| Summary/Abstract |
In the early 1970s, the security threat posed by the Soviet Union and the widespread poverty of the Chinese people prompted the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to reconsider its foreign and economic policies. Although still in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, the majority of the CCP’s leadership, including Chairman Mao Zedong, desired to turn attention away from internal political struggles and toward the national economy. Mao was determined to engage with the United States to confront the precarious situation that his country faced. This new foreign dynamic jibed with U.S. President Richard Nixon’s approach to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and finally brought about U.S.-Chinese rapprochement in the early 1970s. Impinging on the strategic triangle between the United States, China, and the Soviet Union, the U.S.-Chinese rapprochement also enabled China to boost its economy by obtaining advanced technology from the West. At the same time, several pragmatic and moderate leaders such as Zhou Enlai, Hua Guofeng, and Li Xiannian also began to focus on the problems of feeding and clothing the Chinese people (with Mao’s instructions and approval, of course), and turned to the West to import advanced technology and equipment for the petrochemical, steel, and other industrial sectors. These foreign policy shifts culminated in the creation of SisanFang’an (“Four Three Program”) in 1973, an act of opening China to the Western world and a second major effort to import foreign technology, following the comprehensive economic assistance received from the Soviet Union in the 1950s.
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