Why did the relationship between China and the United States began to change during the Nixon administration?

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During Jimmy Carter’s presidency, the most dramatic moment in Sino-American relations occurred on December 15, 1978, when, following months of secret negotiations, the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) announced that they would recognize one another and establish official diplomatic relations. As part of the agreement, the United States recognized the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China, and declared it would withdraw diplomatic recognition from Taiwan (also known as the Republic of China [ROC]).

Prior to 1979, the United States and the People’s Republic of China had never established formal diplomatic relations. In 1949, Chinese Communist Party forces defeated the Government of the Republic of China in the Chinese Civil War and founded the People’s Republic of China, eliminating ROC authority from mainland China. Nonetheless, for the next thirty years, the U.S. Government continued to recognize the Republic of China on Taiwan as the sole legal government over all of China. During that period, the U.S. and PRC Governments had only intermittent contact through forums such as the Sino-U.S. Ambassadorial talks in Warsaw, which began in 1955.

A new era began with a rapprochement during Richard Nixon’s presidency. Nixon and his aide, Henry Kissinger, found ready partners in Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, and Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Premier, who also wanted to improve Sino-U.S. relations. Their efforts resulted in the Shanghai Communiqué, which laid the basis for future cooperation between the two countries even while acknowledging continuing disagreements on the subject of Taiwan. As part of this rapprochement, the two countries opened liaison offices in one another’s capitals in 1973, a time when Taiwan still had an Embassy in Washington. The liaison offices, which in many ways operated as de facto embassies, represented a significant concession by the People’s Republic of China, which opposed the acceptance of “two Chinas” because that implied both were legitimate governments. The U.S. Government placated the People’s Republic of China, and helped set the stage for normalization, by gradually removing military personnel from Taiwan and scaling back its official contact with the ROC Government.

When Carter took office in January 1977, a significant improvement in relations between Communist China and the United States seemed far from inevitable. Presidents before Nixon had failed to make significant progress in improving relations with the People’s Republic of China. President Nixon’s attempt to normalize relations with China during his second term had been frustrated by the Watergate scandal. The collapse of South Vietnam and the opposition of conservative Republicans created an inhospitable environment for pursuing normalization during Gerald Ford’s presidency; any policy shift that could be depicted as appeasing a longstanding communist enemy and abandoning a loyal, anti-communist ally generated significant political resistance.

Officials within the Carter administration debated how to normalize relations with China without damaging relations with the Soviet Union, China’s great rival within the international Communist movement. Nevertheless, Carter and his top aides agreed that the opportunity to normalize relations with China might be fleeting and should not be squandered.In the spring of 1978, Carter decided to proceed with normalization. A handful of top U.S. officials agreed upon instructions, which the President approved, that were sent to the U.S. negotiator Leonard Woodcock, the head of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing. By the terms of the agreement the two sides reached, the United States acknowledged “the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.” The United States declared its intention to abrogate the Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the Republic of China, originally signed in December 1954. Simultaneously, however, the United States declared in the Joint Communiqué that it would “maintain cultural, commercial, and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan.” In Carter’s address to the nation on December 15, 1978, he announced that in accordance with “the Shanghai communiqué, issued on President Nixon’s historic visit, we will continue to have an interest in the peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue.” The Joint Communiqué stated that the United States would begin official diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China on January 1, 1979, and that the two countries would open Embassies on March 1.

The exchange of accredited ambassadors and the operation of Embassies enabled both parties to negotiate diplomatic disputes and pursue mutual interests. A number of disagreements arose that required management by both countries. During Chinese Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping’s goodwill visit to the United States in January 1979, he informed Carter of the People’s Republic of China’s intention to attack Vietnam in response to that country’s invasion of Cambodia. Carter unsuccessfully attempted to dissuade Deng from pursuing this military action. Another point of contention was the legal framework that Congress erected to enable the people of the United States and Taiwan to continue economic and cultural relations following the U.S. decision to break diplomatic relations. PRC leaders repeatedly expressed displeasure with the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which became law on April 10, 1979. The TRA was influenced by Congressional supporters of Taiwan and stated that it is the policy of the United States “to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character; and to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.” In his signing statement, Carter declared that he would use the discretion granted to him by Congress to interpret the TRA “in a manner consistent with our interest in the well-being of the people on Taiwan and with the understandings we reached on the normalization of relations with the People’s Republic of China.” In addition to disagreement over the TRA, U.S.–PRC relations following normalization were impaired by arguments over longstanding financial claims, economic disputes, and the PRC view that the United States was too conciliatory toward the Soviet Union.

Despite such difficulties, U.S.–PRC relations generally improved as the two countries made progress on economic and security issues. Deng’s 1979 trip was extremely successful as he charismatically wooed Congress, the media, and the American people. Journalists depicted the Chinese leader as personable, famously photographing him at a rodeo wearing a ten-gallon hat. On January 31, the United States and People’s Republic of China concluded agreements on various topics including consular relations, academic exchanges, and cooperation in the fields of space technology, high-energy physics, and science and technology policy. The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan increased Sino-American military cooperation, despite the objections of Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. The United States and People’s Republic of China also coordinated their other responses to the Soviet incursion, such as the boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow. The normalization of relations provided both sides with the essential diplomatic mechanisms necessary to manage difficulties and promote common objectives.

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In 1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon traveled to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and met with Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, and Zhou Enlai, the PRC Premier. Over the course of this visit, the two governments negotiated the Shanghai Communiqué, an important step toward improving relations between the United States and the PRC after many years of hostility.

Diplomatic estrangement between the two countries went back to the 1940s. After the Chinese civil war ended in 1949, the Communists established the People’s Republic of China on the Chinese mainland while many soldiers and officials of the defeated Republic of China (ROC) evacuated to the island of Taiwan. For the 30 years that followed, the United States recognized the Republic of China as the legitimate government of China and had no official diplomatic relations with Communist China.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were indications that the United States and the People’s Republic of China were considering rapprochement. The escalating war in Vietnam led U.S. officials to look for ways to improve relations with Communist governments in Asia in the hopes that such a policy might lessen future conflict, undermine alliances between Communist countries, diplomatically isolate North Vietnam, and increase U.S. leverage against the Soviet Union. Likewise, Sino-Soviet tension contributed to the Chinese leadership’s desire for a rapprochement with the United States. Nixon signaled his interest in improved relations by easing the travel and trade restrictions against China that dated from the Korean War in the early 1950s. Although the Sino-U.S. Ambassadorial Talks, which began in 1955 and continued intermittently over the years that followed, had reached a hiatus, the two sides agreed to reopen them in 1969. Of greater significance, Nixon established a secret channel to the PRC’s leadership through Pakistani President Yahya Khan. In Nixon’s view, Khan was an attractive intermediary since he had good relations with the leaders of both the United States and the PRC, and he also provided a means to circumvent the U.S. Department of State, which Nixon feared might oppose or publicize his initiative.

By late 1970, the pace of rapprochement was accelerating. Through the Pakistani channel, the PRC government expressed interest in high level discussions with the United States aimed at improving relations. Mao likewise told U.S. journalist Edgar Snow that he would be happy to talk with Nixon. In 1971, Nixon removed the last remaining restrictions preventing Americans from traveling to mainland China. Following well-publicized fraternization between U.S. and PRC table tennis players during an international competition in Japan, the PRC issued an invitation in April 1971 for the U.S. ping pong team to play a match in Communist China. In April 1972, the PRC ping pong team visited the United States on a good-will tour. This informal “Ping Pong Diplomacy” provided a public face for more serious diplomatic negotiations.

Henry Kissinger, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, traveled to Beijing twice during 1971 to discuss the conditions under which each side would consider a normalization of relations. The first of these trips was conducted in great secrecy and only revealed to the American public during a dramatic speech by President Nixon. Kissinger’s second trip to the PRC, in October 1971, coincided with a vote on Chinese representation in the United Nations. The United States advocated that the United Nations seat delegations from both Communist China and Taiwan. This proposal failed and, instead, the member states of the United Nations voted to seat the PRC delegation in place of the Taiwan delegation. Although the United States unsuccessfully opposed Taiwan’s expulsion from the General Assembly, it supported Communist China’s entrance and assumption of a seat on the Security Council; this contributed to a major diplomatic triumph for the People’s Republic of China.

Nixon travelled to Communist China February 21–28, 1972, becoming the first U.S. President to visit mainland China while in office. Near the end of the trip, the two governments issued the Shanghai Communiqué, in which each articulated its position on a crucial obstacle to normalization, the Taiwan issue. The People’s Republic of China affirmed that Taiwan was a part of China, and that it opposed all attempts to create two Chinas, one China and one Taiwan, or an independent Taiwan. The United States declared that it “acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain that there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China,” and that it did not challenge that position. The United States also noted the importance of finding a peaceful resolution to the Taiwan issue and that it intended to withdraw remaining U.S. troops from Taiwan. Over the course of the talks, Mao and Zhou made clear to Nixon that their country would not normalize relations with the United States as long as Washington continued formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan; Nixon stated that the United States did not support Taiwanese independence. The principles established in the Shanghai Communiqué provided the basis for the establishment of formal diplomatic relations [Carter normalization milestone] between the two countries in 1979. On a global scale, rapprochement fundamentally altered the context of the Cold War and influenced the subsequent movement towards détente between the United States and the Soviet Union.