ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the internal and external factors which have determined foreign policy in the Teng era, and discusses what has changed, and draw implications for US policy and for future Washington-Peking relations. Peking's foreign policy during the later part of the Teng Hsiao-p'ing era has been described as a low-cost, low-risk approach designed to maximize foreign influence and connections and minimize tensions. In addition to being influenced by internal factors, to a great extent, Peking's foreign policy approach also has been a product of the international environment of the later 1970s. In the initial years of the Washington-Peking relationship, the United States was highly receptive to Peking's foreign policy approach but largely because of strategic imperatives, not economic concerns. Peking's basic economic modernization imperatives and other internal priorities which had been governing factors in foreign policy still occupy center stage in the national agenda after the Thirteenth Party Congress.
