Observer: Republican presidents and China-US relations

A Republican president unveiled a new era of China-US relations. Another Republican president put an end to that new era and unfolded a dramatically different one. Since the beginning of the Cold War, Republicans have been known for their antipathy toward communism, and Richard Nixon's staunch anti-communism helped to jumpstart his political career. But Nixon was more than a mundane politician; he was also a geopolitical strategist who had an acute understanding of international relations in his time. Throwing off his ideological straightjacket for a moment, Nixon reached out to China in order to balance against the USSR, which he…