China Misperceived: American Illusions and Chinese Reality [Paperback]

Steven W. Mosher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1992

In this historical overview, the author, one of the first Westerners permitted to live in rural China, argues that the USA has consistently misinterpreted China for many years. He traces the distortions that led the US first to cringe at the "Yellow Peril", then to acclaim the new "Maoist Man".

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mosher, one of the first Westerners allowed to live in a Chinese village in the 1970s, has no illusions. He shows that before the 1989 massacre of students in Tiananmen Square, China experienced the Terror of 1950-1953 which cost millions of lives, the countrywide search-and-destroy missions that went under the name of "land reform," the 40-year nightmare of purges and arrests. In an eye-opening polemic as tonic as a cold shower, he lambasts China-watchers, foreign policy experts, politicians, newspaper correspondents and academics who have idealized, romanticized or otherwise misrepresented China over the years. In this category he includes John Fairbank, Edgar Snow, Theodore White, Henry Kissinger, Pearl Buck, Tom Hayden. Director of the Claremont Institute's Asian Studies Center, Mosher blasts Nixon's 1972 visit to China in an election year as "poltiical theater on a grand scale." His illuminating analysis reveals how the U.S. media, having treated Chinese dissidents as a "sideshow" for decades, were unprepared for the recent crackdown on protesters.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

American views of China over the past 50 years have oscillated between exaggerated fears and excessive enthusiasms. In his acerbic review of the academic and journalistic literature on China, conservative scholar Mosher contends that the left-liberal establishment has consistently gotten China wrong. Attacking the credulity and fatuousness of the China studies profession, he undoubtedly hits quite a few legitimate targets, but his polemic is too sweeping and undifferentiated. He fails to get at the roots of the misperceptions he discovers. Mosher himself, unfairly expelled from Stanford's anthoropology doctoral program on questionable charges of professional misconduct, understandably nurses a grudge against the China studies establishment. This book is his revenge, but it is no less worth reading and pondering by a community that has in fact too often gotten China wrong.
- Steven I. Levine, Duke Univ., Durham, N.C.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (May 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465098134
• ISBN-13: 978-0465098132
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,160,431 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What to the scholars and media REALLY know about China?, February 16, 2005

By 

Michael Le Houllier (Taichung City, Taiwan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: China Misperceived: American Illusions and Chinese Reality (Hardcover)

So, you think the currently accepted paradigm of China's so-called "peaceful rise" is accurate? Have you been bamboozled by the stories of the gleaming new cities in China and the desires of China for peace? If so, it isn't your fault. This is a common thread since the rise (and even during the rebellion) of the Communists in China. There are few better at manipulating American media and so-called scholars than the Chinese Communists.

This work is a survey history of the history of China's manipulation of the U.S. media and academia. Some of it was deliberate manipulation, but there is also an element of anti-Americanism among those in the U.S. eagerly willing the stories coming from China.

Mosher does an excellent job of showing the history of that manipulation. Those who said that China's communists believed in democracy have since been discredited. Those who said that Chinese ate well during the Cultural Revolution have been discredited. Those who believed that the Chinese Communists were headed toward a more gentle authoritarianism in the 1980s were painfully proven wrong once again in 1989.

For those who blindly accept today's version of China, read these accounts of the mistakes of the past. Doing so will cause you to step back a minute and look at the reality of today's China: People's Armed Police, Christians and Falungong continually persecuted, along with Tibetan nuns and monks, propoganda-filled Chinese media, Gulag-style prisons known as laogai, escalating threats against its neighbors accompanied by a fearsome military build-up. To this day, the government still denies entry to people known to oppose the regime.

This is an instructive work to the unintiated about the realities of China. This will tell you more than anything else that you will ever read that you believe the current "super-story" regarding China at your peril.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Story, January 16, 2002

By 

BP (Herndon, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: China Misperceived: American Illusions and Chinese Reality (Paperback)

Despite its politically conservative credentials, the book takes a needed and hard look at the overly romantic view of China still held dear by many in Washington and Wall Street. More importantly, Mosher details why this view of China has persisted with a balanced and careful analysis that traces the roots of American views of China.

Readers will come away knowing that criticizing the necrotic thugs who rule China doesn't constitute "anti-Chinese" racism and doesn't make them a conservative crank (I'm a democrat). For too long, critics of our China policy have been labelled ignorant and lacking the exclusive understanding of China's "uniqueness" that Holbrooke-types claim to possess.

An important work that deserves a look and that has been vindicated by China's recent behavior. Of course, all that will change after WTO, I'm sure someone is saying in Washington right now...

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blinded by Beijing..., August 7, 2001

By 

Chuck DeVore "Chuck DeVore" (Dripping Springs, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: China Misperceived: American Illusions and Chinese Reality (Hardcover)

Another excellent book by Steven Mosher. It explores the reasons for the persistent misunderstanding by Americans of China's motives and methods of operation.

The bottom line is fairly simple: if an expert criticizes China, they're denied access, if an expert praises China, they're given access. Without access, how can an "expert" be expert? Thus, the only "credible" China "experts" are those whom of whom the government in Beijing approves.

Reviewer: Chuck DeVore is a candidate for U.S. Senate in 2010, a California State Assemblyman, he served as a Special Assistant for Foreign Affairs in the Department of Defense from 1986 to 1988, retired from the Army National Guard as a lieutenant colonel, and is the co-author of "China Attacks."