ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the development of normalisation in the context of severe tension or sustained periods of abnormal relations, rather than abnormality associated with maverick states. It focuses particularly on the factors that lead to abnormal relations, since these fundamentally affect subsequent attempts to reestablish normal relations. The chapter presents an outline model of the normalisation process and discusses some of the main features of the normalisation process. For example the issue of workers economic conditions in Hong Kong was made the subject of a protest by the PRC to the UK in May 1967, beginning a period of intense conflict and progressive deterioration in Sino-British relations. In contrast to progressive deteriorations of relations, sudden tension can be introduced into, and be the focus of, bilateral relations by quite specific events. Where economic and diplomatic retaliation are linked, the question of normalisation can become problematical in terms of attempts to make progress in improving levels of relations.
