From The Wilson Quarterly, via A Glimpse of the World:
When China first intrigued America, in the late 18th century, we desired its tea and silk. The American missionaries and traders who reached Canton and other ports did not trouble to reflect on what China might want of us”nothing more than the Christian gospel and gadgets and tobacco, they seemed to assume. In the years since, Americans seldom have had occasion to ponder the question. The historical pattern was that America influenced China, and that unequal dynamic climaxed in the World War II alliance with Chiang Kai-shek’s shaky Kuomintang government against the fascist powers. In the 1940s it was presumed that China desired simply to recover from Japanese occupation, poverty, disunity, and corruption.
When “our China,” the Nationalist regime of Chiang, went up in a puff of smoke at the end of the 1940s and the Communists took over Beijing, China became The Other. In the acrimonious years after Mao Zedong’s triumph in 1949, China was beyond our influence. But we knew what China wanted: Mao had warned that he would “lean to one side,” and soon he declared, “The Soviet Union’s today is China’s tomorrow.” We were the “imperialists,” and Mao was against us.
