The China Mirage

March 9, 2015
In 2009’s The Imperial Cruise, Bradley suggested that President Teddy Roosevelt’s inept dealings with Japan in 1905 directly contributed to the decision by the Japanese to go to war with the U.S. in 1941. Here, Bradley extends the faults of the elder Roosevelt to his younger cousin, F.D.R., in regards to U.S. relations with China. The “mirage” of the book’s title was, to quote a 1930s American propaganda pamphlet, that China was “a great nation whose citizens have traditionally regarded Americans as their best friends.” Mostly using secondary sources, Bradley argues that this positive, pre-WWII view of China was false and led the U.S. into several policy errors, including the needless provocation of Japan—a U.S. embargo of Japanese steel and oil as a penalty for war with China—that precipitated Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. He also makes the valid point that the mirage prevented China experts at the State and War departments from moving the U.S. to a more realistic policy that recognized the powerful communist movement under Mao. Though Bradley’s work is insightful and entertaining, it greatly oversimplifies U.S. foreign policy towards Asia before WWII and should not be read as an authoritative study.

February 15, 2015
Best-selling author Bradley (The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War, 2009, etc.) uncovers the 19th-century plan to create a "New China" and "Americanize Asia."The author clearly feels duped by American foreign policy since the debacle in Vietnam shamed his World War II father and destroyed his soldier brother. In this relentless critique of wrongheaded thinking by government officials who did not speak the Asian languages and had little hands-on experience, Bradley focuses especially on the foreign policy of the two Roosevelts. Theodore Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905 for negotiating the peace in the Russo-Japanese War, thereby secretly offering Japan the opportunity to swallow Korea and begin its aggressive stalking into China. Franklin Roosevelt was clearly seduced by the Chiang Kai-sheks (Generalissimo and Madame) and the China Lobby into giving financial support that did nothing to resist the Japanese invaders and could not defeat Mao Zedong, whose peasant army had the wide support of the people. Bradley begins with the imperial aggression by Britain and America in pushing Indian-grown opium on the Chinese populace, a lucrative trade that enriched the well-born families like the Delanos (FDR's maternal side) and caused the two disastrous Opium Wars. While the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese immigration to the United States, prodded by labor strife across the Western states, the Christian missionaries propagated the ideal of a New China, westernized, Christianized and democratized, led by leaders who had studied in the U.S. Ultimately, the China Lobby misled FDR on the true gains of Mao and pressured the U.S. to cut off the oil spigot to Japan, causing it to cast its covetous eyes to the Dutch East Indies. Bradley delivers a strenuous expose about the initial building of the "rickety bridge of fellowship crossing the Pacific."

May 15, 2014

The perennially best-selling author of Flags of Our Fathers offers an eye-opening history of America's role in China from the 19th century, when American businessmen made a fortune trading opium, through World War II and the rise of Mao. With a 300,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 15, 2015

Has a fundamental misunderstanding of China led America to make serious foreign policy mistakes in Asia? Bradley (Flags of Our Fathers) traces the history of U.S.-China relations from the early 19th century to the 1970s, with a special focus on the World War II era. He reveals that several prominent Americans, including Franklin Roosevelt's maternal grandfather, made their fortunes selling opium to China in the early 1800s. Those merchants and the missionaries who followed them lived in cloistered areas shut off from the main Chinese population. This gave them a distorted view, which they brought back to America with them. The author contends that these misconceptions influenced Americans at all levels and caused U.S. leaders to make strategic blunders in the region, such as supporting the unpopular Chiang Kai-shek in China's civil war. Bradley argues that a better understanding of China could have helped America to avoid war with Japan in 1941 and subsequent wars in Korea and Vietnam. VERDICT A superlative read that is highly recommended to experts and novices alike. Richard Bernstein's China 1945 makes an excellent companion to this work, as it covers similar subjects yet offers different interpretations on key issues. [See Prepub Alert, 4/27/14.]--Joshua Wallace, Ranger Coll., TX

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.