American Prometheus: Ronald Reagan and the Modernization of China

This book examines the tremendous modernization of China over the past 30 years from a backwards nation to a world power. Yet this process was not purely internally driven. The administration of Ronald Reagan was largely responsible for the funding and legislation necessary to allow America to help propel China forward. Reagan served as a modern day Prometheus, employing a free market model in which every avenue from military exchanges to cultural interactions were used to modernize the East Asian giant. Deng Xiaoping and Ronald Reagan weorked together to accomplish this unprecedented feat. In the end, neither man could have achieved by themeselves or in such a short time period what they accomplished together. This book details the previous failed attempts by both the USSR and Beijing itself to modernize China. Likewise the actions of Nixon and Carter are throughly detailed to show that while small successes were achieved during the 1960s and 1970s, they were not enough to propel China forward on the path to modernity.