Again, I am not defending our current situation with China. I can assume the Reagan wouldn't be too pleased with it either. But I can also assume that Reagan, through his belief in free markets, would have been pondering some way to introduce it to the Chinese. We know that he lectured the Soviets on the subject nearly every chance he got.
I do not think there is any way in hell Ronald Reagan would have supported massive trade with Russia, while it remained a communist authoritarian state forcing troops to keep their guns trained on it’s easter block citizen, to keep them from fleeing.
What is China today if not the same thing?
And besides, this is all utter nonsense. We didn’t conduct massive trade with Russia under Reagan. Acting as if he would have been for it is pointless. He didn’t implement it.