From the "Red Menace" to Tiananmen Square, the United States and China have long had an emotionally tumultuous relationship. Richard Madsen's frank and innovative examination of the moral history of U.S.-China relations targets the forces that have shaped this surprisingly strong tie between two strikingly different nations. Combining his expertise as a sinologist with the vision of America developed in Habits of the Heart and The Good Society, Madsen studies the cultural myths that have shaped the perceptions of people of both nations for the past twenty-five years.

The dominant American myth about China, born in the 1960s, foresaw Western ideals of economic, intellectual, and political freedom emerging triumphant throughout the world. Nixon's visit to China nurtured this idea, and by the 1980s it was helping to sustain America's hopefulness about its own democratic identity. Meanwhile, Chinese popular culture has focused on the U.S., especially American consumer goods—Coca-Cola was described by the People's Daily as "capitalism concentrated in a bottle."

Today we face a new global institutional and cultural environment in which the old myths no longer work for either Americans or Chinese. Madsen provides a framework for us to think about the relationship between democratic ideals and economic/political realities in the post-Cold War world. What he proposes is no less than the foundation for building a public philosophy for the emerging world order.

Richard Madsen is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. He is coauthor of Habits of the Heart (California, 1985) and The Good Society (1991), author of Morality and Power in a Chinese Village (California, 1984), and coauthor of Chen Village under Mao and Deng (California, 1992).

"Madsen's book is a needed reminder that both Chinese and foreigners' visions of the future of China and their place in it not only are governed by economic aspirations but, on a deeper level, are framed by myths and narratives in which individual aspirations are given meaning in moral tales of social change. . . . The book will be of special interest to those engaged in the sociology of culture, providing a clearly argued and empirically well-grounded study of how narratives of social change function in macrosocial interaction."—American Journal of Sociology

"Madsen's core argument is that the United States and China deal with each other through a series of perpetuated myths. Myth creation, perpetuation, and interaction is central to Madsen's analysis, and he has done an exemplary job of elucidating not only the main myths that operate in each society but also the sources of them. . . . Going well beyond studies of Sino-American diplomatic interactions, Madsen has written a study of lasting importance that can be read profitably by scholars, students, and practitioners of the Sino-American enterprise."—The China Journal (Australia)

"In a timely and incisive book, Mr. Madsen . . . delves into the myths and self-delusions of what these days is the world's major antagonistic relationship. His book . . . attempts to explain the deep misunderstandings that have beset relations between the world's only superpower and the fastest-rising great power, and demonstrates how perceptions have shaped—and sometimes shattered—that relationship."—Asian Wall Street Journal

"A provocative study of the forces that over recent decades have distorted American perceptions of China . . . Madsen provides a fresh look at the forces that have shaped American thinking about China."—Washington Post Book World

"Madsen has an interesting mind, here working on a fascinating inquiry. He wants to discover where the Chinese people (not the government) and the American people wish their countries to be headed morally, and how they want and do not want to be influenced by each other in that endeavor."—New Asia Review

"A thoughtful and provocative essay about how the 'American Dream' shaped by a profound faith in liberal democracy, freedom, and modernization as progress, has provided a powerful moral and emotional context for American views about China."—The China Quarterly

"An indispensable tool for understanding why it is so difficult for the two nations to reach a modus vivendi. The U.S.-China relationship is not just about trade, Taiwan, and human rights; it is also about very diverse cultural traditions."—Foreign Affairs

"Sociologist and China specialist Richard Madsen offers a highly interpretive, engrossing analysis of what the author considers to be the American national self-perception in the context of US-China relations since the Nixon breakthrough."—China Business Review

"[Madsen] seizes this decisive moment, when both the future of China and the U.S. have come to some crossroads, to call for an reexamination of our assumptions."—Asian Week

"Madsen seeks to reinterpret United States-China relations using a moral and sociological lens."—The Journal of American History

"Madsen's alternative view of the recent history of U.S.-Chinese relations has much to offer."—American Historical Review