Risky Fiction: Betrayal and Romance in The Jing Affair

Contrary to our intuitive understanding of the Cold War as a discourse of division, Christina Klein (2003) argues that it is also a discourse of integration, serving to bring the allies closer to each other. The fundamental logic of the Cold War was, thus considered, a Schmittian game of telling friends from enemies, in which betrayal is an unpardonable crime and a traitor the worst kind of enemy. Yet at the same time, betrayal also acknowledges an intimacy that existed prior to the act of betrayal: an intimacy that must be denounced and, even, at times, held in disgust. During the Cold War, while Taiwan worried about being betrayed by its staunch allies and was at risk of being betrayed by its KMT leadership, and while Taiwan, if it converted to communism, would have harmed American interests on the Asia/Pacific front, betrayal was both a real political risk and a risky fiction, one which often (con)fused reality with imagination. In this paper, I analyze an obscure 1965 Cold War novel, The Jing Affair, written by a US government official serving in the Far East Affairs Department under the pseudonym of D. J. Spencer. The novel imagines an attempt by a high KMT official, named Jing, to turn Taiwan over to Chinese communists: this presents an imminent threat to Taiwan’s independence and American national interests. Featuring a Taiwanese-American hero who succeeds in preventing this act of betrayal, The Jing Affair is a political romance about Chinese treason, Taiwanese revolution, and CIA covert operations, set in the impending Taiwan Strait Crises of the 1950s. This risky fiction leads us to reflect on how an imaginary crisis can be productive, for it means imagining an alternative history that bears on political reality. The novel’s Hollywood-esque meshing of political suspense and romantic subplots also reveals the sort of risky connections between fantasy and politics that could put real lives at risk.