Evolution of China's U.S. Policy (1965-72): Prelude to the Economic Reform?

China embarked on its grand economic reform in 1978, and the resulting economic performance has impressive by any standard. Many have accredited China's apparent success to the "gradualism" or patience in its reform agenda. But equally important is China's reform "sequence", which began in staple food production before spreading to other sectors of the economy. What has been absent in the literature is the explanation of why China started with the staple food sector, and why China embarked on the reform in the first place. This study traces China's early reform (the agricultural production) to her realization and abandonment of the self-reliant agriculture policy in the early 1970s. This self-reliance had been China's central ideology and main objective since the 1950s. We study China's attitude towards the U.S. via the line-struggle between different fractions within the Chinese Communist party during this period (1965-72). We further quantify the evolution of China's U.S. policy by examining the anti-U.S. propaganda in Chinese publications.