Former US President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 100, is remembered in China for bringing an end to decades of hostility and establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing – at the expense of Taiwan.
The diplomatic switch in 1979 led to profound changes in US-China relations in the following decades – and its implications are still being felt today, as tensions flare across the Taiwan Strait.
During the height of the Cold War, the Carter administration held months of secret negotiations with Chinese officials to normalize relations, which had been estranged since the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949.
For decades, Washington had recognized the Republic of China in Taipei as the sole legal government of China, after the Kuomintang was defeated by the Communists in the civil war and fled from the Chinese mainland to the island of Taiwan.
A rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China began during the presidency of Richard Nixon, who made an ice-breaking visit to Beijing in 1972. But it was Carter who oversaw Washington’s formal switch of diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.
On December 15, 1978, Carter announced that at the start of 1979, the US would end its diplomatic relations with the Republic of China in Taipei and recognize the People’s Republic of China in Beijing as the sole legal government of China.
While celebrated in Beijing, the announcement came as a shock to many in Taiwan, followed by anger and a bitter sense of abandonment and betrayal – even leading to violent anti-American demonstrations in Taipei. The US also terminated its mutual defense treaty with Taiwan and pulled its military personnel from the island.
On January 1, 1979, the US and the People’s Republic of China formally established diplomatic ties, opening embassies in the two countries’ respective capitals. At the end of that month, Carter welcomed China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping on the South Lawn of the White House – the first visit by a Chinese Communist leader to the US.
“We expect that normalization will help to move us together toward a world of diversity and of peace,” Carter said at the welcoming ceremony. “For too long, our two peoples were cut off from one another. Now we share the prospect of a fresh flow of commerce, ideas, and people, which will benefit both our countries.”
In response, Deng praised Carter’s “farsighted decision” in playing a key role in ending the “period of unpleasantness between us for 30 years.”
Bilateral ties flourished in the following years, from trade and investment to academic and cultural exchanges. One area of engagement Carter facilitated was student exchange. During negotiations for normalizing relations, Deng raised the question of whether Chinese students would be allowed to further their studies in the US.
“When posed with that question, my adviser, Dr. Frank Press, thought it important enough to call me at 3 a.m. in Washington to be sure,” Carter wrote in a letter addressed to the Chinese Embassy in Washington and the US State Department in 2019.
“Deng asked me if China could send 5,000 students, and I answered that China could send 100,000,” Carter wrote.
Proponent for engagement and democracy
As bilateral ties worsened in recent years, some critics in the US have questioned the strategy of engagement with China.
Under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Beijing has taken a stark authoritarian turn domestically and become increasingly assertive abroad, dashing the once widely held hope that China would move toward a more liberal political model following economic growth and its integration with the world.
Amid escalating tensions and calls for “decoupling,” Carter has remained a cool-headed voice and firm supporter of continued engagement.
On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the normalization of US-China relations, Carter warned in The Washington Post that the two nations’ critical relationship is “in jeopardy” and “a modern Cold War between our two nations is not inconceivable” if the deep mistrust continues.
“At this sensitive moment, misperceptions, miscalculations and failure to follow carefully defined rules of engagement in areas such as the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea could escalate into military conflict, creating a worldwide catastrophe,” he wrote.
After he left the presidential office, Carter remained a key figure in US-China relations. He visited China multiple times and was received by successive Chinese leaders, from Jiang Zemin – who called him “an old friend of the Chinese people” – to Xi.
In 2019, at the height of a bruising trade war with China, former US President Donald Trump sought Carter’s council in a rare phone call to discuss ongoing trade negotiations with Beijing.
But Carter’s experience with China far predated his presidency. It was his visit to the Chinese coast in 1949 as a young submarine officer in the US Navy that sowed his interest in China, according to an interview Carter gave to the Council on Foreign Relations.
As the civil war raged in China, Carter’s submarine was operating in and out of Chinese seaports, from Shanghai all the way up to Qingdao.
“And so, I got to see the transformation in China between the nationalist Chinese forces who were just occupying a few of the seaports and the communist forces whose campfires we could see on the hillsides,” he said.
A few months after Carter left China, the nationalists fled the mainland to Taiwan. “So, I saw the birth of China which, by the way, was born on my birthday, October the 1st, 1949. And I think that has precipitated my intense interest in China ever since,” he said.
In China, Carter remains a well-respected figure, despite the rocky relationship in recent years.
In reports about his death, Chinese state media outlets noted Carter’s legacy on US-China relations. On Chinese social media, many users hailed him the “good old man.”
Less mentioned by the Chinese government and state media, however, was Carter’s role in promoting religious freedom and grassroots democracy in China.
At a banquet he hosted for the Chinese delegation in 1979, Carter secured Deng’s agreement to permit unrestricted worship and the distribution of Bibles in China. (Under Xi Jinping, Christians have experienced a significant crackdown).
The Carter Center had supported and monitored village elections in rural China for more than a decade since the late 1990s. Carter himself visited a village in eastern China to monitor one such election in 2001, witnessing villagers casting their votes and greeting elected local officials on stage.
That kind of engagement is nearly unthinkable in today’s China, with the Chinese Communist Party repeatedly attacking “Western values” and viewing foreign non-profits – especially those promoting democracy, rule of law and rights advocacy – with deep suspicion.
Complicated legacy in Taiwan
In Taiwan, Carter’s legacy is more complicated.
When Carter made his first visit to Taiwan in 1999, he still faced plenty of questions – and criticism – over his abrupt announcement to break diplomatic relations with Taipei 20 years ago.
At a speech in Taipei, Carter was confronted by veteran Taiwanese opposition politician Annette Lu, who accused him of having set back the democratization process in Taiwan and demanded an apology from him to the Taiwanese people.
Carter declined to apologize, insisting that his decision had been “a right one.”
In a guest lecture at a university in Atlanta in 2018, Carter said he had “a big argument” with Deng over the status of Taiwan during negotiations in 1978.
“China always wanted us to declare that Taiwan was a province of China, and they wanted us to break our treaty with Taiwan and stop all our military assistance,” he said. “I was insisting that we should break our treaty with Taiwan only in agreement with our treaty, which required a one-year notice. I also insisted that we continue to provide defensive assistance to Taiwan and that the differences between China and Taiwan be resolved peacefully.”
Following the diplomatic switch, the US Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which allows Washington to retain close unofficial ties with Taipei, facilitating commercial, cultural and other exchanges through the American Institute in Taiwan – the de facto US Embassy in Taipei.
The legislation also requires the US to “provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character” to maintain “a sufficient self-defense capacity,” though it did not specify how the US would respond in case of a Chinese invasion of the island – which became known as a policy of “strategic ambiguity.”
As relations between China and the US plummeted in recent years, the Taiwan issue has become a key source of tension between the two countries.