China Policy for the 1980s

For nearly a decade, perhaps the single most successful foreign policy the United States has pursued has been our new relationship with the People's Republic of China. As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's memoirs make clear, President Richard M. Nixon and China's leaders took bold advantage of their common adversarial relationship with the Soviet Union and terminated the Sino-American enmity which had so damaged our countries in the previous two decades. The Nixon Administration fashioned a bipartisan China policy which, despite occasional lapses, has been carefully pursued ever since.

Particularly since the formal establishment of diplomatic relations on January 1, 1979, our two nations have energetically created the framework for a mutually beneficial strategic, economic, scientific, cultural, and diplomatic relationship. Strategically, particularly in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, each nation now appears to be genuinely taking into account the views of the other, so that, when possible, our separate actions will be mutually reinforcing.

In economics, not only have claims-assets, trade, aviation, maritime, and textile agreements been signed, but the Joint Sino-American Economic Commission has now had its first meeting. Jointly headed by a Chinese Vice Premier with leadership responsibilities for economic affairs and the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, it will meet periodically to devote high-level attention to emerging economic issues of mutual concern.

In the scientific domain a similar Joint Sino-American Scientific Commission, chaired jointly by the President's Adviser for Scientific Affairs and by the head of the People's Republic of China's (P.R.C.) State Scientific and Technological Commission, meets annually to survey our burgeoning official scientific exchanges. Almost every agency in the U.S. government has begun to develop constructive relations with its Chinese counterpart. No less than 16 agreements have now been signed involving scientific cooperation. Culturally, the International Communications Agency and the Ministry of Culture have established the basis for expanding cultural contact. And, commencing with Secretary of Defense Harold Brown's visit to China in January 1980, a series of visits between our military establishments has begun to break down the suspicion and ignorance that two decades of confrontation had produced.