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concerts in China were never mentioned in the Chinese press. Arts exchanges were treated more in terms of their symbolic significance vis-à-vis bilateral relations than as essentially cultural events. This situation has severely jeopardized the Chinese perception of American artistic achievement and contributed to the preconditioned over-rating of American cultural events. At the same time, it undermined the Chinese understanding of the cultural achievements of other countries.
Conclusion
In the 15 years under discussion, there were two tendencies dominating Sino-American arts exchanges: the artists' involvement in arts exchanges for art's sake and the hand of the state, both China and the United States, which at times pulled them back to serve political objectives except where the two goals were compatible. To political leaders, arts exchanges were means rather than ends. They were means to strengthen a relationship between the two countries and they were occasionally even used to alienate the other party. Arts exchanges were also seen as a channel and sometimes directly used by the American government to export American values and in like manner, they were used by the Chinese government for gaining economic cooperation from the United States. Plainly, arts exchanges were employed to serve foreign policy objectives. But what were the foreign policy goals of China in this period and the latter part of this period in particular?
Though the initial stimuli of Sino-American diplomatic normalization and rapprochement was the need to counter Soviet expansionism, the goals Chinese political leaders persistently pursued were the establishment of a peaceful international environment and the fostering of foreign economic cooperation for her modernization programme. These two goals should, so Chinese political leaders expected, serve as a guarantee to China's stability and development.
In order to meet these two goals, China greatly strengthened relations with the United States in the first few years since 1978, viewing it as a counterweight to the Soviet Union and, as one of the few suppliers of modern capital and technology which could lead to the success of the modernization programme. Meanwhile, the rapid increase in contacts between the two peoples brought to China values which could not be accommodated in a short time or could not be accommodated at all. On the other hand, as the country which embraced China when China opened