China and the American Dream: A Moral Inquiry (review)

514 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1995 left out completely. Finally, again, the organizers ofthe conference clearly made an effort to cover the politics, economy, and society of the three areas discussed. In any conference, however, contributors will naturally differ in individual interests , expertise, or focus, and thus in their choice of specific topics. There seems to be room, merit, and in fact a need for a coordinated, comprehensive, and balanced cooperative study of these three areas and their future. Danny S. L. Paau Hong Kong Baptist University Richard Madsen. China and the American Dream: A Moral Inquiry. Berkeley , Los Angeles, and London: University ofCalifornia Press, 1995. xxiii, 262 pp. Hardcover $27.50. In this book Richard Madsen brings together China and the United States, which hitherto he has been studying separately, by writing a moral history of the two countries. His theoretical perspective "denies the sharp distinction between subject and object characteristic ofpositive science." To this integrative study the author brings his rich experiences as a former Maryknoll missionary, as a China scholar and sociologist for almost three decades, and as a member for fifteen years of the Robert N. Bellah team that has explored a "public philosophy" for Americans. That Bellah teamwork produced two provocative books: Habits ofthe Heart (University of California Press, 1985) and The Good Society (Alfred A. Knopf, 1991). Madsen wrote China and theAmerican Dream as "someone trained in the sociology of culture and moral philosophy." The "American Dream" seems to be a catchall term for a "liberal myth"— both imprecise notions used interchangeably by Madsen throughout the book as constructs in attempting to make sense out ofthe very complex relations between China and the United States in the last quarter-century. Simply put, the "liberal myth" is what many mainline Protestant Americans (and those whom they have influenced) like to believe about themselves and their country. Before the Communist victory in 1949, China was seen as fertile soil where these Americans could 1995 u ? ¦ make money, convert people to their religious beliefs, or extend their democratic ofHawai'iPressideals. Diplomats, businesspeople, Christian missionaries, and academics—all had their own agendas for shaping China according to their best image ofAmerica. That myth was part and parcel of the American Protestant Establishment. In 191 1, Reviews 515 when the Maryknoll Fathers were founded as a Catholic Foreign Missionary Society ofAmerica, they did so because (as I was told by a senior priest) "we wanted to do no less than the Protestants." Madsen sees this liberal myth as having reemerged in 1979, following the normalization of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China and the subsequent opening of China to Japan and the West for the technology it very much needed in its effort to achieve modernization. This new turn ofevents is seen by the author as having been made possible by the timely and no less mythic initiative of President Richard Nixon, with his historic, well-orchestrated, globally televised visit to the People's Republic in 1972, driven by the emerging Soviet threat as it was perceived by both countries. According to Madsen, the new relationship with China revived a waning "liberal myth" and gave a new lease on life to venturesome and altruistic Americans and their liberal institutions. However, within a short decade, that myth was suddenly challenged in the aftermath of an overheated Chinese economy and the tragic events in Beijing in the spring of 1989. Madsen underscores the severity ofthat tragedy for Americans (more than the brutality ofthe suppression itselfwarranted ), whose dreams for both themselves and China were shattered. Madsen reviews with critical, post-Tiananmen hindsight the tendency of Americans over the last quarter-century to look wistfully at China as a mirror of their highest hopes and aspirations. I can recall a colleague (Tom Fenton) in the mid-1970s claiming that "China-the-Idea" (rather than "China-the-Place") appealed to him because it showed that "Socialism in the United States is a possibility !" (One World, A monthly magazine of the World Council of Churches, Geneva, May 1976, p. 12). Though belated, Madsen's call for sobriety is still needed to help Americans avoid the classic oscillation between love...