Fateful Ties

Americans look to China with fascination and fear, unsure whether the rising Asian power is friend or foe but certain it will play a crucial role in America s future. This is nothing new, Gordon Chang says. For centuries, Americans have been convinced of China s importance to their own national dest [...]
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Americans look to China with fascination and fear, unsure whether the rising Asian power is friend or foe but certain it will play a crucial role in America s future. This is nothing new, Gordon Chang says. For centuries, Americans have been convinced of China s importance to their own national destiny. Fateful Ties "draws on literature, art, biography, popular culture, and politics to trace America s long and varied preoccupation with China. China has held a special place in the American imagination from colonial times, when Jamestown settlers pursued a passage to the Pacific and Asia. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Americans plied a profitable trade in Chinese wares, sought Chinese laborers to build the West, and prized China s art and decor. China was revered for its ancient culture but also drew Christian missionaries intent on saving souls in a heathen land. Its vast markets beckoned expansionists, even as its migrants were seen as a yellow peril that prompted the earliest immigration restrictions. A staunch ally during World War II, China was a dangerous adversary in the Cold War that followed. In the post-Mao era, Americans again embraced China as a land of inexhaustible opportunity, playing a central role in its economic rise. Through portraits of entrepreneurs, missionaries, academics, artists, diplomats, and activists, Chang demonstrates how ideas about China have long been embedded in America s conception of itself and its own fate. Fateful Ties" provides valuable perspective on this complex international and intercultural relationship as America navigates an uncertain new era."