Sino American Normalization And Its Policy Implications

Analyzing the relations between the People's Republic of China and the United States from 1974 to the official normalization of ties between the countries on December 15, 1978, leading experts in East Asian affairs provide a comprehensive view of the likely consequences of the normalization process. Among topics discussed are: the implications of normalization for the strategic interests of China, the United States, Japan and the Soviet Union in East Asia; the future of Taiwan; the expansion of bilateral trade with and investment in China; and the transfer of technology to China. Includes the major official agreements between the two countries between 1972 and the present. ISBN 0-03-058023-4 (pbk.) : $15.95.

Relations between China and the United States have been of central importance to both countries over the past half-century, as well as to all states affected by that relationship--Taiwan and the Soviet Union foremost among them. Only recently, however, has the opening of archives made it possible to research this history dispassionately. The eight chapters in this volume offer the first multinational, multi-archival review of the history of Chinese-American conflict and cooperation in the 1970s. On the Chinese side, normalization of relations was instrumental to Beijing's effort to enhance its security vis- -vis the Soviet Union and was seen as a tactical necessity to promote Chinese military and economic interests. The United States was equally motivated by national security concerns. In the wake of Vietnam, policymakers saw normalization as a means of forestalling Soviet power. As the essays in this volume show, normalization was far from a foregone conclusion.

More than thirty years have passed since the normalization of Sino-American relations in 1979. The United States and China are becoming more interdependent economically, yet at the same time, significant movement and improvements in Sino-American relations are constrained by major economic, security, political and other differences between the two countries. This volume analyzes current problems and issues in Sino-American relations in the context of regional and global strategic patterns and their historical development in the last thirty years. These problems and issues such as the international financial crisis, development of global reserve currencies, regional conflicts and competition for international domination have significant impacts on both world powers, and important implications to the world economy and politics.

Taking an in-depth look at cases of the two Germanys, the United States and China, and Israel and Egypt, Armstrong examines why initiatives by Brandt, Nixon/Carter and Mao, and Sadat and Begin succeeded where previous attempts at rapprochement had failed.The book looks first at the available theory and then at rapprochemnet in practice. Were there, the author asks, similarities between the three cases in terms of the prevailing international circumstances, the strategies and tactics adopted in the pursuit of improved relations, and the formal negotiations that ushered in the new relationships? Armstrong concludes that some underlying principles did indeed govern the shift from mutual antagonism to mutual acceptance--principles that may apply equally in today's post-Cold War world.