422 { China’s Quest
certainly make an appropriate response.” Deng’s fear, he told the visit-
ing Americans, was that these mistaken views would cause the incom-
ing Reagan administration to take actions that violated US “recognition”
that Taiwan was a part of China. “We will attach great importance to the
actions taken by a new administration after it assumes office.” Lest the
visiting Americans miss the point, Deng concluded: “What I have just said
represents the official position of the Chinese government. I deem it highly
important and necessary to let our American friends clearly understand
the position of the Chinese government.”
By fall 1981, Beijing decided that the actions of the new administration had
gone too far, and attempted to secure US agreement to more restrictive guide-
lines limiting future US sales to Taiwan. Contrary to the TRA, which provided
for open-ended US arms sales to Taiwan, Beijing demanded the United States
agree to limitations on sales. In terms of quantity, Beijing pushed Washington
to agree that the annual level of sales and the quality of weapons sold not
exceed those of the Carter administration. Moreover, the overall quantity of
US arms sales should gradually decline, eventually coming to a complete end.
As Huang Hua told Secretary of State Alexander Haig in October 1981:
The problem of arms sales to Taiwan is a remnant of the past, and it
will take some time for the US to settle it. But we have been waiting in
vain for three years, and the problem is still there. We are patient, but
cannot wait for ever. If the US is determined ... to remove this obstacle
blocking Sino-US relations, we can give the US some more time to solve
this problem. The preconditions for our flexibility are: The United States
promises demonstrably that arms sales to Taiwan ... will be reduced year
by year, and finally stopped completely.^47
The reduction of US sales should not be too gradual, Deng told Ambassador
Arthur Hummel. Once final agreement had been reached, China expected
that the US commitment to gradually reduce arms sales to Taiwan did not
mean reduction by one dollar per year, pushing termination of sales into
some distant future.^48 Beijing pushed hard to secure US agreement to a defi-
nite date for a final end to US arms sales to Taiwan.
The United States argued that by trying to secure US agreement to end
arms sales to Taiwan, it was Beijing, not Washington, that was going be-
yond what been agreed to during the normalization negotiations. Not so,
Beijing replied. During the final confrontation between Deng Xiaoping and
Woodcock, when informed by Woodcock that the United States intended to
resume arms sales to Taiwan after 1979, Deng had replied, “Will normaliza-
tion last only one year?” This clearly implied expectation of a time limit on
US sales. And in any case, it was the US side that had reopened the 1978 deal
by passing the TRA.