408 { China’s Quest
modernization. Deng was in a hurry. China had already lost decades and had
to rush to catch up. Late in 1978, Brzezinski informed Deng that, because of
the political calendar in the United States, if normalization was not achieved
by the end of that year, it would need to be delayed until late 1979. What would
be the situation then? Would conditions for normalization still be favorable?
The PRC and the United States had been without diplomatic relations for so
long already. Now the chance was at hand. Deng seized it. Deng’s calcula-
tion, in Ezra Vogel’s estimate, was that China lacked adequate leverage to
both secure normalization and force the United States to stop arms sales to
Taiwan. If he wanted normalization, continuing US arms sales to Taiwan was
the price he would have to pay.^18 Two days before the issue of the PRC-US nor-
malization communiqué, Deng gave his keynote speech to the Third Plenum
of the Eleventh Central Committee announcing “the fundamental guiding
principle of shifting the focus of all Party work to the Four Modernizations.”^19
Deng’s speech ended with the call, “Let us advance courageously to change
the backward condition of our country and turn it into a modern and pow-
erful socialist state.”Deng’s American Tour: Deepening of the Triangular PartnershipDeng Xiaoping’s state visit to the United States from January 29 to February
4, 1979, was the first ever by a top Chinese leader, reciprocated the 1972 and
1975 visits to China by presidents Nixon and Ford respectively, and symbol-
ized the new era of normal Sino-US relations The visit was significant at two
levels: 1) the strengthening of a PRC-US strategic triangular partnership to
counter Soviet expansionism; and 2) the generation of popular American
goodwill that would underpin US support for China’s new long march to-
ward modernization.
Regarding the strengthening of strategic partnership, Deng arrived in the
United States seeking support, or at least understanding, for the upcoming
war against Vietnam. The deterioration of PRC-Vietnamese relations dur-
ing 1978 paralleled Beijing’s push for normalization with the United States.
As outlined in the previous chapter, Hanoi’s failed efforts to engineer a coup
d’état ousting the Khmer Rouge in early 1978, followed by the conclusion in
November of a security treaty with the USSR and the mobilization of powerful
Vietnamese military forces for a full-scale invasion of Cambodia, led the CCP
to decide to “teach Vietnam a lesson” in February 1979. The Carter adminis-
tration generally shared Beijing’s concern about the aggressive activities of
the Soviet Union and its proxies, Vietnam and Cuba, and saw deepened rela-
tions with China as one effective counter to that expansionism. In the words
of National Security Advisor Brzezinski, the strategic triangle was something
that he had to “think of at all times but speak of it never ... publicly one