Hardly. Nixon used China at the height of the cold war to "triangulate" Russia. What he wanted to avoid was a Russia-China tight alliance.
But, in terms of what he really did it was all symbolic. "Ping Pong Diplomacy", Pandas to the D.C. Zoo.
It was Clinton who gave them WTO and zero-tarrif trade with the USA, and that's what made them an economic powerhouse. |
Mao was still in charge of China when Nixon made his diplomatic overture to them. Nixon was under no illusions about what type of fellow Mao was.
What he did was to start the ball rolling that lead to American industry relocating to China. As for the gold window it was quite sustainable. But our massive spending was devaluing the dollar. The Arabs correctly saw that accepting paper dollars that were being inflated away was a losers game.
DC and Nixon were to blame, not the Arabs and others.