National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 16
The Declassified History
Includes Selected
Documents from the Microfiche Collection:
China
and the United States: From Hostility to Engagement, 1960-1998
Prepared by Jeffrey
T. Richelson and Michael L. Evans
June 1, 1999
The relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China over the fifty years since the PRC was established on October 1, 1949 has been extraordinarily complex. Several years ago the National Security Archive initiated a project to shed more light on U.S.-China relations. The purpose was to obtain critical documentation on key aspects of the U.S.-Chinese relationship, with a focus on the years 1969 to the present. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, collection of relevant publications, and archival research, the Archive has amassed a collection of more than 15,000 pages of previously classified documentation on U.S.-China interaction on foreign policy issues, the U.S.-PRC military relationship, the growing economic relationship between the two countries, as well as documents related to the several issues that divide the countries to this day.
In June 1999, the Archive will publish on microfiche with a detailed, item-level printed index, these extraordinary documents, which include policy and research studies, intelligence estimates, diplomatic cables, and briefing materials. Titled China and the United States: From Hostility to Engagement, 1960-1998, this document set is part of the Archive's Special Collection Series, published by Chadwyck-Healey Inc. (Alexandria, Virginia and Cambridge, U.K.), and will ultimately also appear in the Chadwyck-Healey World Wide Web publication of The Digital National Security Archive.
Among the highlights of this collection are the detailed (and previously classified) U.S. government accounts of the infamous military assault by the Chinese government on pro-democracy demonstrators in and around Tiananmen Square in Beijing in June 1989. This Electronic Briefing Book represents the first publication in any media of these documents, which include remarkable SITREPs from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing as well as many of the Secretary of State’s "Morning Summaries" from June 1989. In addition to the crackdown itself, the documents also cover the student demonstrations in late 1985 and 1986 that, in hindsight, were signs of the events to come, the period leading up the PLA's use of force, and post-crackdown assessments of the events and their significance.
This briefing book was prepared by Jeffrey T. Richelson, a Senior Fellow
at the Archive, and Michael L. Evans, a project associate.
Dr. Jeffrey T. Richelson (Ph.D., University of Rochester) is the director
of the Archive's China and the United States project and previously
directed Archive projects on intelligence, the military uses of space,
and presidential national security directives. He is the author of several
books on intelligence, including A
Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (Oxford,
1995) and The
U.S. Intelligence Community (Westview, 1999), as well as articles
in a variety of magazines and academic journals.
Michael L. Evans (M.A., George Washington University) assists with the China and the United States project, the Archive’s forthcoming Guatemala documentation project, and has also assisted with the Archive’s U.S. Espionage and Intelligence project.
Praise for China and the United States:
Patrick E. Tyler
Bureau Chief, Beijing (1993-1997)
The New York Times
Go to the documents