404 { China’s Quest
Deng did not become capitalist—at least, that was not Deng’s intention—but
it did wade ever deeper into the powerful currents of global capitalism, an
approach vastly different than Mao’s.Normalization of Relations with the United StatesDeng began pushing for normalization of ties with the United States as soon
as he was fully restored to office in July 1977.^3 When Secretary of State Cyrus
Vance visited Beijing in August, Deng laid out “three tasks” for the United
States to achieve to make normalization possible: 1) abrogate the 1954 mutual
security treaty with Taiwan, 2) withdraw all US military personnel from
Taiwan, and 3) sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Regarding unifica-
tion of Taiwan with the PRC, Deng told Vance, the Chinese people should be
allowed to solve this problem by themselves.^4 In effect, Deng was asking for
the United States to adopt a hands-off strategy toward cross-Strait relations.
Throughout the process of PRC-US normalization, Taiwan would be the most
difficult problem.
In May 1978, after President Carter resolved a policy dispute between
Vance and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in favor of the lat-
ter’s policy of aligning with Beijing against Moscow, Brzezinski arrived in
Beijing with a new US approach toward normalization.^5 The United States
was willing to accept the “three tasks” stipulated by Deng, Brzezinski told
Deng, but hoped that when the United States said in the process of normal-
ization that it expected a peaceful solution to the Taiwan problem, the US
statement would not be refuted by China. Regarding Taiwan, Deng said: “We
cannot commit ourselves to solving the Taiwan problem peacefully. With re-
gard to this question, the two sides can express their own ideas that do not
bind each other.”^6 That formulation left China free to rebut US statements
about peaceful resolution of the Taiwan question, an outcome contrary to
Brzezinski’s proposal. Still, momentum toward normalization was building.
Beijing pushed very hard for the United States to agree to a hands-off pol-
icy toward a cross-Strait military conflict. Foreign Minister Huang Hua, who
had been dealing with Americans since 1936, when Zhou Enlai assigned his
then-young English-speaking assistant to show the journalist Edgar Snow
around the north Shaanxi base area, led the normalization negotiations on
the Chinese side. The US team was led by Ambassador Leonard Woodcock,
former head of the United Auto Workers union and a skilled negotiator.
The American side agreed to several small but significant changes in the
verbiage used to state the US position on the status of Taiwan.^7 The English
language texts of both the 1972 and 1978 PRC-US Joint Communiqués used
the verb “acknowledge” to state the US position: the United States “acknowl-
edges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is a part of