Romania, a NATO member country sitting in the Southeast part of Europe, is no longer a main player in the Chinese diplomatic agenda today. However, from the 1960s to the 1980s, the Romanian Socialist Republic under the rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu played a special role in China’s diplomacy, since it was one of the few countries that was able to penetrate the Iron Curtain on both sides. As early as 1967, Romania started to act as a direct messenger between Washington and Beijing. After helping facilitate Sino-U.S. Rapprochement in the early 1970s, the Balkan state became a major player in connecting China with the West, and quickly replaced Albania as the new strategic partner of China in the region. This talk explores how China came to rely on Romania as a diplomatic interlocutor for its political and economic opening toward the West, and how this role, in turn, transformed Romania into a "Cold War celebrity" on the international stage. By examining Sino-Romanian relations, the talk offers new insights into the function of mediator states and the distinctive power they wielded during the Cold War. These insights also carry contemporary resonance: in a world where relations among major powers are once again fragile, revisiting the role of "mediators" opens fresh possibilities for addressing the challenges we face today.

About the Speaker

Liye Hong holds a Ph.D. in History from the George Washington University and is an incoming postdoctoral research fellow at East China Normal University. His research examines Sino-Romanian relations during the Cold War, with a particular focus on how Romania, functioning as a political mediator, shaped the peacemaking process between the Western and Eastern blocs. His research received the Samuel Flagg Bemis Dissertation Research Grants from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR).

The ANU China Seminar Series is supported by the Australian Centre on China in the World at ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.

Contact the host of The Power of Mediation – Ceaușescu, Sino-Romanian Relations, and China’s Political and Economic Rapprochement with the West