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Reviewed by:
  • China Confidential: American Diplomats and Sino-American Relations, 1945-1996
  • Lawrence C. Reardon (bio)
Nancy Bernkopf Tucker , editor. China Confidential: American Diplomats and Sino-American Relations, 1945-1996. Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, and the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. xxiii, 569 pp. Hardcover $49.50, ISBN 0-231-10630-0. Paperback $18.50, ISBN 0-231-10631-9.

Imagine that you have been invited to an intimate dinner at the stately DACOR (Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired) headquarters in Washington, D.C. Seated around you are fifty-one of the key career diplomats who have managed the Sino-American relationship during the past half-century. Many you recognize immediately, such as Natale Bellocchi, Ralph Clough, Everett Drumright, Chas Freeman, Marshall Green, John Holdridge, Arthur Hummel, Paul Kreisberg, James Lilley, Winston Lord, John Service, and Richard Solomon. You look in your program to discover that others have worked in the State Department as political, economic, information, or consular officers, on the Policy Planning Staff, within the Intelligence and Research Bureau, or at the American Institute in Taiwan.

While listening to their stories, you realize that these career diplomats risked their lives to represent the United States by enduring house arrest in Mukden from 1948 to 1949, armed attacks against the Taibei Embassy in May 1957, and attacks against the Beijing diplomatic apartments two days after the June 4 incident. Despite Congressional accusations of every perfidy ranging from clientalism to communism, these diplomats remained dedicated in their effort to represent the United States to the Chinese people and to interpret China for U.S. leaders. Their discussions of the major diplomatic events involving Beijing, Taibei, Hong Kong, and Washington thus provide a remarkable insight into the past fifty years of Sino-American interactions.

While such a gathering is logistically impossible, the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) and Nancy Tucker have collected the oral histories of fifty-one diplomats, which Tucker has edited into China Confidential. Each chapter encompasses a decade of diplomatic interactions that are succinctly summarized in the chapter's initial pages. Events include the Marshall Mission in the 1940s, Tibet in the 1950s, the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, the Taiwan Relations Act in the 1970s, President Reagan's visit in the 1980s, and the Taiwan Straits Crisis in the 1990s. After providing a short description of a particular event, Tucker masterfully interweaves the various accounts into a continuous narrative in which the editor skillfully juxtaposes the diplomats' various points [End Page 533] of view. Tucker provides extensive footnotes that elucidate obscure references, corrects only the most basic of mistakes, and provides citations of recently published English-language literature. While unable to enjoy the free discourse enjoyed around the imagined DACOR table, the reader gains a more comprehensive understanding from this edited and annotated alternative.

Tucker's purpose is not to analyze the responses, but to present interesting and contrasting firsthand accounts of historical events, which will enliven any history or political science class discussion on contemporary Sino-American relations. Scholars will gain new insight into the determinants of U.S. foreign-policy decision making and be inspired to delve further into the ADST oral history collection.

As Tucker reminds the reader, oral histories can be problematic. For example, participants disagreed whether the United States was attempting to transform or eradicate communism in China during the 1950s. Robert Bowie was director of the Policy Planning Staff and later assistant secretary of state for policy planning during the Eisenhower administration. Bowie argues that NSC 162/2, the key document guiding the "New Look" approach to U.S. foreign policy, warned "that in the longer run there was going to be friction and tension and perhaps more" in the Sino-Soviet relationship. To encourage such tension, the United States intentionally blocked China's entry into the United Nations and crafted CHINCOM restrictions on China trade to be more stringent than COCOM's trade restrictions on the Soviet Union. The purpose was to make the Chinese dependent on the Soviet Union, which would be unable to satisfy China's developmental needs. By heightening their mutual...

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