XXIV

 

Nixon’s Trip to China

 

 

The Haig Mission

 

n the third anniversary of Nixon’s Inauguration Day we were in the thick of planning an event nobody imagined possible in 1969: the visit of a United States President to Peking. We had hopes for other progress at the beginning of 1972—in relations with the Soviet Union, for example, and in negotiating an end to the war in Vietnam—but the China summit was our immediate focus.

 

China was not important to us because it was physically powerful; Chou En-lai was surely right in his repeated protestations that his nation was not a superpower. In fact, had China been stronger it would not have pursued the improvement of relations with us with the same single-mindedness. Peking needed us to help break out of its isolation and as a counterweight to the potentially mortal threat along its Northern border. We needed China to enhance the flexibility of our diplomacy. Gone were the days when we enjoyed the luxury of choosing the moment to involve ourselves in world affairs. We were permanently involved—but not so physically or morally predominant as before. We had to take account of other power centers and strive for an equilibrium among them. The China initiative also restored perspective to our national policy. It reduced Indochina to its proper scale—a small peninsula on a major continent. Its drama eased for the American people the pain that would inevitably accompany our withdrawal from Southeast Asia. And it brought balance into the perceptions of our friends around the world.

 

Early in the New Year an American technical team descended on Peking. It was headed by Brigadier General Alexander Haig, my deputy, whose assignment was to try to maintain some limits on the flights of imagination of our advance men. Haldeman and Nixon had decided to apply in China their maxims of public relations. They never tired of explaining to the uninitiated that print journalism, that is to say, newspapers, had only a negligible public impact, but that television could change perceptions in a matter of minutes. Moreover, they felt they had been tormented more by the writing journalists than by the broadcasters; the trip to Peking would be a great opportunity to get even, by weighting the press contingent heavily toward television people. The decision turned out to be a great boon to network executives. Since there were only so many hours the networks could broadcast, the number of TV correspondents and technicians required, even for saturation coverage, was limited. And since the White House public relations experts had assigned a larger number of media places to the networks than they could use, a fair number of top echelon personnel who had not been near reporting for a decade received a free trip to China, while some newspapers were excluded altogether.

 

From the point of view of television China offered the added convenience of a country thirteen hours ahead of us: morning events could reach America at prime time in the evenings, and evening events could be broadcast live on morning television—provided only that our hosts cooperated. So it became the advance party’s task to bring home the wonders of American public relations to a Chinese officialdom that had just barely survived the Cultural Revolution. Fortunately for us, the Chinese had time-honored ways of withstanding barbarian invaders. Once they understood what our advance men had in mind, the veterans of the long March immediately grasped the benefit of being introduced on American television by an American President and thus becoming instantly acceptable. They agreed eagerly to the Haldeman conception. The fact that there was no means of televising directly from Peking to the United States proved only a temporary problem, solved by a ground station to transmit pictures by satellite. True to Mao’s dictum of self- reliance, the Chinese purchased the ground station, rejecting our networks’ offer to construct it at their own expense.

 

Haig’s advance trip in early January helped resolve most of the conflicts between the obsessions of our advance men and the inconvenient reality that China was a sovereign state. The Secret Service did not want the President to ride in Chinese cars, but the Chinese leaders thought it would strain the comprehension of the “masses” if they suddenly started moving about in huge American limousines. The compromise was that Nixon could use his own armor-plated limousine when moving about on his own, but that he would ride in the Premier’s car when traveling with Chou En-lai. A similar problem arose over the Chinese offer to fly the President in a Chinese airplane within China. After some internal struggle, the Secret Service reluctantly accepted that it simply would not do to tell a host country that its airplanes were unsafe. The realization that if the Secret Service persisted we might not get to travel within China at all helped a great deal. Altogether, the Chinese handled our advance party with extraordinary skill. Those requests with which our hosts agreed were carried out with magical efficiency. Other projects simply disappeared into an impermeable cloud of bland politeness which never provided an occasion for confrontation.

 

Haig had two private meetings with Chou En-lai to discuss political matters. He gave Chou our assessment of the recently concluded India- Pakistan crisis. Chou agreed with our handling of the conflict. He saw in Soviet policy on the subcontinent not a change provoked by the Sino- American rapprochement but the historic expression of Russia’s expansionist tendencies. On Vietnam, Chou reiterated his moral support for Hanoi and urged a rapid settlement of the war in order to reduce Soviet influence in Indochina. Haig also submitted to Chou a new American counterdraft for the sensitive Taiwan passage in the proposed final communiqué—the major issue left over from my October 1971 trip. Chou En-lai promised only to consider it before the President arrived. The negotiation of a few sentences on Taiwan was to take a great deal of time during the President’s visit.

 

I know of no Presidential trip that was as carefully planned nor of any President who ever prepared himself so conscientiously. The voluminous briefing books (produced under my supervision by Winston Lord and John Holdridge of my staff) contained essays on the trip’s primary objectives and on all subjects of the agenda previously established with the Chinese. They suggested what the Chinese position would be on each topic, and the talking points the President might follow. All of my conversations with Chou in July and October were excerpted and arranged by subject matter. As background material, there were lengthy analyses of the personalities of Mao and Chou, prepared by the CIA and by Richard H. Solomon, a China expert on my staff. There were copious excerpts from articles and books by Western students of China, including Edgar Snow, Ross Terrill, Dennis Bloodworth, John Fairbank, C. P. Fitzgerald, Stuart Schram, and André Malraux. Nixon read all the briefing books with exquisite care, as we could tell by his underlining of key passages throughout. As was his habit, he committed the talking points to memory and followed them meticulously in his meetings with Chou En-lai while seeking to cultivate the impression that he was speaking extemporaneously.

 

Our excerpts from Malraux’s Anti-Memoirs triggered Nixon into inviting that great Frenchman to the White House at the last minute. Nixon was not a little influenced by the gala occasion John and Jacqueline Kennedy had arranged for Malraux when France had lent us the Mona Lisa, and wanted to go one better than his envied predecessor. Whereas the Kennedy evening had been essentially artistic, and therefore “frilly” in Nixon’s eyes, his meeting with Malraux was to be all business. He and the French writer were to collaborate not in staging a social event but in preparing an historic mission.

 

Unfortunately, Malraux was grossly out of date about China. And his predictions of China’s immediate purposes were outrageously wrong. He believed, for example, that the invitation to Nixon reflected China’s need for economic aid; the President would be judged by his ability to come up with a new Marshall Plan for China. Given Mao’s philosophy of self-reliance, there was no chance of this happening; at best Malraux was several years premature.

 

And yet Malraux’s intuitions proved that an artist’s insight can often grasp the essence of problems better than experts or intelligence analysts can. Many of Malraux’s judgments proved remarkably incisive. The rapprochement between China and the United States was inevitable, he argued; it was inherent in the Sino-Soviet split. The war in Vietnam would not prove an obstacle, for China’s actions were reflections of its domestic necessities. China’s role in Vietnam was an “imposture”; China would never help Vietnam effectively; the historical animosity toward Vietnam was too deep. The Chinese did not believe in any ideology; they believed primarily in China.

 

In essence America’s role in Vietnam was now irrelevant, Malraux argued. What mattered was our Pacific policy. If Japan ceased believing in our nuclear protection, it would move toward the Soviet Union. If we could keep Japan tied to us, this might accelerate the need of the Soviet Union and even of China to attend to the satisfaction of their populations. Somewhere down the road, Malraux warned, maybe as early as within two years, our Chinese and Japanese policies would begin to conflict and require careful management. In the process the United States must never be perceived to hesitate; all of Asia expected firmness from the United States. Above all, said Malraux, China was looking for unity, for glory, and for dignity. Eventually it would look for economic salvation, too.

 

It was a stunning performance, not fully appreciated by an audience still imprisoned in the stereotypes of a decade. Words cascaded in torrents from Malraux as he fixed his hearers with his visionary gaze. He developed less a coherent analysis than a series of brilliant tableaux. Malraux had not visited China for nearly a decade; he had clearly not kept up with current developments; he had no inside information. All he had was sensitivity, brilliant perception, and shrewd understanding. Our task was to marry his intuition to the operational knowledge we were gradually acquiring.

 

February was spent in anticipation. We had a testy exchange with Peking at the end of January when, in the context of the President’s January 25 speech, we informed the Chinese in detail of our repeated rebuffs from Hanoi. Chou sent back an acerbic note accusing us of seeking to enmesh the People’s Republic in the Vietnam problem. It was partly true and partly instructive. We would have preferred Chinese pressure on Hanoi. But we would be quite content with Peking’s posture of noninvolvement.

 

On February 9 we published the President’s annual Foreign Policy Report, drafted, in each of Nixon’s first four years, by my staff and me. To our sorrow, no matter how thoughtful we sought to be, we always failed in our basic aim of getting the media to treat it as a statement of the basic philosophy of American foreign policy. Almost all that the press would cover each year was the section on Indochina; instead of a debate over America’s purposes in the world, we invariably generated a discussion of tactics in Vietnam. Still, the 1972 report presented a long essay on China that addressed questions which had been raised since the dramatic July 15 announcement: what was the status of our existing commitments to Taiwan; whether we were “shifting our priorities” from Tokyo to Peking; what were the implications for our policy toward the Soviet Union. The President’s report affirmed all existing alliance commitments; we would not give up a close relationship of twenty years’ standing with Japan for a new opening to China. Less than two weeks before our arrival in Peking, the report affirmed our “friendship, our diplomatic ties, and our defense commitment” to Taiwan; it stressed that “a peaceful resolution of this problem by the parties would do much to reduce tension in the far East.”

 

As for the Soviet Union, we made the conventional disclaimer: Our policy was not “aimed against Moscow.” But the fact was that it had been the Soviet Union whose menace had brought China and us together; our cooperation reflected a geopolitical reality produced by concern at the growth of Soviet military power. We could avoid provocative actions; we would not be able to eliminate the plain impact of the new relationship. If skillfully handled, it could provide an incentive for Soviet restraint and cooperation; if clumsily administered, it might tempt the very crisis it sought to avoid.

 

On February 11 the President made another gesture to China. He approved a new set of recommendations of the NSC Under Secretaries Committee for easing trade relations. This was announced on February 14. Henceforth, all commodities available for sale to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe would also be available to the People’s Republic. It was the last unilateral economic gesture toward Peking.

 

On February 17 the President stood by his helicopter on the White House lawn after a brief farewell meeting with Congressional leaders. For once, Nixon avoided the downbeat. He spoke simply of the many messages that had wished him well. He hoped that the future would record of his trip what was written on the plaque the Apollo 11 astronauts had left on the moon: “we came in peace for all mankind.”

 

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Arrival: The Handshake

 

ixon’s first stop was in Hawaii, where he stayed at an Army base in order to avoid criticism of ostentatious living, and regretted it as soon as he saw his spartan surroundings. Putting up with a commandant’s quarters in the Azores and now in Hawaii seemed a great deal of patriotic sacrifice. On the journey I benefited from Haldeman’s instructions on how to make sure Nixon would get the most flattering television shots. Ziegler was in a state of advanced agitation because he had been told that he could give no briefings on matters of substance in Peking, and he was already dreading the prospect of facing his journalistic tormentors, who would be driven by the goad of daily deadlines. Throughout the journey, Nixon oscillated between anxiety that his otherwise competent staff was oblivious to the finer points of public relations and serious, indeed dedicated, preparation for his sojourn in China. Having read every briefing book, he plied me with questions on the long hours of the plane ride.

 

At 9:00 a.m. On Monday, February 21, we arrived in Shanghai for a brief stop to take on Chinese navigators. The only difference from my previous trips was a lonely American flag now fluttering on one of the poles in front of a modern terminal; on repeated visits to this airport I never saw a sign of any other passenger or an arriving or departing plane. Nixon was greeted by Ch’iao Kuan-hua, technically Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs but in fact the key figure in the foreign Ministry. He was reputed to be one of Chou’s closest associates, a plausible hypothesis since this impressive man was a lesser copy of Chou’s charm, erudition, and intelligence. Present also were two familiar faces from my previous visits: Chang Wen-chin (head of the American Division) and Wang Hai-jung (Deputy Chief of Protocol and allegedly related to Mao), who had accompanied me from Pakistan in July 1971. True to the Chinese tradition that barbarian guests must be assumed to be starving, we were served an elaborate breakfast in record time—discomfiting the White House staff, who knew that it would generate new Nixon pressures for speeding up service on Pennsylvania Avenue. We arrived in Peking at 11:30 a.m., which conveniently was 10:30 p.m. Sunday night Eastern standard time—a prime television period.

 

This historic moment of arrival did not go unplanned. Nixon and Haldeman had decided that the President should be alone when the television cameras filmed his first encounter with Chou En-lai. Nixon had read my account of the July visit and Chou’s sensitivity that Dulles had snubbed him by refusing to shake his hand in 1954. The President was determined to have no other American distract the viewer’s attention while he rectified this slight. Rogers and I were to stay on the plane until the handshake had been accomplished. We had been instructed on this point at least a dozen times before our arrival in Peking; there was no way we could have missed the message. But Haldeman left nothing to chance. When the time came, a burly aide blocked the aisle of Air Force One. Our puzzled Chinese hosts must have wondered what had happened to the rest of the official party that usually files down the steps right behind the President. We all appeared magically—moments after the historic Nixon-Chou handshake had been consummated in splendid solitude.

 

We stood on a windswept tarmac, greeted by an honor guard, the frail and elegant figure of Chou En-lai, and a collection of Chinese notables exhibiting in their identical Mao jackets no discernible hierarchy, though of course they were lined up in precise order of political standing. The reception was understated in the extreme. Except for the 350- man honor guard—perhaps in its rigid discipline the most impressive of any I saw on Presidential trips—it was stark to the point of austerity. This very severity reflected the truth that only the most dire necessity could bring together countries whose other relations warranted none of the joyful ceremony usually associated with state visits.

 

We had been given no indication whether any kind of public welcome was being planned. As our motorcade sped into the center of town there was still some errant hope crackling over Haldeman’s radio to Ziegler that perhaps the real welcoming ceremony involving photogenic Chinese multitudes might be awaiting us at Tien An Men square. The hope was vain. The ever-present Chinese crowds were held back in the side streets as our motorcade swept through the square, vast in its emptiness; past the red walls of the Forbidden City on one side, the massive, squat Great Hall of the People on the other; by huge portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin (surely one of the last of Stalin to be on display anywhere in the world); and on to the state guest houses located around the old Imperial fishing lake.

 

We were housed in two of the residences, the President and most of his staff (including me) in the larger one; the Secretary of State and his entourage in the small residence (a few hundred yards away) that I had used on my previous trips. Each had its own dining facilities, thus keeping spontaneous contact between the two American bureaucracies to a minimum. The Chinese had well understood the strange checks and balances within the Executive Branch and had re-created the physical gulf between the White House and Foggy Bottom in the heart of Peking.

 

On arrival at the Presidential guest house, the entire party was seated in easy chairs arranged in a circle in the very large living room, with a large open area in the center. Chou En-lai’s wife was there to greet us, as were Marshal Yeh Chien-ying, Acting Foreign Minister Chi P’eng-fei, Deputy Foreign Minister Ch’iao Kuan-hua, and other officials. Tea was brought. Chou led a friendly, bantering conversation in which, as always, he managed to pay attention to every member of the American party.

 

In this manner Nixon was exposed for the first time to the Chinese style of diplomacy. The Soviets tend to be blunt, the Chinese insinuating. The Soviets insist on their prerogatives as a great power. The Chinese establish a claim on the basis of universal principles and a demonstration of self-confidence that attempts to make the issue of power seem irrelevant. The Soviets offer their goodwill as a prize for success in negotiations. The Chinese use friendship as a halter in advance of negotiation; by admitting the interlocutor to at least the appearance of personal intimacy, a subtle restraint is placed on the claims he can put forward. The Soviets, inhabiting a country frequently invaded and more recently expanding its influence largely by force of arms, are too unsure of their moral claims to admit the possibility of error. They move from infallible dogma to unchangeable positions (however often they may modify them). The Chinese, having been culturally preeminent in their part of the world for millennia, can even use self-criticism as a tool. The visitor is asked for advice—a gesture of humility eliciting sympathy and support. This pattern also serves to bring out the visitor’s values and aims; he is thereby committed, for the Chinese later can (and often do) refer to his own recommendations. The Soviets, with all their stormy and occasionally duplicitous behavior, leave an impression of extraordinary psychological insecurity. The Chinese stress, because they believe in it, the uniqueness of Chinese values. Hence they convey an aura of imperviousness to pressure; indeed, they preempt pressure by implying that issues of principle are beyond discussion.

 

In creating this relationship Chinese diplomats, at least in their encounters with us, proved meticulously reliable. They never stooped to petty maneuvers; they did not haggle; they reached their bottom line quickly, explained it reasonably, and defended it tenaciously. They stuck to the meaning as well as the spirit of their undertakings. As Chou was fond of saying: “Our word counts.” Every visit to China was like a carefully rehearsed play in which nothing was accidental and yet everything appeared spontaneous. The Chinese remembered every conversation, from those with the lowliest officials to those with the most senior statesmen. Each remark by a Chinese was part of a jigsaw puzzle, even if at first our more literal intelligence did not pick up the design. (Later on Winston Lord and I actually got quite good at it.) On my ten visits to China, it was as if we were engaged in one endless conversation with an organism that recalled everything, seemingly motivated by a single intelligence. This gave the encounters both an exhilarating and occasionally a slightly ominous quality. It engendered a combination of awe and sense of impotence at so much discipline and dedication—not unusual in the encounter of foreigners with Chinese culture.

 

And so it was on Nixon’s visit. By the time we had taken tea, all present felt convinced—just as I had seven months earlier during my secret visit—that they had been admitted into a very exclusive club, though there had yet to take place a single substantive conversation.

 

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Mao Tse-tung

 

hat conversation was not long delayed. We had just finished an opulent lunch when at 2:30 I was told that Chou En-lai needed to see me urgently in the reception room. Without the usual banter he said: “Chairman Mao would like to see the President.” I asked whether I could bring Winston lord. Chou agreed and was uncharacteristically persistent: “Since the Chairman is inviting him he wants to see him fairly soon.” I decided to play it somewhat cool by asking Chou whether he would read his toast at the evening’s banquet or speak extemporaneously; he indicated that he would read it. I inquired whether ours should be muted or tough, to respond to his mood. Slightly impatiently, Chou suggested that he would send me his text in advance. Finally I said that I would fetch Nixon.

 

So the President and I set off in Chinese cars to the Imperial City for the first encounter with one of the colossal figures of Modern history. Lord came along as note-taker. His presence was not revealed, lest salt be rubbed in the wounds of the Department of state, which went unrepresented at any of the talks with Mao. Nixon had told me five days before that he wanted Rogers and Assistant Secretary of State Marshall Green to be occupied elsewhere so he could discuss sensitive matters with Mao and Chou. Nor was Rogers invited to the meeting by the Chinese, perhaps because of comments that state had made about Taiwan’s “unsettled “ juridical status during the previous year. Yet I could have insisted that Rogers come, and had I done so neither Nixon nor the Chinese would have refused; it is one of the prerogatives, indeed obligations, of the security adviser to appeal Presidential decisions he considers unwise. I did not. The neglect was technically unassailable but fundamentally unworthy. The Secretary of State should not have been excluded from this historic encounter.

 

Mao Tse-tung, the ruler whose life had been dedicated to overturning the values, the structure, and the appearance of traditional China, lived in fact in the Imperial City, as withdrawn and mysterious even as the emperors he disdained. Nobody ever had a scheduled appointment; one was admitted to a presence, not invited to a governmental authority. I saw Mao five times. On each occasion I was summoned suddenly, just as Nixon was. On one of my visits Mao expressed an interest in meeting my wife, Nancy. The fact that she was shopping presented no obstacle to our hosts. She was hustled out of a shop by a protocol officer who seemed to know exactly where she was and brought to Mao’s presence while her accompanying State Department security officer, now bereft of his charge, was left to vent his dismay about a kidnapping in central Peking to a storekeeper who spoke no English.

 

We approached Mao’s residence through a red gate where two soldiers of the People’s liberation Army impassively observed the traffic on the broad East-West axis road that has been carved from the former city wall. After passing the vermilion wall we traversed a thoroughfare, at first lined on each side with undistinguished-looking facades; one could not tell what kind of houses stood in the courtyards behind the nondescript exteriors. A mile farther on, the dwellings ended and the road followed a lake on one side and woods on the other. Mao’s house stood alone; it was simple and unimposing; it could have belonged to a minor functionary. No special security measures were apparent. The car drove right up to the front door, which was sheltered by a portico. We entered through a small sitting room that opened into a wide hallway; on at least two of my visits it contained a Ping-Pong table.

 

Mao’s study, a medium-sized room, was across the hallway. Manuscripts lined bookshelves along every wall; books covered the table and the floor; it looked more the retreat of a scholar than the audience room of the all-powerful leader of the world’s most populous nation. On my first few visits a simple wood-frame bed stood in one corner; later it disappeared. Our first sight was of a semicircle of easy chairs, all with brownish slipcovers as if a thrifty middle-class family wanted to protect upholstery too expensive to replace. Between each pair of chairs stood a V-shaped coffee table, covered with a white napkin, fitting into the angle made by adjoining arm rests. The tables next to Mao, being generally piled with books, had just enough room for the ever-present cup of jasmine tea. Two standing lamps with unusually large circular shades stood behind the chairs; in front of Mao, to his right, was a spittoon. When one entered the room, Mao rose from one of the easy chairs; on the last couple of visits he required two assistants’ help, but he never failed so to greet his visitors.

 

One usually cannot tell when meeting a famous and powerful leader to what extent one is impressed by his personality or awed by his status and repute. In Mao’s case there could be no doubt. Except for the suddenness of the summons there was no ceremony. The interior appointments were as modest as the exterior. Mao just stood there, surrounded by books, tall and powerfully built for a Chinese. He fixed the visitor with a smile both penetrating and slightly mocking, warning by his bearing that there was no point in seeking to deceive this specialist in the foibles and duplicity of man. I have met no one, with the possible exception of Charles de Gaulle, who so distilled raw, concentrated willpower. He was planted there with a female attendant close by to help steady him (and on my last visits to hold him up); he dominated the room—not by the pomp that in most states confers a degree of majesty on the leaders, but by exuding in almost tangible form the overwhelming drive to prevail.

 

Mao’s very presence testified to an act of will. His was the extraordinary saga of a peasant’s son from Southern China who conceived the goal of taking over the Kingdom of Heaven, attracted followers, led them on the Long March of six thousand miles, which less than a third survived, and from a totally unfamiliar territory fought first the Japanese and then the nationalist government, until finally he was ensconced in the Imperial City, bearing witness that the mystery and majesty of the eternal China endured even amidst a revolution that professed to destroy all established forms. There were no trappings that could account for the sense of power Mao conveyed. My children speak of the “vibes” of popular recording artists to which, I must confess, I am totally immune. But Mao emanated vibrations of strength and power and will. In his presence even Chou seemed a secondary figure, though some of this effect was undoubtedly by design. Chou was too intelligent not to understand that the number Two position in China was precarious to the point of being suicidal. None of his predecessors had survived. [Neither, in fact, did he. I am convinced—though I cannot prove it—that only illness and death saved him from an assault by what was later called the Gang of Four, tolerated if not backed by Mao. During the last year or so of his life he was rarely mentioned in the Chinese press or by other Chinese leaders to me.]

 

Mao’s impact was all the more impressive because it was so incongruous in relation to his physical condition. Before our first meeting he had already suffered a series of debilitating strokes. He could move only with difficulty and speak but with considerable effort. Words seemed to leave his bulk as if with great reluctance; they were ejected from his vocal cords in gusts, each of which seemed to require a new rallying of physical force until enough strength had been assembled to tear forth another round of pungent declarations. Later on, as Mao’s health deteriorated even further, the effort became so evident as to be painful to observe. In my last private meeting with him in October 1975, as well as during President Ford’s visit of December 1975, Mao could barely speak; he croaked general sounds that Nancy T’ang, Wang Hai-jung, and another aide wrote down after consulting with each other and then showed him to make sure they had understood before translating. And yet even then, in the shadow of death, Mao’s thoughts were lucid and sardonic.

 

Mao, in contrast to all other political leaders I have known, almost never engaged in soliloquies. Not for him were the prepared points most statesman use, either seemingly extemporaneously or learned from notes. His meaning emerged from a Socratic dialogue that he guided effortlessly and with deceptive casualness. He embedded his main observations in easy banter and seeming jokes, maneuvering his interlocutor for opportunities to inject comments that were sometimes philosophical and sometimes sarcastic. The cumulative effect was that his key points were enveloped in so many tangential phrases that they communicated a meaning while evading a commitment. Mao’s elliptical phrases were passing shadows on a wall; they reflected a reality but they did not encompass it. They indicated a direction without defining the route of march. Mao would deliver dicta. They would catch the listener by surprise, creating an atmosphere at once confused and slightly menacing. It was as if one were dealing with a figure from another world who occasionally lifted a corner of the shroud that veils the future, permitting a glimpse but never the entire vision that he alone has seen.

 

Yet Mao could be brutal in cutting to the heart of a problem. On one of my later trips I commented to Teng Hsiao-p’ing that the relations of our two countries were on a sound basis because neither asked anything of the other. The next day Mao referred to my comment and at one and the same time showed his attention to detail. He firmly rebutted my banality: “If neither side had anything to ask from the other, why would you be coming to Peking? If neither side had anything to ask, then why… would we want to receive you and the President?” At another point he indicated his displeasure with what he took to be American ineffectuality in resisting Soviet expansionism; he compared us to swallows in the face of a storm: “This world is not tranquil,” said the gusts painfully emitted from the shattered hulk, “and a storm—the wind and rain—are coming. And at the approach of the wind and rain the swallows are busy… It is possible to postpone the arrival of the wind and rain, but it is difficulty to obstruct the coming.”

 

This was the colossus into whose presence we were now being ushered. He greeted Nixon with his characteristic sidewise glance. “Our common old friend, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, doesn’t approve of this,” he joked, taking Nixon’s hand in both his own and welcoming him in front of the photographers with great cordiality—in itself an event of considerable symbolic significance, at least for the Chinese who were present or who would see the photograph in the People’s Daily. Mao remarked about a statement Nixon had made on the plane ride to Ch’iao Kuan-hua, that he considered Mao a man with whom philosophical discourse was possible. (This was yet another example of the extraordinarily rapid Chinese internal communication, as well as of Mao’s careful briefing.) Mao joked that philosophy was a “difficult problem”; he had nothing instructive to say on the subject; maybe Dr. Kissinger should take over the conversation. But he repeated the formula several times to avoid specifics on the international problems Nixon was raising. When Nixon put forward a list of countries requiring common attention, Mao’s response was courteous but firm: “Those questions are not questions to be discussed in my place. They should be discussed with the Premier. I discuss the philosophical questions.”

 

Nixon’s memoirs give a graphic and accurate account of the meeting.[187] There were the jokes about my girlfriends and how I used them to set up a cover for my secret journeys. There was a mocking exchange about the epithets the leaders of Taipei and Peking were hurling at each other. There was an extraordinary indication of Mao’s preference for the greater calculability of conservative leaders over the sentimental oscillations of liberals: “I voted for you during your election,” he told the startled Nixon. “People say you are rightists, that the Republican Party is to the right, that Prime Minister Heath is also to the right… I am comparatively happy when these people on the right come into power.”

 

Mao used the context of a generally teasing conversation about Nixon’s political prospects to mention his own political opposition. There was a “reactionary group which is opposed to our contact with you,” he said. “The result was that they got on an airplane and fled abroad.” The plane crashed in Outer Mongolia, Mao and Chou explained, in case we had missed the reference to Lin Piao. Nixon made an eloquent statement (reproduced in his memoirs) of his long journey from anti-Communism to Peking, based on the proposition that the foreign policy interests of the two countries were compatible and neither threatened the other. Mao used the occasion to give us an important assurance with regard to our allies as if the thought had occurred to him only while Nixon was speaking: “neither do we threaten Japan or South Korea.” Later on, as I comprehended better the many-layered design of Mao’s conversation, I understood that it was like the courtyards in the Forbidden City, each leading to a deeper recess distinguished from the others only by slight changes of proportion, with ultimate meaning residing in a totality that only long reflection could grasp. In the pleasantries recorded by Nixon there were hints and themes that, like the overture to a Wagner opera, needed elaboration before their meaning became evident.

 

Mao was elliptical, for instance, in conveying his decision to expand trade and exchanges with us. He couched this in the form of an explanation of China’s slowness in responding to American initiatives over two years. China had been “bureaucratic” in its approach, he said, in insisting all along that the major issues had to be settled before smaller issues like trade and people-to-people exchanges could be addressed. “Later on I saw you were right, and we played table tennis.” This was more than a recitation of history and a disarming apology; it meant that there would be progress with respect to trade and exchanges at the summit, as I had urged on Chou during my trip in October. Mao, in short, had willed the visit to be a success. After our presence received Mao’s imprimatur, all Chinese officials seemed to have little difficulty discerning the instructions of the Chairman. Phrases originally obscure to me were quoted as indicating a direction. During the week that followed, all the Chinese—and especially Chou—kept coming back time and again to Mao’s themes, which grew out of a conversation lasting only sixty-five minutes, half of it consumed in translation.

 

Amidst the teasing, the jokes, the light repartee, one had to pay attention, for Mao was putting forward major points in a manner deliberately offhand so that failure of the Nixon visit would not involve a loss of face. He delicately placed the issue of Taiwan on a subsidiary level, choosing to treat it as a relatively minor internal Chinese dispute; he did not even mention our military presence there. The only specific political reference to it was in the banter about the names the two groups were calling each other. And even this was a way of telling us that ultimately the Chinese would find their own solutions. Referring to their alliance in the Twenties, Mao reminded Nixon that “actually, the history of our friendship with him [Chiang Kai-shek] is much longer than the history of your friendship with him.” Neither then, nor in any subsequent meeting, did Mao indicate any impatience over Taiwan, set any time limits, make any threats, or treat it as the touchstone of our relationship.”We can do without them for the time being, and let it come after 100 years.” “Why such great haste?” “This issue [Taiwan] is not an important one. The issue of the international situation is an important one.” “The small issue is Taiwan, the big issue is the world.” These were Mao’s thoughts on Taiwan as expressed to us on many visits. (These were also the views of Chou En-lai and Teng Hsiao-p’ing.) But Mao, like Chou and Teng, spent very little time in our talks on this issue.

 

What concerned Mao then, and even more fully when I saw him later alone at greater length, was the international context—that is, the Soviet Union. To a long disquisition by Nixon on the question of which of the nuclear superpowers, the United States or the Soviet Union, presented a greater threat, Mao replied: “At the present time, the question of aggression from the United States or aggression from China is relatively small… You want to withdraw some of your troops back on your soil; ours do not go abroad.” In other words, by a process of elimination, the Soviet Union was clearly Mao’s principal security concern. Equally important was the elliptical assurance, later repeated by Chou, which removed the nightmare of two administrations that China might intervene in Indochina militarily. In foreclosing Chinese military intervention abroad and in the comments on Japan and South Korea, Mao was telling us that Peking would not challenge vital American interests. And since Westerners were notoriously slow-witted, Mao reverted to a recurrent theme of my meetings with Chou: “I think that, generally speaking, people like me sound a lot of big cannons. That is, things like ‘the whole world should unite and defeat imperialism, revisionism, and all reactionaries, and establish socialism.’ “ Mao, seconded by Chou, laughed uproariously at the proposition that anyone might take seriously a decades-old slogan scrawled on every public poster in China. The leaders of China were beyond ideology in their dealings with us. Their peril had established the absolute primacy of geopolitics. They were in effect freeing one front by a tacit nonaggression treaty with us.

 

Not all was strategy, however, in the encounter with Mao. Even in our brief meeting he could not escape the nightmare that shadowed his accomplishments and tormented his last years: that it might all prove ephemeral, that the exertions, the suffering, the Long March, the brutal leadership struggles would be but a brief incident in the triumphant, passive persistence of a millennial culture which had tamed all previous upheavals, leaving little more in their wake than the ripples of a stone falling into a pond. “The Chairman’s writings moved a nation and have changed the world,” said Nixon. “I have not been able to change it,” replied Mao, not without pathos. “I have only been able to change a few places in the vicinity of Peking.”

 

It was a modest claim after a lifetime of titanic struggle to uproot the very essence of his society. In its matter-of-fact resignation it underlined the revolutionary dilemma. The qualities needed to destroy are usually not those needed to sustain: The greater the upheaval, the more it may lead to a new apparatus even more pervasive and usually much more efficient than the one replaced. Revolutions conducted in the name of liberty more often than not refine new tools of authority. This is no accident. Academicians may define human freedom by concepts of human rights; historians understand that freedom resides not only in legal structures but in the general acceptance of institutions and the ease of human relationships. A society not scourged by irreconcilable schisms can practice tolerance and respect human dignity even in the absence of legally defined rights. Tolerance is inherent in its structure. Britain has never had a written constitution; civil rights are guaranteed by tradition. But a nation riven by factions, in which the minority has no hope of ever becoming a majority, or in which some group knows it is perpetually outcast, will seem oppressive to its members, whatever the legal pretensions.

 

The essence of modern totalitarianism is the insistence on a single standard of virtue and the corresponding destruction of all traditional restraints. The effort to make uniform the new morality has given rise to passions unknown since the periods of religious conflict and it has caused governments to arrogate powers to themselves unprecedented in history. (The American Revolution was not a revolution in this sense. It did not seek to uproot existing institutions but to return them to their original purpose.) To be a true revolutionary one requires a monstrous self-confidence. Who else would presume to impose on his followers the inevitable deprivations of revolutionary struggle, except one monomaniacally dedicated to the victory of his convictions and free of doubt about whether they justified the inevitable suffering? It is the pursuit of this charismatic truth—sometimes transcendental, as often diabolical—that has produced the gross misery as well as the profound upheavals that mark modern history. For “truth” knows no restraint and “virtue” can accept no limits; they are their own justification. Opponents are either ignorant or wicked, and must be either reeducated or eliminated. The more violent the uprooting, the more the need to impose new order by discipline. When spontaneity disappears, regimentation must replace it.

 

So it was with the China that Mao Tse-tung had wrought. No doubt many of the institutions he overthrew were corrupt. Unquestionably, there was something grandiose about Mao’s commitment to egalitarianism in a population of 800 million and to the eradication of institutions grown up in the longest uninterrupted period of self-government on the globe. But the suffering inseparable from an enterprise so far beyond the human scale was vast. And the primeval resistance of a society grown great by the smothering of shocks evoked ever-greater spasms from that colossal figure, who challenged the gods in the scope of his aspirations.

 

To Mao, Communism was the truth. But as he achieved the dreams of his youth he—alone among all the fathers of twentieth-century Communism—espied a deeper truth. He discovered that the evolution of Communism could wind up mocking its pretensions, and that the essence of China might transmute his upheavals into a mere episode in its seemingly eternal continuity. Millions had died for a classless society, but in the hour of its realization it dawned on Mao that the enthusiasm of revolutionary fervor and the stifling controls necessary to transform a society would both in time run up against the traditions of his people whom he both loved and hated. The country that had invented the civil service would turn the Communist bureaucracy into a new mandarin class more confirmed in its prerogatives than ever by the maxims of a true dogma. The nation whose institutions had been shaped by Confucius into instruments for instilling universal ethics would before long absorb and transform the materialist Western philosophy imposed on it by its latest dynasty.

 

The aging Chairman railed against a fate that so cruelly mocked the suffering and meaning of a lifetime of struggle. Unable to bear the thought that the new was turning into a confirmation of what he had sought to destroy, he launched himself into ever more frenzied campaigns to save his people from themselves while he still had the strength. Many revolutions have been made to seize power and to destroy existing structures. Never has their maker undertaken a task so tremendous and possessed as to continue the revolution by deliberate systematic upheavals directed against the very system he has created. No institution was immune. Each decade an assault was launched against the huge, bloated bureaucracies—the government, the Party, the economy, the military. For several years all universities were closed. At one point China had only a single ambassador abroad. Mao destroyed or sought to destroy every number Two man—Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao, Teng Hsiao-p’ing, and possibly even Chou En-lai. In the nature of their position these men were forced to deal with the practical, hence the continuing, issues of Chinese life—the very problems that evoked Mao’s premonition of ephemerality and his all-too-Chinese fear that they would erode the moral distinctiveness of the Middle Kingdom.

 

And so each decade the fading Chairman would smash what he had created, forgoing modernization, shaking up the bureaucracy, purging its leadership, resisting progress in order to maintain undefiled values that could be implemented, if at all, by a simple peasant society, encapsulating his people in its superior virtue while sacrificing all the means to defend it. And in the process he acted like the emperors whom he replaced and in whose compound he now lived, becoming like them in his practices in the struggle to prevent the return to their values.

 

One of history’s monumental ironies is that probably no one better understood the built-in tensions of Communism than the titanic figure who made the Chinese Revolution. He had the courage to grapple with the implications of that insight. Pragmatic Communism leads to mandarinism, nationalism, and institutionalized privilege. His critique of Soviet Russia was so wounding to the Russians because it was essentially true. But truly revolutionary Communism leads to stagnation, insecurity, international irrelevance, and the continuing destruction of disciples by new votaries who prefer purity to permanence. Mao in his last decades oscillated between these two choices. Having understood the inherent dilemma of Communism, he would periodically permit a small dose of modernization, only to destroy those who had defiled his vision by carrying out his orders. And these series of planned upheavals still did not preoccupy him so much that he neglected the traditional Chinese statecraft of using one set of barbarians to balance another.

 

Until his death he was quintessentially Chinese in never doubting the cultural superiority of what he had wrought. He resisted modernization because it would destroy China’s uniqueness, and he fought institutionalization because it banked China’s ideological zeal. It has been said that revolutions destroy their makers. The opposite was true of Mao; he was the maker who destroyed one revolutionary wave after another. He fought the implications of his own revolution as fiercely as he did the institutions he had originally overthrown. But he had set a goal beyond human capacity. In his last months, bereft of speech, able to act only a few hours a day, he had passion strong enough for one last outburst against the pragmatists, again represented by Teng Hsiao-p’ing. And then that great, demonic, prescient, overwhelming personality disappeared like the great emperor Ch’in Shih Huang-ti with whom he often compared himself while dreading the oblivion which was his fate. And his words to Nixon, like so much of what he said and attempted, had the ring of prophecy: “I have only been able to change a few places in the vicinity of Peking.”

 

<<Contents>>

 

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Walks, Talks, and Toasts

 

fter our encounter with history we turned to the practical issue of how to distill from it a direction for policy. While I had outlined the American approach to world affairs in considerable detail to Chou En-lai on two previous visits, only the President could confer final authority and conviction. Much would depend on the Chinese leaders’ assessment of Nixon’s ability to execute, parallel with them, a global policy designed to maintain the balance of power which was the real purpose of their opening to us.

 

And there was need, too, for a formal expression of the new relationship between two countries that had had no communication for over two decades, no diplomatic ties, and no framework for dealing with each other. So the final communiqué was crucial. What was required was a document equally symbolic for Communist cadres and capitalist observers, capable of squelching criticism from the ideological left in China and the conservative right in America. It had to encompass Taiwan but remove it as a bone of contention. It had to suggest our real mutual security concerns without spelling them out in provocative fashion. What was required was easier to state than to achieve. We had made major progress during my October trip. Three paragraphs remained to be settled, one dealing with India-Pakistan, a second with trade and exchanges, and the third with Taiwan. They took four late- night sessions to complete.

 

Meanwhile, the Peking summit unfolded on other levels as well, all intricately interwoven by our subtle hosts and our not so subtle advance men. The Chinese wanted to use the majesty of their civilization and the elegance of their manners to leave an impression that nothing was more natural than an increasingly intimate relationship between the world’s most avowedly revolutionary Marxist state and the embodiment of capitalism. Our advance men had simpler objectives. They sought exposure in prime television time. The purposes intersected to produce a spectacular show, a string of Presidential visits to the architectural and artistic monuments of China’s past: the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Ming Tombs, the Summer Palace, and the Temple of Heaven, where the emperors had carried their self-absorption and presumption to the point of locating the precise geometric center of the universe within a series of concentric circles in what is now downtown Peking.

 

I participated in none of the sight-seeing. I had seen the landmarks on my two previous visits, having indeed been used by the meticulous Chinese as a guinea pig for their study of timings and required security precautions, as well as of how these strange Americans behaved in the presence of the wonders of Chinese history. I therefore used the time to negotiate the communiqué with Ch’iao Kuan-hua and to attend to the Washington business of the Presidential security adviser.

 

From all accounts Nixon’s sight-seeing proceeded according to scenario. No matter how many stops had been planned, one could set one’s watch by initial departure and final return time. Yet regardless of how many digressions the Americans made, they were never under pressure from their Chinese hosts to meet a schedule. They were free to wander and explore, or to fail to do so; the schedule always came out to the minute. When I had experienced this marvel of planning some months earlier, I had asked a Chinese protocol officer how they managed to combine so much precision and latitude without any of the frenzied huffing by which protocol departments of other countries, including our own, demonstrate their virtuosity. It was all very simple, said the Chinese diplomat. Visitors were given only the time of the departure and of return and the places to be visited. They were under no psychological pressure from the detailed minute-by-minute schedule with which protocol officers usually discipline their charges (and demonstrate the intricacy of their preparations). For their own planning the Chinese broke down the allotted time into segments of eight minutes (though why eight remains suitably enigmatic). If guests spent more time in one place than was allowed for, equivalent eight-minute segments were removed from later parts of the tour; if less, eight-minute segments could be added.

 

In other words, the Chinese had hit on a characteristically simple idea: Instead of the guests’ complying with the host’s schedule, the host would gear himself to the wishes of the visitor. Chinese protocol thus inspires a strange sense of repose; it conveys both respect and a flattery all the more effective for appearing totally matter-of-fact.

 

With this preparation, the various sight-seeing trips went off as magnificent spectacles. Hordes of famous television commentators and senior journalists converged on each set piece, eager to record the profound thoughts of the leading actors. “This is a great wall,” said Nixon to the assembled press at the Great wall, placing his seal of approval on one of mankind’s most impressive creations. The fact that the excursions were geared to television only reinforced that here, if ever, the medium was the message. In the mind of the American public, television established the reality of the People’s Republic and the grandeur of China as no series of diplomatic notes possibly could have. The advance men had, after all, made their own contribution to history in a way that I had not comprehended or appreciated beforehand.

 

The symbolic events were continued each evening—in banquets, an exhibition of gymnastics and table tennis in the sports Palace, and a performance of the stupefying revolutionary ballet entitled The Red Detachment of Women. After my ten trips to China, the banquets now seem very stylized. In February 1972 they were still marvelously novel and imbued with the deft little touches with which the Chinese demonstrate that they consider their visitor special. They had acquired a list of Nixon’s favorite tunes, and their splendid army band played a selection of them at each dinner. There were formal banquets on four of the seven nights we were in Peking: a welcoming banquet by Chou En-lai; a return one hosted by Nixon; and feasts in our honor by the municipalities of Hangchow and Shanghai. In addition, Chou En-lai gave a private dinner for the American delegation in Peking.

 

The banquets in the capital took place in the gigantic Great Hall of the People that commemorates the Communist takeover. Its combination of neoclassicism and Communist baroque, so explicit and sullen in contrast to the subtle and suggestive designs of China’s past, faces the vermilion walls of the forbidden City across Tien An Men square. In that vast expanse, which is still enormous even with the huge bulk of the building filling one corner, the Hall is stranded like a beached whale, inspiring awe by its scale, and obliterating conventional reflections about its design by the defiance of mortality that it expresses.

 

The banquet protocol throughout my visits was unvarying. One reached the banquet hall by a grand staircase that rose steeply through various levels to seemingly distant heights. No visitor with a heart condition could possibly make it to the top alive. (There were elevators, but on Presidential visits the party was so large that we had to use the stairs.) The Chinese leadership waited at the head of the staircase. Several wooden stands had been arranged in ascending rows so that unobtrusive officials could assemble us in precise protocol rank for the obligatory group picture. No matter how large the group, it was rapidly arranged and the whole picture-taking process completed in no more than three to five minutes. The honored guests were then escorted into the banquet hall to the strains of a march and shook hands with a long line of dignitaries. The hall can seat as many as three thousand guests. During Nixon’s visit the number was about nine hundred, but the large round tables were so arranged that no sense of empty spaces was created. The head tables were located at the foot of a stage on which were placed two sets of microphones, one for the leader proposing a toast, the other for the interpreter. I sat at a table with the Nixons and Chou En-lai, although too far away to participate in their conversation. The atmosphere was convivial. Not only did the courses of the meal seem to go on forever, but each Chinese at the table, in keeping with Chinese custom, concentrated on making sure every American plate was filled with heaps of food.

 

And then, of course, came the endless rounds of toasts. We drank mao-tai, that deadly brew which in my view is not used for airplane fuel only because it is too readily combustible. I received graphic proof of this when Nixon on his return to Washington sought to illustrate the liquid’s potency to his daughter Tricia. He poured a bottle of it into a bowl and set it afire. To his horror the fire would not go out; the bowl burst and sent flaming mao-tai across the table top. The frantic combined efforts of the first family managed to extinguish the fire just before a national tragedy occurred. Otherwise the Nixon Administration would have come to a self-inflicted premature end even earlier than it did.

 

Each Chinese around the table would drink only by toasting an American. This was done with a cheery “gam bei”—which means “bottoms up” and is taken literally. The glass must be emptied each time; the individual proposing the toast makes sure there is no cheating by showing his empty glass to shame his opposite number into following suit. Since the Chinese outnumbered us two to one and were more used to their national drink, exuberance mounted as such evenings progressed. Fortunately, the banquet toasts were prepared ahead of time, and were read. Only in Shanghai did euphoria carry one away when Nixon proposed what sounded like a defensive military alliance in his only extemporaneous toast of the trip. [“… this great city, over the past, has on many occasions been the victim of foreign aggression and foreign occupation. And we join the Chinese people, we the American people, in our dedication to this principle: That never again shall foreign domination, foreign occupation, be visited upon this city or any part of China or any independent country in this world. “Mr. Prime Minister, our two peoples tonight hold the future of the world in our hands.”] Luckily, by that hour the press was too far gone itself. Nor were the correspondents looking to top the big story of the Shanghai Communiqué. My own problem at these banquets was that I generally had to meet Ch’iao Kuan-hua after each one for several hours to work on the drafting. I told him on one occasion that given everybody’s happy mood we might as well negotiate it in Chinese.

 

But the banquets, televised live on the morning shows in America, performed a deadly serious purpose. They communicated rapidly and dramatically to the peoples of both countries that a new relationship was being forged. In his exceptionally warm welcoming toast at the first state dinner, Chou En-lai proclaimed that despite ideological differences, normal state-to-state relations could be established on the basis of the five principles of coexistence. He made no reference to Taiwan; he specifically abjured recourse to war to solve outstanding disputes. This only made explicit what we had learned privately. It was another, if implicit, assurance that we need no longer fear Chinese military intervention in Indochina. It was knowledge that stood us in good stead five weeks later when the Vietnamese offensive broke over us, especially when accompanied by similar (if less eloquent) assurances from Moscow.

 

Nixon replied in a more emotional vein. He had worked over the draft I had submitted to him, casting it into his personal idiom and adding quotations from Mao. He stressed that we shared common interests that transcended the ideological gulf (without, however, specifying what they were):

 

What legacy shall we leave our children? Are they destined to die for the hatreds which have plagued the old world, or are they destined to live because we had the vision to build a new world?

 

There is no reason for us to be enemies. Neither of us seeks the territory of the other; neither of us seeks domination over the other; neither of us seeks to stretch out our hands and rule the world.

 

Chairman Mao has written, “so many deeds cry out to be done, and always urgently. The world rolls on. Time passes. Ten thousand years are too long. Seize the day, seize the hour.”

 

This is the hour. This is the day for our two peoples to rise to the heights of greatness which can build a new and a better world.

 

After my many trips the banquets, the toasts, the music, have become commonplace, but I confess that when on this first occasion the Chinese Premier began circling the tables to toast each American member of the official party individually, to the strains of “America the Beautiful” played by musicians of an army with which two decades before we had been at war, I was deeply moved. In any event, when Richard Nixon could quote Mao Tse-tung to support American foreign policy on Washington’s birthday, a diplomatic revolution had clearly taken place.

 

The symbolism was meaningful only if it could be matched by substance. This was approached on three levels. There were meetings between the Secretary of State and the Chinese Foreign Minister and their staffs that were devoted to the obsessions of our East Asian Bureau: the promotion of more trade and exchanges of persons—in other words, the subject matter of the Warsaw talks these many years. These meetings also served the purpose of keeping the State Department delegation occupied while Nixon was in meetings with Mao and Chou. (Nixon was convinced-and so told Chou—that “our State Department leaks like a sieve.”) This group met in the guest house set aside for the Secretary of State. The major problem was to prevent the Chinese, whose internal communications were less constrained than ours, from revealing in the Foreign Ministers’ meetings matters that had already been essentially settled in other forums, such as the structure and content of the communiqué. I attended none of these sessions.

 

The second level of meetings was the daily sessions between President Nixon and Premier Chou En-lai in the afternoons, following the morning sight-seeing. Four of these took place, extending over some twelve hours, alternating between the Great Hall of the People and the guest house where Nixon was staying. Nixon and Chou reviewed the International situation and made explicit the parallelism of views and de facto cooperation between the two countries that had grown up since my secret trip to Peking. On our side the participants were Nixon, I, and Winston Lord and John Holdridge of my staff.

 

The third level was the drafting of the communiqué, which involved primarily Deputy Foreign Minister Ch’iao Kuan-hua and me, with occasional recourse to the principals. These drafting meetings took up a total of about twenty hours, with an additional two hours between me and Chou En-lai, who stopped by our meetings on two occasions to let me explain a point to him personally. We met in a separate guest house set aside by the Chinese for their deliberations.

 

But before these meetings could take place, Chou and I had to sort out the scenario to make sure who would participate in which meeting and who knew what. About twenty minutes after the meeting with Mao ended, Chou and I conferred for about an hour in the guest house that had been reserved for communiqué drafting. My major task was to convey to Chou which topics should be raised in what group. “The American folklore has it,” I told him, “that the Chinese are complicated and we are simple, but when I hear myself talk I think we are complicated and you are easier.” Chou handled the exotic Americans with aplomb. In contrast to the Soviets, with whom no secret negotiation was complete without some attempt to play our various channels off against each other, the Chinese never dropped a stitch. They scheduled the meetings and kept the information compartmentalized as if they had dealt with our strange practices all their lives. It turned out that Chou did not mind keeping his own Acting Foreign Minister Chi P’eng-fei otherwise occupied. “He has his limitations,” Chou explained dryly to Nixon.

 

Before Chou and I could discuss substance, another bizarre bit of Americana required attention. Because of modern communications the President, wherever he may be located, is always in charge of the government. But every President believes he needs some symbolic event to demonstrate this. For this trip it had been decided that the President would sign before the assembled press a bill providing for arbitration to settle a West Coast dock strike; in conjunction with that event he would issue a statement calling for action on labor legislation in Congress. The public relations geniuses undoubtedly calculated that these were ideal subjects to have emanate from the capital of a country calling itself a workers’ state. All would have been well had not one of the advance men conceived the idea that Nixon might present the pen with which the legislation was signed to Chou En-lai. For once, our usually imperturbable host was nonplussed. He had not heard of the custom of bestowing Presidential pens that had signed public documents. He did not like his role in it when I explained it to him. He tactfully pointed out that to accept the pen might look like interference in our internal affairs. Perhaps, he helpfully suggested, if we insisted on giving him a pen we could send another one after we returned to America. I finally told Chou that we would all be better off if the subject were dropped.

 

At last Chou and I got around to reviewing the communiqué. Three matters required further discussion. The two sides’ statements on India and Pakistan, drafted on my October trip, had been overtaken by the crisis in November and December; we foresaw no problems in revision. The slim section on trade and exchanges, in our view, required expansion; it was one criterion by which the American public would measure progress. The section on Taiwan, finally, was incomplete. On this, neither side’s current draft was acceptable to the other. Chou and I agreed that much negotiation lay ahead.

 

The first official meeting of the full delegation of each side occurred at a brief plenary session on Monday afternoon, February 21. Tacit cooperation was well advanced when each of the leaders could, seemingly spontaneously, propose a scheme thought up by the other. Chou put forward as his own idea the very work program I had outlined to him not half an hour earlier, thus taking the responsibility for setting up a separate group for the Foreign Ministers and sparing us much internal anguish. Not to be outdone, Nixon proclaimed his opposition to “weasel-worded” communiqués. In meetings of such importance, he declared, leaders showed their strength by being unafraid to avow their differences. Chou happily agreed that the communiqué should follow a format he had originally proposed in October. The bureaucratic books thus having been cleared, the meeting concluded on the high note of Nixon’s declaration that he grouped countries not by ideology but by the foreign policy they conducted.

 

The next meeting took place with more restricted attendance and got down to serious business. On Tuesday afternoon, Nixon skillfully and succinctly described to Chou En-lai the outlines of American policy. He repeated that his diplomacy was based on other nations’ foreign policies, not their domestic structures. His Kansas City remarks of July 1971, while extemporaneous, had reflected his well-considered conviction that a new world order was emerging, based on the five power centers of the United States, Soviet Union, China, Japan, and Western Europe. America had no territorial designs in Asia, and he was convinced that China had none on us. The basis of a cooperative relationship thus existed. Our friendship and alliance with Japan were in China’s interest, Nixon pointed out, for they guaranteed that we would be a major factor in the Western Pacific to balance the designs of others, and would keep Japan from pursuing the path of militaristic nationalism. That was why our presence in the Philippines and even South Korea contributed to China’s security, by maintaining a balance of power in areas close to China. Nixon summed up our efforts to negotiate a settlement in Vietnam. We would not impose a political solution on Vietnam, as Hanoi wanted. If we did, no country would ever trust us again—implying that our reliability was relevant also to Chinese security concerns. He warned that we would react violently if Hanoi launched another major offensive in 1972.

 

With respect to Taiwan, Nixon elaborated some fundamental principles that I had already foreshadowed to Chou: that we would not encourage a “two-Chinas” solution, or a “one-China, one-Taiwan” solution, or encourage other countries to replace our military position on the island. Nixon expressed his hope of completing the “normalization” process during his second term. He did not state our conditions for this, but he left no doubt that he would insist on a peaceful resolution. And he made clear that the withdrawal of our forces depended on the state of tensions in the area. Nixon repeatedly affirmed that he could make no “secret deals” on Taiwan; he made none.

 

Chou, as always, was impassive during Nixon’s presentations and incisive in his own. He left no doubt that he feared Soviet expansionism above all. South Asia was but the most recent example, though Indian imperialist designs were well developed even before the Soviet Union stoked the fire of conflict. The primary problem, as China saw it, was to maintain the world balance of power. He regarded the estrangement between the United States and the new China as ended. The task now was joint opposition to hegemonic aspirations.

 

Chou’s treatment of Vietnam was a masterpiece of indirection. He rebutted Nixon more in sorrow than in anger. He indicated “sympathy” for the North Vietnamese but did not allege a community of interest. He derived the obligation to support Hanoi not from ideological solidarity, much less from congruent national interests, but from an historical debt owed to Vietnam from China’s imperial past. China would express no view on the continuing negotiations. He reiterated that differences between China and the United States would be settled peacefully. We interpreted this to mean that China would not intervene militarily in Vietnam; that North Vietnam was not an extension of Chinese policy; and that Chou treated Vietnam largely in the context of long-term Soviet aspirations in southeast Asia. His principal argument for ending the war quickly was that it bogged down the United States and deflected our energies from more important parts of the globe. Chou criticized our negotiating position in only the most perfunctory manner. He urged our military withdrawal from Vietnam; he never really pushed for Hanoi’s—and our critics’—political program of coalition government and the overthrow of Thieu.

 

With respect to Taiwan, Chou repeatedly emphasized the Chinese intention to “liberate” Taiwan peacefully, though he continued to insist that the process was China’s internal affair. The overwhelming impression left by Chou, as by Mao, was that continuing differences over Taiwan were secondary to our primary mutual concern over the international equilibrium. The divergence of views on Taiwan would not be allowed to disturb the new relationship that had evolved so dramatically and that was grounded in geopolitical interests. The basic theme of the Nixon trip—and the Shanghai Communiqué—was to put off the issue of Taiwan for the future, to enable the two nations to close the gulf of twenty years and to pursue parallel policies where their interests coincided.

 

Such was the distilled essence of many conversations conducted, especially on the Chinese side, with extraordinary indirection and subtlety. There were no reciprocal commitments, not even an attempt to define coordinated action. A strange sort of partnership developed, all the more effectual for never being formalized. It had begun on my secret trip in July and continued on my interim visit in October. It culminated in and was legitimized by Nixon’s skillful and lucid presentations in China. And it was then elaborated in my subsequent six visits. Two great nations sought cooperation not through formal compacts but by harmonizing their respective understanding of international issues and their interests in relation to them. Cooperation thus became a psychological, not merely a legal, necessity.

 

This is why Chou spent almost all of his time with Nixon discussing neither the communiqué (which came up only briefly and tangentially) nor operational decisions. The focus of the discussion—during Nixon’s visit as in my own separate encounters with Mao or Chou or Teng Hsiao-p’ing or Chinese ambassadors—was on the requirements of the balance of power, the international order, and long-term trends of world politics. Both sides understood that if they agreed on these elements, a strategy of parallel action would follow naturally; if not, tactical decisions taken individually would prove ephemeral and fruitless.

 

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The Shanghai Communiqué

 

n fact, our perceptions grew coldly congruent. Yet the parallel strategies did require some tangible expression. The communiqué concluding the visit would be a symbol to the world and our two peoples. It would also guide the two bureaucracies (who would not have access to all the exchanges) in the new direction of policy. It would thus become a touchstone of the relationship between two countries whose diplomatic ties would remain unconventional as long as Washington continued officially to recognize Taipei as the seat of the government of all of China.

 

On many controversial topics most of the text, as I have said, had been settled during my visit in October, including the unprecedented format of stating conflicting points of view. These opposing presentations gave added emphasis and credibility to those matters on which we were able to endorse a common position, especially with respect to opposing “hegemony” (the new code word for Soviet expansionism). The communiqué was thus less subject to misinterpretation or inconsistent elaboration by the two sides than is the case with the normal document that tends to fudge disagreements as well as agreements; the former to convey an impression of harmony, the latter to avoid the charge of collusion. It was more reassuring to our respective allies and friends.

 

Taiwan, however, was a thorny problem. During my October visit we had agreed that each side, as on other issues, would state its own position. Peking had set out its claim to be the sole legal government of China and its insistence that Taiwan was a province of China. It had said that the future of Taiwan was an internal affair. For our own statement I had agreed not to challenge the view held by Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan strait: “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a province of China. The United States does not challenge that position.” Peking, for its part, had agreed not to attack—or even to mention—our defense treaty with Taiwan in the statement of its own position while calling for the evacuation of American forces. But when Nixon arrived in Peking, we still differed over the consequences to be drawn from the agreed statement on China’s unity. The Chinese wanted us to state that a peaceful solution was our “hope.” We insisted on affirming it as an American interest, indeed, on “reaffirming” it, implying that it was a continuing commitment. The Chinese wanted us to commit ourselves unconditionally to the total withdrawal of American forces from Taiwan. We were willing to go no further than to describe our withdrawal as an objective, and even then we insisted on linking it both to a peaceful solution of the Taiwan problem and to the easing of tensions in Asia in general.

 

In the twenty hours Ch’iao Kuan-hua and I needed to resolve these conflicting approaches, just as on my secret trip, each side pushed the other against the time limit to test whose resiliency was greater. Determination was masked by extreme affability. The best means of pressure available to each side was to pretend that there was no deadline. Conciliatory conduct would heighten the sense of urgency without producing personal strain. Yet while pressure is inescapable in any negotiation, the talks were also conducted with unusual delicacy. Each side took care not to make irrevocable demands or to bargain as if a move by one required a concession by the other. For different reasons Taiwan involved issues of principle for both countries. And to suggest that principles have a price can be offensive. This is why the two sides conducted themselves as if we had to solve a common problem not by a sharp bargain but by a joint understanding. We took pains to explain our domestic necessities to each other with great frankness, because we knew that the communiqué would not survive if negotiated through trickery or found unacceptable at home. We recognized that on some issues the only thing negotiators can achieve is to gain time with dignity. On Taiwan it was to leave the ultimate outcome to a future that in turn would be shaped by the relationship which would evolve from the rest of the communiqué and by the manner in which it was negotiated.

 

While Nixon attended to White House business, Ch’iao and I spent the first day of negotiation going through the existing draft line by line to confirm what was already agreed. I explained our requirements on Taiwan; Ch’iao indicated that he had no authority to change the existing Chinese proposal. I decided to let matters lie for a day and used the second day’s “negotiating session”—on February 23—to brief the Chinese on the agreements we planned to reach at the Moscow summit.

 

The Chinese were clearly not happy with our policy toward Moscow, but they would have to adjust to this reality of triangular diplomacy. We and they had a common interest in preventing the Soviet Union from upsetting the global balance of power by any means, including an attack on China. But we had no vested interest in permanent hostility with Moscow unless Moscow challenged the international equilibrium. As nuclear superpowers, we had indeed an obligation to reduce the threat of nuclear confrontation. Peking would no doubt have preferred a simpler pattern of overt hostility between Washington and Moscow. This would have eased its calculations and improved its bargaining position. Our necessities were more complicated. Peking’s domestic imperatives pushed it toward confrontation; our imperative was to demonstrate to our public and to our allies that we were not the cause of conflict, or else the Congress would dismantle our defenses and our allies would dissociate from us. Only from a conciliatory platform could we rally support for firm action in a crisis. We were prepared to confront Soviet expansion. But we were not willing to foreclose the option of a genuine easing of tensions with Moscow if that could in time be achieved. Thus we had to make sure that China understood our purposes and would not be surprised by our actions. We kept Peking assiduously informed of our moves. We sought to avoid any implication of condominium. What we could not do was to give Peking a veto over our relationship with Moscow any more than we would give a veto to the Soviets over our relations with China. It was a three-dimensional game, but any simplification had the makings of catastrophe. If we appeared irresolute or leaning toward Moscow, Peking would be driven to accommodation with the Soviet Union. If we adopted the Chinese attitude, however, we might not even help Peking; we might, in fact, tempt a Soviet preemptive attack on China and thus be faced with decisions of enormous danger.

 

The deadline Ch’iao and I faced was Nixon’s departure from Peking for Hangchow on the morning of February 26. There would be little opportunity to negotiate while traveling, and it would be difficult for the Chinese leaders to assemble their Politburo to ratify the outcome. On the third day of our negotiation, February 24, Nixon and his party were sight-seeing at the Great Wall. With only some thirty-six hours left the real negotiation between Ch’iao and me now began. In a two-and-a-half-hour session that morning Ch’iao put forward once again the formula that the United States “hoped” for a peaceful Taiwan solution. He asked us to assert—unrelated to any other conditions—that the United States “will progressively reduce and finally withdraw all the US troops and military installations from Taiwan.” I rejected the formulation, saying that it jeopardized the entire relationship because American public opinion would never stand for it. Ch’iao and I met briefly in the afternoon to permit me to offer a compromise, which was in fact a slightly modified version of our original proposal. We tied withdrawals to the “premise” of a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan question and reduction of tensions in the Far East (thereby creating a linkage to Vietnam). Ch’iao promised to study the proposal. After midnight, following another banquet, Ch’iao rejected it. With only about eighteen hours of negotiating time left, we were stuck. On Friday, February 25, Ch’iao and I met again for ninety minutes in the morning while Nixon toured the Forbidden City. Neither of us showed much sense of urgency. We tossed ideas around, “thinking out loud,” enabling both sides to pretend that they were not committed. I insisted on some form of conditionality for American withdrawals, especially the premise of a peaceful solution. That afternoon, Ch’iao and I met twice more, while Nixon was resting. At 2:35 p.m. Ch’iao came forward with a formulation which for the first time met our basic principle. China would no longer object if we affirmed an interest in the peaceful solution of the Taiwan issue so long as it also included a reference to total withdrawal of United States forces. I promised him a quick reply.

 

After I conferred with my associates and then with the President, we met again at about 3:30 p.m. I had hit upon the idea of separating the two problems—the final objective of total withdrawal and our willingness to withdraw troops gradually in the interval, which up to now had been in the same sentence. My proposal was to tie the final withdrawal to the premise of peaceful settlement, and to link the progressive reduction of forces to the gradual diminution of “tension in the area.” Ch’iao showed some interest. He came up with a variation. He preferred to speak of the “prospect” of a peaceful settlement, rather than “premise,” claiming that it had a more active and more bilateral connotation; “premise” sounded like a unilateral imposition by Washington. I thought this, if anything, better from our point of view; it implied some degree of Chinese commitment. In any event, I did not believe that the fate of Taiwan would be determined by such supersubtle shades of meaning. Ch’iao was not yet prepared to accept linking our withdrawal to our other requirement, the diminution of “tension in the area.”

 

I was convinced that we had made our breakthrough. In every negotiation a point is reached where both sides have gone too far to pull back. Accumulated mutual concessions create their own momentum; at some stage retreat puts into question the judgment of the negotiators. Mao had put this same principle in his usual indirect fashion while pretending to Nixon that agreement was not essential: “… if we fail the first time, then people will ask why we are not able to succeed the first time? The only reason would be that we have taken the wrong road. What will they say if we succeed the second time?” Mao was quite right. An initial failure was bound to blight a later success: “what use is there if we stand in deadlock?”

 

Chou joined the negotiation for half an hour that afternoon, a clear indication of his confidence that we would not fail the first time. Chou was not needed to confirm an impasse; his presence showed that he would take the responsibility for the requisite compromise. I explained once again that we could make no unconditional commitment to withdraw and that the conditions of even a partial withdrawal had to be realistic and explicable to our public. We did have an interest in a peaceful solution of the Taiwan issue, and the war in Southeast Asia would in fact influence our deployments on Taiwan. By stating these concerns honestly we would be able to defend the communiqué in America. If not, we would be forced into stating the same conditions unilaterally, undermining the mutual confidence that was the most crucial purpose of the negotiations and the visit. Chou said that he would think my arguments over.

 

There was, in fact, an incongruity between the intensity of the discussion and its intrinsic importance. Chou knew well enough that the Taiwan issue could not be resolved during the President’s visit. Indeed, any attempt to do so would run counter to China’s objective of establishing a cooperative relationship. It would either raise a domestic storm in America or produce a deadlock in Peking; either contingency would stifle the new ties in their infancy. The fundamental objective of both sides was not territorial but geopolitical. Each had concluded that it needed the other for maintaining the balance of power. China’s need was somewhat greater from the point of view of security, ours from the point of view of psychology. We required maneuvering room for our diplomacy and to give hope to our people after a tormented decade at home and abroad.

 

Matters would no doubt have been concluded then and there had we not been obliged to adjourn for a brief Nixon-Chou meeting, which was followed by another banquet. Chou En-lai’s toast was rather brief, and noted the “great differences of principle between our two sides.” Though Nixon’s and Chou’s standard rhetoric had repeated this same point all week, and though Chou En-lai at the end of his toast hailed the Chinese commitment to friendship with the United States, some restless newsmen thought they had detected a sudden “tension” in the negotiations because of the nuances of the toast and because the general mood at the banquet seemed deflated compared with the euphoria of the first night. Of course, since both sides had agreed to keep the substance of the conversations secret, the press, having had little guidance, must be forgiven for emphasizing the most dramatic possibilities. The fact was that by the time of the banquet the back of the communiqué was broken—except for some bickering within our delegation. Nixon and Chou in their one-hour meeting on Friday afternoon did not even discuss the communiqué. If conversation seemed to flag at the head table, it was partly because of the general exhaustion produced by successive late- night sessions, especially among the negotiators, and partly because we were all seated in protocol order, which meant that we found ourselves next to the same people at banquet after banquet. Inevitably we had by then explored every conceivable avenue of small talk. The American press self-centeredly assumed that its presence, indeed the intensive media coverage, made Nixon vulnerable to Chinese “pressure” because he needed a successful outcome—as if the Chinese did not have an equal if not greater stake. Whatever the cause, there were sensational headlines that “Banquet Toasts Hint Trouble” (in the Washington Star) or “Nixon-Chou Talks Appear Deadlocked” (in the Washington Post) and elaborate accounts of impasse based on no particular information.

 

Ch’iao and I met again at 10:30 p.m. After this Friday banquet and settled the key issue in fifteen minutes. He immediately accepted all the American formulations as I had explained them to Chou. In the process, we secured Ch’iao’s agreement to stating that we acknowledged Taiwan as a “part” rather than a “province” of China, thus eliminating a suggestion of subordination. The relevant paragraph now read as follows:

 

The U.S. side declared: The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves. With this prospect in mind, it affirms the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan. In the meantime, it will progressively reduce its forces and military installations on Taiwan as the tension in the area diminishes.

 

I had the Taiwan paragraph typed and took it to Nixon in the adjoining guest house. As in all negotiations, once we had agreed on our general objectives, Nixon had left the conduct of the talks to me. He took no special interest in the various formulations until there existed a version requiring his final approval. At one point I asked him to write a marginal comment on one of the Taiwan drafts which I then showed Ch’iao to lend emphasis to my insistence on conditionality for our withdrawals. Now the point of decision had been reached. We had a draft that I considered acceptable. At 10:50 p.m. Friday night Nixon and I reviewed it in detail. A comparison with earlier drafts indicated that we had achieved our basic objective. We would reaffirm our interest in a peaceful solution of the Taiwan question. Our agreement to the principle of total withdrawal of our military forces from Taiwan was stated as an ultimate objective linked to the prospect of a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan issue (implying that there was some ground for expecting it); withdrawals until then would depend on a reduction of tensions in the area. Both sides understood that the American role in the defense of Taiwan did not depend on the few forces on Taiwan, which were mostly communications personnel for our operations in Southeast Asia. The real American security role on Taiwan was defined by the 1955 mutual defense treaty. Neither side mentioned this in the Shanghai Communiqué, and its continued validity had been reaffirmed in the President’s foreign Policy Report published a week before his departure for Peking. Furthermore, not the least anomalous aspect of the China trip was that our defense commitment to Taiwan was reaffirmed yet again, this time on Chinese soil when I later briefed the press in Shanghai on February 27.

 

The Taiwan paragraph of the communiqué was not a “victory” by one side over the other; no constructive relationship can be built on that basis. In a joint enterprise of sovereign states only those agreements endure which both sides have an interest in maintaining. Rather, it put the Taiwan issue in abeyance, with each side maintaining its basic principles. Despite the continuing difference over Taiwan our rapprochement with China accelerated because we shared a central concern about threats to the global balance of power.

 

After Nixon approved the Taiwan paragraph, negotiations with Ch’iao on the other unsettled issues, mostly trade and exchanges, were concluded rapidly. The original Chinese draft had contained only a brief, noncommittal sentence, but we stressed that to many Americans progress here would be a measure of the new relationship. Ch’iao now accepted our proposals to expand the section on trade and exchanges. We went over the communiqué once again line by line. By 2:00 a.m. We had completed our labors. The text was subject only to confirmation by our principals, which from previous exchanges we knew would be a formality.

 

On Saturday, a brief plenary session was improvised in the waiting room at Peking airport before our departure for Hangchow in a Chinese aircraft (with the Secret Service oozing displeasure). The purpose was to give the Foreign Ministers their moment in the limelight by joining a session with the principals covered by the press, as well as to bless the work of the previous night. Unfortunately, someone had neglected to inform the honor guard that departure was not imminent. They were called to attention as soon as the limousine carrying Chou and Nixon arrived at the airport and remained in this posture in biting cold for the fifty minutes that the plenary session lasted. It was an astonishing display of discipline and endurance.

 

The session went off agreeably enough. Discussion of the communiqué was dampened by the inconvenient fact that most members of our party had not yet seen it, typing having been completed only just before we left the guest house. The two Foreign Ministers were invited to report on their deliberations during the week. This did not take long. Chou filled the void by speaking of an incident on Nixon’s visit to the Ming Tombs. A keen-eyed American journalist had noticed that some of the children playing in colorful dresses seemed extremely well-rehearsed, raising some questions about their spontaneity. Chou gracefully apologized:

 

Some people got some young children there to prettify the Tombs, and it was putting up a false appearance. Your press correspondents have pointed this out to us, and we admit that this was wrong. We do not want to cover up the mistake on this, of course, and we have criticized those who have done this.

 

I did not go myself to the Ming Tombs, and I admit that I did not know about it previously that they would do that. I came to know that only through your press last night, and when I investigated the matter I found out that that had truly been the case, and I must thank that correspondent. I may have a chance to do that when we arrive in Hangchow and Shanghai.

 

Chou’s comment on the danger of cover-ups evidently made no lasting impression on his principal guest. Nixon replied gracefully that he had enjoyed seeing the little girls, however they had gotten there—and then knocked the press as untrustworthy. It took great self-confidence and no little shrewdness for Chou to admit this mistake. Aside from displaying an admirable candor, it had the added advantage of reinforcing the seriousness of Chinese purposes on issues of principle where not even the possibility of error was admitted. Unfortunately, Chou’s words did not seem to percolate through the Chinese bureaucracy with customary efficiency. In Hangchow we encountered once again groups of youngsters in colorful national dresses playing games—a sight never to be seen under other circumstances at that period on the somber streets of Chinese cities. And two years later when Chou had withdrawn from government because of illness, I encountered the same tableau in Soochow. It seemed to be a standard operating procedure for distinguished visitors that not even the great Chou had authority to erase.

 

It would be pleasant to report that after our departure from Peking the business portion of the trip was completed. And indeed Hangchow, at the mouth of the lower Yangtze River, is one of the most beautiful cities in China. Built along romantic lakes, filled with exquisite gardens, temples, and palaces, blessed with a mild climate and an early spring, it is an ancient center of culture, scholarship, and poetry. Marco Polo, visiting in the thirteenth century, extolled Hangchow as “the greatest city which may be found in the world” and so beautiful that “one fancies onself to be in Paradise.”[188] Ambassador Huang Chen in Paris had told General Walters of a Chinese saying that there were two places worth seeing, Heaven above and Hangchow below. The setting was reduced to Nixonian prose when the President pointed out to Chou en- lai on visiting the West lake that the scene “looks like a postcard.”

 

The only sight-seeing excursion that I personally made was in Hangchow. One of its most beautiful spots is an island in the middle of a lake that is itself on an island inside a larger lake. On that inner island the Chinese have placed a series of simple structures which are essentially frames through which to view the vistas as if they were paintings. During this particular side trip I was looking at the gentle hills rising like some large plant out of the water. A solitary birch was bending gracefully at the edge of the frame. All was tranquillity and repose. Suddenly into the picture staggered Walter Cronkite. He was a little the worse for wear, dressed in heavy furs more appropriate for a polar expedition and weighted down by a spectacular assortment of photographic gear around his neck. Fond as I am of Walter, the scene lost some of its serenity.

 

In any event the mood of the American party did not match the tranquillity of the scenery. On the plane to Hangchow the State Department experts were given the communiqué, in the preparation of which they had had no part. Predictably, they found it wanting. It is the price that must be paid for excluding the professionals from a negotiation. Unfamiliar with the obstacles overcome, those not participating can indulge in setting up Utopian goals (which they would have urged be abandoned during the first day of the negotiation had they conducted it) and can contrast them with the document before them. Or they can nitpick at the result on stylistic grounds, pointing out telling nuances, brilliantly conceived, which the world was denied by their absence. I had recommended that Assistant secretary Green join our negotiating team. Nixon had vetoed this for fear of leaks and because he preferred to have his inevitable confrontation over drafting with Rogers all at once rather than day by day. As over Rogers’s absence from the meeting with Mao, I should have insisted; we now paid the price.

 

No sooner had we arrived in Hangchow than secretary Rogers—just as after the Berlin negotiations—informed the President that the communiqué was unsatisfactory. He submitted a list of amendments prepared by his staff, as numerous as they were trivial. For example, his experts objected to the phrase that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintained that there was but one China. It seemed to them too inclusive; there might be some Chinese who disagreed. They proposed that we replace “all Chinese” with “the Chinese”—a distinction beyond the grasp of my untrained mind. Another recommendation was to drop the word “position” in the phrase “does not challenge that position.” There were about fifteen changes of the same order of magnitude, including the reasonable proposal that the English text put the American statement of position first while the Chinese text would reverse the procedure. (This is conventional diplomatic practice.)

 

Nixon was beside himself. He recognized his political dilemma. He was already edgy about the reaction of his conservative supporters to the trip; he dreaded a right-wing assault on the communiqué. And he could see that leaks that the State Department was unhappy about American concessions might well be the trigger. He also knew that reopening the communiqué after the Chinese had been told he agreed to it might well sour his trip—especially since the importance of the proposed changes was next to impossible to explain. He was so exercised that he started storming about the beautiful guest house in Hangchow in his underwear. He would “do something” about the State Department at the first opportunity—a threat he had made at regular intervals since my first interview with him those many years ago at the Pierre Hotel, and never specified or implemented. One minute he insisted that he would stick to his word, the next that he could not go home with a divided delegation. I recommended that I have a go at Ch’iao Kuan-hua after dinner, however painful the occasion. If the Chinese insisted on the existing draft, we would have no choice but to stick with our commitment.

 

I did not enjoy this particular banquet, of Southern cuisine, despite its extraordinary quality, from apprehension of what was to follow. Ch’iao Kuan-hua and I met at 10:20 p.m. I decided our only hope lay in perfect frankness. I explained that normally a Presidential decision settled a communiqué. But in this case we had not achieved our full objective if we merely announced some formal propositions; we needed to mobilize public opinion behind our course. It was therefore in our common interest that Ch’iao cooperate in giving the State Department a sense of having contributed. I then presented the proposed changes.

 

My arguments did not exactly overwhelm Ch’iao. He replied sharply that both sides had come very far and China had made many concessions in response to American wishes. The Politburo had approved the text the previous night on the basis of our assurance that the President had accepted it. How could we reopen it less than twenty-four hours before the communiqué was to be published? But the Chinese are pragmatic, and their leadership wise. Creating a psychological basis for a new relationship with the United States was more important than these valid objections of Ch’iao’s. After a brief interruption—no doubt to consult the Premier- Ch’iao returned with a compromise. The Chinese would consider no changes in the Taiwan section; they had made major accommodations to our view; their leadership had approved the text after much debate. Any attempt to change it would preclude issuing a communiqué the next day. But Ch’iao would be prepared to discuss our other proposals on their merits.

 

We were thus launched into another late-night session. After firing many “empty cannons,” the Chinese agreed to much of what was proposed on the parts of the communiqué not dealing with Taiwan. By 2:00 a.m. Another “final” draft was at last completed, subject once again to the formal approval of our principals. This was obtained early the next morning. Ch’iao and I met once again for two and a half hours at midday on Sunday in Shanghai to review the new completed text. We read through it line by line, checking even punctuation, and agreeing on a few stylistic changes. (The full text of the communiqué is given in the notes.)[189]

 

I then outlined to Ch’iao Kuan-hua the briefing I would give to the press on the communiqué that afternoon. It was essential that neither side claim a victory. It was important not to exhibit our brilliance in interpretation. This was a not so subtle dig at the able (and often helpful) Assistant Minister Chang Wen-chin, whose capacity to develop fine shades of meaning had an heroic cast. My main purpose at the session was to make Ch’iao aware that I would reiterate the defense commitment to Taiwan in my briefing. I hoped that there would be no Chinese reaction. Ch’iao replied that he would rely on my tact.

 

My news conference in the Industrial exhibition Center Banquet Hall in Shanghai was surely one of the most paradoxical events to take place on Chinese soil since the revolution. A foreign official explained that his country would continue to recognize a government which was the rival to that with which he had been negotiating, and would defend it with military force against his hosts. I reiterated the continued validity of the defense treaty by reaffirming the appropriate sections in the President’s foreign Policy Report published just weeks previously. And it is a measure of their wisdom that there was no Chinese reaction. Our hosts understood their priorities.

 

The Chinese grasp of essentials was also shown by their handling of the communiqué’s translation. We had used Peking’s interpreters in all the meetings, largely because of Nixon’s belief that State Department interpreters would leak; theirs were also much better than ours. This was not a handicap, as sometimes alleged, because the Chinese would be bound by the English text. (Also, many on the Chinese side understood English, and Holdridge understood Chinese. In cases of dispute the English text would be controlling.) Because of the pressure of time we had no opportunity even to check the Chinese translation—a suicidal omission when dealing with the Russians, as we had learned when we announced our first SALT breakthrough. But Chou En-lai played no petty games; he understood that mutual confidence was more important than scoring debating points. The Chinese translation, amazingly enough, turned out to be more favorable to our position than the English one. I later forwarded to the President an analysis done by Richard Solomon of my staff, which concluded:

 

Significant variations between the Chinese and English texts were found regarding the three issues of Taiwan, the Indochina war, and cultural exchanges. In virtually every case, however, the Chinese version clarifies a bit of ambiguity in the English text, or states our position in a way that is more rather than less favorable to our objectives.

 

Regarding the future of Taiwan, the Chinese version conveys even less of a sense of U.S. acceptance of the PRC [Peking] view that the island is Chinese territory than does the English. It more strongly conveys the idea that we do not wish to get involved in a debate regarding the Chinese position on Taiwan, and strengthens the sense of our concern that there be a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan question.

 

The Shanghai Communiqué was as unusual as the new relationship it confirmed. Its opening section expressed the conflicting views on a whole host of issues including Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. The American position was phrased in conciliatory fashion, stressing our commitment to peaceful solutions and the principles of individual freedom and social progress for all the peoples of the world. In this first statement of our values to the Chinese people, we sought to emphasize that America stood for humaneness and hope. The Chinese rhetoric was more militant, though toned down considerably from the conventional style. It was difficult enough to habituate cadres brought up during the Cultural Revolution to the sight of Americans meeting with Chinese leaders; it was not possible to dispense totally with revolutionary rhetoric. It was clear, as Mao and Chou frequently admitted, that the occasional firing of “empty cannons” was for the record.

 

These contrasting statements merely served to highlight the revolutionary change in the Chinese-American relationship embodied in the views that the two sides expressed in common. China and the United States in effect renounced the use of force in settling disputes with each other. They announced their common opposition to the hegemonic aspirations of others. They agreed not to enter into any agreements aimed at the other. They undertook to promote exchanges and trade. And Taiwan was handled in a manner preserving the dignity, self-respect, and commitments of each side.

 

The Shanghai Communiqué was probably unique in its success in guiding relations between two great nations for seven years without ever a dispute over its meaning until it was superseded by diplomatic relations in 1979. It had no secret clauses or codicils. Its significance lay not only in its words but in the assumptions underlying it. Despite the media’s emphasis, the communiqué was not about Taiwan or bilateral exchanges, but about international order. It brought together two previously hostile nations not because they desired to settle bilateral problems—these could have been postponed for a substantial time—but to deal across the gulf of ideology with common security concerns.

 

Our sojourn in China was nearing conclusion. There was a final banquet in Shanghai where, with all tension gone, mao-tai flowed like water and Nixon, carried away with it all, delivered his extemporaneous toast (already noted) which edged up to an American military guarantee of China. Ch’iao and I had seemingly become so habituated to our late- night sessions that we could not do without another one. We met on February 27-28 from 11:05 P.M. to 12:30 p.m. In a session devoted to Vietnam. I explained our negotiating position in greater detail than Nixon had to Chou, and our determination to defeat an offensive by all available means should Hanoi seek a military resolution. Ch’iao repeated China’s moral and material support for North Vietnam but, following Chou, dissociated China from Hanoi’s negotiating position. These were a matter between us and the North Vietnamese on which China would express no views. He issued no warnings. He indicated no penalty if we carried out our threat.

 

There was one more conversation before my day was done. At three o’clock in the morning I was called to Nixon’s room on an upper floor of the high-rise hotel that served as our domicile. Before us lay the immense city of Shanghai, with just a few flickering lights barely suggesting the presence of close to eleven million people. All else was blackness. The mass of China lay before us, all-pervasive but invisible. Nixon had also awakened Haldeman to share with him the tensions, the exhilaration, and the inchoate fears that always marked the end of his great exertions. Nixon talked about his accomplishments, asking for confirmation and reassurance. And we gave him both, moved in part by an odd tenderness for this lonely, tortured, and insecure man, in part also by an all-consuming desire to get to bed after an exhausting week. Yet it was easy to give Nixon the reassurance he wanted. The embellishments generated by the Walter Mitty side of his nature were trivial, in some ways touching. He had indeed wrought a genuine historic achievement. He had thought up the China initiative (even though I had reached the same conclusion independently); he had fostered it, had run the domestic political risks of going it alone, and had conducted himself admirably during the journey.

 

Chou En-lai paid a farewell call on Nixon just before escorting him to the airport early in the morning of February 28. It was a gentle and pensive conversation between two men who had taken each other’s measure and were comfortable with each other’s purposes. Since one could never be sure whether Occidentals had gotten the point, Chou reviewed once again the Chinese position on the two issues most likely to be immediately troublesome: Taiwan and Vietnam. With respect to Taiwan he again counseled patience: “we, being so big, have already let the Taiwan issue remain for twenty-two years, and can still afford to let it wait there for a time.” About Vietnam Chou was at his best. He averred support for Hanoi but he again based it not on national interest or ideological solidarity but on an historical debt incurred by the Chinese empire several centuries before. Clearly China might make some material sacrifices; it would not run the risk of war to discharge such a debt. China, insisted the subtle Premier, had refrained from avowing any special link to Vietnam in the communiqué because it did not want to leave the wrong impression. Chou told Nixon:

 

We have extreme sympathy for the people of that area. We believe they are closely linked with us. We thought of using wording in the communiqué but then we thought maybe there would be other implications and so we did not do so… As Chairman Mao has pointed out, we who have been victorious have only an obligation to assist them, but not the right to interfere in their sovereignty. The debt we owe them was incurred by our ancestors. We have since liberation no responsibility because we overthrew the old system… Dr. Kissinger can bear witness that we have exerted extreme restraint since July of last year. Yet the key to easing tensions in the world does not lie there and Mr. President and I and Chairman Mao all understand that.

 

We indeed understood each other; the war in Vietnam would not affect the improvement of our relations. The avowal of restraint and of the fact that the key to easing tensions did not lie in Indochina left no doubt that Peking’s priority was not the war on its Southern border but its relationship with us. Three months later Moscow revealed the same priorities, more crudely. Moscow and Peking, for all their hatred of each other, and perhaps because of it, were agreed on this point: North Vietnam would not be permitted to override their greater geopolitical preoccupations. Against all odds, our diplomacy was on the verge of isolating Hanoi.

 

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Assessments

 

ixon’s trip ended on a high note of sentiment, but it was not from that impetus that Sino-American relations subsequently prospered. For all their charm and ideological fervor, the Chinese leaders were the most unsentimental practitioners of balance-of-power politics I have encountered. From ancient times Chinese rulers have had to contend with powerful non-Chinese neighbors and potential conquerors. They have prevailed, often from weakness, by understanding profoundly—and exploiting for their own ends—the psychology and preconceptions of foreigners. In the nineteenth century China was the only great prize to escape complete capture and subjugation by European nations. Though humiliated and mistreated it managed to maintain self-government through the skillful use of Western legal concepts of sovereignty (which have no exact Chinese equivalent) and the proposition that domestic matters are beyond foreign challenge. Throughout its history, whenever threatened, China has sought to pit potential adversaries against one another, and as a last extreme—as in the nineteenth century—it embroiled them over the division of Chinese spoils. Explaining how China avoided the fate of Africa and India in the colonial era, Chou said to me on one occasion: “On the one hand it was because of the strong desire for unity. On the other, so many countries were trying to get something out of China that other countries could not control it.” When the Nixon Administration came into office, two Chinese governments claiming legitimacy were dealing with their foreign problems by startlingly similar methods. Chiang Kai-shek dealt with us from a position of weakness; Mao maneuvered the Soviets also from a position of weakness. Both were doing well.

 

Mao and Chou, practicing high Chinese statesmanship in which ideology reinforced history and culture to confer psychological assurance, found a natural partner in Nixon. He was President during a period when the conventional wisdom decried the exercise of power; his critics asserted that America would prevail if at all because of the purity of its motives. But it was precisely the unpredictable, idiosyncratic nature of a policy founded on this illusion that needed to be overcome. Emotional slogans, unleavened by a concept of the national interest, had caused us historically to oscillate between excesses of isolation and overextension. The new “morality” was supposed to extricate us from excessive commitments. But moral claims lent themselves as easily to crusades as to abstinence; they had involved us in the distant enterprises to begin with. This American volatility unsettled the international equilibrium and those who relied on us. It was ultimately dangerous to the maintenance of peace. What the intellectual community’s loathing of Nixon kept them from understanding was that we agreed with their professed desire to relate ends to means and our commitments to our capacities. We parted company with many of them because we did not believe it sensible to substitute one emotional excess for another. Indeed, one reason why the Vietnam debate grew so bitter was that both supporters and critics of the original involvement shared the same traditional sense of universal moral mission.

 

What made the Nixon Administration so “un-American” was its attempt to establish a sense of proportion out of the welter of conflicting emotions and to adjust to a world fundamentally different from our historical perception. The impulses to lurch toward either isolationism or global intervention had to be cured by making judgments according to some more permanent conception of national interest. Values and principles would inspire our efforts and set our direction. But it was no use rushing forth impetuously when excited or sulking in our tent when disappointed. We would have to learn to reconcile ourselves to imperfect choices, partial fulfillment, the unsatisfying tasks of balance and maneuver, given confidence by our moral values but recognizing that they could be achieved only in stages and over a long period of time.

 

It was a hard lesson to convey to a people who rarely read about the balance of power without seeing the adjective “outdated” precede it. It was not one of the least ironies of the period that it was a flawed man, so ungenerous in some of his human impulses, who took the initiative to lead America toward a concept of peace compatible with its new realities and the awful perils of a nuclear age, and that the foreign leaders who best understood this were the two grizzled veterans of the Long March, Mao and Chou, who openly expressed their preference for Richard Nixon over the wayward representatives of American liberalism. Their praise of Nixon was more than subtle Chinese flattery. “A sentimental policy knows no reciprocity,” wrote Bismarck over a century earlier. For sovereign nations, predictability is more crucial than spasmodic brilliance or idiosyncratic moralistic rhetoric. They must gear their actions to the performance of others over extended periods of time; their domestic survival and international security alike may depend upon it. And it was on this level of shared geopolitical interest transcending philosophies and history that the former Red-baiter and the crusaders for world revolution found each other.

 

Out of these contacts, meticulously nurtured in the years to come, grew a relationship in which America and China reinforced each other while almost never coordinating tactics explicitly. From an early hostility to the American alliance with Japan (still to be found in the Shanghai Communiqué), the Chinese leaders soon came, in part under our persistent persuasion, to view it as a guarantee of America’s continued interest in the Western Pacific and a rein on Japanese unilateralism. Soon they strongly supported close relations between Japan and America. On one occasion Mao went so far as to advise me to make sure that when I visited Asia I spend as much time in Tokyo as in Peking; Japan’s pride should be respected. I accepted the recommendation. The Chinese, indeed, came to stress that US-Japanese relations were more important than US-Chinese relations. One of the advantages of our relationship with Peking has been that neither we nor the Japanese have been pressured by China to make a choice of priorities or induced to jockey for Peking’s favor.

 

Over the years China’s interest in an economically and militarily strong Western Europe grew to the point that I only half-jokingly called the People’s Republic one of our stronger NATO allies. Surely the lectures that West European leaders heard in Peking about the importance of Atlantic defense were if anything more stern than the ones they received in Washington. And, as with Japan, the Chinese urged close relations between America and Europe. China tacitly encouraged our presence in the Philippines and Thailand and, while it followed Pyongyang’s basic line, it never really pressed us to remove our forces from Korea. It correctly judged that the visible presence of American power was crucial for maintaining a balance of power in Asia and Europe. On my every visit the Chinese leaders urged us to pay close attention to the crucial Southern rim of Eurasia—Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan—three close friends of the United States (and China), whose security was a barrier to a Soviet breakthrough to the Indian Ocean and a check on pro-Soviet radicalism in the Middle East. In the Middle East itself they continually encouraged our negotiating efforts, knowing that this was the best means of eroding Soviet influence. While they had little interest in Latin America, their contempt for Cuba as a Soviet agent was evident. The Chinese have shown a greater concern with and understanding of the spread of Soviet-sponsored radicalism in Africa than any Western country with the exception of France.

 

In most critical areas China has been a stabilizing force. Its motives, to be sure, are not to foster American designs but to contain Soviet expansion. But this approach is anti-Soviet only if Moscow’s compulsion to spread its influence is so inherent in the Soviet system that it cannot survive without it. There is nothing incompatible in close relations with both Peking and Moscow so long as Moscow pursues a restrained foreign policy.

 

It would be dangerous in the extreme to assume that Chinese objectives and ours are in all respects identical. Peking would prefer to see us so embroiled with the Soviets that it need pay no price at all for a collaborative relationship with Washington. In such conditions, the protection afforded by the American option would be “free.” Chinese leaders unquestionably would aspire to a clear-cut alignment rather than an American policy of equidistance between Moscow and Peking that tilted toward Peking only because it was the weaker and more threatened of the Communist giants. For our part, we did not have any illusions about the permanence of the new relationship. Peking and Washington were entering a marriage of convenience transformed into an emotional tie primarily by Chinese psychological skill and American sentimental recollection of a China that no longer existed, if ever it had. Once China becomes strong enough to stand alone, it might discard us. A little later it might even turn against us, if its perception of its interests requires it. Before then, the Soviet Union might be driven into a genuine relaxation of tensions with us—if it has not first sought to break out of its isolation by a military assault on China. But whatever China’s long-term policy, our medium-term interest was to cooperate, and to support its security against foreign pressures.

 

To understand the contribution of the China initiative to international stability, we merely need to ask ourselves what the world would have been like if Chinese pressures in Asia had been added to Soviet global adventurism during the Vietnam war and afterward. By restoring hope to the American people, it also gave us a chance to shape a new concept of international order even while emerging from a debilitating war and a wrenching decade at home. The ultimate significance of the opening to China thus resided less in the formal exchanges than in the tacit understandings that grew out of Nixon’s visit. They provided the foundation for a common if informal strategy, by which different—even clashing—purposes produced an extraordinary parallelism in action. It was a triumph of the intangible in the conduct of foreign policy.

 

The press corps accompanying Nixon did not concern themselves with the long-range implications of the journey. Maddened by a week without briefings, driven around the bend by endless banquets and deadly toasts, perhaps convinced in their hearts that nothing good could possibly come of a Nixon initiative, satiated but unstimulated, they fell on the Shanghai Communiqué like tigers on raw meat thrown into their cage. The Washington Post of February 28 began its story:

 

President Nixon has acceded to Chinese Communist demands by publicly pledging, for the first time, to withdraw all American forces and military installations from Taiwan… The considerable concessions by the President appeared to have been made in return for a relatively minor Chinese agreement to “facilitate” bilateral scientific, technological, cultural, sports, journalistic and trade exchanges between the United States and China.

 

Weighing the concessions made by the President, many observers here feel that the Chinese got the better of the bargain… Chinese officials appeared pleased by the outcome of the discussion.

 

The section on hegemony and renunciation of force totally escaped the writer, as did the conditionality of our undertaking to withdraw from Taiwan.

 

One television commentator, noting that there was no written mention or affirmation of the American defense commitment to Taiwan, concluded that in the communiqué China had won “a giant step” and given away little. China’s omission of its customary condemnation of our defense treaty with Taiwan could equally be cited as a Chinese concession, as indeed Ch’iao Kuan-hua argued to me, since it seemed to abandon a long-held Chinese position. In any case, the same commentator ignored that on Chinese soil I reiterated our defense commitment to Taiwan.

 

On February 28 in the Detroit Free Press, an equally profound observer was quoted: “They got Taiwan; we got egg rolls.” Newsday headlined its stories: “Goodbye waves; waves of shock” and “Consensus- US Paid High Toll for Diplomatic Bridge to China.” The Boston Globe headlined: “Nixon Makes Concessions on Taiwan, Pledges Pullout.” It quoted an Australian reporter as giving this expert assessment: “Chou battled all week” for the Taiwan section “and he got what he wanted.” Likewise the Philadelphia Bulletin: “Nixon flying Home; Yielded on Taiwan.” That the deal was struck when the Chinese accepted our formulations would have seemed as implausible in the era of the credibility gap as it was true.

 

Eventually, the lurid headlines calmed down, particularly after Nixon’s arrival statement in Washington reiterating that our commitments were unaffected. The Christian Science Monitor wrote wisely that “What President Nixon agreed to was what he was doing anyway.” So long as the defense treaty remained in force, “nothing is changed.” The Washington Post in an editorial of February 29 analyzed the Shanghai Communiqué intelligently and defended Nixon against accusations of “selling out” Taiwan—accusations fostered among others by its own correspondent. Negative stories were in any event overwhelmed by the visual impact of Nixon’s visit to Peking, which nearly every American family had been able to witness on its television screen. For once a White House public relations strategy succeeded, and performed a diplomatic function as well. Pictures overrode the printed word; the public simply was not interested in the complex analyses of the document after having watched the spectacle of an American President welcomed in the capital of an erstwhile enemy.

 

And what followed left no doubt about the real priorities of both sides. For years the United States was the only country enjoying political relations with Peking that did not have to sever its diplomatic ties with Taipei. Again and again in the years following the Nixon visit, the Chinese leaders stressed to us Mao’s precept that Taiwan was a subordinate problem; the major common issue was the maintenance of the international equilibrium. We enjoyed diplomatic ties in all but name; we had throughout a regular channel of intimate communication at the highest level and more frequent exchanges than had most of the Western governments which had recognized Peking many years earlier. After the formation of liaison Offices in each other’s capitals in 1973 (following the Vietnam settlement), the two countries even had de facto embassies to promote the broader economic, cultural, and people-to-people exchanges that characterize relations between friendly states. The only element lacking was the willingness of Chinese leaders actually to set foot in Washington while a rival embassy was present.

 

Major expansion of trade and exchanges, which some saw as goals we were disappointed in not obtaining, were of secondary importance to both sides. On the Chinese side, the reluctance mostly came from Mao’s ideological and Middle-Kingdom faith in self-reliance, not from the absence of diplomatic relations; no other country did much better than we did in this regard as long as Mao was alive. In 1977 and especially 1978, a new Chinese leadership moved out aggressively to expand economic and educational exchange with the West; the United States was a major participant and suffered little penalty because of the absence of formal diplomatic relations before January 1, 1979.

 

But this evolution being then unknown, there was an odd sense of ambivalence on the plane back from Peking. Nixon understood international affairs too well not to grasp that he had sealed a genuine diplomatic triumph. But he was also sufficiently political to recognize the danger he might face from his old conservative supporters if the first press accounts determined the national mood. Pat Buchanan, a speechwriter who considered himself Nixon’s conservative conscience, was morose. In the best tradition of Presidential entourages he blamed pernicious advisers (meaning me) for the President’s departure from grace. (Ray Price, the liberal conscience, often had the same tendency and the same target.) Nixon stewed in his cabin, not knowing what he would find on his return. It was unnecessary. The pictures of a President working for peace moved a country that was exhausted by years of turmoil over an inconclusive war. Nixon received a triumphal welcome at Andrews Air force Base from a bipartisan group of Senators and Congressmen headed by the Vice President. Nixon used the occasion to remind listeners of his achievements but also to make clear that we had not given up “any United States commitment to any other country.” Within five minutes of reaching my office at ten o’clock in the evening I called two leading conservatives, Governor Ronald Reagan and Senator Barry Goldwater. Both promised their support if the President did not deviate from the commitment to Taiwan expressed by me in Shanghai and by the President at Andrews Air force Base. Reagan joked that the China visit had been a great television “pilot” and ought to be made into a series.

 

The next day Nixon met with the bipartisan leadership of both Houses of Congress and received strong support. Euphoric, he even thought he might settle all his problems in one fell swoop. As the meeting broke up he stopped Senator Fulbright and urged him to end his public criticism of Vietnam because it was a very delicate issue and the “string could break” if there were a continuing hassle over it. Nixon pointed his finger at the startled Fulbright and said, “OK, Bill, agreed?” The distinguished Senator stood there in some disbelief, nodding (or maybe shaking) his head—the chronicler, Tom Korologos of the Congressional liaison staff, is not precise on this point.

 

I briefed the press in greater detail than was possible in Shanghai and also met informally with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The machinery that accompanies great events moved into action. Ambassadors had to be informed. The most painful was my meeting with Ambassador James Shen from Taiwan; we had not in fact made any commitments undercutting Taiwan’s security, but the entire process was bound to be inimical to its status. The most thorough, inquisitive caller proved to be the Ambassador from Japan, who having earlier missed my secret trip to Peking was not about to fail to unearth some new great secret if it could be accomplished through persistence.

 

The trip was increasingly perceived as a great success. As the American public gained hope from the China visit, Vietnam became less an obsession and more a challenge to be mastered. The Administration that had revolutionized international relations could not so easily be accused of neglecting the deepest concern of the American people.

 

Once more, though, we encountered the curious phenomenon that success seemed to unsettle Nixon more than failure. He seemed obsessed by the fear that he was not receiving adequate credit. He constantly badgered his associates to press a public relations campaign that would call more attention to the China visit. He followed the press carefully, so that any criticism could be immediately countered. He read some commentator’s criticism that the Chinese statements of their position in the Shanghai Communiqué were more aggressive than the statements of our position. On March 9, therefore, he sent me a memorandum asking me to make clear to the press the deep thought and analysis that lay behind this “decision” to state our position moderately. His preference for this approach dated back, he said, to a speech he gave in the Soviet Union in 1959, which he urged me to read in his book six Crises. Though Chou En-lai had originally proposed the idea of separate and conflicting statements, though Chou and I had drafted almost all of that part of the text in October 1971 without reference to Washington, and though Nixon had learned of both the approach and the content only after I returned, he wanted me to explain to the press—and I believe had convinced himself—that he had conceived it:

 

You could begin by pointing out that I made the decision with regard to the tone of the statement of our position for two basic reasons. First, the more aggressive we stated our position the more aggressive the Chinese would have to be in stating their position. As a result of our presenting our position in a very firm, but non-belligerent manner, their position, while it was also uncompromising on principle, was not nearly as rough in its rhetoric as has been the case in previous statements they have issued over the years…

 

I was determined that in this document, which would be the first time Chinese leaders, and cadres, and to a certain extent even Chinese masses, would ever hear the American position expressed, I had to make the strongest possible effort to set it in a tone which would not make it totally incredible when they heard it. It would not have been credible, of course, had we set forth our position in more aggressive terms because 22 years of propaganda at the other extreme would have made it impossible for the reader of the communiqué, or those who heard it read on radio, to believe it at all if the tone was too harsh.

 

Nixon, of course, deserves full credit for the Shanghai Communiqué. A President is always responsible for the policy, no matter who does the technical labors. A less courageous President could have pulled back from the separate statements, when I presented them to him upon my return in October, in favor of a more orthodox presentation. This trivial incident does not derogate from Nixon’s boldness in his historic opening to China. What it illustrates, however, is the tendency for illusion to become reality, a brooding and involuted streak that, together with starker character traits, at first flawed, and later destroyed, a Presidency so rich in foreign policy achievements.

 

What Nixon hinted, Haldeman made explicit. On March 14 Haldeman sent me a memorandum whose thrust was that my briefings devoted too much time to substance; I would serve the President better by stressing to the press and above all on television the great personal qualities that made the achievements possible. Helpfully, Haldeman recited a catalogue of some ten of them. Since Haldeman never sat in on the negotiations, he could only have gotten all this information from one source. For anyone familiar with Oval Office procedure, the memorandum evoked a familiar scene: Haldeman, equipped with the yellow pad that every White House staffer (including me) carried with him as if part of our uniform, jotting down the musings of the chief. Some of Haldeman’s descriptions were on the mark; others were bizarre; the whole concept was irrelevant. Leaders do best by emphasizing performance; surely this is all that history cares about. The conviction that Nixon’s standing depended less on his actions than on their presentation was a bane of his Administration. It conveyed a lack of assurance even during his greatest accomplishments. It imparted a frenetic quality to the search for support, an endless quest that proved to be unfulfillable. It made it impossible for him ever to trust the momentum of events. It caused him to seek to embellish his most incontestable achievements, or to look for insurance in the face of even the most overwhelming probability of success. It was the psychological essence of the Watergate debacle.

 

In 1972 I read these memoranda with amusement tinged with exasperation, for I was still too close to events. Today I find them not without pathos—of a lonely man in his hour of high achievement reassuring himself with a catalogue of accomplishments and laudatory adjectives when the deed spoke for itself. Nixon had triumphed in the most important purpose of the visit. Leaders of two powerful nations had taken the measure of each other and judged that they could conduct compatible foreign policies, revolutionizing world diplomacy.

 

The bipolarity of the postwar period was over. There would be greater demands on America’s creativity, endurance, and sophistication—but also new opportunities. At the end of the process stood what we had longed and suffered for during four tumultuous years: an honorable negotiated peace in Vietnam.

 

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