Chen Village and its leaders. -- The Big Four cleanups. -- Studying Chairman Mao. -- The Cultural Revolution. -- The cleansing of the class ranks. -- A leftward lurch and a solid footing. -- The great betrothal dispute. -- Plunging into a new decade. -- The troubled seventies. -- The new era. -- The Midas touch. -- Entrepreneurs and gamblers.

China and the American dream : a moral inquiry / Richard Madsen.
"A Philip E. Lilienthal book".
Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-254) and index.

From the "Red Menace" to Tiananmen Square, the United States and China have long had an emotionally tumultuous relationship. Richard Madsen's frank and innovative examination of the moral history of U.S.-China relations targets the forces that have shaped this surprisingly strong tie between two strikingly different nations. Combining his expertise as a sinologist with the vision of America developed in Habits of the Heart and The Good Society, Madsen studies the cultural myths that have shaped the perceptions of people of both nations for the past twenty-five years.

The dominant American myth about China, born in the 1960s, foresaw Western ideals of economic, intellectual, and political freedom emerging triumphant throughout the world. Nixon's visit to China nurtured this idea, and by the 1980s it was helping to sustain America's hopefulness about its own democratic identity. Meanwhile, Chinese popular culture has focused on the U.S., especially American consumer goods--Coca-Cola was described by the People's Daily as "capitalism concentrated in a bottle."

Today we face a new global institutional and cultural environment in which the old myths no longer work for either Americans or Chinese. Madsen provides a framework for us to think about the relationship between democratic ideals and economic/political realities in the post-Cold War world. What he proposes is no less than the foundation for building a public philosophy for the emerging world order.

Link to Library of Congress Publisher decription and bibliographic record.

Description keywords: Tian’anmen 天安門 -- student movement, 1989 -- Chinese-American cultural myths, vies on democracy, capitalism, public philosphy, world order

Introduction / Perry Link, Richard Madsen, Paul G. Pickowicz -- Hard-copied entertainment fiction from the Cultural Revolution/ Perry Link -- Popular cinema and political thought in post-Mao China: reflections on official pronouncements, film and the film audience / Paul G. Pickowicz -- How come you aren't divorced yet? / Zhang Xinxin 張辛欣 -- Love and marriage in North China peasant operas / R. David Arkush -- My mother's house / Deborah Davis -- The Catholic Church in China: cultural contradictions, institutional survival and religious renewal / Richard Madsen -- Recycling rituals: politics and popular culture in contemporary rural China / Helen F. Siu -- Pride and prejudice: Subei people in contemporary Shanghai / Emily Honig -- The perstistance of propriety in the 1980's / Ellen Johnston Laing -- Guerrilla interviewing among the getihu / Thomas B. Gold -- Value change among post-Mao youth: the evidence from survey data / Stanley Rosen.