Nixon in China
PENGUIN CELEBRATIONS
NIXON IN CHINA
MARGARET MACMILLAN is the author of Women of the Raj and the bestselling Paris 1919, which won the 2003 Governor General’s Award and several prestigious international prizes. Her most recent book is The Uses and Abuses of History. She is the warden of St. Antony’s College at Oxford University.
Nixon in China
The Week That Changed the World
MARGARET MACMILLAN
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Published in this edition, 2009.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)
Copyright © Margaret MacMillan, 2006
For their consent to quote from material in their collections or for which they hold copyright,
the author would like to acknowledge and thank the following: Dr. Henry Kissinger for
The White House Years; the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training for the interviews in their
Foreign Affairs Oral History Program; and the executors of the estate of Richard M. Nixon for RN:
the Memoirs of Richard Nixon. Brook Lapping Productions for the transcripts for Playing the China Card
produced by Brook Lapping Productions for Channel 4 and transmitted by broadcasters worldwide.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders, but in the event of any omissions, the author
would be grateful to hear from them.
The photo credits on page ix constitute an extension of this copyright page.
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To my sister, Ann, and my brothers,
Tom, Bob and David
Contents
Photographs
Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration
Maps
Introduction
1. Setting Out
2. Arrival
3. Chou En-lai
4. Diaoyutai
5. Meeting with Mao
6. Mao Tse-tung
7. The Long Freeze
8. Breaking the Pattern
9. The Polar Bear
10. The Banquet
11. Opening Movesv
12. The Secret Visit
13. Getting Ready
14. Getting Down to Business
15. The Irritant: Taiwan
16. Indochina
17. Haldeman’s Masterpiece
18. Audience Reactions
19. The Shanghai Communiqué
Conclusion
Appendix: The Communiqué
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Photographs
1 Nixon and Kissinger aboard Air Force One
2 A sketch of West Lake, Hangzhou
3 Soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army
4 Chou En-lai waiting to greet Nixon
5 The first handshake between Nixon and Chou
6 Nixon and Chou reviewing Chinese troops at the Beijing airport
7 Portrait of Mao in Tiananmen Square
8 Nixon’s first meeting with Mao
9 The Nixon–Mao handshake
10 The welcome banquet in the Great Hall of the People
11 Nixon and Chou toasting each other
12 The American and the Chinese flags in the Great Hall of the People
13 Chou with the Nixons
14 Nixon at work
15 A private meeting between Nixon and Chou
16 Scene from The Red Army Detachment of Women
17 Nixon and Jiang Qing at The Red Army Detachment of Women
18 The Nixons on the Great Wall
19 Pat Nixon watching a student singing
20 Pat Nixon admiring a panda at the Beijing Zoo
21 Nixon with journalists outside his villa at Hangzhou
22 The Nixons’ arrival back at Andrews Air Force base
The author and publishers would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce illustrations: Plate 1, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-C8473-16A; 2, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-C8598-35A; 3, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-C8544(12); 4, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-C8521-08/photo Byron Schumaker; 5, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-C8487-02A/photo Ollie Atkins; 6, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-C8588-14; 7, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-C8487-16A; 8, Ollie Atkins Collection, Special Collections & Archives, George Mason University; 9, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-8649(01)/photo Rich Remsberg; 10, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-C8616-29; 11 and 20, Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images; 12, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-C8488(02A); 13, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-C8487-30A; 14, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-C8543-16A; 15, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-C8546-13A; 16, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-C8520(05A); 17, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-C8518-04; 18, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-C8549(25A)/ photo Joe McCary; 19, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-C8530-13; 21, NLNP-WHPO-MPF-C8635(18); 22, New York Times.
Acknowledgements
In writing this book, I have accumulated many debts of gratitude. I have used, and probably abused, the wonderful libraries at the University of Toronto, especially Robarts and its inter-library loan facility, and the Graham Library at Trinity College. That college, of which I have been lucky enough to be provost, gave me time and support to work on this book, and I am very grateful to its Board of Trustees, my two marvellous assistants, Brenda Duchesne and Jean McNeil
l, and to my generous colleagues, in particular Geoffrey Seaborn, Derek Allen and Bruce Bowden, who took over my responsibilities when I went on a research leave.
I have had outstanding research assistants, among them Erin Black, Jake Hirsch-Allen, Sadia Rafiqiddin, Rebecca Snow and Kate Snow. Early on, Maria Banda did an invaluable search of the available literature. Wynne Lawrence carried on her work and wrestled my Bibliography into shape. Matthew Hogan not only searched the National Archives in Washington for me but proved to be an inspired picture researcher. Andrew Galbraith was indefatigable in finding Chinese books in Beijing and Hong Kong, and Tony Yixi Zeng and Jonathan Jen-fu Yang researched and translated Chinese sources. In Beijing, Joseph Caron, the Canadian Ambassador, and his colleagues gave me invaluable assistance in making contacts with Chinese academics and diplomats, and the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs was gracious enough to be my host. Herbert Levin and Robert Edmonds, both of whom have first-hand experience dealing with China as diplomats, gave me the benefits of their insights and helped me to make contact with several of those who participated in the events of the early 1970s. Thanks too to all those whom I list elsewhere who generously agreed to give up their time and allow me to interview them.
A number of friends have given me much valuable advice and help, and I would like to single out in particular Bernie Frolic, Blair Seaborn and Peter Snow. I have benefited greatly from my conversations over the years with Conrad Black, Bob Bothwell, Dominic Patten, and Allan Gotlieb about international relations and American politics, and with Tom Rawksi, Evelyn Sakakida Rawski and Alfred Chan about Chinese history and politics. I am also grateful to James Mann and Rosemary Foot for taking time to give me their insights and advice. Jennifer Polk kindly located the Star Trek quotation for me. If I were to list all those who fed me meals and gave me drinks and who put up with me when I was absent-minded, these acknowledgements would be very long indeed, but I hope they know how grateful I am.
This is the first book where I have worked closely with an agent, or rather agents; Caroline Dawnay, Emma Parry and Michael Levine not only give their profession a good name but they are full of wise advice and, when it is needed, encouragement. I have been equally lucky with my publishers and editors: Grant McIntyre, Peter James, Caro Westmore, Roland Philipps and Lucy Dixon at John Murrays; David Davidar, Diane Turbide, Elizabeth McKay and Eliza Marciniak at Penguin Group (Canada); and Gina Centrello, Kate Medina, Robin Rolewicz and Benjamin Dreyer at Random House, and all the efficient and nice people who work with them. Finally, as I always must, I thank my family: my mother who read everything with a kindly but critical eye, my brothers and sister to whom this book is dedicated, and my many nephews and nieces.
Note on Transliteration
Most Chinese names are now transliterated into English using the pinyin system. Hence Peking has become Beijing. I have kept the older system only for names which are very well known already: Mao Tse-tung (pinyin Mao Zedong); Chou En-lai (Zhou Enlai); Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi); Sun Yat-sen (Sun Yixian).
Nixon in China
Introduction
ON A COLD FEBRUARY MORNING more than three decades ago, Richard Nixon entered Mao Tse-tung’s study in Beijing. The conversation that followed was slow and fitful because it went through interpreters. It was as one might expect of two people who were strangers but who had heard a lot about each other. They said how pleased they were to meet and exchanged polite compliments. They talked about mutual acquaintances: Chiang Kai-shek, the President of that other China in Taiwan, for example, or the former President of Pakistan, Yahya Khan, who had helped arrange for their meeting to take place. And they talked briefly about their mutual foe, the Soviet Union. They made some jokes, mainly at the expense of Nixon’s companion Henry Kissinger, but they were generally serious.
Nixon tried to raise some matters which he felt were important. Mao waved him off and talked vaguely in what he called ‘philosophical’ terms. After about an hour, he looked at his watch and suggested that they had talked long enough. After a last exchange of pleasantries, Nixon took his leave. Neither man had said anything that surprised the other, and they had not come to any momentous conclusions. Yet their conversation was one of the most important occurrences in the recent past.
President Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao Tse-tung were well aware that they were making history that day in 1972. Both understood that their meeting and, indeed, Nixon’s whole visit to China were important above all else for their symbolism. It was, after all, the first-ever visit of an American president to China, an end to the long stand-off during which neither country had recognized the other. It was an earthquake in the Cold War landscape and meant that the Eastern Bloc no longer stood firm against the West.
One of the things the two men talked about was the past: particularly the events and the issues that had kept their two countries apart ever since the Communists took power in 1949. They also talked about politics, about Nixon’s problems with his own right wing and the threat to his administration from the Democrats, and also about the recent upheaval in China when Mao’s chosen successor, Lin Biao, it was claimed, had tried to stage a coup. They did not discuss the much greater turbulence of the Cultural Revolution, which had started in 1966 when Mao called on the young to attack the old, whether values, traditions or people. Nixon, like an importunate guest, tried to bring the conversation around to his favourite topics, such as the future balance of power in Asia and in the world as a whole. Mao, the affable host, refused to be drawn and insisted on talking in vague generalities. They parted, with more polite words, both apparently expecting that they would meet again in a few days. They did not in fact meet again that time, although they were to do so on Nixon’s subsequent visits to China.
International relations are about treaties, arms control, economic structures, courts, bilateral and multilateral deals, but they also involve gestures. Exchanges of ambassadors, public statements, state visits, these indicate the ways in which nations see themselves and how they see others. The meeting itself and Nixon’s week in China which followed were partly about confirming what had already been negotiated, but they were also intended to underscore that there was a new era in the long and often stormy relationship between China and the United States and, indeed, between Asia and the West. The visit shook American allies such as Japan and Taiwan; it infuriated China’s few friends in the world; and it worried the Soviet Union. We have been debating exactly what it really meant ever since.
The relationship between China and the West and between China and the United States more specifically has seen many stages. Long before the Thirteen Colonies had revolted against the British Empire, China had had indirect contact with the West in the shape of trade through Central Asia with the Roman Empire. In Europe’s middle ages, a few brave or foolhardy travellers, Marco Polo among them, had managed to travel the overland route and see China for themselves. Later still, Jesuit missionaries had come to convert the Chinese courtto Catholicism only to end up becoming quite Confucian in their outlook. They were followed by traders, impertinent bandits from the Chinese point of view, who clustered around the south coast of China to buy its silks, teas and porcelains – and eventually to sell the Chinese opium in return. American traders joined in enthusiastically. And missionaries, among them many Americans, arrived to save Chinese souls.
Until the start of the nineteenth century, the Chinese had dealt with Westerners, to their own satisfaction at least, as inferiors who were fortunate if they even had contact with the Middle Kingdom, the name the Chinese had for themselves, and enjoyed its high-quality products. That calm assumption of superiority was shaken and then shattered (although perhaps not irrevocably) when Western powers, strengthened by the products of the Industrial Revolution, forced their way into China and, in the end, helped to destroy the old order. By the end of the century, the ruling dynasty was on the point of collapse and China itself appeared to be on the edge of disappearing into one empire or another.
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br /> The United States had been part of that sorry story, but it had sometimes shown itself to be friendly. It had backed the continuation of a Chinese state. American missionaries who were actively founding schools and hospitals provided a growing constituency of support back home for a beleaguered China. There were other views of China in the United States, though, from the repository of the wisdom of the ages to the Yellow Peril, the source of powerful Oriental plots to overthrow American power and the American way of life. American attitudes to China continue to this day to oscillate between those two poles of fascination and sympathy on the one hand and fear and repugnance on the other.
Chinese attitudes have gone through similar evolutions, from suspicion and hostility to an admiration for American values such as democracy. The United States was China’s ally during the Second World War, fighting Japan which had occupied so much of China. As the war ended, though, the United States slid from backing China to backing one faction, the Guomindang, against another, the Chinese Communists. When the Communists won the civil war in 1949, they had every reason to fear and hate the Americans. That became open hostility during the Korean War when Chinese and American soldiers fought one another.
From that point on, neither side trusted the other and neither was seriously prepared to try to bridge the chasm between them. Chinese newspapers and Chinese officials railed against American imperialism. Chinese schoolchildren threw bean bags at an Uncle Sam, whose long fangs dripped innocent blood, and Chinese streets and squares carried giant slogans of hatred and resistance. The United States reciprocated in full. It backed the Guomindang regime in Taiwan and its ludicrous claims to speak for the whole of China. It kept China – the People’s Republic – out of the United Nations and other international bodies. At the Olympics, the Chinese athletes were from Taiwan. American presidents referred contemptuously to the Reds and insisted that the capital of China was Beiping and not Beijing because that is what their allies in Taiwan still called it.