Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization (review)

From its abstract title, many readers of the Journal of Cold War Studies might get the impression that this book is not for them. It is indeed filled with references to literary theory, post-colonial studies, and other formulations that do not make easily recognizable contributions to the study of the Cold War. (There are no new revelations from hitherto unexplored archives, for instance.) However, at a deeper level, if one gets past Kuan-Hsing Chen’s theoretical discussions, the bulk of which is a recitation of other scholars’ writings and speeches, one will find much that is interesting and important, particularly concerning the impact of the Cold War on Taiwan, where Chen lives and teaches, and by implication on other Asian countries.

“[The] cold war is still alive within us,” he states (p. 118). It is not entirely clear whom he is referring to by “us,” but at the least the book provides a penetrating analysis of the intellectual, emotional, and psychological impact of the Cold War on people living in Taiwan. They—both the mainland Chinese who fled to the island after 1949 and those who had lived in Taiwan under Japan’s colonial rule, as well as their respective descendants—continue to suffer from the Cold War trauma, a fundamental aspect of which, Chen argues, has been the overwhelming presence of the United States in Taiwan and in Asia as a whole. From this perspective, the Cold War meant, more than anything else, the expansion and durability of U.S. power and influence, which amounts to U.S. “imperialism.” Because Japanese imperialism was followed by U.S. imperialism almost instantaneously, Asians, in particular the people of Taiwan, have never been truly “independent,” an adjective that recurs frequently in the book in juxtaposition to imperialism. Instead, their habits, their ideas, and even their languages have been penetrated by U.S. influence.

The fact that postwar Japan has also been overwhelmingly influenced by the United States has made matters worse for Taiwan and other Asian countries, the book suggests. Because the United States chose Japan to be its principal Cold War ally, the Japanese never gained their “independence” or had an opportunity to reflect on their own imperialist past. Instead, they impressed other Asians as having betrayed them, not merely politically but also intellectually. If independence is to be achieved, then, Chen believes, the overwhelming presence of U.S. power in the region, including Japan, must end.

There is some logic to such an argument, but how concepts like “imperialism” and “independence” work in the age of globalization—and globalization is an overarching framework for the book—is far from clear. Globalization may be another term for imperialism, as Chen implies here and there, but he does not specify the precise relationship between the Cold War and globalization, unless we simply accept that in both phenomena the United States played the key role. But although Chen rejects imperialism, he does not seem to believe that globalization must also be repudiated. He recognizes that, after all, globalization means transnational networks and connections, making it possible for him to speak of “us” so confidently. But in the age of globalization, what does it mean for a country, or for any other entity, to be “independent”? Chen states that he is not looking to turn history backward and have the world return to the age dominated by nation-states (and empires). If so, can there really be “independent” nations?

More fundamentally, what does Chen mean by the United States or by America? As he himself notes, there are huge numbers of Chinese, both from Taiwan and from the mainland, in U.S. cities, particularly Los Angeles. China is very much part of America, and Chinese part of Americans. It makes little sense to speak of “American” imperialism or Taiwan’s “independence” in such circumstances. This demographic transformation of American society began in the 1970s, long before the formal ending of the Cold War, but even if we accept Chen’s assertion that the Cold...