A Resource History of US-China Rapprochement

Abstract Facing the prospect of dual crises in domestic production and international supply of oil in the 1970s, Washington looked to an unlikely new source: The People’s Republic of China. Reputable American analysts at the time assessed that China’s near offshore contained reserves on par with the Persian Gulf region. Three consecutive administrations in Washington seriously considered China one geoeconomic “fix” to pressing concerns about concentrated resource dependency, first for oil then later for metals and minerals. During the Nixon Administration, fears of overdependency on producer nations encouraged this turn. By Carter’s time, officials maintained a more expansive view of China’s mineral potential and were committed to transcending oil dependencies partly via a program of investment in Chinese minerals. Though China now represents Washington’s gravest point of dependency, rather than its soundest escape, the fulcrum of the US -China economic relationship today remains the same as in the 1970s: foreign resource dependency.