Tag: Books

  • Coming Around to Mann's Book: A Valuable Polemic

    After my initial reaction to James Mann’s China Fantasy, I was ready to be disappointed by the rest of the book. As it turns out, rhetorical excesses aside, the book is a valuable read for anyone interested in how the U.S. political world discusses China, especially those of us who discuss the U.S.–China relationship every…

  • Sloppiness in James Mann's 'China Fantasy'

    I’m half done reading journalist James Mann’s The China Fantasy: How our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression, and it’s an interesting, if controversial, read. One thing stands out so far: Mann’s relationship with evidence is strained, and he sometimes fails in logic. In his defense, Mann notes in the first lines, “This is not a…

  • Nixon in China Part One: Keeping Japan in Line

    This is the first of two posts in which I will outline some historical context on U.S.–China–Japan relations surrounding Nixon’s 1972 China visit. This material is all drawn from Margaret MacMillan’s Nixon and Mao, which I recently finished reading. (Page citations are included.) The book was full of engaging reconstructions of the diplomatic maneuvers and…

  • A Passing Passage: When the U.S. was a model for China

    I’m reading Margaret MacMillan’s Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World these days. Here’s a paragraph to consider from page 97. In the early days of the republic, many Chinese looked to the United States as a model—of government, but also of a society. President Woodrow Wilson’s promises of a new world order…

  • Japan and the U.S. 'Beyond Bilateralism': Introduction

    “Challenges to Bilateralism,” T. J. Pempel’s wide-ranging introduction to 2004’s Beyond Bilateralism (which he edited with Ellis S. Krauss) lays out a compelling narrative for post-WWII U.S.–Japan relations. One of modern history’s strongest and most enduring bilateral relationships, he writes, is giving way to a complex network of ties involving other actors: in short, moving…