ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the factors that propelled the change. In the late 1980s and early 1990s a qualitative change occurred in China's strategic, political, and internal environment. In that period the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended; China's relations with the US deteriorated following the Tiananmen crisis; Taiwan's separatism intensified; and the Gulf War began. The common theme in Moscow's policy on China and on the US was the USSR's economic weakness and the budgetary burden of its military, and by the latter half of the 1980s it had no choice but to cut its defense costs and mobilize external sources of capital through loans and expanding exports. In the internal political arena too, changes occurred which influenced China's form of arms procurement. The natural candidates in this camp were senior officers identified with the move to military modernization, and their support for Jiang stemmed from their fealty to Deng Xiaoping.
