Fighting on the Cultural Front - (Nancy Bernkopf Tucker and Warren I. Cohen Book on American-E) by Hongshan Li (Paperback)

About the Book

Hongshan Li provides a groundbreaking account of the confrontation between the United States and the People's Republic of China on the Cold War's cultural front.

Book Synopsis

The Cold War conflict between the United States and the People's Republic of China did not only encompass political, military, diplomatic, and economic clashes. The two powers also confronted each other on the cultural front. Despite a long history of extensive and mostly constructive cultural interactions, the two nations cut off existing ties in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and established new relationships aimed at attacking and isolating each other. Even after Beijing and Washington permitted cultural exchange as part of their effort to normalize diplomatic relations in the 1970s, the weaponization of cultural interactions continued.

Hongshan Li provides a groundbreaking account of the confrontation between the United States and the People's Republic of China on the Cold War's cultural front. He investigates the origins, evolution, and significance of the role of cultural interactions in the shifting relations between the United States and the PRC from the late 1940s through the late 1970s. Li demonstrates that the drastic transformation of U.S.-China cultural interactions not only altered the course of Sino-American cultural relations but also shaped the Cold War experience of the two peoples. Fighting on the Cultural Front examines topics such as competition and conflicts over Chinese students and scholars stranded in the United States, maneuvers on the authorization of journalistic exchanges, the establishment of Taiwan as a cultural bastion, and Beijing's promotion of its revolutionary ideology through individual U.S. citizens, particularly African Americans. This important book offers a new lens on the history of U.S.-China relations and the cultural side of the global Cold War.

Review Quotes

A deeply researched work that uses an impressive array of US and Chinese sources. Its analysis is a well-balanced narrative with neither side dominating nor left simply responding to the initiatives of the other.-- "Diplomatic History"

Meticulously researched, with primary and secondary Chinese sources that have never been used before. Li discusses a wide range of themes and events with countless fascinating details, providing fresh insights into many of them.-- "Asian Studies Review"

The narrative of the book is successful in smoothly merging specific details with international events and the diplomatic development of US-China relations, which is always in the background.-- "H-Diplo"

This is a meticulously researched and beautifully written monograph on US-China cultural relations during the Cold War, with a particular emphasis on people-to-people interactions.-- "H-War"

Beautifully rich with details and prodigiously sourced, Fighting on the Cultural Front tells the complex history of Cold War cultural relations between Maoist China and the United States, moving seamlessly from the machinations of leaders and politicians to the personal interactions of travelers and activists. A very important and much-needed contribution to our understanding of Cold War politics and culture.--Fabio Lanza, author of The End of Concern: Maoist China, Activism, and Asian Studies

Through careful examinations of the extraordinary history of cultural battles between China and the United States during the Cold War era, this book tells us why cultures matter so much on the diplomatic front between the Chinese and Americans. Everyone who cares about the history and future of Sino-American relations should read this book.--Xu Guoqi, author of Chinese and Americans: A Shared History

A groundbreaking study of the cultural front of the Cold War between the United States and China from the late 1940s to the late 1970s. Hongshan Li has provided an engaging and extensive account on this very important but long-neglected subject. This superb book offers new insights about the significant role of the cultural Cold War in shaping Sino-American cultural relations and its lingering effects today.--Shuhua Fan, author of The Harvard-Yenching Institute and Cultural Engineering: Remaking the Humanities in China, 1924-1951

Meticulously researched and based in large part on heretofore rarely explored archival materials, Fighting on the Cultural Front fills a major gap in our understanding of US-China relations. It focuses on cultural, people-to-people, and nonofficial relations, and in so doing provides a powerful and comprehensive analysis relevant not only for the Cold War era but for today as well. A must-read for anyone attentive to the world's most consequential bilateral relationship.--Hanchao Lu, Georgia Institute of Technology

About the Author

Hongshan Li is professor of history at Kent State University. He is the author of U.S.-China Educational Exchange: State, Society, and Intercultural Relations, 1905-1950 (2008) and a coeditor of Image, Perception, and the Making of U.S.-China Relations (1998) and China and the United States: A New Cold War History (1997).