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ROBERT L. SUETTINGER, Beyond Tiananmen: The Politics of U.S.-China Relations, 1989-2000. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003. XII, 556 pages, $ 39.95. ISBN 0-8157-8206-3
This weighty volume is a first book by an author with 24 years' experience in US government service. It consists of a series of narratives about decision- making in various China-related policy fields. As participant-observer in both intelligence and policy processes, Suettinger rejects classified information, which he considers overrated. Writing from the US perspective, he offers less detail for the Chinese side, yet his depiction of relations is quite consistent. An overarching message are his repeated warnings that many disputes between the US and China were entirely unnecessary.
His major case is a detailed description of the Tiananmen events in 1989, conveyed to the US public through media dominated by countless US journalists with little prior knowledge of Chinese language and politics. These US media hardly mentioned that the student protesters could agree only on a negative agenda. The extremist attitudes of some of them revealed in the interview of the only female leader, Chai Ling, with an Australian paper, are still little known: "What we are actually hoping for is bloodshed. ... Only when the square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes." In contrast, Suettinger presents the Chinese leaders as amazingly patient with...