Nixon in China

by Margaret MacMillan

  The Americans found the city a pleasant change after the austerity of Beijing and Hangzhou. Shanghai, the great seaport which had been one of the main centres for foreign trade and investment before the Communist takeover, had been badly neglected by the Communists, who mistrusted its free and easy ways, its radical traditions and its cosmopolitanism, but it was still, as one American journalist wrote, ‘a real city’. Even in 1972 Shanghai women dared to wear lipstick and bright clothes. Its streets bustled with crowds and its shops had a richer variety of goods than those in Beijing or Hangzhou. The Americans did not know the lengths to which the authorities had gone to tidy up the city; the locals had even been ordered to take their laundry in from the racks that hung outside each apartment.20

  The local authorities in the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee had laid on a full programme for the Nixons. Pat Nixon watched children’s activities at the Shanghai Children’s Palace and was serenaded by a student band playing ‘Can She Bake a Cherry-Pie, Billy Boy?’ ‘We study very hard in this place,’ said her young guide, ‘and then go back to our schools and teach the others as Chairman Mao told us.’ A weary Nixon was taken off to visit the Shanghai Industrial Exhibition, formerly the Sino-Soviet Friendship Building, to admire the products of Chinese industry. Machinery could be dangerous, he said. ‘Sometimes when you push the button it does not turn out all right.’ He inspected Chinese typewriters and an early computer. ‘I understand philosophy,’ he commented to Chou, ‘but computers are too complicated for me.’ Chou admitted that he did not understand them either; ‘but you have to pay attention to them’. Nixon looked up at the giant portraits of Communist luminaries. ‘We don’t see many pictures of Engels in America,’ he noted. He peered through a magnifying glass at a minuscule piece of ivory engraved with a famous poem of Mao’s about plum blossoms reaching their height of beauty just as they are about to disappear. Chou had quoted it to Nixon in Beijing and explained that it meant that those who start something may not always be there to enjoy the result. Nixon had taken the initiative to re-establish the United States’ relations with China. ‘You may not be there to see its success,’ he had warned Nixon. ‘A very unlikely event,’ Kissinger had interjected hastily.21

  While the Nixons were touring Shanghai, Kissinger was having one last meeting with Qiao on the communiqué. ‘Is there any new question your side would like to raise?’ asked Qiao sardonically. There was not. Kissinger did, however, have a request. He hoped the Chinese would exercise discretion in the way they discussed the communiqué. ‘It would make the realization of our common objective immeasurably more difficult if Chinese domestic propaganda or Chinese foreign propaganda or Chinese friends were to represent this as a major American defeat, or as any American defeat.’ Qiao nodded. Kissinger also wanted to alert the Chinese to a couple of things. He was probably going to have to visit Japan in the next few weeks. It would, however, be a visit of no particular importance. More important, he would be having a press conference with the American journalists later that afternoon and was bound to be asked some awkward questions about, for example, whether he and Nixon had made any secret deals with the Chinese or whether the communiqué included all the topics that had been discussed. The answer to both those questions would, of course, be ‘No.’ To general laughter, Kissinger added, ‘Wherever possible I will try to tell the truth.’

  The most difficult question he expected to get would be one about whether the American defence commitment to Taiwan was still in force. He was bound to say that, yes, the commitment was still valid but he would do so in as low key a way as possible. If any journalists tried to follow up, he would simply say that he was not prepared to make any further comment on such a sensitive issue while he was on China’s soil. ‘Are you certain this is what will happen?’ asked Qiao. Kissinger, who had already planted the necessary question with a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, assured Qiao that he need not worry. Qiao said he understood the difficulties the United States faced over its treaty with Taiwan and he was most grateful for Kissinger’s forewarning of how he intended to deal with the issue. ‘We can only express the hope that you will be as prudent as possible.’22

  At 5.30 in the afternoon, a tired and nervous Kissinger stood in the banquet hall of the Shanghai Industrial Exhibition to sketch out the main points of the communiqué for the assembled journalists. The press, who had themselves been working long hours filing stories back to the United States, were equally tired. Many had initially asked to stay on in China after Nixon left; when the rumour spread through their hotel later that night that Chinese officials were walking through their hotel to offer permission, they locked their doors in a panic.

  As an olive branch, and because it was useful to associate the State Department publicly with the communiqué, Kissinger had asked Green to join him at the briefing. The crucial question came: why had the United States not reaffirmed its treaty commitment to Taiwan in the communiqué? Kissinger answered that, as Nixon had said earlier that year in his report on foreign policy to Congress, the United States was maintaining the treaty with Taiwan. He had nothing further to say and he would appreciate it if the journalists did not pursue the subject. Much to Nixon’s and Haldeman’s relief, the press reports were, if not wildly enthusiastic, reasonably positive. Among the White House staff, though, Pat Buchanan, later a prominent conservative critic of Nixon, was appalled at what he considered a sell-out.23

  Kissinger also attempted to mollify the State Department by giving the impression at the press conference that Rogers had been involved at every step in the negotiation of the communiqué. Rogers himself may have been more soothed by the unexpected visit that Chou paid him that same afternoon. Chou was well aware of the divisions among the Americans and the hurt feelings on the State Department side. The Chinese interpreters had reported back to him on the angry comments from the State Department officials about the communiqué. Kissinger had also hinted broadly in a conversation just before they left Beijing that it might be a good idea to do something for ‘those who feel neglected’. Chou agreed. He now told Rogers how much he regretted that his duties as prime minister of China had kept them from meeting more often. ‘Secretary Rogers, you have done so much and we appreciate it.’24

  That night the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee put on a final banquet for the Americans. Rose Mary Woods, Nixon’s long-time and deeply conservative secretary, kept everyone waiting as she and Buchanan commiserated with each other. ‘Don’t rush me,’ she snapped when she was told to hurry up. ‘As long as we have sold out to these bastards, it doesn’t make any difference.’ Chou and Nixon did the usual round of toasts, perhaps knocking back more maotai than usual. The host, Zhang Chunqiao, who had risen to prominence during the Cultural Revolution and who was later to be tried along with Mao’s wife as one of the Gang of Four, made a brief speech of welcome and toasted the friendship between the great Chinese and the great American peoples. Nixon replied with a carefully crafted metaphor about building bridges across 16,000 miles of ocean and twenty-two years of hostility. Under the influence of the maotai, or so Kissinger suspected, Nixon got carried away and suggested that the United States stood ready to defend China if any foreign power tried to attack it. Their joint communiqué, he said proudly, would make international headlines the next morning. After all, ‘This was the week that changed the world.’25

  After the banquet, while most of the Americans watched a display of acrobatics, Kissinger went off to hand over to Qiao a last batch of top-secret military intelligence about Soviet forces. He would, he told Qiao, continue to send special information privately through Huang Hua, the Chinese ambassador at the United Nations. It would be best if the Chinese did not tell the State Department about this secret channel. The two men went back over the old familiar subject of Vietnam, with Kissinger saying how sincere the United States was in wanting to get out of its war and Qiao reiterating that the Chinese had no intention of interfering. It was well after midnight when they parted with sentiments o
f mutual esteem. ‘Maybe you will have some rest tonight,’ Qiao said.26

  Kissinger still had one last duty to perform before he could get to his bed. Haldeman, who had been sitting up with an excited Nixon, called him in to the President’s suite. The three of them sat there until after 2 a.m. as Nixon drank more maotai, going over the past week and praising Kissinger for his role in making the visit such a success. ‘Sort of recapping problems and triumphs,’ wrote Haldeman in his diary, ‘the real breakthrough, the lack of understanding of what has been done, but the fact will come out eventually.’ Kissinger felt that, as so often, Nixon was asking for reassurance. He and Haldeman gave it to him, moved, said Kissinger, in part by a longing to get to bed but also ‘by an odd tenderness for this lonely, tortured, and insecure man’. The evening finally came to an end as the three stood on the terrace of Nixon’s suite and took one last look at the great, dimly lit city lying below them.27

  Many people went short of rest that night. Walter Cronkite, along with other American journalists, was wakened out of a deep sleep by a pounding on his door. Two army officers stepped in, presented him with a huge box of sweets, saluted and left. The Chinese had been convinced, ever since Kissinger’s first visit, that all Americans loved sweets because the bowlfuls left out had been emptied every day as the Americans amassed souvenirs. The attendants at the Diaoyutai, where the Kissinger party stayed in Beijing, had reported, much to Mao’s amusement, that the Americans ate not only the sweets but the wrappers too.28

  On Monday morning, at Nixon’s request, he had one last private meeting with Chou. He wanted, Nixon said, to reassure Chou that the record of their talks would remain secret, even from the rest of the American government. The two of them had made considerable progress in the past week; he hoped that when they disagreed in the future, as they must given that they represented such different countries, they would keep the rhetoric cool and not attack each other personally. Although the two of them had discussed other powers such as the Soviet Union, India and Japan, he also intended, Nixon said, to say virtually nothing about their discussions either to the American press or to the leaders of those countries. Chou agreed that their two countries should not attack each other unnecessarily but pointed out that there were still many areas where they disagreed. Taiwan, of course, but there China was prepared to wait. Vietnam was the most pressing issue. The Chinese were particularly sad because the Americans had continued their bombing. Kissinger intervened: he was sure that there had not been any bombing during the Nixon visit. Chou was polite but firm that there had been.29

  As Nixon left the hotel, the staff lined up in order of their rank along the driveway. He was accompanied to the airport by Shanghai’s revolutionary leader, Zhang, who took the opportunity to remind a foreigner, yet again, of China’s century of humiliation. He pointed out a former golf course, now a children’s park: before the Communist victory, he said, repeating the widely believed story, a sign had said ‘No Chinese Allowed’. Haldeman, who had gone off to buy miniature trees, nearly missed the motorcade. The press took off their long underwear with relief and piled it on Barbara Walters’s bed as a last joke. While she waited in line to say goodbye to Chou, a hotel attendant rushed up with a large and very smelly package for her.30

  As the American planes took off, a Chinese worker hauled down the American flag, and all over Shanghai, people rushed to hang their laundry out of their windows. Charles Freeman, from the State Department, remembers the mood on his plane as euphoric. ‘We had accomplished our purpose, which was a strategic one. We had not given away very much on Taiwan. We had held our ground on other international issues. We had established the framework for a relationship.’ The staff on the Zoo Plane, for the second-tier journalists, had decorated the cabin and laid in special meals and wines. The passengers settled into their seats and most did not wake up again until the plane reached Anchorage. On his plane, Nixon continued to worry at his problems concerning Rogers and how to, as he put it to Haldeman, consign his Secretary of State to the deep freeze. He went over what Kissinger should say in a detailed background briefing to the press back in the United States. Haldeman, Nixon said, should make a note that Kissinger had been working very hard and, as a reward, Haldeman was to contact Bebe Rebozo and ask him for all the phone numbers of women under thirty in his little black book.31

  Not all the Americans went directly home. Five journalists did stay on in China for a short period. Green and Holdridge went off to brief American allies throughout Asia and the Pacific. The Nixon visit, they were to say, had not altered anything; indeed their interests had been furthered by the reduction of tensions between the United States and China. This was not an easy sell. The South Korean Foreign Minister was not convinced by their assurances that Chou had told Nixon that China, which after all was a strong supporter of North Korea, wanted stability in the peninsula. In Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek refused to meet Green and Freeman at all and sent his son instead. The young Chiang listened politely and had only a few questions. He probably had a very good idea of what had happened during the talks in China because one of the designated American interpreters, who was a close personal friend, had just been on a hunting trip with him.

  The Japanese had not got over their earlier shokkus or the latest one when the Shanghai communiqué was released. Sato, the Prime Minister, had walked out of a press conference mumbling angrily against Nixon. Green was unable to convince him that Nixon had not made secret agreements with China and that American friendship for Japan remained as strong as ever. In South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, where the governments depended on American support for their survival, the reaction was muted. The Thai, Indonesian and Malaysian governments were polite but skeptical.

  In the Philippines, the Americans found an atmosphere close to hysteria. Imelda Marcos, the wife of the President, threatened to leave for Beijing immediately to establish a new relationship between her country and China. Green and the American ambassador were called before the Senate to explain why the United States was repudiating its former policies on Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China. When they reached Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister, told Holdridge and Green that their country had just sprung the trap’ on their friends. The reaction was much the same on their last stops in Australia and New Zealand. Green made a particularly bad impression on the Australians. As their senior foreign ministry official said, ‘He was either consumed with personal vanity to such an extent that he believed a lot of the optimistic nonsense he talked or alternatively he was lying to bolster a bad case.’32

  Such reactions were not sufficient to diminish the pleasure that Nixon took in his trip. Back in Washington, he had received a hero’s welcome. Fifteen thousand people had turned out at Andrews Air Force Base to see his plane land. Although both he and Kissinger grumbled about it, the press coverage was generally favourable. In the polls, Nixon’s popularity rose sharply to a 56 per cent approval rating, the highest he had enjoyed in over a year. Nearly 70 per cent of those polled believed that his trip would be useful. When Nixon met his cabinet the day after his return, he told them that the United States had a ‘profound new relationship’ with China. He now turned his attention back to the Soviet Union and the perennial sore of Vietnam, and at home he increasingly focused on the presidential election.33

  Conclusion

  NIXON’S WEEK IN CHINA in 1972 was the culmination of a long and delicate process as two old adversaries moved to establish contact with each other. As the last-minute negotiations over the Shanghai communiqué so clearly showed, the process could have gone badly wrong and the relationship might have slid back into the deep freeze. Both sides rightly felt both relief and a certain guarded optimism about what the future now held. The Chinese assumed that American concessions on Taiwan, in particular, would lead in due course to a solution of that issue as the United States wound down its military presence and ended its support for the government in Taipei. Taiwan, no one perhaps knew quite how, would be merged into the
homeland. Equally important, from the Chinese perspective, their country had been recognized as a major power and could now move to take its rightful place on the world’s stage. The Americans, for their part, hoped for a substantial realignment in the balance of power which would give them China, with its massive population, vast territories and enormous potential, as a counter-balance against the Soviet Union and also as a new means of pressuring North Vietnam.

  At Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, Nixon arrived to an enthusiastic welcome organized by his Vice-President, Spiro Agnew. ‘My God,’ said Hugh Sidey of Life, ‘it’s like the arrival of the king.’ At 98 per cent, Nixon’s trip to China registered the highest public awareness of any event in the Gallup poll’s history. The right-wing fulminated to little apparent effect. A furious Pat Buchanan threatened to resign from the White House staff on the grounds that the United States had done a deal with a Communist regime and sold out its ally Taiwan, but in the end he did not carry out his threat. The conservative journalist William F. Buckley, who had been brought along on the trip to win him over, publicly condemned the Shanghai communiqué and went off to support John Ashbrook of Ohio, a little-known Republican Congressman who was trying to stop Nixon’s re-election.1

  American allies murmured – a ‘distinct whiff of “peace in our time”‘, said the British ambassador in Washington – but the overall position of the United States in the world seemed strengthened by its new relationship with China. True, North Vietnam suddenly attacked the South at the end of March 1972. On the other hand, when the United States resumed its heavy bombing of targets in South Vietnam and, for a brief period, of Hanoi and its port city of Haiphong, the Chinese protested but did nothing. In May, when Nixon went even further and mined Haiphong harbour to prevent much-needed Soviet supplies from reaching the North, the Soviet Union made a pro forma protest, but it did not attempt to break the blockade and, more important, did not cancel the approaching summit.