Unironically Nixon Goes To China. This was part of a larger normalization of US-Communist relations throughout the world.

Also, throughout the 90s and 00s there was a persistent belief that China was “liberalizing” and they would one day become a Capitalist Democracy like the rest of us. There are shades of End Of History that influenced this thinking, and it wasn’t broken until the mid 10s. Here’s The Economist admitting as much in 2018, and probably the only admission of being wrong by the publication.

Not since Mao Zedong has a Chinese leader wielded so much power so openly. This is not just a big change for China (see article), but also strong evidence that the West’s 25-year bet on China has failed.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West welcomed the next big communist country into the global economic order. Western leaders believed that giving China a stake in institutions such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) would bind it into the rules-based system set up after the second world war (see Briefing). They hoped that economic integration would encourage China to evolve into a market economy and that, as they grew wealthier, its people would come to yearn for democratic freedoms, rights and the rule of law.

It was a worthy vision, which this newspaper shared, and better than shutting China out. China has grown rich beyond anybody’s imagining. Under the leadership of Hu Jintao, you could still picture the bet paying off. When Mr Xi took power five years ago China was rife with speculation that he would move towards constitutional rule. Today the illusion has been shattered. In reality, Mr Xi has steered politics and economics towards repression, state control and confrontation.

EDIT: I forgot to mention it, but several other significant events precipitated the current China.

1. Vietnam and the loss for the US was the nail in the coffin for hard military power against communism in the Western mind.
2. the Sino-Soviet split, where the US thought to drive a wedge in international socialism by partnering with China through soft power. This was part of the broader diplomatic normalization between the West and Communism I mention above, where hard military power gave way to soft diplomatic/economic power and influence in the western thought.
3. -thought implementing market reforms that the west mistook as moving towards Capitalism.
4. The fall of the Soviet Union, that itself birthed the End of History thinking, came with it the beginnings of the thought that China would follow the same path.

All of these factors led to the western ‘certainty’ of China going down the path of Capitalist Democracy.