RAS Shanghai – HONORABLE SURVIVOR: Mao’s China, McCarthy’s America and the Persecution of John S. Service
Posted: December 9th, 2011 | No Comments »RAS WEEKENDER
Saturday 10th December, 2011 at 4:00 p.m.
Tavern, Radisson Plaza Xingguo Hotel 78 Xing Guo Road,Shanghai
兴国宾馆 上海市兴国路78å·
LYNNE JOINER
On
HONORABLE SURVIVOR: Mao’s China, McCarthy’s America and the Persecution of John S. Service
Lynne Joiner’s biography offers a fascinating tale of international intrigue, romance, war, revolution, and the fate of nations. It weaves diplomat John Service’s extraordinary story into the fabric of a watershed moment in our history when World War II was ending, the Cold War was dawning, and the McCarthy era witch-hunters were stirring–and offers a gripping true story of love, courage, betrayal, and final redemption set against a backdrop of war and revolution that changed the world forever.
During World War II when the U.S. Army needed allies to fight against the Japanese, diplomat John Service was secretly assigned to learn about Mao’s communist guerrillas. He was the first to alert top U.S. officials to the growing power of Mao’s peasant revolution and cautioned his government not to take sides in what he predicted would be the renewal of China’s bitter civil war.
In 1950, the Foreign Service officer became McCarthy’s scapegoat for the alleged “loss” of China to the communists and was fired on a charge of “doubtful loyalty.” A unanimous ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court returned Service to the diplomatic corps in 1957, but only Nixon and Mao’s historic handshake in 1972 finally confirmed his vindication by history. The author gained access to top secret FBI and State Department security records and was granted special access to Service’s private papers. Joiner’s exhaustive research reveals much new information on the role played by the FBI and Chiang Kai-shek’s secret Nationalist Chinese police in spreading false information about the diplomat, including charges that he fathered an illegitimate child with his beautiful Chinese actress mistress-an alleged Soviet spy- during the war.
Winner of the 2010 Douglas Dillon Award for distinguished writing on American diplomacy, HONORABLE SURVIVOR, has received much critical acclaim. Here’s a sampling:”Honorable Survivor is not just a fascinating read… it also offers breathtaking insights into the realities of the process of national policymaking, including the terrible toll exacted by egotism, miscommunication, prejudice, turf warfare and plain ignorance. As such, the book is full of timely lessons…. Reading Honorable Survivor, one cannot help but reflect on more recent foreign policy challenges – Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan – where a genuine comprehension of developments in a distant land could make all the difference for effective policymaking.”
–Susan Brady Maitra, Foreign Service Journal
“Joiner is neither naïve nor uncritical toward her subject….[Her] book is part biography, part history of an extraordinarily complex and tormented chapter in China-US relations, and part description and analysis of the paranoid style in American politics during the McCarthy era. There are lessons to be learned here, for yesterday and for today.”
–Lyman P. Van Slyke, The Journal of the China Quarterly,
Lynne Joiner is a veteran broadcast journalist whose career includes assignments for major American TV news organizations, such as ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC. She was the only American correspondent in China at the time of Premier Zhou Enlai’s death in 1976. Her news reporting and documentary filmmaking have taken her around the globe and her articles have appeared in such publications as Far Eastern Economic Review, San Francisco Chronicle, and Pacific News Service. Joiner is currently in Shanghai, serving as a media consultant for International Channel Shanghai-(ICS-TV), an all-English television cable channel in the city.
Entrance: RMB 30.00 (RAS members) and RMB 80.00 (non-members) those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption, prior to the RAS Lecture. Membership applications and membership renewals will be available at these events.
RSVP: to RAS Bookings at: bookings@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn
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