Nixon administration, China policy

Two key State papers prepared in 1969 provide a good account of its representation and assessment of China during this period. The first was a discussion paper on the proposed February Warsaw talks prepared by the Asian Communist Affairs desk (ACA) for Nixon the second was a China policy study undertaken between February and August in response to NSSM 14, which was to be the first detailed statement of the Nixon administration s China policy. ... 

The Nixon administration held two sessions of ambassadorial talks with the Chinese at Warsaw in January and February 1970. The preparations for these talks provided a focal point for the competing China discourses of the State Department and White House and perpetrated the eventual bureaucratic rupture between them over China policy. 

The Nixon administration was relatively successful in garnering support for the China opening. This was due in no small part to the altered domestic perception of China, which was tied up with the prominent changes in China policy discourse of the late 1960s and with Nixon s own process of policy relaxation beginning in 1969. It also stemmed from a strong desire for peace among a Vietnam-weary public. However, a crucial factor was the careful policy advocacy employed by the White House. 

For a succinct summary of the six alternative normalization formulas considered by the Nixon and Carter administrations, see Yufan Flao, Dilemma and Decision An Organizational Perspective on American China Policy-Making (Berkeley, 1997), pp. 61—6. 

China, and did not once refer to the Chinese threat.He wrote that the international order would remain insecure as long as China, as a major power, stood outside of it and the administration s new policy toward China embodied his goal of creating a balanced international structure in which all nations will have a stake. At the same time, the report tacitly recognized China s desire for international influence commensurate with its size and history. The new international structure, Nixon promised, would provide full scope for the influence to which China s achievements entitle it. ... 

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