Soviet History, History of India, Asian History, History of International Relations, and China's foreign policy

This paper charts how the perceptions of China held by American visitors were transformed during the period from the ping-pong diplomacy of 1971 to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the US and China in... more abstractThis paper charts how the perceptions of China held by American visitors were transformed during the period from the ping-pong diplomacy of 1971 to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the US and China in 1978. Using published, archival and oral sources created by these visitors, this paper will show how early visitors to China began to form a consensus that, contrary to the American rhetoric of the 1960s, the Communist regime was both permanent and successful. In other areas, visitors did not agree, and this paper will also explore divergences in American ideas about China’s economic development and political system. As well as detailing American perceptions of China, this paper also seeks to explain and contextualise them. It will posit that Americans witnessed China primarily through two categories of previous knowledge and experience: firstly, their memories of “old”, pre-revolution China; and secondly, their perceptions of their own society. Many of the first visitors to the People’s Republic had previously visited, lived and worked in China before the Communist revolution of 1949, and (partially as a result of encouragement from their hosts) this was the predominant context with which visitors understood the post-1949 changes to that society. Simultaneously, many visitors found in China a foil to a contemporary America that they saw as divided, stagnating, unequal and unjust. These two contexts, I argue, help us to explicate both commonalities and divergences in the reactions of various visitors to the People’s Republic. The changing perception of China among Americans had import for the country’s foreign policy: visitors elucidate in their accounts how the experience of travelling to the PRC changed or confirmed their ideas about how their government should deal with Beijing. This paper will, then, conclude with reflections on the influence these transnational visits had on popular support for and dissent from American China policy.

Cold War, Transnational History, Sino-US Relations, and Cultural Exchange

This paper will present an outline of my DPhil thesis research, which examines the role that people-to-people visits and exchanges had in the international relations between the United States and China from the famous... more abstractThis paper will present an outline of my DPhil thesis research, which examines the role that people-to-people visits and exchanges had in the international relations between the United States and China from the famous ping-pong diplomacy of 1971 to the establishment of full diplomatic relations between those two countries in 1978. Before the sensation of ping-pong diplomacy, exceptionally few Americans had visited China since the establishment of the Communist People’s Republic in 1949. However, from 1971, and particularly after Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972, an exponentially increasing number of scholars, athletes, politicians, journalists, and, eventually, tourists travelled to the country as part of a quasi-official programme of “exchanges”. I look at this exchange programme from three perspectives, that of the Chinese and American governments; of the non-state organisations that managed the exchange programme; and of the individuals that travelled to America and China as part of this transnational diplomacy. This presentation will detail the novel sources that I have used in a range of big and small American archives, including rare access I have gained to a number of small and underused archival collections relating to organisations and individuals that oversaw and participated in the programme of exchanges of people between the US and the China in the 1970s. I will also briefly discuss the limited quantity of materials that I have retrieved from Chinese archives. This paper will then elucidate the historiographical intervention that this project makes in the existing literature on the history of Sino-American relations, in particular its challenge of the existing dominant focus on security considerations and collaboration as the determining factor behind the development of Sino-American relations in this period. This talk concludes by elucidating the critical arguments of my thesis. The central contention of my work is that people-to-people exchanges and other bilateral contacts — what is today called Track II diplomacy — were a critical factor in the success and failures, the progress and setbacks, of the diplomatic negotiations between the two countries that culminated in an agreement to normalise the diplomatic relations that had been severed in 1949. This argument is substantiated by an examination of the two main organisations for arranging exchanges in people-to-people contacts between Americans and Chinese. In the early years of the “fragile relationship” between the US and Chinese these organisation were, I argue, at the vanguard of broadening and deepening contacts between the peoples of those two countries. Finally, this presentation will discuss in brief my further argument that exchange visits to China transformed popular American perceptions of the People’s Republic, shifting collective understandings of the China from a backward, irrationally radical country that threatened America geopolitically and ideologically to a hardworking, organised and egalitarian society that was increasingly open to — and could benefit from — interaction with the US.

Diplomatic History, International History, Cold War history, Sino-American Relations, China's foreign policy, and 1 more

International History, Modern Chinese History, and Sino-US Relations

This paper examines the role of the bilateral exchange programme and people-to-people contacts in Sino-American diplomacy during the Ford Presidency. During Ford’s time in office, relations between Beijing and Washing... more abstractThis paper examines the role of the bilateral exchange programme and people-to-people contacts in Sino-American diplomacy during the Ford Presidency. During Ford’s time in office, relations between Beijing and Washington deteriorated to their lowest ebb since Nixon’s first overtures. A deadlock in high-level negotiations pushed both sides, but in particular the US, to attach greater attention to exchanges as a means to achieve agreements less than normalisation and to preserve the bilateral relationship that had already been established. A vigorous exchange programme was also critical to maintaining the public facade of robust relations, both to adversaries in Moscow and audiences at home. Important as they were, exchanges also proved problematic: Ford’s term saw a succession of rows over people-to-people contacts threaten to further erode cordiality between America and China.

International History, Modern Chinese History, and Sino-US Relations

The historiography of China’s ‘reform and opening’ period has recently reassessed the roots of economic reform, with historians such as Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian arguing that the genesis of Deng Xiaoping’s program... more abstractThe historiography of China’s ‘reform and opening’ period has recently reassessed the roots of economic reform, with historians such as Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian arguing that the genesis of Deng Xiaoping’s programme of modernisation can be found in the destruction of both the economic and cultural legitimacy of the Socialist planned economy during the Cultural Revolution. Concurrent and connected with this development was the Sino-American diplomatic rapprochement. This paper examines the role the United States played as an active agent in the reorientation of the Chinese economy. It argues that, while the origins of Deng’s economic policies were predominantly indigenous, from the early 1970s the PRC showed itself enthusiastic for Western assistance in economic modernisation, primarily through exchanges of Western technology and expertise, and an exponential increase in trade. US government policymakers encouraged this, not only because of the intrinsic value of such exchanges, but in addition because the provision of such material benefits to the PRC acted as leverage that would allow Washington to achieve its political and diplomatic goals in its relations with Beijing. This mutually beneficial arrangement ultimately contributed significantly to the simultaneous emergence of Deng as China’s paramount leader and policymaker, and the normalisation of Sino-American diplomatic relations in 1978. Benefitting from extensive archival research in a range of US government archives, this paper will enhance our understanding of the fundamental links between the PRC’s foreign and economic policies in this critical period of innovating and reinventing Chinese modernity.

International History, Modern Chinese History, and Sino-US Relations

This paper examines the role of the Chinese domestic factor in the Sino-American rapprochement during the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. It considers how US perceptions of developments in Chinese politics fro... more abstractThis paper examines the role of the Chinese domestic factor in the Sino-American rapprochement during the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. It considers how US perceptions of developments in Chinese politics from the twilight of the Cultural Revolution through Mao’s death and to the emergence of Deng Xiaoping affected the formation of strategies to improve Sino-American relations. This paper argues that changes in China’s internal situation played a critical role in improvements in the Sino-American relationship and, moreover, that the US, in order to serve its foreign policy objectives, took an active role in influencing Chinese political outcomes. This had critical consequences, for Sino-American relations, for China’s domestic political situation, and for the direction of Chinese economic and ideological development in the age of détente. Ultimately, the interest of US administrations from Nixon to Carter in improving the Sino-American relationship precipitated the provision by the US of the material, technological and trade means for the People Republic’s ‘opening and reform’ program of the late 1970s and 1980s. In this way, this paper makes a multifaceted contribution to our understanding of the history of the United States during the late 1960s and 1970s. Firstly, it aids in our understanding of the causes and the means of the courting of China by the US. Secondly, it provides evidence of the US’ willingness and ability to act to influence the domestic politics of the People’s Republic. Finally, it provides a further example of the US’ universalist Cold War program of remoulding the world to fit its vision of modernity, elucidating how this dynamic played out in perhaps the most ambitious, successful and consequential target of such US efforts: Red China.

International History, Modern Chinese History, and Sino-US Relations