BOOK INTRODUCTION
The central theme of the U.S. foreign policy may not have changed much from her core beliefs of anti-communism and promotion of democracy and capitalism, but the style of conducting foreign affairs certainly has taken a new skit since Donald Trump has become the 45th US Preident. As a black mustang elected into the White House with no previous Washington experience, Trump took a ‘Strongman’ approach to govern his country and to deal with leaders of other countries. The U.S. in her two and half century history has marched successfully to the status of superpower. Broadly tracing from Washington, Monroe, to Lincoln, two Roosevelts, then to Nixon, Carter, Reagon and through Clinton, Bush and Obama, the U.S. foreign policy touts isolationism sometimes but actually cultivates American Globalism for her advantage, expansion and world leadership (some may say domination).
Trump’s “America First” and “Make America Great Again’ are not adopting isolationism nor practicing the ‘American Globalism’. On the other hand, China with her several thousands years of history, she was able to be self sufficient for a couple of millenia appearing to be acting in isolationism until she was forced open by the ‘Eight Western Powers’ in the 19th century. China’s republic nation building was treacherous with unwanted continuous foreign interference, intervention, and even invasion. She was forced into isolation in most part of 20th century until Nixon-Kissinger changed the US China policy. Now China has risen not only embracing capitalism in her controlled manner but also practicing globalism with Chinese style of leadership. This is Dr. Chang’s sixth book on US-China relations. He wishes to guide his readers to read this book with isolationism and globalism in mind.
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If you would flip the pages of this book, you would find various topics related to the U.S. and China. In the first few chapters besides discussions on China policy and US-China relations, you will find topics on making America great again, corona virus, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, South China Sea issue and US-China trade agreement. Continue on, you will find some domestic issues, election, impeachment, freedom of speech and universal value as well as analysis on Hong Kong protest, China’s defense white paper, CCP’s secret for success and competition between the U.S. and China.
You will find more papers on trade dispute and how to face competition from China including the last chapter of the book tracing the trade negotiation chronologically to the final phase one deal. Since this book is a collection of short essays on different subjects, the author tried to use the introduction and conclusion chapters to formulate a theme which may not be obvious from reading the separate discussions.
If we would review the history of both China and the U.S. , we would find both countries had gone through a phase of isolation (although each had different interpretation of isolationism) and then embraced globalization (also globalism was practiced differently). The U.S. interprets isolationism in her own way and swayed between that and globalism. China was forced into isolation but eventually broke out. Committed strongly to her ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI or OBOR), China is definitely embracing globalism to sustain her economic development.