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    The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present
    The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present
    The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present
    Ebook1,174 pages27 hours

    The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present

    By John Pomfret

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    A remarkable history of the two-centuries-old relationship between the United States and China, from the Revolutionary War to the present day

    From the clipper ships that ventured to Canton hauling cargos of American ginseng to swap Chinese tea, to the US warships facing off against China's growing navy in the South China Sea, from the Yankee missionaries who brought Christianity and education to China, to the Chinese who built the American West, the United States and China have always been dramatically intertwined. For more than two centuries, American and Chinese statesmen, merchants, missionaries, and adventurers, men and women, have profoundly influenced the fate of these nations. While we tend to think of America's ties with China as starting in 1972 with the visit of President Richard Nixon to China, the patterns—rapturous enchantment followed by angry disillusionment—were set in motion hundreds of years earlier.

    Drawing on personal letters, diaries, memoirs, government documents, and contemporary news reports, John Pomfret reconstructs the surprising, tragic, and marvelous ways Americans and Chinese have engaged with one another through the centuries. A fascinating and thrilling account, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom is also an indispensable book for understanding the most important—and often the most perplexing—relationship between any two countries in the world.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateNov 29, 2016
    ISBN9781429944120

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    Reviews for The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom

    4/5

    33 ratings11 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I received this book via the Early Reviewers program here on LibraryThing.This book is a detailed history of the relationship between citizens of the United States and China. It is not a history of the two nations as much, that sort of history is just the backdrop of what is in this book. As such, it is a very different viewpoint on China. However, this book does seem to focus a bit too much on missionary activities by various Protestant denominations. While that activity was very prominent, there's clearly a bit of a bias. There is also a bit of a problem with repeated topics, as sometimes the same period of time is covered from the perspective of different people.I found this interesting, but a bit limited in scope. However, I believe that most readers will find almost all of the content of this book to be something they hadn't read before and as such is useful.
    • 5/5
      This was a fascinating look at the difficult and complicated relationship the US and China have had over the past few centuries. Today trade with China is often in the headlines and there is a strong sentiment in the US that China 'cheats' the US by stealing trade secrets or through currency manipulation. But reading this book has given me a hint of how complex this issue is. There is quite a bit of history of China being cheated by both the British and the US and where allies allowed events like the invasion by Japan to occur without consequences. The book also describes the campaigns that both the US and Chinese governments have waged over the years trying to influence public opinion against the other country. Really interesting and very well researched!
    • 5/5
      America has woven an intricate relationship with China since the dawn of American Independence. We have admired, cajoled, abused, protected, proselytized and betrayed our shifting relationships with the Middle Kingdom more times than can be accurately stated. And not surprisingly, China has done the same. It is probably fair to say that much that China has become was learned first from America and Americans. John Pomfret’s brilliant history, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, takes a slow, thoughtful look at all the machinations that have driven the relationship of these two superpowers over the past 250 years. Drawn by the lure of trade and religion, America has constantly tried to mold the Middle Kingdom into a democracy that would be stable and profitable. At the same time, the Nationalist Chinese, followed by Mao and the PRC have shopped America for weapons, technology and intellectual property, building themselves up to be a world-dominating superpower while ignoring calls for human rights and democratic ideals.The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom is a long, fascinating history that is hard to put down and important to understand in the coming years.
    • 4/5
      We use the words essential and unique far too often. The words have lost their impact as we are exposed to so much marketing.Well, let me give those words one more application. Forgive me.In this digitally connected world we really do need to make proper use of these technologies and get ourselves better informed about this world. Looming like a giant in our midst is China. Apprehension about the East from our Western eyes goes back to the Greeks views of the Persians and probably earlier. If we are interconnected anyway, shouldn't it be essential (that word) to learn about our history and relations with China? I will take that one. Yes.So how can we get insight and how can we approach this? I would suggest that this beautifully written book's through a reporter's eyes is such a way. This is reporting that is insightful and balanced. That is certainly unique in today's short read and rip reporting today. This is long form journalism taking the time that this subject deserves. It informs.I would suggest that the highlights are many. The biographical sketches of the scores of individuals are very well chosen and are worthy themselves of your reading time. You can open the book at nearly any page and pick up on a fascinating description of individuals who have deep connections in trying to find that something that can bring some understanding. As one example, the reporting on the works of the American ladies who used their role as missionaries to offer help with bringing Western medical techniques to Chinese people were wonderfully drawn. They were not recognized for their works as much as deserved.So where to start? Consider this richly detailed book.
    • 4/5
      The US and China have been involved with each other from the very beginning of our country. It's never been a smooth relationship - the US seeing China as both market and potential Western democracy, China seeing the US as the Beautiful Country and as foreign invader. And for 250 years, this relationship has see-sawed between love and hate. Pomfret uses his experience as an American in China to show how this relationship has gone through these cycles no matter who ruled China or who led the US. It's a dense, but highly readable account of our combined history with a message that remains highly relevant to today.
    • 4/5
      Excellent, lengthy review of American - Chinese relations. Shows how history keeps repeating itself. We (Americans) try over and over to understand China and use the knowledge to our benefit, yet keep making wrong assumptions and conclusions. The same with the Chinese, they seem to continually be perplexed at our seemingly random behavior. Very well written and documented. Would be of great benefit to anyone interested in relations between the two countries.
    • 5/5
      Five stars all the way. This is the single best political history of China I have read that flows and keeps you turning the pages. The research is excellent (do not under any circumstances skip the end notes) and the stories add some of the most insightful lessons. But the one that keeps chasing me and keeping me awake in the middle of the night was the comment by a Communist Party official (p. 457): "We're going to make America think we're their friends."
    • 5/5
      John Pomfret presents an overview of 250 years of U.S./China relations – not an easy task! If there’s one recurring theme here, it’s cycles of enchantment and disappointment as the two sides interact with and influence each other. I think the book is at its strongest covering the period from about 1800 to 1900, weakening as it gets into the modern era. However, it’s never less than engaging. Not a quick or particularly light read, but an enjoyable one.
    • 5/5
      Excellent book, so illuminating, and very readable. One of the characteristics of US-China relations is the secretive nature of it that prevails to the present day. The whole post-WWII Lost China actually had a basis with Communist sympathizers in the State Department and the prejudice of Stillwell and even George Marshall sabotaging the Nationalists. Claims that the Communists fought the Japanese are laid to rest as the Nationalists did the fighting and Mao waited and strengthened.The author nicely shows how the American and Chines attitudes may change over time, but they also repeat. Americans are continuously suckered into deals with the hope of a big payoff that usually never materialize, and the Chinese are perplexed by contradictory signals from Americans.The only thing that detracts from the story is that it could have used another round of proofreading. Some typos - "bonk" for "bank" and "dag' for "dog" among them, and some stray words that got left behind in the editing. Some maps, photos, and an index would have enhanced the narrative.
    • 1/5
      Could not get past these few lines that were written seemingly entirely unironically.

      "The first American Christian missionaries ... were crucial to China's development. ... [T]hey supplied the tools to break the stranglehold of traditional orthodoxy. They taught the Chinese Western science, critical thinking, sports, industry, and law. They established China's first universities and hospitals. These institutions, though now renamed, are still the best of their kind in China."

      I almost couldn't believe reading the "critical thinking" bit, but gave the benefit of the doubt, believing the author meant "Western critical thinking," and not that the missionaries taught the Chinese "critical thinking"; i.e., the entire genre of skeptical, investigative thinking called to mind by that name.

      But the author goes on to say the missionaries established China's first universities. A simple Google search reveals that China had imperial colleges and academies all the way from at least since the Western Han dynasty. The laudatory sentence that follows smells to Heaven of Western-centric chauvinism.

      A blanket painting of Chinese traditional thought as a "stranglehold of traditional orthodoxy" that Western knowledge somehow cures should also be laughable in any history that seems to want to be taken seriously.

      I could not imagine taking the rest of the book seriously, and didn't bother to go further than the above.
    • 3/5
      Several disclaimers up front:

      * Stars are not for quality (which deserves at least a 4) but to guide Goodreads' recommendation algorithm toward my personal reading preferences.

      * I only read Part I (the first 9 chapters/136 pages), and I did so with very particular interests in mind (see below).

      * This review is entirely my opinion and does not in any way reflect the opinions of my employer.

      Whew! Now that all that's finally out of the way...

      As stated, I only read the parts of this book relevant to my interests. I have a novel project on the back-back-back burner (argh, life!) set somewhere between 1898 and 1902. The main characters is a Chinese/Chinese-American woman (part of reading this was to find out whether this was even possible with the Chinese Exclusion Act) who is also a doctor. Chapter 7, "Bible Women", was exceptionally helpful in this regard.

      What interested me most was China's apparent admiration for the States through the early 20th century (until one betrayal too many at the post-WWI Versailles Peace Conference), and how often that admiration was mutual. What a wasted opportunity! We're so used to seeing China as a rival these days, and I think we've even bought in to some of the 20th century communist party's propaganda that China was too stuck in its old ways to modernize without being dragged kicking and screaming. It's remarkable how many opportunities there were for things to turn out differently, if only the U.S. had gotten over its navel-gazing, on-again-off-again xenophobia, and conflicting desires for empire and isolation.

      It was also refreshing to realize how many American missionaries--particularly single women, which I didn't even know was possible!--went over hoping to convert the Chinese to Christianity only to accept that it wasn't going to work and adjust their missions accordingly. Many ended up opening schools for women, hospitals, and medical schools. It's a stereotype now that many Chinese Americans and Chinese educated in America become doctors, but that tradition health care, and traveling to the States for advanced medical education, was nurtured by Americans. Which helps my theoretical novel immensely!

      Anyway, while I can't comment on the content of the book as a whole, I will say that I had a little trouble following the timeline in Part II. Dates seemed to disappear right when I needed them for reference, and then leaped forward years at a time. At one point a chapter seemed to end in the middle of the Boxer Rebellion and didn't pick it up until at least a whole chapter later. That said, the quality of the writing was excellent. Pomfret certainly knows how to tell a good story...but he might be better suited to topic-themed chapters like "Bible Women" rather than strictly linear history.

      As far as I read, this is a highly valuable book with a fascinating angle on a topic of critical importance in the 21st century. Pomfret provides a fair and balanced view of both countries' strengths and shortcomings, and any cynicism about America in this review is my own.

    Book preview

    The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom - John Pomfret

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