ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the strategic basis of learning in the formulation and implementation of US policy toward China. US policy makers have shaped China policy based largely on their perceptions of the strategic environment and considerations of US strategy rather than solely on issues in bilateral relations with China. Strategic considerations and assessments have often provided the key to China policy. The Ronald Reagan administration came to realize that its initial objectives toward China were incompatible and therefore impractical. Strategic considerations were predominant in US policy making toward China even in the 1940s and 1950s, despite the ideological rhetoric and the domestic political pressures that often appeared to most observers as the driving forces behind US policy. A key objective of US policy at the end of World War II was to separate communist movements and governments from the perceived source of their inspiration and control— the Soviet Union.
