It was in may 1994 that the Clinton administration finally accepted that it could not compel China to pursue a human – rights policy to American liking on pain of withholding from it access to the American market on normal trading terms, known as Most Favoured Nation treatment (MFN). Like other US presidents who had come to office determined to apply a tougher approach to China (such as Reagan over Taiwan), Clinton, who had indicated in the 1992 campaign for the presidency that he would be determined to hold the Chinese government to greater account over its human-rights record arising out of Tiananmen, had to change course in the face of Chinese realities. Except, in this case, the pressure did not just arise from an obdurate China, but from domestic sources too, notably the American business community and indeed from the administration’s Department of Commerce, both of whom were exercised about the significance of the fast-growing Chinese market. Within the Pentagon there was also an interest in restoring military-to-military exchanges with the Chinese. Thus the commerce secretary and the secretary of defense paid visits to Beijing later that September and October respectively, where they were well received.