Nixon’s opening was premised upon the idea that a weak and isolated China was dangerous because it lashed out and incited revolutions elsewhere.
But which was preferable: a powerful or a weak China?
#Nixon visits china reason how to#
Two strategic questions underpinning Nixon’s radical shift on China policy remain.įirst, how to cope with China? By the end of the 1960s, after 20 years of trying, many in the United States knew it was impossible ignore the most populous nation on earth and one-half of the Communist axis driving the Cold War. Each side pays close attention to the capabilities and intentions of the other and the Taiwan issue remains a major source of discord. Today, despite more than 40 years of diplomatic ties, China–US distrust is sufficiently high that we expect many points of contention to evolve into crises. Yet, we seem to have come full circle back to the state of affairs that rendered Nixon’s historic visit to the People’s Republic of China so dramatic in the first place. Nixon’s opening to Communist China reversed two decades of animosity and war, containment, isolation and non-recognition, two crises in the Taiwan Strait and threats of nuclear attack. Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacificįifty years on from what US president Richard Nixon called ‘the week that changed the world’, it is appropriate to recall one of the most radical policy turnarounds of all time.
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