Perhaps for the first time in modern Chinese history, a popular American writer is able to write thoughtfully and at times critically about China without provoking the instinctive nationalistic responses so typical of Chinese students and intellectuals, and to do so without paternalism or exoticism or revolutionary propaganda. By so doing, he has succeeded where many early twentieth-century American writers—missionaries and journalists—failed. This phase in his writing career could well be the harbinger of “normal” relations between the two peoples on an equal footing.
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