What happened when Ronald Reagan met Deng Xiaoping: Taiwan, a nuclear deal and Nancy
Archives reveal how it was the US president’s wife who attracted Deng’s attention during a reception at the Great Hall of the People
“Reagan may visit China in spring,” read a headline in the South China Morning Post on September 28, 1983. Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang had announced that he and the American president might exchange visits the following year, but warned that serious differences in opinion remained.
On April 26, 1984, Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, were welcomed to Beijing with a rare 21-gun salute, despite the bitter rhetoric the US president – a fervent anti-communist – had aimed at China before he took office, in 1981.
On April 28, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping arrived at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People to meet Reagan “but it was [...] Nancy who attracted his attention”, the Post reported on April 29. Deng “held her hand tightly as the three posed for pictures and then escorted her into the meeting room for more picture taking. ‘Your current visit is too short,’ Mr Deng told the President’s wife. ‘As a friend (of the Chinese people), I think you should know China more.’”
During the Reagans’ six-day visit, the two countries finalised an agreement that would enable China to buy American-built nuclear reactors at an estimated cost of US$20 billion. “But neither side budged on the issue of Taiwan and Mr Reagan was rebuffed in his efforts to bring about strategic cooperation with China in opposing what he calls Soviet expansionism in the Pacific”, said a Post report dated May 3.