Desaix Anderson was the first American charge d’affairs to Vietnam when diplomatic relations were reestablished in 1995 after a hiatus of almost twenty years. His role was to meet, analyse, report on, and influence the policy-level leaders of Vietnam as well as those officials responsible for executing those policies. His insights into the Vietnamese leadership […]
The year 1979 marked turning points in both contemporary Chinese history and Sino-American relations. Deng Xiaoping initiated market reforms and an opening to the global economy which would transform China, with Guangzhou (Canton) at the forefront. Washington and Beijing’s mutual diplomatic recognition triggered an across-the-board expansion of relations between the United States and China. When […]
This book is essential reading for any student of Burma, security in the Asia-Pacific region, China-India relations, or military and strategic priorities in Asia and the world. The key to coming to grips with modern Burma is to understand the country’s armed forces. Although it has dominated all aspects of Burmese life since the 1962 […]
Taken from journals and letters written during the final decades of the Manchu Empire and the chaotic years of revolution and civil war leading up to the War of Resistance (1937–1945), this is the story of the life and work of the Protestant missionaries who opened their first station in the upper Min River region […]
This classic account (1952) of the makers of “New Japan” tells the life stories of a journalist, an ex-Navy vice-admiral, a steel worker, a farmer, and Emperor Hirohito. Frank Gibney was a wartime intelligence officer who became Time magazine correspondent during the American Occupation of Japan. He went on to be a major interpreter of Japan to […]
Four Hundred Million Customers (1937) is a collection of humorous essays and piquant anecdotes underpinned by well-informed insight and highlighted by witty drawings by G. Sapojnikoff. Like a bowl of salted peanuts, these vignettes make you want “more.” The book was welcomed on its publication as the most entertaining and instructive introduction to the rapidly modernizing people […]
This landmark study by a leading Chinese scholar of international relations significantly advances our understanding of the origins of Chinese Communist foreign policy. Basing himself on a wealth of previously inaccessible Chinese archival sources, memoirs, and official documents, Professor Niu charts the evolution of CCP foreign policy in the period preceding the revolutionary victory in […]
The roots of modern Sino-Japanese relations lie in the intense cultural and political exchanges which blossomed in the mid-1850s extending into the late 1920s. Scholarly interest has grown over the last two decades in the interaction between China and Japan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While much of that interest has centered […]
When Soong Meiling, better known to the world as Madame Chiang Kai-shek, died in October 2003, her life of over a century almost exactly paralleled America’s own century of direct involvement with Asia, which began with the acquisition of the Philippines. Alone among Western Powers, the United States championed an Open Door policy toward China. […]
In late 1940, General Vasilii Chuikov was sent by the Soviet government to China to serve as chief military adviser to General Chiang Kai-shek, head of the Nationalist government. China was still fighting alone against Japan after more than three years of war. It was Chuikov’s task to oversee the provision of Soviet military aid […]
China’s rise to world power status has changed the shape of the world. The U.S.-China bilateral relationship is arguably already the most important one for both countries and it embraces issues of global and regional security, economic prosperity, and the environment, among many others. If Americans tend to ignore history, Chinese do not. The five […]
The Oriole’s Song is a love story — love of family, of entwined cultures, of life itself — during and after the turmoil of war. This beautiful recollection of an American girlhood in China during World War II is a continual delight with large insights and small moments made exqusite by delicate prose. On May […]