ABSTRACT
John E. Wills, Jr., Jack Wills to all his friends and colleagues was born in 1936. He taught history at the University of Southern California from 1965 to 2004, and now is Professor Emeritus. The attacks of McCarthy and his allies on experts on China had the effect that few people wanted to go into the field, and the country was short of specialists on almost every area of Asia. A stable China that sees its interest in stable relations with the rest of the world is in everyone's interest. China is trying to lure Taiwan with opportunities to invest, and is having some success. But the Taiwan political establishment is not very mature, and politicians tend to seek votes by making strong statements that they know will offend the Chinese leaders. Some younger scholars are deeply involved in some pretty esoteric sub-discourses in Chinese studies and in history in general.
