Chinese Lessons:Nixon, Mao, and the Course of U.S.-Chinese Relations

The Tiananmen Square massacre of June 1989 suddenly called into question the tenuous friendship between China and the United States. There had been tensions in the relationship since the late 1970s, when Congress, rebelling against Jimmy Carter's decision to extend recognition to Beijing as the government of China, committed Washington to granting Taiwan most privileges of a sovereign state and providing it with weapons. Ronald Reagan's openly expressed preference for the regime in Taiwan similarly irritated the Chinese. These offenses did not cause Beijing to break with Washington, but Deng Xiaoping did edge away from the United States and order campaigns -- against "bourgeois liberalization" and "spiritual pollution" -- aimed at diminishing U.S. influence in China.

As MacMillan demonstrates, Nixon and Kissinger had been indifferent to China's internal affairs. Similarly, President George H. W. Bush argued that the strategic relationship between China and the United States was too important to be jeopardized by Beijing's domestic transgressions. He and his foreign policy team, considering themselves "realists" in the mold of Nixon and Kissinger, did all they could to minimize congressional action against China and to assure Deng of their intention to continue working with him. But it was inevitable that Americans would become discomfited by a regime that was so abusive to its own people. After being exhilarated by a vision of democracy in China, many were horrified by the televised scenes of repression in Tiananmen. There was an outcry against the "butchers of Beijing" and calls for sanctions against China.

A NEW WORLD

The end of the Cold War, combined with anger over Tiananmen, inevitably led a number of Western analysts to question the importance of maintaining friendly relations with China. The exigencies of the Cold War may have required the United States to ally itself with numerous despicable regimes, but surely, they argued, that was not necessary for the world's only remaining superpower. China was no longer needed: the United States was secure without it. And it was time, they said, for Washington to stand up for American values, to demand respect for human rights in China and everywhere else in the world.

In 1992, presidential candidate Clinton condemned Bush's coddling of Beijing. Campaigning with him was Winston Lord -- a Kissinger acolyte and Bush's first ambassador to China -- who, contrary to the master's teaching, called for punishing China for Tiananmen and for Deng's subsequent intransigence. Lord's appointment as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in 1993 heartened human rights activists and visionaries who still hoped for an American-style democracy in China. But the Democrats' threat to deny China most-favored-nation treatment for its exports proved hollow. Clinton's ultimate concern for revitalizing the U.S. economy forced him to surrender to pressures from businesspeople less interested in human rights in China than in importing the inexpensive products of cheap Chinese labor or in exporting their wares to the billion potential Chinese customers. Deng proved to be correct in calling Washington's bluff.

By the late 1990s, Deng's market-oriented reforms had taken hold, and China began a period of extraordinary economic growth. Chinese leaders perceived no need for political reforms and proudly trumpeted their success in retaining power for the Communist Party as well as raising living standards -- in marked contrast to the negative example of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

At the same time, radical changes in Taiwan generated new tensions in the Taiwan Strait, and ultimately between Beijing and Washington as well. The Kuomintang, surprising most analysts, opened the door to democracy, winning support across the political spectrum in the United States. President Lee Teng-hui, a native Taiwanese suspected of favoring independence, was put in power by Chiang Kai-shek's son, setting off alarm bells in Beijing. Lee was granted a U.S. visa, despite the initial reservations of the Clinton administration. It was this violation of the existing understanding with Beijing -- that Taiwan's leaders would not be allowed to visit the United States -- that led to a heightened risk of military conflict between the United States and China amid a series of incidents in the Taiwan Strait.

In July 1995 and again in March 1996, the Chinese army fired missiles in the vicinity of Taiwan, bracketing the island with the second barrage. Clinton reminded Beijing of Washington's insistence on a peaceful resolution of Beijing's differences with Taipei, but he also responded to the first episode by sending the Chinese president his personal assurance that the United States would not support Taiwan's independence or its admission to the United Nations. The Chinese, however, pocketed his assurances, reminded the United States that they now had the capability of reaching U.S. cities with nuclear missiles, and warned that U.S. intervention to defend Taiwan could be very costly. Accommodating Washington was not a high priority for China.

In February 1996, preceding the second episode, China began to mass troops on its side of the Taiwan Strait. Warnings from the Clinton administration that an attack on Taiwan would have "grave consequences" were backed by the dispatch of two carrier battle groups to the region. The Chinese army backed off, and the U.S. ships departed. No shots were fired. In Beijing, the lesson was clear: China had to develop the capability to destroy any naval force the United States sent to defend Taiwan.