Stinks.”
20. Butterfield, China, 281.
21. James Reston, “China is Building a New Nation,” in The New York Times
Report from Red China (New York: Avon, 1971), 246-248.
22. Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, China! Inside the People’s
Republic (New York: Bantam, 1972), 2. (Hereafter cited as China!)

 Page 271
23. Quoted in New York Times Book Review, 16 March 1975, 4-5.
24. The most scholarly analysis of this phenomenon is Lucian W. Pye, The
Dynamics of Chinese Politics (Cambridge: Oelgeschlager, Gunn and Hain,
1981).
25. Kenneson, “China Stinks.”
26. Fox Butterfield, “How the Chinese Police Themselves,” New York Times
Magazine, 18 April 1982, 54, 56.
27. Michel Oksenberg, “Mao’s Policy Commitments, 1921-1976.” Problems
of Communism 35, no. 6 (November-December 1976): 1-26; and Edward
Friedman, “The Innovator,” in Dick Wilson, ed., Mao Tse-tung in the Scales of
History (London: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 319-20. In an earlier
article, however, Friedman attributed the “tragic losses” of the Cultural
Revolution to Mao’s deliberate inflammation of class struggle and to a
“politics of destroying the old and tearing down established institutions.” See
Edward Friedman, “Cultural Limits of the Cultural Revolution,” Asian Survey
9, no. 3 (March 1969): 188-201.
28. Harry Harding, “Reappraising the Cultural Revolution,” The Wilson
Quarterly 4, no. 4 (Autumn 1980): 132-41.
29. Richard Baum, “The Cultural Revolution in Retrospect,” in Baum and
Bennett, eds., China in Ferment, 177.
30. Rosenthal, “Memoirs,” part 1, p. 14.
31. Ibid., part 1, p. 42; and part 2, p. 42.
32. Fraser, The Chinese, 51.
33. Edward Friedman, “Maoism, Titoism, and Stalinism: Some Origins and
Consequences of the Maoist Theory of the Socialist Transition,” in Mark
Selden and Victor Lipsett, eds., The Transition to Socialism in China
(Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1982), 207.
34. Butterfield, China, 19-20, 348-49.
35. Michel Oksenberg, “On Learning From China,” in Oksenberg, ed., China’s
Developmental Experience, 6.
36. Eberstadt, “Has China Failed?”; and Jan Prybyla, “China’s Economic
Development: Demise of a Model,” Problems of Communism 31, no. 3 (May-
June 1982): 39-40.
37. Hollander, Political Pilgrims, p. 292ff. See also Michel Oksenberg,
“Comments,” in Ping-ti Ho and Tang Tsou, eds., China in Crisis (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press), 2:493. As late as the winter of 1981-82, several
of my undergraduate students told me that they found it difficult to understand
why the Chinese would want to be any better off materially than they already
are, since their quality of life was so much better than ours. Hollander calls
this the “Noble Savage” myththe admiration of the allegedly “simple,
spontaneous, unregulated, and uncorrupted life” of the “Robust proletarian”
and “earthly peasant.” Political Pilgrims, 35-36.
38. Butterfield, China, 16-17.
39. Kenneson, “China Stinks,” passim.
40. Johnson, “To China, With Love,” 38.
41. China! 107.
42. Rosenthal, “Memoirs,” part 1, p. 51; Kennson, “China Stinks.”
43. Rosenthal, “Memoirs,” part 1, pp. 45, 50-51.
44. China! pp. 107, 138.
45. Fraser, The Chinese, 36-37. A similar view of Beijing can be found in
Leys, Chinese Shadows.
46. Hollander, Political Pilgrims, 279-80.

 Page 272
47. Louise Bennett, “Conclusion,” in Baum and Bennett, eds., China in
Ferment, 234.
48. Butterfield, “How the Chinese Police Themselves.”
49. Shirk, “What About China?”
50. Butterfield, “How the Chinese Police Themselves.” The quotation is from
Fraser, The Chinese, 29.
51. Ross Terrill, ed., The China Difference (New York: Harper & Row, 1979).
52. Shirk, “What About China?” 111.
53. Fraser, The Chinese, 83.
54. Rosenthal, “Memoirs,” part 2, p. 48.
55. Merle Goldman, “The Persecution of China’s Intellectuals: Why Didn’t
Their Western Colleagues Speak Out?” Radcliffe Quarterly, September 1981,
13.
56. Hollander, Political Pilgrims, p. 280.
57. Rosenthal, “Memoirs,” part 2, 39.
58. This linkage is stated explicitly in China! 2-3.
59. For a summary of the criticisms of refugee interviewing and a rebuttal, see
Miriam London and Ivan D. London, “How Do We Know China? Let Us
Count the Ways . . . ,” Worldview 19, nos. 7-8 (July-August 1976): 25-26, 35-
37.
60. Hollander, Political Pilgrims, chap. 8. For an earlier account, see Herbert
Passin, China’s Cultural Diplomacy (New York: Praeger, 1962).
61. Goldman, “The Persecution of China’s Intellectuals,” 13.
62. Fraser, The Chinese, 44.
63. Ibid., 278.
64. Kenneson, “China Stinks.”
65. The dissidents play a central role in Fraser, The Chinese, and in Garside,
Coming Alive.
66. Hollander, Political Pilgrims, 321.
67. For a slightly different interpretation of this phenomenon, see Jeane
Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” Commentary, November
1979, 34-45.
68. Zagoria, “China by Daylight.”
69. Eberstadt, “Has China Failed?”
70. Butterfield, China.
71. Kenneson, “China Stinks”; and Butterfield, China, introduction.
72. Goldman, “The Persecution of China’s Intellectuals,” 12.
73. The quotations are drawn, respectively, from Fraser, The Chinese, 17;
Leys, Chinese Shadows, 51; and China! 268.
74. China! 100.
75. Leys, Chinese Shadows, 48.
76. I am indebted to Kenneth Lieberthal for this important point.
77. John Fraser’s book has a number of unflattering references to Sinologists.
See, in particular, The Chinese, 17 and 29.
78. Advertisement for Fox Butterfield, China: Alive in the Bitter Sea, placed
by Times Books in the New York Times Book Review, 16 May 1982, 6.

 Page 273

Comparative Observations:
American Images of Japan and China
Hilary Conroy
There is no single American opinion of China or of Japan, and Americans who
think about East Asia from their varying perspectives and points of view do
not always compare Japan and China. Nevertheless, stereotypes usually
contain some grain of truth, and if one thinks as a big Uncle Sam looking
westward across the Pacific during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he
is first seeing a generalized “Oriental” type, which he is curious about but
wants to keep at a distance; and then a differentiated Japan and China in which
first one and then the other has the more favorable image.
Since the papers in this volume have dealt extensively and almost exclusively
with American images of China at various periods in the history of American-
East Asian relations, it is appropriate to begin with a few general remarks
about American images of Japan. First, whether her overall image has been
favorable or unfavorable, modern Japan has been regarded as an energetic,
achieving society. This has been ascribed to various roots in traditional Japan:
samurai drive, bourgeois mentality, natural entrepreneurship, peasant energy,
and adaptability. However, Frances Moulder, while admitting the fact of the
image, calls it untrue. This is because she feels that the relatively rapid
recovery of Japan from the ravages of Western imperialism was due less to
Japanese abilities or traditions than to the simple fact of less pressure from the
West. In short, Japan was a small and relatively unimportant island country
when China was the big juicy melon, which the various imperialist powers
contemplated slicing up. Had Japan been more attractive to the imperialists,
she would have been as easily and thoroughly disrupted and destroyed as
China. 1
We shall return to this theme later in this chapter, because it is in a sense the
large overriding image of the long-range Ameri-

 Page 274
can mind on the Far East. Japan has been alternately admired and detested but
usually respected, while China has been both loved and pitied but not
generally admired or respected. First, however, let us look at shorter-range
alternating images of Japan to get some idea of how that island appendage off
Asia looked in the American mind. If we begin with the visits of some of the
American voyagers of the mid-nineteenth century, we should, of course,
highlight the impressions of Commodore Matthew C. Perry and his crew of
note-takers, but first a word or two should be said about the setting of the
Perry encounter. For example, the first American shipmaster to receive a
message from Japan took a look at the writing and concluded that “it looked as
though a chicken had walked across the page.” 2 This was Captain Cooper of
the U.S. whaler Manhattan, who sought to establish contact and possibly trade
with Japan in March 1845, but who was informed (rather politely) that Japan’s
exclusion laws forbade this.
Cooper’s remark about Japanese writing, the proud descendant of centuries of
Chinese and Japanese calligraphyin which the philosophical teachings of
Confucius, Mencius, Chu Hsi, and their Japanese counterparts, such as
Hayashi Razan and other Shushi scholars, were preservedis most ironic in
view of the depth of the civilizations it represented and the crudeness of the
American voyagers. But this is a good point from which to undertake
reflections on American images of Japan, for it should be remembered that
however much Americans came to respect Japan and the Japanese for their
energy and efforts, it was from a position of condescension. America in the
nineteenth century, when the first contacts were made, and far on into the
twentieth was a society of supreme self confidence.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, Americans were energized by what
Stowe Persons called “the democratic faith,” believing that there was a moral
order, based on individualism, Christianity, an idea of progress, and an
American mission to carry the torch of democracy.3 There was not the
slightest doubt among Americans going to Asia, whether well or poorly
educated themselves, that their American civilization was vastly superior to
whatever might be found imbedded in the strange writing of Eastern lands.
This sense of superiority was again revealed in the records of the Perry
expedition, the official ones authorized by the Commodore himself and the
surreptitious ones kept, in defiance of “the Como’s” orders, by his underlings.
According to his official

 Page 275
Narrative of the Expedition, Perry assumed that a firm attitude and insistence
on heavy ceremonial courtesy toward himself and the president’s letter he bore
would impress the Japanese and bring about their compliance with his advice.
4

Perry’s subordinates expressed similar sentiments. For example, a junior

officer, Edward Yorke McCauley, kept a diary that has been published under
the title With Perry in Japan, edited by Allan Cole. McCauley’s first
observation on Japan was one that lasted with him and in the public mind.
“One thing must be said about these people which can not be gainsaid, that
they are without exception the most polite people on the face of the earth.”
McCauley, however also indicated that the Japanese had to be handled by
force or threat of force. After the politeness notation, he says: “Nothing has
astonished the natives so much as our impudence. Paixhan guns, electric
telegraphs, steam and firearms all called for their admiration. These three
steamers walking majestically up their bay, clearing mandarin and plebian
boats out of the way without distinction, must have seemed to them a matter of
doubt whether they would keep going on, over hill and dale into the water on
the other side.”5
On the occasion of the first visit of official Japanese envoys to the United
States, in 1860, the American press had its initial opportunity to report
impressions of Japanese in its dailies and weeklies. Harper’s Weekly reported:
“Few American ladies will be likely to fall desperately in love with the
principal members of the Embassy in consequence of the striking beauty of
their forms and faces. The first Ambassador is a man of small frame with a
stoop across the shoulders. He has a long face and a peculiar nose not unlike
the beak of a parrot. The second Ambassador is decidely worse looking.”6
Despite their physical unattractiveness, the Japanese ambassadors made a
good impression and their young apprentice interpreter, Tateishi Onojiro
(Tommy), did indeed become a favorite with American “maidens and ladies.”
Newspapers that began by making fun of the Japanese came around to finding
their deportment and demeanour most praiseworthy and in considerable
contrast to that of the unruly American crowds who came out to see them. A
month later Harper’s reported: “The drollest part of the whole thing is that we
speak of the Japanese as if they were barbarians and savages. But we have yet
to read of the moment during these proceedings in which the Japanese
gentlemen have not been quite as dignified, intelligent, and well-bred as any

 Page 276
gentlemen in any country or time. The barbarism and savage behavior has
been entirely upon our part,” from the “shouting, staring, insulting mob.” 7
Akira Iriye in his introductory essay to the book entitled Mutual Images:
Essays in American Japanese Relations (1975) argued that the idea of images
as a conceptual tool in the study of foreign relations did not begin until as late
as the 1930s. He saw Charles A. Beard’s The Idea of National Interests,
published in 1934, as an early example of the later trend in the study of
images. He viewed such books as Harold Isaacs’ Scratches on Our Minds
(1958) and A. T. Steele’s The American People and China (1966) and his own
work in the 1960s and 1970s as bringing this study of images to a level of
respectability. Nevertheless, whether scholars realized it or not, images were
being formed.8 If the Perry expedition and the first official Japanese embassy
were the episodes that brought Japan dramatically to the minds of Americans,
it was the general course of events in Japan’s relations with the outer world
over the next half century that built a somewhat conflicting but generally
positive image of Japan in American minds. First there was Japanese general
adaptability and willingness to learn. As the new Meiji government (post-
1868) made clear its positive intentions in this regard in both words and deeds,
American teacher-advisers to Japan were favorably impressed by the Japanese
character. These teacher-advisers included William Elliot Griffis, who taught
science; James Hepburn, who taught medicine and also devised a system for
romanizing the Japanese language; William Smith Clark, agriculture; Robert
Walker Irwin, business; Charles LeGendre, diplomacy; Ernest Fenolossa,
philosophy; and Lafcadio Hearn, literature.
In addition several nationally prominent Americans who visited Japan,
however briefly, helped to form a positive image. One of the first (1870) was
William H. Seward whose stepdaughter, Olive, recorded her and his
impressions, which were quite favorable: the Japanese were polite, friendly,
and progressive, though in much need of American instruction. Ulysses S.
Grant and his wife were wined and dined by the Emperor in 1879, and
thereafter, back in America, Grant was known as a good friend of Japan.
Those who contributed to building an appreciation of Japan in the United
States included Percival Lowell; his famous poet sister Amy; John LaFarge,
the artist; and the educator-historian, Henry Adams.9 Also, American
ministers to Japan “Judge” John A. Bingham and Richard B. Hubbard, whose
terms at Tokyo together

 Page 277
spanned the years 1873-89, were favorably impressed with Japan and reported
home in that vein. 10
In addition Japan’s quite ardent participation in American “World’s Fairs” at
Philadelphia (1879), New Orleans (1885), Chicago (1893), and St. Louis
(1903) delighted Americans. The combination of an exotic and artistic past
with a progressive present made Japan seem both delightful and impressive.
The only problem was a sense of worry, explicitly voiced by Lafcadio Hearn
in his writings from Japan, that the present would overwhelm the past to rob
Japanese civilization of its quaintness and charm. Its progress was respected,
but Japan was not yet feared (at least in St. Louis) as a competitor.11
Chitoshi Yanaga, whose thick volume Japan Since Perry served as the
standard text on modern Japanese history for many years, called the era that
was inaugurated by the first (1860) official Japanese mission to America one
of “cordial relationship unprecedented,” and so it remained until
approximately the turn of the twentieth century.12
The first faint cloud on the American image of Japan developed over the
Hawaiian islands. There Japanese laborers were brought in great numbers by
American planters to work their sugar and pineapple plantations. By the mid
1890s, more than twenty-five thousand had come, and the number was rapidly
accelerating, to the alarm of the now vastly outnumbered American population
that had controlled the islands through manipulation of the Hawaiian
monarchy. The Japanese were hard workers, but too ambitious and too smart
to suit their employers, who by 1897 feared a Japanese takeover.
By a combination of skillful lobbying and considerable luck, Hawaii’s
American leadership was able to obtain annexation of the islands from a
formerly reluctant Congress; and Japanese leaders, unready and unwilling to
provoke a quarrel, smoothed the matter over, leaving good images and
relationships temporarily untarnished.13
However an era of “troubled encounter” (Neu) and “Pacific estrangement”
(Iriye) was about to begin.14 Victory in the Russo-Japanese war (1905)
brought Japan, according to U.S. Navy Secretary H. A. Herbert, “to a place
among the great nations of the earth.”15 By this time the American image of
China and Chinese had been well established as a negative stereotype: weak
country, undesirable people. The Chinese Laborers Exclusion Act (1882) with
its several extensions and tightenings-up set the tone for

 Page 278
American attitudes toward and handling of Chinese immigration. And China,
weak and inept, was being maintained as an “entity” through the goodness of
American hearts and the Open Door Policy (1900).
Negativism about Japan was of an entirely different sort. Having become
powerful as a nation, the Japanese were regarded as pushy and overbearing.
Akira Iriye quotes Nevada Senator Francis G. Newlands as follows (1909):
“The presence of the Chinese, who are patient and submissive, would not
create as many complications as the presence of the Japanese, whose strong
and virile qualities would constitute an additional factor of difficulty.” 16
While it is true that during the first brush with Japanese immigration on the
West Coast a few ultraracist Americans had tried to denigrate the Japanese by
placing them in the same category as the despised and pitied Chinese, this did
not last long. The key word for this was “Mongolian,” which could be applied
indiscriminately to Chinese, Koreans, Japanese or other East Asians. The
height of this approach came in 1906 when the San Francisco School Board
decreed that Japanese children should attend what had heretofore been known
as “the Chinese School” in San Francisco. During their discussions the board
had used the term “pupils of the Mongolian race.”17
Not only did the Japanese government protest this, but President Theodore
Roosevelt forced the school board to rescind the offensive decree. After this
the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907, by which Japan voluntarily agreed to
limit immigration to the United States, had the effect of requiring the United
States government, at least, to treat Japan and Japanese with circumspection
and respect and not to lump them with Chinese and other “Asiatics,”
“Orientals,” and “Mongolians.”
While there continued to be racist attitudes and anti-Japanese legislation in
California and other western states, these now had to be expressed obliquely
as pertaining to “aliens ineligible for citizenship” (e.g., in California’s “Alien
Land Law of 1913”).18 Indeed, an incensed spokesman for white Christian
interests in California, one Montaville Flowers, M.A., felt impelled to write
and warn of “The Japanese Conquest of American Opinion” (the title of his
272-page book).19
Flowers called Hawaii already a “Japanese colony,” the Gentlemen’s
Agreement a “moral victory for Japan,” and the alien land problem a question
of “Who Shall Own the Pacific Coast.” He saw powerful Americans as tools
or allies of the Japanese in helping them establish areas of control in the
United States.

 Page 279
Those included the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America,
which employed Mr. Sidney L. Gulick, M.A., D.D., a native of the Marshall
Islands and longtime resident of Japan, and Professor H. A. Millis, who wrote
books and articles designed to “malign” the state of California “to put Japan
over in states where she is not known, where there is no local interest, where
the people are still asleep on this question, and to coerce the people of a
section of the country.” 20 Their message was spread not only by the Federal
Council but by the World Peace Foundation of Boston, the American Peace
Society of Washington, the Church Peace Union of New York, the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, and the Japan Society of New York,
which alone sent one thousand copies of Professor Millis’s book “to presidents
of American colleges and other.”21
Obviously feeling on the defensive, Flowers claimed that the powerful pro-
Japanese opinion molders had called Californians “rough, ignorant,
prejudiced” and said that the legislation against Japanese was promoted by
“boodlers, criminals, professional agitators, jingoes, demagogues.”22
Meanwhile, within less than a year, Japan had “launched ten war vessels” and
“Japan’s flag is flying from vessels in almost every trading post in the world.”
Her army had increased by 250,000 men, she had appropriated $400,000 for
an aviation school, and ”from January 1 to February 10, 1916 the excess of
exports from Japan over imports amounted to thirteen million dollars.”23
So argued an arch enemy of Japan, fearing and warning against her prowess.
Her friends turned the argument around, admiring Japanese progress and
restraint. Thus Lindsay Russell, president of the Japan Society of New York
and one of Flowers’s principal targets, had in 1915 “a symposium of papers by
representatives/ citizens of the United States on the relations between Japan
and America and on the common interests of the two countries.”24 William E.
Griffis was among the more rhapsodic contributors, even giving a “long live”
for the Japanese emperor and empress.25
The same W. E. Griffisa perennial writer and speaker on Japan following a
teaching adventure there in his youth, 1870-74, and continuing through a
latter-day return visit in 1926-27credited Japan and the Japanese with great
progress and achievements in almost everything: enlightened government,
economic prosperity, and international brotherhood. Indeed, compared with
American racists, the Japanese practised “real Christianity.”26
In 1931, with the Manchurian Incident, the American image of Japan began to
change for the worse. But again, even as the

 Page 280
war clouds thickened and American-Japanese relations moved toward Pearl
Harbor, the tone was one of hatred but not of contempt. During all these years,
from 1900’s Open Door proclamation days to the end of the Pacific War China
was always in the “help needed” category, and although American
missionaries loved China (much more than Japan), it was certainly a love of
condescension.
This situation almost reversed in the first decade after the Pacific War.
Defeated Japan lay prostrate; there was no longer any fear of her in the
American mind. The antagonism and hatred of the war years soon dissipated.
The author remembers riding around Tokyo in army vehicles driven by
vengeful veterans of Pacific campaigns. For a month or two early in the
occupation, they took considerable delight in “Making Japs jump” out of the
way to avoid being run down. But this didn’t last long. Before the end of that
first winter of occupation, Americans were experiencing positively friendly
feelings for their Japanese charges. There was a considerable degree of
condescension in this, but the “pluckiness” of the Japanese in working their
way through the hardship of life in their shattered country mitigated that
attitude. Occupation memoir books like The Conqueror Comes to Tea and
MacArthur’s Japan found the Japanese much less offensive and cruel than the
war and its propaganda had made them seem. 27 And their evident
determination to work hard toward recovery elicited respect from the
conquerors. At home in America it was discovered that the Japanese-
Americans who had suffered wartime incarceration under the name of
”relocation” had not been traitors at all; rather, some of them, like the 442d
infantry division from Hawaii, had proved themselves heroes on the European
front.
Meanwhile the China image was being further tarnished by the increasingly
obvious incompetence of the Nationalist government, both in the latter-post-
Stilwell days of the war and in the postwar era of communist takeover of
mainland China. Considerable sympathy (but certainly no admiration) went
out to Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) and his holdout forces on Taiwan. As for
Mao and his fellow communists on the mainland, they quickly lost whatever
admiration Americans had felt for them. As contributors have shown in earlier
essays, Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China and the writings of other
journalists and scholars who had sought out the “Reds” at their wartime Yenan
(Ya’nan) headquarters gave Americans a glimpse of a “new China” of
competence, courage, and hard workalbeit ideological impurityin contrast to
the worsening image of China under the Nationalists. But with the

 Page 281
establishment of the People’s Republic at Peking (Beijing) in the fall of 1949,
what from the general American point of view were unsavory happenings
piled up so fast that China was soon being considered as bloody and bad as
Japan in the 1930sworse really because “they were doing it to their own
people.” 28
Of course, it can be said that as with Japan in the 1930s there was some degree
of “respect” for the power of Peking, but not enough to accelerate this to the
level the Japanese militarists had attained, causing alarm and nervousness in
the United States. Communist China wasn’t that strong. It could damage her
own people, but not the American homeland or Pacific area domain. While
Americans did not believe that “unleashing” Chiang would topple the
Communists, the argument about that had the effect of denigrating both
Chinas. This situation continued through the 1960s, with increasing American
irritation with (not fear of) what continued to be called “Red China.” The
Cultural Revolution, as proclaimed and promoted by Mao, seemed to most
Americans so unrealistically absurd that they began to think of Red China as a
self-destroying madhouse commanded by a madman. Only a few intellectuals
even attempted to retain some shred of belief that China was following a
course of future promise. Such books and Allyn and Adele Rickett’s Prisoners
of Liberation and Edgar Snow’s The Other Side Of The River tried to explain
China in a favorable light, and John Fairbank in the periodic updatings of his
The United States & China tried to show that U.S.-China relations were not
necessarily implacable, but these views were lost amidst general derision
about little red books of Quotations from Chairman Mao.29 Indeed, one of the
most telling means devised by President Lyndon Johnson’s political enemies
to hit at him was their production of a little red book of Quotations from LBJ.
Even the defection of China from the Soviet orbit went largely unnoticed until
the end of this decade of the 1960s.
During the 1960s Japan almost became an American favorite, except with a
few die-hard old soldiers left over from Pacific war days and some (though not
many, as yet) auto industry people. The decade started badly, with cancellation
of President Dwight Eisenhower’s visit scheduled for June 1960. This was to
have been to celebrate the signing of a new ten-year Mutual Security Pact,
which (later on) was revealed to have permitted United States ships bearing
nuclear weapons to visit Japanese ports. The clamor against the treatyraised by
student and antigovernment demonstrators covering a wide political spectrum
who feared that the treaty would project Japan down a bad path to rearmament

 Page 282
and future warled Prime Minister Kishi to ram the ratification through the Diet
and then resign to minimize the damage. 30 But thereafter his successor, Ikeda,
cooled the potential for antagonistic feelings by lowering Japan’s foreign
politics profile, until it was barely visible, and concentrating on economic
recovery.
Then President John Kennedy sent Edwin O. Reischauer, a Harvard professor
of Japanese studies, to Japan as ambassador. Not only did Reischauer mend
the “broken dialogue,” but he put a friendly face on every aspect of American-
Japanese relations.31 Remaining through the Johnson years, he worked hard to
prevent troublesome issues from arising, and the American press carried
generally favorable “news” about Japan. Such things as the “Bullet Train”
(Shinkansen), which could travel at 150 miles per hour from Tokyo to Osaka, a
very competently run Japan Air Lines, and well made Japanese products like
Canon cameras, Seiko watches, Shiseido cosmetics, Sony television sets,
Honda motorcycles, and of course, Toyota and Datsun automobiles became
known favorably in the United States. A few Americans “remembered Pearl
Harbor” but most of them were avidly buying Japanese imports. The Japanese
did not help America in the Vietnam war “because of their peace constitution,”
which General MacArthur had given them, but Americans knew the Japanese
were “on our side” against communism.
China remained a “problem,” even though, despite the madness of the Cultural
Revolution, she did not, for reasons as yet not understood by Americans,
intervene against the United States presence in Vietnam. Not even the China
expertsonly Henry Kissinger, if scholars are to believe his memoirshad any
inkling of the possibility of a thaw in United States relations with Peking and
the dawn of a new open door era in Chinese-American relations.32 But
Kissinger saw it, and told President Richard Nixon (though according to
Nixon, one of the most noted anticommunists in American political life, he
was the one who grasped the reality of the opportunity presented by the Sino-
Soviet split first). Whichever, Nixon ushered in a new era of American-
Chinese relations with his visit to Peking in 1973.33
During the 1970s roles reversed as China became an American favorite with
great numbers of well-guided American tourists seeing the Great Wall and the
Peking opera and catching glimpses of various clean and happy “workplaces”
in China. Drugstore became something of a favorite on the American avant-
garde film circuit, and Democracy Wall impressed many American visitors.
Meanwhile, Toyotas, Datsuns, and Hondas were too much for

 Page 283
the American auto industry. The oil shortage and scare of 1973 and thereafter,
which American automakers took their time adjusting to, opened wide the
American market to Japanese auto imports. Clever advertising and soaring
gasoline prices brought a majority of American auto purchasers around to
believing there was no “buy American” problem in purchasing a Datsun,
distinctly small and foreign at first, from their “All American Datsun Dealer,”
as the TV advertising described them. But as layoffs hit Detroit and
Reaganomics cooled and depressed the economy further, unemployed
autoworkers began campaigns against Toyotas, Datsuns, and Japanese imports
in general, even to the point of bashing windshields on a number of Japanese
cars as a means of protest. Japanese autos and other Japanese products,
however, were already owned by far too many Americans to make direct
action feasible on any large scale. But reminders of Pearl Harbor and a subtle
anti-Japanese tone began to enter the popular mood. Scholars and businessmen
remained admirers of Japan in the sense that they were fascinated and
intrigued by Japanese methods of production, even to the point of wishing
they could somehow emulate Japanese no-strike and essentially nonunion
working conditions. Ezra Vogel found “Lessons for America” in his very
popular and influential book Japan as Number One, and Time Magazine in a
special issue devoted to Japan (1 August 1983) tried hard to make Japan look
good and especially to show there is no such thing as ”Japan Incorporated”that
indeed Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry encourages
competition at home to the point that inefficient companies lose out, leading to
success abroad in the business world. 34
But the prevailing American mood in the 1980s has been that Japan has
become so successful that her sails should be trimmed a bit, either with some
quotas or tariffs against Japanese imports or by forcing Japan to “pay the cost
of her own defense.”
Whether the argument is pro or con, there is still an element of respect for
Japanese achievements. A century ago the Japanese educator-philosopher-
journalist, Fukuzawa Yukichi, worried in the columns of his Jiji Shimpo
newspaper that Japan would be linked with China and Korea in the minds of
Westerners. “Datsu-A” he proclaimed. “Dissociate from Asia,” or more
stridently, “Get away from Asia.” He did not want Japan to be associated with
“backward” Asian countries, particularly with China and Korea. Although
most Americans cannot tell a Japanese from a Chinese or Korean face in the
physical sense, there has been no confusion with regard to the level of
modernization of those

 Page 284
countries. Whether liked or disliked, Japan since the Meiji period has been far
ahead, and Fukuzawa would be proud of that. 35
On the other hand, whether Japan deserves the respect she has enjoyed over
China in her American image is far less certain. For all her achievements and
progress, there is something superficial about Japan’s eagerness to succeed in
whatever may be the fashions of a given moment of world history, followed by
sulking when the traditional structure is endangered by its achievements. Most
Western historians, except the aforementioned Frances Moulder, give Japan
high marks for achievement if not for deportment, but there may be deeper
levels of analysis for examining levels of civilization, as Fukuzawa advocated.
Many students of the Vietnam War generationincluding my son France, whose
impressions of China are recorded in this volumefound much more of interest
in China’s history, both ancient and modern, than in Japan’s. Beyond
technology and trade (admittedly high), what has Japan to offer the cause of
“the advancement of civilization”? Shinto, a not very deep religion; social
hierarchy, too much; artistic genius, yes, but too narrow and refined. Why
should poetry be limited to seventeen syllables and art to the diminutive and
the meticulous? Bushido? Positively medieval. Whereas China has had
everything, from Confucian humanism and Taoist individualism to Maoist
concern for the masses, including much more science than Westerners thought
possible before Joseph Needham’s multivolume Science and Civilization in
China, (1959- ) no lack of entrepreneurial ability, a strong work ethic, and
even a “Democracy Wall” (1979). “Modernization” may be slow but that is
not the only measure of human achievement.36
So it may be argued, but unfortunately for China’s image too many tragic
excesses have clouded achievements, especially since America met China in
the early nineteenth century: opium trade, Taiping rebellion, Boxer rebellion,
warlords, Guo Min Tang collapse, Cultural revolution, and, of course, the
massacre of student protesters at Beijing’s Tian An Men Square in June 1989.
Tragic, sad, pitiable are the words to describe these.
Tiananmen was especially poignant for my wife and for me. After visiting
both the PRC and Taiwan in the summer of 1988 we had returned to our
University of Pennsylvania full of optimism and hope for the future of both
Chinas (or “one country, two systems” as was said in Beijing and not denied in
Taipei). True, the PRC was bureaucratically inefficient as CAAC travel
service, translated by our Chinese friends as “China Airlines Always Cancels”
proved by bringing our 3 P.M. flight into Beijing at 3 A.M.

 Page 285
However, the signs of progress were everywhere. Riding through the country
roads of South China had reminded us of Japan in the 1950s, with roads and
bridges being built by human hands with three-wheeled equipment that might
be characterized as “early modern.” Beijing, busy and optimistic, was still
bicycleland, but in Taiwan we could see how fast Chinese can modernize if
they want to. The PRC seemed to be balancing the pace better, with less
pollution.
Back at the University of Pennsylvania we worked during fall and winter to
help set up a “Seminar on Economic Cooperation and Development in the
Pacific Area” in cooperation with the Pacific Rim Economic Institute of
China’s People’s University”Seminar Pacific” as it was calledat the Friendship
Hotel, Beijing, April 4-8, 1989.
It was, as expressed in our subsequent newsletter report “A week of Hope and
Dialogue before the Deluge.” 37 But once again, with the Tian An Men Square
Massacre, American feelings for China were reduced to pity for the country
and its people, in contrast to the respect and admiration accorded Japan for
somehow pragmatically rebounding from the disasters it has encountered.
Notes
1. Frances V. Moulder, Japan, China and the World Economy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1977). A succinct presentation of Dr. Moulder’s
thesis may be found in her article entitled “Comparing Japan and China: Some
Theoretical and Methodological Issues” in Alvin D. Coox and Hilary Conroy,
eds., China and Japan: Search for Balance since World War I (Santa Barbara:
ABC Clio-Press, 1978), 87-111.
2. Harry Emerson Wildes, Aliens in the East (London: Oxford University
Press, 1937).
3. Stowe Persons, “Americanization of the Immigrant,” in David Frederick
Bowers, Foreign Influence in American Life (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1944), 43-44. See also J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (New York:
Macmillan, 1932).
4. Francis L. Hawks, comp., Narrative of the Expedition of an American Naval
Squadron to the China Seas and Japan, 3 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Congress
of the United States, 1856). See also Alfred Tamarin, Japan and the United
States: Early Encounters, 1791-1860 (New York: Macmillan, 1970), chaps. 2-
3; George Henry Preble, The Opening of Japan: A Diary of Discovery in the
Far East, edited by Boleslaw Szcesniak (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1962); Arthur Walworth, Black Ships Off Japan: The Story of
Commodore Perry’s Expedition (New York: Knopf, 1946); and Edward Yorke
McCauley, With Perry in Japan: The Diary of Edward Yorke McCauley, edited
by Allan B. Cole (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942).
5. McCauley, With Perry, 85-88.

 Page 286
6. Harper’s Weekly 178 (26 May 1860): 327.
7. Harper’s Weekly 182 (23 June 1860), 386; see also Masao Miyoshi, As We
Saw Them: The First Japanese Embassy to the United States (1860)
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 28-52; Chitoshi Yanaga,
“The First Japanese Embassy to the United States,” Pacific Historical Review
9, no. 2 (1940): 113-38.
8. Akira Iriye, ed., Mutual Images: Essays in American-Japanese Relations
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975): 1-23.
9. Foster Rhea Dulles, Yankees and Samurai (New York: Harper & Row,
1965), chaps. 9, 12.
10. Charles E. Neu, The Troubled Encounter: The United States and Japan
(New York: Wiley, 1975), 18-19. For details on the U.S. Ministers to Japan in
the Meiji era, see Payson J. Treat, Diplomatic Relations Between the United
States and Japan, 1853-1895, 2 vols. (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1932).
11. Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1894), and Japan: At Attempt at Interpretation (New York:
Macmillan, 1904). On fairs see Neil Harris, “All the World’s a Melting Pot,”
in Iriye, Mutual Images, chap. 2.
12. Chitoshi Yanage, “The First Japanese Embassy to the United States,”
Pacific Historical Review 9, no. 2 (1940): 137.
13. Hilary Conroy, The Japanese Frontier in Hawaii, 1868-98 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1953), 137-38.
14. Charles E. Neu, The Troubled Encounter: The United States and Japan
(New York: Wiley, 1975). Akira Iriye, Pacific Estrangement: Japanese and
American Expansion, 1879-1911 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1972).
15. William L. Neumann, America Encounters Japan (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1963), 103.
16. Iriye, “Japan as a Competitor,” in Iriye, Mutual Images, 77-78.
17. See Walton Bean, Boss Ruef’s San Francisco (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1952), 182; Thomas A. Bailey, Theodore Roosevelt and the
Japanese American Crises (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1934), 14; A.
Whitney Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United States (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1938), chap. 9.
18. Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1962), especially chaps 5-6.
19. Montaville Flowers, The Japanese Conquest of American Opinion (New
York: George Doran Co., 1917).
20. Ibid., 78-79, 88-89.
21. Ibid., 88-89.
22. Ibid., 59.
23. Ibid., 236.
24. Lindsay Russell, ed., America to Japan (New York: G. P. Putman, 1915).
25. Ibid., 232.
26. See Griffis papers at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., especially
box 20 and an unnumbered box for 1927.
27. John Lagerda, The Conqueror Comes to Tea: Japan under MacArthur
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1946); Russell Brines,
MacArthur’s Japan (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1948).
28. See Mark Tennien, No Secret Is Safe (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young,
1952).
29. Allyn Rickett and Adele Rickett, Prisoners of Liberation (New York:

 Page 287
Cameron Associates, 1957); Edgar Snow, The Other Side of the River (New
York: Random House, 1962); and John F. Fairbank, The United States &
China, 4th ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948, 1979).
30. George B. Packard III, Protest in Tokyo: The Security Treaty Crisis of
1960 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966).
31. Edwin O. Reischauer, “The Broken Dialogue with Japan,” Foreign Affairs
39, no. 1 (October 1960): 11-26. In a real sense, it was with this article that
Professor Reischauer began his goodwill ambassadorship toward Japan.
32. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 1049-
96.
33. Richard Nixon, R. N.: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, 2 vols. (New York:
Warner Books, 1979). See especially 2:8-21.
34. Ezra Vogel, Japan as Number 1: Lessons for America (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1979). Herman Kahn anticipated Vogel’s praise of
Japan’s success in his The Emerging Japanese Superstate (Englewood Cliffs:
Prentice Hall, 1970). He modified this in his volume with Thomas Pepper, The
Japanese Challenge (New York: Crowell, 1979). Time Magazine, 1 August
1983, especially 38-41. Time’s subheading was: “Fighting it out: Competition
at home leads to success abroad.”
35. Fukuzawa’s “Datsu-A” argument was first published in Jiji Shimpo, 16
March 1885. See discussion in Bunso Hashikawa, “Japanese Perspectives on
Asia: From Dissociation to Coprosperity,” in Akira Iriye, ed., The Chinese and
the Japanese (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 328-32. Sheila K.
Johnson stresses a “situational approach” and “multiple images” in her
American Attitudes Toward Japan, 1941-1975 (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover
Institution Studies, no. 51, 1975). See also Richard H. Minear commentary on
“Orientalism and the Study of Japan,” Journal of Asian Studies 39, no. 3 (May
1980): 507-817; and Matsuzawa Hiroaki, “Varieties of Bunmei Ron” (Theories
of Civilization) in Hilary Conroy, Sandra T. W. Davis, and Wayne Patterson,
eds., Japan in Transition (Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses,
1984), 209-14.
36. Of course, this could be argued otherwisethat modernization and its
accouterments are the all-important things. Perhaps the writer’s comment here
is in part a reaction to the strong put-down of China and praise of Japan in
Lucian W. Pye’s sophisticated analysis in Asian Power and Politics: The
Cultural Dimensions of Authority (Cambridge: Harvard-Belknap Press, 1985);
see especially chaps. 6-7. Reviewing Pye’s study for the Annals of the
American Political and Social Science Association, I suggested that Pye
“seems too much inclined to admire Japan’s orderly pragmatism and to
denigrate China’s lack of it,” perhaps because as a political scientist, he keeps
power always in focus, while I, as historian, must consider many other things
as well. The Annals 488 (November 1986), 197-98.
37. IPS Newsletter (Petaluma, Calif.: Interchange for Pacific Scholarship),
vol. 5, no. 1 (summer 1989).

 Page 288

SUGGESTED READINGS
This bibliography on American images of China and to a lesser extent of
Japan was prepared in January, 1990, and is by no means comprehensive. It
largely excludes literature on Asian immigrants in the United Statesstudies of
assimilationwhile including studies of diplomatic crises involving
immigration. The bibliography is restricted to representative examples of pre-
January, 1990, full-length memoirs by participants in American-East Asian
relations, to anthologies, and to analytical works. It therefore includes, for
example, Orville Schell’s Discos and Democracy, In the People’s Republic, To
Get Rich is Glorious, and “Watch Out for the Foreign Guests!” but excludes
Schell and Franz Schurmann’s The China Reader and Schell and Joseph
Esherick’s Modern China, both historical works of far broader scope than
Sino-American relations. This list also excludes popular and scholarly articles,
even though many articles have played an essential role in shaping our
understanding of American-East Asian relations, such as Michael H. Hunt’s
“Pearl BuckPopular Expert on China, 1931-1941,” in Modern China 3, no. 1
(January 1977): 33-64. The reader searching for popular or scholarly articles
or works with a broader scope than American images of China or Japan up to
January, 1990, is referred to the footnote references in articles in this volume,
to annotated bibliographies in John K. Fairbank’s The United States and China
(1979) and Warren I. Cohen’s America’s Response to China (1990), and to
current social science reference guides.
JONATHAN GOLDSTEIN
Abend, Hallett, My Life in China, 1926-1941. New York: Harcourt, Brace,
1943.
Amnesty International. Political Imprisonment in the People’s Republic of
China. New York: Amnesty International, 1978.
Anderson, David L. Imperialism and Idealism: American Diplomats in China,
1861-1898. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.
Anderson, Irvine H., Jr. The Standard-Vacuum Oil Company and United States
East Asian Policy, 1933-41. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.

 Page 289
Bachrack, Stanley D. The Committee of One Million. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1976.
Barnds, William J., ed. China and America: The Search for a New
Relationship. New York: New York University Press, 1977.
Barnett, A. Doak. Communist China and Asia: Challenge to American Policy.
New York: Harper, 1960.
Barrett, David. Dixie Mission. Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies,
University of California, 1970.
Battistini, Lawrence H. The United States and Asia. New York: Praeger, 1955.
Baum, Richard, with Louise Bennett, eds. China in Ferment: Perspectives on
the Cultural Revolution. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971.
Belden, Jack. China Shakes the World. New York: Monthly Review Press,
1970 [1949].
Bennett, Adrian. Missionary Journalist in China: Young J Allen and His
Magazines, 1860-1883. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983.
Bernstein, Richard. From the Center of the Earth: The Search for the Truth
about China. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982.
Borg, Dorothy. American Policy and the Chinese Revolution, 1925-28. New
York: Octagon, 1968.
. The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1933-38. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1964.
, comp. Historians and American Far Eastern Policy. New York: Columbia
University East Asian Institute Occasional Papers, 1966.
Borg, Dorothy, and Waldo Heinrichs, eds. Uncertain Years: Chinese-American
Relations, 1947-50. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.
Borg, Dorothy, and Shumpei Okamoto, eds. Pearl Harbor as History:
Japanese-American Relations, 1931-1941.
Breslin, Thomas A. China, American Catholicism, and the Missionary.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980.
Brown, Arthur Judson. The Chinese Revolution. New York: Student Volunteer
Movement, 1912.
. New Forces in Old China: An Unwelcome but Inevitable Awakening. New
York: Revell, 1904.
Buckley, Thomas H. The United States and the Washington Conference.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1970.
Buhite, Russell D. Nelson T. Johnson and American Policy Toward China,
1925-1941. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1968.
. Patrick J. Hurley and American Foreign Policy. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1973.
Butterfield, Fox. China: Alive in the Bitter Sea. New York: New York Times
Books, 1982.
Callahan, James Morton. American Relations in the Pacific and the Far East,
1784-1900. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1901.
Campbell, Charles S. Special Business Interests and the Open Door Policy,
Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1968 [1951].
Carlson, Ellsworth C. The Foochow Missionaries, 1847-1880. Cambridge:
Har-

 Page 290
vard University Press, 1974.
Ching, Frank, ed. The New York Times Report from Red China. New York:
Quadrangle Books, 1972.
Clubb, Paul H. United States Policy toward China: Diplomatic and Public
Documents, 1839-1939. New York: Russell and Russell, 1967 [1964 and
1940].
Clyde, Paul H., and Burton Beers. The Far East: A History of the Western
Impact and the Eastern Response, 1830-1975. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1975.
Cochran, Sherman. Big Business in China: Sino-Foreign Rivalry in the
Cigarette Industry, 1890-1930. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980.
Cohen, Paul A. China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the
Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860-1870. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1964.
. Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent
Chinese Past. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.
Cohen, Warren I. America’s Response to China: An Interpretive History of
Sino-American Relations. New York: Wiley, 1990 [1971].
. The Chinese Connection: Roger S. Greene, Thomas W. Lamont, George E.
Sokolsky and American-East Asian Relations. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1978.
, ed. New Frontiers in American-East Asian Relations. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1983.
Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars. China! Inside the People’s Republic.
New York: Bantam, 1972.
Conroy, Hilary. The Japanese Frontier in Hawaii, 1868-1898. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1953.
Conroy, Hilary and T. Scott Miyakawa. East Across the Pacific. Santa
Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio Press, 1972.
Croly, Herbert. Willard Straight. New York: Macmillan, 1942.
Crossman, Carl. The China Trade. Princeton: Pyne Press, 1972.
Crow, Carl. 400 Million Customers. New York: Harper, 1937.
. The Traveler’s Handbook for China. Shanghai: Hwa-Mei Book Concern,
1913.
Cumings, Bruce. The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and Emergence
of Separate Regimes, 1945-1947. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.
Curry, Roy W. Woodrow Wilson and Far Eastern Policy, 1913-1921. New
York: Octagon, 1968.
Danton, George H. The Culture Contacts of the United States and China: The
Earliest Sino-American Culture Contacts, 1784-1844. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1931.
Davies, John Paton, Jr. Dragon By the Tail. New York: Norton, 1972.
Dawson, Raymond. The Chinese Chameleon. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1967.
Dennett, Tyler. Americans in Eastern Asia. New York: Barnes and Noble,
1922.
Dulles, Foster Rhea. American Policy toward Communist China, 1949-1969.
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1972.

 Page 291
. China and America: The Story of their Relations since 1784. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1946.
. The Old China Trade. New York: AMS Press, 1970 [1930].
Esherick, Joseph W., ed. Lost Chance in China: The World War II Despatches
of John S. Service. New York: Random House, 1974.
Etzold, Thomas H., ed. Aspects of Sino-American Relations since 1784. New
York: Franklin Watts/New Viewpoints, 1978.
Evans, Paul M. John Fairbank and the American Understanding of Modern
China. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988.
Fairbank, John K. China: The People’s Middle Kingdom and the U.S.A.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967.
. China Perceived. New York: Knopf, 1974.
. China Watch. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987.
. Chinabound: A Fifty Year Memoir. New York: Harper and Row, 1982.
. Chinese-American Interactions. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 1975.
. Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The Opening of the Treaty Ports,
1842-1854. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953.
. The United States and China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979
[1948].
, ed. The Missionary Experience in China and America. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1974.
Feis, Herbert. The China Tangle: The American Effort in China from Pearl
Harbor to the Marshall Mission. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953.
. The Road to Pearl Harbor. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950.
Fifield, Russell H. Woodrow Wilson and the Far East: The Diplomacy of the
Shantung Question. Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1965.
Flynn, John T. While You Slept. Our Tragedy in Asia and Who Made It. Old
Greenwich, Conn.: Devin-Adair, 1971 [1951].
Foot, Rosemary. The Wrong War: American Policy and the Dimensions of the
Korean Conflict, 1950-1953. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.
Forbes, H. A. Crosby; John Devereaux Kernan; Ruth S. Wilkins. Chinese
Export Silver, 1785 to 1885. Milton, Mass.: Museum of the American China
Trade, 1975.
Forsythe, Sidney A. A Missionary Community in China, 1895-1905.
Cambridge: Harvard East Asian Monographs, 1971.
Foster, John W. American Diplomacy in the Orient. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1903.
Friedman, Edward, and Mark Selden, eds. America’s Asia: Dissenting Essays
on Asian-American Relations. New York: Pantheon, 1971.
Fuess, Claude M. The Life of Caleb Cushing. New York: Harcourt, Brace,
1923.
Gallicchio, Marc S. The Cold War Begins in Asia. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1988.

 Page 292
Garrett, Shirley. Social Reformers in Urban China. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1970.
Garver, John W. China’s Decision for Rapproachement with the United States,
1968-1971. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1982.
Goldstein, Jonathan. Philadelphia and the China Trade, 1682-1846:
Commercial, Cultural and Attitudinal Effects. University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1978.
, ed. Georgia’s East Asian Connection, 1733-1983. Carrollton: West Georgia
College Studies in the Social Sciences, 1983.
Greene, Felix. A Curtain of IgnoranceChina: How America is Deceived.
London: Cape, 1965.
Griswold, A. Whitney. The Far Eastern Policy of the United States. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1938. Gulick, Edward V. Peter Parker and the
Opening of China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973.
Hao, Yen-p’ing. The Commercial Revolution in Nineteenth Century China:
The Rise of Sino-Western Mercantile Capitalism. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1986.
. The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China: Bridge Between East and
West. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.
Harding, Harry. China’s Foreign Relations in the 1980s. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1986.
Harding, Harry, and Yuan Ming, eds. Sino-American Relations, 1945-1955.
Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1989.
Hemenway, Ruth V. A Memoir of Revolutionary China, 1924-1941. Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1977.
Hinton, William. Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village.
New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966.
. Shenfan: The Continuing Revolution in a Chinese Village. New York:
Random House, 1983.
Hollander, Paul. Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the
Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, 1928-1978. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1981.
Hunt, Michael H. Frontier Defense and the Open Door: Manchuria in
Chinese-American Relations, 1895-1911. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1973.
. The Making of a Special Relationship. The United States and China to 1914.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.
, et al. Mutual Images in U.S.-China Relations. Occasional Paper No. 32.
Washington, D.C.: Wilson Center, Asia Program, 1988.
Hunter, Jane. The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-
of-the-Century China. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.
Hyatt, Irwin. Our Ordered Lives Confess: Three Nineteenth Century American
Missionaries in East Shantung. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976.
Iriye, Akira. Across the Pacific: The Inner History of East Asian-American
Relations. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1967.
. After Imperialism. The Search for a New Order in the Far East. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1965.

 Page 293
. The Cold War in Asia: A Historical Introduction. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1974.
. Mutual Images: Essays in American-Japanese Relations. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1975.
, ed. American-East Asian Cultural Relations. Chicago: Center for Far Eastern
Studies, University of Chicago, 1984.
, ed. U.S. Policy toward China. Boston: Little, Brown, 1968.
Iriye, Akira, and Warren Cohen. American, Chinese, and Japanese
Perspective on Wartime Asia, 1931-1939. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly
Resources, 1990.
Isaacs, Harold. Scratches on our Minds: American Views of China and India.
Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1980 [1958].
Israel, Jerry. Progressivism and the Open Door: America and China, 1905-
1921. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971.
Jiang, Arnold Xiangze. The United States and China. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1988.
Jones, Dorothy B. The Portrayal of China and India on the American Screen,
1896-1955. Cambridge: MIT Center for International Affairs, 1955.
Kahn, E. J., Jr. The China Hands. New York: Random House, 1975.
Kalicki, J. H. The Pattern of Sino-American Crises: Political-Military
Interactions in the 1950s. London: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Karlgren, Joyce K. and Denis F. Simon, eds. Educational Exchanges: Essays
on the Sino-American Experience. Berkeley: University of California Institute
of East Asian Studies, 1987.
Kates, George N. The Years that Were Fat: The Last of Old China. Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1967 [1952].
Kaufman, Burton I. The Korean War: Challenges in Crisis, Credibility, and
Command. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.
Koen, Ross Y. The China Lobby in American Politics. New York: Harper and
Row, 1974.
Kubek, Anthony. How the Far East Was Lost. Chicago: Regnery, 1963.
La Fargue, Thomas E. China’s First Hundred. Pullman: State College of
Washington, 1942.
LaFeber, Walter. The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion,
1860-1898. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963.
Latourette, Kenneth S. The History of Early Relations between the United
States and China. New York: Kraus, 1967 [1917].
Lauren, Paul Gordon, ed. The China Hands’ Legacy: Ethics and Diplomacy.
Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1987.
Lewis, Bernard; Edmund Leites; and Margaret Chase, eds. As Others See Us.
Mutual Perceptions, East and West. A special issue of Comparative
Civilizations Review nos. 13-14 (1985-1986).
Li, Tien-yi. Woodrow Wilson’s China Policy, 1913-1917. New York: Octagon,
1969.
Liu, Kwang-Ching. Americans and Chinese: A Historical Essay and a
Bibliography. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963.
, ed. American Missionaries in China: Papers from Harvard Semi-

 Page 294
nars. Cambridge: Harvard East Asian Monographs, 1966.
Lutz, Jesse G. China and the Christian Colleges, 1850-1950. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1971.
McClellan, Robert. The Heathen Chinee: A Study of American Attitudes
Toward China, 1890-1905. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1971.
McCormick, Thomas. China Market: America’s Quest for Informal Empire,
1893-1901. Chicago: Quadrangle, 1967.
MacFarquhar, Roderick, ed. Sino-American Relations, 1949-71. New York:
Praeger, 1972.
McKee, Delber L. Chinese Exclusion versus the Open Door Policy, 1900-
1906: Clashes over China Policy in the Roosevelt Era. Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1977.
MacLaine, Shirley. You Can Get There From Here. New York: Norton, 1975.
Mathews, Jay, and Linda Mathews. One Billion: A China Chronicle. New
York: Random House, 1983.
Matray, James I. The Reluctant Crusade: American Foreign Policy in Korea,
1941-1950. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985.
May, Ernest R. The Truman Administration and China: 1945-1949.
Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1975.
May, Ernest R., and John K. Fairbank, eds. America’s China Trade in
Historical Perspective: The Chinese and American Performance. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1986.
May, Ernest R., and James C. Thomson, Jr., eds. America-East Asian
Relations: A Survey. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972.
May, Gary. China Scapegoat: The Diplomatic Ordeal of John Carter Vincent.
Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1982 [1979].
Mayers, David A. Cracking the Monolith. U.S. Policy Against the Sino-Soviet
Alliance, 1949-1955. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986.
Miller, Stuart C. The Unwelcome Immigrant: The American Image of the
Chinese, 1785-1882. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974 [1969].
Moody, Peter. Opposition and Dissent in Contemporary China. Stanford:
Hoover Institution Press, 1977.
Moorsten, Richard, and Morton Abramowitz. Remaking China Policy: U.S.-
China Relations and Governmental Decision-making. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971.
Morse, Hosea Ballou. The International Relations of the Chinese Empire. 2
vols. London: Longmans, Green, 1910.
Morse, Hosea Ballou, and Harley MacNair. Far Eastern International
Relations. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931.
Nee, Victor, and James Peck, eds. China’s Uninterrupted Revolution: From
1840 to the Present. New York: Pantheon, 1975.
Oksenberg, Michael. Explorations in Sino-American Relations. Boulder,
Colo.: Westview, 1989.
, ed. China’s Developmental Experience. New York: Praeger, 1973.
Oksenberg, Michael, and Robert B. Oxnam, eds. Dragon and Eagle: United
States-China Relations: Past and Future. New York: Basic Books, 1978.

 Page 295
Passin, Herbert. Encounter with Japan. New York: Kodansha, 1982.
Peck, Graham. Two Kinds of Time. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950.
Pugach, Noel. Paul S. Reinsch: Open Door Diplomat in Action. Millwood,
N.Y.: KTO Press, 1979.
Pye, Lucian. Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority.
Cambridge: Harvard University Belknap Press, 1985.
Rabe, Valentin H. The Home Base of American China Missions, 1880-1920.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978.
Rea, Kenneth W., ed. Early Sino-American Relations, 1841-1912. Boulder,
Colo.: Westview, 1977.
Reed, James. The Missionary Mind and American East Asia Policy, 1911-
1915. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983.
Reischauer, Edwin O. My Life between Japan and America. New York: Harper
& Row, 1986.
Rickett, Allyn, and Adele Rickett. Prisoners of Liberation. New York:
Cameron Associates, 1957.
Romanus, Charles F., and Riley Sunderland. Stilwell’s Command Problems.
Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1956.
. Stilwell’s Mission to China. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military
History, 1953.
. Time Runs Out in CBI. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military
History, 1959.
Ross, Edward Alsworth. The Changing Chinese: The Conflict of Oriental and
Western Cultures in China. New York: Century, 1911.
Schaller, Michael. The United States and China in the Twentieth Century. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1989 [1979].
. The U.S. Crusade in China, 1938-1945. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1979.
Schell, Orville. Discos and Democracy: China in the Throes of Reform. New
York: Pantheon, 1988.
. In the People’s Republic: An American’s Firsthand View of Living and
Working in China. New York: Random House, 1978 [1977].
. To Get Rich is Glorious: China in the 80s. New York: New American
Library, 1985 [1984].
. “Watch Out for the Foreign Guests!”: China Encounters the West. New
York: Pantheon, 1980.
Service, John. The Amerasia Papers. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1971.
Shewmaker, Kenneth E. Americans and Chinese Communists, 1927-1945.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971.
Smith, Arthur H. China and America To-day: A Study of Conditions and
Relations. New York: Revell, 1907.
. China in Convulsion. 2 vols. New York: AMS Press, 1973 [1901].
. Chinese Characteristics. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat, 1970 [1894].
. Village Life in China. Boston: Little Brown, 1970 [1899].

 Page 296
Snow, Edgar. The Battle for Asia. Cleveland: World, 1941.
. The Far Eastern Front. New York: Smith and Haas, 1933.
. Journey to the Beginning. New York: Random House, 1958.
. The Other Side of the River: Red China Today. New York: Random House,
1961.
. Random Notes on Red China 1936-1945. Cambridge: Harvard East Asian
Monographs, 1957.
. Red Stars Over China. New York: Grove Press, 1968 [1938].
Snow, Lois Wheeler. China on Stage: An American Actress in the People’s
Republic. New York: Random House, 1972.
So, Kwan Wai, and Warren I. Cohen. Essays in the History of China and
Chinese-American Relations. East Lansing: Asian Studies Center, Michigan
State University, 1982.
Spence, Jonathan. To Change China: Western Advisors in China, 1620-1960.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1969.
Spurr, Russell. Enter the Dragon: China’s Involvement in the Korean War,
1950-1951. New York: Newmarket Press, 1988.
Steele, Archibald T. The American People and China. New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1966.
Stueck, William W., Jr. The Road to Confrontation: American Policy toward
China and Korea, 1947-1950. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1981.
Sutter, Robert B. China-Watch: Toward Sino-American Reconciliation.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.
Swanberg, W. A. Luce. New York: Scribner’s, 1972.
Swisher, Earl. China’s Management of the American Barbarians. New York:
Octagon, 1982 [1953].
Tamarin, Alfred. Japan and the United States: Early Encounters, 1791-1860.
New York: Macmillan, 1970.
Tennien, Mark. No Secret is Safe. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Young, 1952.
Terrill, Ross, ed. The China Difference. New York: Harper and Row, 1981
[1980].
Thomas, John N. The Institute of Pacific Relations. Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1974.
Thomson, James C., Jr. Sentimental Imperialists: The American Experience in
East Asia. New York: Harper and Row, 1981.
. While China Faced West: American Reformers in Nationalist China, 1982-
1937. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969.
Thorne, Christopher. Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain and the War
Against Japan, 1941-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
. The Limits of Foreign Policy. The West, the League and the Far Eastern
Crisis of 1931-1933. New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1973 [1972].
Tong, Te-kong. United States Diplomacy in China, 1644-1860. Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1964.
Tsou, Tang. America’s Failure in China, 1941-50. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1967.

 Page 297
Tuchman, Barbara. Notes from China. New York: Collier, 1972.
. Stilwell and the American Experience in China. New York: Macmillan, 1971.
Tucker, Nancy B. Patterns in the Dust: Chinese-American Relations and the
Recognition Controversy, 1949-1950. New York: Columbia University Press,
1983.
Utley, Freda. The China Story. Chicago: Regnery, 1951.
Van Alstyne, Richard W. The United States and East Asia. New York: Norton,
1973.
Varg, Paul A. The Closing of the Door: Sino-American Relations 1936-1946.
East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1973.
. The Making of a Myth: The United States and China. East Lansing: Michigan
State University Press, 1968.
. Missionaries, Chinese, and Diplomats: The American Protestant Missionary
Movement in China, 1890-1952. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958.
. Open Door Diplomat: The Life of W. W. Rockhill. Champaign-Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1952.
Vevier, Charles. The United States and China, 1905-1913: A Study of Finance
and Diplomacy. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1955.
West, Philip. Yenching University and Sino-Western Relations, 1916-1952.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976.
White, Theodore, and Annalee Jacoby. Thunder Out of China. New York: Da
Capo, 1980 [1946].
Wiest, Jean-Paul. Maryknoll in China: A History. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E.
Sharpe, 1988.
Wildes, Harry Emerson. Aliens in the East. London: Oxford, 1937.
Wong, Eugene Franklin. On Visual Media Racism: Asians in the American
Motion Pictures. New York: Arno, 1978.
Wright, Mary C. The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T’ung-chih
Restoration, 1862-1872. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1957.
Young, Arthur. China and the Helping Hand, 1937-1945. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1963.
Young, Kenneth T. Negotiating with the Chinese Communists: The United
States Experience, 1953-1967. New York: McGraw Hill, 1984 [1968].
Young, Marilyn. The Rhetoric of Empire: American China Policy, 1895-1901.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968.

 Page 298

CONTRIBUTORS
David B Chan has taught East Asian history and Sino-American relations at
California State University at Hayward since 1963. In 1957 he received his
Ph.D. in East Asian history from the University of California at Berkeley. Dr.
Chan has published articles on medieval and modern China. He has served as
executive vice president of the Institute of Pacific Studies and as resident
director in Taipei of the California State Universities’ Center.
Since 1967 Paochin Chu has taught East Asian history and international
relations at San Diego State University, where he has also directed the Center
for Asian Studies. In 1970 he received his Ph.D. in international relations from
the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation concerned the diplomacy of V.
K. Wellington Koo, also the subject of a book and several articles by Dr. Chu.
Since 1979 France H. Conroy has taught social science at Burlington County
College, Cinnaminson, N.J., where he also directed the international studies
program. In 1975 he received his Ph.D. in East-West political philosophy from
Union Graduate School. He has written on China for Peace and Change, The
San Francisco Chronicle, and The Courier-Post (Cherry Hill, N.J.). Dr.
Conroy wrote for the ”New Left” newspapers The Guardian and The Call
before beginning his teaching career. In 1979 Dr. Conroy was invited to China
by the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese
Communist Party as a member of a writers and journalists delegation.
Hilary Conroy is Professor of Far Eastern History Emeritus at the University
of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California and
has been a Fulbright research scholar at Tokyo University, president of the
Conference on Peace Research in History, and a senior specialist at the
Institute of Advanced Projects at the East-West Center (Honolulu). The most
recent of his publi-

 Page 299
cations are, with Alvin D. Coox, China and Japan: Search for Balance (1978);
with Harry Wray, Japan Examined (1983); with Sandra T. W. Davis and
Wayne Patterson, Japan in Transition (1984); and, with Roy Kim, New Tides
in the Pacific (1987).
Jacques M. Downs received his Ph.D. in American diplomatic history from
Georgetown University in 1961. Since then he has taught American history at
the University of New England, Biddeford, Maine. Dr. Downs coedited The
Thunder of the Mills: A New England Business and Economic History
Casebook, 1690-1965 (1980) and The Cities on the Saco (1986).
Jonathan Goldstein is an associate professor of East Asian history at West
Georgia College and a research associate of Harvard University’s John K.
Fairbank Center for East Asian Research. In 1973 he received his Ph.D. in
American-East Asian relations from the University of Pennsylvania, where he
studied under Hilary Conroy. He wrote Philadelphia and the China Trade,
1682-1846 (1978) and edited Georgia’s East Asian Connection, 1733-1983
(1983). He has published articles on nineteenth century Sino-American
relations in Ch’ing-shih wen’t’i, Asian Cultural Quarterly (Taipei), American
Studies (Taipei), New China, and The American Asian Review.
Harry Harding is Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.
He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University, where he has also taught
political science. He is the author of Organizing China: The Problem of
Bureaucracy, 1949-1976 (1981); China: The Uncertain Future (1974); and
China and the United States: Normalization and Beyond (1979). Dr. Harding
edited China’s Foreign Relations in the 1980s (1984).
Sandra M. Hawley teaches history at San Jacinto College, Houston, Texas. She
received her Ph.D. in American-East Asian relations in 1974 from Case
Western Reserve University, where she studied under David van Tassel. She
has published articles on American-East Asian relations and is working on
Asia in the American Imagination, an examination of ideas and images in
foreign policy.
Jerry Israel is Academic Dean and Vice President of Simpson College,
Indianola, Iowa. He has taught United States and modern Chinese history at
Illinois Wesleyan University. He received his

 Page 300
Ph.D. in history from Rutgers University in 1967. Professor Israel is the author
of Progressivism and the Open Door: America and China, 1905-1921 (1971)
and of articles about twentieth century American-East Asian relations and
American images of China.
Ramon H. Myers is the curator of the East Asian Collection and a Senior
Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford,
California. He received his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of
Washington (Seattle) and has taught at the Universities of Hawaii and Miami
(Coral Gables). He is the author of The Chinese Peasant Economy (1970) and,
with Mark Peattie, coedited The Japanese Colonial Empire (1987). He
coauthored, with Tai-chun Kuo, Understanding Communist China: Communist
China Studies in the United States and the Republic of China, 1949-1978
(1986).
Raymond G. O’Connor, University of Miami emeritus, has published in the
fields of maritime and diplomatic history and American-East Asian relations.
Most recently, Dr. O’Connor wrote the introduction and commentary for the
second edition of The Japanese Navy in World War Two (1986).
Mark A. Plummer received his Ph.D. in United States and Asian history from
the University of Kansas in 1960. Since then he has been a member of the
history department at Illinois State University. He has spent extended periods
of time in China (mainland or Taiwan) on five occasions since 1962 and has
served as Fulbright professor of American history at National Taiwan
University.
Jan S. Prybyla is Professor of Economics at The Pennsylvania State
University. He is the author of, among others, The Political Economy of
Communist China (1970); The Chinese Economy: Problems and Policies
(1978, 1981); Issues in Socialist Economic Modernization (1980); and Market
and Plan Under Socialism: The Bird in the Cage (1987).
Murray A. Rubinstein teaches history of religion at Baruch College of the City
University of New York. He received his Ph.D. in history from New York
University in 1976 and has published articles and reviews about Christian
missionaries in China in American and Taiwanese journals. In 1979-80 Dr.
Rubinstein served as Fulbright lecturer in American Studies in Taiwan.

 Page 301
Jonathan G. Utley has taught the history of the United States foreign relations
at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, since 1969. In 1970 he received his
Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana. In addition to Going to War with
Japan, 1937-1941 (1985), he has written numerous reviews and articles on
U.S.-East Asian relations.
Raymond F. Wylie is Professor of International Relations and Director of the
East Asian studies program at Lehigh University. He received his Ph.D. in
political science in 1976 from the School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London. He has written The Emergence of Maoism, 1935-1945
(1980); China: The Peasant Revolution (1972); China Today: An Introduction
for Canadians (1972); and, with Immanuel C. Y. Hsu, “The China Hands in
Historical and Comparative Perspective,” in Paul Gordon Lauren, ed., The
China Hands’ Legacy: Ethics and Diplomacy (1987), 58-80.

 Page 303

INDEX
N.B. In preparing this text and index with many Chinese names for an
American audience, I have been guided by Professor John Schrecker’s advice
to let common American usage dictate which transliteration should prevail. He
asks rhetorically, “Do we use Firenze rather than Florence?” During two
centuries of Sino-American relations several formal systems plus numerous
arbitrary renditions have been used to convert Chinese words into Latin
characters. In both the text and index I have entered Chinese names according
to their commonest usage in American English, such as Chiang Kai-shek or
Sun Yat-sen. Wherever feasible I have juxtaposed or cross-indexed
transliterations less commonly used in American English, such as Jiang Jieshi
or Sun Zhongshan.
JONATHAN GOLDSTEIN
A
Abeel, David, 68, 69, 70, 71, 82, 89
Acheson, Dean, 163
Adams, Brooks, 114, 130
Adams, John, 185
Adams, John Quincy, 89, 91
Adams, Henry, 276
Ahlstrom, Sydney E., 82
Alcock, Sir Rutherford, 58, 65
Allen, B. Sprague, 54
Alley, Rewi, 161, 162, 163
American Peace Society, 279
Ames, Roger T., 23, 25
Amiel, Leon, 42
Amnesty International, 246
Anderson, David, 65, 80, 81
Anderson, Rufus, 82
Anslinger, H. J., 165
Anti-Sinophobia, 180
Apana, Chang, 135
Aristotle, 14
Arnold, Julean, 152, 165
Arnold, Thurman, 62
Aruga Tadashi, 15, 24
Atkinson, Brooks, 182
Averson, Richard, 131
Awakawa Tasuichi, 41
B
Bain, Chester A., 112
Bao Dai, 163
Barnard, Noel, 40
Barnsley, Edward, 54
Barrett, Colonel David D., 182
Battistini, L. H., 112
Beaudouin, John T., 165
Beale, Howard K., 130
Beard, Charles A., 276
Beasley, W. G., 13, 24
Becker, William H., 53
Beers, Burton F., 111
Bemis, Samuel Flagg, 111, 112
Benny, Jack, 158
Benton, Thomas H., 92
Bergamini, David, 13, 24
Berstein, Richard, 244
Bestor, John, 41
Beurdeley, Cecile, 42
Beurdeley, Michel, 41, 42
Biddle, Katharine, 54
Biggers, Earl Derr, 132, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 142, 143, 144, 146, 147
Billington, Ray Allen, 77, 82
Bingham, John A., 276
Birch, William, 54
Bisson, T. A., 150, 165
Bix, Herbert, 11, 24
Blake, Reed H., 79, 82
Blythe, Samuel A., 152, 165
Boatfield, Helene, 54
Boston Symphony Orchestra, 200
Botsford, Jay, 44, 53

 Page 304
Bow, Clara, 157
Bowring, Charles, 102, 105
“Boxers, The,” 17, 115-17, 119, 122, 179
Bowring, John, 99
Bradley, Charles William, 94
Bradley, Charles William, Jr., 94
Bridgman, Elijah Coleman, 68, 69, 70, 71, 74, 75, 80, 81, 82
Bridgman, Eliza J., 81, 82
Brinker, William J., 82, 111
Brogam, John A., 165
Brown, Arthur Judson, 119, 120, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126, 129, 130, 131
Brown, Gawen, 47
Brown, Samuel, 68
Browne, Peter, 48, 49
Bruce, Frederick, 60, 65
Buchanan, James, 93, 97, 98, 106, 107, 110
Buchwald, Art, 195
Buck, Pearl, 18, 145, 165, 167
Buckingham, James, 55
Burlingame, Anson, 60, 65, 185
Burton, David H., 130
Butler, Joseph T., 42
Butterfield, Fox, 248, 249, 251, 252, 265
C
CAAC, 193, 284
Calder, Kent, 23, 25
Callahan, J. M., 111, 112
Campbell, Joseph, 40
Canfield, Cass, 150
Carnegie, Dale, 150
Carpini, John de Plano, 36
Carrington, Edward, 90
Carter, Edward C., 165
Case, Margaret, 13, 24
Cass, Lewis, 107, 108, 110
Central Committee Propaganda Department, 195, 205, 206
Chamberlain, Basil Hall, 12
Chambers, William, 55
Chan, Charlie, 18, 132-47, 135
Chan, David B., 20, 183
Chang Li, 134
Chaplin, Charlie, 194
Chennault, Claire, 18
Chew Ng Poon, 130
Ch’i-shan, 63
Ch’i-ying, Imperial Commissioner, 91, 96, 98, 108
Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi), 18, 19, 154, 159, 160, 163, 181, 182-84, 189,
280, 281
Chin Shi Huang, 245
China Broadcast Administration Bureau, 195, 205
China Trade Museum (Milton, Mass.), 44, 52
Chinaman, John, 106
Chinese Communist Party, 193, 196, 210
Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 180, 277-78
Chinoiserie, 16, 38, 43-55
Chippendale, Thomas, 48
Chou En-lai. See Zhou Enlai
Christman, Margaret C. S., 52
Christy, Arthur E., 53
Chu Teh, 182
Chu Paochin, 20, 171
Chung Yango-mo, 41
Churchill, Winston, 250
Clarendon, Lord, 104
Clark, Dan E., 112
Clark, William Smith, 276
Clayton, John M., 93
Clifford, George, 54
Close, Upton, 165
Clyde, Paul H., 111, 112
Co Tui, 165
Cochran, Thomas, 65
Cohen, Paul A., 9, 80
Cohen, Warren I., 22, 166, 288
Cohong, 60
Confucius, 23, 191, 274
Conger, E. H., 122, 124, 131
Conner, Patrick, 44, 53
Conrad, Paul, 182
Conroy, France H., 9, 20, 25, 193, 284
Conroy, Hilary, 11, 24, 25, 173
Coolidge, Calvin, 57
Coolidge, Joseph, 59
Cooper, Captain, 274
Cooper, Michael, 42
Cornell, Richard, 146
Costin, W. C., 112
Creel, George, 150
Croly, Herbert, 148, 164
Cronkite, Walter, 195
Crosby, William, 66
Crossman, Carl L., 44, 45, 46, 53, 54, 55

 Page 305
Crow, Carl, 18, 148-68
Croy, Homer, 165
Cultural Revolution, 188, 190, 198, 202-3, 205-7, 210-11, 217-18, 246-72
Cunningham, Edward, 100, 101
Curtin, Philip, 44, 53
Cushing, Caleb, 50, 59, 65, 78, 79, 83, 95, 96, 97, 103, 107, 109, 110
Cushing, John Perkins, 48, 49
Czaja, Michael, 42
D
da Gama, Vasco, 36
de Saint-Méry, Moreau, 49
Danton, George H., 42
Davey, Sir Crichton, 127, 128
Davis, John W., 98, 99
Davis, William, 54
Dawson, Raymond, 14, 24, 67, 79, 147
DeGaulle, Charles, 250
Delano, Frederick A., 66
Delano, Warren, 59, 66
Deng Xiaoping, 20, 184, 192, 209, 211, 217, 218, 222, 269
Denker, Ellen Paul, 52, 54
Dennett, Tyler, 56, 65, 89, 111, 112
Department of Internal Security, 203
Diamond, M. S., 40
Dirks, Nicholas, 24
Djerassi, Norma, 253
Djilas, Miloran, 229, 248
Dolan, C. H., 165
Donahue, George A., 81, 82
Donald, W. H., 154
Dooner, Pierton W., 178
Dower, John W., 24
Downing, A. J., 54
Downs, Jacques M., 16, 17, 56, 66
Dulles, John Foster, 164, 183, 184
Dunn, Nathan, 50, 55
Dwight, Timothy, 72
E
Eberlain, Harold, 54
Eberstadt, Nick, 251, 264
Edwards, Jonathan, 72
Egami Namio, 41
Eisenhower, Dwight, 152
Elliot, Captain, 57, 63, 64, 65
Emily (ship), 62
Empress of China (ship), 11, 44, 52, 88, 184
Engels, F., 21, 191
Epstein, Israel, 163
Esherick, Joseph, 288
Ettinghausen, Richard, 40
Etzold, Thomas, 82, 111
Evans, Benjamin, 48
Everett, Alexander Hill, 97, 98, 99
F
Fadiman, Clifton, 152, 165
Fah Lo Suee, 134
Fairbank, John King, 5, 64, 65, 80, 111, 112, 166, 281, 288
Fay, Peter Ward, 80
Fell, Gideon, 143
Fenolossa, Ernest, 276
Field, James A., Jr., 81
Fineman, Helene, 54
Fingarett, Herbert, 23, 25
Fisher, Robert E., 41, 55
Flannery, Harry W., 165
Flannery, Henry W., 150
Forcey, Charles, 164
Forbes, H. A. Crosby, 44, 45, 46, 53, 54, 55
Forbes, Paul Sieman, 65
Forbes, Robert Bennett, 57, 65, 66
Forbidden City, 210
Ford, Henry, 187
Fort, Joel, 253
Foster, J. W., 111, 112
Fox, Richard, 24
Fox, Robin Lane, 40
Four Modernizations, 213
Franke, Wolfgang, 167
Franklin, Benjamin, 54, 185
Fraser, John, 253, 255, 261, 262
Friedman, Donald J., 165
Fudan University, 197
Feuss, Claude M., 111
Fukuzawa Uykichi, 283-94, 287
Fu Manchu. See Manchu, Dr. Fu
G
Gamewell, Frank, 149
“Gang of Four, The”, 198, 203, 204, 205, 210-11, 213-14, 217, 219, 246, 262
Gannett, Lewis, 166
Gapp, Frank, 5, 19
George, Lloyd, 125
Girard, Stephen, Collection (Philadelphia), 175
Goldman, Merle, 257, 260, 266
Goldstein, Jonathan, 16, 43, 52, 54, 298, 303

 Page 306
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 208
Gordon, Elinor, 42
Graca, Jorge, 42
Grant, Ulysses S., 175
Gray, Basil, 41
Great Hall of the People, 210
Great Leap Forward, 210, 216
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 210, 211
Great Wall, 260, 282
Greenberg, Michael, 60, 66
Greene, Felix, 20, 172
Grew, Joseph, 156, 159
Griffis, William Elliot, 276, 279
Gulick, Edward V., 75, 79, 81, 82, 83, 112
Gulick, Sidney L., 279
Guo Min Tang (Kuo Min Tang), 154, 189-90, 284
H
Haas, Robert, 167
Hadden, Briton, 148
Hall, David L., 23
Hallock, Gerald, 106
Hao Yen-p’ing, 13, 14
Harding, Harry, 21, 244
Haroldsen, Edwin O., 79, 82
Harrier (ship), 90
Harrison, William, 91
Hart, Robert, 60
Harte, Bret, 7, 115, 16, 127, 128, 129
Hatada, Takashi, 41
Hawley, Sandra M., 17, 18, 132
Hay, John, 117
Hayes, A. A., 111, 113
Hayward, George, 65
Hazard, Benjamin H., 41
Heard, Augustine, 59, 65
Hearn, Lafcadio, 276, 277
“Heathen Chinee” theme, 17, 77-78, 115-16, 133-34, 140
Hepburn, James, 276
Herbert, H. A., 277
Hodshon, G., 54
Ho Chi Minh, 163
Hoflheinz, Roy, 23, 25
Hollander, Paul, 252, 254, 258, 260, 263
Honour, Hugh, 54
Hoover, Gladys, 165
Hope, Bob, 158
Hope, Sir James, 108
Hopkins, Samuel, 72
Houckgeest, Andreas van Braam, 48, 54
Houqua, 48
Hoveland, Carl I., 80
Howard, David S., 52
Hsu Kuang-chin, 98
Hua Guofeng, 211
Huang En-tung, 98
Hubbard, Cortlandt, 54
Hubbard, Richard B., 276
Hudson, Geoffrey, 42
Hume, Ivor, 53, 54
Hummel, 55
Hunt, Michael H., 22, 24, 131, 288
Hunt, Thomas F., 177
Hunter, William, 55
Hurley, Patrick, 18, 19, 156, 160
I
Ikeda, Prime Minister, 282
Imber, Diana, 41
Inden, Ronald, 24
Indusco, 161-62, 167
Ingersoll, Robert, 156
Iriye Akira, 11, 15, 22, 23, 131, 276, 278, 286
Irwin, Robert Walker, 276
Isaacs, Harold, 11, 23, 146, 147, 160, 166, 244, 276
Israel, Jerry, 18, 123, 131, 148
Iyer, Raghavan, 42
J
Jackson, Andrew, 89
Janis, Irving, 80
Jardine, William, 63, 64
Jefferson, Thomas, 185, 250
Jejeebhoy, Jamsetjee, 66
Jiang Jieshi. See Chiang Kai-shek
Jiang Qing, 198, 211, 214
Johnson, Lyndon, 281
Johnson, Nelson T, 165
Johnson, Sheila, 252
Jouett, John E., 165
Jourdain, Margaret, 54
Judd, Walter, 150, 152, 165
K
Kahn, Helen Dodson, 164
Kaltenborn, H. B., 165
Kapp, Robert A., 24
Katz, Elihu, 80, 82
Kaufman, Zena, 165
Kearny, Lawrence, 91, 92, 96
Keep, Ann E., 40

 Page 307
Keightley, David N., 41
Kelley, Harold H., 80
Keller, G. F. 178
Kennedy, David, 48
Kennedy, John, 282
Kenneson, James, 248, 252, 262, 265
Kernan, John Devereaux, 53
Ketcham, Ralph, 54
Kidder, J. Edward, Jr., 41
Kim, Roy, 25
King, Caroline, 55
Kipling, Rudyard, 15
Kishi, Prime Minister, 282
Kissinger, Henry, 174, 259, 282
Klapper, Joseph T., 78, 80, 83
Kline, F. Gerald, 79, 82
Knox, Henry, 47, 66
Komroff, Manuel, 42
Kopf, David, 12, 24
Kubek, Anthony, 166
Kublai Khan, 36, 184
Kukai, 35
Kung, H. H., 162
Kuo Ping-chia, 112
Kuo Min Tang. See Guo Min Tang
L
L’Eplattenier, Alison, 42
Labaree, Leonard, 54
Lady Hughes (ship), 61
LaFarge, John, 276
LaFeber, Walter, 130
Lancaster, Clay, 44, 53, 54, 55
Latimer, John R., 48
Lattimore, Owen, 152, 163, 165
Latourette, Kenneth Scott, 80
Law, Howard E., 165
Lazarfeld, Paul, 80, 82
LeGendre, Charles, 276
LeCorbellier, Claire, 54
Lee, Jean Gordon, 52
Leigh, W. Colston, 165
Leites, Edwund, 13, 24
Lenin, Vladimir, 21, 191, 210
Leonard, Jane, 52
Lewin, Kurt, 73
Lewis, Bernard, 13, 24, 41
Leys, Simon, 267
Liggett, Barbara, 53
Lin Biao, 211
Lin, Commissioner, 59, 65
Lincoln, Abraham, 185
Lippmann, Walter, 148, 152
Liu Shaoqi, 218
Lowell, Amy, 276
Lowell, Percival, 276
Luce, Henry, 148, 150, 164, 184
Ludden, David, 24
Lydia (ship), 62
M
MacArthur, Douglas, 152, 156, 159, 161, 280, 282
McBain, Audrey, 40
McCarthy, Charlie, 158
McCauley, Edward Yorke, 275
Macauley, Thomas B., 12
McClellan, Robert, 130
McCune, Evelyn, 41
Mcgrath, Harold, 146
McKee, Delber L., 131
MacLaine, Shirley, 198, 249, 253
McLane, Robert M., 101, 102, 103, 104
McReynolds, Patricia Justiniani, 42
Macy, George H., 176
Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 115, 124, 130
Mallet, Louis, 58
Manchu, Dr. Fu, 17, 18, 126, 127, 128, 129, 131, 134, 135, 143, 145
Mandel, Gabriele, 42
Manhattan (ship), 274
Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), 18, 19, 20, 21, 155, 160, 163, 164, 168, 182,
187, 190, 193, 194, 200, 204, 205, 206, 29, 210, 211, 212, 213, 215, 217, 218,
224, 231, 233, 235, 245, 246, 250, 251, 256, 262, 265, 269, 280, 281
Marcy, William L., 93, 100, 101, 103, 104, 106, 107
Marsden, 42
Marshall, George, 156
Marshall, Humphrey, 93, 99, 100, 101
Marshall, Peter J., 42, 44, 53
Marx, Karl, 21, 191, 210
Matheson, James, 66
Matsui Iwane, 19
May, Ernest R., 167
Melby, John, 5, 18, 19
Metzger, Thomas A., 23, 25
Michael, F. H., 113
Michener, James A., 38, 42
Miles, Milton “Merry,” 18, 19
Millard, Thomas F., 118, 120, 121, 124, 131, 154, 155
Miller, Perry, 72, 81
Miller, Stuart Creighton, 65, 67, 79

 Page 308
Millis, H. A., 279
Minear, Richard H., 12, 24
Mitter, Partha, 41
Miyoshi, Masao, 42
Moley, Raymond, 165
Moody, Peter, 246
Moore, Herbert, 165
Monroe, James, 89
Morgan, J. P., 119
Morris, Robert, 88
Morrison, Robert, 73
Morse, H. B., 112
Moulder, Frances, 273, 284
Muhammad, Wallace D., 198
Myers, Ramon H., 21, 220
N
Nagai Yonosuke, 15
Nanking (Nanjing), Treaty of (1842), 68, 92, 109
Nast, Thomas, 180
Needham, Joseph, 284
Nehru, Jawaharlal, 12
Nelson, Christina H., 52
Neumann, William, 159, 167
New, Charles, 131
Newlands, Francis G., 278
Nichols, H. P., 66
Niijima Atsuyoshi, 248
Nixon, Richard, 162, 163, 174, 182, 184, 259, 282
Norman, E. H., 13, 24
North, Robert C., 167
Norton, W. W., 165
Notman, John, 48, 50
Nye, Gideon, Jr., 105
Nye, Russell, 143, 146, 147
O
O’Connor, Raymond G., 16, 31
Oberholtzer, Ellis, 55
Oksenberg, Michel, 250, 251
Olien, Clarice N., 81, 82
Olschki, Leonardo, 42
Olyphant, D. W. C., 71, 81
Onians, John, 40
Onojiro Tateishi, 275
Open Door Policy, 278
Opium, 16, 61-66, 74, 90-91, 95-96, 109, 173
P
Pacific Rim Economic Institute, 208
Pal, Pratadapaditya, 41
Patterson, Don, 165
Park, Eldon A., 165
Parker, Dr. Peter, 68, 70, 71, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 89, 91, 92, 99, 100, 101,
103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 112
Peabody Museum of Salem, Massachusetts, 45, 47, 50, 52, 175-77, 186
Pearl Harbor, 280, 282, 283
Peck, James, 167
Peking Opera, 211
Pelcovits, Nathan, 58, 60, 65
People’s Daily, 195, 203, 204
People’s Liberation Army, 193, 211
Perry, Matthew Clabraith, 38, 99, 101, 102, 104, 105, 274, 275, 276
Peters, John, 50, 55
Phillips, Clifton Jackson, 80, 81
Pierce, Franklin, 103, 106
Pillement, Jean-Baptiste, 47, 48
Plummer, Mark A., 20, 21, 210
Poirot, Hercule, 143
Pollack, David, 41
Polo, Marco, 36, 184
Porot, Hercule, 132
Poster, Amy G., 41
Pound, Ezra, 23, 25
Powell, John B., 154, 155, 156, 158, 166
Pred, Allan P., 79
Prewitt, Nancy, 165
Price, Harry, 152, 165
Pritchard, Earl H., 112
Prybla, Jan S., 21, 228, 251
Public Security Ministry, 218
Pulleyblank, E. G., 35, 41
Pulver, Roger, 15
Pye, Lucian, 14, 15, 24, 245
Q
Quincy, Josiah, 66
R
Rainwater, Dorothy, 54
Rambach, Pierre, 41
Ratsey, Captain, 90
Rawson, Philip, 41
Rea, Kenneth W., 65
Red Guards, 211, 215, 259
Red Square, 210
Reed, William B., 105, 106, 107, 108, 110
Reinsch, Paul, 123, 126, 185
Reischauer, Edwin O., 12, 282
Renshaw and Barnhard, 47
Reston, James, 249
Ricci, Matteo, 35

 Page 309
Rice Christians, 156-57
Riche, Thomas, 54
Rickett, Adele, 281
Rickett, Allyn, 281
River, James, 46
Rivinus, Marion, 54
Rockefeller, Nelson, 152
Roberts, Donald F., 79
Roberts, Edmund, 89
Roberts, Laurence P., 44, 53
Robinet, W. M., 105
Rodrigues, Father Joao, 42
Rogers, Buddy, 157
Rohmer, Sax, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 146
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 250
Roosevelt, Theodore, 17, 19, 114, 119, 278
Roper, Elmo, 77, 82
Rosenthal, A. M., 250, 252, 253, 256, 258
Ross, Edward Alsworth, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128, 129, 131
Roth, Gordon, 165
Rubinstein, Murray A., 16, 17, 43, 52, 67, 80, 81, 82
Rubruck, William, 36
Rudolph, Lloyd I., 14
Rusk, Dean, 163
Russell, Lindsay, 279
S
Said, Edward W., 11, 12, 13, 24
Salisburg, Ethel I., 165
Sansom, George B., 12, 40
Sargent, William, 52
Sartain, John, 48
Saxton, Eugene, 150
Schell, Orville, 288
Schiffrin, Harold Z., 13, 24
Schram, Wilbur, 79
Schurmann, Franz, 288
Schwind, Arlene Palmer, 52
Seckel, Dietrich, 40
Seebohm, A. F., 65
Seitz, H. F., 165
Seligman, Janet, 40
Seltzer, Ruth, 54
Service, John Stewart, 18
Seward, William H., 65, 95, 276
Shambaugh, David, 22, 25
Shao, Paul, 31, 40
Shehan, Vincent, 165
Sherwood, Robert E., 165
Shewmaker, Kenneth E., 166
Shinn, Henry, 55
Shirk, Susan, 246, 255
Sinophobia, 17, 176-80, 277-78. See also ”Yellow Peril” fears
Sinor, Denis, 42
Sisson, Edgar, 153, 166
Slade, John, 59
Smith, Adam, 240
Smith, Harrison, 167
Smith, Nayland, 127
Smith, Philip Chadwick Foster, 52
Smith, Warren W., Jr., 41
Snellgrove, David L., 40
Snow, Edgar, 18, 148-68, 172, 194, 280, 281
Snow, Lois Wheeler, 20, 163, 166, 168
Snow, Helen Foster, 154, 166. See also Wales, Nym
Sokolsky, George, 165
Soong, T. V., 162
Souder, Casper, 55
Speer, Robert, 165
Stalin, Joseph, 21, 191, 210
Stedman, Raymond William, 131
Steele, A. T., 276
Steenstrup, Carl, 13, 24
Steinberg, Charles S., 79
Stevens, George B., 81
Stevens, Edwin, 68, 69, 70, 81
Stilwell, Alison, 165
Stilwell, Joseph “Vinegar Joe,” 150, 156
Straight, Willard, 148, 164
Strong, Anna Louise, 163
Strong, Josiah, 114, 124, 130
Sullivan, Michael, 40, 41
Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan), 156
Swanberg, W. A., 164
Swisher, Earl, 62, 65, 66, 113
T
Taboroff, June, 41
Taggert, Ross E., 52
Tai Li, 18, 19
Taku, 108
Tan Chung, 63
Tang, Anthony, 223
Tansuo, 214
Tattnall, Commodore Josiah, 108
Taylor, George E., 113, 165
Terrill, Ross, 210
Thacker, John, 66