Review | Book review: China, US bound by suspicion and hope

The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present
by John Pomfret
Henry Holt and Co

Before Anson Burlingame arrived in Beijing in 1862 to become the first American minister assigned to the Chinese capital, the United States’ diplomatic presence in mainland China had consisted of six men working from a hotel room in Shanghai, without the Stars & Stripes or a trained interpreter in sight.

Burlingame set up residence in a courtyard near the Forbidden City, the entrance of which was so narrow that visiting dignitaries had to get down from their sedan chairs in the street and drag their gowns through the mud. It marked an inauspicious start in the country for a man who would resign as a US diplomat to become “minister plenipotentiary” on the first major Chinese delegation to the West.

Nowadays, there is a growing sense that no problem of global concern – whether it be global warming, economics or the proliferation of nuclear weapons – can be solved without Washington and Beijing working together. One hundred and fifty years ago, however, just 90 years after the US was founded, the idea that one of the world’s youngest nations and a country then struggling to exert itself against foreign powers would one day be the main global rivals would have seemed farfetched, to say the least.

In his new book, John Pomfret, a former China corres­pondent for The Washington Post and author of Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China (2006), examines this often-strained relationship, tracing periods of optimism, xenophobia, anger, alliance and uncertainty as the two countries have gone from being friends to allies to enemies and back again. Key figures on both sides, including Burlingame, are fleshed out while missed opportunities to alter the trajectory of the relationship are scrutinised.