JAMES BRADLEY, james at jamesbradley.com
Bradley is author of several nonfiction bestsellers focused on the American experience in the Pacific and Asia, including Flags of Our Fathers and The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia.
Bradley has lived in Asia off and on since he went to university in Tokyo in 1974. He is currently in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand and producing a series on “War With China?” on his “Untold Pacific” podcast channel. Recent episodes include “America’s New McCarthyism,” “U.S. Military: ‘War with China Inevitable'” and “U.S. Military Has China Surrounded” with author and documentary filmmaker John Pilger.
In 2016, Pilger released the documentary “The Coming War on China,” which Bradley is featured in — the documentary is now online.
Bradley said today: “We’re seeing both Trump and Biden ratchet up the anti-Chinese rhetoric and it is incredibly dangerous. There’s a great deal of propaganda that depicts China as this great threat and that taps into a long history of anti-Chinese sentiment and misinformation in the U.S.
“Well before the outbreak of this pandemic, elements of the U.S. establishment have been itching in one way or another for increased conflict with China.” This includes the U.S. building “more and bigger military bases that ring China. You have the reconstitution of groups like the Committee on the Present Danger: CHINA with members like Frank Gaffney, Steve Bannon, William Bennett and the CIA’s Bradley Johnson.
“And of course, the pandemic is being exploited by many to ratchet up tensions around a trade war with China and foster resentment.”
Bradley elaborated on the work behind his book The China Mirage — today the U.S. media feature “many who are disappointed that American outreach to China over the last 20 years didn’t liberalize China, make it more American. The China Mirage focuses on this continuing U.S. delusion; the ‘mirage’ in the American mind is that China will become something more like America. Pearl Buck — a huge 20th century author — preached this mirage to the American public in the 1930’s and the U.S. made the Chinese Civil War inevitable.” As Bradley told NPR when the book came out: “Chiang Kai-shek was the China mirage incarnate. He was going to lead China to become an Americanized, Christianized country.”
The book also tracks wealthy U.S. individuals and families like the grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt “who dealt with Chinese gangs to inject illegal opium into China and how many prominent East Coast families accumulated massive fortunes as drug dealers during China’s century of humiliation.” The China Mirage traces the American experience with China from presidents George Washington to Richard Nixon.
See from FAIR: “Media Fail to Identify Xenophobia as Biden Says Trump ‘Rolled Over for Chinese.’“
