But Barack Obama’s “ pivot to Asia” launched between 20, implemented with more warmongering rhetoric by Donald Trump through his trade offensive, revealed that the world is just too small for two great powers like these, regardless of who the leaders are. The shock of 9/11 and the financial crisis of 2008 meant that structural tensions between the US and China could be hidden under the carpet throughout the 2000s. Meanwhile, to his secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice, China was a “potential threat”. But this would not last.Ĭhina’s defence expenditure was growing fast and when George W Bush started his race to the White House, he described China as “a competitor, not a strategic partner”. This was enough for a military crisis in the Taiwan Strait in 1995-96 and the US bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade in 1999 – declared involuntary by the Americans – not to destroy Nixon’s and others’ diplomatic efforts. With a passionate speech in March 2000, Bill Clinton sought to convince the US Congress that supporting the PRC’s entry into the World Trade Organisation was the right thing to do for those leaders who believed in “a future of greater openness and freedom for the people of China in a future of greater prosperity for the American people”. Indeed, a positive peak was reached during the 1990s. If the US-China train did not derail, it was because, at the time, the US continued to prioritise economic interests. Despite the shock to the world, Bush bypassed what Kissinger described as “the bureaucracy and his own ban on high-level exchanges”, writing a secret letter to Deng addressing him as lao pengyou – old friend – in memory of the years Bush had spent as liaison officer in Beijing. Most strikingly, the relationship made it through the repression of Tiananmen Square’s protests in 1989. This was characterised by spirited support for Taiwan, which in the early days meant representatives such as vice-president (and later president), George H W Bush, and the former national security adviser Henry Kissinger had to conduct some diplomacy of reparation. First, it made it through the administration of Ronald Reagan from 1980 to 1988. The relationship has since survived two crucial passages.

A few years after Nixon’s China trip, “ normalisation” was achieved by Jimmy Carter and Deng Xiaoping, and the US finally moved its embassy from Taiwan to Beijing. The Nixon-Mao meeting was just the beginning of a durable, stable relationship. Strategic interests of the two great powers were as aligned at the time as they clash nowadays.

But the US’s long-term objective was to bring the most populous country into a rising global economic order.

Washington was keen to gain a new heavyweight partner to counter Moscow.

Nixon visits china