American Studies of Contemporary China (review)

© 1996 by University ofHawai'i Press Reviews 265 and the present—in China as elsewhere—ifwe are to have any effective influence over the future. Read carefully, these volumes can assist us in this task. Roger V. Des Forges State University ofNew York at Buffalo Roger Des Forges is an associateprofessor ofhistory writing a book on northeast Henan province in the Ming-Qing transition. David Shambaugh, editor. American Studies ofContemporary China. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1993. 369 pp. Hardcover $57.95, isbn 1-56324-266-4. Paperback $23.95, isbn 1-56324-267-2. There is something distincdy singular about the American study of China as compared to, for instance, Japanese or Russian sinology. This conference volume, organized on tiiat premise, captures that singularity, encompassing a broad spectrum of the activities and thinking of die American China studies community. The unique and tumultuous history ofthis community explains the distinctiveness that differentiates it from European and Asian sinology. American scholars , inhibited during the McCarthy era of the 1950s, studied China from a distance during the 1960s. Scholars in the 1970s were influenced by the post-Vietnam cultural revolution in America as they puzzled out the origins and impact ofthe Chinese Cultural Revolution. The 1980s produced the "normalization generation ," scholars who lived in and did fieldwork in China, and whose experience, in post-Tiananmen retrospect, might never be repeated. More than previous generations , their fieldwork was framed by the theoretical concerns oftheir disciplines. The 1990s saw many Chinese scholars added to the community, enriching and deepening its understanding of die Chinese way of diinking. The structure of this volume reflects this history, with sections that cover the evolution ofthe field, disciplinary surveys, the American China studies community itself, the available infrastructure for studying China, and intellectual trends for the 1990s. Harry Harding reviews the evolution of scholarship on contemporary China, finding a wave-like pattern, with each generation experiencing intellectual excitement followed by lethargy. The normalization generation, well represented by Thomas Gold, Anthony Kane, Penelope Prime, Nina Halpern, Robert Ross, and Paul Godwin, defines the disciplinary concerns ofsociology, economics, 266 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1996 political science, international relations, and the humanities in the study ofChina. This generation, deeply embedded in the theoretical concerns ofthe social sciences, can be expected to further the synthesis ofdieory and sinology, and dius shift the field further away from an area-studies approach. The next generation ofChinese scholars could be expected to resist that shift, stressing the uniqueness ofChina. The section on the American China studies community divides specialists into academic, government, private sector, and journalists. Thomas Fingar, as a government specialist, provides a glimpse into the invisible world ofintelligence analysis. Richard Madsen traces American academia's intellectual debates, explaining "why China 'is so bad to tiiink with.'" Thomas Robinson explores how private sector China specialists go about their work, having agendas shaped by employers and customers. Jay and Linda Matiiews tell how journalists experience on the ground the smells, sights, and sounds of Chinese society, and dien vividly convey this to their readers. What all these specialists have in common is the extent to which the ultimate consumer of their product shapes its content. The section concerned with infrastructure reconfirms the need for the material means to nurture and sustain the field. Timothy Light assesses the current state ofChinese-language teaching in the United States and provides recommendations to improve language proficiency. Eugene Wu catalogs the primary library resources available and makes suggestions for how to incorporate the tremendous outpouring ofpublished materials from China. Mary Brown Bullock discusses how American scholarly exchange programs with China were shaped by die Soviet exchange model, attempting to gain leverage on the issue ofreciprocity by linking American research access with technology transfer to China through the natural sciences. Terrill Lautz traces the patterns ofpublic- and private-sector funding, noting that funding is shifting from China studies in the United States toward China itself. One feels that the distinctiveness ofthis American China studies community is a fleeting phenomenon limited to the latter half of the twentieth century, a product ofthe Cold War and its aftermath. In the...