The Council on Foreign Relations and the Making of US China Policy, 1950-1980

Abstract

This paper focuses on the role of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) in preparing the ground for the US decision to reopen relations with China, and ultimately to move towards full diplomatic recognition in 1979. With the eventual Communist takeover of China increasingly anticipated, by the late 1940s, the Institute of Pacific Relations, the US-based foreign policy think tank that had focused upon Asia, became the subject of ferocious McCarthyite charges that it was a Communist front. US Foreign Service officers who had predicted Mao Zedong’s victory were likewise accused of being Communist agents. With the subject of China policy close to politically radioactive from 1950, in the 1950s and 1960s the CFR became a forum for discreet, private discussions of developments in China among China specialists, including academics, journalists, businessmen, and government officials from the State and Defense Departments and the CIA. Existing China specialists regrouped on the CFR, and new ones were brought into these deliberations. The CFR published books on Sino-Soviet relations and China policy and, in the 1960s, a major series of studies dealing with most aspects of US China policy. McGeorge Bundy later argued that these efforts were central to preparing the ground for the resumption of US relations with China. This paper seeks to assess just how significant the CFR was in helping to change the climate of US public opinion toward China and facilitating moves to resume US relations.