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At the Dawn of the New China: An American Diplomat's Eyewitness Account

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Richard Williams's story is unique and multidimensional. His work in setting up a new American diplomatic mission, his Chinese wife reuniting with brothers and sisters just emerging from the ravages of the Cultural Revolution, and his kids' experiences as the only foreign teenagers in the city all lead him into areas of Chinese society and life seldom accessible to foreigners. The result is a memoir of unparalleled richness.

And it goes way beyond that. By including declassified diplomatic cables and newspaper accounts, Williams situates his personal experiences in the wider perspective of what was happening with China globally and Sino-American relations in particular. He combines a touching family saga with an in-depth portrait of a China on the brink of historic change.

This is Richard Williams' fascinating and wryly humorous account of two years as the U.S. Consul General in the Chinese city of Guangzhou (formerly called "Canton") from 1979 to 1981. His was the first American consulate to re-open in China after formal diplomatic relations with the PRC were established in 1979.

Readers interested in the development of U.S.-China relations will be fascinated -- and entertained -- by this book. Large strategic and foreign policy considerations moved China and the United States to establish relations. It was left to Foreign Service Officers such as Richard Williams and his team to make it all work -- first by setting up a new Foreign Service post, then by issuing visas, establishing commercial relations, traveling through China to report on local conditions, introducing the Big Mac, and escorting the first waves of American visitors.

Americans who know the more open China of the twenty-first century will, in this book, encounter the China making its first hesitant steps toward modernization and reform. The difficulties confronted by early official travelers, the lingering suspicion of America, the obfuscation of officials high and low, and the choices made by Foreign Service families before there were international schools are all described. Williams' wife Jane had left Tianjin as a girl; her reunions with family members in the PRC add poignant touches to the book.

This is a fine book for any young person thinking about a Foreign Service career. Although almost three decades have passed since Richard Williams and his family opened the post in Guangzhou, "At the Dawn of the New China" captures much of the enduring qualities of Foreign Service life.

-30-

Just as the title says, At the Dawn of the New China gives us a

benchmark perspective on the amazing transformation that's taking

place in China. And it's the first book I've come across that

actually helps me solve the mystery of just what it is our diplomats

are trying to do for us out there in the trenches.

I myself was the child of an expat living in Asia around the same time and the book brought me back to my childhood and memories of growing up in a foreign land.

This is a fascinating book, a window on modern, pre-ascendant China, the work of an American diplomat, and his family's life in Guangzhou. I found it fascinating in part because I was born and lived (obviously, or I wouldn't be here to write this) in the Far East in the early 1970s, when most of it was still a different world from the West, before both (along with the rest) were homogenized by "globalization." But the book is fascinating for reasons other than my own. Richard Williams was in Guangzhou at a time when it was still foreign to Americans and America was still foreign to it. Business deals failed because free markets were new and still alien. Today, Guangzhou is not only a high-technology manufacturing center, but a locus of R&D as well, and China is no longer remote. Richard Williams' family bridged the gap between China and America by living in Guangzhou (and, later, Hong Kong) and because his wife is Chinese and his children inherently multicultural.

Reading this book was like having dinner with a diplomat -- and not the guarded bureaucratic kind. Williams has an eye for colorful detail and absurdity, and recounts tales of everything from negotiating with recalcitrant local officials to getting accustomed to squat toilets. Anyone who's visited China in the last decade or two will be particularly fascinated by Williams' account -- so much has changed since then, yet much remains the same.