| Summary |
This study analyzes the main themes of the policy of the United States toward China from 1978-1988, the Chinese responses, and the controversies resulting from their different interests. The primary focus is the most important issues in their relations during this period, specific on trade and technology transfer, Taiwan and human rights. This research points out that most studies have tended to overemphasize the importance of strategic interests in U.S. policy making, interpreting relations between the United States and China in terms of the military threats from the Soviet Union that both perceived. Strategic interests did play a dominant role in shaping the initial efforts of the Carter administration to normalize relations between the People's Republic of China, as well as influencing the decision of the early years of the Reagan administration to resolve the dispute over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. Changes in the international balance of power beginning in 1985 reduced the importance of strategic cooperation between the United States and China. The "strategic interest" theory is not sufficient to explain the conflicts between the United States and China over human rights and import quotas of Chinese textiles, where differing cultural values and economic systems were the primary considerations. The study concludes that both the Carter and Reagan administrations were guilty of sending confusing signals to China because their policies were based on inconsistent U.S. interests. President Ronald Reagan, for example, claimed that his administration supported the efforts of the government of Taiwan and the mainland China to reunite the Chinese nation, based on the premise that the Taiwan issue was an internal Chinese problem. His administration refused to stop selling arms to Taiwan, which the island Republic counted on to defend itself against the mainland. Beijing had a hard time understanding these American policy shifts. It attributed these policy changes to a lack of sincerity on the part of the U.S. government in its relations with China. The thesis concludes that different historical backgrounds nurture different social values; the conflicts caused by these differences in US-China relations from 1978- 1988 appear, in retrospect, to have been inevitable. |
