China and the American Dream: A Moral Inquiry by Richard MadsenReview by: Lucian W. PyeThe China Quarterly, No. 143 (Sep., 1995), pp. 867-869Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/655005 .

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Book Reviews

China and the American Dream: A Moral Inquiry. By RICHARD MADSEN.

[Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. 262 pp. $27.50. ISBN 0-520-08613-9.]

Richard Madsen has written a thoughtful and provocative essay about how the "American Dream," shaped by a profound faith in liberal democracy, freedom and modernization as progress, has provided a powerful moral and emotional context for American views about China. Ultimately, however, the dream only complicated Sino-American relations and produced frustration and disillusionment. Although writing somewhat in the tradition of Harold Isaacs's Scratches on Our Minds but without the usual love-hate polarities of the "good China-bad China" imagery, Madsen significantly elevates the importance of American views of China by advancing a more fundamental and audacious argument. He wants us to believe that expectations about Chinese developments became central to America's basic sense of self-identity, and therefore disappointments about events in China have constituted a challenge to fundamental American values.

Specifically Madsen believes the Tiananmen Massacre was a profoundly shocking experience for the American public, not just because of what they saw on television but because the event shattered the American liberal myth about China's potential to become ever more like the United States. Like many others, Madsen credits in part the missionary movement for shaping American thinking about China. He goes on however to find strong secular forces which linked China to the American Dream. Even during the height of the Cold War right-wing, anti-Communist politicians still believed that if only the "Red Masters" were removed, the Chinese people would prove that they had a natural affinity for American values. A much more important development was the emergence of a strong mainstream, centralist and inherently liberal point of view which Madsen describes through a detailed account of the founding and successes of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Even the radical left, which he identifies with the views of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, made China a part of their version of the American Dream by idealizing Maoism and seeing the Chinese as "revolutionary redeemers" who had much to teach the United States.

Although these groups helped to establish the myth of China's importance for American values, it was President Nixon's dramatic visit to China that enshrined the myth in the public's imagination. With Kissinger and Nixon outdoing each other in making the opening of China into a world-shaking event of supreme importance for American security,

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868 The China Quarterly

the American media picked up on the drama of how the two countries had much in common. (The Chinese, aware of their desperate condition after the disasters of the Cultural Revolution, could only conclude that the United States must indeed be in decline if it thought that China could make any difference in the world balance of forces - a judgment about America in decline that many Chinese leaders have been slow to abandon even to this day.)

With President Nixon not just legitimizing but glorifying contacts with those behind the "bamboo curtain," China mania quickly gripped the country, and the rush was on to send and receive delegations to and from China. Madsen recounts in some detail the naive enthusiasms of groups of American natural scientists, social scientists and religious leaders who proudly visited a China that was still reeling from the Cultural Revolution and was under the sway of the Gang of Four, but who to their shame only saw progress and constructive achievements. It is embarrassing to be reminded by Madsen of how gullible these "missionaries of the American dream" were. Scholars, who should have been more sceptical and indeed more honest, were not prepared to say anything bad about the Chinese for fear of "soiling the nest" for those who would be coming after them.

Madsen drives home the point that the liberal myth took an ever stronger grip on the American imagination precisely because it chose to ignore Chinese realities and build on the false expectation that American values were being warmly accepted by the Chinese. He acknowledges that the journalists Fox Butterfield and Richard Bernstein did try to convey some truths about Chinese conditions, but they could not counter the mainstream tide of uncritical enthusiasm. That is until Tiananmen shattered once and for all the liberal myth.

Madsen has less to say about Chinese developments. He acknowledges that some Chinese intellectuals were indeed attracted to the American Dream, but in the main he advances the more pessimistic view that the "openness" of the country led mainly to "emptiness" - to a loss of moral values, corruption, hedonistic materialism and consumerism. His conclusion is that both countries are now in need of new myths and these can only come about through "conversations" that will give each national community a new "main narrative" and renewed spiritual foundations. He does not, however, detail exactly what this might involve, but rather signals what he has in mind by references to communitarian authors and to the work he has done with Robert Bellah and others in The Habits of the Heart and The Good Society. By trying to stay at a high level of abstraction about national myths he is not in a position to offer much that is concrete or specific, and so his conclusions are a message which floats on a lofty spiritual plane.

In seeking to get at fundamental matters, Madsen raises more interesting questions than he provides convincing answers. Is it really plausible that China was such a critical element in defining the American Dream, and that it became a basic factor in vitalizing America's sense of self worth? Was Tiananmen really so profound an event as to "shatter the liberal myth" for Americans? Have Americans ever really believed that

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Book Reviews 869

any other country, especially a Third World one, has the capabilities to become "just like us"? In seeking a deeper level of interpretation of U.S.-China relations Richard Madsen has possibly overstated his case and thereby exaggerated the significance of his speculations. If so, this is too bad because much of the impressive strength of his analysis lies in showing how unrealistic others have been about China.

LUCIAN W. PYE

Sino-American Military Relations: Mutual Responsibilities in the Post-Cold War Era. By ROBERT S. MCNAMARA, DAVID E. JEREMIAH, JAMES P. MCCARTHY, WILLIAM R. RICHARDSON, JIMMY D. Ross, DAVID M. LAMPTON, DAVID L. SHAMBAUGH and JUNE MEI. [New York: National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (China Policy Series, No. 9), November 1994. 31 pp. $3.00.]

The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations' delegation composed of a former U.S. Secretary of Defense, four recently retired four-star Flag officers and two leading China scholars, including one who specializes in Chinese military affairs, travelled to China in the spring of 1994 to explore security issues with senior military and civilian leaders. Its purpose was to determine: Beijing's vision of the post-Cold War world; its attitude towards a regional security organization; the extent and purpose of the PLA's emerging force projection capabilities; the degree to which China recognizes regional anxiety over the PLA's growing military power and whether it intended to take action designed to alleviate this apprehension; and Beijing's support for a continuing American military presence in the region. Several members continued on to Taiwan, where they sought to clarify Taipei's perspectives on its security needs and China's role in these perceptions.

The delegation's findings were predictable. Even in what it believes is a multipolar world, Beijing remains unenthusiastic about any kind of regional security organization, preferring bilateral discussions to the multilateral arena. Nor will Beijing permit Taiwan to participate in any regional security forums. Beijing is also unwilling to recognize that its defence modernization programme under way since the late 1970s raises legitimate anxieties in the region. And, even though every Chinese security analyst recognizes the utility of U.S. forward deployed forces in the region, Beijing on principle cannot publicly support the American military presence.

The report's blueprint for Sino-American military ties approximates the process that began with Secretary of Defense Brown's visit in January 1980. Beginning with high level exchanges on strategic issues, the report's recommendation develops through steps that include professional military education linkages, discussions of security and military strategy at the War College level, exchanges on defence conversion and dual-use technologies. For the foreseeable future, the authors do not recommend major weapons sales, nor do they believe China anticipates such transfers.

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