Abstract
 
Late on June 3, 1989, and into the next day Chinese soldiers brought to an abrupt end the 7-week standoff between the Chinese state and students and citizens of Beijing. It has been common to see balance of power considerations as bringing China and the United States together in 1972 to balance against the Soviet Union, and it has been equally common to see the end of what Kissinger called the Sino-American “tacit alliance” (1972–1989) to be, naturally, the end of the Cold War and/or the breakup of the Soviet Union. Borrowing from Hopf’s societal constructivism (2012) and Wendt’s “cultures of anarchy” (1999) here applied at the second level of analysis, the following study concludes that June 4 was actually key to the end of the Sino-American “tacit alliance,” leading to a major shift in mutual perceptions, which caused a shift in the Sino-American dyadic culture, from that of trusted friends to that of distrusted adversaries for a season, effectively ending the “tacit alliance” between the US and China.
 
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