Three Joint Communiqués And Sino-U.S. Relations

As two big countries in the world, whether China and America can develop asound relationship has a direct bearing not only on themselves but also on the worldstrategic pattern. With the growth of China's comprehensive national strength and theenhancement of its international status, and the reinforcement of American status asthe only superpower, Sino-U.S. relations become more delicate and complicated.How to assess and handle the relations between the two countries correctly becomesone of the most important hot topics in the 21st century. Therefore, Sino-U.S.relations have drawn much attention from scholars, experts and diplomaticprofessionals at home and abroad. They have devoted a great many efforts toexploring Sino-U.S. relations from political, economic, strategic perspectives and soon, summarizing the past and describing the present and predicting the future.This paper intends to study Sino-U.S. relations through analyzing the ThreeSino-U.S. Communiques. These Communiques issued by U.S. and P.R.C. providethe two countries with common guiding principles. They are the basis of thedevelopment of Sino-U.S. relations. Since the diplomatic relations between the twocountries have been set up, Sino-U.S. relations have undergone ups and downs, andeven have encountered some major setbacks that could be called "crisis". Taiwanproblem and the human rights issue have become very sensitive in Sino-U.S.relations. In order to develop Sino-U.S. relations normally and smoothly, both sidesmust abide by the Three Joint Communiques. However, due to different cultures inChina and America, both sides have their different understandings of the three Joint Communiques. This paper made the most of Huntington's theory of "The Clash ofCivilizations" in order to state that the sources of conflicts lie in the differences ofbeliefs and values between the West and the East, and in their understandings of itscivilization and misunderstanding of the other country. It's largely because of theclash of civilizations between China and America that leads to the dispute aboutwhether each side abides by the three Joint Cornmuniques and the tortuousdevelopment of Sino-U.S. relations.Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction to the current research relating to this field athome and abroad.Chapter 2 mainly analyzes some features of the text. The Three JointCommuniques are a kind of text and diplomatic documents having special wordingwhich is different from that of ordinary documents. The strength of diplomaticlanguage lies in its purposeful uncertainty.Chapter 3 introduces related studies, especially the research achievements onSino-U.S. relations by Huntington, Tao Wenzhao and Wang Xiaode.Chapter 4 gives a brief introduction to the definitions of culture and politicalculture, and the Three Joint Sino-U.S. Communiques and the theory of Clash ofCivilizations.Chapter 5 selects Taiwan and human rights issue which are the most importantquestions mentioned in the Communiques for case studies and further explains thedifferent understandings of the Communiques held by China and U.S. due to culturaldifferences. Furthermore, the author gives her perspective on the future development of Sino-U.S. relations.The final part of this paper proceeds to the conclusion that due to Americancultural hegemony Sino-U.S. conflicts of culture will go on and Chinese culture willlie in an unfavorable situation. Just as Huntington expressed, the clash ofcivilizations doesn't advocate the rivalry between different civilizations and we dohope that different civilizations and beliefs can learn to coexist with each other.When resolving those thorny problems, China and U.S. should enhance each other'sunderstanding through dialogue and cultural communication. Thus, the ThreeSino-US Joint Communiques will become the "real" common guiding principles todeal with the relations of the two countries.