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as regards your request to send someone to remain at the capital. while it is not in harmony with the regulations of the Celestial Empire we also feel very much that it is of no advantage to your country" (pp. 122-123).
This disdain for trade has now been replaced by eagerness to earn foreign exchange. Recently, we saw China go to great lengths in its attempt to retain most-favoured-nation trading status with the United States. In the weeks before Washington was to decide whether to renew China's trading privileges, Beijing went so far as to lift martial law in Tibet and to release hundreds of political prisoners.
Spence has an eye for the telling detail, the little twists of fate that propel history forward. Thus he says that when two Soviet nuclear experts were withdrawn from China during the Sino-Soviet dispute, they tore to shreds all the documents they could not take with them. But the Chinese painstakingly reconstructed the shredded documents and found in them crucial information on atomic implosion" (p. 589).
This is by no means a book that can be read in one sitting. Some of Spence's earlier books were page-turners. "The Death of Woman Wang" was as gripping as any thriller: "Emperor of China: Self-Portrait of K'ang-hsi" was poignant and stirred one's deepest emotions.
But "The Search for Modern China" is the most ambitious work by the author thus far.
It is encyclopedic in scope. It is crammed with facts, dates and names. Its 876 pages include 49 well-placed maps and 49 well-chosen tables, as well as dozens of illustrations in colour and black and white. Its contents are to be sipped and savoured, not swallowed in big gulps.
Spence the master historian is on less sure ground when dealing with more recent events. Thus, he has Chiang Ching-kuo becoming president of Taiwan in 1975, three years too early. He also displays a less sure grasp of his facts regarding the Sino-British agreement on Hong Kong.
But these petty details are almost not worth mentioning when one
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