Jimmy Carter

Early Life and Naval Career

James Earl Carter Jr. was born on 1 October 1924 in the small farming town of Plains, Georgia, and grew up on a farm in nearby Archery. His father ran a farm and a store; his mother, Lillian, was a registered nurse. He attended Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology and graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1946; on 7 July that year he married Rosalynn Smith, also of Plains. In the Navy he became a submariner, serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets and rising to lieutenant; he was later chosen by Hyman Rickover for the nuclear submarine programme and took graduate work in reactor technology and nuclear physics at Union College. According to Chinese reports, he first visited China in 1949 as a young naval officer. When his father died in 1953 he resigned from the Navy and returned home to take over the family farm, running a seed and farm-supply warehouse with his wife.

From Georgia to the White House

Back in Plains, Carter served on local boards for education, the hospital authority and the library, and in 1962 was elected to the Georgia State Senate, where he served two terms. He lost his first race for governor in 1966 but won in 1970, taking office as Georgia's 76th governor on 12 January 1971 and declaring in his inaugural address that the time for racial segregation was over. On 12 December 1974 he announced his candidacy for president. In the political climate after Watergate, this Washington outsider won the Democratic nomination on the first ballot at the 1976 convention and narrowly defeated the incumbent, Gerald Ford, on 2 November.

The Presidency

Carter served from 20 January 1977 to 20 January 1981. In foreign policy his administration concluded the Panama Canal treaties; in September 1978 he mediated the Camp David Accords between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, followed by the Egypt–Israel peace treaty; he signed the SALT II treaty with the Soviet Union; and he established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. He made human rights a prominent theme of foreign policy. At home he created the Departments of Energy and Education, pursued deregulation in energy, transportation, communications and finance, and signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. At the same time, soaring oil prices brought inflation and an energy crisis that dogged his term. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 he responded with a boycott of the Moscow Olympics and a halt to grain sales to the USSR. In November 1979 Iranian students seized the US embassy in Tehran and took American hostages, and a rescue attempt failed in the spring of 1980. Carter lost the 1980 election to the Republican Ronald Reagan; the hostages' release was negotiated before he left office.

Normalisation with the People's Republic of China

After taking office, Carter sent Secretary of State Cyrus Vance to China in August 1977 and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in May 1978. On the evening of 15 December 1978 (Washington time) he announced in a national address that the United States and the People's Republic of China would establish diplomatic relations from 1 January 1979. The United States recognised the government of the PRC as the sole legal government of China, while severing diplomatic ties with the authorities on Taiwan, terminating the Mutual Defense Treaty and withdrawing US forces from the island. Deng Xiaoping visited the United States from 29 January to 4 February 1979, and on 31 January the two leaders signed agreements on science and technology, cultural exchange and other areas; during their talks Deng informed Carter of China's intention to take military action against Vietnam. On 10 April 1979 Carter signed the Taiwan Relations Act passed by Congress. At home, his recognition of the PRC drew criticism from conservative Republicans.

After the Presidency

In 1982 Carter became University Distinguished Professor at Emory University and founded The Carter Center, which works on conflict mediation, election observation and disease prevention; he took part in mediation efforts in Ethiopia and Eritrea, North Korea (1994), Haiti, Bosnia, Sudan and elsewhere. In 2002 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He visited China more than ten times after leaving office, first in 1981; The Carter Center has worked in China since 1998, initially helping to observe village committee elections and later turning to promoting US–China dialogue and exchange. Carter died at his home in Plains on 29 December 2024, aged 100 — the longest-lived president in American history. The next day President Xi Jinping sent a message of condolence to President Joe Biden, describing Carter as "a driving force and decision-maker" behind the establishment of China–US diplomatic relations.