On the Front Lines of the Cold War

by Seymour Topping

  Our friend Huang Hua and his wife, He Liliang, were among the many who suffered the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. In 1966, Zhou Enlai appointed Huang as ambassador to Egypt, the key post in the Middle East. Protected by Zhou, he was the only ambassador not recalled during the early years of the Cultural Revolution for “reeducation.” Recalled home in late 1970, he and his wife were sent to one of the hundreds of May Seventh Schools in rural areas to which officials and intellectuals were sent to do manual labor supposedly to be reeducated by the peasants. The schools took their name from Mao’s May 7, 1966, directive in which he said: “Going down to do manual labor gives vast numbers of cadres an excellent opportunity to study again.” Huang Hua worked in a machine shop and also as a peasant in the rice and gaoliang fields separated from his wife, who did manual labor at another location. After six months Zhou managed to bring Huang Hua back to Peking. Zhou appointed him ambassador to Canada and then told him to disappear and make arrangements for the secret arrival of Henry Kissinger, in preparation for the visit of President Nixon. Huang Hua was at the Peking Airport to welcome Kissinger on July 7. In September, I met Huang Hua at his embassy in Ottawa. When I asked him about his days in the May Seventh School, loyal to the leadership of his country, he spoke proudly of the experience of “reintegrating with the masses.” He told me he felt that he had learned a lot about peasant life.

  In October 2006, when Audrey and I were guests of Huang Hua and his wife at their vacation retreat in Hangzhou, we discussed the Cultural Revolution once again. He Liliang told us for the first time of her tragic family experience. “In 1966 I returned to Peking from Cairo. I was pregnant at the time. I learned that my father, who was seventy-three and a professor at the People’s University and head of the philosophy department, had been arrested by the Red Guards. He was living in the basement of one of the university buildings. The Red Guards refused to let him have his medicine pills for his high blood pressure. The city was then in total anarchy. My father was beaten around the head and suffered a brain injury. The Red Guards sent him to a hospital where I saw him. He died there.”

  Audrey asked Huang Hua: “Did you see any positive results coming out of the Cultural Revolution?” He replied: “Definitely not. The whole thing was a tragic mistake.”

  35

  ZHOU ENLAI AND THE FUTURE OF TAIWAN

  I nervously paced the floor of our Peking hotel room concerned about the absence of any word from Abe Rosenthal as to the status of our Pentagon Papers project. It was June 11, 1971, three days before the date we had set for publication of the Papers, and there had been only one message from him. As Audrey’s and my China dispatches began appearing in the Times, Rosenthal cabled: “Audrey on Friday and Seymour on Saturday. But what’s holding up copy from Joanna.” Joanna was our four-year-old daughter. Rosen-thal’s silence persuaded me that publication of the Papers must have been stymied. I decided to return to New York.

  Audrey was sitting on a sofa frowning as she watching my antics. I sighed and said to her, “Come, please.” Then, to her puzzlement, I led her up to the roof of the Xin Jiao Hotel, where there would be no chance that we would be overheard, and as we sat in the hot sun leaning against a revetment wall, I related to her for the first time details of the Pentagon Papers project. I said it was hard for me to conceive that the publisher would balk at publication, but the pressures on him to desist were enormous and probably had increased since I left New York. I told Audrey I intended to leave straight away for New York, and if I found on arrival that a decision had been taken not to print the Papers, I might resign. Audrey approved of my plans without hesitation. We decided that she would go on to Yan’an, as she had planned to photograph Mao Zedong’s old wartime haunts, and that we would meet in New York.

  On the morning of June 13, as I was packing, a Chinese porter brought a telegram from Rosenthal. We had gone to press with the Papers. I sat for a long time on our hotel bed, face in my hands, silently giving thanks. Punch had decided to publish despite all the risks. Rosenthal, backed by Reston and others, had stood like a rock throughout. He had insisted, as he and I had agreed to print not only the articles written by Times staffers based on the Papers but also the pertinent texts. The first installment was published that morning, six pages of news stories and documents. Publishing the texts of the classified documents had made the Times more vulnerable to government prosecution.

  It was Sunday, and in the evening Audrey called from Yan’an over a creaky telephone line and shouted “Great” when I told her the news. I told her I still intended to return to New York. Tied up with the Pentagon Papers, Rosenthal would need me back at my job of running the news operation. On Tuesday morning I went to the Information Department of the Foreign Ministry to say good-bye. I was received by Ji Mingzhong, the official who had escorted me to the cable office to correct my dispatch on the trial of Yao Dengshan, and Ji’s superior, Ma Yuzhen, an urbane but very tough diplomat. I explained that my presence was required in New York because of the repercussions anticipated from publication of the Papers. Although the Chinese media had not, and would not, make mention of the Papers, senior Chinese officials were cognizant of the Papers controversy from Reference News, a compendium of monitored foreign news agency reports distributed to specified offices by the Chinese on a need-to-know basis.

  Then Ji casually expressed surprise that I would not be going to Nanjing. His eyebrows arched, and he made no reply when I noted that this was the first time that I had been told, despite numerous requests, that I would be permitted to visit Nanjing. Obviously, for some reason, the Foreign Ministry did not want me to leave the country, and a Nanjing visit was now being offered as an inducement to delay my departure. I agreed to stay on for several days. I was eager return to Nanjing with Audrey, the city where we had courted, but there was also the other compelling reason. On our arrival in Peking, I had asked to see Premier Zhou Enlai. Now my hopes were aroused by the games the Information Department was playing with me. No American correspondent, other than Edgar Snow, had interviewed Zhou Enlai since 1949.

  When I returned to our hotel, there was a message from Rosenthal: “Please keep in mind I would like you to return as soon as feasible stop Everything well under control stop Enormous reaction to Sheehan Project but our fan is in good working order Regards.”

  I knew it was as close to a summons home as Rosenthal would send me. I read the reference to the fan as meaning that the Times was fighting off attacks as a consequence of its publication of the Papers. I ran out of the hotel, jumped into a taxi, and returned to the Foreign Ministry, catching Ji and Ma before they left for lunch, and told them I must leave the next day. That night, in a private dining room of the Peking Hotel, the Information Department gave a farewell dinner for me at which I completed negotiations for the future entry of Times correspondents into China. I then cabled Rosenthal to “keep fan running,” and the next morning at 6:30 A.M., I boarded a plane bound for Guangzhou en route to New York.

  Not long in the air, my Chinese jet airliner was diverted to Changsha in Hunan Province. I was told there was engine trouble. We landed at an air force base in the midst of a training exercise for new Chinese fighter planes of the Russian MIG model. Hours later, we were transferred to another plane, which took us to Guangzhou. I was on the tarmac of the Guangzhou airfield, trudging wearily to the terminal, when I was separated from the other passengers and led into a small waiting room. As I sat sipping tea, I was introduced to a Mr. Yang of the Foreign Affairs Section of the Guangzhou Revolutionary Committee. Without preliminaries he said: “Premier Zhou Enlai would like to see you. Will you return to Peking?” I looked at him dazed, nodded and asked: “When?”

  “The plane leaves at 5 o’clock,” Mr. Yang said. It was then 4:25 P.M. When I insisted that I must telephone the Times office in Hong Kong to report the postponement of my departure, I was driven at high speed to a hotel to make my call and then back to the airport. Never mind that the plane was delayed and disgruntled passengers
were waiting on the tarmac. A China Travel agent led me to a counter to buy a return ticket to Peking. I grumbled only when asked to pay once again the excess baggage charge.

  At the Peking airport I was greeted by Mr. Ji, and as I was going through the entry formalities, he asked me casually: “What would you like to do over the next several days? “ I looked at him in stunned disbelief. In my Walter Mitty comedy reveries aboard the plane, I imagined myself whisked from the airfield into the presence of Zhou Enlai for that exclusive interview during which he would impart some great headline-making news. Now, reality intruded, and I understood that I had been summoned to await the pleasure of the premier. Back at the Xin Jiao Hotel, my aspirations were dealt another blow. I encountered William Attwood, publisher of the Long Island newspaper Newsday, and his wife, Sim. They had been the guests of Cambodia’s Prince Sihanouk at his Peking residence. Attwood and I took the measure of each other and decided that candor would serve us best. I told my story, and he disclosed that he was promised an audience with a responsible official if he delayed his departure. Yet more. Bob Keatley of the Wall Street Journal, who had been exploring Yan’an with his wife, Ann, was in a high state of excitement, with visions of his own exclusive interview with Zhou Enlai dancing in his head. He too had been persuaded to rush back to Peking. The Chinese provided a special plane for the Keatleys and persuaded Audrey to accompany them. She had been photographing the old Mao cave in Yan’an when it was suggested to her coyly by Yu Zhangjing, the interpreter assigned to us by the Foreign Ministry, that she telephone me in Peking, notwithstanding her assumption that I was in New York. By the next day, the Keatleys, Attwoods, and Toppings had been shepherded into the Xin Jiao Hotel and asked to stand by. We were told not to stray, since the summons from Zhou Enlai, who often worked through the night until 5 A.M., might come at any hour. We waited three days.

  As I waited, I wrote and cabled on June 19 the first article of a major four-part series based on the five-week tour of China from Manchuria to the southern provinces which we had just completed. It was front-paged on June 25. I would have been disconcerted if I had known that the lead of the paper that day was a story under a four-column headline which said: “Times Asks Supreme Court to End Restraints on Its Vietnam Series.” I was unaware that publication of the Papers had stalled.

  In my summary series for the Times I introduced the first article with these lead paragraphs:

  PEKING, June 19—The doctrines of the Cultural Revolution have been translated into new Communist dogma. Under Mao Zedong that dogma has propelled China into a continuing revolution that is producing a new society, and a new “Maoist man.”

  Relative stability, prosperity and a surface tranquility have been restored with the end of the convulsive mass conflicts and great purge generated by the Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966 as a power struggle between Chairman Mao and Liu Shaoqi, then head of state and since deposed amid charges that he had deviated from revolutionary principles. Mao believes that he has interrupted an evolution that was turning China into a society on the Soviet model characterized by a privileged bureaucracy and tendencies toward the rebirth of capitalism in industry and agriculture.

  The gigantic Maoist thought remolding program has profound implications not only for the 800 million Chinese but also for the world. It is producing a highly disciplined, ideologically militant population that is taught that Mr. Mao is the sole heir of Marx and Lenin and the interpreter and defender of their doctrine and that each Chinese must be committed to fostering a world Communist society.

  Even so, underlying tensions persist in the party hierarchy and at the grass roots as the ideological struggle to resolve what Mr. Mao describes as “contradictions among ourselves” goes forward. “We have won a great victory.” the leader says, echoed by his designated successor, Vice-Chairman Lin Biao. “But the defeated class still struggles. These people are still around and this class still exists. Therefore, we cannot speak of final victory, not even for decades.”

  While I was at work three days later on my series, which was running front page in the Times, Ji phoned to say that the Toppings in company with the Keatleys and the Attwoods would dine with Zhou Enlai in the Great Hall of the People at 6:15 P.M. As our motorcade sped through Tiananmen Square to the Great Hall of the People, we were not were aware that Henry Kissinger would be arriving secretly in Peking eighteen days hence. Nor were we yet aware that our interview was intended by Zhou Enlai as a stage setter for the visit of President Nixon.

  The Chinese were awaiting Kissinger with some uncertainty as how to contend with him. At the conclusion of the dinner which Zhou gave for Ronning earlier in May in the Great Hall of the People, the premier asked my father-in-law to remain for a private talk. Seated in another reception room, the premier told Ronning of the impending visit of Henry Kissinger. “Can we trust Kissinger?” the premier asked. A critic of American policy in Vietnam, Ronning could only bring himself to reply: “All Chinese contacts with Americans are useful.” It was obvious that Zhou was looking to the meeting with Kissinger with the intention of reaching an understanding with Nixon that would serve as a counterweight in the sharpening dispute with Moscow. During the dinner Zhou had spoken of the possibility of war with the Soviet Union and said that the Chinese as a precaution were building air raid shelters nationwide. He said the work on the shelters began in the aftermath of a deadly clash in Manchuria on March 2, 1969, over the border demarcation on Zhenbao (“Treasure”) Island in the Ussuri River. Zhou unhesitatingly invited Audrey to report his remarks about the confrontation with the Soviet Union.

  Ronning did not share with Audrey or me the information given to him by Zhou in confidence about the Kissinger visit. In the days immediately preceding our dinner with Zhou Enlai, Chinese officials had casually questioned us about Kissinger, asking about his background, his personality, and influence. We had become so inured to Chinese curiosity about American leaders that it did not occur to us that the visit of a presidential envoy was imminent. There was no reason to assume that was in the offing. There had been no slacking in the Chinese press of attacks on the United States, especially on the central issue of Taiwan. The Seventh Fleet was still patrolling the Taiwan Straits. There were American troops on the island, their bases being used for support of the war in Vietnam.

  The Chinese maneuvers which brought Kissinger to Peking were put into play as early as November 1968 when Zhou Enlai proposed a meeting in Warsaw with delegates of the incoming Nixon administration. The forum was to be the private ambassadorial talks which had begun in 1955 on settlement of outstanding issues between the two countries and had continued for 134 fruitless meetings, first in Geneva and then in Warsaw. The Zhou Enlai gambit was undertaken for a complex of reasons. The turbulent phase of the Cultural Revolution in which Zhou Enlai had been personally threatened was coming to an end, and he could safely turn his attention to foreign affairs. Peking was eager to extricate itself from the isolation into which it had blundered as a consequence of the militant revolutionary policies it had pursued abroad during 1964–65. Relations with the Soviet Union were rapidly deteriorating, and there was a deep concern that the Russians might do a repeat on the Chinese of the Moscow-led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 in reaction to Peking’s ideological quarrels with Moscow and the border disputes. The Chinese also had been intrigued by an article under the title “Asia After Vietnam” in the October 1967 issue of Foreign Affairs under Nixon’s byline which stated that “taking the long view, we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside of the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates and threaten its neighbors.”

  The initial Chinese probe of the Nixon Administration’s intentions foundered on February 18, 1969 two days before an exploratory meeting was to take place. Peking cancelled the meeting after lodging a complaint, charging that a Chinese diplomat, Liao Heshu, had been incited to defect by the Central Intelligence Agency. It was more likely that the Liao affair was
used as a pretext for delaying the discussion until after the CCP’S Ninth Party Congress, which was summoned into session on April 1, 1969 to legitimize the shifts in power and policies stemming from the Cultural Revolution. Peking agreed the following year to resumption of the Warsaw talks for compelling reasons. The military confrontation with the Soviet Union continued to sharpen in 1969 in the aftermath of the border clashes in Central Asia and Manchuria. In February, Nixon offered to send a senior American official to Peking to discuss means of bettering relations. Then, on May 19, 1969, twenty-four hours before delegates were to meet in Warsaw, Peking once more canceled the session citing “the increasingly grave situation created by the United States government, which brazenly sent troops to invade Cambodia and expanded the war in Indochina.” The disruption was part of the price paid by the Nixon administration for mounting the military strike into Cambodia designed to root out North Vietnamese bases. However, in a few weeks time, while lending support to the ousted Cambodian regime of Prince Sihanouk, the Chinese let it be known that they would resume contacts at a suitable time. In the next months, Nixon sent a series of secret messages to Peking in which he persuaded the Chinese it was his intention to withdraw from Vietnam and that he was committed to normalizing relations with Peking.