[
    {
        "id": 212548,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 102,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "82\n\ninternational considerations once again dominated Sino-American relations, but cultural relations this time occupied an important position. The administration saw clearly that cultural exchanges were a means towards a closer relationship. In the period 1979-1981, bilateral arts exchanges were numerous, showing the strong support of the administration for such projects. Carter personally, like Nixon, granted interviews with visiting Chinese artists and to China-bound American artists.\n\nThe framework of arts exchanges established by the Carter Administration had a far-reaching impact on the coming years. The impact was so strong that a substantial number of exchanges were still carried out when Sino-American relations were at a low ebb in the initial years of the Reagan Administration.\n\nIn the Reagan Administration, cultural relations with China were handled at a lower level of management, as compared with the Carter Administration. Furthermore, the \"spirit of U.S. generosity, high expectations, and mutual understanding\" that had informed relations during the Carter administration had yielded to narrow calculations of interest, revived ideological enmity, and mutual suspicion. Nevertheless, the function of cultural exchanges as a foreign policy instrument was essentially the same - supporting general policy objectives. As the anti-Soviet strategic theme in Sino-American relations became less urgent, the United States began to pursue long-term American interests more vigorously and arts exchanges with China became even more politicized than in the previous three administrations.\n\nIn the Reagan Administration, arts exchanges were made a channel to export to China American ideology and to consciously create a cultural imagery in China. To examine the nature of arts exchanges with China in the Reagan Administration, a good example might be an incident involving a show of modern American paintings from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.\n\nThe art exhibition from the Boston Museum was an official exchange programme initiated to implement the accord reached in Beijing in 1979. Before the opening of the show, Chinese officials requested that 13 abstract paintings be deleted from the exhibition. The American side, headed by Charles Wick, Director of the USIA (then called the United States International Communication Agency (USICA)), responded",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212549,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 103,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "83\n\nfuriously, threatening to cancel the exhibition if the 13 paintings were banned. The opening ceremony was postponed one hour to wait for a settlement which finally came with concessions from the Chinese officials. In their speeches at the ceremony, the Americans repeatedly referred to the \"American\" principle of free artistic expression, and Huang Zhen, Commissioner for External Cultural Relation and Wick's Chinese counterpart, expressed strong reservations about the paintings.\n\nTo Wick, the exhibition was a showcase to the Chinese that in the United States, free artistic expression was a universally accepted value and artists in the United States enjoyed greater artistic freedom than in China, whose cultural policy, as it refused to accept abstractionism presented by those 13 paintings, was \"totalitarian\". Wick's hard line on this issue also implied that the United States supported those unorthodox Chinese artists and writers who were being criticized in the campaign against \"bourgeois liberalization\".\n\nWick's management of the abstract painting incident indicated that the United States government would sacrifice good relations with China to the goal of presenting American cultural imagery to the Chinese people. Arts exchanges with China were no longer an instrument to create a warm atmosphere, under which circumstance both parties would co-operate nicely when differences occurred. Putting this position in the anti-Communist background of the Reagan Administration, a theme of explicit cultural warfare seems to have raised its head.\n\nCompared with the American Government, the private sector's support for arts exchanges with China was stimulated by fewer political considerations. Private interests provided support for such projects in various forms, including the funding of organizations specializing in U.S.-China arts exchanges, such as the Center for United States-China Arts Exchange, and the funding of specific exchange projects. In the realm of U.S.-China arts exchanges, financial support is a very important factor. The exchange programmes could not be realized without such support, but such programmes normally cannot show a profit. To discuss the numerous organizations and private exchanges involved is impossible. What can be done in this paper with regard to the private sector's support of cultural exchanges is to examine closely the Center for U.S.-China Arts Exchange and to derive some conclusions from the Center's activities.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    }
]