Image, Perception, and the Making of U.S.-China Relations by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461744047
Publisher: University Press of America

"China Is the Technical Center of the World Revolution!”

From 1965 to 1966, China’s had embroiled itself in a suicidal revolution. While orchestrating the revolution Mao was greatly shaken by the seemingly collusion between the United States and the Soviet Union in international affairs and the sharp decline of China’s prestige and influence in the world. In July 1966, he wrote to his wife Jiang Qing, “There are more than a hundred parties in the world. Most of them do not believe in Marx and Lenin.”64 He ended his zonal approach to international affairs and no longer viewed the world in terms of socialist and imperialist camps or systems. More importantly, there was no longer any boast of the east wind prevailing over the west wind. However, this did not lead to any reduction of radicalism in his approach to international situations. He was either blinded by hysterical domestic politics or could not think in any logical manner when China was largely cut off from the outside world due to the fact that most of China’s diplomatic apparatus was shattered by the Cultural Revolution.65 In this xenophobic mind-set, he identified most of the countries in the world as hostile. Mao was inching toward madness in terms of governing the nation’s foreign affairs.

Ironically, it was exactly at this time that the United States began to adopt a new approach to China. Although many key American leaders were still suspicious of China, more and more policy-makers in Washington began to challenge the long-standing approach of nonrecognition, containment, embargo and boycott to China.66 On February 12, 1966, the State Department announced that the United States was prepared to allow Chinese journalists to visit the United States.67 On March 8 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee began a series of hearings on China policy. On March 20, Rusk outlined the Administration’s China policy to the House Subcommittee on the Far East, stating that “[w]e expect China to become some day a great world power.” Rusk told the House subcommittee that many avenues of exchange with China had been open and that Washington was willing to sit down “with Peiping and other interested countries to discuss the critical problems of disarmament and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.”68 On July 12, 1966 President Johnson also declared that his administration was committed to improving relations with China.”69 No Chinese leader in his right mind would dare to mention the possibility of improving relations with the United States for fear of being accused by Mao and his fanatical followers of committing a serious revisionist mistake. China’s self-imposed isolation and radical rhetoric scuttled most of its diplomatic accomplishments of the early 1960s.

The only program that had not been affected by the Cultural Revolution was China’s quest for nuclear capability. On May 9, 1966, it detonated its third nuclear device.70 On October 27 of the same year, China conducted a guided missile test.71 On June 17, 1967, after five nuclear tests in two years and eight months, China detonated its first hydrogen bomb.72

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