Legal Class Struggle: China's Response to the United States, 1967–72

 

Abstract:  On 21 February 1972, Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong had a historic meeting with U.S. President Richard Nixon in Beijing, which marked the end of two decades of hostile relations, and the beginning of rapprochement between China and the United States. Assuming that a revolutionary state normally would not be interested in diplomatic relations with capitalist countries like the United States, most accounts focus on the Soviet threat while underscoring a moderation in Chinese domestic politics or a change in Mao’s psyche. This paper places China’s policy for rapprochement with the United States in the Marxist-Leninist tradition of legal class struggle. I argue that Mao as a Marxist-Leninist consistently desired U.S. recognition to build an internationally approved national haven and act on the international stage in a legitimate capacity. By the early 1970s, therefore, he simply responded to a long-awaited U.S. initiative to come to terms with a Communist government in China. This study carries important implications for international relations theory and Chinese Communist foreign relations studies.