Competing Images and American Official Reconsiderations of China Policy, 1961&–1968

2001 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 53-92
Author(s):  
Evelyn Goh

AbstractIn February 1972, President Richard Nixon made a historic visit to the People”s Republic of China (PRC), marking a Sino-American rapprochement and the beginning of the route to normalization of relations. This came more than twenty years after mainland China turned Communist and fought American-led United Nations forces in Korea. Thereafter, the United States had sought to ”contain“. Communist China by means of bilateral alliances and military bases in East Asia, and to isolate it by refusing to recognize the Communist regime. The next twenty years were marked by American opposition to UN membership for the PRC, three crises in the Taiwan Strait, much offensive rhetoric, and a proxy war in Vietnam. Thus it appeared in 1972 that Nixon had executed a dramatic reversal of U.S. China policy in ending this hostile estrangement.

Author(s):  
D. Barry Kirkham

We consider that the isolation of Communist China from a large part of normal international relations is dangerous. We are prepared to accept the reality of the victory in mainland China in 1949…. We consider, however, that the effective political independence of Taiwan is a political reality too.—THE HONORABLE PAUL MARTINThe International Legal Status of Formosa has long been a subject of vigorous political and academic debate. Twenty-three years after the termination of the Second World War the matter remains completely unresolved; yet it is of fundamental importance. As one writer has stated, “The question of the international status of Taiwan has been the central issue of dispute between the People’s Republic of China and a number of western states and has constituted the primary obstacle to the establishment of formal relations between mainland China and Canada.” In the words of another scholar:The Formosa problem is perhaps the most important cause of the hostile relationship between the United States and Communist China. Its prolonged unsettlement creates a highly dangerous situation in the Far East. As a result, many international problems, such as Chinese recognition, the seating of Communist China and disarmament remain unsolved. Accordingly, an early settlement of the Formosan problem is necessary.


Author(s):  
Sheriff G.I. ◽  
Chubado B.T. ◽  
Ahmet A.

This paper discusses the concept of the one-China policy and how the United States support of Taiwan poses a challenge to stability in the region. The paper adopted the library descriptive instrument from historical research to come up with the available data in the paper. Findings show that, since 1949, the struggle between the Nationalist Republic of China and the Communist party escalated into a civil war which resulted in the defeat of Kuomintang and the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC), which took control of all mainland China. Only the island of Taiwan remained under the control of the ROC. Since then, both the ROC and the PRC have been claiming to represent all of "China", and both officially claim each other's territory. The paper concludes that China cannot forfeit the strait of Taiwan despite American support to the island. The deteriorating relationship between the U.S and China relationship has seen trade wars to accusations on the origins of the coronavirus to political buffering, to the sovereign of Taiwan and Hongkong, it just seems to be a manifestation of the Sino-American Cold War. The way things appear, the relationship between the U.S and China will further deteriorate largely because democracy and liberal order are being challenged by the political posture of China. The paper recommends that there is the need to maintain the non-interference principle by the two parties, the United States should know that Taiwan is China and therefore not meddle in the affairs of China and vice-versa.


Author(s):  
Ilko Drenkov

Dr. Radan Sarafov (1908-1968) lived actively but his life is still relatively unknown to the Bulgarian academic and public audience. He was a strong character with an ulti-mate and conscious commitment to democratic Bulgaria. Dr. Sarafov was chosen by IMRO (Inner Macedonian Revolutionary Organization) to represent the idea of coop-eration with Anglo-American politics prior to the Second World War. Dr. Sarafov studied medicine in France, specialized in the Sorbonne, and was recruited by Colonel Ross for the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), remaining undisclosed after the with-drawal of the British legation in 1941. After World War II, he continued to work for foreign intelligence and expanded the spectrum of cooperation with both France and the United States. After WWII, Sarafov could not conform to the reign of the communist regime in Bulgaria. He made a connection with the Anglo-American intelligence ser-vices and was cooperating with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for more than a decade. Sarafov was caught in 1968 and convicted by the Committee for State Securi-ty (CSS) in Bulgaria. The detailed review of the past events and processes through personal drama and commitment reveals the disastrous core of the communist regime. The acknowledgment of the people who sacrificed their lives in the name of democrat-ic values is always beneficial for understanding the division and contradictions from the time of the Cold War.


2015 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 261-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cole Roskam

The current international attention devoted to contemporary Chinese-financed and constructed development in Africa has tended to obscure complex and multivalent histories of the relationships between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and numerous African nations; and many of these histories date back decades. The ideological origins behind socialist China’s engagement with Africa, and the geopolitical dynamics that continue to propel them forward, trace back to the time of Chairman Mao Zedong, who first coined the term ‘intermediate zone’ in 1946 to position the vast expanse of contested territories and undecided loyalties existing between the ideological poles of the Soviet Union and the United States after World War II. Nine years later (1955), at the first Non-Aligned Movement conference held in Bandung, Indonesia, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai declared thatever since modern times most of the countries of Asia and Africa in varying degrees have been subjected to colonial plunder and oppression, and have thus been forced to remain in a stagnant state of poverty and backwardness […]. We need to develop our countries independently with no outside interference and in accordance with the will of the people.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-42
Author(s):  
WENMING XIAO ◽  
YAO LI

Abstract Based on a detailed case study of the socialist transformation of the Shanghai Great World Amusement Centre (Dashijie), this article documents state-building efforts during the early years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Between 1950 and 1958, the Communist regime incrementally transformed the power configuration within Dashijie, promoting dramatic changes in its personnel, institutional structures, drama performances, and physical space. Over the course of this process, Dashijie seemed to become a ‘loftier’ cultural organization in accordance with the aims of its transformation. This transfigured Dashijie, however, fell out of favour with the people of Shanghai. This multifaceted transformation process reflects considerable state capacities on the one hand and illustrates the complexity of state capacities—their unevenness and the limitations of a strong state—on the other. The complexity of state capacities thus shaped and was embedded in the process and outcome of this socialist cultural transformation. Since the Chinese state is once again making strenuous efforts at culture-building, an overview of cultural transformation in the early PRC era has important contemporary implications.


2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (6) ◽  
pp. 2109-2136
Author(s):  
RUPING XIAO ◽  
HSIAO-TING LIN

AbstractThis article revisits the issue of the offshore islands in the Taiwan Strait during the Cold War. Benefitting from archival materials only recently made available, specifically Chiang Kai-shek's personal diaries, CIA declassified materials, Taiwanese Foreign Ministry files, and rare publications from the Contemporary Taiwan Collection at the Library of the Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, this research examines the cloud of suspicion surrounding the secret contacts between Taipei and Beijing leading up to and during the 1958 offshore islands crisis, elucidating how such a political tête-à-tête, and the resultant tacit consensus over the status of the islands, gradually brought about an end to the conflict between Taiwan and Communist China. In hindsight, the crises over the offshore islands along China's southeast coast momentarily brought the United States closer to war with Communist China, while putting the relationship between Taipei and Washington to a serious test. The end result, however, was that, while these isles were technically embedded in the unfinished civil war between the Chinese Nationalists and Communists, they provided, ironically, an opportunity for secret communications and, ultimately, a kind of détente between the two supposedly deadly enemies across the Taiwan Strait. A close examination of the details of these crises, along with their attendant military, political, and diplomatic complexities, reveals an amazing amount of political intrigue at both the local and international levels that has not been fully realized until now.


1964 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 1-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Ginsburgs ◽  
Arthur Stahnke

When the Chinese Communists finally consummated their seizure of power in mainland China, one of the first tasks which faced them was that of elaborating a formal institutional structure for the exercise of regular public authority. Indeed, while the new leadership now undoubtedly enjoyed de facto control over the country and the mass of the people, it found itself quite destitute of those normal channels of state regulation and administrative management which serve to bestow legitimacy on a claimant to the role of national government and to distinguish a duly constituted, relatively stable political order from an altogether fluid interlude of revolutionary action predicated on ad hoc use of organised force under a central direction. The Party soon moved to make up for this grave deficiency by creating, on paper at least, a complex mechanism of state administration to back up its bid for recognition as the official spokesman for the Chinese nation and, concurrently, provide it with the wherewithal to play that role effectively.


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