The China Factor in America's Foreign Relations: Perceptions and Policy Choices

摘要

With the perspective of a decade of efforts to normalize U.S.-PRC relations, it seems fair to conclude that the changes in world politics initiated by President Nixon's historic trip to Peking in 1972 were as much in people's minds as they were in actual alterations in global political, economic, and military forces. While normalization removed the burdens for China and the U.S. of two decades of confrontation, it has not produced an intimate new alignment of resources and efforts or a restructuring of American priorities in Asia. Yet, U.S.-PRC normalization initiated processes of change that, if they endure for several decades, can contribute significantly to the modernization of China and to the building of a new coalition of powers supportive of the basic goals of American foreign policy. In retrospect, we can clearly see that the normalization process begun in 1971 eliminated the negative costs to U.S. defenses and foreign relations of two decades of political and military hostility with China. Normalization facilitated our disengagement from Vietnam. The positive benefits of normalization will only be realized as the U.S.-PRC relationship develops in the years ahead. Yet, the China factor, for all its promise, will be only one element in America's foreign relations.