This collection follows China's relations with countries in Western Europe from the early 1950s through the 1980s. It includes documents from China, Italy, France, West Germany, and other countries. See also the Digital Archive collection: Sino-French Normalization, 1964.For materials on China's relations with Eastern Europe, see China-Eastern Europe Relations.
Sino-European Relations during the Cold War and the Rise of a Multipolar World combines critical oral history with newly translated documentary sources to provide insights into the dynamics of Sino-European relations, past and present, and recent and ongoing global power shifts.
Martin Albers discusses Deng Xiaoping's 1975 visit to France - the first major Western country to fully recognize the People's Republic of China - and the trip's importance to Deng's future economic policy in China.
Enrico Fardella introduces Italian Foreign Ministry documents which provide an inside view of the Sino-Italian negotiations for diplomatic recognition in 1969 and 1970, and the influence of structural changes in the Cold War system on that process.
Bernd Schaefer introduces documents from West German archives to explore the convergence of interests between Mao Zedong's China and politicians in West Germany in the 1970s.
When France and the People’s Republic of China established diplomatic relations in January 1964, observers called the event a “diplomatic nuclear explosion," but the high hopes entertained for Sino-French relations never quite materialized, undermined by China and France’s conflicting goals toward the Vietnam War and the turmoil associated with the Cultural Revolution.
