"The Week That Changed the World"?

"That opening paved the way for President J[immy] C[arter] to strip Taiwan (as the Republic of China) of U.S. diplomatic recognition in January 1979 and switch ties to the PRC. That allowed U.S. investors and manufacturers to take advantage of the economic liberalization within Chinese paramount leader D[eng] X[iaoping]'s 'reform and opening' policy that helped transform China from impoverished backwater to the economic powerhouse—and increasingly, the U.S. military rival—that it is today."

Phelim Kine at Politico tries to "parse the lessons of the 50th anniversary of President R[ichard] N[ixon]'s historic trip to China."

And at The Bulwark, Mona Charen adds that "The Verdict Is In: Trump Wasn't Right About China."

"Neither Carrots nor Sticks Have Swayed China as Predicted"

"Nearly half a century since Nixon's first steps toward rapprochement, the record is increasingly clear that Washington once again put too much faith in its power to shape China's trajectory. All sides of the policy debate erred: free traders and financiers who foresaw inevitable and increasing openness in China, integrationists who argued that Beijing's ambitions would be tamed by greater interaction with the international community, and hawks who believed that China's power would be abated by perpetual American primacy."

In a 2018 Foreign Affairs article, Kurt M. Campbell and Ely Ratner write that since World War II "Chinese realities upset American expectations."

To Have Great Leap 109

The New York Times runs obits for record producer Henry Stone, actress Lauren Bacall, scholar Pierre Ryckmans, and boatman Eroni Kumana.

"The Worst Famine in History"

"Nowadays, Yang asserts, 'rulers and ordinary citizens alike know in their hearts that the totalitarian system has reached its end.' He hopes 'Tombstone' will help banish the 'historical amnesia imposed by those in power' and spur his countrymen to 'renounce man-made calamity, darkness and evil.' While guardedly hopeful about the rise of democracy, Yang is ultimately a realist. Despite China’s economic and social transformation, this courageous man concludes, 'the political system remains unchanged.' 'Tombstone' doesn’t directly challenge China’s current regime, nor is its author part of an organized movement. And so, unlike the Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, Yang Jisheng is not serving a long prison sentence. But he has driven a stake through the hearts of Mao Zedong and the party he helped found."

In The New York Times, Jonathan Mirsky reviews a new English-language translation of Yang Jisheng's Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962.

You Ain't Going to Make It with Anyone Anyhow

"The Maoist temptation was part radical chic, part revolutionary tourism, part orientalism. It drew upon a deep-seated discontent with the corruption of Western society as well as the illusion of a radiant utopian future. It was also heavily infused with bourgeois self-hatred. By placing the emphasis on culture—the Great Helmsman was after all a poet as well as a revolutionary—Maoism offered intellectuals in Paris (if not Beijing) the opportunity to act out the role of revolutionary vanguard. So, too, it appealed to those enamoured of the invigorating and moralising qualities of popular violence. Robespierre's ghost was much in evidence."

Jeremy Jennings in Standpoint reviews Richard Wolin's The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s.

The Great Leap Backward

"Society completely unravelled. In the newly established communes, peasants following Mao's lunatic advice ploughed their paddies uselessly deep. They dismantled their houses to use as fertiliser, and melted down their tools to make the steel Mao had decreed was the mark of an advanced socialist country (after all wasn't Stalin 'the man of steel'?). Other peasants abandoned their fields and marched miles to work all night constructing mammoth water schemes that often came to nothing, while their families died without grain at home. The only reason millions more didn't starve, as Dikötter describes in detail, is because of their desperate ploys to steal food."

In Literary Review, Jonathan Mirsky reviews Frank Dikötter's Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62.

Most Peculiar, Mama

"Conspiracy theories spawned theories of who benefited from conspiracy theories. There was gold at the end of Gravity’s Rainbow. Even Oliver Stone was not necessary. For example, Wheen notes, “It was A Clockwork Orange which convinced [Arthur] Bremer that he must shoot George Wallace [because he couldn’t get close to his first choice, Nixon], and Bremer’s assassination diaries then inspired Paul Schrader to create the character of Travis Bickle. So: without Bremer there would be no Taxi Driver, and without Taxi Driver John Hinckley Jr. wouldn’t have become so obsessed by Jodie Foster that, to prove himself a worthy rival to Bickle, he shot Ronald Reagan.” He’s not making this stuff up.

Todd Gitlin in The New Republic reviews Francis Wheen's Strange Days Indeed: The 1970s: The Golden Age of Paranoia.

"The Real Brains and Boss of the Chinese Government"

"Her eight-month visit to the U.S. in 1943 to raise aid for her homeland would be the envy of any modern-day PR person. She wrote countless articles, addressed both houses of Congress, and wowed crowds at Madison Square Garden and Carnegie Hall. Her greatest achievement was as a propagandist, persuading Congress and the American public that her husband could deliver a democratic China."

Melanie Kirkpatrick in The Wall Street Journal reviews Hannah Pakula's The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China.

Waiting for the Great Leap Forward

"To be sure, the last 30 years have had plenty of problems—corruption, crackdowns on dissidents, environmental degradation, unequal educational opportunities and a failing rural health system. Chinese leaders lacking confidence in their ability to maintain public order are not likely to listen to Western advice on how to handle human rights, minorities and dissidents. China will move at its own pace, but Deng’s revolution demonstrated that it is able to take positive lessons from the West."

Ezra F. Vogel in The New York Times argues that sixty years after the creation of the People's Republic of China, "the true revolution belongs to Deng Xiaoping."