The United States and China in the Twentieth Century

From the nineteenth-century opium trade and missionary movements through the establishment of diplomatic relations and suppression of the Democratization Movement, this book illuminates the sudden, often bizarre shifts in relations between the U.S. and China. Focusing on the period since the 1930s when the U.S. involved itself in a struggle to shape China's destiny and, by extension, to remake Asia, Michael Schaller shows how the policies and perceptions that led to America's wars in Korea and Vietnam were formulated during World War II when the U.S. first confronted the Chinese Communist Revolution. Schaller also explains U.S. policy in terms of America's perception of its own needs in Asia and how the revolution in China challenged our sense of omnipotence in the Pacific.

The new second edition is fully revised and brought up to date to reflect the changes in U.S.-Chinese relations that came with the Carter, Reagan, and early Bush administrations, as well as the "Second Chinese Revolution" initiated by Deng Xiaoping. It includes entirely new chapters on the Nixon years, the process of normalizing relations under Carter, the tensions caused by Reagan's anti-communist rhetoric, the status of Taiwan, and the impact of the dramatic post-Mao reforms in Chinese society. The new edition also analyzes current Sino-American relations in the context of the emerging economic and strategic significance of the Pacific Basin and China's domestic turmoil.