U. S.-CHINA POLICY: WATERGATE TO TIENANMEN SQUARE (1974-1989)
This section discusses the ebb and flow of American policy toward the PRC during the administrations of Gerald Ford (1974-1976), Jimmy Carter (1976-1980), Ronald Reagan (1980-1988) and the first year of the presidency of George Bush. It covers the period from the resignation of Nixon on August 8, 1974 to the massacre in Tienanmen Square on June 3-4, 1989 and its immediate aftermath.
The United States and the PRC were slow to capitalize on the momentum generated by the Nixon-Kissinger opening to China for a variety of domestic political and foreign policy reasons. Full normalization of relations was not accomplished until the third year of the Carter administration. Thereafter, American policy toward the PRC followed an uncertain course, which in the early to mid-1980s, was handicapped by friction over the Taiwan issue. By the late 1980s, American policy toward China appeared to have arrived at a firmer footing because of a commonality of interests vis-a-vis the Soviet Union and the Chinese decision to open its economy to the West and to initiate fundamental internal economic reforms. However, by the end of the 1980s, Sino-American relations foundered once more this time over the unwillingness of the PRC's leadership to accept any serious challenge to its monopoly of political power and the consequent revulsion of American public opinion and its government to the violent suppression by the Beijing government of student and intellectual dissent. As the Cold War came to an end, the future of the Sino-American relationship and the direction of American policy remained problematic as the United States attempted to adjust to the challenges and opportunities presented by China's emergence as a great power.
According to Liu (1997), Nixon intimated to Mao and Chou during his February 1972 visit that he intended to normalize relations with the PRC during his second term. ...