No Backing Down

Like no other studies on Sino-American relations during the Cold War, Brazinsky’s new book focuses on status competition in Asia and Africa. In his account, after the one hundred years of humiliation following the Opium War at the hands of the West, the newly established People’s Republic of China (PRC) sought to gain international standing and reestablish China as a great power. For Maoist China, Brazinsky argues, “Achieving status in the Afro-Asian world meant enjoying a special position in the absence of a formal hierarchy” (5). China’s struggle to lead a coalition of the opposed nations inevitably generated fear in the United States, which in turn spared no effort to deny China’s bid for Third World leadership. The author draws on fresh materials from the United States, the Soviet Union, and particularly the briefly declassified Chinese Foreign Ministry archives of 1949–1965. The result is a comprehensive and deeply original study of the China-U.S. Cold War in Asia and Africa.

China · Cold war · Development economics · Economic history · Economy · Humiliation · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sociology · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · History · International Development and Aid · Law