ABSTRACT
Zhou Enlai's key portfolio on Sino-US relations was passed on to Deng Xiaoping during a highly contested generational leadership succession. Featuring China's "independence and self-reliance", Deng moved beyond the original geopolitical aspirations of Sino-US normalization and revised essential aspects of Mao's strategies further to subordinate China's foreign policy to his goals of open door and economic reform. The Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship had failed miserably with regard to the exchange of vital information. The Taiwan Relations Act severely affected the new opportunity to build trust and the Sino-US relationship was increasingly at odds over "differences" such as "human rights" performance. Truncated normalization requires an in-depth explanation of Deng Xiaoping's management of Sino-American relations from within his new "independent foreign policy", which he officially endorsed at the Twelfth Party Congress in 1982. The Shanghai Communique claimed that the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence would govern Sino-American relations; however, over the years it has more often been honoured in the breach.
