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In the diplomatic sphere, “seeking truth from facts,” the foundation of Deng’s
pragmatic policy approach, meant that China was, in fact, poor and weak,
and must focus intensively on development for a very long time if it was to
become prosperous and strong. In many respects, it is this sense of modest
humility that distinguishes China’s diplomacy during the Deng era.
Normalization of Ties with the Soviet Union
The beginning of China’s quest for improved relations with the Soviet Union
followed hard on the heels of the 1982 PRC-US confrontation over arms sales
to Taiwan in 1982. As noted in the previous chapter, China’s leaders believed
that the United States was trying to use what Washington perceived as
China’s vulnerability within the strategic triangle to force China to bow to
unacceptable US arms sales to Taiwan. Improving China’s ties with Moscow
would counter this by weakening Washington’s ability to play the Soviet card
against Beijing. Huang Hua notes that the Reagan administration’s objection-
able moves toward Taiwan were a main factor leading Deng to shift from
rhetorical opposition to Soviet hegemonism to opposition to all hegemonism,
“so as to strike a proper balance” between the two superpowers.^1 The Soviet
military threat to China had diminished considerably since the 1970s. The
fact that Moscow had failed to act against China during China’s 1979 punitive
war against Vietnam signaled the limits of Soviet power. So too did the fact
that Soviet forces were bogged down in an expanding war in Afghanistan.
The United States, for its part, was rapidly expanding its military forces, con-
fronting the Soviet Union with a genuine arms race it could not hope to win.
The Soviet Union clearly needed relief.
Vice Foreign Minister Qian Qichen, Soviet-educated and fluent in Russian
and who was China’s principal in the seven-year-long push for better relations
with the Soviet Union, noted that by early 1982 Beijing had already established
“a new framework” for PRC-US relations, thereby creating an opportunity to
improve relations with Moscow.^2
Modernization of China’s large, Soviet-derived industrial base was one
motive to expand economic cooperation with the Soviet Union. A large
swath of China’s industry in the early 1980s was still based on technology and
machinery supplied by the USSR in the 1950s. In the intervening decades,
Soviet design bureaus had upgraded much of that equipment. Incorporation
of those Soviet improvements into China’s industrial stock might make an
important contribution toward modernization of China’s industry, or so it
seemed at the time. Then there was trade. For the five Chinese provinces
and autonomous regions bordering the USSR or Soviet-allied Mongolia,
the USSR was a natural trading partner. Most of those provinces were
far from China’s east coast seaports offering easy access to the global