France Is Following Us to Revolution?

My latest at the Diplomat draws on some recent work on the diplomatic re-emergence of China after the Cultural Revolution:

While the diplomacy of Kissinger and Nixon looms large in the American mythology of the “opening” of China, Albers establishes that the diplomatic re-emergence of China began well before the Sino-American rapprochement of 1972. Even prior to the Cultural Revolution, the People’s Republic of China had pursued a revolutionary foreign policy posture. However, few countries abided by the same restrictions as the United States (and the United Nations) regarding the primacy of the Nationalist regime in Taiwan; even during the PRC’s periods of diplomatic belligerence, it enjoyed a wide range of diplomatic relationships with the Communist and developing worlds. Nevertheless, Beijing struggled to make inroads in Western Europe.