426 { China’s Quest
stood, affirmed by Reagan and subsequent presidents as the law of the land
and a core part of US policy toward Taiwan. Perhaps what is significant about
the 1979–1982 renegotiation was how well Beijing did considering China’s still
very weak position.
China punished Washington for its stubbornness over arms sales by
shifting to a rhetorically more middle position between the United States
and the Soviet Union. Beijing hoped thereby to disabuse Washington of any
notions that Beijing’s triangular partnership with Washington could be used
to impose harsh terms on China. Two weeks after the issue of the arms sales
communiqué, Huang Hua during a visit to the UN laid out for top Reagan
administration officials China’s new foreign policy, adopted at the recent 12th
Congress of the CCP. China followed an independent foreign policy and did
not depend on any big power or group of big powers, Huang told US leaders.
Huang also stated China’s hope that the United States would fulfill its com-
mitment in the August 1982 communiqué earnestly and solve this problem
at an early date and thoroughly.^58 Subsequently, Chinese media stopped
speaking of global united front against hegemonism, greatly toned down
condemnations of Soviet “social imperialism,” and began to assign greater
moral equivalence to Soviet moves and American moves around the world. A
new stress appeared in PRC foreign propaganda: China’s independent foreign
policy of seeking peaceful coexistence with all countries. Beijing also began
its slow march toward re-establishing normal relations with the USSR. Close
alignment with the United States circa 1978–1980 had created the appearance
of dependency, which the American superpower tried to exploit over Taiwan.
Beijing responded by moving toward a more balanced rhetorical position in
the strategic triangle. But quiet cooperation on Cambodia and Afghanistan,
and electronic monitoring of Soviet Central Asia, raised PRC-US strategic co-
operation reached unprecedented levels. That cooperation helped consolidate
a positive US approach toward China’s Four Modernizations.Sino-American Partnership Shapes World HistoryThe period of PRC-US strategic partnership in the late 1970s and early 1980s
constituted, in effect, the second Sino-American alliance. The first was against
Japan from 1940 to 1945. Neither were formal or declared; both were infor-
mal and not based on treaties of alliance. But both were nonetheless effective.
The second Sino-American alliance, or strategic partnership if one prefers,
helped persuade Soviet leaders to pull back from policies of assertive use of
military force by the Soviet Union and its Cuban and Vietnamese allies to
expand the frontiers of socialism. Sino-Soviet strategic partnership was not
the only factor, or even the most important factor, compelling Soviet leaders
to undertake the fundamental shift in Soviet policy engineered by Mikhail