Title: The U.S. “All-Out Engagement” China Policy and Its Implications for Beijing and Taipei
Abstract: AIthough the triadic relationship entangling the United States, mainland China, and Taiwan can be approached from any of the three perspectives, in this article I look at it mainly from the U.S. point of view. Unless otherwise specified, the term Sino-U.S. relations refers to U.S. relations with both parts of China, straddling the Taiwan Strait. Because the new U.S. all-out engagement policy toward mainland China cannot be fully appreciated in isolation from the history of American China policy, this discussion begins with the origins of the post-World War II policy: President Franklin D. Roosevelt's blueprint for a new world order after the defeat of Nazism in Europe and expansionist Japan in Asia.' Parenthetically, we shall not review history for its own sake, but for lessons that will help us better understand the present turn of events and its implications. For the United States, the legacy of the unfinished Chinese civil war of the late 1940s has been a perpetual, harrying problem. The outcome of that war upset FDR's blueprint, which envisioned a revitalized China, a valued wartime ally (then under Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government), as a stabilizer of peace in Asia. (Hence China was to be a permanent member on the UN Security Council, to be created after the war.) To forestall a resurgence of militarism in Japan, the FDR plan called for clipping of its wings: Korea would be freed from Japan and Taiwan returned to China.
Publication Year: 1999
Publication Date: 1999-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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