Columbia University Press Jimmy Carter and China: Multilateral Competition in the Global Cold War

In the late 1970s, with relations between the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China strained, the Carter administration saw an opening. The United States and its allies embarked on military and dual-use technology transfers to China as a counterweight to the USSR, transforming rapprochement into full-blown cooperation. Carters decision to pivot away from the United Statess traditional ally, the Republic of China on Taiwan, and embrace the Peoples Republic redefined the Cold War from a struggle against communism to one against the Soviet Union. It not only complicated a variety of American objectivesfrom the security of Taiwan to global technology transfer and US-Soviet détentebut also sowed the seeds of future tensions between China and the West. This book is an international history of the Carter administrations intricate relations with the two competing Chinese regimes, highlighting the geopolitical significance and lasting implications of this pivotal moment. Drawing extensively from previously untapped archives in China, Taiwan, Western Europe, the United States, and Russia, Sheng Peng uncovers the internal governmental debates across world capitals that affected Carters China policy. He charts how both mainland China and Taiwan were integrated into global supply chains for defense and dual-use technologies during the 1970s and 1980s and the present-day consequences. Jimmy Carter and China demonstrates that technological competition was as crucial as strategic and ideological competition to the course of the Cold War, and together they profoundly shaped US-China relations and the world today. Autorid: Sheng Peng