Chinese Encounters with America is a finely edited book by veteran American China scholars Deborah Davis and Terry Lautz, detailing the lives of 12 illustrious Chinese individuals who lived, worked and studied in America, and how these American encounters transformed their lives. Comprising 12 chapters, each providing a biographical profile of a prominent figure shaped by and shaping US-China relations, this volume is a welcome addition to a growing body of work that centres “people’s diplomacy” and interpersonal relationships in shaping bilateral relations across the Pacific. Read collectively, these life histories also trace the changing images of America among China’s elites, and how the shifting nature of these “encounters with America” reflects the shifting dynamics in the Sino-American relationship across the 20th and 21st centuries.
The book’s three parts trace a chronology from the 1930s–2020s, where the “Americas” – and indeed the “Chinas” from which the individuals originated – were varied and diverse. For the generation who came of age in the 1930s–1940s before the Cold War rupture (part one), this included a progressive New Deal America where a proud Chinese Communist would be welcomed in the Harvard college classroom. These individuals were often members of an academic and diplomatic elite who suffered for their bourgeois ties and “foreign education,” yet never wavered in their dedication to the party-state; they were ultimately able to re-activate these ties to the US during China’s Reform era as leaders in diplomacy and academia. For those Chinese whose first American encounters coincided with the early Reform era of the late 1970s and 1980s (parts two and three), it was the America of constitutional democracy, liberal public spiritedness and civil society that was most attractive. Though ties were first established by state agencies, the America they encountered was also characterized by the efforts of nonprofits and by the hospitality and creative energies of Asian Americans. Of course, in the age of optimism and ambition surrounding China as a new world power in the 21st century, the America that Chinese encounter is increasingly no longer the “promised land” that students in the “going abroad craze” fantasized about in the 1980s; instead, encountering an America characterized by underfunded higher education and a retreat from global commitments, it is a resurgent China that offers greater prospects for professional success, material advancement and participation in a broader nationalist project of “rejuvenation.”
In composing this volume, Davis and Lautz have gathered a community of authors, many of whom are respected scholar-practitioners themselves engaged in Sino-American educational and cultural diplomacy over the last few decades. Chapters draw on personal correspondence, oral history or longstanding relationships between author and subject, evidencing a degree of intimacy while providing a strong narrative arc. Less critical biography than introductory primer, the chapters are written in lively prose, making them excellent teaching resources that can be assigned individually or thematically. While some of the protagonists are already well known – for instance, interpreter and diplomat Ji Chaozhu, who has published a best-selling English-language memoir, or volleyball sports icon Lang Ping whose story was featured in the film Leap – many others, though distinguished in their respective fields, are lesser known to English-language audiences. Particularly notable is the volume’s focus on intellectuals – scholars involved in shaping China’s “American studies” community and Sino-American higher educational exchanges – as well as Chinese leaders traversing the worlds of business, civil society, athletics and the performing arts. In every case, their encounters and experiences in America have been transformative and positive.
One of the volume’s strengths is its use of these biographical sketches to make a cogent case for continued Sino-American engagement, despite ideological differences and geopolitical tensions. As the editors acknowledge, the individuals profiled are an extremely elite group who rose to the top of their professions by leveraging various relationships and institutional networks across the Pacific. Many already had multi-generational social and cultural capital through their US-educated parents and grandparents, but even for those who did not – like plant biologist Deng Xing Wang – they entered an America of elite universities, networks of educational and cultural diplomacy, and ready-made communities primed to help them flourish. Across multiple chapters, these Chinese individuals benefitted from American mentors, university presidents, intellectual communities and well-meaning supporters, whose goodwill and generosity exemplified the best of international exchange and intercultural understanding. But there were undoubtedly others who did not rise as exemplars of Sino-American friendship but instead faltered. A broader accounting of such voices – even while foregrounding the success stories – would provide a useful corrective.
Indeed, as historians such as Paul Kramer have argued, American efforts at educational internationalism since the turn of the 20th century rarely achieved their planned goals but were often derailed by individual aspirations and agency – detours in life trajectories that the various chapters in this volume too, elucidate. While many of such instances in this book ultimately land on some form of Sino-American “cooperation” (the title of part four) – as in social media celebrity Hung Huang’s identification of herself as a “bridge” or world citizen, or Sino-American institutional collaborations in various forms – were there other diversions that took a different kind of turn? For instance, did Reform-era Chinese students or scholars sojourning in America turn into critics of America, or was that position foreclosed because anti-imperialism was already a position claimed by the Chinese party-state? Did they suffer experiences of racism or, as earlier generations of Chinese international students in the US, were they simply sheltered by the generous and liberal environs of elite universities and nonprofits? Some fascinating discussions in the book highlight these tensions, for instance, in chapter three, where Chinese intellectual Zi Zhongyun’s positive views of American constitutional democracy and public spirit were counterbalanced by her overt criticisms of American foreign policy as a global hegemonic power addicted to intervention in other countries.
Reading Chinese Encounters with America at a moment when America is actively engaged in destructive acts of war across the globe – alongside tightening restrictions and surveillance on international students and scholars domestically – is a sobering act, as one would be hard pressed to find Chinese encounters with America providing inspiration for domestic achievements in China in more recent times. Some of the stories in part three – such as of biologist Deng Xing Wang’s return to China, or Ma Tianjie’s critique of the US as an insufficient model for environmental activism – seem almost prophetic, when read in light of the recent exodus of Chinese scholars and scientists from American universities and China’s efforts to stake out a position as a global leader in higher education, ecological conservation and climate action. Davis and Lautz, of course, want to show us another way forward, in a world where the US and China can engage as equal partners – where mutuality, shared interests and a recognition of common humanity can produce better worlds for both nations. Whether or not one follows their conclusion, readers of all persuasions would benefit from reflecting on the life histories Chinese individuals recounted in this book, and how their encounters with America inspired them to different futures.
