The Jackson School of Global Affairs Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy presents
Stefano Chessa Altieri, Fox Fellow and PhD candidate in Global History, Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Italy and at SciencesPo, France:
“Retaining Control after Tiananmen: The Bush Administration’s Preoccupations with China Policy Making.”
As the reverberations of the June 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing echoed through American public opinion, President George H.W. Bush struggled to maintain the exclusive control over China policy that his predecessors had enjoyed since the early 1970s Sino-U.S. rapprochement. The Administration, while managing the complex task of integrating Beijing into a U.S.-led post-Cold War global order, was also compelled to navigate an increasingly confrontational domestic environment, including tensions with the Democrat-led Congress, balancing human rights foreign policy imperatives with growing economic interests and deepening interdependencies with China.