Kissinger Scholar Lanxin Xiang Gives Lecture on
'The Ideological Context of U.S.-China Relations'
Event Date: June 16, 2004

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In his lecture, Lanxin Xiang, Henry Alfred Kissinger Scholar in Foreign Policy and International Relations in the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, argues that in American policy circles the ideological context of Sino-U.S. relations is usually identified as democracy versus communist despotism. In this construct he says, there is no question that China is on the wrong moral side. Proponents of this policy argue that a peaceful China must be a democratic China.

Xiang’s presentation takes issue with these assumptions about the need to democratize China. Xiang earned his doctorate from the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in 1990. He is the author of numerous articles and books on both 20th-century and contemporary Chinese history and on Chinese domestic and international affairs in the Cold War and post-Cold War periods. "The Origins of the Boxer War," was published by Curzon Press in 2002.

For information about the Kluge Center visit the web site at:
http://www.loc.gov/loc/kluge/