Richard H. Solomon

Charles W. Freeman

After two decades of hostile confrontation, China and the United States initiated negotiations in the early 1970s to normalize relations. Senior officials of the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations had little experience dealing with the Chinese, but they soon learned that their counterparts from the People's Republic were skilled negotiators. This study of Chinese negotiating behavior explores the ways senior officials of the PRC--Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and others--managed these high-level political negotiations with their new American "old friends." It follows the negotiating process step by step, and concludes with guidelines for dealing with Chinese officials. Originally written for the RAND Corporation, this study was classified because it drew on the official negotiating record. It was subsequently declassified, and RAND published the study in 1995. For this edition, Solomon has added a new introduction, and Chas Freeman has written an interpretive essay describing the ways in which Chinese negotiating behavior has, and has not, changed since the original study. The bibiliography has been updated as well.

Pursuing Interests Through "old Friends"

Chinese Negotiating Behavior

Since its first publication in 1971, Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture has become a foundational text in China scholarship. Combining a psychological analysis of Chinese socialization with a narrative of Mao Zedong's political strategy, Richard Solomon traces the fault lines in the rise of one of the twentieth century's most influential political leaders. With great skill and insight, Richard Solomon delineates in parts I and II what might best be termed the living Confucian political culture. This is not the Confucianism of the classical texts, but the understanding and sentiments about politics produced by distinctive Chinese practices of child rearing and education, and the resulting structure of adult relationships. Proceeding from a solid basis of knowledge about the traditional Chinese family, Solomon draws on in-depth interviews with one hundred people of three generations and employes a battery of psychological tests to characterize Chinese adult orientations toward social and political life. These range from deeply ambivalent sentiments about authority to elaborate conventions for dealing with both friends and strangers and especially for avoiding controversy. In parts III and IV, Solomon then builds an account of Mao's political strategy, arguing that Mao appreciated the Chinese fear of social chaos and skilfully manipulated it. Behind the traditional ideal of harmony and of smooth, graceful interpersonal relationships lay powerful anxieties that any manifestation of of social disorder or political conflict can quickly lead to chaos and the collapse of the social order. Being of an assertive nature, Mao was prepared to push conflicts over the line of cultural restraint that inhibited his opponents. He believed social progress could be extracted from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, though in the end, he could not manage what he had released.

Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture

Richard Hugh Solomon

For most Americans, the "exit" from Indochina occurred in 1973, with the withdrawal of the U.S. military from South Vietnam. In fact, the final exit did not occur until two decades later, after the collapse of the Republic of Vietnam in 1975, the Cambodian revolution, and a decade of Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. Only in the early 1990s were the major powers able to negotiate a settlement of the Cambodia conflict and withdraw from the region. This book recounts the diplomacy that brought an end to great power involvement in Indochina, including the negotiations for a UN peace process in Cambodia and construction of a "road map" for normalizing U.S.-Vietnam relations. In so doing, this volume also highlights the changing character of diplomacy at the beginning of the 1990s, when, at least temporarily, an era of military confrontation among the major world powers gave way to political management of international conflicts.

Richard H. Solomon

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