304 { China’s Quest
the reference. This provision would be given considerable substance during
the 1970s. According to Kissinger, one of the remarkable things about the
new Sino-American relation was the extent to which the two sides agreed and
were able to cooperate in area after area, once the issue of Taiwan had been set
aside. The PRC-US rapprochement of 1972 was underpinned by convergent
views and interests about Soviet expansionism.
In China, it was necessary to explain the new relationship with US imperi-
alism. The day the Shanghai communiqué was released, Zhou Enlai convened
a Politburo meeting to discuss the consequences that might follow from the
new PRC-US dialog and decide how to explain the new relationship with the
United States to the Chinese people. Eventually it was decided to explain the
new relation with US imperialism to the Chinese people in terms of the ex-
ploitation of contradictions between primary and secondary enemies. Mao
Zedong’s united front theory from the 1930s and 1940s had explained why the
CCP united with the secondary enemy, then the KMT, to defeat the primary
enemy, then Japan, thus allowing the CCP to defeat enemies one at a time.
Now US imperialism was cast in the role of “secondary enemy” and Soviet
“social imperialism” in the role of primary enemy. Familiar categories of Mao
Zedong Thought were thus used to explain “Chairman Mao’s revolutionary
diplomatic line” to the Chinese public and to foreign communists.Breakthrough on China’s Diplomatic RelationsDuring the twenty years of US-PRC confrontation from 1950 to 1971, the
United States had used its vast influence to dissuade countries from establish-
ing diplomatic relations with “Communist China” or voting to admit “Red
China” to the United Nations. This effort was a major component of the US
strategy of containing the PRC. Ever since the UN was formed in 1945, the
Republic of China (ROC), located in Taiwan since 1949 and led by Chiang
Kai-shek, had held the China seat in the UN. Keeping that so was a major ob-
jective of US containment policy. To many people, it seemed silly that a small
island of then perhaps 14.8 million people held a veto as one of five permanent
members of the Security Council. But keeping the ROC in the UN was a way
of keeping the PRC out. Several West European countries defied Washington’s
wishes and opened missions or full embassies in Beijing—Britain, Denmark,
and the Netherlands in 1950, France in 1964—but generally US lobbying was
effective. In 1969, China had diplomatic relations with only fifty-three coun-
tries. In 1971–1972, as US-PRC rapprochement got underway, the dam broke.
In those two years, thirty states recognized the PRC. With Washington itself
moving to improve ties with China, American arguments against other coun-
tries following suit were no longer viable. Moreover, Nixon saw the entry of
China into the United Nations and the international community as in the US
interest, and decided to no longer use US influence to prevent it. In October