Thanks for the answer. I appreciate it. Welcome to the nyu bookstore. This is a first event of our fall season where happy all of you are here tonight. You probably notice the cameras. Cspans booktv is here tonight as also tell your friend who could not come up they can watch it on television later. Since we are filming, when opened the floor for questions, please hold the questions until you are given this microphone. Also please turn off your cell phone ringers. I appreciate that. Tonight were just love it the release of kevins new book, a force so swift mao, truman, and the birth of modern china, 1949, which was released today. Kevin peraino is a veteran and Foreign Correspondent was reported from around the world. He spent a decade as a Senior Writer and pure chief for newsweek magazine. He was a finalist for the livingston award for Foreign Affairs reporting and was part of a team that won the National Magazine award in 2004. His first book was titled lincoln in the world, the making of the statesman and the dawn of american power. It was named one of the daily beast best books on president lincoln. He has also written for the wall street journal, foreignpolicy and politico magazine. Mr. Peraino is a visiting scholar at the program in International Relations at new york university. Our other guests scott anderson. Mr. Anderson is a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine. His most recent book is laurent in arabia, war, defeat and the making of the modern middle east. It was shortlisted for the National Book critics circle award. He was raised in east asia and attended the iowa writers workshop. In his 33 33 years as a war correspondent he is covered conflicts in chechnya, egypt, israel, lebanon, northern ireland, sri lanka and sedan. So clearly were in for an interesting event since its the release date of kevins about we want to make sure you have the complete other event tonight. Heres what im talking about. First you came to the store. Maybe you had a snack, socialized. Then you will sit through a very boring introduction thank you. After that you will hear these two incredibly insightful men have an interesting discussion. And after that we open the floor for questions, and you can get more directly involved by asking your questions. Sounds pretty good, yeah . One more thing. Theres a looming pile of books over here. To get the complete author event experience i recommend you pick up a a book, get it signed, purchased the book and then you done the whole thing. Cool . Lets get on with it. Have a good time, guys. [applause] on my weight in your tonight i was thinking its kind of a classic kind of cliche of when youre trying to promote a book and saying its like ripped from todays headlines. This is a first time i think literally that is true. How much of the book the u. N. , President Trump. I guess the first question of what to ask you is how you came to the subject . It was a long time before china and north korea were front and center of the world. How did you come to the . I wish i had that crystal ball when i started this four years ago and i dont get what would be going on today, but i started it. When i finished my last book a few years ago, the cia declassified it secret interval history of covert operations around the chinese periphery, and this is a couple copies of these things that one was kept in a vault in langley and one circulated as an education tool among covert operatives. For whatever reason it was in response to a freedom of information act request by a group of veterans of cia officers. They released this and some of the said trickled out over the years, but there was an immense amount of kind of new granular detail about these operations. They make for great reading the when youre writing history whenever you have new stuff like that, it makes for a good history. This is also, this is like 2011, 2012. 2012. Its also when Hillary Clinton wrote her essay about the pivot to asia. In beijing this on the pivot that age as containment, modernday containment. Im thinking at this point in time beijing what about containment. We have more information than ever before about what containment really was at its origins in 1949 and thats how, that was my original, and exchange of it. The book is, 1949 is the lead up to the korean war. And its also about how you deal with the rising china, do you engage, confront . The takeover happen rather rapidly. It seems at least to the outside world were not seeing a lot of attention seemed to come out of left field. Can you walk us through like how that all kind of unfolded . Sure. Just give us a sense of how it happened. My book starts the beginning of 1949, the chinese civil war is really over. Mao has won at this point and is doing kind of cleanup operations. Slowly over the course of the year he is taking over beijing and in shanghai. But mao and Chang Kaishek, the support been going on in one way or another for 20 years. These guys had been adversaries for 20 years going back to the 1920s. At one time they were both kind of, i i wouldnt say allies but they were kind of fellow travelers in this effort to modernize china in their reaction to the ching regime, the ching dynasty which had been rolling china since it 17 century. Theyre both trying to modernize china and then beginning in the 1920s, they slowly began to kind of mao led to the mountains. Chang kaishek took over the nationals government. Then there was this time with the japanese, they were both occupied with the Japanese Occupation of china during the 1930s and world war ii. They never stop clashing or fighting, but their focus shifted to the japanese. Really after the collapse of japan, after hiroshima and nagasaki, after the end of world war ii this kind of civil conflict reignited and they had come the support that a been simmering for years and years came to in game and thats where my story starts, the beginning of that. And Chang Kaishek made blunders which may have hastened it alone. Can you talk about what his whole strategy in manchuria yeah, he went on the offensive in manchuria kind of a couple of different times, 1947, 1948 when he probably shouldve made some military errors. Theres this whole kind of debate about why Chang Kaishek loss of the chinese civil war. One of the main theories is that he made these errors at decisive points, so that was one reason. Another thing though was that he had a very difficult task in the wake of world war ii. World war ii devastated china. 15 Million People died in the fighting. There were like 80100 million refugees. The economy was completely devastated. He had a tough job. I grew up in taiwan as a kid. I will talk about that in a minute but one thing that is always struck me despite having grown up in taiwan is how little, and im just speaking for myself, how Little People know about what happened to mao taking over in china. If any of us were paying attention at all in school, you know knew quite a bit about the Russian Revolution but the Chinese Revolution seem to come and go. Even at the time it didnt get an awful lot of attention. Curious what you think that is. Is it because there are so many other things happening around the world . Was there a perception in this country and you just wasnt that important . Why do you think its always been the sort of talk in asterisk to history . It depends where, im not sure about taiwan but i think part of it might be just nationalism. Somebody said the essence of a nation is all the people have a lot of things in, everybody has forgotten the somethings. Theres this kind of process of forgetting that takes place in any nation, whether its on taiwan, Mainland China or even in the United States, that a think might be a play there. Sometimes people want to forget. Its helpful for nationalism. Ill tell you though, in Mainland China the revolution is very present. Theres a complex in beijing that i i walked past, its cald the 1949 complex and its got these numerals and theres a brewery inside and they sell a beer called airpark lips and the price is cheap for the beard spin on how bad the smart is but its in the 1949 complex. The beer. You can go back to southwest of beijing which was mao base camp and china. Tourists pay a couple of bucks to sit in a replicate of maos old chairs or pose with rifles standing beside sandbags. Theres an element of memory. Both remembering and forgetting that takes place in all these kinds of things. I was in taiwan from 196269, and one of my distinct memories of my childhood, i was very little, october 10, Chang Kaishek would take to the podium in the main square and give this rousing speech he. He always end with the line back to the mainland. It was decided upon to somehow go back to Mainland China and take over. Every childs child is normal to them. What a member of of childhood is how utterly militarize childhood was. It was an antiaircraft gun to the interests of white elementary school. Military anywhere. Part of it was there was an official statement sees in taiwan. As a kid you didnt realize part of what all this was about was to keep the americans supporting Chang Kaishek, so that no human, the americans were not going to fund transit through that human rights because it was a frontline state. I wonder if you talk about, so much of history is that different personalities. Could you talk about the man Chang Kaishek was and the man mao zedong was . Sure. In this book i follow, theres a million characters that you could make a russian novel of it. One of the problems i had is finding a few, year to focus on a few characters or you just get too many. I focused on mao, Chang Kaishek, madam Chang Kaishek was just a fascinating figure. She was the first lady of the republic of china an amazing character. No matter what you think politically, she was born in 1897 and she died and i think 2003 searches like 106. Her life span of the 20th century. She was a genuinely powerful, influential woman at the time when that wasnt always the case in china in the mid20th century. You go and you read, what are my favorite things is reading these letters that she wrote as come in her 20s which are in an archive at Wellesley College was she went to college. She grew up and get a lot of her u. S. Its amazingly you realize she is a very intelligent person, very dynamic, very forceful personality. She is one of the characters that i found totally fascinating. Some of the best sources, for a biographer on the right of history one of the gifts you can have is when he has been and wife are part of the time youre writing about because they write letters. And so madam Chiang Kaishek in 1949 was in the u. S. She was lobbying the u. S. For support. Chiang kaishek was in china. What about these telegrams backandforth and they are hilarious. They are like these kind of bickering husband and wife emails which are then she says you should really give the speech tomorrow. Im not going to the speech. I voted for you. Just dont change it. These kind of things back and forth. It gives you a window, theres like 120 of them over the course of this year. Four me its always about the people i love. Thats what draws me in. And mao, what do you think of him . So mao, we kind of think of mao i think we kind of have this image of mao as an elderly person that we think of them as kind of the nixon, even the very young revolutionary or kind of older obese kind of computer, somewhat senile figure of the nixon years. In 1949 hes like hes not particularly well. He had a condition that his doctors called and you know roses. Thats with a call in the 40s. Im not sure what it was but a a psychic constriction of the blood vessels. He would faint and swoon at times. He would stay up all hours of the night. He was one of these people would stay up all night on a high end crash in the morning. When my store opened at the beginning of 1949, these are heady days for mao because as were talking about, hed been fighting this war for a long time. He had to leave an infant daughter behind on the trail during the long march. One of his wife was executed by firing squad. For mao this was a long time coming. And when you read the sources from this time there were heavy times. Each day they would start with these kind of euphoric meetings. They would all gather in base camp and go over the latest victories. One of his biographers talked about how he would play records on a photograph that his wife had bought in shanghai of operas and sing along with the operas. You get a sense of the guy who is invited for a long time and hes come into his own. He had a heck of a task ahead of them. The same problems for Chiang Kaishek are now the problems are mao. So he is a big task after he takes over china of, you know, of making it work. Once mao took over, it fueled the whole we lost china debate here which played right into the growing red scare that was happening here. And when exeter and, of course, with the korean war in 1950. Who did lose china . Wasnt anything the americans could done or that Chiang Kaishek couldve done to prevent it . I dont think so. Its a bit of a false question. Thats the question who lost china, and i dont think the really was a whole lot. China was in the United States to lose. It was the chinese, of revolution, but that question, i mean as a political issue it became a huge political issue. Both starting in 1949 and going through, i think mccarthy gave his West Virginia speech at the beginning of 1950, kind of a leader. The very beginning of mccarthyism. One of the statistics i saw was that in 1949, onethird of, onethird of all the stories on the front page of american newspapers were about spying and infiltration. Theres this kind of tangible fear in the country during this time about, that there were spies within the United States. There was some spine to be honest. The u. S. Was doing some spying and others were doing some spine. One of the interesting kind of spy tangents during this year is that diverges was one of the cambridge spy ring, a british spy, was working in the British Foreign office on the asia desk during 1949. Its possible that he couldve passed information about some of these debates that were talking about two stallings operatives or whatever, so they mightve been some spine but the fear, of both the spy in the later in 1949 the soviet exploded their first atomic bomb. I think the combination of these spying fears and the Nuclear Fears led to a lot of insecurity and paranoia among americans. Had to the Administration First view maos china . Dbc mao as a puppet of stalin . Dbc or Chinese Revolution as engineered by the soviet union . Some did and some didnt. As far as the Truman Administration was concerned, by this point did want anything to do with china. Remember this is like, this was a few years after the end of world war ii, and so has really risen to level of global, rebuilding i mean, that was as much of an exaggeration. This was the origin of the international system. It had an enormous task of primarily rebuilding europe. This was just after the Marshall Plan and some of these, stalin was taking advantage in Eastern Europe. What they wanted to do was forget about china. They assume the of the problems that they try to forget about it. Dean acheson was not in east asia geico the secretary of state in 1949. He did want anything to do with it. Slowly over the course of 1949 that became impossible. East asia took over the agenda. Dean acheson in general, we tk a lot about strategic patience. We hear that about people talk about an President Trump said the strategic patient is over. Dean acheson was he strategic patience guy, and he would tell us aboard at the state department dont just do something, stand there. He didnt want action for the sake of action. He felt like people did too much. And sometimes his line was he said with the Chinese Revolution we have to wait for the dust to settle and then maybe we can figure out what to do. He got killed for that politically. People just jumped all over it and said he was being too passive. So thats what treatment turning to the cia now and the documents you able to access, how quickly did the cia start carrying out covert operations in china . It was mid 1949. The driver for this is, yet help the nationalist and establish an early system in china. He was a very forceful personality. What he wanted to do is he said, mao is taking over china. What we need to do is establish what he called a belt of resistance around the periphery of china. What you wanted to do is file money and weapons to these provincial leaders and on the periphery of china and inside Mainland China on the areas around where mao control the he lobbied really hard. You can go to stanford in california and read the letters. You just realized you in the presence of a forceful personality as i was reading them, this is a great example of calm in washington, i just kind of force of will can sometimes get things done. He said letter after letter lobbying people to do this. One of the people whose attention he caught was frank wisner who, scott is now writing a book about, hes one of the characters in scotts new book, and he is the head of the Speedy Office of policy coordination. Which is basically the covert operation wing of the cia at this point. And frank with her like this idea. Sure he did. Because the czar, as