Behind the Bamboo Curtain


Book Description

Based on new archival research in many countries, this volume broadens the context of the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Its primary focus is on relations between China and Vietnam in the mid-twentieth century; but the book also deals with China's relations with Cambodia, U.S. dealings with both China and Vietnam, French attitudes toward Vietnam and China, and Soviet views of Vietnam and China. Contributors from seven countries range from senior scholars and officials with decades of experience to young academics just finishing their dissertations. The general impact of this work is to internationalize the history of the Vietnam War, going well beyond the long-standing focus on the role of the United States.




Eight Months Behind the Bamboo Curtain


Book Description

This was the motto of Chang Kuo-sin, and the ideal which he inspired generations of students of communication to follow. He proved his own dedication to this when, in 1949, he found himself in Nanking, the former nationalist capital, under the rule of the newly victorious communists. For eight months he lived and attempted to work in the midst of these historical changes. He managed to smuggle his detailed notes out to share with the world at a time when almost no reports of the new regime were being published. To mark the centenary of his birth, Hong Kong Baptist University’s School of Communication has republished this important work by one of its most distinguished professors.




Behind the Purple Curtain


Book Description




Burmese Shadows


Book Description

Covering 25 years, 'Burmese Shadows' highlights the reality of living and fighting for survival for ordinary people in Burma. These harsh realities, however, are juxtaposed against the vibrant and rich traditions and cultures which combine to make the enigmatic country.




No Dogs in China


Book Description

In 1949 the bamboo curtain clattered down over one-fifth of the people of the world. In one sudden twist of history, a vast community that had been militarily and politically allied with the West was transmuted into the ideological foe of everything the free world stands for. With the surprise intervention by Red China in Korea, a new alignment of world powers was confirmed and the bamboo curtain had been fastened down securely. If the people of China were inadequately known in the years before the Red Revolution, all free intercourse between East and West was now interrupted completely. Chinese life could be described only by released westerners who had viewed it through prison bars, or it had to be interpreted from the incredibly distorted releases of the communist propaganda bureaus. Suddenly, in 1956, China offered to open its doors to western reporters wishing to come and see what was really happening in their country. In the spring of 1957, William Kinmond, Staff Reporter for the Toronto Globe and Mail, entered Red China with assurances that he might travel where he wished and report what he liked—or disliked. This is his report on China at this moment in history.




The Tortilla Curtain


Book Description

The lives of two different couples--wealthy Los Angeles liberals Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher, and Candido and America Rincon, a pair of Mexican illegals--suddenly collide, in a story that unfolds from the shifting viewpoints of the various characters.




Piercing the Bamboo Curtain


Book Description

This book deals with the testimony of one man’s life, from his birth, through childhood, his many tribulations, and his calling to be a missionary in China. It also contains a brief historical background in the Appendix, so that you will understand what has made China what she is today. Most importantly, you will see how God moves in His own mysterious ways to bring about His will in the lives of men and nations. By Fred Corlett




Bamboo Palace


Book Description

In the dying days of the Vietnam War, a royal family is rounded up and flown by helicopter to a remote prison camp. Behind the bamboo curtain erected by victorious communist guerillas, the tragic final days of an Asian king and his dynasty will play out. Bestselling author of the Carpet Wars, Christopher Kremmer takes readers on a gripping odyssey to Indochina's heart of darkness, the remote prison camp where the Kingdom of the Million Elephants and the White Parasol finally ends. Part travelogue, part mystery, Bamboo Palace reveals the only known eye-witness account of the final solution carried out in the jungles of northern Laos. 'thrilling ... a marvellous gift for the well-turned phrase' - Michael Smithies, the Nation 'Now this is what I call a travel book' - Dianne Dempsey, the Age




China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975


Book Description

In the quarter century after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Beijing assisted Vietnam in its struggle against two formidable foes, France and the United States. Indeed, the rise and fall of this alliance is one of the most crucial developments in the history of the Cold War in Asia. Drawing on newly released Chinese archival sources, memoirs and diaries, and documentary collections, Qiang Zhai offers the first comprehensive exploration of Beijing's Indochina policy and the historical, domestic, and international contexts within which it developed. In examining China's conduct toward Vietnam, Zhai provides important insights into Mao Zedong's foreign policy and the ideological and geopolitical motives behind it. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he shows, Mao considered the United States the primary threat to the security of the recent Communist victory in China and therefore saw support for Ho Chi Minh as a good way to weaken American influence in Southeast Asia. In the late 1960s and 1970s, however, when Mao perceived a greater threat from the Soviet Union, he began to adjust his policies and encourage the North Vietnamese to accept a peace agreement with the United States.




A Cold War State of Mind


Book Description

First popularized during the 1950s, the concept of brainwashing is often viewed as an example of Cold War paranoia, an amusing relic of a bygone era. Yet as Matthew W. Dunne shows in this study, over time brainwashing came to connote much more than a sinister form of Communist mind control, taking on broader cultural and political meanings. Moving beyond well-known debates over Korean War POWs and iconic cultural texts like The Manchurian Candidate, Dunne explores the impact of the idea of brainwashing on popular concerns about freedom, individualism, loyalty, and trust in authority. By the late 1950s the concept had been appropriated into critiques of various aspects of American life such as an insistence on conformity, the alleged softening of American men, and rampant consumerism fueled by corporate advertising that used hidden or subliminal forms of persuasion. Because of these associations and growing anxieties about the potential misuse of psychology, concerns about brainwashing contributed to a new emphasis on individuality and skepticism toward authority in the 1960s. The notion even played an unusual role in the 1968 presidential race, when Republican frontrunner George Romney's claim that he had been brainwashed about the Vietnam War by the Johnson administration effectively destroyed his campaign. In addition to analyzing the evolving meaning of brainwashing over an extended period of time, A Cold War State of Mind explores the class and gender implications of the idea, such as the assumption that working-class POWs were more susceptible to mind control and that women were more easily taken in by the manipulations of advertisers.