China learns to compromise: Change in U.S.–China relations, 1982–1984 (1991)

U.S.–China relations experienced significant change during the Reagan administration. In contrast to the 1970s, when China criticized American “appeasement” of the Soviet Union andU.S.–Taiwan diplomatic relations, and to the early Reagan years, when China threatened to downgrade relations over American arms sales to Taiwan and badgered Washington on a host of lesser issues, relations were remarkably free from challenges to a developing and expanding relationship from late 1983 until the June 1989 massacre.