Re-opening the Door

Abstract

I would like to examine the most important causes of the Sino-American rapprochement, including Nixon’s visit to China, which was the symbolic culmination of this whole process. My expectation is that there were three main reasons. The first one was that the United States realized that their former China policy was a failure and they needed to accept the fact that the largest country in the world was communist. The second reason was that by establishing some kind of relationship with China the United States could get into a better position when dealing with the Soviets because of the deteriorating Sino-Soviet relationship. The third reason would be related to the status of Richard Nixon.