A new memorandum illuminates the history of previous US-China Relations

There is insufficiently observed a recent book with unprecedented flashes in the story of how the US has helped to open the post -Maoist China in the world – and could not be more timely. These days, the growing footprint of the LDC on the world scene has drawn the attention of geostrategic observers dealing with the rest of power not only in Asia

But on all continents. This is besides Beijing’s growing leverage in world trade and technology. Therefore, this book should require a historian reading for those who want to know how China went up for decades from the Cold War and entered the current era.

“Eastward Westward” by Professor Jerome Cohen is actually a personal memoir, an extremely readable that offers revealing windows in many other critical history of history than only US-China relations. Let me say in advance that, for a few decades, I have met the author, now in the 1990s and the father of an old friend, Ethan Cohen, a leading New York gallery introduced by artists such as Ai Weiwei in America. And as in most such cases, by respect, one does not ask a friend’s parents too many detailed questions about their achievements, so Prof Cohen’s amazing presence in history remained largely unknown to me – until he reads the memoirs.

This may seem to be a strange admission by columnist Forbes for over 25 years, a widely published journalist on external cases and co-author of two books in the Russian-China alliance. But he complies with the reason why Jerome Cohen was so effective and influence – he worked quietly and confidently behind the scenes to resolve the details of the great world initiatives, while politicians and diplomats have received all the publicity. Cohen first enters history when, after elaborating the famous Yale Law Journal as a student in the 1950s, he becomes an employee of two judges of the Supreme Court in succession, a leader of justice, a unheard of achievement. And suddenly the reader has a look at Washington at a central hour, when the US was still simmering from the previous Brown Vs Council.

Within a few years, Jerome Cohen won a Rockefeller grant to explore the laws of communist China, an almost impossible work taking into account the country’s tightly sealed situation in the 1960s. found to float in the port. “I thought if someone knew about China’s legal system would be those who were leaving justice,” says Cohen. As thirty, something becomes a leading world expert in Chinese law and in the mid -1960s he teaches at Harvard. Over the years, the Department of Legal Chinese is expanding to become the Department of Law Asia. The influence of this section on political affairs of the Far East has not yet been recognized. In 1969, he chaired a meeting of Harvard and MIT professors who produces a confidential note to President Nixon to launch secret talks with China. “This was the origin of Henry Kissinger’s famous 1971 visit,” says Prof Cohen. (Kissinger was a colleague at Harvard – the two had often discussed such a bordered).

Here was then Cohen’s first great secret entry on his path to redefine the Eastern-West relations on a fundamental level. In the coming decades, he travels widely in the Far East with his family. Joan’s wife is, in the meantime, a leading cultural spiritual in the visual arts of the region. At the beginning of the time of Deng Xiao Ping, he meets quietly leading Chinese artists in Beijing in their homes to see and encourage the turmoil of independent art in China. Hence the family’s friendship with Ai Weiwei and his ilk. She is the first western woman to choose top art students in the contemporary work of the outside world. In previous years, Professor Cohen has expanded the Law Asia Department in Harvard to take over the most successful young minds in the area. They, in turn, go to high government positions in their countries. We must not forget that for a large part of that time, states such as South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and the like struggled with military and authoritarian leaders. Cohen’s students have undoubtedly helped to change the political climate.

Subsequently, in the 1990s, Professor Cohen again enters the engine room again, this time to eliminate a reliable trade code for foreign investment in the GDC. It is assisted by fellow lawyers, former students and Beijing officials to determine this most critical of the foundations. Until then he is a senior partner at Paul Weiss’s law firm and brings the first heavy investment of foreign companies in China. (He later returns to the Academe as a professor of law at the University of New York). From the moment of Nixon onwards, it helps high -profile political prisoners find freedom by starting with the old classmate of Yale Tom Downey, who joins the CIA in the 1950s, falls into Maoist China, quickly arrested and served 18 years in prison before Cohen. Cohen intervenes on behalf of Benigno Aquino of the Philippines, Kim Dae Jong of South Korea, Annette Lu of Taiwan, all who helps guide their countries to liberal governance. Most recently it helps to release Ai Weiwei from prison and the famous blind lawyer “barefoot” Chen Guangchen.

Although he is undoubtedly still respected as a leading pioneer of their current prosperity, Prof Cohen’s human rights activities may have not attracted him to the current Beijing leadership. What is he doing for the present situation then after all his years to open China to the world? It has strong words against the current rule of the “rule of law” and not the “rule of law”. And he is a strong supporter of Taiwan, especially because his example contradicts all those who argue that western -style governance is opposed to Chinese traditions. The chapter dealing with such questions is wonderful entitled “The Traffic Prohibition channels Knell of the Day of Separation” by Thomas Gray’s famous poem. He is ultimately optimistic about the future of China, characteristically because he feels that his young legal minds offer a tank of potential for guiding the country’s course. But you need to read the book for a full exhibition in the wisdom of capital and the 94 years of Jerome Cohen.