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China Sino-American Relations
China's relations with the other superpower, the United States,
also have followed an uneven course. Chinese leaders expressed an
interest in possible economic assistance from the United States
during the 1940s, but by 1950 Sino-American relations could only be
described as hostile. During its first two decades the People's
Republic considered the United States "imperialist" and "the common
enemy of people throughout the world."
The Korean War was a major factor responsible for setting
relations between China and the United States in a state of enmity
and mistrust, as it contributed to the United States policy of
"containing" the Chinese threat through a trade embargo and travel
restrictions, as well as through military alliances with other
Asian nations. An important side effect of the Korean War was that
Washington resumed military aid to Taiwan and throughout the 1950s
became increasingly committed to Taiwan's defense, making the
possibility of Chinese reunification more remote. After the United
States-Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty was signed in 1954, Taiwan
became the most contentious issue between the United States and
China, and remained so in the late 1980s, despite the abrogation of
the treaty and the subsequent normalization of relations between
Beijing and Washington in 1979.
In 1955 Premier Zhou Enlai made a conciliatory opening toward
the United States in which he said the Chinese people did not want
war with the American people. His statement led to a series of
official ambassadorial-level talks in Geneva and Warsaw that
continued fairly regularly for the next decade and a half. Although
the talks failed to resolve fundamental conflicts between the two
countries, they served as an important line of communication.
Sino-American relations remained at a stalemate during most of
the 1960s. Political considerations in both countries made a shift
toward closer relations difficult, especially as the United States
became increasingly involved in the war in Vietnam, in which
Washington and Beijing supported opposite sides. China's
isolationist posture and militancy during the Cultural Revolution
precluded effective diplomacy, and Sino-American relations reached
a low point with seemingly little hope of improvement.
Several events in the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, led
Beijing and Washington to reexamine their basic policies toward
each other. After the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in
1968 and the Sino-Soviet border clashes in 1969, China saw its
major threat as clearly coming from the Soviet Union rather than
the United States and sought a closer relationship with Washington
as a counterweight to Moscow. When President Richard M. Nixon
assumed office in 1969, he explored rapprochement with China as
part of his doctrine of reduced United States military involvement
in Asia. Moves in this direction resulted in an American ping-pong
team's trip to China and Henry A. Kissinger's secret visit, both in
1971, followed by Nixon's dramatic trip to China in 1972. The
Shanghai Communique, a milestone document describing the new state
of relations between the two countries, and signed by Nixon and
Zhou Enlai, included a certain degree of ambiguity that allowed
China and the United States to set aside differences, especially on
the Taiwan issue, and begin the process of normalizing relations.
After the signing of the Shanghai Communique, however, movement
toward United States-China normalization during the 1970s saw only
limited progress. The United States and China set up liaison
offices in each other's capitals in 1973, and bilateral trade grew
unevenly throughout the decade. "People's diplomacy" played an
important role, as most exchanges of delegations were sponsored by
friendship associations. Chinese statements continued to express
the view that both superpowers were theoretically adversaries of
China, but they usually singled out the Soviet Union as the more
"dangerous" of the two.
In the second half of the 1970s, China perceived an increasing
Soviet threat and called more explicitly for an international
united front against Soviet hegemony. In addition, rather than
strictly adhering to the principle of self-reliance, China adopted
an economic and technological modernization program that greatly
increased commercial links with foreign countries. These trends
toward strategic and economic cooperation with the West gave
momentum to Sino-United States normalization, which had been at an
impasse for most of the decade. Ties between China and the United
States began to strengthen in 1978, culminating in the December
announcement that diplomatic relations would be established as of
January 1, 1979. In establishing relations, Washington reaffirmed
its agreement that the People's Republic was the sole legal
government of China and that Taiwan was an inalienable part of
China. Deng Xiaoping's visit to the United States the following
month was symbolic of the optimism felt in Beijing and Washington
concerning their strategic alignment and their burgeoning
commercial, technical, and cultural relations.
In the 1980s United States-China relations went through several
twists and turns. By late 1981 China appeared to pull back somewhat
from the United States as it asserted its independent foreign
policy. Beijing began to express increasing impatience with the
lack of resolution on the Taiwan issue. One of the main issues of
contention was the Taiwan Relations Act, passed by the United
States Congress in 1979, which provided for continuing unofficial
relations between Washington and Taipei. In late 1981 China began
to make serious demands that the United States set a firm timetable
for terminating American arms sales to Taiwan, even threatening to
retaliate with the possible downgrading of diplomatic relations. In
early 1982 Washington announced it would not sell Taiwan more
advanced aircraft than it had already provided, and in August,
after several months of intense negotiations, China and the United
States concluded a joint communique that afforded at least a
partial resolution of the problem. Washington pledged to increase
neither the quality nor the quantity of arms supplied to Taiwan,
while Beijing affirmed that peaceful reunification was China's
fundamental policy. Although the communique forestalled further
deterioration in relations, Beijing and Washington differed in
their interpretations of it. The Taiwan issue continued to be a
"dark cloud" (to use the Chinese phrase) affecting United StatesChina relations to varying degrees into the late 1980s.
In addition to the question of Taiwan, other aspects of United
States-China relations created controversy at times during the
1980s: Sino-American trade relations, the limits of American
technology transfer to China, the nature and extent of United
States-China security relations, and occasional friction caused by
defections or lawsuits. Difficulties over trade relations have
included Chinese displeasure with United States efforts to limit
imports such as textiles and a degree of disappointment and
frustration within the American business community over the
difficulties of doing business in China. The issue of technology
transfer came to the fore several times during the 1980s, most
often with Chinese complaints about the level of technology allowed
or the slow rate of transfer. China's dissatisfaction appeared to
be somewhat abated by the United States 1983 decision to place
China in the "friendly, nonaligned" category for technology
transfer and the conclusion of a bilateral nuclear energy
cooperation agreement in 1985.
Determining the nature and limits of security relations between
China and the United States has been a central aspect of their
relations in the 1980s. After a period of discord during the first
years of the decade, Beijing and Washington renewed their interest
in security-related ties, including military visits, discussions of
international issues such as arms control, and limited arms and
weapons technology sales.
Beginning in 1983, Chinese and United States defense ministers
and other high-level military delegations exchanged visits, and in
1986 United States Navy ships made their first Chinese port call
since 1949. The United States approved certain items, such as
aviation electronics, for sale to China, restricting transfers to
items that would contribute only to China's defensive capability.
As of the late 1980s, it appeared that American assistance in
modernizing China's arms would also be limited by China's financial
constraints and the underlying principle of self-reliance.
Despite the issues that have divided them, relations between
the United States and China continued to develop during the 1980s
through a complex network of trade ties, technology-transfer
arrangements, cultural exchanges, educational exchanges (including
thousands of Chinese students studying in the United States),
military links, joint commissions and other meetings, and exchanges
of high-level leaders. By the second half of the 1980s, China had
become the sixteenth largest trading partner of the United States,
and the United States was China's third largest; in addition, over
140 American firms had invested in China. High-level exchanges,
such as Premier Zhao Ziyang's visit to the United States and
President Ronald Reagan's trip to China, both in 1984, and
President Li Xiannian's 1985 tour of the United States demonstrated
the importance both sides accorded their relations.
Data as of July 1987
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