American political, economic, and security ties. 66
• In 1981 Beijing had publicly disavowed any interest in military purchases
from the United States until the United States satisfied China’s position on
the sale of arms to Taiwan. It continued to note that it was dissatisfied with
US arms transfers to Taiwan after the August 1982 communiqué, which
continued at a pace of more than $700 million a year; but it now was
willing to negotiate with the United States over Chinese purchases of US
military equipment.
• Beijing muffled previous demands that the United States alter its position
regarding Taiwan’s continued membership in the Asian Development
Bank.
• China reduced criticism of official and unofficial US contacts with Taiwan
counterparts. It notably avoided criticism of US officials being present at
Taipei-sponsored functions in Washington. Beijing was even willing to
turn a blind eye to the almost thirty members of Congress who traveled to
Taiwan in various delegations in January 1984—coincident with Zhao
Ziyang’s trip to Washington. It even welcomed some of the members who
traveled on to the mainland after visiting Taiwan.
• Beijing allowed Northwest Airlines to open service to China in 1984, even
though the airline still served Taiwan. This was in marked contrast with
the authoritative and negative Chinese position adopted in 1983 in re-
sponse to Pan American World Airways’ decision to reenter the Taiwan
market while also serving the mainland.
• China reduced complaints about the slowness of US transfers of technolo-
gy to China and about the continued inability of the administration to
successfully push through legislative changes that would have allowed the
Chinese to receive American assistance. 67
Rapprochement and Normalization
87
China’s greatest compromise was to give a warm welcome to President
Reagan, despite his continued avowed determination to maintain close US
ties with “old friends” on Taiwan. Visits by Speaker O’Neill and others made
clear to China the importance of the China visit in serving to assist the US
president’s reelection bid in the fall. Chinese leaders also understood that the president was unlikely to accommodate China interests over Taiwan and
some other sensitive issues during the visit. Indeed, Chinese reportage made
clear that there was no change in the president’s position on the Taiwan issue
during the visit. Thus it appears that the best the Chinese hoped for was to try to consolidate US-PRC relations in order to secure broader strategic and
economic interests, while possibly expecting that such a closer relationship
over time would reduce the president’s firm position on Taiwan and other
bilateral disputes.
The Reagan administration, meanwhile, attempted to add impetus to the
relationship by accommodating Chinese concerns through the avoidance of
strong rhetorical support for Taiwan that in the past had so inflamed US-PRC
tensions, and by moving ahead on military and technology transfers to the
PRC. Nevertheless, when the US-China nuclear cooperation agreement,
which had been initialed during the president’s visit, became stalled because
of opposition from nonproliferation advocates in the United States who were
concerned about reports of China’s support for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons
program, China went along with administration explanations of their inabil-
ity to reverse the adverse situation with only minor complaint. 68
In short, by mid-1984 it appeared that, at a minimum, Beijing was deter-
mined to further strengthen military and economic ties with the United States
and to soft-pedal bilateral differences that had been stressed earlier in the
decade. On the question of Taiwan, Beijing retreated to a position that asked
for US adherence to the joint communiqué and accelerated reductions of US
arms sales to Taiwan, but Chinese leaders were not prepared to make a
significant issue of what they saw as US noncompliance unless they were
seriously provoked. This meant giving lower priority to Chinese complaints
about President Reagan’s interpretations of the communiqué at odds with
China’s position and lower priority to Chinese complaints over the US presi-
dent’s continued strong determination to support US interests in helping the
defense of Taiwan. The new Chinese position also meant downplaying Chi-
nese criticism of methods used by the United States to calculate the value of
arms sales to Taiwan at high levels, thereby allowing more than a half billion
dollars of US sales to the island’s armed forces for years to come. It also
meant that China chose not to contest vigorously the ultimately successful
maneuvers used by Taiwan and US defense manufacturers that allowed the
United States to support, through commercial transfers of equipment, tech-
nology, and expertise, the development of a new group of more than one
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Chapter 4
hundred new jet fighters, the so-called indigenous fighter aircraft, for the
Taiwan air force. 69
Continued Sino-Soviet Differences
China’s incentive to accommodate the United States was reinforced by Bei-
jing’s somber view of Sino-Soviet relations. China appeared disappointed
with its inability to elicit substantial Soviet concessions—or even a slowing
in the pace of Soviet military expansion in Asia—during the brief adminis-
tration of Yuri Andropov (d. 1984). Beijing saw the succeeding government
of Konstantin Chernenko (d. 1985) as even more rigid and uncompromising.
In response, China hardened its line and highlighted public complaints
against Soviet pressure and intimidation—an approach that had the added
benefit of broadening common ground between China and the West, espe-
cially the strongly anti-Soviet Reagan administration. 70
The Sino-Soviet vice-ministerial talks on normalizing relations were re-
vived in October 1982 following their cancellation as a result of the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979. These talks were unable to bridge a
major gap between the positions of the two sides on basic security and
political issues. Beijing stuck to its preconditions for improved Sino-Soviet
relations involving withdrawal of Soviet forces from along the Sino-Soviet
border and from Mongolia (later China added specific reference to Soviet
SS-20 missiles targeted against China), an end to Soviet support for Viet-
nam’s military occupation of Cambodia, and withdrawal of Soviet forces
from Afghanistan. 71
In part to get around this roadblock, a second forum of vice-foreign-
ministerial discussions began in September 1983. The discussions covered
each side’s views of recent developments in the Middle East, Central Ameri-
ca, the Indian Ocean, Afghanistan, and Indochina; concerns over arms con-
trol, including the deployment of SS-20 missiles in Asia; and other questions.
No agreement was noted.
Progress in both sets of talks came only in secondary areas of trade,
technology transfers, and educational and cultural exchanges. Both sides
attempted to give added impetus to
progress in these areas coincident with
the exchange of high-level Sino-American visits in early 1984. In particular,
Moscow proposed and Beijing accepted a visit to China by First Deputy
Prime Minister Ivan Arkhipov. The visit was timed to occur just after Presi-
dent Reagan’s departure from China in early May 1984. It was postponed on
account of rising Sino-Soviet frictions.
Chernenko’s leadership went out of its way to publicize strong support
for Mongolia and Vietnam against China, and underlined Soviet unwilling-
ness to make compromises with China at the expense of third countries.
Beijing also saw Moscow as resorting to stronger military means in both
Rapprochement and Normalization
89
Europe and Asia in order to assert Soviet power and determination against
China and others. In February and March, the Soviet Union deployed two of
its three aircraft carriers to the western Pacific; one passed near China in late February, on its way to Vladivostok. And in March, the USSR used an
aircraft carrier task force to support its first joint amphibious exercise with Vietnam, which was conducted fairly close to China and near the Vietnamese
port city of Haiphong. This followed the reported stationing of several Soviet
medium-range bombers at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, in late 1983—the first
time Soviet forces were reported to be stationed outside areas contiguous
with the USSR.
Meanwhile, the Chinese escalated their artillery barrages and other mili-
tary pressure against the Vietnamese—taking their strongest action precisely
at the time of President Reagan’s visit to China in late April and early May
1984. Beijing at the same time escalated charges regarding the Soviet threat
to Chinese security, especially via Vietnam, and attempted to establish pub-
licly an identity of interests with both Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone,
during a visit to China in March, and President Reagan in April–May, on the
basis of opposition to Soviet expansion in Asia. The result was the most
serious downturn in Sino-Soviet relations since the Soviet invasion of Af-
ghanistan in late 1979.
THE SUCCESS OF THE US–PAN-ASIAN APPROACH TO CHINA
In sum, the record of developments in China’s approach toward and relations
with the United States and the Soviet Union in 1983 and 1984 show that the
pan-Asian approach adopted by Secretary of State George Shultz and the
senior officials responsible for Asian affairs during this period of the Reagan administration worked effectively in support of American interests in policy
toward China in several important ways. It notably played into an array of
concerns and uncertainties in Chinese foreign policy calculations and inter-
ests, causing the Chinese leaders to shift to a more accommodating posture
toward the United States—a posture that played down issues that in the
recent past had threatened, according to Chinese officials, to force China to
take steps to downgrade US-China relations. US officials made sure their
Chinese counterparts understood that the United States was no longer as
anxious, as evident in the first decade of Sino-American rapprochement and
normalization, to seek China’s favor in improving Sino-American relations
as a source of leverage against Moscow. The United States was increasingly
confident in its strategic position vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, and had begun a process to roll back the gains the Soviets had made in the previous decade in
various parts of the developing world. It was China that appeared to face
greater difficulties posed by Soviet military buildup and expansion. China
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Chapter 4
needed the US relationship as a counterweight to this Soviet posture, and it
increasingly needed a good relationship with the United States to allow for
smooth and advantageous Chinese economic interchange with the developed
countries of the West and Japan and the international financial institutions
they controlled.
Under the circumstances, the Chinese leaders grudgingly adjusted to the
new US stance, viewing their interests best served by less pressure and more
positive overtures to the Reagan administration, seen notably in their warm
welcome for the US president on his visit to China in 1984. As noted above,
some scholarship portrays the improvement in US-China relations at the time
largely through dynamics in US-China relations. In general, 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 leverage over Chi-
na in negotiations over Taiwan and other disputes and compelled China to
make concessions 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, 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 set the stage for relatively smooth US
domestic politics over China policy for the remainder of the Reagan adminis-
tration.
Chapter Five
Tiananmen, Taiwan, and
Post–Cold War Realities,
1989–2000
COLLAPSE OF US POLICY CONSENSUS AND EMERGING
DOMESTIC DEBATE ON CHINA
Unexpected mass demonstrations centered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square
and other Chinese cities in spring 1989 represented the most serious chal-
lenge to China’s post-Mao leadership. Deng Xiaoping was decisive in resolv-
ing Chinese leadership differences in favor of hard-liners who supported a
violent crackdown on the demonstrators and broader suppression of political
dissent that began with the bloody attack on Tiananmen Square on June 4,
1989. Reform-minded leaders were purged and punished. 1
Anticipating shock over and disapproval of the Tiananmen crackdown
from the United States and the West, Deng nonetheless argued that the nega-
tive reaction would have few prolonged adverse consequences for China.
The Chinese leader failed to anticipate the breadth and depth of US disap-
proval that would profoundly influence US policy into the twenty-first centu-
ry. American public opinion of China’s government dropped sharply. It has
never recovered the positive views of the Chinese government that prevailed
in the years prior to Tiananmen and has reflected a wary and negative view
of China on the part of a majority of Americans almost thirty years later. The
US media switched coverage and opinion of China, portraying the policies
and practices of the Chinese rulers in a much more critical light than in the
years leading up to Tiananmen. Almost thirty years later, American and
Chinese specialists have continued to see US and Western media remaining
focused on the negative in reporting and commentary that deals with the
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Chinese government. US leaders were shocked by the brutal display of pow-
er by China’s authoritarian leaders. Expectations of rapid Chinese political
reform dropped; they were replaced by outward hostility at first, followed by
often wary pragmatism about the need for greater US engagement with the
Chinese government as it rose in prominence in Asian and world affairs. The
US engagement was tempered by a private suspicion of the longer-term
intentions of the Chinese rulers, which remained a prominent feature of US
expectations of China well into the next century. 2
The negative impact of the Tiananmen crackdown on the American ap-
proach to China was compounded by the unforeseen and dramatic collapse of
communist regimes in the Soviet bloc and other areas, leading to the demise
of the Soviet Union in 1991. These developments undermined the perceived
need for the United States to cooperate pragmatically with China despite its
brutal dictatorship, on account of a US strategic need for international sup-
port against the Soviet Union. The Soviet collapse also destroyed the strate-
gic focus of American foreign policy during the Cold War. The ability of the
US president to use Cold War imperatives to override pluralistic US domes-
tic interests seeking to influence American foreign policy declined. A variety
of existing and emerging American interest groups focused on China’s au-
thoritarian regime in strongly negative ways, endeavoring to push US policy
toward a harder line against China. Meanwhile, Taiwan’s authoritarian
government at that time was moving steadily to promote democratic policies
and practices, marking a sharp contrast to the harsh political regime in main-
land China and greatly enhancing Taiwan’s popularity and support in the
United States. 3
Taken together, these circumstances generally placed the initiative in US-
China relations with US leaders and broader forces in the United States.
Chinese leaders at first focused on maintaining internal stability as they
maneuvered to sustain workable economic relations with the United States
and other developed countries while rebuffing major US and other Western-
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