P1: KcS 0521839866agg.xml CY468B/Goh 0521839866 August 25, 2004 17:12 Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement with China, 1961–1974 From “Red Menace” to “Tacit Ally” EVELYN GOH Nanyang Technological University iii P1: KcS 0521839866agg.xml CY468B/Goh 0521839866 August 25, 2004 17:12 published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom cambridge university press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, uk 40 West 20th Street, New York, ny 10011-4211, usa 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon´ 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org C Evelyn Goh 2005 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2005 Printed in the United States of America Typeface Sabon 10/13 pt. System LATEX 2ε [tb] A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Goh, Evelyn. Constructing the U.S. rapprochement with China, 1961–1974 : from “red menace” to “tacit ally” / Evelyn Goh. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-521-83986-6 1. United States – Foreign relations – China. 2. China – Foreign relations – United States. 3. United States – Foreign relations – 1961–1963. 4. United States – Foreign relations – 1963–1969. 5. United States – Foreign relations – 1969–1974. i. Title. e183.8.c5g625 2004 327.7305109046–dc22 2004045808 isbn 0 521 83986 6 hardback iv P1: KcS 0521839866agg.xml CY468B/Goh 0521839866 August 25, 2004 17:12 Contents Foreword by Rosemary Foot page ix Acknowledgments xi List of Abbreviations xiii 1 Introduction 1 part i. competing discourses, 1961–1968 2 “Red Menace” to “Revolutionary Rival”: Recasting the Chinese Communist Threat 17 The “Red Menace”: Communist China as Expansionist Military Aggressor 20 “Revolutionary Rival”: Communist China as Independent Militant Challenger 30 3 “Troubled Modernizer” to “Resurgent Power”: Revisionist Images of the PRC and Arguments for a New China Policy 46 “Troubled Modernizer”: China as an Underdeveloped Country 47 “Resurgent Power”: China as Frustrated Reemerging Major State 61 4 The Revisionist Legacy: The Discourse of Reconciliation with China by 1968 82 Competing Discourses 84 The Discourse of Reconciliation with China, 1968 92 part ii. discursive transitions, 1969–1971 5 Nixon’s China Policy Discourse in Context 101 “Tough Coexistence”: Nixon’s China Policy Thinking as Vice President, 1952–1960 102 v P1: KcS 0521839866agg.xml CY468B/Goh 0521839866 August 25, 2004 17:12 vi Contents China as “Key Player”: The Development of Nixon’s China Strategy, 1960–1968 106 President Nixon’s China Policy Discourse, 1969–1971 112 Nixon’s Discourse of Reconciliation in Context 121 6 Debating the Rapprochement: “Resurgent Revolutionary Power” versus “Threatened Major Power” 124 New Opportunities and Old Doubts at the Beginning of the Nixon Administration 125 “Revolutionary Resurgent Power”: The State Department Rethinks China Policy 128 “Threatened Major Power”: The White House Reconceptualizes China 136 Debates and Departures: The Renewed Warsaw Talks, 1970 142 Conclusion 147 part iii. discourses of rapprochement in practice, 1971–1974 7 “Principled” Realist Power: Laying the Discursive Foundations of a New Relationship, July 1971 to February 1972 153 Kissinger’s New Representation of the Chinese 155 New Identity, New Interests: Articulating the Common Ground for a New Relationship 164 Conclusion: Discursive Foundations 182 8 Principles in Practice: Policy Implications of the U.S. Decision for Rapprochement 184 Test of Friendship: The 1971 South Asian Crisis 185 Negotiating Principles, Postponing Resolution: U.S. Policy toward Taiwan 192 Discursive Reconstructions and Policy Outcomes 204 9 “Selling” the Rapprochement: The Nixon Administration’s Justification of the New China Policy 206 “Realist Resurgent Power”: Explaining the Former Enemy 207 China as “the Enemy of My Enemy”: Realpolitik for the Right 215 Conclusion 220 10 “Tacit Ally,” June 1972 to 1974: Consolidating or Saving the U.S.–China Rapprochement 222 Triangular Politics, June 1972 to February 1973: Former Enemy to Tacit Ally? 223 Maintaining Momentum in U.S.–PRC Relations, July–November 1973 236 Stalemate: U.S.–PRC Relations in 1974 247 Conclusion: Triangular Balance of Power to Tacit Alliance 252 P1: KcS 0521839866agg.xml CY468B/Goh 0521839866 August 25, 2004 17:12 Contents vii 11 Conclusion 256 Bibliography 269 Dramatis Personae 285 Index 295 P1: JTR/JZW 0521839866c01.xml CY468B/Goh 0521839866 August 4, 2004 15:44 1 Introduction Discourses of Reconciliation Your handshake came over the vastest ocean in the world – twenty-five years of no communication. Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai to President Richard Nixon, Beijing, 21 February 1972 It was the week that changed the world. Nixon, Shanghai, 27 February 1972 President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to the People’s Republic of China in February 1972 marked a Sino-American rapprochement and the be- ginning of the route to normalization of relations. This came more than twenty years after mainland China was “lost” to the communists and, less than a year later in 1950, attacked American-led United Nations forces in Korea. Thereafter, a key tenet of U.S. Cold War strategy was to “contain” Communist China by means of bilateral alliances and military bases in East Asia, and to isolate it by severing trade, travel, and diplomatic con- tacts and refusing to recognize the communist regime. The next twenty years were characterized by American opposition to UN membership for mainland China, three crises in the Taiwan Straits, offensive rhetoric, threats of nuclear attack, and the fighting of a proxy war in Vietnam. In ending this hostile estrangement in 1972, Nixon thus executed a dra- matic reversal of U.S. China policy. The U.S.–China rapprochement was the most significant strategic shift of the Cold War prior to 1989, more so than the Sino-Soviet split. As Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger claimed, the rapprochement “changed the world” by transforming a Cold War international system made up of two opposing 1 P1: JTR/JZW 0521839866c01.xml CY468B/Goh 0521839866 August 4, 2004 15:44 2 Introduction ideological blocs into a tripolar one in which great-power foreign policy was conducted on the basis of “national interest” and power balancing. This reversal of policy, while dramatic, is not generally considered dif- ficult to explain.1 The U.S.–China rapprochement is understood as the re- sult of the operation of the realist logic of balance-of-power.2 Washington and Beijing were brought together by a shifting balance of power, which saw the former’s military superiority reduced in relation to Moscow, and the latter no longer an ally but a significantly weaker adversary facing a possible war with the Soviet Union. The Sino-Soviet relationship was characterized from the start by ide- ological tension, which developed as the two states competed for leader- ship in the international communist movement.3 This conflict was evident not only in the fierce disagreements about issues such as the communist revolutionary struggle and relations with the United States, but also in Moscow’s declining support for its ally.4 By the late 1960s, the conflict had developed military dimensions, with troop build-ups on the Sino- Soviet border. The Chinese decision for rapprochement with the United States was motivated by two sets of reasons. First, at the national security level, Beijing needed the U.S. opening to deter a Soviet attack. China’s strategic position in relation to its militarily superior neighbor worsened 1 The best accounts of the rapprochement are found in Harry Harding, A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China since 1972 (Washington, DC, 1992), pp. 35–40; Robert Ross, Negotiating Cooperation: The United States and China, 1969–1989 (Stanford, 1995), pp. 1–54; John Garver, China’s Decision for Rapprochement with the United States, 1968– 1971 (Boulder, 1982); and William Bundy, A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency (New York, 1998). A detailed but journalistic account based on new documents and interviews is provided by Patrick Tyler, A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China (New York, 1999), pp. 45–180. For a succinct recent account of the Chinese decision based on new documents, see Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, 2001), Chapter 9. 2 Realist and neo-realist schools of thought perceive the international system to be anarchi- cal, causing states to be preoccupied with ways to enhance their relative military power in order to secure themselves against threats from other states, including forging alliances to balance against another powerful state. See Hans Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York, 1949); Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Relations (Reading, 1979); and Stephen Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, 1987). 3 See Steven Goldstein, “Nationalism and Internationalism: Sino-Soviet Relations,” in Thomas Robinson and David Shambaugh, eds., Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (Oxford, 1994). 4 Moscow’s qualified military support for Beijing had been evident as early as the 1950s, when, anxious to avoid a conflict with the