Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954-1973 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954-1973 Andrew J. Nathan (bio) Robert S. Ross and Jiang Changbin, editors. Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954-1973. Cambridge (MA) and London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001. xv, 504 pp. Hardcover $60.00, ISBN 0-674-00524-4. Paperback $25.00, ISBN 0-674-00526-0. This thirteen-author volume reports the findings of a joint research project of the John King Fairbank Center at Harvard University and the International Strategic Research Center at the Chinese Communist Party Central Party School. The project held conferences in 1996 and 1998 and, besides this book, has published two sets of papers in Chinese. The book's subtitle is more accurate than the title in describing its contents. Except for Michael Schaller's concluding chapter, which deals partly with U.S.-Japan relations, the other chapters all focus on U.S.-China relations. They are arranged in an overlapping chronological pattern, starting with chapters that describe the crystallization of hostility between the two powers in the early 1950 s and ending with chapters that analyze the Nixon-Mao breakthrough of the early 1970s. Each chapter, however, tends to reprise the background to, or later significance of, the developments it discusses, leading to considerable repetition. Thus, several chapters repeat the stories of the 1954-1955 and 1958 Taiwan Strait crises, of CCP official Wang Jiaxiang's 1962 criticism of Mao's foreign policy, of National [End Page 436] Security Council official Alfred Jenkins' mid-1960s views on the potential to improve Washington-Beijing relations, of four Chinese marshals' late-1960s study that advocated an opening to the United States, of Nixon's attempts to signal his willingness to engage with China, and of Mao's decision to allow an American table-tennis team to visit China in 1971, among others. There is also a rough "he says-she says" pattern to the book, as chapters by Chinese authors more or less alternate with those by Western (American, Canadian, and British) authors, with each set of chapters based predominantly on documentation from the contributors' own side. Sometimes the views from one side and the other seem inconsistent. For example, Robert Accinelli thinks the strong American military response to the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis deterred China from trying to seize Jinmen, while Gong Li in the next chapter believes that the Chinese show of resolve during the crisis deterred the United States from giving stronger support to Chiang Kai-shek. Zhang Baijia and Jia Qingguo believe the on-again-off-again Sino-U.S. ambassadorial talks during the 1950s and 1960s performed some valuable functions, while Steven Goldstein in the next chapter describes them as a "dialogue of the deaf." Both sets of conclusions might possibly be true, but the book places a considerable burden of synthesis on the reader. The Chinese chapters draw on recently published official compendia of work documents produced by Party Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai (memos, talks, speeches, etc.), on a chronology of Zhou's life, and on memoirs of people who worked closely with the two leaders. In addition, there is the occasional document cited from what appear to be archives; coyly, the footnotes cite only the document name and date, but not the location where it can be found. A few of the more interesting revelations in the book are unsourced—for example, the story of informal Taipei-Beijing contacts in 1957 through an intermediary named Song Yishan that appear to have produced an early version of the proposal for "one country two systems" (p. 155). Coeditor Robert S. Ross thus speaks too categorically when he says that "archives on the Maoist era were opened after Mao died" (p. 22). They are open on a very partial basis and only to selected Chinese scholars. Because the sources for the Chinese chapters have passed through Party vetting, selection, and editing processes, they create a record that is somewhat stilted and superficial, that concentrates on iconic incidents and quotations, and that supports a conventionalized interpretation of the actions of leaders rather than providing fertile ground for controversy and reinterpretation. The Chinese documentation...