Before rapprochement even began, Nixon told Time magazine in October 1970, "If there is anything I want to do before I die, it is to go to China" (“Richard M. Nixon”). This allurement immediately gave China the upper hand, for as soon as negotiations began, all discussions took place in Beijing. Kissinger was similarly awed by the region and especially by its leaders. After meeting Mao Tse-Tung in a meeting that lasted only one hour, he said Mao, “dominated the room by exuding in almost tangible form the overwhelming drive to prevail” (“Mao Tse-Tung”). Both Nixon and Kissinger’s allurement was immediately recognized by the Chinese, who chose to manipulate these sentiments in negotiations in order to gain nearly all their objectives, while the U.S. just nodded away, content enough to have merely been permitted into the country.
The results of these meetings are most apparent in the Shanghai Communiqué of 1972, which announced the opening of China and the two countries goal of normalizing relations. Entering these negotiations the U.S. still supported Chiang Kai-shek’s government in Taiwan, as well as their seat in the United Nation’s as representative of the whole of China. The final communiqué however stated that,
“The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China... It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves. With this prospect in mind, it affirms the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan” (U.S. Department of State).
This change in position demonstrates the U.S.’s willingness to abandon support of Taiwan and permit its absorption into Mainland China. This was further exemplified by the mainland’s takeover of the UN seat. Although Nixon resigned and it took until 1979 to fully normalize relations, throughout the entire process these same policy approaches were followed.
Throughout the normalization of relations, it became a common belief in the United States that a natural outcome of China’s opening would be its democratization. This conviction however, had no substantial factual basis, and instead was only an ideological dream. This misperception is similar to the stereotypical view Nixon and Kissinger first held in engaging with China, in that it seriously affected relations between the two countries. The climax of this notion came during the late 1980’s Chinese democracy movement and the June 4 Tiananmen massacre. A small and localized student population demanded democracy and staged a sit-in protest in Beijing’s city center. U.S. officials immediately jumped to the conclusion that this would be the fall of the communist government, which was fueled by CIA documents (faultily) reporting that the Chinese government had become divided at the very highest levels and was fissuring all the way down to the local levels (CIA). However, to anyone in China it was more than apparent that this was not the case.
Just preceding the Tiananmen massacre, Ambassador Lord stated in a cable from the embassy back to the U.S. that Chinese leaders, “currently place their premium on stability,” and they define stability as, “the suppression of dissent” (Lord). He added that, “They see the free expression of ideas as leading to instability rather than helping them find answers to complex questions” (Lord). This implies that the result of the demonstrations could only be suppression, which is exactly what happened. On June 4, 1989 the students were surrounded by the People’s Liberation Army and brutally murdered, the command to use such lethal force coming from the highest level of authority. This demonstrates the military control the government holds over the people and their insistence on maintaining it at all costs.
Following the massacre, U.S. intelligence continued to report that divisions within the government must exist and communism was destined to fall. In a CIA report titled “China’s Military: Fragile Unity in the Wake of Crisis,” the Chinese military leadership was characterized as, “deeply divided over the appropriateness of the internal crackdown of June 4, with many officers concerned about Using the military to quell civil unrest” (CIA Directorate of Intelligence). This intelligence report however, was entirely unfounded and instead of collapsing into a democratic revolution as U.S. officials fantasized, China and the Chinese Communist Party emerged from the event more unified than ever before. As Andrew Nathan suggests in the introduction to the book The Tiananmen Papers, “Bureaucratically, the Chinese system proved to be a strong one.” An immediate purge occurred of anyone in relation to the protests and in response there was a surge in top officials declaring their support of the military crackdown (“China: Back to Business”). This outcome, so unexpected to officials in the U.S., left them in a conflicted position of how to respond.
U.S. citizens expected an immediate response to the humanitarian atrocities committed , but underlying economic issues immediately became a decisive factor in the U.S.’s response. On June 29, 1989 the State Department issued a document entitled “Themes,” in which they outlined the Bush Administrations stance on the incident. It stated that the PRC was permitted to deal with its citizens in any manner seen fit, as that was an “internal affair,” which followed the agreement reached in the Shanghai Communiqué. However, the American people’s reaction was also an “internal affair” and their interests would also have to be addressed. While President Bush did initiate initial economic sanctions to satisfy Americans’ concerns, he still emphasized his desire to, “manage short-term events in a way that will best assure a healthy relationship over time" (“Themes”). In the end, the long-term economic relationship was deemed more important to the U.S. national interest than short term reprimands and therefore China felt no serious consequences for their inhumane actions. Instead, the U.S. granted China Most Favored Nation Status in 1991, shortly followed by their entrance into the WTO.
This history of Sino-U.S. relations demonstrates its unbalanced nature and the ability of the Chinese to manipulate the U.S.. This however, is not an issue that we have moved beyond, but instead still haunts U.S. foreign policy. The same misperceptions exist, especially regarding the expectation for China to democratize. As Yang Ma reports in The Economist, “When the U.S. Congress granted Permanent Normal Trade Relations to China in 2000, proponents of expanded trade predicted that China's ongoing economic opening would ultimately lead to political liberalization” (Ma). This was further fueled by the belief that the introduction of the Internet into China would lead to a newly informed population and their ability to mobilize. As President Bill Clinton said, "[B]y letting our high-tech companies in to bring the Internet and the information revolution to China, we will be unleashing forces that no totalitarian operation rooted in the last century's industrial society can control" (Clinton). Following this technological introduction however, China shocked the U.S. by imposing censor measures that had seemed inconceivable before. According to an Amnesty International report, “All communication on the Internet in China passes through government-controlled routers and the authorities are able to block access to many sites and to filter content and delete individual links or web pages if considered ‘dangerous.’ or ‘subversive’” (Amnesty International). This type of censorship makes the dissemination of political information nearly impossible, and therefore prevents the Internet from being used as at tool for democratization.
The Internet is only one form of China’s extreme censorship though. Their control extends to all levels of society, from information and news reported through newspapers, television, radio and the internet, to cameras monitoring people’s actions in all public places. The ironic aspect of this situation is that it is U.S. companies providing the technology that allows the Chinese government to conduct this monitoring. This exemplifies the discrepancy between how the American people believe China should be dealt with and how big business is negotiating with them (as was earlier implied with the granting of MFN status. to China and their entrance into the WTO).
Following the Tiananmen massacre the American people demanded China be seriously reprimanded, so in response sanctions were implemented prohibiting the export “of any crime control or detection instruments or equipment” to China. Representative Tom Lantos, who helped draft this law said, "We wanted to undermine the effectiveness of the police in rounding up, imprisoning, and torturing political dissidents, not only those involved in the Tiananmen Square movement, but for years to come.” This pacified the American public, yet large information technology companies decided to ignore these laws, knowing that America and China’s integrated economies would make the enforcement of these restrictions impossible.
With the knowledge of the U.S. government’s inability to impose any real regulations, IT companies continued to conduct trade with China and today sales are skyrocketing, estimated in the tens of millions of dollars a year and rapidly growing (Einhorn). In defense, these companies state that the systems will help the Chinese differentiate between real criminals and innocuous dissidents. John S. Chen, the chief executive of Sybase Inc, a U.S. based company that sells database programs to the Shanghai police said, "Anything that helps China to modernize will help China to improve its human rights situation," and, "The more accurate information the police have about an individual target, the more accurate and sensible they can be" (Einhorn). Unfortunately, China has cited, “Signing online petitions, calling for reform and an end to corruption, planning to set up a pro-democracy party, publishing ‘rumors about SARS’, communicating with groups abroad, opposing the persecution of the Falun Gong and calling for a review of the 1989 crackdown on the democracy protests,” as “subversive” activities, which “endanger state security” (Amnesty). This has resulted in the arrest of at least 260,000 individuals and their being held in ideological “reeducation” camps for indefinite periods of time, according to the U.S. State Department (Amnesty International).
China defends such actions declaring that they are necessary in maintaining stability, which they view as fundamental to their state security. This view seems very reasonable and similar to any state’s perspective on national security. It therefore also seems rational that U.S. companies would provide technology to support this, as they have, with Cisco exemplifying this by pledging its support to China’s goal of “increasing social stability” (Einhorn). However, it is necessary to recall how China defines “stability.” As Ambassador Lord noted, China defines “stability” as, “the suppression of dissent” (Lord). Therefore, there is no connection between U.S. companies supplying of technological systems and a move towards democracy in China. Instead, the more open and modern China becomes, the more repressive their society will be and the further they will move away from democracy.
In the end, the U.S. and China are capitalist countries with economics determining their relationship. In this system there is no room for moralist or humanitarian views, as they cannot be implemented in any form. Instead, the goal of profit dictates and eclipses all other objectives. Although U.S. businesses attempt to justify their support of China’s repressive practices, they ultimately recognize that if they don’t sell to the Chinese authorities, competitors in other countries will (Einhorn). In the search for profit therefore, these companies chose to simply ignore what their products are being used for. As Microsoft has stated, they are "focused on delivering the best technology to people throughout the world", but "cannot control the way it may ultimately be used” (Amnesty). This ability to “focus” and promote to the public only one aspect of the relationship permits U.S. companies and Americans in general to believe the fallacy that China’s modernization can lead to democracy.
This perception is further fueled by the Chinese themselves, who continue to delight U.S. fantasies by saying they are, “sympathetic to democratic impulses” (Khan). They keep Americans salivating for hints of democratization, yet continually offer excuses of how, “time is not right, or conditions are not suitable, or procedures are not yet finalized” (Khan). These procrastinations do not declare repulsion to democracy and therefore keep the U.S. waiting with baited breath, ready in the meantime to offer the Chinese most anything it wishes. Yet, this situation is only a continuation of the initial relationship established by Nixon and Kissinger with Mao and Chou En-lai. Through rapprochement, Tiananmen, the normalization of relations and ever increasing economic interdependence, China has incessantly held the upper hand by fueling Americans dream of an ideological revolution in the last great communist nation. This misperception however, will only lead to a continuation of the situation that has persisted, and in contrast to Americans’ expectations, the modernization of China will only serve to fortify its authoritarian system.
Work Cited
Amnesty International “People’s Republic of China Controls Tighten as Internet
Activism Grows.” Jan 28 2004. < http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/
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1989. 21 pp.
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Einhorn, Bruce and Ben Elgin. “Helping Big Brother Go High Tech.” Business Week
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Khan, Joseph. “A Democratic China? Not So Fast, Beijing Leaders Say.” New York
Times: April 8, 2004.
Lord. “U.S. Embassy Beijing Cable, Farewell and Hail.” April 21, 1989. <
Ma, Ying. “Democracy’s Slow Boat to China.” Asian Wall Street Journal. Feb 15, 2006.
< http://www.aei.org/research/nri/publications/pubID.23898,projectID.22/
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“Richard M. Nixon.” Public Broadcasting System. 1999.
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The Tiananmen Papers
State Department document entitled "Themes" (June 29, 1989)
