Volume 24, Number 21 & 22 · January 26, 1978
Solving the China Problem
By John K. Fairbank
China and America: The Search for a New Relationship
edited by William J. Barnds
A Council on Foreign Relations Book, New York University Press, 254 pp., $15.00
China, Oil, and Asia: Conflict Ahead?
a study from The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, by Selig S. Harrison
Columbia University Press, 317 pp., $10.95
Both the persistent charm and the occasional hostility of American-Chinese relations come from our cultural separation, our subtly different expectations and reactions. Chou En-lai and Henry Kissinger, as supra-cultural negotiators, could bridge those differences with more success than we can expect from our Congress, bound as it is to the electorate, or from the less traveled Peking leadership of today. Lacking dominant leaders on either side, we may fall into a people-to-people Sino-American confrontation of emotional reactions, hurt pride, fear, and hostility. The People's Republic is remote and self-sufficient enough to get Mr. Carter's least attention. When it does come up, understanding our China problem may be too big a task for a public already overburdened by foreign policy. Our last two wars were on the periphery of the Chinese revolution. Now that it is settling down, can we work out a stable relationship? Can we recognize that Taiwan is part of One China, in theory under Peking, and still maintain our close contacts with Taiwan in fact? This is a challenge we can meet only if we have more than our usual modicum of will and wit.
Review, 3007 words
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