cy used successfully by President Nixon and National Security Adviser Kis-
singer in early interaction with China. Their approach allowed for very little
consultation with Congress, key US allies, or the Taiwan government regard-
ing the conditions and timing of the 1978 normalization agreement. In
contrast to general US congressional, media, and popular support for the
surprise Nixon opening to China, President Carter and his aides clearly were
less successful in winning US domestic support for their initiatives. Many in
Congress were satisfied with the stasis that developed in US-PRC-ROC rela-
tions in the mid-1970s and unconvinced that the United States had a strategic
or other need to pay the price of breaking a US defense treaty and other
official ties with a loyal government in Taiwan for the sake of formalizing
already existing relations with the PRC. Bipartisan majorities in Congress
resisted the president’s initiatives and passed laws, notably the Taiwan Rela-
tions Act (TRA), that tied the hands of the administration on Taiwan and
other issues. 42
The Taiwan Relations Act was passed by Congress in March 1979 and
signed by President Carter on April 10, 1979. The initial draft of the legisla-
tion was proposed by the Carter administration to govern US relations with
Taiwan once official US ties were ended in 1979. Congress rewrote the
legislation, adding or strengthening provisions on US arms sales, economic
relations, human rights, congressional oversight, and opposition to threats
and use of force. Treating Taiwan as a separate entity that would continue to
receive US military and other support, the law appeared to contradict the US
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Chapter 4
stance in the US-PRC communiqué of 1978 establishing official US-PRC
relations. Subsequently, Chinese and Taiwan officials and their supporters in
the United States competed to incline US policy toward the commitments in
the US-PRC communiqué or the commitments in the TRA. US policy usual-
ly supported both, though it sometimes seemed more supportive of one set of
commitments than the other. 43
Running against President Carter in 1980, California Governor Ronald
Reagan criticized Carter’s handling of Taiwan. Asserting for a time that he
would restore official relations with Taipei, Reagan later backed away from
this stance but still claimed he would base his policy on the Taiwan Relations
Act. The Chinese government put heavy pressure on the Reagan administra-
tion, threatening serious deterioration in relations over various issues but
especially continuing US arms sales to Taiwan. 44
Viewing close China-US relations as a key element in US strategy against
the Soviet Union, Secretary of State Alexander Haig led those in the Reagan
administration who favored maintaining close China-US relations and op-
posed US arms sales to Taiwan that might provoke China. For a year and a
half, Haig and his supporters were successful in leading US efforts to accom-
modate PRC concerns over Taiwan, especially regarding US arms sales to
the ROC, in the interest of fostering closer US-China cooperation against the
Soviet Union. The United States ultimately signed with China the August 17,
1982, communiqué. In the communiqué, the United States agreed gradually
to diminish arms sales, and China agreed it would seek peaceful reunification
of Taiwan with the mainland. Subsequent developments showed that the
vague agreement was subject to varying interpretations. President Reagan
registered private reservations about the agreement, and his administration
also took steps to reassure Taiwan’s leader of continued US support. 45
Looking back at the first decade of opening and developing US-China
contacts leading to the normalization of relations, prevailing assessments
follow a pattern that seems consistent with the perspective of realism in IR
theory. They show a strong tendency on the part of US leaders to focus on
relations with China as the key element in a new US approach to East Asian
and world affairs. The war in Vietnam, the growing challenge of an expand-
ing Soviet Union, the seeming decline in US power and influence in East
seemed to support emphasis on a new US approach to China with important
benefits for US foreign policy and other interests. US leadership attention
focused on doing what was needed to advance the new China relationship
and gave secondary attention to long-standing US allies and other close
relationships in East Asia or manipulated them in ways that would accord
with the China-first emphasis in US policy. Emblematic of this trend, Nix-
on’s surprise announcement in July 1971 that he would visit China was so
shocking and disturbing to the long-standing and more conservative China
Rapprochement and Normalization
77
policy of the government of Prime Minister Eisaku Sato of Japan that it
brought down the Japanese government. Available scholarship shows that
Nixon deliberately withheld information of the American shift so he could
“stick it to Japan” and show US frustration with Japan’s trade and economic
policies working against US interests. 46
The US emphasis on China came with significant costs for the United
States and US interests, though scholarship tends to depict the benefits of the US approach as justifying the costs. 47 Notably, US leaders came to overesti-mate the power, influence, and utility of China in assisting US efforts to
withdraw from Vietnam and to shore up international opposition to Soviet
expansion. By so doing, they gave advantage to China in negotiations over
contentious US-China issues regarding Taiwan and other disputes. Seeking
sometimes unattainable advantages from improved relations with China, US
leaders sacrificed relations with an ally, Taiwan, and treated relations with
Japan and other Asian allies and associates in ways that subordinated those
relations to US interests in improving relations with China. They also sacri-
ficed attention to those US values and interests in Asian and world affairs
that were inconsistent with a pragmatic pursuit of better ties with China.
The elitist approach of US leaders followed a pattern of secret diplomacy
and deal making that undermined the US administration’s credibility with the
Congress and significant segments of the US media and public opinion. It
also undermined the constitutionally mandated shared powers the executive
and legislative branches hold in the conduct of US foreign policy. This
experience established an atmosphere of suspicion and cynicism in American
domestic politics over China policy and set the stage for often bitter and
debilitating fights in US domestic politics over China policy in ensuing years
that on balance are seen not to serve the overall national interests of the
United States. 48
The Pan-Asian Approach of George Shultz
and Chinese Accommodation
Amid continued strong Chinese pressure tactics on a wide range of US-China
disputes, US policy shifted with Haig’s resignation in 1982 and the appoint-
ment of George Shultz as se
cretary of state. Reagan administration officers
who were at odds with Haig’s emphasis on the need for a solicitous US
approach to China came to the fore. They were led by Paul Wolfowitz, who
was chosen by Shultz as assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs;
Richard Armitage, the senior Defense Department officer managing relations
with China and East Asia; and Gaston Sigur, the senior National Security
Council staff aide on Asian affairs and later assistant secretary of state for
East Asian affairs. While officers who had backed Haig’s pro-China slant
were transferred from authority over China policy, the new US leadership
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Chapter 4
contingent with responsibility for East Asian affairs shifted US policy toward
a less solicitous and accommodating stance toward China, while giving much
higher priority to US relations with Japan, as well as other US allies and
friends in East Asia. There was less emphasis on China’s strategic impor-
tance to the United States in American competition with the Soviet Union,
and there was less concern among US policy makers about China possibly
The scholarship on the US opening to China that began in the Nixon
administration, reviewed above, focuses on powerful strategic and domestic
imperatives that drove the United States and China to cooperate in a prag-
matic search for advantage for their respective national and leadership inter-
ests. It underlines the primacy of China in American foreign policy in Asia
while relations with Japan and other East Asian allies and friends remained
secondary and were sometimes viewed as declining assets or liabilities. 50
Some scholars, often using a cost-benefit analysis seen in the realist
school of thought, discern an important shift in US strategy toward China and
in East Asia more broadly beginning in 1982. 51 The reevaluation of US
policy toward China under Secretary of State Shultz is seen to bring to power
officials who opposed the high priority on China in US strategy toward East
Asia and the world, and who gave much greater importance to US relations
with Japan and other US allies in securing US interests amid prevailing
conditions. The reevaluation on the whole is depicted as working to the
advantage of the United States. It notably is seen to have added dimensions
related to a changing balance of forces affecting Chinese security and other
interests in Asian and world affairs, which prompted heretofore demanding
Chinese leaders to reduce pressures on the United States for concessions on
Taiwan and other disputed issues. The changes in Chinese policy helped
open the way for several years of comparatively smooth US-China relations
after a period of considerable discord in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Other scholars also employ cost-benefit assessments, which are seen in
the realist school of thought to explain the improvement in US-China rela-
tions at the time through analyses focused on the dynamics of US-China
relations. 52 They discern US compromises and accommodations in negotiations and relations with China that assuaged Chinese demands and met Chi-
nese interests over Taiwan and other issues. They tend to avoid analysis of
how any shift in emphasis in US policy away from a focus on China and
toward a greater emphasis on Japan and the East Asian region might have
altered Chinese calculations and the overall dynamic in US interaction with
China.
The analysis in the assessment detailed below supports the former view. It
shows that the Chinese leaders grudgingly adjusted to the new US stance,
viewing their interests best served by less pressure and more positive initia-
tives to the Reagan administration, seen especially in their warm welcome
Rapprochement and Normalization
79
for the US president on his visit to China in 1984. Cooperative Chinese
relations with the United States were critically important to the Chinese
leadership in maintaining Chinese security in the face of continuing pressure
from the Soviet Union and in sustaining the flow of aid, investment, and
trade essential to the economic development and modernization underway in
China—the linchpin of the Chinese Communist leadership’s plans for sus-
taining its rule in China. Meanwhile, the Reagan leadership learned not to
confront important Chinese interests over issues like Taiwan in overt and
egregious ways, seeking to continue US military and other support for Tai-
wan in ways less likely to provoke strong Chinese reaction. Thus, the accom-
modations that characterized US-China relations in Reagan’s second term in
office were mutual, but they involved significant Chinese adjustments and
changes influenced by the new posture toward China undertaken by Secre-
tary of State Shultz and his colleagues.
In this author’s assessment, the scholarship that portrays the improvement
in US-China relations at that time as largely based on the dynamics of US-
China relations seems too narrowly focused. In this scholarship, the United
States is seen to make compromises in ways that accommodate Chinese
interests and thus allow for smoother US-China relations. By limiting the
focus to the dynamics of US-China ties, this scholarship seems to miss the
importance of the shift in US emphasis during the tenure of George Shultz.
Overall, that shift seems to have significantly enhanced US power and lever-
age over China in negotiations over Taiwan and other disputes and com-
pelled China to make concessions on its part in order to ensure a positive
relationship with the United States advantageous to Chinese interests. This
changed dynamic, with the United States in a more commanding position
vis-à-vis China, also was much more acceptable to congressional members,
media, and others in US politics that had been alienated by the secrecy and
perceived excessive US deference to China in the previous decade. It made
executive-congressional relations over China policy much smoother than in
the previous six years.
China’s Shifting Strategic Calculus and the Importance
of the United States
The significance of the shifts in American policy toward China and Asia
undertaken during the tenure of Secretary Shultz and under the direction of
such influential US officials as Wolfowitz, Armitage, and Sigur are shown
below to be important for China’s broader international calculations, influ-
encing its approach toward the United States. Chinese foreign policy was
strongly influenced by Chinese assessments in line with realist IR theory of
the relative power and influence of the Soviet Union and the United States
and the effects these had on key Chinese interests of security and develop-
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Chapter 4
ment. Throughout much of the 1970s, China had been more vocal than the
United States in warning of the dangers of expansion by the Soviet Union,
seen as the greatest threat to China’s security and integrity. Chinese officials and commentary depicted Soviet efforts to contain China in Asia through its
military buildup and advanced nuclear ballistic missile depl
oyments along
the Sino-Soviet border, its deployments of mobile mechanized divisions in
Mongolia, its stepped-up naval activity in the western Pacific along the Chi-
na coast, its military presence in Vietnam, including active use of formerly
US naval and air base facilities, and its ever-closer military relationship with India and growing involvement with and eventual invasion of Afghanistan.
These Soviet actions were seen as part of a wider expansion of Soviet power
and influence that China judged as needing to be countered by a united
international front including China and led by the United States. 53
For much of the 1970s, particularly after the resignation of President
Nixon, Chinese officials and commentary saw the United States vacillate
between a tough line toward the USSR and an approach seeking détente and
accommodation with Moscow. Concern over US resolve toward Moscow
saw China criticize Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for being too soft
toward Moscow during the Ford administration, favoring instead the harder
line advocated by Defense Secretary James Schlesinger. Carter administra-
tion officials like UN envoy Andrew Young, who took a moderate view
toward Soviet-backed Cuban troop deployments and other Soviet expansion
in Africa, were roundly criticized in Chinese media. More cautious official
commentary registered reservations about Secretary of State Cyrus Vance’s
approach in seeking arms limitation talks with Moscow, while Chinese offi-
cials and commentary registered approval of National Security Advisor Brze-
zinski’s tough anti-Soviet stance. 54
Over time, and especially after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late
1979, Chinese leaders began to recalculate the balance of forces affecting
their interests and their respective approaches to the Soviet Union and the
United States. The previous perceived danger that the United States would
“appease” the Soviet Union and thereby allow Moscow to direct its pressure
against China now appeared remote. Carter’s last year in office and Reagan’s
initial stance toward the USSR saw a large increase in US defense spending
and military preparations. Closely allied with the United States, European