ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that American-East Asian relations are afflicted not just by the trade tensions that have grown since 1970s. But also by a new cultural and rhetorical divide that increases friction at the same time that it obscures the continuing realities of the relationship. If East Asia has an America problem, of course, it is by no means only Americans who contribute to it. If Mark Twain's innocents abroad were non-Americans visiting America, one of the oddest cultural traits they might encounter would be America's mysterious liberal probity: Public utterance and private thoughts seem remarkably divorced, and voicing private thoughts is verboten. Pacific Asia is a manufacturing basin for consumer goods, while its wealthy class consumes Pacific America's high technology and agriculture: Cray supercomputers for the workaday world, California's mangoes for the dinner table. The American lake has opened, of course, especially in the postwar years, a realm of opportunity for East Asia.
