Books: The Confucian Factor

CHINA PERCEIVED: IMAGES AND POLICIES IN CHINESE-AMERICAN RELATIONS

by JOHN K. FAIRBANK

245 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $7.95.

Nobody in the West has done more to clear up the mystery of China than John K. Fairbank, professor of Chinese history at Harvard. His latest book, a collection of 17 essays written between 1946 and 1974, continues a lifetime of combat against what he calls "the original sin of ignorance" about East Asia. It is a sin, Fairbank feels, that can be resisted only with the help of a great deal more historical knowledge than...

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