A Great Wall - Hardcover

Tyler, Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1891620371 ISBN 13: 9781891620379

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 1999

Synopsis

Discusses the relationship between the United States and China since 1969

About this title

Review

When the People's Republic of China was proclaimed in 1949, the balance of power in Asia was irrevocably changed. Ever since, democratic America has been obliged to contend with a Communist colossus whose world objectives are diametrically opposed to its own--how to deal with a leader, Mao Zedong, who once said, "Let 400 million Chinese die and 300 million will be left"? This book is no dry history; the author describes how easily escalating tensions over Taiwan could involve the USA in a major war today. Trained as an investigative journalist, Patrick Tyler is a marvelous writer, combining shrewd diplomatic analysis with deft descriptions of the protagonists, many of whom he saw in action when he was New York Times bureau chief in Beijing. His cast of characters includes the greatest political figures of the day, from Mao and Gorbachev to six American presidents, beginning with Nixon, whose bold knocking opened China's door, and ending with Clinton's gamely attempting to balance America's commercial interests with human rights issues. Tyler's personal experience and formidable research, including 15,000 pages of newly declassified documents, produce gems such as Brezhnev's attempt to run off with a briefcase belonging to an American negotiator visiting the men's room, and the shocking picture of Kissinger passing national secrets to Chinese officials. A Great Wall is a highly readable account of relations between the world's most powerful and the world's most populous nations and their momentous implications for the new millennium. --John Stevenson

From the Author

In 1992, when I left my desk at the Washington Bureau of the New York Times and moved to Taiwan to begin a year's intensive study of Mandarin Chinese, I carried a book bag filled with all the volumes I could find on the history and culture of contemporary China.

But something was missing. I could find no penetrating history of U.S.-China relations that explained for a general reader, like myself, the politics and personalities of the six presidential administrations, beginning with Nixon, that have managed the American relationship with Asia's fastest growing power.

Of course there is a great deal of insightful literature on China, but I was looking for a "biography" of the relationship itself, something that could help me understand the motivations of Mao and Nixon to rewrite the script of the Cold War, and then everything since. I wanted to understand how each president had come to understand China; and how the Chinese, throughout the Cultural Revolution and the turmoil caused by the deaths of titans like Mao, Zhou and Deng, had kept focused on America as somehow connected with China's destiny.

After several years of research, 200 interviews and a review of an extraordinary archive of newly declassified documents, I have written the book I wanted to read when I first went to China.

About this edition

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1891620371
• ISBN 13: 9781891620379
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 496