Читать книгу Getting China Wrong - Aaron L. Friedberg - Страница 12

In the span of little more than two and a half years, a series of dramatic developments weakened and then swept away the foundations on which the policy of engagement had come to rest. The killing of over one thousand unarmed students in Beijing’s central Tiananmen Square in June 1989 served as a brutal reminder of the CCP regime’s continued, repressive character and cast doubt on facile assumptions about the inevitability of liberalizing reforms. Five months later, the Berlin Wall was reduced to rubble by another group of peaceful protestors, unleashing a wave of pent-up demand for change that would overturn Communist regimes across Eastern Europe, culminating in December 1991 with the collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Union. The primary justification for two decades of engagement – the claim that the United States needed China to help it balance Soviet power and win the Cold War – had suddenly been rendered obsolete.

It would not take long for an entirely new set of rationales to take shape, sustaining most, though not all, aspects of previous US policy and eventually gaining widespread, if not universal, acceptance. These rationales and the expectations derived from them will be discussed in detail in Chapter 2. In order to understand the logic that underpinned them, and to appreciate their emotional appeal and enduring persuasive power, it is necessary first to describe the unique set of historical circumstances, the distinctive confluence of events, ideas, and material interests, out of which they emerged.