Nixon in China

by Margaret MacMillan

  At 3.30 in the morning, Kissinger, disguised in a floppy hat and dark glasses, was whisked off through deserted streets to the Rawalpindi airport in a small blue car driven by Pakistan’s Foreign Minister. The other Americans followed with the luggage. The Pakistan International Airlines plane waited, its engines already running. At the top of the stairs, a party of Chinese officials, among them Nancy Tang, Mao’s personal interpreter, waited to greet the Americans, much to the shock of the Secret Service agents, who had no idea what was going on or where they were off to. One started to reach for his gun. A stringer for a London newspaper who happened to be at the airport seeing his mother off noticed the unusual activity and asked a policeman what was up. ‘It’s Henry Kissinger; he’s going to China.’ The reporter rushed off to send the story to London, where it was spiked because his editor assumed he must have had too much to drink. In the American embassy the next day rumours went round that something was not quite right about the story of Kissinger’s illness.13

  Nixon himself nearly let the secret out when he gave a speech in Kansas City on 6 July. He talked in a statesmanlike way of a new world order where the five main powers would be the United States, the Soviet Union, Western Europe, Japan and China. It was essential, he said, that his administration take the first steps towards ending the isolation of China. The comments were overlooked by the American press but picked up by alert British and Asian journalists. The White House managed to persuade them to keep quiet.14

  The plane took off into the darkness. Kissinger disappeared into the special VIP cabin and, without thinking, the rest of the Americans arranged themselves on the right-hand side of the aisle and the Chinese took the left. Dawn came up to reveal the Hindu Kush, the great range of mountains that helps to divide China from its neighbours. As the plane crossed into Chinese airspace, Winston Lord, perhaps by design, found himself at the front, the first American official in twenty-two years to reach China. The Chinese and Americans chatted politely among themselves. Holdridge, who had visited China as a child before the Second World War, noticed that one of the Chinese aircrew quietly pocketed all the packages of cigarettes the steward brought round. ‘This seemed a hopeful sign that he was human, and that China was still China.’ Kissinger, who spent much of the time poring over his notes, had a brief flash of anger when he realized that his assistant had forgotten to pack a change of shirts for him. He borrowed a couple (as luck would have it, with labels saying ‘Made in Taiwan’) from the much taller Holdridge. Kissinger managed to hold the sleeves up with elastic bands but spent his time in China looking, said Lord, rather like a penguin.15

  On the other side of the world, Nixon had just broken the news of Kissinger’s trip to Rogers, whom he had invited to San Clemente partly to keep an eye on him. It had not been a good few weeks for Rogers. In May, he had been deeply hurt and distressed when he was informed, shortly before it was announced, that Nixon and Kissinger had negotiated a major arms deal, SALT 1, with the Soviet Union and that Kissinger had been having regular secret meetings with Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to Washington. Now he was given a feeble story about how Kissinger had been in Pakistan when the Chinese had unexpectedly invited him to Beijing to meet Chou.16

  The PIA plane flew on, across the vast desert which the silk route had once crossed, and landed at a military airport outside Beijing around lunchtime. On the ground, a small party, headed by Ye Jianying, one of the Four Marshals whose reports had started Mao and China down a new path in international relations, waited to escort them to the Diaoyutai. Holdridge found himself in a car with Huang Hua, an experienced diplomat who had just been appointed ambassador to Canada. ‘You know,’ said Huang as he opened the conversation, ‘in 1954 at Geneva, your Secretary of State refused to shake the hand of our premier, Premier Chou En-lai.’ Holdridge hastened to assure him that there would be nothing similar this time. When Chou arrived at the Diaoyutai that afternoon, he climbed out of his limousine with his arm outstretched. Holdridge remembered the scene years later: ‘Kissinger strode out to greet him. Kissinger extends his hand, handshake, and boom, boom, boom, boom – flashbulbs all over the place, videotape, etc. This was an historic handshake.’ Chinese who were present thought that Kissinger was nervous and tense.17

  The Chinese kept the news of Kissinger’s visit secret until after he had left, but word began to spread in the inner circles of government. Zhang Hanzhi was a young official in the Foreign Ministry. She and her colleagues sensed that something was happening. Government ministers looked excited. Two of the top interpreters had disappeared. At lunchtime they reappeared and broke the news. ‘It was like a bomb exploding in the Foreign Ministry.’18

  That first day, Kissinger and Chou talked until nearly midnight. Chou began the discussions by inviting Kissinger to make an opening statement. ‘Besides, you have already prepared a thick book.’ Kissinger hastily explained that he rarely used written notes but that he wanted Nixon to know what he was going to say. After he had gone through his summary of American concerns, it was Chou’s turn.19 The two men and their colleagues settled down for what were to be seventeen hours of conversations. They had only two days to get to know each other and develop the necessary level of trust to enable the contact which had been established with such difficulty to produce fruit.

  Chou was experienced, his diplomatic skills sharpened after years of negotiating with the Communists’ enemies, such as the Guomindang, and their one-time friends such as the Soviet Union. He also had the self-control and patience that surviving through the long years of war and inner-party struggle had brought. Kissinger was much younger but he had an equal talent for diplomacy. If he was not as seasoned as Chou, he was learning quickly. The two statesmen, the old hand and the novice, laid themselves out to charm each other. Kissinger lavished praise on China, ‘this beautiful and, to us, mysterious land’. Oh, said Chou, ‘When you have become familiar with it, it will not be as mysterious as before.’ Kissinger also took every opportunity to flatter Chou himself: ‘It is hard to believe that the Prime Minister could be anything but cool-headed.’ When the question of taping their conversations came up, Kissinger demurred: ‘You will be so much more precise and better organized than I, that I would be shown up at a disadvantage’. That was probably untrue, replied Chou. ‘You are younger and have more energy than I.’20

  In those first encounters, Chou and Kissinger discovered the main areas where they agreed and disagreed. For China, Taiwan was the most important issue, while for the United States getting out of Vietnam was of equal importance. The Chinese made it clear that, although they did not intend to use force to reunite Taiwan with China, they were not prepared to see two Chinas in the world or in international bodies such as the United Nations. They wanted the United States to recognize that Taiwan was part of China and to set a timetable for withdrawing American forces. The United States, Kissinger hinted, expected that one day there would be only one China, though it could not say so right away for political reasons. In any case, it intended to withdraw its troops, but that was linked partly to what happened in Indochina. Once the United States was safely out of its wars there, it could dismantle many of its bases in Asia. Chou refused to be drawn into making any promises on Indochina. The peoples there must decide their own fates.21 Kissinger also devoted considerable effort to reassuring the Chinese that the United States had no intention of colluding with other powers (neither the Soviet Union nor Japan was mentioned specifically) against China. Indeed Nixon promised that the United States would not take any major steps affecting China without discussing them with the Chinese first. Chou would not be drawn into discussions of a common front between China and the United States.

  Late on the night of Kissinger’s first day in China, Chou En-lai made his report to Mao. The Chairman was pleased to learn that the United States intended to start withdrawing troops and support from Taiwan. As for Vietnam, said Mao in an altruistic fashion, it was important that the United States settle it because people were ge
tting killed there. ‘We should not invite Nixon to come just for our own interests.’ Mao also ordered Chou to make a statement the following morning on the big issues, pointing out that ‘all under the heaven is in great chaos’. The theme was a favourite one of Mao’s, who believed that historic changes – the victory of Communism, for example – occurred when the world was in turmoil. In a fit of bravado, perhaps because he did not like the idea of Kissinger reassuring China that the United States would not collude with others against it, Mao added that Chou could tell the Americans that China was quite ready to be divided up among the United States, the Soviet Union and Japan if they chose to invade. In fact, according to Chinese sources, Mao was relieved to hear that the United States had no aggressive intentions towards China. If that were true, the Chinese military could move even more troops north to the border with the Soviet Union.22

  The next morning, Chou arranged for the Americans to have a tour of the Forbidden City. They were taken first to a small museum to see an exhibit of artefacts dug up during the Cultural Revolution. It was a sad display, although the American visitors could not know it, in light of the widescale destruction of China’s cultural heritage during the Cultural Revolution. The Forbidden City was closed off to keep any Chinese from seeing the extraordinary visitors. The Americans wandered through the great imperial courtyards and some of the halls where the emperors had once maintained harmony between heaven and earth. ‘We absorbed’, Kissinger told Nixon, ‘the magnificently simple and proportionate sweeps of the red and gold buildings.’ His unfortunate assistants, Lord remembers, sweated in the summer heat under the burden of their briefcases, which they dared not leave behind.23

  The meetings resumed at noon, in the Great Hall of the People. The Chinese had pointedly selected the Fujian Room, named after the province that faced Taiwan. Chou duly made a strongly worded statement which faithfully echoed Mao’s views. And perhaps he shared them; it was after all a difficult change of direction for an old Communist to find himself talking to a representative of the biggest capitalist power in the world. ‘There is chaos under heaven,’ he told the Americans, who were taken aback by the change in his tone. ‘In the past twenty-five years,’ he went on, ‘there has been a process of great upheaval, great division, and great reorganization.’ The two superpowers were vying to control neutral countries and the territories that lay between them. ‘The Soviet Union is following your suit, in stretching its hands all over the world.’ China, Chou said, was still a weak country, but it did not fear a combined attack from its three main enemies. Already it was preparing for a people’s war. ‘This would take some time and, of course, we would have to sacrifice lives.’24

  All over the world, the people were mobilizing. ‘Such resistance is stimulated by your oppression, your subversion, and your intervention.’ The United States was enmeshed in Taiwan and Indochina; it was encouraging Japanese militarism; and it was conniving with the Soviets to keep a monopoly of nuclear weapons. Perhaps it was not worth Nixon’s coming to China at all if the differences between their two countries remained so serious, especially over Taiwan, which was a small matter for the Americans but not for China. ‘Taiwan is not an isolated issue, but is related to recognition of the People’s Republic of China, and it is also related to the relations of all other countries to China.’ If Nixon wanted to come to China, he would have to discuss Taiwan.25

  Kissinger rallied and was equally firm back. He wanted to make it clear, he said, that the Chinese had been the first to suggest that Nixon come to Beijing and they must decide when the time was right. On the other hand, a visit by Nixon would take China and the United States a long way to solving the issues between them. ‘It also has tremendous symbolic significance because it would make clear that normal relations are inevitable.’ On Taiwan, Kissinger said, he had already explained that the United States intended to withdraw its forces and that the other issues the Chinese worried about – the recognition, for example, that Taiwan was part of China – would settle themselves in due course. In time, too, relations between the United States and China would move on to a normal, peaceful footing.26

  Once Chou had said his piece, he reverted to his usual courteous self. He noted that he had followed American wishes in keeping the visit a secret. The New York Times reporter James Reston, who was on his way to Beijing, had found himself on such a slow train that he would not arrive until Kissinger had left. As for the American politicians who wanted to visit China, ‘I have a great pile of letters from them on my desk asking for invitations, which I have not answered.’ Nixon would very much appreciate that, Kissinger said. ‘This is done’, Chou replied, ‘under the instructions and wisdom of Chairman Mao.’27

  By this point it was after 2 p.m. Their Peking duck was getting cold, Chou said, and the Americans might like a break. The summer heat and the tension of the morning were too much for one of the Americans, who fainted just as they moved in to lunch. Over their duck, Chou asked Kissinger whether he had heard of the Cultural Revolution. It had been a difficult period, Chou said, and at one point he had been locked in his office by Red Guards. Mao, of course, was right to have launched it. Even the violence, while it got out of hand at times, was necessary to keep the revolutionary spirit alive. ‘China was now firmly guided by the thought of Mao Tse-tung.’ Perhaps, Chou remarked later that afternoon, Mao would talk more about the Cultural Revolution when Nixon visited. ‘We sometimes wonder whether we can talk about such things. But Chairman Mao speaks completely at his will.’ At the end of lunch, Chou, the thoughtful and gracious host, took the Americans off to the kitchens to show them how their meal had been prepared.28

  After the friendly interlude, the two sides resumed their tough debate. They touched on Indochina and the American presence there, Japan, Korea, the Soviet Union, the tension between India and Pakistan in South Asia – subjects that were to become staples of their discussions over the next years. Of more immediate concern was the question of Nixon’s visit. The Chinese, Chou said, were prepared to issue a formal invitation but they had a concern about the timing. Would it not be better for Nixon to meet the Soviet leaders first? China did not want to create any more tension with the Soviet Union. ‘You saw, just throwing a Ping-Pong ball has thrown the Soviet Union into such consternation.’ Kissinger said that the United States expected to have a summit with the Soviet Union, possibly in the next six months. In fact he had learned in Bangkok that the Soviets had postponed the summit indefinitely, so he decided to push for an early Nixon visit, partly as a way of putting more pressure on the Soviet Union. Kissinger suggested that Nixon should visit China in March or April of the following year. Chou agreed that he would take the matter to Mao.29

  He regretted, Chou said, that he had to leave for an appointment which would last until 10 p.m. (It was with a delegation from North Korea.) He and Huang Hua would come later that evening to continue their discussions and to work on a common announcement, about both Kissinger’s trip and the forthcoming Nixon one. The Americans went back to their villa at the Diaoyutai for dinner. They drafted an announcement and waited for the Chinese officials to reappear. Ten o’clock came and went with no Huang and no Chou. The Americans walked in the gardens to avoid eavesdroppers and wondered what the delay meant. ‘For all we knew,’ wrote Kissinger in his memoirs, ‘the Chinese had had second thoughts.’ At the very least, he suspected, the Chinese were trying to unsettle them.30 In fact, Huang was waiting for Mao to give him instructions. Some time after eleven, Chou appeared, full of apologies. Huang Hua would come shortly with a Chinese draft and they could compare its wording to the American version. Kissinger and Chou chatted for a short time and then Chou took his leave.

  Huang finally arrived around midnight with wording which had Nixon asking for an invitation to China so that he could settle the issue of Taiwan, as a necessary first step towards normalizing relations. ‘I rejected both propositions,’ Kissinger said later. ‘We would not appear in Peking as supplicants. We would not come for the
sole purpose of discussing Taiwan or even simply to seek “normalization of relations”.’31 The wrangling went on until 1.40 in the morning, when Huang suggested that they take a short break. He disappeared and the Americans waited until nearly 3 a.m. before they learned that he would not be back until 9 a.m. The Americans were puzzled and disturbed. Their plane had to leave by 1 p.m. if Kissinger was to make his schedule in Pakistan and they needed that announcement.

  Although they could not know it, Huang had rushed back to Mao’s house only to find that the Chairman had gone to bed. When he finally managed to see him the next morning, Mao had dealt briskly with the issue of who wanted the invitation: ‘None took the initiative, both sides took the initiative’. The wording was now sorted out easily. Chou En-lai, ‘knowing of President Nixon’s expressed desire to visit the People’s Republic of China’, had duly invited him. Nixon would come some time before May 1972. The meeting between the American and Chinese leaders was to seek the normalization of relations and to exchange views on matters of concern to both sides. ‘President Nixon has accepted the invitation with pleasure.’ Kissinger, who was so deeply impressed by Chou En-lai and his ‘extraordinary personal graciousness’, might have been taken aback if he had heard Chou’s speech to his colleagues later that year. Nixon, said Chou, had ‘eagerly’ asked to be invited to China, like a whore who would ‘dress up elaborately and present herself at the door’.32