BOOK REVIEWS
187
years of research on Chinese history and politics a number of profound thoughts on the situation of China which he lays before the reader simply, almost conversationally, without any of the impedimenta of scholarship to restrict his book to the expert. The result is a stimulating book which is effortless to read.
All these essays were published earlier in magazines, and though this might have meant a rather disorganised book, in fact the aspects of the China problem which he covers in this rather small volume are the crucial ones, except possibly for the gap left by his silence on China's relations with Europe and the Soviet Union. On the whole the book is oriented towards the American reader, but this is justified in the preface in which Fairbank explains that his conception of the China expert is as a middleman, explaining China to his own country as much as studying it in vacuo. He fulfils this function himself beautifully in several pieces which show how China developed her hostility towards the U.S. and other foreigners, and one can hardly escape his conclusion that, if the American imperialists had not existed, Peking would have had to invent them. There are a couple of first-class essays on Taiwan, and, at the end, an assortment which includes a piece on the journalist Edgar Snow and another on the protestant missions in China. Both of them drive home vital aspects of the gap in understanding between China and the U.S.
Hong Kong.
COLINA LUPTON
1.
LOCAL PUBLICATIONS NOTED
MAKING ENDS MEET; Majorie Topley (Ed.) being Vol. 1, Journal of the Hong Kong Institute of Social Research (1965), pp. iv, 117, published in Hong Kong by the South China Morning Post. H.K.$5.
CHILDREN WITH PROBLEMS — CHILD GUIDANCE IN HONG KONG: by Gennie Gen-hwa Lee, Anita King-fun Li and Beryl Robina Wright. Hong Kong, 1966, pp. xii, 88, H.K.$6.00.
BOOK REVIEWS
187
years of research on Chinese history and politics a number of profound thoughts on the situation of China which he lays before the reader simply, almost conversationally, without any of the impedimenta of scholarship to restrict his book to the expert. The result is a stimulating book which is effortless to read.
All these essays were published earlier in magazines, and though this might have meant a rather disorganised book, in fact the aspects of the China problem which he covers in this rather small volume are the crucial ones, except possibly for the gap left by his silence on China's relations with Europe and the Soviet Union. One the whole the book is oriented towards the American reader, but this is justified in the preface in which Fairbank explains that his conception of the China expert is as a middleman, explaining China to his own country as much as studying it in vacuo. He fulfils this function himself beautifully in several pieces which show how China developed her hostility towards the U.S. and other foreigners, and one can hardly escape his conclusion that, if the American imperialists had not existed, Peking would have had to invent them. There are a couple of first class essays on Taiwan, and, at the end, an assortment which includes a piece on the journalist Edgar Snow and another on the protestant missions in China. Both of them drive home vital aspects of the gap in understanding between China and the U.S.
Hong Kong.
COLINA LUPTON
1.
સ્પં
2.
LOCAL PUBLICATIONS NOTED
MAKING ENDS MEET; Majorie Topley (Ed.) being Vol. 1, Journal of the Hong Kong Institute of Social Research (1965), pp. iv, 117, published in Hong Kong by the South China Morning Post. H.K.$5.
CHILDREN WITH PROBLEMS — CHILD GUIDANCE IN HONG KONG: by Gennie Gen-hwa Lee, Anita King-fun Li and Beryl Robina Wright. Hong Kong, 1966, pp. xii, 88, H.K.$6.00.
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.