Sino-American Relations, 1945-1955: A Joint Reassessment of a Critical Decade (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 259 nuclear status forces the Federal Republic to rely on the United States for nuclear protection; on the other hand, if war should occur, the United States has an understandable interest in limiting it to Europe and preventing the involvement of U.S. territory in a nuclear conflagration. Geopolitically, the U.S. strategy for containing the Soviets has increasingly been at odds with the West German desire for improving relations with East Germany and Eastern Europe. Here the Federal Republic confronts the difficulty of cultivating relations with Eastern Europe, especially through the new minid étente with East Berlin, without compromising its loyalties to the West. Although the Federal Republic has profited from participating in the open international economy, as the United States so strongly advocated it do at the end of World War II, it has been forced to adjust to "the relative weakening of America's postwar economic hegemony." The Federal Republic's international orientation now leaves it vulnerable to the consequences ofAmerican imbalances. Fluctuations in the dollar and the impact of high U.S. interest rates on German capital markets burden the Federal Republic's economic position at home and abroad. Hanrieder's masterful survey is replete with insight into the forces that have shaped West Germany's relations with its allies and adversaries. Authoritative and comprehensive, this study is a must for all those seeking a greater understanding of Germany's role in Europe and the world. Sino-American Relations, 1945-1955: A Joint Reassessment ofa Critical Decade. Edited by Harry Harding and Yuan Ming. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1989. 343 pp. Reviewed by Raphael Cung, M.A. Candidate, SAIS. Relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China have been deteriorating since the mid-1980s. First, Moscow improved its relations with both Peking and Washington, thus taking away some of the strategic impetus for close Sino-American relations. Second, contentious issues that had long lain dormant—especially Taiwan and human rights in China—resurfaced to act as irritants between the United States and China. Of course, relations between the two states reached their lowest point in recent years when the Peking regime killed thousands of demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. But the present tension in Sino-American relations cannot compare with the intense hostility and conflict between the two countries from 1945 to 1955. This important and fascinating period in Sino-American relations is the subject of this book edited by Harry Harding, one of America's foremost China specialists, and Yuan Ming, a professor at Peking University's Institute for International Relations. This collection ofessays by American and Chinese scholars raises a number ofinteresting and controversial issues. The most important concerns whether or 260 SAISREVIEW not the conflict between the United States and the People's Republic of China could have been averted or at least ameliorated. In their essays, He Di and Tao Wenzhao argue that the confrontation between the Americans and the Chinese Communists stemmed mainly from Washington's continued assistance to the tottering Nationalist regime from 1945 to 1949, and that the United States could have had a more harmonious relationship with China if only it had been willing to deal with the revolutionary government. Moreover, they claim that the United States, trapped by its Cold War mindset, exaggerated the extent to which Chinese Communists were dependent on the Soviet Union and treated them with hostility, thus ironically pushing them closer to the Soviets. On the other hand, Steven Goldstein asserts that the conflict between the two countries was almost inevitable because ofhistorical circumstances, and that the "correct" course of action for each side was not a viable choice at the time. For example, the United States perhaps should have cut offaid to the Nationalist regime as many State Department experts advocated. But domestic factors, especially growing anti-communism in the United States and the influence ofthe "China lobby," prevented such a move. Similarly, while the Chinese Communists perhaps should have moderated their "anti-imperialist" rhetoric and refrained from their harsh treatment of captured American personnel, they were reacting to their traumatic experience with colonialism and their growing sense of nationalism. Other interesting issues...