Wayne State University Wayne State University Dissertations 1-1-2013 Reading The eT a Leaves: The ediM a And Sino- American Rapprochement, 1963-1972 Guolin Yi Wayne State University, Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations Part of the Communication Commons, History Commons, and the International Relations Commons Recommended Citation Yi, Guolin, "Reading The eT a Leaves: The eM dia And Sino-American Rapprochement, 1963-1972" (2013). Wayne State University Dissertations. Paper 719. This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@WayneState. It has been accepted for inclusion in Wayne State University Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WayneState. READING THE TEA LEAVES: THE MEDIA AND SINO-AMERICAN RAPPROCHEMENT, 1963-1972 by GUOLIN YI DISSERTATION Submitted to the Graduate School of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2013 MAJOR: HISTORY Approved by: ____________________________________ Advisor Date ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ! ! ! COPYRIGHT BY GUOLIN YI 2013 All Rights Reserved DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, Youju Yi and Lanying Zhao, my siseter Fenglin Yi, and my wife Lin Zhang. ! ii! ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am sincerely and heartily grateful to my advisor Melvin Small, who has lighted my way through the graduate study at Wayne State. I am sure this dissertation would not have been possible without his quality guidance, warm encouragement, and conscientious editing. I would also like to thank other members of my dissertation committee: Professors Alex Day, Aaron Retish, Liette Gidlow, and Yumin Sheng for their helpful suggestions. It is also my great pleasure to thank Professors Denver Brunsman (now at George Washington University) and Sandra VanBurkleo, whose friendliness and encouragement meant a lot to me, especially when I started my life at Wayne. While writing my dissertation, I have benefited from conversations with Robert Ross from Boston College and Odd Arne Westad from the London School of Economics and Political Science. I am obliged to John Lynch of the Television News Archive at Vanderbilt University and Dai Xiaolan along with Ma Xiao-he at Harvard Yenching Library. They have offered generous assistance when I did archival research at their institutions. I would like to show my gratitude to fellow graduate students and teaching assistants: Richard Fry, Barry Johnson, Renee Bricker, Mike Murphy, Errin Stagich, Elizabeth Ryan, Edmund La Clair, Karen Turlay, Maria Wendeln, and many others who have extended support and shared my joy and hardships in study as well as teaching. I am truly thankful to the staff at the History Department of Wayne State, Ginny Corbin, Gayle McCreedy, and Kay Stone (now at the English Department), whose kindness has made me feel at home at the Department. Lastly, my heart-felt appreciation goes to my wife Lin Zhang, my closest friend who has been a source of inspiration and happiness for me. She not only has helped me with the materials, but also has spent endless hours with me walking through the challenges as well as happiness. ! iii! Thanks to a Dissertation Fellowship from the Humanities Center and a Summer Dissertation Fellowship from the Graduate School of Wayne State, I was able to focus on writing and revising the dissertation. ! iv! TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication....................................................................................................................................... ii Acknoledgements........................................................................................................................... iii Notes about Chinese Names and Places ........................................................................................ vi List of Abbreviations .................................................................................................................... vii Chapter 1: Introduction................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: The Depoliticization of the China Issue: 1963-1966 .................................................. 26 Chapter 3: The Cultural Revolution as a Watershed: 1966-1968................................................. 64 Chapter 4: The Sino-Soviet Crisis: “Danger and Opportunity” in 1969 .................................... 107 Chapter 5: From Warsaw to Beijing: The “Intricate Minuet”: 1970-1971................................. 142 Chapter 6: Preparing for the Show in Beijing: 1971-1972 ......................................................... 183 Chapter 7: Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 228 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 237 Abstract....................................................................................................................................... 261 Autobiographical Statement ....................................................................................................... 263 ! v! NOTES ABOUT CHINESE NAMES AND PLACES All Chinese names and places throughout the text are rendered in the Pinyin system of transliteration, except where they occur in different forms in quotations. As with the tradition in East Asia, the family name generally goes before the given name for Chinese people, except for those who have adopted English names. For terms that had been widely accepted, such as Chiang Kai-shek and Canton, I put their English equivalents in brackets after their Pinyin spellings. ! vi! LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CCP Chinese Communist Party CIA Central Intelligence Agency CPSV Communist Party of the Soviet Union CWIHP Cold War International History Project FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States GLF Great Leap Forward JFK John Fitzgerald Kennedy LBJ Lyndon Baines Johnson NSC National Security Council NYT New York Times PD People’s Daily PRC People’s Republic of China RN Reference News UN United Nations WP Washington Post ! vii! 1! Chapter 1: Introduction The U.S.-China rapprochement of 1972 is regarded as one of the most important events of the Cold War. In a self-congratulatory tone, Richard Nixon claims that it was “the most dramatic geopolitical event since World War II.” Historians like Chen Jian and David Wilson consider it, along with the Sino-Soviet border clashes, as “two of the most important events in the international history of the Cold War.” 1 Thus far, scholars of the Sino-American rapprochement have examined the Cold War international setting, domestic politics, and the policy-making of the two governments. With most of the works focusing on the political aspect, we know more and more about diplomacy and triangulation. However, we still know very little about how people in the two countries came to learn about the change in relations and how each nation prepared its people for the dramatic rapprochement. Historiographical Survey During the first decade after Nixon’s visit to China, American scholars who studied the Sino-American rapprochement generally employed the “realistic approach” that emphasized the balance of power among Washington, Moscow, and Beijing. These scholars explained the Sino- American thaw in light of the change in the international environment such as the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the eruption of Sino-Soviet border clashes in 1969 in particular. They argued that Beijing’s fear of becoming the “next Czechoslovakia” compelled it to seek reconciliation with Washington as a way to counterbalance the Soviet threat.2 Due to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Richard Nixon, The Real War (New York: Warner Books, 1980), 134; Chen Jian, Introduction to “All under Heaven Is Great Chaos: Beijing, the Sino-Soviet Border Clashes, and the Turn toward Sino-American Rapprochement, 1968-69,” ed. Chen Jian and David Wilson, Cold War International History Project (CWIHP), Working Paper No.11 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1998), 155. 2 Harold C. Hinton, Peking-Washington: Chinese Foreign Policy and the United States (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1976), 28; A. Doak Barnett, China Policy: Old Problems and New Challenge (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1977), 2-3; Allen S. Whiting, China and the United States, What Next? (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1976); John King Fairbank, The United States and China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 457. ! 2! their lack of first-hand sources, especially those from China, these scholars used inferential reasoning in explaining policy-making in both governments. Their speculations about policy- making in China were based on the American perspective. In the 1980s, under the influence of Warren Cohen, a reformist movement occurred in the study of China in the United States. Younger scholars began to criticize Sinologists of the first generation, such as Barnett and Fairbank, for being Western-centric and proposed the “Sino- centric approach.” Cohen’s America’s Response to China was a direct counter-approach to Fairbank’s “impact-response” theory, which argued that the modern history of China was a response