Jimmy Carter and China

Reviews / Votes

Sheng Peng has written a nuanced and balanced account of the Carter administration's policy toward China and Taiwan. Based on important research in Chinese and American source materials, it will be a crucial work for anyone who wants to understand the dilemmas that the United States faced in dealing with two competing Chinese governments. -- Gregg A. Brazinsky, author of <i>Cold War Comrades: An Emotional History of the Sino-North Korean Alliance</i> A splendid account of a key phase in the US relationship with China and Taiwan. Using a wide array of previously unexamined primary sources, Sheng Peng gives us a fresh and deeply instructive take on the Carter administration's multilayered approach to a multilateral competition. -- Fredrik Logevall, Harvard University Sheng Peng's important book shows how Jimmy Carter's establishment of official US-China relations reshaped the Cold War by weakening the Soviet Union while accelerating China's technological ascent and straining ties with Taiwan. Using sources from China, Taiwan, the United States, and from Europe and the Soviet Union, Peng reveals how decisions made in the late 1970s set the foundations of today's US-China-Taiwan relationship. -- Pete Millwood, author of <i>Improbable Diplomats: How Ping-Pong Players, Musicians, and Scientists Remade US-China Relations </i> Sheng Peng's Jimmy Carter and China is required reading for students of the world's most consequential bilateral relationship. Drawing on new American, Chinese, Soviet, and European materials, Peng reveals how America's Cold War pivot toward Beijing helped to end the superpower conflict-and sowed the seeds for today's conflicts. -- Timothy Nunan, University of Regensburg Sheng Peng's masterful analysis of the trilateral relationship between the United States and the two Chinas during the Carter Administration places one of the most important Cold War shifts - the full mutual US-PRC diplomatic recognition of January 1, 1979 - into multiple contexts, from US-China relations and the decline of superpower detente to worldwide ideological changes and technological developments. Moving away from exclusively focusing on the American superpower, the author reveals the strategic and tactical considerations of PRC and ROC leaders that equally shaped the course and outcome of this triangular relationship. Jimmy Carter and China is an indispensable scholarly contribution to our understanding of both the end of the Cold War era and the rise of the contemporary world. -- Lorenz M. Luethi, author of <i>Cold Wars: Asia, the Middle East, Europe </i>