[
    {
        "id": 212417,
        "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-1990",
        "page_number": 359,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "336\n\nJonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China, W.W Norton and Company: $29.95; cloth; 876 pages.\n\nJonathan D. Spence in \"The Search for Modern China” endeavours to facilitate an understanding of China. He says, quite rightly, that \"in trying to understand China today we need to know about China in the past\" (pp. xix-xx). That is why Spence begins his narrative in the late 16th century, when China was ruled by its last native dynasty on the eve of the Manchu conquest.\n\nInterestingly, the Yale historian explains that his book is not about modern China. Rather, it is about a centuries-long effort to create such a country, one which is both integrated and receptive, fairly sure of its own identity yet able to join others on equal terms in the quest for new markets, new technologies, new ideas\" (p.xx).\n\nBy this definition, Spence says, China is not today and never has been a modern country.\n\nCertainly, China in the Qing dynasty was far from being **fairly sure of its own identity yet able to join others on equal terms**. As Spence points out, China did not even have a national flag in its 4,000 years of existence, until one was created in the nineteenth century, when it consciously began to acquire what it thought were the attributes of a modern nation.\n\nAs is to be expected, Spence finds numerous parallels in Chinese history. Thus, he likens General Claire Chennault's World War II \"Flying Tigers\" to the foreign mercenary Ever-Victorious Army formed to fight the Taiping rebels; he sees similarities between Great Leap Forward rhetoric and the vision of Hong Xiuquan, the Taiping Heavenly King, and he compares the Shanghai Communique of 1972 with the Treaty of Nerchinsk of 1689.\n\nThis does not mean, of course, that China is unchanging. During the Qing dynasty, for example, China spurned British requests for developing trade. Spence quotes the Qianlong emperor's message to George III of England:\n\n\"We have never valued ingenious articles, nor do we have the slightest need of your country's manufactures. Therefore, O king,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212541,
        "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": 95,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "75\n\nin 1978 mainly to carry out official exchange programmes. As for Sino-American relations, cultural exchanges never escaped the attention of top administrators. In the Shanghai Communique signed on 28 February, 1972, both parties expressed their intention to promote cultural exchanges, though the positions of the leaders of both countries at the time prevented them from making much progress along those lines. Following the establishment of diplomatic relations, a cultural agreement was soon signed on 31 January, 1979 and this agreement was consolidated by five implementing accords, covering exchanges in every year following 1979. Between 1979 and 1981, \"an expanded program of cultural exchanges brought major exhibits of Chinese art, archaeological finds, music and dance troupes... to the United States, and a reciprocal flow of U.S. films, symphony orchestras, and exhibits to the PRC.”\n\nAt the beginning of the normalization of the Sino-U.S. relationship, both governments emphasized the promotion of links in fields other than political, though political relations dominated their priority lists. It was, however, realized that cultural relations, among other links, would create multiple constituencies in each society with a vested interest in the future well-being of the overall relationship and that is what the two governments were vigorously pursuing.\n\nCultural development and political reassessment\n\nThe use of cultural exchanges as an instrument may or may not have been helpful in bilateral strategic and economic terms, but its influence on China's domestic policies was beyond the expectations of policy makers. As has been discussed, there was in China a notion that socialism was a superior social system. Under such a system the only thing that needed to be done was raising production and enhancing material accumulation. This notion prevailed before, during and immediately after the Cultural Revolution. Underlined by this notion, the task of cultural establishments, particularly those of art and literature, was destined for educating the masses as to government policies and mobilizing them to work hard in national construction. The cultural sector was not viewed as an independent voice for social progress and therefore was merely assimilated to politics. The fusion of art and politics, in the minds of the leaders at least, was perfectly underlined by the famous slogan \"literature and art serve political assimilation, the new assimilation of the arts to the pursuit of material modernization still dissatisfied many writers and artists. But this new assimilation did provide them with a",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212547,
        "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": 101,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "81\n\nrelations with China were employed for the first time by Richard Nixon. Among a number of measures, he lifted restrictions against Americans wanting to travel to China as a gesture for and, therefore, a step to reconciliation. Nixon approved the visit of the American table tennis team to China. At the White House, the president chatted with members of a table tennis team which was the first Chinese sports delegation that ever toured the United States since the founding of the People's Republic. On 13 January, 1973, he interviewed the Shenyang Acrobatic Troupe. Such meetings were conducted as part of the administration's policy of strengthening the U.S.-China general relationship. Even at a time when the administration could only place cultural exchanges low on its priority list, they still enjoyed the attention and support of the president.\n\nAt this stage, Sino-American ties in culture were far from sufficient. This does not mean that either party failed to see the importance of such exchanges. Thus, the Nixon Administration repeatedly expressed its recognition of the importance of cultural relations in the Shanghai Communique and the communique on 22 February, 1973 which actually announced a programme to expand cultural relations. The president's meetings with visiting Chinese artists were also expressions of this concern. However, in the two years after Nixon's visit, the administration could not find the time to handle matters other than strategic concerns. Furthermore, the president was bogged down in the domestic political difficulties which eventually led to his resignation. The Ford Administration, afraid of irritating the Soviet Union and the right wing at home, could only maintain the status quo and even sacrificed arts exchanges with China. By doing so it accelerated a general deterioration in Sino-American relations.\n\nThe Carter Administration made no improvement in either the general relationship or cultural relations with China in its first eighteen months in office. When a new China policy began to take shape in the middle of 1977, the general relationship improved. In May, the State Department prepared a memo for the president which pointed out that unless diplomatic relations were established, the existing cultural and economic relations would possibly stagnate or even be weakened. It also pointed out that Sino-Soviet relations would get closer if the United States failed to have a formal relationship with China. But what played a decisive role in the American efforts to establish diplomatic relations was the soaring influence of the Soviet Union in international affairs, a situation Nixon faced before the Sino-American rapprochement. Clearly",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    }
]