ABSTRACT
In the early 1960s Tod Clare was working for Cummins Engine Company, which had its Far East headquarters in Hong Kong. Clare's job at Cummins's Hong Kong office was to set up a regional operation for Southeast Asia. Like many other Americans, Clare had thought the expression "overseas Chinese" referred primarily to the Chinatowns of the United States, like the one in San Francisco. The more Clare did business with the Chinese, the more he wanted to know China itself. In the first half of the twentieth century, China had been torn apart by revolution, Japanese invasion, and civil war. Polish and Czech commercial hopes for China proved no more lasting than the dreams of the Americans or British. The East-bloc trade and the bright colors on the Chinese streets had both faded with the Sino-Soviet split at the end of the 1950s.
