(K. Brent Tomer),
The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present. By John Pomfret. Henry Holt; 693 pages; $40.
IN 1943 Fei Xiaotong, China’s most famous anthropologist, visited America and proclaimed it “paradise”, arguing that his own country needed to embrace the American spirit. Americans created things, he said. They didn’t dwell in the past. They had Superman. America was a land “without ghosts”. Fei was typical of many Chinese before and since: an intellectual who loved the bottom-up, can-do character of America and wanted some of it for his own country, with its top-down traditions.
China has long tried to work out how much of America it really wants. In 1881, the New York Times predicted that “China cannot borrow our learning, our science, and our material forms of industry without importing with them the virus of political rebellion.” Chinese leaders know the same is true today.
The two huge nations, each with their own distinct sense of their exceptionalism, have long been…Continue reading
K. Brent Tomer 