The Study Of Nixon’s Changes Of Attitudes Towards China

On issue of the Chinese civil war after World War II, the United States firmly supports ChiangKai-shek. However, the support of the United States has not been able to help the KMT win the civil war,on the contrary the inner war ended with the victory of the Communist Party of China. Since then, theChiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan and continued to get support from the United States. Because ofideological confrontation, the United States adopt a hostile attitude towards the nascent ChineseCommunist regime. The Chinese government takes the United States as the primary threat to its ownnational security, hence, the Sino-US relations have entered a hostile state for more than20years. However,with the drastic changes of international form, as well as for the sake of national interests of both countries,during the reign of Nixon, conditions to improve Sino-US relations and even establish bilateral diplomaticrelations have been met. As for the history of Sino-US detente relations, Nixon undoubtedly played a keyrole. Changing his attitudes towards China is the basement to improve Sino-US relations as well as itspolicy towards China. This paper intends to take Nixon’s early attitudes towards China as the starting point,to analyze the reasons and results of the change of Nixon’s attitudes towards China in-depth. This paperconsists of four parts:The first chapter discusses the early political career of Richard Nixon and his attitudes towards China.As we all know, Nixon is an active anti-communist in his early political career. So, in order to analyze thechanges of his attitudes towards China after he entered the White House, it is necessary to make acomparison between his early and later attitudes towards China. Nixon’s early attitudes towards China iscontradictory, these contradictions are the keys for his later changes. The second chapter introduces theloosening of Nixon’s attitudes towards China. The failure of the presidential election in1960is a smallblow for Nixon, for he has always been very smooth in the political arena. So he had to rethink, in order tomake a comeback. Volatile international situation in the1960s force Nixon to take a deep reflection on theChina issue. After the ups and downs of the political arena, and long-term sharpening, Nixon has alreadybecome a mature politician. His maturity helped him win the next general election, as well as theopportunity to open the door of Sino-US relations. The third chapter analyzes the reasons for the changes ofhis attitudes towards. In order to get a clear picture of the changes he made, it is necessary to analyze thereasons, this is the core part of the thesis. The forth part is the results of Nixon’s efforts and also asublimation of Nixon’s changes of attitudes towards China. Nixon’s changes of attitudes towards China lethim visit China successfully, and eventually knocked the door of the easing of Sino-US relations.The full text of the four parts is an organic combination, to re-examine the shift of Nixon’s attitudetowards China, trying to understand and grasp some regularity phenomenon of the development process ofSino-US relations, and summarize the successes or failures from the historical perspective.