From 1958 to 1963, US-China tensions did not alleviate under the administrations of Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War with the Gulf of Tonkin Incidents in August 1964 and his deployment of ground combat troops in south Vietnam in March 1965 increased Mao’s concern about the American threat on China’s southern border. However, when Johnson sent the signal to Beijing that the United States had no intention to either invade north Vietnam or to destroy the Hanoi regime, China also showed restraint in dealing with the American threat. The two governments thus reached a tacit agreement about non-confrontation in Vietnam. During the high point of the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1968, Johnson’s ‘tentative bridge-building’ gestures, such as conciliatory public speeches and allowing the sale to China of a limited amount of goods such as pharmaceutical and medical supplies, were rebuffed by Beijing (Lumbers 2008, 177, 188). It was Richard Nixon that broke the ice between the two countries after he took office in 1969.

When it comes to the Sino-American reconciliation under Nixon’s presidency, scholars have covered how leaders of the two countries took advantage of the opportunities created by the unique context and contingencies of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and how they maneuvered through public and private communications.