Conceptions of two competing orders are taking shape. This is a critique to the west’s tendency to see the world on its own terms, but in this lesson there is probably an even harder truth. The liberal international order was never truly global In the case of current US-China relations, instead, we have a clearly declining superpower with a clearly rising economic and military power with a long list of grievances, and the two unable to reach much-needed diplomatic arrangements.Ī world apart: US president Joe Biden and Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in a virtual summit, November 2021. Yet others might note that during that time there was an equilibrium of power, and diplomacy was able to operate efficiently with necessary agreements. Many would admit that economic interdependence means we are in a much better place compared to the cold war years. Fifty years is a short time in historical perspective, and during this time we have managed to move from a cold war with Russia and the unfreezing of relations with China, to a new type of cold war between the US and China. Five decades after the meeting between Nixon and Mao, there are four important lessons to be drawn.Įverything changes more quickly than western strategy-makers believe. The current relationship is probably too complex to attach a label to – although clearly the trend is one of diplomatic unravelling. Only two months ago, Joe Biden was inviting the west to join the US in a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics – a practice unheard of since the cold war. So tensions between the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) did not end when Donald Trump left the White House in January 2021. But Barack Obama’s “ pivot to Asia” launched between 20, implemented with more warmongering rhetoric by Donald Trump through his trade offensive, revealed that the world is just too small for two great powers like these, regardless of who the leaders are. The shock of 9/11 and the financial crisis of 2008 meant that structural tensions between the US and China could be hidden under the carpet throughout the 2000s. Meanwhile, to his secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice, China was a “potential threat”. But this would not last.Ĭhina’s defence expenditure was growing fast and when George W Bush started his race to the White House, he described China as “a competitor, not a strategic partner”. This was enough for a military crisis in the Taiwan Strait in 1995-96 and the US bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade in 1999 – declared involuntary by the Americans – not to destroy Nixon’s and others’ diplomatic efforts. With a passionate speech in March 2000, Bill Clinton sought to convince the US Congress that supporting the PRC’s entry into the World Trade Organisation was the right thing to do for those leaders who believed in “a future of greater openness and freedom for the people of China in a future of greater prosperity for the American people”. Indeed, a positive peak was reached during the 1990s. If the US-China train did not derail, it was because, at the time, the US continued to prioritise economic interests. Despite the shock to the world, Bush bypassed what Kissinger described as “the bureaucracy and his own ban on high-level exchanges”, writing a secret letter to Deng addressing him as lao pengyou – old friend – in memory of the years Bush had spent as liaison officer in Beijing. Most strikingly, the relationship made it through the repression of Tiananmen Square’s protests in 1989. This was characterised by spirited support for Taiwan, which in the early days meant representatives such as vice-president (and later president), George H W Bush, and the former national security adviser Henry Kissinger had to conduct some diplomacy of reparation. First, it made it through the administration of Ronald Reagan from 1980 to 1988. The relationship has since survived two crucial passages. A few years after Nixon’s China trip, “ normalisation” was achieved by Jimmy Carter and Deng Xiaoping, and the US finally moved its embassy from Taiwan to Beijing. The Nixon-Mao meeting was just the beginning of a durable, stable relationship. Strategic interests of the two great powers were as aligned at the time as they clash nowadays. But the US’s long-term objective was to bring the most populous country into a rising global economic order. Washington was keen to gain a new heavyweight partner to counter Moscow. On February 21 1972, Chinese leader Mao Zedong and US president Richard Nixon met in Beijing to reset their countries’ relations, which had been frozen for the previous two decades.Ĭhina needed protection from the USSR. It was “the week that changed the world”.
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