The past few years have marked a new nadir in Sino-American relations. Though interactions between China and the US are not nearly as tenuous as they were during the mid-twentieth century, since 2016 the two countries have slid into a relationship marked by accusations, bombastic exchanges, and an attenuation of the economic and interpersonal ties cultivated since the 1972 rapprochement. The retreat from intellectual openness and liberalism on both sides of the Pacific has unsettled the future of Sino-American cooperation, and marks (at least for the moment) a natural ending to the narrative arc of increasing Sino-American exchange that began with President Richard Nixon’s visit to China.
Chinese Encounters with America: Journeys that Shaped the Future of China, a volume edited by Deborah Davis and Terry Lautz, features twelve biographies of prominent Chinese figures who meaningfully engaged with the US and then returned to China during this nearly fifty-year period of concerted exchange and cross-Pacific bridge-building. Featuring chapters by scholars, journalists, and practitioners, the biographies trace the opportunities and challenges of the period from the 1970s to the present, illuminating how diplomats, scholars, scientists, musicians, dancers, social media influencers, entrepreneurs, and sports figures navigated between the two countries and, in the process, reshaped not only their home country but also Sino-American relations. The editors intend to counter “the dominant narrative of competition and distrust between China and the United States” (3), and they do that by capturing the optimism and possibility of this period of Sino-American relations, and pointing, implicitly, toward an alternate future—one that is still within sight—of cooperation and mutual regard.
The volume is divided into three chronologically organized sections: Cold War and Reconciliation, Reform and Engagement, and Globalization and Cooperation. The first section features three profiles. The first is of the interpreter and diplomat Ji Chaozhu 冀朝铸 (1929–2020) (written by Charles W. Hayford), who spent some of his childhood in New York City and attended Harvard before returning to China in 1950. There, he served as an interpreter for Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping, then worked at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, and ended his career as the ambassador to the UK. The second profile is of Xie Xide 谢希德 (also known as Hilda Hsieh; 1921–2000) (by Deborah Davis and Richard Madsen), a product of women’s educational institutions on both sides of the Pacific (Bridgman Academy in Beijing and then Smith College in the US) and a member of the third generation in her family to be educated in the US. Trained in physics at MIT, she returned to China in 1952, where she focused on semiconductor research and served as president of Fudan University from 1983 to 1988, establishing Fudan’s Center for American Studies. The section closes with the story of Zi Zhongyun 资中筠 (b. 1930) (by Steven I. Levine), a foreign affairs bureaucrat whose grounding in American Studies began when she attended Yenching University, where she studied English and American literature. After the 1970s, Zi became one of China’s leading experts on American politics and culture.
These figures, whose expectations for Sino-American relations were shaped by the dynamics of the Cold War, were all devoted to the Chinese Communist Party and committed to its vision for a new China. Ji and Xie returned to China from abroad after 1949 to serve in the CCP bureaucracy, and all three individuals endured political persecution during the 1960s and 1970s for their foreign connections or class background. All three also worked within the system; there were no other options during the early decades of their working lives, but it is notable (if perhaps obvious) that either good luck in or skillful navigation of sensitive political moments played a part in long-term career success for this generation. A few other commonalities emerge in their stories, including the critical importance of elite family connections and the role of Western educational institutions in China in educating the pre-1949 and early CCP elite. Not accidentally, given that their post-1970s, late-age career success stemmed from a willingness to switch gears in the wake of political realignment, all three individuals shared an irrepressible intellectual curiosity. While driven to establish connections with the United States out of their patriotic desire to serve China, their personal backgrounds or temperaments led them to approach the study of and engagement with China’s erstwhile enemy with tolerance and broad-mindedness.
The second section, “Reform and Engagement,” illuminates the wider range of pathways and careers in the wake of Mao Zedong’s death, the end of the Cultural Revolution, and the implementation of the Reform and Opening policies after 1978. As the editors note in their section introduction, the individuals in this section, who came of age in the 1980s, “broke from enforced obedience to the Party” and, having visited or studied in the US, returned to China with broader skills and academic experiences than the previous generation (100). This is apparent in the chapters, which focus on “American watcher” Wang Jisi 王缉思 (b. 1948) (by David M. Lampton); garment manufacturing scion Marjorie Yang Mun Tak 楊梅德 (b. 1952) (by William C. Kirby); civil society advocate at the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences (CASS), the Ford Foundation, and the Asia Foundation Zhang Ye 张烨 (b. 1954) (by Elizabeth Knup); volleyball celebrity Lang Ping 郎平 (b. 1960) (known in China as “The Iron Hammer) (by Susan Brownell); and modern dancer Yang Meiqi 杨美琦 (b. 1945) (by Emily Wilcox).
Some themes from the first section continue into this new generation, including elite family backgrounds, connections to elite educational institutions in China and the US, and a willingness to work within the system to achieve change. The latter commonality emerges in this section as a clear choice on the part of the editors and contributors in constructing the volume, because some of the chapters mention parallel anti-establishment figures who do not receive chapter-long treatments. For instance, when dancer Yang Meiqi visited the United States for a pivotal short period of dance study in New York City, her host, the Asian Cultural Council, arranged for artist Ai Weiwei (a persistent CCP critic in the twenty-first century) to show her around the city. The editors’ explicit focus on Chinese who returned to China, therefore, contains an implicit focus on those who successfully built careers and survived politically in the PRC. While this choice shapes the narrative of the volume as a whole, the chapters, like those in the previous section, highlight wider trends of this period, especially the growing openness and engagement of the 1980s and 1990s and the tendency of Chinese of this generation to look to the US as a model of a more open and liberal society.
The third section, “Globalization and Cooperation,” emphasizes the continued richness of the Sino-American exchange for people on both sides of the Pacific, but also alludes to the tarnished luster of American exceptionalism among sympathetic Chinese in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the repeated election of President Donald Trump. With chapters on plant biologist Deng Xing Wang 邓兴旺 (b. 1962) (by Abigail E. Coplin); women’s media mogul and social media influencer Hung Huang 洪晃 (b. 1961) (by Melinda Liu); environmental activist Ma Tianjie 马天杰 (b. 1982) (by Lili Pike); and pianist and composer Gong Tianpeng 龚天鹏 (b. 1992) (by Sheila Melvin and Jindong Cai), this section showcases the diverse and (compared to earlier eras) unconventional career paths that were increasingly open to young Chinese. As with Gen X and elder millennials in the United States, the individuals featured in this section changed jobs, career focus, and employers many times in their working lives, and they moved fluidly between China and the United States (and elsewhere) for schooling, work, and personal reasons. Their biographies demonstrate how globalization and the resulting global elite mobility changed not just economies and state relations but also the scope and shape of individual lives.
The figures in this third section were less likely to work in government or elite Chinese educational institutions. Instead, their lives reflect the twenty-first-century vibrancy of Chinese civil society and the pull of China-based economic and cultural prospects as researchers, artists, and activists returned to China. Like earlier generations of returnees featured in this volume, they devoted themselves to improving their home country, but they framed their goals quite differently. Earlier generations mentioned wanting to strengthen or build China; by the early twenty-first century, the subjects of these chapters focused on asking the state to fulfill its promises—to individuals, to the environment, to marginalized groups like women, to future generations. This focus lays bare the tensions of globalization in contemporary China: it has made possible economic stability and material comfort for an unprecedented percentage of the Chinese population and supplied a greater confidence about the strengths of Chinese systems and institutions, but has also shifted citizens’ sensibilities about what their state owes them and what their society could become.
This volume is a valuable archive documenting Chinese engagement with the US and its changes over the fifty-year period that coincided with China’s emergence as a global economic and political leader. In a moment when it is easy to feel disheartened by the state of Sino-American relations, the volume’s collected biographies are a reminder that, even during low points of engagement, there are those who wish to connect across space and ideology to learn, discuss, and exchange ideas and perspectives. Heated rhetoric and saber-rattling may garner headlines, but there are many people working towards a different vision, a vision of an interconnected, shared future. This volume documents both the institutional and personal legacies to which so many have devoted energy, time, and heart, and which might continue to serve as models, inspirations, and points of departure for future generations.
