China Whisperers: The Voices That Have Shaped America's Views of Its Chief Geopolitical Rival

From one of the most prominent post-Cold War geopolitics experts and “a grand strategist to whom the Pentagon turns” (The Wall Street Journal), a probing and insight-filled look at the China experts who have influenced-and continue to influence-America’s policy toward its greatest rival. No country or civilization is as big or as old as China. And in the minds of Americans whose job it is to contemplate international affairs, China has always been more than just the “ultimate place”: quite simply, it is the essential foreign policy challenge-one frequently thought incapable of being solved. Enter the China Whisperers: American missionaries, travelers, journalists, linguists, and foreign service officers who, going back a hundred years, have been on the ground, fluent in Mandarin, and enamored of the culture.In the early and mid-20th century, these were the true China experts of the Western world.Some proved unwitting dupes, others showed their brilliance.What lured them to that distant