Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during the opening ceremony of the 4th World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China on December 3, 2017.
(AFP/Getty Images)When the CEO of Apple, Inc., gave the keynote address last week at a conference in Wuzhen promoting the Chinese government’s style of Internet management, he added a line to what is now a long and dishonorable history of his industry’s engagement with China.
The rise of Asia, and particularly of China—the tremendous growth in its economic, diplomatic, and military power—has not escaped the notice of anyone on this planet, and many commentators now take Asian ascendancy in the 21st century as an inevitability. Michael R. Auslin of the American Enterprise Institute (and formerly a history professor at Yale) has undertaken to correct that view. Although his publisher could not resist the startling title The End of the Asian Century, Auslin disclaims any predictions. They slip out from time to time (vaticinari humanum est), but mostly he plays the role of a Wall Street analyst…
For the American student of China, these are interesting times. Domestically, repression is on the rise: It is now common to turn on the television in China and see free-thinking individuals, days or weeks after having been “disappeared,” confess woodenly to crimes for which they have not yet been legally charged. Equally striking is China’s assertive behavior abroad. Beijing has declared a million square miles of the South China Sea to be a Chinese lake, with swiftly constructed artificial islands now starting to be fortified and The Hague’s adverse ruling brushed aside with contempt. “One Belt, One Road” and the Asian Infrastructure…
For 35 years the one-child policy loomed large in Western perceptions of China, and news that Beijing will now permit all couples a second child has prompted a spate of commentary. The policy’s origins, however, are not widely known. Perhaps they are felt to be self-evident. This draconian measure might seem to have been a stereotypically Chinese response to a crisis of overpopulation, shaped by Asiatic traditions of state supremacy and implemented with Maoist brutality. But that description is almost entirely wrong.
Fraught relations between the United States and China have a long history. Study could start with this volume, for it is an impressive labor of synthesis. In less than 250 pages of text, Dong Wang reviews more than 200 years of commercial and diplomatic history as well as the cultural and personal interchanges that have shaped attitudes on both sides of the Pacific. The curious and energetic will value the book’s 26-page bibliography and the suggestions for further reading that close each chapter. The history itself is fascinating. But the author’s tone and perspective are steeped in values that few readers…
