Probably the most consequential outcome of US-China cordiality in the early 1970s was that China contracted with US firms to build ammonia-fertilizer factories:
> "In the early 1970s, China negotiated contracts with foreign firms for construction of thirteen large nitrogenous-fertilizer plants. By 1980 all thirteen plants had been completed, and ten were fully operational."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_and_industrial_h...
By the early 1980s, China's food production was finally on a stable footing, and this was largely due to the import of "Green Revolution" technology enabled by the opening up of trade with the West:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture_in_Chin...
It can be said with a fair degree of certainty that both the Soviet and Chinese systems of Communist authoritarianism prevented the kind of innovative approaches to agricultural production that the more open academic research environment in the United States encouraged. The contrast between Norman Borlaugh and Trofim Lysenko is somewhat instructive in that regard, and it seems Mao's China had no shortage of Lysenko types.
Of course, the consequences of the Green Revolution, i.e. steep population growth and increased reliance on fossil fuels, were not really understood at the time, either. Now we sort of have the tiger by the tail, while steadily increasing climate stress is starting to undercut agricultural production, in China, India, Africa, Europe, the USA...