(Page 29 of 32) - Testing Sincerity:Henry Kissinger's Opening Encounter With the Chinese Leadership authored by Duffy, Gavan. and Goh, Evelyn.

a set of mutually-contextual beliefs influenced by perceptual/logical changes wrought by
the interaction of a host of exogenous political factors. This in effect leads us into the
second question we want to address.

[B]

What were the reasons for the change?

Why and how did the idea for this relationship, which would have constituted a secret
alliance against the Soviet Union, develop? For the larger study, we posit as the key
action theorem normalization of relations for the Chinese side, at least. This was the
eventual goal of the US-PRC rapprochement; the conditions for its achievement lay in
two key interacting variables: the resolution of the Taiwan issue, and the containment of
the Soviet threat.

Taiwan was for over twenty years the primary obstacle to US-PRC relations.
Washington had backed the Nationalists in the Chinese civil war, and after the victory of
the Communists and the retreat of Chiang Kai Shek to Taiwan in 1949, the US had
interposed the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Straits when the Chinese Communists entered
the Korean War in 1950. This, together with the US-ROC Mutual Defence Treaty of
1956, effectively prevented the Communists from ‘unifying’ the nation by incorporating
the island. Beijing had insisted throughout the 1950s and 1960s on the cessation of the
US “occupation” of Taiwan as the precondition for serious talks.

In 1971/2, though,

this rigid Chinese stance was eased, and Beijing was willing to gloss over the difficult
issue of Taiwan for the time being, in favour of the more urgent need to contain the
Soviet threat.

However – and this was a point downplayed by Kissinger – the US did

have to make explicit commitments towards the principle of ‘one China’, and to reduce
US troops on Taiwan.

Furthermore, China agreed in the February 1973 to exchange Liaison Offices in each
other’s capital cities. That China agreed to set up an unofficial diplomatic mission in
Washington while the Republic of China still maintained a Chinese embassy there was
continuing evidence that the Chinese side was still to wait for the resolution of the
Taiwan issue. However, the question arises as to whether this was for the sake of

See transcripts of US-PRC Ambassadorial talks at Warsaw, e.g. reports of meetings, 15 August

1961, 13 December 1962 in Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-3 XXII: Northeast Asia
(Washington, DC: USGPO, 1996); reports of meetings, 16 December 1965, 16 March 1966, 8
January 1968 in FRUS 1964-8 XXX: China (USGPO, 1998).

See Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, Introduction.

In the Shanghai Communiqué issued at the end of Nixon’s 1972 visit, the US stated that it

“acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain that there is but one
China and that Taiwan is part of China”. It also “affirm[ed] the ultimate objective of the
withdrawal of all US forces and military installations from Taiwan… [and] will progressively
reduce its forces and military installations on Taiwan as the tension in the area diminishes”.
Moreover, in Kissinger’s first talks with Zhou, the former’s explicit statement that the US did not
support ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one China one Taiwan’ was apparently the necessary factor for the talks
to proceed – see John H. Holdridge, Crossing the Divide: An Insider’s Account of Normalization
of US-China Relations (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), pp.57-8.