US-China Naval Co-operation Against the Soviet Union

Carter’s Navy

Bruce A. Elleman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040399705
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: History

This book discusses the key role of the transfer of naval technology from the U.S. to China in building up the Chinese Navy during the Cold War.

Revealing how this process began in the late 1970s under the Carter Administration when Deng Xiaoping was newly in power, and how it accelerated under both the Reagan and Bush administrations, moving from the transfer of simple technology to entire naval systems the book highlights how the policy was successful in helping make China a serious threat to the Soviet Union, and how it thereby contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The book also demonstrates how this same policy also enabled China, now with the world's largest navy, to become much more assertive in East Asia more widely, resulting in the U.S. reversing its technology transfer policy following the Tiananmen Square massacre and in China turning to Russia and other former Soviet countries including Ukraine for the supply of Soviet-era equipment.

Utilising disclosed and formerly secret documents this book will be a valuable resource to both students and scholars of international relations, security studies and naval studies, particularly in relation to Chinese-U.S.-USSR relations during the Cold War.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Historical Background to Carter’s Tech Transfer Program to China
• 2 Determining the Process for Dual-use Technology Transfers
• 3 Solving Problems with Dual-use COCOM Transfers
• 4 The Dual-use COCOM Mechanism
• 5 Technology Transfers as a Possible Threat
• 6 The Carter Administration’s Long-term Goals
• 7 Ronald Reagan’s Technology Transfer Policies
• 8 End of the Cold War and Western Reaction to the Tiananmen Massacre
• Conclusions: How Carter, Reagan, and Bush helped Create the PLAN
• Document 1 U.S.-ROC Mutual Defense Treaty, 2 December 1954 (ratified 3 March 1955) (Terminated by the United States in 1980)
• Document 2 Formosa Resolution, 1955
• Document 3 Shanghai Communiqué, 28 February 1972
• Document 4 Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America, 16 December 1978
• Document 5 Taiwan Relations Act, 10 April 1979
• Document 6 Joint Communiqué on the Question of Arms Sales to Taiwan, 17 August 1982
• Document 7 A concurrent resolution expressing the sense of Congress regarding missile tests and military exercises by the People’s Republic of China, 21 March 1996
• Document 8 Anti-Secession Law adopted by NPC, 14 March 2005
• Bibliography
• About the Author
• Index