This is a book I read with my colleagues at work, as the early parts of the book relate to some of the collections in our archival depository. Bradley's work is a sweeping account of the flawed policy of American government toward China from the mid-19th century until the rise of Mao Zedong to power in the 1940s. The early part of the book focuses on the American merchant class who set up trading posts that the were deliberately isolated from the ordinary Chinese people by the Chinese government. The American merchants all made wealth in the opium trade creating an opiate crisis in China (It made me realize that the Sackler family were not the first Americans to get people hooked on opiates while also acquiring Asian art).

Among these merchants were Warren Delano, the maternal grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The foreign policy of both Theodore Roosevelt and FDR are key parts of this book as they operated on false assumptions of China as a place where the Chinese peasants were eager to be Americanized and convert to Christianity. This view was promulgated by what Bradley calls the China Lobby, lead by influential and wealthy businessmen like the publisher Henry Luce. Key figures in the China Lobby were the Soong Family, Charlie Soong and his daughters Soong Ai-ling, Soong Ching-ling, and Soong Mei-ling who were American educated and Christian converts. Soong Mei-ling married Chiang Kai-shek and together and gained power by deluding the China Lobby and American government for financial support while in fact creating a cruel but ineffectual dictatorship over China.

I found this book very illuminating about the history of China and Chinese-American international relations. Bradley also has a lot of suppositions about how a more realistic approach to China by the US government could've prevented the severity of the Pacific theater of World War II as well as the wars in Korea and Vietnam. He certainly makes a good point that the US could've responded positively to calls for alliance from Mao, a more effective fighter against Japan than Chiang, and someone who was no less a communist or tyrant than America's World War II ally Josef Stalin. On the other hand I am very turned off by Bradley's snarky tune and frequent use of jokey nicknames for the figures in this book. For all I know,The China Mirage may be 100% factual, but Bradley's writing style makes me doubt it.

Favorite Passages:

"On the American side, generations of missionary dreams about New China created an assumption in the United States about a reality that never existed in Asia. The China mirage took hold in the nineteenth century, affected U.S. foreign policy and domestic politics in the twentieth century, and continues to misguide America. Perhaps the cautionary tale revealed in this book will motivate people in both countries to strengthen that bridge across the Pacific before it’s too late. Again."

 

"...a procession of American sea merchants made their fortunes smuggling opium. They were aware of its poisonous effects on the Chinese people, but few of them ever mentioned the drug in the thousands of pages of letters and documents they sent back to America. Robert Bennet Forbes—a Russell and Company contemporary of Delano’s—defended his involvement with opium by noting that some of America’s best families were involved, 'those to whom I have always been accustomed to look up as exponents of all that was honorable in trade—the Perkins, the Peabodys, the Russells and the Lows.'"

 

Certainly some missionaries knew that Chiang was a one-party despot with legions of Blue Shirt thugs terrorizing the populace. They also knew that Chiang’s government was still a weak collection of warlord states held together by Ailing and Chiang through financial payoffs. But for reasons of either blind faith or strategic amorality, these men of God overlooked Chiang’s shortcomings. The Missionary Review of the World wrote, 'China has now the most enlightened, patriotic and able rulers in her history.'”

 

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I think the best summary would be: "Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia". Fascinating and eye-opening. Even if it's the first book I've read where Mao is the one who benefits from whitewashing. Key insights are how powerful propaganda is and how politics is wholly removed from public opinion and done between private individuals. We like to think this has changed.

Ironically this book has its own agenda too (but it's upfront about it). ( )

The blurb is basically correct: America's elite being made fools of over their bone-ignorance of China.

Some nice bits of Chinese history, American history, folly, cruelty and loss, but not a particularly engaging book, which is a pity.

Best thing I could say about it is that this book is a good primer, but really there needs to be more, more meat. ( )

This was an excellent history of the American relationship with Asia, with a particular focus on China. Going back to the nineteenth century, when FDR's grandfather made a fortune selling opium in China, this history traces the themes of cultural misunderstanding and a willingness to believe what was desired in the US's Asian relationships. The second world war takes up plenty of space in this volume, with the author carefully discussing the motivations of interested parties and arguing that the war was preventable through a different course of action. Overall, this was a highly interesting history which offers a fresh perspective on well-known events. ( )

A mirage is something that appears real or possible but is not in fact so. This is main premise of this book as in reviews and analyzes our interaction and interventions in China. The western powers primarily Britain, and America, tried to force open China's markets and chose their leaders. Evangelicals saw China as a ripe mission field. They believed with a little effort the Chinese would become card carrying Christians complete with western values. The fact that a few Chinese converted was the mirage. The reality was that outside those few, China was never open to Christianity nor western valuesBuying the mirage over the reality cost American in particular and west in general dearly. Bradley contends that the end of WWII would have been different if me had chosen Mao Zedong to lead the fight against the Japanese. Chiang Kai-shek our chosen leader in WWII fit the mirage. He was ineffective on the battlefield as well as politically, but he fit the mirage. Mao Zedong in contrast was effective on the battlefield as well as politically. He would ultimately lead mainland China. Mao Zedong a buddhist nationalist didn't fit the mirage. The US China lobby convinced the State Department to ignore Mao's out reaches to America. The subsequent fight over who lost China cleared the State Department of diplomats who could have steered American foreign policy in a different direction. America might have realized that the nationalist tendencies of Mao in China and Hồ Chí Minh in Vietnam did not have to end in their becoming Communist. This is book's primary argument. It explores the issue of what could have been. The book is useful to anyone interested in going to China. Missionaries interested in China will have their perspectives challenged. I certainly did. ( )