Engaging China: Fifty Years of Sino-American Relations

Anne Thurston

Published by Columbia University Press 2021

Engaging China

Fifty Years of Sino-American Relations

Anne Thurston

In the series A Nancy Bernkopf Tucker and Warren I. Cohen Book on American–East Asian Relations

https://doi.org/10.7312/thur20128

Overview
Contents

About this book

This book brings together leading China specialists to offer a retrospective on relations between the United States and China over the last half-century and consider what might be next. The contributors include academics, leaders of China-related nongovernmental organizations, and former diplomats and government officials.

Author / Editor information

Anne F. Thurston is the former director of the Grassroots China Initiative and senior research professor at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. She has written or edited many books about China, including Enemies of the People: The Ordeal of the Intellectuals in China’s Great Cultural Revolution (1987); A Chinese Odyssey: The Life and Times of a Chinese Dissident (1991); Li Zhisui’s The Private Life of Chairman Mao (1994), and, with Gyalo Thondup, The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of My Struggle for Tibet (2015).

Reviews

Michael J. Green, author of By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783:
Engaging China offers a nuanced understanding that there was no single framework, assumption, or motivation behind the increasing interdependence with China that developed after 1971. Moreover, the volume demonstrates that there was connectivity and thinking about relations well before 1971. It will be an essential text for students, a resource for policy makers, and a good read for the general public.

Jan Berris, vice president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations:
This wonderful volume, composed of contributions from an all-star lineup of talented and experienced China hands, reminds us of the richness of the past fifty years of engagement and the benefits accrued to both countries and their peoples. A must-read for all who want to understand the crucial importance of the U.S.-China nexus.

Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China:
Immensely readable and rich with perspective and detail, Engaging China reckons with the rise and fall of one of history’s most pivotal diplomatic strategies. From esteemed American scholars and practitioners who grappled with China in real time, this is a clear-eyed account of what happened—and a roadmap for what lies ahead.

J. Stapleton Roy, former U.S. ambassador to China:
China is confronting the United States with its biggest international challenge. If there is one book that can help readers understand China's transition, in American eyes, from a quasi-ally against the Soviet Union to the biggest threat to U.S. interests in the global arena, this is the one.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Part I. The Making and Unmaking of the U.S.-China Relationship
1. Engaging China: Fifty Years of Sino-American Relations Anne F. Thurston Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
2. The Logic and Efficacy of Engagement: Objectives, Assumptions, and Impacts Thomas Fingar Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	32
3. Mismanaging China’s Rise: The South China Sea Dispute and the Transformation of Sino-American Relations from Strategic Partners to Strategic Rivals John W. Garver Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	56
Part II. Thinking About How We Think About China
4. A Half Century of Engagement: The Study of China and the Role of the China Scholar Community Andrew Mertha Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
5. The American Dream and the China Dream: Unpeaceful Evolutions Richard Madsen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	120
6. U.S.-China Retrospective: Forty Years of Commercial Relations Craig Allen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	146
7. A Perspective on Chinese Economics: What Have We Learned? What Did We Fail to Anticipate? Barry Naughton Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	174
Part III. On the Ground Nongovernmental, People-To-People Cooperation
8. Strategic Adaptation: American Foundations, Religious Organizations, and NGOs in China Mary Brown Bullock Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199
9. U.S.-China Relations: A Public Health Perspective Yanzhong Huang Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
10. Thinkers. Builders. Symbols. Spies? Sino-U.S. Educational Relations in the Engagement Era Robert Daly Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	260
Part IV. Fault Lines, Threats to Peace and Reflections on the Future
11. U.S.-China Military Relations: From Enmity to Entente and Maybe Back Again Chas W. Freeman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	295
12. China’s Periphery: A Rift Zone in U.S.-China Relations Carla P. Freeman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	335
13. Forty-Plus Years of U.S.-China Diplomacy: Realities and Recommendations Kenneth Lieberthal and Susan Thornton Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	365
14. Engagement with China: A Eulogy and Reflections on a Gathering Storm David M. Lampton Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	391
Afterword Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	423
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	427
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	429
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	437

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Illustrations
- Other: 14 b&w figures

eBook

Published: September 8, 2021
ISBN: 9780231554022