The United States and China: Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged

by John King Fairbank

Overview

For two generations scholars and general readers have looked to John King Fairbank’s The United States and China for knowledge and insights about China. In this fourth edition, enlarged, he includes a new preface and an epilogue that brings the book up to date through the events of 1982. He has also updated the vast bibliography and both indexes. This book stands almost alone as a history of China, an analysis of Chinese society, and an account of Sino–American relations, all in brief compass.

The older portions of the book still sparkle, and they have been refined by the latest scholarship and the author’s own observations in the People’s Republic of China. And many photographs, especially chosen by John and Wilma Fairbank, show a changing land and its inhabitants.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674036642
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	07/01/2009
Series:	American foreign policy library.
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	660
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

John King Fairbank was Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and Director of the East Asian Research Center at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

Contents
Forword Reischauer Edwin O.
Preface, 1983 Fairbank John K.
Introduction
1 The Chinese Scene
The Contrast of North and South
China's Origins
The Harmony of Man and Nature
Part I The Old Order
2 The Nature of Chinese Society
Social Structure
The Peasant: Family and Kinship
The Market Community
Early China as an “Oriental” Society
The Medieval Flowering
The Gentry Class
The Chinese Written Language—The Scholar
Chinese Writing
The Scholar Class
Nondevelopment of Capitalism—The Merchant
3 The Confucian Pattern
Confucian Principles
Government by Moral Prestige
Early Achievements in Bureaucratic Administration
The Classical Orthodoxy
Neo-Confucianism
Chinese Militarism
Individualism, Chinese Style
The Nondevelopment of Science
4 Alien Rule and Dynastic Cycles
Nomad Conquest
The First Sino-Foreign Empires
The Manchu Achievement
The Nature of Chinese Nationalism
The Dynastic Cycle
5 The Political Tradition
Bureaucracy
Central Controls
Government as Organized “Corruption”
Law
Religion
Taoism
Buddhism
Chinese Humanism
Folk Sects and Peasant Rebellion
Part II The Revolutionary Process
6 The Western Invasion
European versus Chinese Expansion
The Arab Role
The Ming Explorations
Early Maritime Contact
The Jesuit Success
China's Impact on Europe
The Tribute System
The Canton System and Its Collapse
The Treaty System
Extraterritoriality
The Demographic Disaster
7 Rebellion and Restoration
The White Lotus as a Prototype
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom
The Taiping Religion
Taiping Communism
The Nien and Other Rebels
The Restoration of Confucian Government
“China's Response to the West” in Retrospect
8 Reform and Revolution
The Self-Strengthening Movement
Imperialism and Reform in 1898
Revolutionaries versus Reforms
Sun Yat-sen
Liang Ch'i-ch'ao
Dynastic Reform and Republican Revolution
The New Nationalism
The Revolutionary Leadership
9 The Rise of the Kuomintang
The Search for a New Order
The Collapse of Parliamentary Democracy
The Republic's Decline into Warlordism
The Growth of Urban Nationalism
The May Fourth Movement
The Student Movement and New Literature
The Nationalist Revolution
The Kuomintang-Communist Alliance
The Nationalist Accession to Power
10 The Nanking Government
Political Development
Party Dictatorship
Rights Recovery
The Rise of Chiang Kai-shek
Echoes of Confucianism
Roots of Totalitarianism
Progress toward Industrialization
Transportation
Industry
Banking and Fiscal Policy
Public Finance
Local Government
The Rural Problem
11 The Rise of the Communist Party
Vicissitudes of the First Decade
The Attractions of Communism
The Comintern's Difficulties
The Rise of Mao Tse-tung
The Maoist Strategy
Yenan and Wartime Expansion
Organization of Popular Support
Wartime Ideological Development
The New Democracy
Liberation
Part III The United States and the People's Repulic
12 Our Inherited China Policy
American Expansion and Britain's Empire
America's Role within Britain's Informal Empire
The American Ambivalence about China
The Evolution of the Open Door
The Integrity of China
The Nature of the American Interest
America's Contribution and the Fate of Liberalism
13 United States Policy and the Nationalist Defeat
American Aid and Mediation
The Nationalist Debacle
The “Loss of China” in America
Our Ally Tiawan
14 The people's Republic: Establishing the New Order
Political Control
Coalition Government
The Party, Government, and Army Structures
The Mass Organizations
Law and Security
Economic Reconstruction
Land Reform
Social Reorganization
Thought Reform
Communism and Confucianism
Criticism, Literary and Political
The Korean War and Soviet Aid
15 The Struggle for Socialist Transformation
Collectivization Agriculture
The First Five-Year Plan
The Struggles with Intellectuals and with Cadres
China in the World Scene
The Great Leap Forward
The Communes
16 The Second Revolution
Mao and His Opponents
The Two Approaches to China's Revolution
The Sino-Soviet Split
The Growth of Bureaucratic Evils
Cadre life
Mao Revives the Revolution: The Socialist Education Movement
Repoliticizing the Army
The Cultural Revolution
The Aftermath
Mao Tse-tung's Monument
17 Perspectives: China and Ourselves
Our China Policy and the Wars in Korea and Vietnam
New Perspectives of the 1970s
China Today in the Light of Her Past
Echoes of the Dynastic Cycle
Processes of Modernization
Problems of the New Order
Epilogue, 1983
Suggested Reading
1983 Addenda to Suggested Reading
Index to Suggested Reading
General Index
Credits for Illustrations

Editorial Reviews

Still flashes with brilliance in its latest (fourth) incarnation… With this latest edition of what is arguably the best guide to China in any language, American and other non-Chinese readers may finally catch a glimpse of the ‘very complex’ Chinese way of life.

Asiaweek Literary Review

An indispensable book for thoughtful people.

New York Times Book Review

[Fairbank’s] ability to transcend the academic to write a highly readable, authoritative, information-packed, perceptive and analytical account of the Chinese is unsurpassed. This is must reading for all Asiaphiles.

Asia Mail

As useful and timely as when it first appeared in 1948. Written by America’s foremost China scholar, John Fairbank, the book addresses a popular, not the academic, audience. It offers a sweeping view of the Chinese polity from ancient times up to the recent, convoluted period of Western contact, spiced by the wit and insight into detail of a geographer who drew the maps himself… Yet the book offers much to the specialist as well as the layman. To the historian, a state-of-the-art review of the latest historical analysis of modern China… To the student, a cogent guide to the field… For the diplomat and businessman, the work explores that most intangible but also most influential area of human feeling between the two countries that has launched ventures and derailed them.

China Business Review

Fairbank provides a miraculously concise account of Chinese civilization from its foundations to the present day… Maps, photographs, and an 80-page bibliography make this an invaluable reference work.

New Republic

[Fairbank's] ability to transcend the academic to write a highly readable, authoritative, information-packed, perceptive and analytical account of the Chinese is unsurpassed. This is must reading for all Asiaphiles.-- "Asia Mail"

An indispensable book for thoughtful people.-- "New York Times Book Review"

As useful and timely as when it first appeared in 1948. Written by America's foremost China scholar, John Fairbank, the book addresses a popular, not the academic, audience. It offers a sweeping view of the Chinese polity from ancient times up to the recent, convoluted period of Western contact, spiced by the wit and insight into detail of a geographer who drew the maps himself... Yet the book offers much to the specialist as well as the layman. To the historian, a state-of-the-art review of the latest historical analysis of modern China... To the student, a cogent guide to the field... For the diplomat and businessman, the work explores that most intangible but also most influential area of human feeling between the two countries that has launched ventures and derailed them.-- "China Business Review"

Fairbank provides a miraculously concise account of Chinese civilization from its foundations to the present day... Maps, photographs, and an 80-page bibliography make this an invaluable reference work.-- "New Republic"

Still flashes with brilliance in its latest (fourth) incarnation... With this latest edition of what is arguably the best guide to China in any language, American and other non-Chinese readers may finally catch a glimpse of the 'very complex' Chinese way of life.-- "Asiaweek Literary Review"

The best general introduction to the Chinese political system... A book of love and great learning.-- "Kirkus Reviews"

From the Publisher