Abstract: This chapter charts aspects of the relationship between China and the United States from the normalization of relations in 1979, up to 1994. The emphasis is on China’s closer involvement with the international community, the exercise of US structural power designed to facilitate or retard the pace of that involvement, and China’s responses to the norms and rules of behaviour in an international order that many have seen as having been promoted largely by the United States. The chapter also examines the US attempt to consolidate bilateral ties with China after normalization in pursuit of the particular objectives of its foreign policy, but more especially to encourage China's contribution to international order. The different sections look at normalization and adjustment in 1979–84, the deepening of ties in 1985–89, and reassessments made in the period 1989–94.

Keywords: American—Chinese relations, China, China—s involvement with the international community, foreign policy, international order, normalization of relations, structural power, United States, US bilateral ties with China, US structural power,