ABSTRACT
The fact that Ronald Reagan agreed to send sophisticated offensive weapons to China illustrates how far the US-China relationship had come in a short period of time. Reagan had come out against normalizing ties with the People's Republic of China. While Reagan may not have had as much of an opportunity to address the Chinese people directly as lie had wanted, lie clearly was impressed by the dynamism of China's economy and society. The common interests ensured that the US-China relationship was vastly improved over the pre-Nixon era, diplomatic tensions between the United States and China still arose during the Reagan era. The next year, Reagan approved China for the Foreign Military Sales program, allowing China to receive weapons directly from the US government and to obtain American government. The American media made a big deal of the fact that the Chinese government physically blocked Fang Lizhi, China's leading democracy advocate, from attending a banquet hosted by Rush.
