Partisan Political Factors In The Cold War Era U.s. Policy Toward China. Analysis

Partisan politics is one of the most important aspects in the American domestic politics. The thesis mainly focuses on this internal element and tries to analyze its influence on the making of U.S. China policy.With the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the world has entered a significant transitional period in which the old world order is substituted by the new order which is formed by U.S., China, Russia, EU, Japan and other countries and groups. Globalization not only enhances the relations among different countries but also gradually weakens the effect of ideology. In this circumstance, partisan politics has produced both positive and negative influence on the making ofU.S. China policy from three levels--the presidential election, the vote oncongressional bill and the executive-congressional game in the divided-government period.Furthermore, partisanship is much more prominent than bipartisanship on the making of U.S. China policy. We can find bipartisanship which is caused by the Republicans' and Democrats' consistency on capitalistic ideology and democratic values on secondary issues like human rights and environment protection. However, because of the differences on ideas, main electorates and interest groups, partisanship is always demonstrated on the principal issues such as economic and political bills.Looking forward to the future, the thesis argues that the new concept, post-partisan politics which is advocated by Obama Administration, does not have the sound feasibility on policy making. Therefore, the elimination of the negative effect of partisanship on the making of U.S. China policy still hangs on the deepening of interdependence between America and China and proper adjustments of two parties' political bases.Besides the preface, the thesis is divided into three parts: the first part explains why partisan politics can influence the making of U.S. China policy from American domestic political angle and external and internal background in the Post-Cold War era; the second part sorts the U.S. China policies from three angles, presidential election, the party distribution of 101st～110th Congressional Bills and the principal cases in the divided-governments according to the time clue of three U.S. Administrations after Cold War; the third part demonstrates the differences and consistencies of two parties' interests and uses the theory of "levels of analysis" to analyze the interaction between partisan politics and other elements which also influence the making of U.S. China police; at the end of the thesis, I try to present a new idea of partisan politics in Obama Administration, post-partisan politics and analyze the possible effect it may cause in the future.