The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present

748 Pages·2016·7.32 MB·English

by  John Pomfret

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Table of Contents
About the Author
Photos
Copyright Page

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To Zhang Mei, who pulled me over the finish line
Acknowledgments
Many people and institutions assisted me in writing this book, providing
inspiration, places to stay, funds, and guidance. The Smith Richardson
Foundation and the Fulbright Scholar Program awarded me research grants. The
Council on Foreign Relations gave me a perch in Washington, DC, in 2011, and
Peking University welcomed me as a visiting scholar in 2013–2014.
At Henry Holt, my editor, Serena Jones, inherited this orphaned project and
treated it like her own. I owe her and Holt’s editor in chief, Gillian Blake,
enormous thanks for their patience and guidance. My agent, Gail Ross, as
always, provided me with invaluable support.
Thanks go to Peter Fuhrman, who helped me hatch the idea in the first place
and provided advice throughout the process. Margaret Johnson and Ray
Ottenberg gave me unstinting friendship and a home away from home in
Washington, DC; Margaret also expertly pulled together the images for the
book. Ray arranged for his book club to read an early version and thanks go to
John Claringbould, Fred Hart, John Despres, Bert Rein, Tom Reston, and John
Wyss.
At the Washington Post, I benefited from the help of great colleagues past
and present: Phil Bennett, Steve Coll, Len Downie, David Hoffman, and Bob
Kaiser, along with former CEO Don Graham, were all very supportive of my
interest in China. Without them, I would never have made it back there as a
correspondent, and thus this book could not have been completed. Marcus
Brauchli, Karen Deyoung, Ed Cody, Jon Randal, Rajiv Chandrasekaran,
Cameron Barr, Scott Wilson, Keith Richburg, Kevin Sullivan, Jackson Diehl,
and Fred Hiatt were all helpful in pushing me to think more deeply about US-
China relations. At the New York Times, Joe Kahn and Phil Pan were particularly
supportive of this endeavor. Gady Epstein and Evan Osnos, at respectively the
Economist and the New Yorker, were so as well. Michael Green, Victor Cha, and
Bonnie Glaser, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, provided
invaluable perspective on America’s role in Asia. Michael was also extremely
forthcoming in sharing a draft of his wonderful book on the US in Asia. At the
Brookings Institution, Li Cheng, Jeffrey Bader, Kenneth Lieberthal, and Dennis
Wilder were helpful. At the Council on Foreign Relations, Elizabeth Economy
has always been supportive. William Kirby at Harvard and Lydia Liu at
Columbia and Charles Hayford provided assistance, as did Chen Jian of Cornell.
Michael, Cosimo, and Debbie Thawley’s advice and encouragement were
invaluable as were those of Orville Schell and Michael Oren. As always, Jim
Mann was an excellent sounding board for my numerous odd theories. And
thanks go to Paul French for providing key data and great stories on the Yanks in
old Shanghai.
Thanks go to the staff at the Asia reading room of the Library of Congress,
the American Baptist Historical Society, the George C. Marshall Foundation,
and the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, particularly Hsiao-
ting Lin. In Taiwan, thanks go to Ch’i Hsi-sheng and also the archives of the
Foreign Ministry of the Republic of China.
In China, I benefited from the assistance of many historians and journalists,
some of whom cannot be named due to ongoing repression of free speech there.
Those who can be named include Shen Zhihua, Yang Kuisong, and Feng Youcai
at East China Normal University; Yu Tiejun, Fan Shimin, and Wang Jisi at
Peking University; and He Hui at Huanan Normal University. My researcher,
Yang Lin, was extremely adept at finding obscure periodicals and documents.
Russell Leigh Moses at the Beijing Center opened up its library to me. Special
thanks go to Holli Semetko and Emory University’s Robert W. Woodruff
Library for facilitating my research.
I was aided greatly by the assistance of colleagues and friends who read
portions of the manuscript. Ed Gargan and Zofia Smardz suffered through
numerous drafts. Historians Maochun Yu and Frederic D. Grant Jr. caught key
errors. Dick Butterfield hectored me to give it more voice. Steve and Claire
Mufson and M. T. Connolly saved me from embarrassing myself. My father,
John D. Pomfret, covered an early version in red pencil. My sister, Dana
Pomfret, added her keen eye. In the end, of course, I am responsible for all
mistakes and infelicities.
At home, my children, Dali, Liya, and Sophie, generally tolerated their
increasingly grizzled dad pounding away at the keyboard night and day. In the
spring of 2016 as the project entered the home stretch, my mother, Margaret H.
Pomfret, passed away. I deeply regret that she never saw it finished. My wife,
Zhang Mei, to whom this book is dedicated, supported me throughout this
venture, even through its darkest hours. Neither of us can believe that it actually
got done.
Prologue
On a barren landmass nine thousand miles from his native Boston, William Dane
Phelps stalked his prey. A colony of elephant seals lazed on a narrow beach, safe
from the sharks and orcas that fed on them in the open sea. But here came
Phelps, a teenager with a spear. Ten people were waiting to eat, and Phelps had
been commanded to cook. The only problem: the meat—all nineteen hundred
pounds of it—was alive. “I was left alone to get breakfast,” Phelps recalled. “I
knew nothing of the habits of the elephant, had never seen one killed, and there I
was.”
Phelps picked what looked to be the most docile of the beasts and leapt into
battle. He struck the seal on the nose. The animal reared up on its flippers,
bellowing as it towered over the boy. That opened up the monster’s midsection.
Phelps tried to plunge in his spear, but the animal caught the weapon in its
mouth and gave it a jerk, cracking Phelps on the head and knocking him on his
back. Phelps righted himself, bashed out the creature’s eyes with his club, and,
he wrote, “lanced him until he was dead.”
It was 1817, and fifteen-year-old Phelps was a six-month sail from home,
having just landed on Marion Island, a speck of land one thousand miles from
the southernmost tip of Africa. Phelps was one of a crew of twenty-five aboard
the Pickering, a brig from Boston that was scouring the seas for fur seals. They
had struck pay dirt on Marion. While their ship went off in search of more
treasure, Phelps and seven others remained on the windswept isle to hunt and
skin.
Phelps and his shipmates spent almost two years on Marion, living in a cave