Jimmy Carter's foreign policy decisions were fateful for Asia

Beyond the Middle East, far-reaching developments during his term include the recognition of the government in Beijing in 1979

- Nirmal Ghosh

An American diplomat, now in Washington, remembers vividly the day in Beijing – many years after Mr Jimmy Carter had left the White House – when he asked a group of Chinese students if they knew anything about him.

"All their hands shot up," he recalled. "And they said, 'He recognised China.'"

While the stage had been set earlier for the historic event by two-term US president Richard Nixon and his secretary of state Henry Kissinger, it was still certainly a fateful decision when, on Jan 1, 1979, Washington recognised the government in Beijing as China's legitimate government.

Mr Carter was then in the middle of his 1977 to 1981 term as president of the United States.

Three months later, on April 10, 1979, the Taiwan Relations Act became law in Washington – and, without amendments, remains to this day the basis for the US' relations with China and Taiwan.

The Act states that the US' "decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means and that any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, is considered a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States".

It also states that the US "shall provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character and shall maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardise the security, or social or economic system of the people of Taiwan".

Mr Carter died at his home in Plains, Georgia, on Dec 29, at the age of 100.

The other far-reaching developments during his term in office were the end of detente with the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian revolution, and his reversal on withdrawing American troops from the Korean peninsula.