Washington (AFP)
Did Richard Nixon's historic decision in the 1970s to normalize US relations with Communist China bear the seeds of the current crisis, the most serious to date between Washington and Beijing?
This is what suggests the head of American diplomacy Mike Pompeo who, accusing the Asian giant of not having kept his promises, on Thursday recorded the failure of this opening strategy - during a speech since the library dedicated to the former Republican president who initiated it.
An analysis applauded by some hawks but contested by other actors and specialists of these four decades of roller coaster. Even if all recognize that the two superpowers have today entered an era of fierce strategic competition for world supremacy. Even in a new Cold War.
It all started with a secret trip: that of Henry Kissinger in 1971 to Beijing, paving the way for the arrival a few months later, in broad daylight this time, of President Nixon, of whom he was the adviser.
Mao's "rapprochement" with China was underway.
- "Old paradigm" -
"But the dialogue did not lead to the change that President Nixon hoped to induce in China," said Mike Pompeo, before deciding: "the old paradigm of blind dialogue with China simply does not work".
"It is historically wrong to say that the American policy of openness towards China was based on the naive hope that China would liberalize politically", jumped Stapleton Roy, who took part in the negotiations of the 1970s before being ambassador of the states - United in Beijing twenty years later.
According to him, the Nixon-Kissinger duo, "totally pragmatic", wanted "to strengthen our position in the Cold War with the Soviet Union" by driving a wedge between the two communist countries "and, incidentally, to obtain help from China to end the Vietnam War ". "The main objective has been decisively fulfilled, not the second," he told AFP.
Mira Rapp-Hooper, of the think tank Council on Foreign Relations, underlines how detente was not easy - the establishment of diplomatic relations, "very controversial", will not take place until 1979, under the leadership of Jimmy Carter and Deng Xiaoping.
Until then, Washington recognized Taiwan, refuge of Chinese nationalists, as the only Republic of China, and it was necessary to overcome stubborn resistance within the American Congress to recognize Beijing by relegating the Taiwanese ally.
But "diplomats never thought that China", which at the time was "absolutely not a great power", "was going to become a liberal democracy", assures the researcher.
- Human rights -
The bloody repression of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989, with several hundred deaths, opened a difficult first phase. The United States imposes sanctions.
Arrived at the White House in 1993, Bill Clinton wants to condition the clause of the "most favored nation", granted to Beijing to develop bilateral trade, to respect for human rights.
"Relations were extremely strained," recalls Ambassador Roy, then stationed in the Chinese capital. But the Democratic president has finally "been able to overcome these obstacles and improve cooperation."
"Economic interests won out," says Mira Rapp-Hooper bluntly. "There was the feeling of an inexorable rise in power of China which could be positive for the United States" thanks to a movement of reforms, she adds, admitting a certain "naivety" on certain aspects.
Because in the meantime, the most populous country in the world has started to develop under the impetus of Deng Xiaoping's opening up to the market economy. Its market of more than a billion inhabitants arouses envy, and its cheap labor attracts investment: globalization is in the process of blossoming, and China fully finds its place there, consecrated by its entry in the World Trade Organization in 2001.
This is what the hawks of Donald Trump's government denounce today.
- "Structural change" -
The West "allowed the rebirth of a Chinese economy in crisis, only to see China bite the international hand which nourished it", launched Mike Pompeo, in a real indictment against the Chinese Communist Party, incarnation in his eyes of the country rival.
The turning point actually started with the 2008 global financial crisis.
For Mira Rapp-Hooper, "Chinese leaders thought that the American liberal democratic model was starting to falter and that China had the opportunity to assert itself as a great power", "without worrying about adapting its economic practices or its regime to external expectations ".
It is this "structural change in the nature of Chinese power" that has helped bring relations "to their all-time low," she said, although the crisis is also punctually fueled by recent activism from the Trump administration, anxious to show its muscles as the November 3 presidential election approaches.
The result: a "downward spiral in almost every area", from the future of Hong Kong to the rights of Uyghur Muslims, from accusations of industrial espionage to the management of the pandemic, to the South China Sea and the war. commercial.
"China has adopted the characteristics of other rising powers, by becoming more arrogant and by pushing the defense of its own interests", also believes Stapleton Roy, who adds however: "it is a problem that a good diplomacy can manage, without threats or bluster ".
© 2020 AFP