50 years + on from Nixon going to China, if either side got screwed from US-China rapprochement, which side should have played it different, and when?

[raharris1973]

Now that Nixon's visit to Mao in China, and the process of Sino-US rapprochement it inaugurated, is over 50 years in the past, it is an interesting vantage point from which to reflect.

The US more than fifty years later in a period of tense rivalry with China, even a Cold War, but still conducting massive volumes of trade despite tariffs and restrictions, and not having the ubiquitous proxy wars and Cuban Missile Crisis and Berlin style stand-offs that marked much of the US-Soviet Cold War.

There's buyer's remorse on the economic and diplomatic opening to China in the US, and certainly Chinese resentment of the US and likely some sense of betrayal of the normalization agreements that accompanied the Nixon-Kissinger visits and establishment of formal diplomatic relations.

Turning this into an exercise in what-iffing, let's accept the idea that either the US, or China, or both, got screwed over, betrayed, or the 'short-end of the stick', by whatever metric you choose, by the era of Sino-American rapprochement in the 70s-80s, de facto anti-Soviet coalition in the 70s-80s, and progressive tightening of economic links from the 80s through mid-to-late 2010s.

If that's the case, which side should have played the relationship with the other differently after 1970 to get a better relative position for itself? The USA, or China? And starting when? Was the Sino-US a win-win at least as long as the Soviet Union was around? Or it never was? Or it continued to be for long after? How could either side have realistically levered things differently, or tried to, and what would the other have done realistically in response?

 

[raharris1973]

I asked a similar question about which country, the US or China, got the short end of the stick from the relationship some years ago. I got multiple responses saying the US did, largely along, industrial, economic, and jobs grounds, some saying it was a mutual benefit, but virtually none saying there was any reason for China to feel aggrieved or betrayed or nastily surprised. Nobody seemed able to fathom how China could regard the ties as have anything other than upsides.

I can imagine it, but I won’t say why yet. I’ll see if anyone else comes up with anything.

Structurally, in the international system, the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had cemented an alliance or Sino-western coalition of convenience in the late Cold War, left both sides “free” to now worry about each other and stand up to each other once more.

One also does not have to look at cultural explanations, ideological explanations, or regime type explanations for why post 1989 and 1991 Russia developed much better political relations with China than Russia developed or maintained with the USA, or than China maintained with the USA.

The PRC post Soviet collapse settled its territorial claims with Russia rather than pressing them, and did not try to displace Russian political influence in Mongolia and the Central Asian Stan’s. Those countries did not run after Chinese political alliances either. Everybody started trading more, but China coordinated political moves in Central Asia with Moscow.

Whereas in the former Soviet bloc and Soviet republics, the U.S. moved to fill the vacuum wherever Russia retreated. Many locals sought to entice the west or he included, and the US and NATO let them in, earning anger against Russia that China did not earn.