After a brief storm over the Taiwan Strait in 1995–1996, diplomatic relations calmed. But China’s sheer size made it a contender. With the Tiananmen crackdown of 1989, the Communist Party had signaled its intent not to abandon its one-party leadership. Since then it had fashioned a popular ideology that was as much nationalist as Communist.18 If Washington was betting on international trade and globalization to “Westernize” China, the Chinese Communist Party took the other side of the bet.
