I always enjoy attending book readings delivered by Paul French. Paul last year had published his excellent historical biography, “Carl Crow: A Tough Old China Hand.” This year his book on China, “Through the Looking Glass: China’s Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao,” looks just a detailed and engaging as his Crow Book. Earlier this week French visited us here in the boondocks of Suzhou from Shanghai (at least, that’s what folks who can’t work up the gumption to take the 35-minute bullet train ride out here from Shanghai believe) to regale us with stories of how journalists of yore had little intention of being the dispassionate observers today’s newswriters cum entertainers claim to be. Back then, journalists all had an ideological bent that their editors back in their home Western countries either amplified (as in the case of many of the reporters for the Times of London), or simply ignored (as did the editorial gestapo of Henry Luce’s publishing empire, state-side).

French made the point that at the turn of the 20th century China was a far more important story than it is today. At that time, the lives of individuals and even of entire cities were at stake as the colonial powers tried to balance the chaos of the times that could bring a wealth of opportunity against the kind of chaos that literally meant the death of entire societies at the time. “In 1937 alone,” French said, “there were more than 40 books published about China.” As well, French elaborated, ALL the major newspapers of the world had teams of reporters and stringers throughout China: the New York Times alone had eight reporters in China, while The Guardian and the Times of London – the voice of the British Empire – had large China bureaus as well.

The media at the time had a front seat to the axis around which world history was being spun at the time: the Opium Wars; the Taiping Rebellion; the Boxer Rebellion; the Russo-Japanese War; the fall of the Qing Dynasty; and the Asian theater of War from 1937 through 1945; not to forget the civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists that led to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.

By searching through on-site as well as online newspaper archives and talks with countless journalists who have been covering the China story off and on for the past thirty years, French uncovers such gems as the true impact of the Times of London’s coverage of the Opium wars and the Boxer Rebellion; and of the blind spot American foreign policy had because of the infatuation Henry Luce had with the Kuomintang and – as did so many others, including Carl Crow – with Madam Chiang Kai Shek. French asserts that if the American administration before, during and after World War II had understood the true depth of corruption and malfeasance of the KMT’s stewardship of China at that time, they would have approached the civil war that broke out after the surrender of the Japanese in a wholly different way.

Perhaps the Americans wouldn’t have supported the KMT at all. Perhaps Harry Truman and not Richard Nixon would have been the first to open the door to direct relations with Mao.

Now that’s history in the re-making.

Read more about French’s book on Carl Crow’s life here.

Check out Paul’s blog China Rhyming, chock full of interesting bits about China now and China then.