Sino-French Normalization and Its Impact on the United States and Taiwan
In: Journal of American-East Asian RelationsSearch for other papers by Qiang Zhai in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
This article examines the making of Chinese-French cooperation during a critical period of the Cold War. In 1964, the People’s Republic of China and France established diplomatic relations. Escaping from the restraints of the rigid Cold War alliance structure, Mao Zedong and Charles de Gaulle took the bold and extraordinary move to forge a new relationship based on the geopolitical calculations of countering American-Soviet domination of world affairs. What motivated Mao’s policy toward France? How did he view de Gaulle? How did the changes in the international system in the early 1960s affect Mao’s perceptions and calculations? What was the connection between Sino-French normalization and the Vietnam conflict? How did Washington and Taipei respond to the Sino-French rapprochement? This article uses newly released Chinese Foreign Ministry Archive files, declassified U.S. government documents, and primary sources from Taiwan (including Chiang Kai-shek’s diaries) to answer these questions.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Beschloss, Michael R., Ed. Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963–1964. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.
-
ccp [Chinese Communist Party] Central Documentary Research Department, Ed. Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao [Mao Zedong’s Manuscripts since the Founding of the prc]. Vol. 7. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1992.
-
ccp Central Documentary Research Department, Ed. Zhou Enlai nianpu, 1949–1976 [Chronology of Zhou Enlai’s Life, 1949–1976]. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1997.
-
Chiang Kai-shek’s Diaries. Hoover Institution Library and Archives. Stanford, CA.
-
Chinese Foreign Ministry Archive. Beijing, People’s Republic of China.
-
Diplomatic History Research Office of the prc [People’s Republic of China] Foreign Ministry, Ed. Zhou Enlai waijiao huodong dashiji, 1949–1975 [Chronicle of Zhou Enlai’s Diplomatic Activities, 1949–1975]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 1993.
-
Foreign Ministry of the prc and the ccp Central Documentary Research Department, Comp. Mao Zedong waijiao wenxuan [Diplomatic Writings of Mao Zedong]. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe and Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 1994.
-
Liu, Shufa, Ed. Chen Yi nianpu [Chronicle of Chen Yi’s Life]. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1995.
-
prc Foreign Ministry Archive, Ed. 1954 nian Rineiwa huiyi [The Geneva Conference of 1954]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2006.
-
Renmin ribao [People’s Daily], 3 December 1958, p. 4.
-
U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States. 1961–1963. Vol. xxii: Northeast Asia. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996.
-
U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States. 1964–1968. Vol. xii: Western Europe. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2001.
-
U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States. 1964–1968. Vol. xxix: Japan. Part 2. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2006.
-
U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States. 1964–1968. Vol. xxx: China. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998.
-
Wu Xiuquan. Huiyi yu Huainian [Recollections and Memories]. Beijing: Zhonggong Zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, 1991.
-
Ambrose, Stephen E. Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962–1972. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.
-
Bozo, Frederic. Two Strategies for Europe: De Gaulle, the United States and the Atlantic Alliance. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.
-
Buckley, Roger. US-Japan Alliance Diplomacy, 1945–1991. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
-
Chai Chengwen, Huang Zhengji, and Zhang Changjin. Sanda tupo [Three Breakthroughs]. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe, 1994.
-
Chen Jian. Mao’s China and the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
-
Chen Jian. “China and the Indochina Settlement at the Geneva Conference of 1954.” In The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis. Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrick Logevall, Eds., 240–62. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
-
Chen Jin. “Why Did Mao Zedong Like to Read Modern French History.” Dangde wenxian [Party Documents], No. 1 (2011): 117–20.
-
Chen Hongmin, Zhao Xingsheng, and Han Wenning. Jiang Jieshi de hou bansheng [The Second Half of Chiang Kai-shek’s Life]. Hangzhou: Zhejiang daxue chubanshe, 2000.
-
Clayton, Anthony. The Wars of French Decolonization. London: Longman, 1994.
-
Cline, Ray S. Chiang Ching-Kuo Remembered: The Man and His Political Legacy. Washington, DC: United States Global Strategy Council, 1989.
-
Connelly, Matthew. A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
-
Costigliola, Frank. France and the United States: The Cold Alliance Since World War ii. New York: Twayne’s, 1992.
-
Crean, Jeffrey. “A New Sphere of Influence: Table Tennis Diplomacy and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 28, No. 2 (June 2021): 109–132.
-
Dallek, Robert. Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.
-
Foot, Rosemary. The Practice of Power: US Relations with China since 1949 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1995).
-
Friedman, Jeremy. Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.
-
Garver, John W. Foreign Relations of the People’s Republic of China. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993).
-
Gilks, Anne and Gerald Segal. China and the Arms Trade. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985.
-
Griffith, William E. The Sino-Soviet Rift. Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 1964.
-
Grundy, Steven Crawford. “The Sino-Soviet Alliance in Konrad Adenauer’s Chancellorship, 1945–1963.” Diplomatic History 47, No. 1 (January 2023): 139–60.
-
Han Huaizhi and Tan Jingqiao, Chief Eds. Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Contemporary Military Works of the Chinese Armed Forces]. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1989.
-
Hanhimaki, Jussi. The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
-
Hoffmann, Stanley. “The Foreign Policy of Charles de Gaulle.” In The Diplomats, 1939–1979. Gordon A. Craig and Francis L. Loewenheim, Eds., 238–54. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.
-
Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954–1962. London: Macmillan, 1977.
-
Huang Qinghua. “Sino-French Relations during the War of Resistance against Japan and the early Post-war Period.” Kangri zhanzheng yanjiu [Studies on the War of Resistance against Japan], No. 3, (2008): 1–37.
-
Isaacson, Walter. Kissinger: A Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
-
Jackson, Julian. De Gaulle. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018.
-
Jersild, Austin. The Sino-Soviet Alliance: An International History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.
-
Keylor, William R. Charles de Gaulle: A Thorn in the Side of Six American Presidents. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020.
-
Kong Xiangxiu. Geng Biao zhuan [Biography of Geng Biao]. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe, 2010.
-
Lacouture, Jean. Pierre Mendes France. George Holoch, Trans. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1984.
-
Lacouture, Jean. De Gaulle: The Ruler, 1945–70. Alan Sheridan, Trans. London: Harvill, 1991.
-
LaFeber, Walter. The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations throughout History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.
-
Li Jiasong, Chief Ed. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiao dashiji [Chronicle of Main Diplomatic Activities of the People’s Republic of China]. Vol. 2. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2001.
-
Li Danhui, ed. Beijing he Mosike: Cong lianmeng zouxiang duikang [Beijing and Moscow: From Alliance to Confrontation]. Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2002.
-
Li, Xiaobing. Building Ho’s Army: Chinese Military Assistance to North Vietnam. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2019).
-
Li, Danhui and Yafeng Xia. Mao and the Sino-Soviet Split, 1959–1973: A New History. New York: Lexington Books, 2018.
-
Lin Ke. “Mao Zedong’s Striking Impression on Me.” Dangde wenxian, No. 4 (1992): 67–68.
-
Lin, Hua. “The Chinese Occupation of Northern Vietnam, 1945–1946: A Reappraisal.” In Imperial Policy and Southeast Asian Nationalism. Hans Antlov and Stein Tonnesson, Eds., 144–69. Surrey, UK: Curzon, 1995.
-
Logevall, Fredrik. “The French Recognition of China and Its Implications to the Vietnam War.” In Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World beyond Asia. Priscilla Roberts, Ed., 153–171. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.
-
Lumbers, Michael. Piercing the Bamboo Curtain: Tentative Bridge-Building to China during the Johnson Years. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008.
-
Luo Qingchang. “My Observations of Mao Zedong’s Fine Style.” Dangde wenxian, No. 3 (1993): 42.
-
Lüthi, Lorenz M. The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.
-
Lüthi, Lorenz M. “Rearranging International Relations?: How Mao’s China Obtained Recognition from de Gaulle’s France, 1963–1964.” Journal of Cold War Studies 16, No. 1 (Winter 2014): 111–45.
-
Martin, Garret Joseph. General de Gaulle’s Cold War: Challenging American Hegemony, 1963–1968. New York: Berghahn, 2003.
-
Martin, Garret. “Playing the China Card?: Revisiting France’s Recognition of Communist China, 1963–1964.” Journal of Cold War Studies 10, No. 1 (Winter 2008): 52–80.
-
Northcutt, Wayne. Mitterrand: A Political Biography. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1992.
-
O’Balance, Edgar. The Algerian Insurrection, 1954–1962. London: Farber and Farber, 1967.
-
Pei Jianzhang, Ed. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiaoshi, 1949–1956 [Diplomatic History of the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1956]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 1994.
-
Radchenko, Sergey. Two Suns in the Heaven: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009.
-
Romano, Angela. “Waiting for de Gaulle: France’s Ten-year Warm-up to Recognize the People’s Republic of China,” Modern Asian Studies 51, No. 1 (2017): 44–77.
-
Schaller, Michael. Altered States: The United States and Japan since the Occupation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
-
Shen, Zhihua and Yafeng Xia. Mao and the Sino-Soviet Partnership, 1945–1959: A New History. New York: Lexington Books, 2015.
-
Statler, Kathryn C. Replacing France: The Origins of American Intervention in Vietnam. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007.
-
Suri, Jeremi. Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
-
Torikata, Yuko. “Reexamining de Gaulle’s Peace Initiative on the Vietnam War.” Diplomatic History 31, No. 5 (November 2007): 909–38.
-
Vaïsse, Maurice. La grandeur: politique étrangère du Général de Gaulle 1958–69 [The Height: General de Gaulle’s Foreign Policy, 1958–69]. Paris: Fayard, 1998.
-
Wall, Irwin. “France in the Cold War.” Journal of European Studies 38, No. 2 (June 2008): 121–39.
-
Wang Taiping, Chief Ed. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiaoshi, 1957–1969 [Diplomatic History of the People’s Republic of China, 1957–1969]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 1998.
-
Wang, Tao. Isolating the Enemy: Diplomatic Strategy in China and the United States, 1953–1956. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021.
-
Westad, Odd Arne, Ed. Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.
-
Whiting, Allen. “The Sino-Soviet Split.” In The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 14: The People’s Republic. Part i: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1949–1965. Roderick MacFarquhar and John K. Fairbank, Eds., Chapter 11. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
-
Wolff, David. “‘One Finger’s Worth of Historical Events’: New Russian and Chinese Evidence on the Sino-Soviet Alliance and Split, 1948–1959.” Cold War International History Project Working Paper No. 30. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, August 2000.
-
Woods, Randall Bennett. Fulbright: A Biography. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
-
Xu, Guangqiu. Congress and the U.S.-China Relationship, 1949–1979. Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 2007.
-
Zhai, Qiang. “China and the Geneva Conference of 1954.” China Quarterly, No. 129 (March 1992): 103–22.
-
Zhai, Qiang. China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
-
Zhang Jiazhan. “De Gaulle and China during the Fifth Republic.” Faguo yanjou [French Studies], No. 2 (1991): 85–91.
-
Zhang Xichang, Wang Yihao, Wang Taiping, and Huang Zhiliang. Fengluan dieqi: Gongheguo disanci jianjiao gaochao [Summit After Summit: The Third High Tide in the prc’s Establishment of Diplomatic Relations]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 1998.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 107 | 107 | 47 |
| Full Text Views | 110 | 110 | 4 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 103 | 103 | 8 |
Sino-French Normalization and Its Impact on the United States and Taiwan
In: Journal of American-East Asian RelationsSearch for other papers by Qiang Zhai in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This article examines the making of Chinese-French cooperation during a critical period of the Cold War. In 1964, the People’s Republic of China and France established diplomatic relations. Escaping from the restraints of the rigid Cold War alliance structure, Mao Zedong and Charles de Gaulle took the bold and extraordinary move to forge a new relationship based on the geopolitical calculations of countering American-Soviet domination of world affairs. What motivated Mao’s policy toward France? How did he view de Gaulle? How did the changes in the international system in the early 1960s affect Mao’s perceptions and calculations? What was the connection between Sino-French normalization and the Vietnam conflict? How did Washington and Taipei respond to the Sino-French rapprochement? This article uses newly released Chinese Foreign Ministry Archive files, declassified U.S. government documents, and primary sources from Taiwan (including Chiang Kai-shek’s diaries) to answer these questions.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 107 | 107 | 47 |
| Full Text Views | 110 | 110 | 4 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 103 | 103 | 8 |