China's recent economic reforms have opened its economy to the world. This policy, however, is not new: in the late nineteenth century, the United States put forward the Open Door Policy as a counter to European exclusive 'spheres of influence' in China. This book, based on extensive original archival research, examines and re-evaluates China's Open Door Policy. It considers the policy from its inception in 1899 right through to the post-1978 reforms. It relates these changes to the various shifts in China’s international relations, discusses how decades of foreign invasion, civil war and revolution followed the destruction of the policy in the 1920s, and considers how the policy, when applied in Taiwan after 1949, and by Deng Xiaoping in mainland China after 1978, was instrumental in bringing about, respectively, Taiwan's 'economic miracle' and mainland China’s recent economic boom. The book argues that, although the policy was characterised as United States 'economic imperialism' during the Cold War, in reality it helped China retain its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

China's recent economic reforms have opened its economy to the world. This policy, however, is not new: in the late nineteenth century, the United States put forward the Open Door Policy as a counter to European exclusive 'spheres of influence' in China. This book, based on extensive original archival research, examines and re-evaluates China's Open Door Policy. It considers the policy from its inception in 1899 right through to the post-1978 reforms. It relates these changes to the various shifts in China's international relations, discusses how decades of foreign invasion, civil war and revo.

East Asia was a major focus of struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War of 1945 to 1991, with multiple "hot" and "cold" conflicts in China, Korea, and Vietnam. The struggle for predominance in East Asia, however, largely predated the Cold War, as this book shows, with many examples of the United States and Russia/the Soviet Union working to exercise and increase control in the region. The book focuses on secret treaties, 26 of them, signed from the mid-1890s through 1950, when secret agreements between China and the USSR, including several concerning the Chinese Eastern Railway, gave Russia greater control over Manchuria and Outer Mongolia. One of the most important was negotiated in 1945, when Stalin signed the Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty with Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalists, that included a secret protocol granting the Soviet Navy sea control over the Manchurian littorals. This secret protocol excluded the US Navy from landing Nationalist troops at the major Manchurian ports, thereby guaranteeing the Chinese Communist victory in Northeast China; from Manchuria, the Chinese Communists quickly spread south to take all of Mainland China. To a large degree, therefore, this formerly undiscussed secret diplomacy set the underlying conditions for the Cold War in East Asia.

Now in a fully updated edition, this accessible text provides a balanced history of modern China in a global context. The authors focus especially on China’s culture, warfare, and immediate neighbors and provide a unique comparative approach to bridge the cultural divide separating Chinese history from Western readers trying to understand it.

Economic and geopolitical expansion -- The Indo-Pacific: a strategic coupling -- Diversity and contested definitions -- Security issues of the Indian Ocean region -- Maritime commerce of the Indian Ocean region -- Prosperity and the emerging geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific -- Traditional interests, evolving priorities -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Chapter 13: Conclusions: interests and strategies in Asian regional institutional development -- International interests -- Strategies of engagement -- Future of Asian cooperation -- Theoretical impact -- Summary -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

This book explores the question “Why is the US Navy in the South China Sea at all?” It traces the history of diplomatic, economic, and military tensions among the People’s Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the United States, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, outlining the origins of the United States-Vietnam relationship during the immediate post-World War II period, the turmoil of the Vietnam War during which China supported North Vietnam against a US-backed South Vietnam, and the decision of the US government to open relations with China beginning in 1972. It shows how from 1945–1975, the US government used its relations with Vietnam to exert diplomatic, economic, and military pressure on China to open negotiations leading to full recognition and further discusses the surprising action of the US Navy in 1974 to allow the Chinese Navy to take the Paracel Islands by force, thereby denying control over these islands to a united Vietnam, closely allied with the Soviet Union, which was the common enemy of both China and the USA. Overall, the book demonstrates how the presence of the US Navy in the South China Sea is a crucial element in much wider, global US strategy.

Stalin was a master of deception, disinformation, and camouflage, by means of which he gained supremacy over China and defeated imperialism on Chinese soil. This book examines Stalin’s covert operations in his hunt for supremacy. By the late 1920s Britain had ceded place to Japan as Stalin’s main enemy in Asia. By seducing Japan deeply into China, Stalin successfully turned Japan’s aggression into a weapon of its own destruction. The book examines Stalin’s covert operations from the murder of the Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin in 1928 and the publication of the forged “Tanaka Memorial” in 1929, to Stalin’s hidden role in Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the outbreak of all-out war between China and Japan in 1937, and Japan’s defeat in 1945. In the shadow of these and other events we find Stalin and his secret operatives, including many Chinese and Japanese collaborators, most notably Zhang Xueliang and Kōmoto Daisaku, the self-professed assassin of Zhang Zuolin. The book challenges accounts of the turbulent history of inter-war East Asia that have ignored or minimized Stalin’s presence and instead exposes and analyzes Stalin’s secret modus operandi, modernized as “hybrid war” in today’s Russia. The book is essential for students and specialists of Stalin, China, the Soviet Union, Japan, and East Asia.