US-China Cold War Collaboration

1971-1989

S. Mahmud Ali

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN: 9781134245802
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Freedom
• Index: Politics & International Relations

After more than four decades the Cold War ended with the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union. Almost simultaneously China emerged as the new potential disruptor of international stability, with Beijing replacing Moscow as the key source of Western insecurity.

Drawing upon extensive primary resources, Ali questions the logic behind this perception, reflected both in popular and academic literature. Disclosing hitherto unknown aspects of the Soviet Union's disintegration, the text reveals a secret strategic alliance between the USA and China during the Cold War's final decades. Presenting an in-depth analysis of the relationship between the two countries, the book identifies the bases on which the alliance emerged; the growing mutual concern of a 'Soviet threat'.

Using documentation from the three capitals, Ali presents a compelling tale of intrigue and conspiracy at the highest level of the international security system. The text brings a new dimension to the current literature and deepens our understanding of a key aspect of the Cold War – its end.

1 Prologue

An unarmed EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft flying in the airspace over China Sea was struck by a Chinese fighter and, of course, for a while we had 24 of our great personnel detained. Some ask why are we conducting surveillance against another nation? My answer to that is, ‘That’s what we do.’ We are vigilant, we are watchful because we know that our interests and those of our allies in the region may be challenged; we must be ready.¹

(General Hugh Shelton, Chairman, JCS, July 2001)

The firm struggle by the Chinese government and the people against US hegemony has forced the US government to change from its initial rude and unreasonable attitude to saying ‘very sorry’ to the Chinese people for the plane collision. In dealing with this incident with the United States, China has fully displayed its manner as a great power in safeguarding world peace and struggling unyieldingly against power politics . . . The struggle between the pursuers and opponents of hegemony and the unipolar world is a long-term and complicated one and it will not be completed through one event or one round of encounters.²

(Renmin Ribao, April 2001)

Comments like these made by US and Chinese officials in 2001 showed how fraught relations had become. Although the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, assured his Chinese hosts in July 2001 that Washington did not consider Beijing a ‘strategic peer-competitor’, the substance of US policy, reflected in the FY2002 defence budget presented just then, suggested otherwise. US–Chinese ties became controversial in the 1996 US presidential campaign; but major fissures had appeared shortly after the June 1989 Tiananmen Square events when horror and loathing swept the West generally, and the USA in particular. Demands for ‘punishing’ Beijing became vociferous.

Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton managed, despite public anger, to restore a measure of ‘normalcy’. Post-Tiananmen sanctions were diluted by both.³ The mid-1990s changed that. Sharp exchanges over the Taiwanese president’s visit to Cornell University, Chinese missile ‘tests’, and exercises around Taiwan in 1995 and 1996, and the US naval response to the latter suddenly highlighted the possibility of a clash between the two forces. Reports of alleged People’s Republic of China (PRC) efforts to influence the outcome of the 1996 US presidential elections, and the second Clinton Administration’s policies, appeared in the press. Now, debates between those who wished to see a robust approach to Chinese human rights, intellectual property rights and trade policy records, and those who supported the Administration’s ‘constructive engagement’ policy, became an exchange of vitriol. The publication of the ‘Cox Commission Report’, the ‘mistaken’ bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the ‘Kosovo war’, alleged PRC espionage in US missile and nuclear warhead arenas, the arrest on espionage charges of US physicist Wen Ho Lee, and of several US nationals in China – all pushed relations downward. Presidential candidate George W. Bush’s characterisation of China as a ‘strategic competitor’ during the 2000 campaign, and his post-election pursuit of ballistic missile defence, widened the breach, deepening mutual anxieties. The collision of an EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft with a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) interceptor in April 2001 brought mutual perceptions to their nadir since diplomatic relations were established in 1979.

This level of mutual distrust between the two establishments, and between influential elite factions in both countries, makes it difficult to imagine the two countries as secret partners, working closely in a clandestine alliance designed to weaken a common adversary, the Soviet Union, for nearly two decades. And yet, the record gleaned from official documents from the three capitals demonstrates the existence of such a covert coalition, highlighting its effectiveness and its significant, if unacknowledged, contribution to the demise of the Soviet Union, and the coterminous end of the Cold War. This work traces the tortuous path Washington and Beijing travelled in the closing decades of the Cold War, focusing on their covert collaboration against Moscow.

US policy toward China was mixed throughout the twentieth century, with wild swings across the spectrum ranging from semi-colonial repression through military alliance followed by benign neglect, to active hostility, to barely concealed animosity. Inconsistencies became apparent after the anti-Japanese front between Chiang Kaishek’s nationalist Kuomintang Administration and Mao Zedong’s communist rebels fell apart following Japan’s surrender. US support for the Kuomintang Party (KMT) burgeoned as the civil war between the two factions resumed. Under the Sino–American Cooperative Organization Agreement, the USA shipped materiel worth $17.66m to the KMT⁴ between VJ Day and 2 March 1946. Washington transferred 131 naval vessels worth $141.31m under Public Law 512 as a grant.⁵ Between 1 January 1948 and 31 March 1949, the USA gave away ordnance worth $60.60m to the KMT, and sold war material⁶ worth another $5.30m. The 80th Congress passed the ‘China Aid Act’ as PL472 which instructed that a sum of $338m was ‘to remain available for obligation for the period of one year following the date of enactment of this Act’. Another $125m was offered ‘for additional aid to China through grants’.⁷

In addition, between VJ Day and 30 June 1948, Washington shipped combat hardware worth over $781 million to the KMT under the Lend–Lease Act.⁸ The volume and value of these transfers underscored the depth of US commitment to the KMT regime. When the latter fled to Taiwan in October 1949, it was not just the bulk of this ordnance that was lost – along with it went considerable US ‘face’ and honour, which became apparent as the debate over ‘who lost China’ raged in Washington. The centre of the nearly unipolar post-war world was unable fully to reconcile itself to this defeat. Efforts began to undermine what many in Washington viewed as a local agency of an expansionist communist leadership in Moscow.⁹

Even when in the last two decades of the Cold War Washington overcame its sense of betrayal and outrage at the ‘loss’ of China, significant sections in the USA remained uneasy over the approach to Beijing. However, China loomed too large on the Asian scene and could not be ignored. Future historians would credit Richard Nixon and his Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, Henry Kissinger, with initiating the ‘China card’ discourse in American Cold War strategy, but China’s potential as a likely counterpoise to the Soviet Union appeared in US thinking two-and-a-half decades earlier. Truman was the first US President to stress the useful role China could play in the adversarial post-war dynamic to help protect US interests. He wrote to his Secretary of State, James Byrnes, ‘We should rehabilitate China and create a strong central government there. We should do the same for Korea. Then we should insist on the return of our ships from Russia and force a settlement of the Lend–Lease debt to Russia. I’m tired of babying the Soviets.’¹⁰ Truman maintained Roosevelt’s ‘honest broker’ initiative to forge an anti-Japanese, Chinese Nationalist–Communist coalition, which saw several US envoys – General George Marshall among them – being sent to China. Many Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officers, too, worked with Communist commanders like Zhang Wenjin and Han Xu in Chungking, Yenan and elsewhere in the 1940s.¹¹ These Red Army men rose to senior positions in the late 1960s, but the bitter civil war and the Communists’ victory had broken contact between the USA and Mao’s PRC; the records of wartime associations disappeared into dusty Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) depositories. The choices made by the PRC, shaped by US support for the KMT, deepened the breach. Shortly before forcing the Nationalists to flee from the mainland, Mao made clear his inclinations in the context of the emerging global bipolarity:

We belong to the anti-imperialist front headed by the USSR and we can only look for genuine friendly aid from that front and not from the imperialist front . . . We also oppose the illusion of the third road. Not only in China but also in the world without exception one either leans to the side of imperialism or the side of socialism. Neutrality is a camouflage . . . This is to ally with the Soviet Union.¹²

A turbulent transition

In December 1953, Vice President Nixon had advised Eisenhower to ‘normalise’ relations with China, but his proposal sank without a trace. He revived it during his second bid for the presidency, outlining his prospective China policy in a Foreign Affairs article in 1967. The emphasis on China was reflected in the CIA’s briefings to the Nixon team early on. The CIA set up a liaison office in New York to brief the President-elect and his transitional staff. On 9 December 1968, Nixon’s Special Assistantdesignate, Henry Kissinger, demanded detailed briefing on ‘the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia, the state of US–Chinese relations, the US–USSR strategic arms balance, and the Arab Israeli conflict’ from the CIA liaison officer.¹³ Two days later, Kissinger and senior aide Lawrence Eagleburger were briefed. They asked for more details on several topics including ‘the prospects for a meeting in Warsaw of Chinese and American representatives’.¹⁴ Making contact with Beijing was high on Nixon’s agenda.

While Kissinger would earn the subsequent accolade for the opening to China, Nixon drove the process. As President, Nixon preferred formal briefings and written papers; he rarely spoke to the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) personally. DCI William Colby later wrote about the single such exchange – ‘I remember only one private conversation with him; it occurred when he phoned to ask what was happening in China and I provided a quick summary off the top of my head.’¹⁵ Nixon’s China initiative fell into a pattern of policymaking in which he set the agenda and directed its execution.¹⁶ Shortly after inauguration, Nixon sent Kissinger a memo on 1 February 1969 asking, ‘How do we establish relations with China?’¹⁷ One National Security Council (NSC) staff recounted:

The challenge on China was to work on two tracks. First, secretly, we had to get in touch with the Chinese, with whom we had no contact. And this was done through various channels and was totally, very carefully, restrictively handled out of the White House. But second, there was the function of publicly signalling the Chinese and other audiences that we were prepared to move in a different direction on our China policy.¹⁸

Another NSC staff recalled Nixon asked Kissinger for an early national security study memorandum (NSSM) on China:

the NSSM had something in it that Henry had never heard of. I don’t think many of us had ever heard of it. It had to do with pig bristles for shaving brushes, which the Chinese produce. As the first gesture that he picked out of the damn NSSM was the pig bristles. We took the pig bristle imports off the list of prohibited imports. It was the first signal that something was afoot.¹⁹

Other signals followed. US diplomats sought contacts with their Chinese counterparts in Warsaw and Bucharest. Nixon and Kissinger filtered information from them before it reached the State Department. A number of such meetings produced limited advances – Beijing agreed to receive a US envoy to discuss the Taiwan issue, but the big break came with Pakistan’s intermediation nearly two years into Nixon’s first term. His initiative could not have been better timed. Whatever the motives driving the initiative, the almost inevitably triangular linkages informing great power dynamics were evident early on.

As Moscow–Beijing polemics hardened, events in Czechoslovakia triggered Chinese anger. Dubcek’s ‘Prague spring’ was becoming the kind of ‘revisionist’ departure from Marxist orthodoxy that Beijing accused Moscow of. However, when Soviet forces led a Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Chinese commentary severely criticised Moscow. Mao expressed concern to foreign leaders about the possibility of war spreading.²⁰ Anxiety may have sensitised him to US signals. In the autumn of 1968, China agreed to resume the long-stalled Warsaw talks. On 20 January 1969, Nixon talked in his inaugural speech of US willingness to develop relations with all countries. When the editors of Renmin Ribao and Hongqi sought permission to print anodyne excerpts from that speech, Mao instructed that the full text be published.²¹ This unprecedented move signalled to readers at home and abroad that Beijing saw changes ahead. Events moved swiftly after this. Almost timed to match the launch of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) 9th National Congress, Soviet and Chinese border guards clashed on Damansky/Zhenbao island on the Ussuri river in early March. Xinhua reported:

At 9:17 AM on March 2, large numbers of fully armed soldiers, together with four armoured vehicles and cars, dispatched by the Soviet border authorities, flagrantly intruded into the area of the Zhenbao island, which is indisputably China’s territory, to carry out blatant provocations against the Chinese border garrisons on normal border patrol duty. They first opened cannon and gunfire, killing and wounding many Chinese soldiers. The Chinese border garrisons were compelled to fight back in self-defence when they reached the end of their tolerance. The grave incident was entirely and solely created by the Soviet authorities.²²

Another clash occurred on the island on 15 March; Mao ordered each county to establish a militia battalion or regiment to ‘supplement the field army. When the war breaks out, it will not be enough to rely upon the annual conscription.’²³ The CPC Congress focused on the border conflict and the danger of escalation. Mao told the first plenary session to prepare for war with the Soviet Union. He was also remarkably critical of what he now saw as the excesses of the Red Guards’ campaign across China.²⁴

As border tensions mounted and further Soviet deployments were reported, Mao asked four of the PLA’s ten marshals – Chen Yi, Ye Jianying, Xu Xiangqian and Nie Rongzhen – to study the international security situation and report to the CPC’s leadership at the end of the Congress. Zhou’s senior aide, Xiong Xianghui, was assigned to help the marshals write their report. The team met six times in June and July, submitting their report to Zhou on 11 July. It analysed the dynamics informing US–USSR relations, and between those powers and China. By equating hostile attitudes of ‘US imperialists’ and ‘Soviet revisionists’ toward China, the marshals enabled Beijing to consider both powers equally threatening. This intellectual leap was aided by the marshals saying while the USA was unlikely to attack China, the Soviet Union was.

It is unlikely that the US imperialists will rashly launch or enter a war against China. The Soviet revisionists have made China their main enemy, imposing a more serious threat to our security than the US imperialists. The Soviet revisionists are creating tensions along the long Sino–Soviet border, concentrating troops in the border area and making military intrusions. They are creating anti-China public opinion, creating chaos on the international scene, while at the same time forcing some Asian countries to join the anti-China ring of encirclement with a ‘carrot-and-stick’ method. All these are serious steps that the Soviet revisionists are taking in preparations for a war of aggression against China . . . Both China and the United States take the Soviet Union as their enemy thus the Soviet revisionists do not dare to fight a two-front war.²⁵

This line of argument suggested that China build bridges to the USA if it too wished to avoid a two-front war. Events encouraged this hypothesis. A war with the Soviet Union appeared imminent in August; the CPC Central Committee ordered general mobilisation in the Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Heilongjiang border provinces. Later in 1969, national mobilisation followed. The order also sought to end internecine fighting triggered by the Cultural Revolution between the Red Guards and the PLA, and among Red Guard factions. Mao saw the latter as a challenge to his efforts to counter a much bigger external threat.²⁶ All ‘class enemies’ who threatened the PLA were targeted for neutralisation. The Cultural Revolution was effectively ended.

Whi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Prologue
• 2 Gathering momentum
• 3 A new beginning
• 4 A hyperactive interregnum
• 5 Consolidation amid fluidity
• 6 Building China’s national power
• 7 The Afghan war
• 8 The Soviet denouement
• 9 Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography