THE OTHER CONTINENT: ASIA 389ing America’s national interest. Baker’s first instinct was to move
cautiously regardless of feelings of outrage at the Tiananmen massacre.
He warned Bush that Gorbachëv was likely to try and reinforce ties
with China. Baker sought to prevent Moscow from taking advantage
of any rift between Washington and Beijing.^55 Nevertheless the domi-
nant opinion in the administration was that the Americans had to give
some sign of displeasure at the massacre. On 5 June Bush halted arms
deals with China that were worth $600 million to American corpora-
tions. He did this with some regret: ‘Down the road we have enormous
commonality of interests with China, but it will not be the same
under a brutal and repressive regime.’^56 For some weeks he had
been under criticism from Senator Goldwater after approving the sale
of jet fighters to Beijing. Goldwater had feared that such planes could
be used against Taiwan.^57 The Tiananmen bloodshed made it impos-
sible to brush his words aside.
Gorbachëv saw his chance to make at least a little progress with
the Chinese. The two sides met in November 1989 to find ways of
decreasing the forces near each other’s borders and enhancing mutual
confidence. Sessions were held in Beijing and Moscow and continued
in the next year.^58 Normalization was becoming a reality at the state
level. The Chinese economic reforms stalled as Deng continued the
repression and stabilized the political order. He also judged it prudent
to remove some of the leading proponents of market economics from
their posts. This probably reinforced Gorbachëv’s dismissive attitude
to the road that Deng had been taking. When Gorbachëv met Giulio
Andreotti in July 1990, he assured him that China’s reformed economy
was vulnerable to its enemies.^59 He mistook a temporary interruption
for permanent abolition, and he overlooked how much change
remained in place. While coming to diplomatic terms with Beijing,
he continued to underestimate its achievements and to overplay Mos-
cow’s industrial and agricultural potential under the aegis of his own
favoured policies.