American History Hit - Frenemies: China & the USA, a History

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

The People's Republic of China has only existed since 1949, but in just 75 years its relationship with the United States is in a strong position to be the most tumultuous of all.Don is joined by Rana Mitter for this episode of Frenemies. Rana is S. T. Lee Professor of U.S.-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School and, with Don, he helps to unravel the ups and downs of this relationship. How did the two countries start off on the wrong foot? And how has China since become one of the U.S.'s top trading partners?Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Produced by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It's late January, 2003. 18,300 meters, some 60,000 feet high in the skies over North America.

A balloon soars on the jet stream. Now, this is no ordinary balloon. It's enormous, a towering 200-foot-high, luminous white inflation, outfitted with propellers and rudders for maneuverability. It's a balloon that can be steered. It carries 16 solar panel rays to power the balloon's payload suspended below it, a tech bay, the size of several school buses, crammed with computers, sensors, antennas, all sorts of fancy surveillance equipment.

Gliding steadily southeast, the balloon moves over Alaska's frozen tundra, the wilds of Western Canada, eventually crossing the border into the United States, riding its air currents over rugged Montana. Pilots begin to notice the thing above, circling it, photographing the behemoth. What is it? What's it doing? Who sent it here? As serene and peaceful as it appears, lofting through the air, down below on earth the balloon is creating a turbulent storm of controversy. The focus of suspicion and geopolitical anger between American officials

who claim it is a giant militarized spy platform dispatched by China. And Beijing, who plays the denial game, declaring it's nothing but a weather balloon gone off course. Well, innocent or not, this high-altitude colossus marks yet another flashpoint in a long, endlessly tense relationship between the U.S. and China. A relationship is tenuous and troubled, as it is economically vital to both superpower nations. Hey, folks, it's American History Hit. Don Wildman here, your host. Welcome back to another episode in our Frenemones series.

Today, we're digging. into the long and prickly relationship between the United States and China, an astonishing misalignment for the ages. Or is it? Over the centuries, as the United States has followed a zigzag course leading eventually to superpower status, China has transformed in its own remarkable way, from once being a closed imperial civilization at the mercy of foreign powers to a modern, technologically advanced nation now asserting its own claim to global leadership. The U.S. China relationship is one loaded with strategic tensions, historical resentments, economic interdependence, and ideological divides, one of the most complex, consequential, and volatile dynamics of our time,

a geopolitical high-wire act that may well define the next global order. So if you mean to understand where the modern world is headed, start here with this fraught and fractious history. And to help us navigate what all has brought us to this point, we're joined by Rana Mitter. S.T. Lee Chair in U.S. Asia Relations at Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Professor Midder, welcome, honored to have you. Don, a great pleasure to be with you, and do you just please call me, Rana. I'm sure the listeners will. Thank you very much. We're going to focus this discussion today on 20th century events, really mid-20th century on, a time when this relationship was generally shaped by how the United States reacted to events unfolding within China,

which is an unusual situation here. Most obviously, it begins with the communist revolution, led by Mao Zedong, and against Chiang Kai Czech, which recreates the nation in a form contrary to American values. Then comes the alignment with the Soviet Union, the cultural revolution of the 60s. It's a lot of stuff that we're going to discuss. We're trying to shape out a framework of what has brought us to this point. Much of this is about the Cold War, but when we're talking about China, it's a unique discussion because China is a unique country. It seems like a relationship driven by so

much fear and understanding, but there's then that economic aspect of it, which both relations rely on to. So where do you start in discussing this relationship in general? I'm going to start, Don, in a year which in some ways is a pivotal year for the entire world, and that is 1945. And no surprises here, 1945, because that's the end of World War II. I think history hit listeners will be very well used to that particular piece of history. We don't need to dive too much in terms of why that is. But let's start with China in 1945. And as we do that, as you say, over this conversation,

go to stretch through the period of Chairman Mao, the Cold War, post-Cold War, and towards present days. So plenty to cover. But why do I start in 1945? The reason is, and again, this is something that people may not remember so much, that China was one of the countries, perhaps the country, in Asia on the Allied side that was most significantly devastated by the experience of World War II.

Now, I say that because I think a lot of listeners will know, you know, it's well well known, the United States, British Empire, the Soviet Union, the Big Three as the Allies during World War II. But I would say that Big Four includes China as well, which went to war with Japan first before the others in 1937. That's two years before the outbreak of the war in Europe. then fights eight devastating years, and I say devastating in the sense of tens of millions, well, many millions, perhaps over 10 million deaths, 60 to 80 million people becoming refugees,

infrastructure of China smashed into pieces. So that's what China's like in 1945 when our story begins. On the one hand, it gets some of the benefits of being a wartime ally of the United States. The fact that to this very day, China is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, People may sometimes ask, well, why is that? Well, the main reason is China is on the Allied side during World War II. So that's on the plus side. The minor side is that China is devastated.

It's suffering refugee flight. Its railways, roads are bombed to pieces by the Japanese. Mines have been placed, not least by the Chinese themselves, retreating up the rivers, the Great Roads of China, like the Yangtzee. So that is the situation in 1945. But then we have to cover what comes next. the next three or four years are shaped by a vicious, brutal, deadly civil war between the two major parties that vie for rule over China at this point. The rulers, when we start in

1945, are the nationalist or Wormindang, sometimes spelled Kuomintang party of Chankajek. Chankajek is the generalismo, militarist leader. He's been in charge of China one way or another since 1928, but by the time we get to 1945, he's led his country through the devastation of World War II. He might say he's about to win the war but lose his nation, because he then fights the other massive force that has grown up in China during those devastating years of World War II, Chinese Communist Party. Don't do the conversation. I'm going to keep saying CCP.

When I say that, that's short for Chinese Communist Party. So I'm going to be using that a lot during what we have to do. say. The Chinese Communist Party, just take a moment to step back and think who these folks are. You started in 1921. This is a tiny little group of people. They're all men, pretty much all men at that stage. They meet in secret meetings in Shanghai, Beijing, big cities of China, they're reading marks, they're inspired by the Russian Revolution. There aren't very many of them. They spend much of the next 20 years in ups and downs, including the famous Long March of the 1930s, maybe subject to another conversation and another day.

Really, they look like they're not going places. They try to ferment a revolution out in the countryside in the 20s and 30s. It doesn't go so well. Then World War II happens. The Japanese invade, and they ally with the nationalists under Changkaishek. And the eight years of the war against Japan is the chance for the communists to grow and grow and grow. Particularly out in China's countryside. They perfect techniques of guerrilla warfare.

They grow their numbers. They form an alliance with the Soviet Union. By the time we get to the end of World War II, the Japanese surrender after the invasion of Manchuria and the atomic bombings. The civil war is set for the CCP and the nationalists under Shankar Sheck struggle for victory. Don't want to spoil the ending for the listeners, but they may know it. In 1949, the communists win. They win for a variety of reasons amongst them the exhaustion, corruption, and essentially the loss of morale of the nationalists who are fighting them. But also, Soviet assistance to the communists in China means that they're able to build up their

own resources, peasant revolution, out in the countryside, and the use of greatly improved military tactics that they've learned about during World War II, and they bring to deadly perfection in the civil war. So that gets us to 1949, 1st of October, when essentially the nationalists are forced to flee to the island of Taiwan, where they've been ever since, of course, and in central Beijing, at Tiananmen, the Gate of Heavenly Peace, Mao stands up, and And around that time, not at that exact moment, but around that time he and various comrades essentially established People's Republic of China, communist party-ruled state that still exists in China to this very day.

Wow. It's so much the case of so much that happened throughout Europe in terms of the undoing of the imperial structures and governancees and so forth, but certainly aligned with what has happened in Russia. The destruction of all that aristocracy, etc., is the same kind of thing that's happened generally in China, just in a much bigger scale because China is a massive population even then, right? Absolutely. About that point, we're talking about 700 million people in the population. Today, of course, it's close to 1.3 billion. But as you say, the revolution, both the experience of the early 20th

century when there's a lot of revolutionary change in war, and then the establishment of the communist government in 1949 breaks down many of the old certainties, in particular the class structures, One of the things that the Communist Revolution in general, and let's get him in the picture, Mao. Mao Zedong, by this stage, by 1949, the undisputed leader of China's Communist Revolution. A lot of factional battles that go along the way to getting him to that position. But by 1949, there's no doubt he is the man in charge. And class warfare, destroying the old bonds. I mean, aristocracy maybe has gone by that stage because China already became a republic in 1911 when the last emperor has overthrown.

So the old royal families, you know, the old imperial dynasties of China are no longer on the scene. But the sort of economic divisions that meant you get a kind of rich bourgeois, middle class, and so forth, Mao and his comrades have their sights set on these guys. And in 1949, that is essentially where the class revolution begins. I know, Don, we're going to spend probably more time talking about U.S.-China relations, but this just sets the scene that this is genuinely an absolute overturning. of Chinese society in a way that in some parts never gets reversed. The fact of it is there's so many layers, and it's a wonderful aspect of it.

It's painful in many regards, but there's so many layers that have to do with great affection, great alignment, and then a kind of feeling of betrayal, distrust. All of this stuff really feeds into this amazingly complex relationship that we're about to go into more detail. But I'm trying to sketch out at the top that, you know, watch out what's coming here, because for the next 50, you know, eventually 100 years, that's what's fueling this thing. There's a lot. When Nixon goes to China, Nixon is a former World War II guy. He has great affection and respect for what the Chinese have accomplished fighting the Japanese, just like we did.

All of this back and forth, just like with Russia, is going on in the same way for us. Let's nail down exactly what happens October 1st, 1949. At that point, how much is the government of China like the one we know today. Have they created something that is the lasting structure, Rondon, Mao? So the government of China, Don, that is established on the 1st of October, at least officially on the 1st of October in 1949, is in one important element identical to the party this is today,

and at least one other element almost entirely different. So let me say what those two elements are. The first one is that then and now, the People's Republic of China is a party state. It is in other words, a recognized nation state, but it is one that is ruled by a Marxist-Leninist party that believes that above all, the party's interests come first. The interest of the nation and the people, of course, matter. It's in the the clue is the name, the People's Republic of China, but it is the party as the instrument of destiny that is going to get the people to the destination they need to go to. The father, in fact, of

today's Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. His father was called Xi Zhongshun, and he once said the party's interests come first, or always come first. In fact, that's a title of a great new biography of Xi Jinpingxin by the American historian Joseph Turijian. But that sentiment will be expressed by most of the revolutionaries who took part in that overturning of society. So that structure of a Marxist-Lendist party that will, you know, seek information, seek input in terms of its policies, but when the line is put forward, well, this is the policy, there's no arguing with it, there's no democratic back and forth, this is the Leninist way of looking at things. The other element that has changed completely, though, which is perhaps, yeah, and I'd say it is as important, is that the economic

model that the party uses, its idea for how China is going to become prosperous, stable, make its way in the world. Between 1949 and now, that has changed massively. In 1949, essentially what is set up is a partial copy, partial adaptation of the command economy exemplified then by the Soviet Union. And China jumps on that particular bandwork. In the period in between, after that, 1960s, early 1970s, China goes through the famous cultural revolution. That's also the time as it happens when Nixon visits. You mentioned Nixon, so let's just mention him there. But China's economy is much more inward looking at that point.

And then from the 1970s, technically 1978, but actually probably even a little earlier, you get the period that's still ongoing today in which any Chinese you speak to will refer to as reform and opening. In other words, the bringing of markets and markets with a very strong international flavor to the socialist model. So one Leninist party system throughout the whole time, but at least three different economic regimes underpinning them. That's what's the same.

That's what's different. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. 1949 and Mao's success is the turning point, of course, towards Cold War and our feeling of betrayal that they have now become the enemy, basically. How much did the United States see that communist victory as a failure of our own containment? Did we drop the ball here as far as the U.S. was concerned, or did it just happen and we couldn't stop it? Much of the 1950s in American policy circles was taken up with a debate, if you can call it that, and the question of who lost China. And even now, if you look at textbooks around that period, the question of the who lost China debate is still described. I think most analysts now, certainly historians, would say that the question itself is based on a false premise, because it makes an assumption that the most important thing in regime change, if you want to put it that way, or in changing the internal policy,

politics of China or any other country is what the United States chooses to do. Now, don't be wrong, the United States in the post-World War II period, was and is, the single most powerful international force, much more so than the Soviet Union, as it turned out, in international politics. But the ability to use that simply to take responsibility to either turn on or turn off governments or societies or even international markets, it's not that simple. And so in the case of China, I would say that on the one hand, most historians would say that the primary factors, the really important factors that changed China from a nationalist to a communist government, were internal. I mentioned some of them earlier. The US is important.

Of course it is, but, you know, that's not the key driver. But that wasn't the way that it looked in Washington and surrounding areas at the time. And just to give you a little bit more detail on the back of that, there are phases in terms of that development. So we're talking about the early Cold War. Let's get specific. In the lead-up to the fall of the nationalist government, Shankar Shek's government, Harry Truman's government, which is what administration, which is the one in power at that time,

to be honest, spent some time, but not the majority of its time, looking out on the China question. There's a heck of a lot going on elsewhere in the world that Truman and Dean Acheson and others have to deal with, including making sure that Europe isn't conquered by the Soviets and a whole question of reconstruction of Japan. So basically pretty early on, the Truman administration thinks this government, the nationalist government of China is not going to survive.

And they provide some loans, you know, a bit of armaments, basically say, you know, guys, you're on your own. You have to fight this out. And Trun himself was very unimpressed by the top nationalist leaders he met. He really wasn't a fan of the KMT, the nationalist government at the time. And it might have stayed that way. By the time the Nationalists were forced to flee to Taiwan, the communist forces to flee to Taiwan, the communist, you know, brilliant military tactics, lightning, war, they finally take over the whole of the mainland in a very, very short period of time, and they want to get to Taiwan. The reason they don't get it

is the Cold War, because of course the Chinese communists also undertake a move, which I think in retrospect, you have to consider whether or not it was really a wise one or not, which was to join in, Mao joins in, somewhat reluctantly, with proddings from Stalin and from Kim Il-Sung, the North Korean leader, that China should join in with trying to take South Korea and make it part of a unified Korean peninsula under communist domination. And we know that as the Korean War. By the way, it's not called the Korean War in China. There it's known as the Resistance to America War, which is one of the reasons it keeps getting

brought out of the propaganda cupboard when needed. My point is this, that Truman at that point saw the question of Taiwan's survival under Changkaishech, from no longer just being the kind of leftover business of a horrible civil war where the American allies had not performed, the nationalists, to being the last outpost of an anti-communist government in an area where it looked like communist domination in Northeast Asia with Stalin's assistance was going to go very successfully from their point of view. And so essentially the Korean War saves Taiwan under Shankar Sheck during that period. that then sets the scene for what, in retrospect, when we look back at that early Cold War period,

even now looks like a really bizarre settlement, which is that for more than a quarter of a century between 1949 and 1979, there was no official diplomatic recognition between the United States of America and the People's Republic of China. Even the Nixon visit of 1972, which we'll get to, and people, I'm sure, remember that as a great historical event, That wasn't the opening of diplomatic relations. That was just the beginning of a rapprochement. So you've got more than a quarter of a century when two of the most important countries on earth are simply not talking to each other. And the reason for that, I'm going to spread the responsibility a little bit evenly here.

Number one is the Chinese really shouldn't have tried to invade South Korea. If they'd step back from that, they might have essentially been able to reopen diplomatic relations, perhaps, with the United States early on in the 50s, even though they showed some reluctance about whether they wanted. to. But I think it was probably a misjudgment for the Eisenhower administration, which followed on and John Foster Dulles, the then Secretary of State, simply decide that no possible diplomatic rapprochement with China was possible in the 1950s and 60s. And Nixon, to be fair, has to take his responsibility because he was vice president of the United States during most of that time. And much of the brutality and viciousness of the regime in China during the Cultural Revolution in particular, I think might well have been gone in a different path and a less violent path,

had the path between the US and China been more open at that time. But that's a counterfactual. In reality, there was no diplomatic relationship between the two. And that sets our scene for a cold war where the US and China really aren't talking to each other. Yeah. Just one of the smaller matters wrong term for it, but we have never had an official treaty with Taiwan to protect it. That has never been signed. We never did that. I've always been wondering if the United States sort of secretly was this more of a problem than it was an advantage in preventing the domino theory from succeeding as far as they're concerned. I mean, where do we stand with Taiwan in the earlier days that way? Okay. So first of all, Don, there was actually for a period, if not an official

treaty, at least a defense agreement. This was under the Eisenhower administration in the 50s. And just to remind listeners, I'm sure, you know, history hit listeners are very experts. They'll know this, but reminder that during the time that the People's Republic was not recognized by the United States or indeed the United Nations until the early 1970s, the Republic of China temporarily located on Taiwan was the recognized Chinese state. So during that time, even though it was only the state of Taiwan, any discussions about China had to be done with Taipei. So during that time in the 1950s, after a couple of what were called Taiwan Straits crises, where it looked like the mainland might be trying to bombard the coast of,

Taiwan maybe launched an invasion, you know, unclear. Mao's certainly keen to, you know, keep Taiwan on its toes. The Eisenhower administration found itself in this awkward position that you've outlined that they don't really want to give a proper guarantee to, for the defense of Taiwan with Chiang Kai Shek still sitting in the president's palace, keen to start World War III maybe and reinvade the mainland. You know, it dies and have people, they're not done. They're not going to let that happen. At the same time, they don't want to give Mao ideas that he can do anything he wants. So, essentially a defense agreement is agreed during that time by which the U.S. Navy does provide protection around the main island of Taiwan, but importantly, it did not extend that to the two, the outlying islands, a couple of which basically sits so close to the coast of mainland China that you could see them. They're still there today. They're called Jimman and Mazu, and you can see the mainland from the coast and of the islands and vice versa. So those were not included. Now, just to flash ahead for a moment, when you get past the next and visit, you get the opening of full relations between the People's Republic and the US under

Jimmy Carter in 1979, 1st of January. Many interests in Congress, this is Congress rather than the administration at this point. Many people in Congress think this is pulling the rug from under the nationalist government, which is still in power in Taiwan. Shrekashik has died by that stage, but his son, Zhang Ji Guo, is in power. So they passed the Taiwan Relations Act. That's initiative of Congress, but it's, you know, goes through and is ratified. That still exists today. And it does not give a treaty alliance or any sort of guarantee to Taiwan about its defense. It's not like the U.S.-Japan security alliance. It's not like the U.S.-S.-S.-South Korea security alliance. But it does say that the United States can make sure that Taiwan is able to

defend itself, and that could be interpreted widely. It could be selling arms. Maybe in some cases, when you're pushing the envelope. Chinese side don't like this very much, but it could include military advice, assistance. It's wide in interpretation, but that TRA, the Taiwan Relations Act of 979, is essentially what's there now as a means of acknowledging the fact that the Republic of China and Taiwan since 1979 has not been from the U.S.'s point of view the acknowledged government of China. Mao's outlook on U.S. relations during this period, what looks like an isolationist period, as far as the U.S. is concerned. Was that an advantage to him during this? I mean, we're talking about decades of time here. We are talking about decades of time.

And it's worth noting that during that time, China was both connected and isolated from a whole variety of other countries as well. So during the 1950s, China has a strong alliance with the Soviet Union, which then breaks up in acrimony in the early 1960s. There's also the growth over that time up and down in relations with other Asian countries, particularly other countries that in Asia that have just left the empires of European powers and are now seeking independence themselves. So China never lacks for people to talk to, but the United States for more than a quarter of a century is not really on that list from 1949 up to the early 70s. Mao himself was not opposed to this sort of isolation. In other words, he was not sitting there from the documents

in Zhong Anhai, the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party's governance at the center, of Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing. He was not sitting there kind of bemoaning the fact that, you know, he wouldn't get on the, he wanted to get on the phone and the Americans wouldn't pick up at the other end. He actually regarded, it is important to use one of his own expressions to lean to one side. In other words, make it clear that when China was taking the path of a revolutionary socialist government from 1949, aligning with the Soviet Union, which it did at that point, it was doing so in an absolutely wholehearted way. Now, there had been attempts in the late World War two years, in the Civil War years, to try and have some sort of outreach to the United States. General George Marshall, no less, one of the great figures of the American military and diplomatic world, spent an entire year in 1946 in China trying to sort out a deal between the communists and nationalists and left China for home on the 1st of January, 1947, pretty disillusioned. It didn't work out.

But those attempts to try and bring the Americans in by the Communist Party, by the CCP, it's now fairly clear were only there as a means of providing some sort of cover in terms of the bigger agenda, which was a genuine, deep-seated and radical socialist policy. And in that context, not being connected to the United States

was actually something that Mao actively wanted to embrace. It wasn't because he didn't treat the United States seriously. One great phrase that he used during that period was that the United States was the most respected enemy. So it was a sort of, I think,

Your series is called frenemies. And while this is perhaps isn't quite the same as being a friend, it is the idea that someone you're opposed to is not necessarily to be despised or taken lightly. You know, one can take someone seriously and respect them while being deeply opposed to what they say. Now, for the first decade or so of the Cold War, the 1950s really, economically, this isn't a disaster from the point of view of Mao and China because they're tied into the growing socialist world economic system that means they're trading with East Germany.

they're trading with Poland. They're trading with all these places that the Soviet Union is in charge of trading with the Soviets as well. Stalin is keen to get them pulled into that system. That becomes more difficult in the 60s when they're split up with the Soviet Union. There's a kind of cramonious falling out between the two sides. But during that period, Mao nonetheless continues to make it very clear that he regards the ideological commitment of pushing back against the United States, as well as the Soviet

Union, which he regards as another imperialist power, is very, very important. The Korean War is perhaps the best example of how that happens in practice. Basically, Malagre has started, or take part in it, just a few months after the establishment of the People's Republic, which is a really weird time to start a new international war when you're setting up your own country. And in large part, it was the ideological importance, as he saw it, of being seen to push back against American imperialist power, as he would have called, in the world that meant that he felt he had to show willing and be part of that Korean war and the, as they would put it in China, resistance to America.

In a sense, we've reached at this point the end of part one of the modern relationship, which is really defined by the Cold War. It continues on, of course, but the 60s, as you've already mentioned and we'll discuss in more detail now, is really about another period of time leading up to the open. up. So we can, in a sense, leave that behind at this moment and say, gee, there was a lot that happened. In 1949, 50, everything that went on in the 50s is amazing. But things start to shift as the relationship with the Soviet Union changes, the big border crisis that happens in the 60s, the Tibet crisis, as far as the United States are concerned, these are massive stories

that deserve their own episodes. So we can't sort of bog down in too many of them. But really, we're trying to sketch towards the 1970s, what happens under Nixon, the opening of China in 1972, is really the result of a rift between the Soviet Union and China, in one respect, right? There's a moment of opportunity for the United States to slip in and kind of intrude on that relationship. Is that one very general way of looking at that moment? Yes, it is. Essentially, from about 1960 onwards, it's clear that for whatever reason, and the Western world found it quite difficult to intuit what the reasons were, but for various reasons, the Soviet Union and China, the two great socialist powers of the world, had fallen out with each other. I mean, a lot of it

was actually quite personal. Chris Chov and Mao said he didn't get on with each other. But then as American politics developed in the 1960s, a whole variety of things came together to make this an opportune moment for a reorienting of world order. First of all, let's not forget, the one Asian issue that was, you know, really running like a... Let's not forget, first of all, the one Asian-related issue that was destroying large parts of American society at that time, the Vietnam War. Large numbers of, you know, young Americans were being sent, fight in Vietnam, and it was consuming politics at that time. And Richard Nixon, who in the mid-1960s is in the sort of political wilderness, he failed to become president in 1960, but he still... looking for a comeback. He wrote, and absolutely, even today, actually, really well worth reading

a seminal piece in the journal Foreign Affairs in 1967 called Asia After Vietnam. And it's a way of kind of projecting forwards as to what was going to happen next. And it's very long, well worth reading even now, but there's one sentence in it that's worth noticing where he says, we cannot afford forever to leave China outside the family of nations. That was one of the first indications for those who are willing to look that Richard Nixon, you know, the archetypal, hard-right, Republican foreign policy guru and politician, was looking for a shift. So, as we will know, he got elected, became president, 1969, and he brings in a guy called Henry Kissinger as his national security advisor. And there's a lot of discussion at high levels. Nixon is leading

it. Kissinger is obviously very heavily involved about whether or not this is the moment to try and take advantage of the split between the Soviets and the Chinese. Can America wedge itself in the middle, they're asking, and essentially become the only power that is talking to both of those particular countries? And in doing so, is there some way that they can get to the end of this appalling war in Vietnam? That's also very much on their minds. So the stars align, and Henry Kirstenra said at first, was not that crazy about the idea. He was a bit reluctant to say that actually it was possible to leverage China this one. but as we know, history tells that he was willing to give it a go.

And this also coincided, we now know, with what do you might call a thaw, along with a bit of turmoil in Beijing. The Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966, and again, the outside world tries to work out what an earth to make of this extraordinary overturning of Chinese society, violence, turmoil, everywhere. But behind the scenes, we know that there were figures within the leadership who were reluctant to go down this very, very, very, destructive path, amongst them Prime Minister Joanne Lie, the second in command, you might say, in some ways relatively moderate figure within the leadership. That's more complex than that, but let's say that. And he and others put forward the idea that actually it was the time to seek a rapproch more, seek a new closeness with the United States, with which there have been no diplomatic relations by that stage for more than 20 years. So that is also represents an opportunity.

but within China, where there is a rift between the leadership as well that the United States wants to encourage, wants to take advantage of. Joe and Lai, I remember that feeling about John Lai, that there was a sense of hope with this guy. He was kind of a cool guy, you thought, from my little boy perspective. But that was the key. So on one hand, we have a sort of geopolitical rift with Russia, for one, but we also have this within. So that's the moment of chess playing that's really going on there. Boy, is it chess.

I mean, this is such high-level stuff. We don't really hear about this these days, but the Achesons and all these Dulleses, all these guys are playing this game that's really big, large scale is what's happening. We also haven't talked about the fact that in 1964, China becomes a nuclear power, which really tips the balance. Yes, that's absolutely right. So China's nuclear program, which has been underway, really, for several years by that point, comes to fruition with the building and testing of China's first nuclear weapon, first atomic weapons. bomb. There's also, actually, along with that, development of satellite systems as well. So the idea of China as this technologically advanced defense power or security power becomes really important at that stage. I would say by that stage, the world's concentration really is on

the U.S. Soviet competition on nuclear weapons. The Chinese weapon, of course, is an addition, and I'm welcome addition in many ways, to proliferation across the world. But at that stage, it's still very much in the lower tier of players, certainly compared to the Soviets or the Americans. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. Ron is so much of the last phase of this relationship, the most recent phase of this, reaching back to Nixon onward,

is about trade, is about us becoming these remarkable trade partners, where there's so much interdependence. How does this occur? How does this inform what had been so far? fractious and difficult. And are we still dealing with the same geopolitical realities of competing against each other, even while we depend on each other? It's such an ironic circumstance, isn't it? It is ironic, Don. So let's just take a moment to look at what you might call the

decade and a half that comes between Nixon's visit to China, 1972, and perhaps Tiananmen Square, 1989, the killings around China's capital that many people, of course, will know or need perhaps even remember. The Nixon visit was a genuinely epochal event. I won't go to huge details because it's quite well known, but I want to just put that as the start of the context. Essentially, the sign that the thaw, the freeze between the United States and China was finally going to be breached. It took a few years for them to get to official diplomatic relations, but that was, you know, more process than

reversing of course by that stage. But what ends up in some ways being just as important are the economic shifts, the tectonic plates that move in terms of the global economy under the surface in those years as well. Essentially, one of the things you ought to have to remember about Nixon and not always remember quite as affectionately in some terms is that he was also the president who took the United States off the gold standard and essentially shook up almost to the point of destruction of the old Bretton Woods economic system that had been set up after 1945. The whole variety of reasons for that, but basically, he triggered that particular process. That meant that the 1970s began to become a decade when all around the world in

different ways in the United States, down in South America, in parts of Asia, in the United States, the move towards the internationalized, liberalized system of market economics, where currencies flowed freely, and trade began to global. in a big way, that really came into place during that period. Now, one particular domestic development in China, we now know was very important in this, which was that even despite the fact that collective farms and communal and collective economics had been ruling the roost in China for 20, 30 years, there was still actually more private entrepreneurship, particularly in the countryside, amongst the farmers, that had been acknowledged. A lot of it obviously was the love that dare not

speak its name, because saying you were running markets at a time of socialism could get you where it's a big trouble. But, you know, these entrepreneurial farmers and they were doing pretty well. And when it came to the time when Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader who essentially comes to supreme control, a couple of years after Mao's death in 1978, says that market socialism is the way to go. The floodgates open. And China's domestic economics becomes a really important part of, at that point, China's domestic economy starts to reform in the direction of markets in a way that has never stood still since then. But that then links into what's happening in the Western world, the United States in particular. And as China's economy expands, it moves from agriculture

to late industry and manufacturing made in China. The United States is also in the 80s, under the presidency of one Ronald Reagan, doing various things that also help to push China's case forward. Number one, see, the number one is that the Reagan administration really, really wants to push back against the Soviet Union. They're the bad communists. That means that Deng Xiaoping's China becomes the good communists. And there's a lot of actually quite warm relationships

between the two, even up to a certain amount of defense cooperation, which people prefer not to talk about these days. But happened under Carter, it happened under Reagan. Then, in economic terms, you have Reagan's decision, along with his economics team, to essentially make the United States into a big debtor nation, in other words, to create lots of credit and to use to suck in lots of exports from imports from the US point of view from Japan, but also

from China. So China's getting its market mojo back. Its peasants are moving into manufacturing and these sort of cities in the big, in the countryside. And the United States is becoming a huge global market to buy all of these goods. So everyone's happy. This is the situation that some economists and historians, one of them is the famous economic historian Neil Ferguson, have called Chimerica. In other words, the two economies, becoming more and more embedded with each other. Now, the 80s is when this begins to take off. 1989 in Tiananmen Square,

the horrific killing of student and workers after democracy demonstrations in the center of Beijing, looks as if it's going to put, you know, the end on this particular period. But in fact, what we now know is that after a short period when it looked at the US and China might essentially be in the deep freeze because of this horrific event in 1989,

actually, the economies start to come together again and to fire on even more cylinders through the 1990s, thereby creating the Chinese economic miracle in which, of course, input, productivity, growth, hard work, labour and China continues to grow the economy, but American economic policies, also policies elsewhere in the world, but the United States is really crucial to this, oriented in a direction that essentially looks to create supply chains

and take a huge number of imports of cheaply made goods from China. At the same time, they also have to say there's one other phenomenon emerging, which is a great relevance today, the beginning of the hollowing out of some parts of American manufacturing, which ends up not being able to compete in terms of cost or speed or automation, either with the cheapness of China or the efficiency of Japan. And all of these factors come together in the 80s and 90s. Yeah.

Again, though, this is the tendency of all Americans, to sort of give ourselves the credit for the situation when, in fact, China is really in the driver's seat of this change. It's a worldwide role that they're playing, not just towards the United States, but we are, of course, the main market for them. I want to ask you, the reaction to the Tiananmen Square, which in that year, I remember, we're talking about the spring of 1989. So many of us who were youngsters at the time remember the man in front of the tank. It was all these symbolic moments of like, oh, thank goodness for these people. they're finally breaking the bonds of oppression and so forth.

And then it all happened so tragically and then went away. And it was largely because of this economic factor that the United States at the federal level knew that we had this skin in the game as far as the transformation of the Chinese economy. That really was the scale, wasn't it, at that point? I'd say that that's broadly right, John, but... I mean, that's the scale in terms of a balance. I'm sorry.

Broadly right, but with some other thoughts that we should keep in mind. Actually, I wouldn't underestimate how much the US continued to be in the minds of Chinese reformers as a role model all the way through the 1990s. One of the things that's less realized about China, worth saying, I think, is that after the horror of Tiananmen Square, 1989, there are a few years when really human rights and freedoms in China were in the absolute deep freeze. And yet, in the mid-1990s, say from 1993, 4 onwards, maybe for about 15 years or so, actually even under China's authoritarian system, which was always there, there was more openness to political ideas that came from the outside world. You could discuss, you know, democratization, constitutionalism, and a willingness to actually embrace the outside world again on the grounds that economic benefit

might well have to come with being more internationalized. Just one very quick example, people may have to be. forgotten. In 1998, less than 10 years after Tiananmen Square, President Bill Clinton, the United States, and President Zhang Zemin of China, debated live on Chinese TV as to whether democracy was a good idea or not. Now, you won't need me to say that they had rather different ideas about this, but the point is that this could happen live on Chinese TV inside a communist country at that point, because there was enough sense, both of China getting its confidence back, that it was heading the right way, and a feeling that engaging with you.

United States was something that was within the ambit of a shared enterprise. And many of the other things, which have since gone on to become quite controversial, such as the US and China working together to get China into the WTO, the World Trade Organization in the early 2000s, are also part of that period when it seemed that after Tiananmen Square being a horrific but perhaps not entirely predictive element of what was going to happen in terms of China's domestic politics, that there might be a second act in which the U.S. and China could be closer to each other, there might be more democratization. That was a big moment when we were, China most favored nation, you know,

gets that status going. I mean, there were so many headlines, tension relieving headlines that thought, oh, goodness, this is all finally over and we can all be friends and important friends, you know. I was living in California. I remember those container ships still coming to this day. We really rely on them. I want to bring this to the modern moment, to the modern tensions that we are feeling right now.

Certainly under Biden times, the balloons are coming over. Oh, my goodness, it's all kinds of scary things that the Chinese are doing to us. An illusion, because the reality is we continue on in this interdependent way, but have we reached a real point of fracture, or are we just in another chapter of this goes on and on? Let's just figure it out as we go. I think we're in another chapter, but it's quite a tense chapter, and we don't yet know what the end point is going to be. I would say that the moment we mentioned a few minutes ago,

the entry of China into the World Trade Organization 2001, which happened with the support of both Democrats and Republicans, was probably the last policy moment in US-China relations where both sides were trying to get exactly the same thing. In the 20 or so years since then, although, of course, there have been diplomatic relations and some cooperation, particularly on climate change for a while, between the two sides, agendas were really different in many ways. I think the turning point,

or at least an important turning point, we can now identify in retrospect. And that was probably 2008. The great financial crisis, when China looked at the near implosion of the Western liberal economic system and financial system, and found itself thinking, well, maybe we can do better. You know, if we've been following this guidebook for the last 20, 25 years, but this is what happens, it goes wrong, maybe we ought to go in a different direction. And that decade that followed the financial crisis was the one where China, you know, pumped huge amounts of credit into the economy, built all those skyscrapers and high-speed railways and airports and all the kind of shiny new equipment that you see if you go to China, but also started pumping 2.4% of its GDP year-on-year

into scientific research and development because they knew that over time, you know, five years, 10 years, 15 years in, that would mean an awful lot of graduates in China who can do math, an awful lot of places in the country that could take scientific research and then commercialize it and also make China's military one of the strongest in the world. So I would say that that set of developments that comes from 2008, when the US and China are finally really diverging, has led to where we are now. In other words, the reality that both sides are still hugely dependent on each other for tech cooperation in some areas, or they're not all, in terms of investment and in terms of the global financial system, but are now heading in divergent directions

where the success of one is seen essentially as being to the detriment of the other and vice versa. And that is a shift, but it's a shift that has nearly... Yeah, something close to that. Yeah. I mean, and the other irony in general is that the world, never mind China, is now reacting to us in ways we used to. have to read the world where there's a strong national figure, you know, a nationalist movement, which is in charge of the country, and people are trying to read, you know, which way the U.S.

is going to go by way of Donald Trump. It's really quite a reverse, isn't it? Because that's how we used to look at the world. And now they're having to read those same tea leaves for us. Well, the word tariff, of course, has been heard more in U.S. politics, perhaps in the last half year or so than, you know, in half a century before that. I think it's fair to say that we're on a journey. and we don't know the end point of that yet.

Both China and the US have raised tariffs against each other, lowered tariffs against each other, and we still, at the time of recording, have to wait for what it sounds like President Trump once, and I suspect that President Xi is probably likely to agree to at some point, which is a summit meeting between the two. It may be that in the age of politics that's run by big personalities who basically take on very individual decisions,

that maybe that's the next phase for the US-China relationship, It's two presidents who both think of themselves as the key actors, not just in their own countries, but in their hemispheres, who are actually going to sit down and have that conversation. Where it will go, well, I have to say, Don, that's probably for another episode of history hit. Well, we're calling you, and we need that information. Ron Amitter is a professor of U.S. Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School. Please do yourself a favor and Google this man's brilliant career, the many books and articles he's written. Thank you so much, Rana. Glad to meet you.

Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great.

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