Kazushi Minami, <i>People's Diplomacy: How Americans and Chinese Transformed U.S.-China Relations during the Cold War</i>

In this well-researched, lucidly written book, Kazushi Minami sets out to investigate the “People-to-People” exchange programs initiated by the Chinese and U.S. governments during the period from the rapprochement between the two countries in February 1972 and the normalization of Sino-U.S. relations in January 1979. The “rapprochement” between China and the United States represented the strategic responses by both countries to the expansionist threats posed by the Soviet Union. These responses were driven by the fear shared by the masters of realpolitik at the time—Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Mao Zedong. Using “People's Diplomacy” as an organizing analytical framework, Minami argues that national leaders in both China and the United States “set strategies, conducted negotiations, and designed the blueprint for the new bilateral relationship” (p. 4), but the real work was done by the businesspeople, scientists, students, tourists, athletes, artists, and others who engaged in what the author calls “people's diplomacy” (p. 4).How does Minami define “people's diplomacy”? He maintains that it is “a form of diplomacy whereby nonstate actors, independent of, yet often guided by, the state, create informal diplomatic relations between countries. Through people's diplomacy, they cultivated new ties between the United States and China in the absence of formal diplomatic relations” (p. 4). His definition seems to be an effort to combine features from two distinct analytical categories in scholarly discussions of diplomacy, namely, “state-to-state diplomacy,” in which state representatives interact and represent the positions of their respective state leaders, and “public diplomacy,” wherein non-state actors, independent of state guidance, interact with their non-state counterparts in other countries in pursuit of their own interests. Minami demonstrates his acquaintance with the common scholarly usage of “public diplomacy” when he describes it as consisting of discussions of international relations by “nonstate actors” who “do not represent the state, yet they engage in diplomatic activities with their own capacity to pursue their own interests.” (p. 8) The flaw in his definition of “people's diplomacy” is that the nonstate actors in China whom he describes as engaging in “people's diplomacy” during the period of study were, by no means, “independent of the state” and instead were controlled by the Chinese state and Chinese Communist Party.In talking about the role played by the U.S. government in managing the exchange programs under “people's diplomacy,” Minami correctly observes that this role gave “considerable autonomy to nongovernmental organizations” and rarely involved direct intervention (p. 11). On the China side, the situation was entirely different. The Chinese government “dominated exchange programs through mass organizations, trying to achieve its diplomatic objectives without showing the heavy hand of the state” (p. 10).Minami identifies the leading nongovernment organization in the U.S. as the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (p. 10) and in China as the so-called “mass organizations,” which were the quasi-nongovernmental organizations controlled by the CCP. They included women's federations, Communist youth leagues, and sports associations (p. 10).The most interesting and well-documented part of the book are Chapters 2 through 7, which deal with the exchange programs between the two countries in the 1970s in the fields of trade, science, education, tourism, sports, and art. Minami carefully identifies all the organizations in both China and the United States in each of the six areas that were taking part in the exchange programs. He draws a vivid picture of the participants’ sentiments of euphoria and disappointment and their ideological and value differences that separated the two sides in dealing with practical issues. Furthermore, he emphasizes the changes that followed Mao's death in 1976, the even more dramatic changes introduced by Deng Xiaoping after he returned to power in 1978, and the normalization of relations between China and the United States in early 1979, which established a new foundation for bilateral relations between the two countries.Minami gives credit to ordinary people in both China and the United States for having provided new ideas and working to create a new Sino-U.S. relationship that has had transformative effects and shaped what has become the bilateral relationship today. One might question the validity of such a romanticized portrayal of the role of “people's power” in shaping the relationship. In reality, unless China's leaders had decided to set their country on a new course, as Deng Xiaoping did in 1978, no new bilateral relationship could have emerged.Criticism aside, Minami has done an impressive job by collecting research materials in the United States, China, and Taiwan. He gathered materials in thirteen archives and presidential libraries in the United States (p. 249), nine municipal and provincial archives in China, and the archives housed in the Institute of Modern History Archives, Academia Sinica, in Taiwan (p. 250). His diligent scholarly research efforts shine through, particularly in Chapters 2–7.More than fifty years have passed since the “rapprochement” between China and the United States. The world has changed greatly. A weak, poor China has grown into a strong economic and military power that increasingly seeks to challenge the existing world order led by the United States. China has forged a close partnership with Russia, a much-diminished power since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, to achieve its ambitious goals. More generally, People's Diplomacy can help readers to understand better how the many changes that took place during the Cold War from the “rapprochement” in February 1972 through the normalization of relations in January 1979 contributed to the current bilateral relationship and world order.