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Cover of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, 1945-1992

Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, 1945-1992

by Nancy Bernkopf Tucker

RelationsUnited StatesTaiwanHong KongForeign relations

American foreign policy in Asia has long been preoccupied with mainland China. But the end of the Cold War and the 1989 Tiananmen massacre have forced the U.S. to think in new ways about the "other" Chinese in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The events at Tiananmen dramatize the human rights dilemma inherent in Hong Kong's scheduled 1997 return to Beijing. And they highlight Taiwan's rapid transformation, initiated in the 1980s, into a freer, democratic society. At the end of the Cold War, Nancy Bernkopf Tucker asserts, these developments challenge the United States to take more seriously than ever its relations with Taiwan and Hong Kong - to approach both not as strategic players in the game of dominoes but as significant forces in their own right. No other study so clearly focuses American thinking on relations with Hong Kong and Taiwan. Surveying post-1945 U.S. ties with both areas in the context of earlier historical interaction, Tucker explores commerce and trade, military imperatives and political priorities, as well as cultural controversies over Westernization and tradition, bringing to light trends and events in the first comprehensive analysis of these relationships. Tucker reexami

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Book data: Open Library