Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

It is well known that President Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 visit to China established an anti-Soviet alliance between Beijing and Washington that reshaped the global Cold War power balance. Naturally, scholars have focused on strategic issues such as the Sino-Soviet split and the Vietnam War to understand the U.S.-China rapprochement. However, one can no longer dismiss issues such as trade and soft power in the 1970s as insignificant and thus unimportant to the reconciliation. Moreover, we also need to examine how the opening of China contributed to the globalization process in the 1970s. This paper argues that the Sino-American rapprochement had not only changed the Cold War power structure, but also changed the dynamics of globalization by reorienting China’s modernization toward the West.