Rather like the special relationship the United States and United Kingdom enjoy (and that many of my British friends disparaged), there are special relationships in Asia, too. I’ve been enjoying Jonathan Fenby’s massive Modern China: The fall and rise of a great power, 1850 to the present. One thing I found enlightening is his explanation of the practical reasons for the renewal of relations between China and the United States in the 1970s. (I don’t remember anything about this, which is proof that I had absolutely no interest in politics as a kid, much as I loved global things, and read many books about and set in Asia.) Weapon sales to Taiwan, and U.S. support for Tibet, was an issue then, but as Jimmy Carter explained in 2007, “Beijing privately acknowledged that the US would continue to sell arms to Taiwan.” Fenby gives the full story.

By the way, the jacket copy of Modern China is as good a summary as I’ve seen of China’s recent history and the extraordinary disasters (some self-imposed) came before its breathtaking rise.