Foreign relations between the United States and China in the modern era began in the early 1970s. Shut off from one another for decades, President Richard Nixon's historic visit to the People's Republic of China in 1972 marked the beginning of a series of political and economic developments that persist in affecting our world today. In 1973, two issues impacted Sino-US relations most acutely. On the one hand, the problem of Taiwanese independence would demand delicate diplomacy and ginger negotiations; on the other, facing the challenge of undoing a 20 history of near-total embargo on US business with China (Theroux S2). The reverberations of the Shanghai Communique which addressed Taiwan, and the creation US-China Business Council, which signified the first trade delegation in the region, are felt to this day.
Because Nixon's monumental first visit to China took place in February of 1972, the relevance of 1973 must, in large part, be understood to be a product of that critical diplomatic venture. Were it not for the action taken by President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1972, the events of 1973 simply could not have been (Manning & Przystup 13). The Nixon proposal that the US and China undertake a "long march together" was introduced in 1972; the first steps of this march would be taken in 1973 (Buckley, Jr. 58). The idea that the United States and China might form a strategic union to countervail the might of the Soviet Union was not novel. It was, however, remarkable that a fervently anti-Communist administration in Washington was able to assume that an accommodation with Mao Tse-tungs's communist China was possible (Zimmerman, et al. 46).
First on the docket would be the US position regarding Taiwan, a rogue island formerly under Chinese control. Mao's desire to bring this democratizing little nation to heel was problematic for the US, and 1973 would feel the effects of the Shanghai Communi...