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THE BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY AND THE MIDDLE KINGDOM: AMERICA AND CHINA, 1776 TO THE PRESENT<\/h5>\nTHE BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY AND THE MIDDLE KINGDOM: AMERICA AND CHINA, 1776 TO THE PRESENT<\/h5>\nHenry Holt, $40, 693 pages<\/strong><\/p>\n Trying to understand China<\/span><\/a> has been compared to gazing into jade. Cloudy and yet softly glowing, jade, in the words of the great Japanese novelist and essayist Tanizaki Junichiro, \u201cquite lacks the brightness of a ruby or an emerald or the glitter of a diamond. But this much we can say: When we see that shadowy surface, we think how Chinese it is, we seem to find in cloudiness the accumulated sediment of the long Chinese past, we think how appropriate it is that the Chinese should admire that surface and that shadow.\u201d<\/p>\n Author and foreign correspondent John Pomfret concentrates on what is, by Chinese standards, a mere blinking of an eye: the era between the present day and 1776 when the ancient Middle Kingdom began a complicated, ambivalent interaction with what was then the world\u2019s youngest nation. But even contemplating this brief interval of Chinese history is a jadelike study of surface and shadow \u2014 of shared hopes and illusions \u2014 all shaped by that \u201caccumulated sediment of the long Chinese past \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n In 693 fact-filled pages rich in detail but driven by a lively narrative style, Mr. Pomfret brings alive a fascinating cast of characters with good judgment and sympathetic imagination. This reviewer was pleasantly surprised by the clarity and fairness with which Mr. Pomfret treats figures like Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, a flawed but sincere soldier-statesman trying to unify and modernize his country while fighting a war to the death with the Japanese \u2014 and while Mao\u2019s communists engaged in political sabotage, \u201cgleefully celebrated each of Chiang\u2019s defeats,\u201d and, in the words of a Russian adviser at Mao\u2019s headquarters, \u201chave long been abstaining from both active and passive action against the [Japanese] aggressors.\u201d Mr. Pomfret also chronicles the constant vilification of Chiang and praise for Mao as an \u201cagrarian reformer\u201d by pro-Mao factions in the State Department and \u201cprogressive\u201d stooges like Vice President Henry Wallace.<\/p>\n The result is a work that is both outstanding, in-depth journalism and an excellent \u201cfirst draft\u201d of history when dealing with contemporary and near-contemporary events. Mr. Pomfret has an eye for colorful characters and telling quotes. He even has a justifiably kind word for Cixi, the cunning Manchu concubine who gained western notoriety as the Dowager Empress. \u201cWestern historians \u2026 have generally portrayed her as a scheming autocrat who stymied reforms. But to be fair, she had an impossible job, trying to steer a course between grasping imperialists and competing factions at court.\u201d<\/p>\n Among her wiser advisers \u2014 whose influence was enhanced by the fact that he was also one of her lovers \u2014 was the Manchu prince Gong, one of the first Chinese to distinguish between the predatory imperialism of the Russians, Japanese and major European colonial powers, \u201cbarbarians\u201d all, and Americans interested only in trade and missionary work. The latter, while it never came close to mass conversion of the Chinese, was indispensable to introducing modern knowledge and western science and medicine through its schools and hospitals. \u201cThe American barbarians,\u201d Gong wrote in an 1861 memorandum, \u201care pure-minded and honest in disposition and have always been loyal to China<\/span><\/a>. The problem is how to control them to make them exploitable by us.\u201d That problem, Mr. Pomfret wryly observes, \u201cwould perplex Gong and his intellectual descendants for the next 130 years.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom\u201d is about much more than the official relationship between Washington and Beijing. It is also the story of the American Dream of legions of ethnic Chinese who came to the \u201cBeautiful Country,\u201d overcame incredible barriers and built good lives, and of the remarkable progress of other overseas Chinese. \u201cThe extraordinary success of the Chinese in America and Taiwan\u2019s march to full democracy exemplified the harmonious melding of American values and Chinese culture. Here in action was the Great Harmony that many Chinese and Americans had sought for years.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Even on the Mainland, despite Mao\u2019s early purges, the madness of the Cultural Revolution, and the periodic, almost seasonally predictable changes in Sino-American strategic relations, more and more middle-aged and younger Chinese officials and technocrats are the products of a post-ideological society (admittedly still ruled by an ideological state structure). And more and more children of the governing elite are doing their university and postgraduate studies in leading American universities.<\/p>\n The result is a delicate but \u2014 so far \u2014 practical balance in Sino-American relations. \u201cBoth sides are often guarded, sometimes hostile,\u201d Mr. Pomfret concludes, \u201cbut overall they are accommodating.\u201d Like Felix and Oscar, China<\/span><\/a> and America will always be an Odd Couple, but one that shares a number of ties and interests in common.<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0<\/em>Aram Bakshian Jr., an aide to Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, writes widely on politics, history, gastronomy and the arts.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n