China Whisperers

From one of the most prominent post-Cold War geopolitics experts, an “illuminating, insightful, and essential” (Chris Miller, bestselling author of Chip War) look at US-China relations and the China experts who have influenced—and continue to influence—America’s policy toward its greatest rival.

Few countries or civilizations are as big or as old as China. In the minds of Americans whose job it is to contemplate international affairs, the present-day superpower has always been more than just the “ultimate place”: quite simply, it is the essential foreign policy challenge—one frequently thought incapable of being solved.

Enter the China Whisperers—those of the past and the present. A hundred years ago, they were American missionaries, travellers, journalists, linguists, and foreign service officers who were on the ground, fluent in Mandarin, and enamoured of the culture. They were the true China experts, and over a period of a few transformative decades they had front-row seats to the formation of both the Nationalist and Communist parties; crossed the Gobi Desert; searched out the young Mao Zedong in the wilds of Yen'an province; provided visionary analysis on the American predicament in Asia; bore witness to China’s World War II; and made invaluable contributions to journalism, diplomacy, and American foreign policy in East Asia.

The China Whisperers’ ranks have been filled more recently not so much by nomadic journalists and explorers as by multi-lingual policy experts who’ve had the ear of the person occupying the Oval Office. Often, their voices have proved critical, counselling engagement over precipitous moves. Across the decades, China Whisperers is the story of how Americans interpreting China have both succeeded and failed—for while some proved prophetic others were shown to be dupes. The book paints a full-bodied portrait of the drama of trying to understand a radically different and age-old culture—and of the US-China rivalry that constitutes the most dangerous element of geopolitics.