U.S. FOREIGN POLICY AND CHINA U.S. Foreign Policy Toward China

This research paper summarizes the historical background of American foreign policy toward China, the present state of relations between the United States and China and recommendations for the future. China and the United States have dealt with each other for more than two centuries. American foreign policy has fairly consistently supported the emergence of a stable, less impoverished, less authoritarian and friendly China. Often, those policy hopes were not firmly grounded in Chinese reality, but rather reflected a peculiarly American view of how China should conduct its affairs. In the 20th century, they were repeatedly dashed -- by the Japanese invasion in the 1930s, the Chinese civil war, the Chinese military intervention in Korea, the internal convulsion of the Cultural Revolution, the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 1989 and other actions by the Chinese inimical to American interests, including the recent revelations of Chinese espionage in the United States. American policy has at times been weak or uncertain, such as during the 1930s, the mid-1970s and at times during the 1990s.

Since relations were normalized in the 1970s, American foreign policy toward China has been more firmly grounded in reality; nevertheless, relations between the United States and China have remained troubled, areas of mutual cooperation co-existing with areas of rivalry and tension. As a result of the great strides China has taken in the 1980s and 1990

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(2) a deteriorating relationship after 1959 with the Soviet Union, previously its principal external source of economic and military assistance. Mao accused the Soviets of ideological heresy (revisionism) for pursuing possibilities of detente with the West. The Soviets withdrew all support. After nearly 400 border skirmishes between Chinese and Soviet forces along the borders of Manchuria and Sinkiang province, intelligence sources revealed to Kissinger in 1969 "a relentless Soviet buildup along the entire 4,000 mile . . . Chinese border." 1971-1988. The visits by Kissinger and President Richard Nixon to Beijing in July 1971 and February 1972 represented a new phase in American policy, the opening to China, which led to full normalization of relations during the administration of President Jimmy Carter. Traditionally a hawk on China policy, Nixon signaled a change when he said in an article in October 1997: "taking the long view, we cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations." By opening up a dialogue with Mao and Zhou Enlai, Nixon and Kissinger sought to play the Chinese card, -- i.e to take advantage of the Sino-Soviet schism and thereby to induce the Soviet Union and the PRC to be more cooper

Category: Government - U