When Nixon Met Mao: The Week That Changed the World

Beijing, People’s Republic of China. Ninth of July 1971. Against the rules of state protocol, a stout, professorial-looking man with wide black-rimmed glasses stepped out of a limousine with the blinds down. Opposite him stood China’s second most powerful man, the suave Premier Zhou Enlai. The two men shook hands vigorously with enthusiasm. The foreign visitor was Henry Kissinger, National Security Adviser to US President Richard Nixon. After months of secret diplomacy, the much-awaited meeting, the first high-level meeting between the US and China for more than twenty years, finally took place.

Known only to a dedicated few, it was the overture to the first official visit by an American President to China since the Second World War. On 21 February 1972, Richard Nixon made an official visit to China. The visit lasted a week and it was to be a week that changed the world. Most analysts and historians agree that it was the most important foreign visit by an American President at any time before or since.

It was the beginning of the normalisation of relations between the two countries. Official diplomatic relations between the US and China had been suspended since 1949, when the Chinese Communists took power after the civil war. This was the longest freeze in relations in modern history.

The rapprochement between the US and China during the Cold War, whose main architects were Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, is considered one of the major achievements of the Nixon administration and one of the most important geopolitical events of the 20th century.

Its far-reaching consequences continue to shape world order today. China returned to the international political and economic chessboard then, and slowly but patiently assumed an ever greater role in the decades that followed. It was the US that enabled it to do so by working closely with it after the re-establishment of relations, which is ironic in its own way, since today China is the most important challenger to the US in its quest to become the world’s greatest superpower, while it is already the undisputed dominant power in Asia and the Pacific region. In the five decades since that famous meeting, China has undergone a complete transformation.

With the current redefinition of US-China relations, a look at the legacy of two titans of American politics, Nixon and Kissinger, on the latter’s 100th birthday, is more than appropriate. While many agree that Nixinger’s (a fusion of the surnames Nixon and Kissinger) diplomacy, much vaunted in the last century, was instrumental in America’s victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, the question of whether it was also responsible for China’s meteoric rise, which is felt at all levels today, is more controversial. Certainly the thaw, which has led to ever closer economic contacts and exchanges, has helped China’s development, but it has also helped the US.

Nixon came to the White House in 1969, at the height of the Cold War, which was primarily defined by the relationship between the two major superpowers and ideological adversaries, the USA and the Soviet Union. At that time, the latter’s power was, at least at first sight, not yet waning, while the US was facing numerous crises at home and around the world, notably as a consequence of the unpredictable Vietnam War, from which it had tried unsuccessfully to extricate itself. Nixon therefore made the end of the Vietnam War a central objective of his presidency.

China, isolated, weak and poor at the time, was an important piece in the chess game of the Cold War, in which only one side could win in the end.

The basic calculation in Nixon’s head before he swung into the US government at the second attempt was simple. To weaken the Soviet Union by winning over China, which was a natural ally of Moscow because of its ideology. But after Stalin’s death, there were growing disputes between Beijing and the Kremlin, and soon a final rift that pushed the neighbours even to the brink of war.

The Americans shrewdly tried to take advantage of this, and to bring China, which saw the Soviet Union as a major defence threat, into their fold, with political as well as economic advantages. A thaw in relations with China would not only weaken the Soviet Union, but also the unity of the global communist bloc, which at that time was numerically stronger than the liberal-democratic bloc.

Nixon therefore had to establish diplomatic contacts first after 22 years. His plan was risky. And since he was a man who was suspicious anyway and prone to autocratic impulses when it came to making important decisions, he intended to carry it out in the most limited possible circle of his most trusted associates.

There were not many of them, but among them was a man who is still regarded as one of the most brilliant minds in the history of American foreign policy, and certainly someone who shaped it much more than most presidents after the Second World War. This was none other than Henry Kissinger, the old man of American foreign policy, who has influenced it for seven decades.

Who was Henry Kissinger?

Heinz Alfred Kissinger was an immigrant with Jewish roots whose family escaped the Nazi terror. He served in the US Army during the Second World War and became a naturalised American citizen in 1943. He began his brilliant career as an influential academic at Harvard, where he was, among other things, Director of the Defence Studies Programme and, above all, a leading founder and advocate of the theory of realism and the concept of ‘realpolitik’ in international relations.

According to this theory, foreign policy should be completely subordinated to national interests, for the protection of which it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice ideals, ethics and the basic values of democracy, such as human rights. Decisions in international relations are supposed to be pragmatic, aimed at balancing political power and non-interference in the internal political affairs of other countries.

Already with his doctoral thesis, he had shown his fascination with the search for the best model for maintaining the security of the world order, which he saw in the balance of power between the major powers. History has shown that wars of major proportions do not occur then, because no one actor has dominant power.

He focused on the Westphalian policy of Europe for three hundred years and its organisation after the Congress of Vienna, when it was the balance of power that kept the peace. At the same time, he described it as a prototype of ‘realpolitik’ and, by his work, opened the door to the administration even then. He also addressed the very topical issue of the use of nuclear weapons in foreign policy in combination with conventional forces.

No other appointed official of the US administration has played such a large, indeed colossal, role in the formulation of its foreign policy, and no other academic has so successfully combined theoretical work with the practical.

Thus he advised the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations, as well as New York Governor and Republican presidential candidate Nelson Rockefeller, before being appointed by President Nixon to one of the most important foreign policy posts – first as head of the National Security Council and, in his second term, as Secretary of State (a post he retained after Nixon’s resignation in the wake of the Watergate affair).

Kissinger came to Washington with a fairly well-developed picture of what an international order whose overriding goal is stability should look like. This would be best achieved by a balance of power in which the distribution of forces is roughly equal between all partners. Ideally, there should be more than one of these, not just two, as was the case during the Cold War. This was one of the reasons why Kissinger was quickly impressed by Nixon’s idea of a triangle between the Soviet Union, China and the US.

Kissinger was not at first an expert on China, but he quickly learned about it when he realised how much it was bothering his superior. He had already mentioned the need for dialogue with it when he worked for Rockefeller, but after that he focused much more on relations with the Soviet Union and, of course, Vietnam. He understood Asia through the lens of the West and its colonial traditions, while the specifics of the relations between the various powers in the region were less clear to him. But the more he focused on China, the more fascinated he became by its social and cultural legacy.

Although he initially followed Nixon, who had a clearly defined view of the world and its post-war order, he soon began to steer it himself. It is clear from Kissinger’s many works that he always had a strong desire to take his place in history and that his initial contacts with Zhou Enlai and Mao were so fascinating to him, not least because they were so etched in the annals.

The course of history has been most influenced by his diplomatic activity with China, leading to the definitive and formal normalisation in 1979, and by the admirable synchronisation of the opening towards China and the easing of tensions with the Soviet Union. For decades afterwards, Kissinger remained an expert on China, while at the same time working for its interests. For example, he supported its membership of the World Trade Organisation and lobbied on behalf of US corporations and commercial interests through his consultancy Kissinger Associates.

Of course, we cannot overlook his controversial role in the Vietnam War and the decisions relating to the bombing of Cambodia. The latter ruined his reputation and will forever remain a controversial figure. Despite the fact that he even won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to establish a ceasefire with North Vietnam, this was also controversial, as the ceasefire did not last. His fiercest opponents, however, nicknamed him Mr Killinger.

USA and China after the Second World War

China’s international position was strengthened in the last year of the war and in the immediate aftermath, as an ally of the US and Britain, it was on the winning side. The Americans, anxious to prevent the post-war order from being determined by the British and French empires, which were in their last gasps, pushed for China to become the only non-Western country to become a member of the United Nations Security Council. This was not, of course, Communist China, but Nationalist China under Chiang Kai-shek.

While the communist movement was growing stronger under the increasingly powerful Mao Tsetung, the nationalists dreamed of a China that would co-shape the region and the world, build a modernised agricultural and industrial sector, support anti-imperialist movements in countries still under the French, British or Dutch yoke, and, above all, establish a form of multi-party democracy that respected both Chinese particularities and international demands. It also sought to improve relations with its eternal enemy, Japan, turning it into a regional ally. The country’s prestige grew in the region, around the world and in international organisations.

But at home, the strength of the nationalists was visibly waning under pressure from the Communists. Although the US stood by them, they were defeated in an economically devastating civil war and were forced to retreat to Taiwan in 1949. The US, in its pragmatic style, showed its willingness to quickly turn the tide and engage with the communists, but in 1950 the Korean War broke out, forcing Mao to support the North Korean leader Kim Il-sung and Stalin.

This decision resulted in the freezing of US relations with mainland and since then communist China and the continuation of the alliance with Chiang Kai-shek and the recognition of Taiwan as the official and legitimate representative of the Chinese government. Thus, until the Nixon-Kissinger manoeuvres, Taiwan sat on the Security Council and other international organisations.

China became isolated and left to its own devices, which led it from one disastrous decision to another under the psychopathic leadership of Mao Tse-tung. For example, the Great Leap Forward policy, with which the Chinese Communists aspired to self-sufficiency, and the Cultural Revolution, for which capitalism was the ultimate horror, resulted in at least twenty million innocent victims. Mao completely wiped out the private sector and subordinated the entire economy to the state. This self-destruction could have been avoided if China had been part of a global trading bloc.

Despite the freeze in official diplomatic relations, the admittedly limited dialogue between the US and China still took place even before the Nixon presidency, and not all the credit should be given to him and Kissinger alone. The only official channel of communication was between the US and Chinese ambassadors in Warsaw.

The issue of strategic rapprochement with China was thus already a topical one during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in 1961 and 1965, when Washington was well aware of the difficulties in Sino-Soviet relations. And since it was clear that the Chinese communist regime was strong enough to endure, and since China was too big and potentially too powerful to be ignored indefinitely, shy flirtations with its regime began. But Beijing was hesitant, mainly because of Vietnam, where the war was raging and where it and the Americans stood on opposite shores.

Richard Nixon, who had already fought Kennedy for the presidency in the 1960 election and lost it narrowly, was always more attentive to world events than at home. When he made one of the biggest comebacks in electoral history and finally became President in 1968, he had his international relations strategy in his pocket.

The year before, he had published an article in the influential Foreign Affairs magazine on the need to engage with China: “There is no room on this small planet for a billion capable people to live in angry isolation.”

At the same time, he was aware that the US would not be able to maintain its power after Vietnam if it had to fight the Soviet Union and China at the same time. Nixon was the first post-war President who was prepared to adjust the global balance of power at a time when the USA was still the most powerful country in the world. But Vietnam was visibly and rapidly draining it.

Triangular diplomacy

Both China and the US benefited from the rapprochement, even though Mau was perceived to be in a stronger position. The Great Helmsman even described the US as a paper tiger and predicted a fate similar to that of Hitler’s Germany and imperial Japan.

But both were under severe domestic and international pressure, with the oil crisis and high inflation rampant in the US, also as a consequence of the Vietnam War, and China suffering from the effects of the Cultural Revolution – which saw it lose virtually all its allies except Albania – and the Great Leap Forward, which led to famines of unprecedented proportions. This was the doctrine that would have led to China’s rapid industrialisation, so people had to smelt steel instead of farming. Agricultural production dried up and people starved.

Before that, the Soviets had helped the Chinese in many ways, both with monetary aid and with knowledge transfer, factory construction, infrastructure. Many Chinese students were educated in high-quality Soviet universities. The Sino-Soviet conflict also put an end to this kind of cooperation.

Therefore, the Chinese top leadership saw the agreement with the US as a way of restoring international credibility, as a way of defending itself against the Soviet Union and as a way of helping with the necessary economic reforms. It was not difficult for the Chinese to realise that only those nations which had close economic relations with the USA were economically advanced. Perhaps this reflection even more than the common front against Moscow guided them. In any case, the circumstances were right on both sides to ease the tension in relations.

Moreover, as if on cue, the already frayed relations between China and the Soviet Union had reached a new critical point only three months after Nixon’s inauguration. Namely, between March and September 1969, the Soviet Union and China fought several battles over border disputes along the Ussuri River. First, the Chinese army crossed the border and ambushed the Soviets, attempting to occupy the Soviet island of Damansky. Then the Soviets used a new missile system to burn several square kilometres of Chinese border territory and killed hundreds of Chinese soldiers.

There was a rapid escalation, and Mao was already preparing the top of the Communist Party for war, and the Soviets even considered a nuclear attack on China with the help of the US, which rejected the offer.

This was the historical context that Kissinger exploited. China, in its fear, realised that it needed the US to defend itself against the Soviets, and the Soviets needed it, and the US needed normal relations with both of them in order to weaken them mutually, while at the same time putting pressure on them to stop supporting North Vietnam. At the same time, the Americans were also worried about the Soviets declaring nuclear parity. Economic factors added to the calculus, as the US needed new markets at home because of the recession.

China also offered cheap labour, which had no rights, and the infrastructure needed to make China a manufacturing hub for US multinationals. Through this, they could target the growing Asia-Pacific market and thus help US companies that were struggling to survive.

The time has come for Kissinger’s long-awaited chase for the balance of power. But before that, clear signals had to be sent to the other side about the desire for rapprochement. Both sides did this, and sometimes comical situations arose.

Mao, for example, invited the famous American journalist Edgar Snow to Tiananmen Square for the National Day celebrations, a privilege that no foreigner had ever enjoyed. Snow was a sympathiser of Communist China who, as early as 1937, romanticised Mao’s life and the Communist Party in his book The Red Star Over China and even took part in part of Mao’s long march.

Then it was Nixon’s turn. In an interview he said, almost pathetically, ‘If there is one thing I want to do before I die, it is to go to China. If I don’t go, I would at least like my children to go.”

This was followed by the famous table tennis tournament. First, the American and Chinese teams met in Japan, where the teams started discussing the possibility of a tournament in China. But Mao was against it, until the American and Chinese players stepped off the Chinese bus together in front of the press with a big smile on their faces. When Mao saw the picture of the two players and watched the enthusiastic international reaction, he quickly changed his mind.

The two teams met in April 1971 and were even received by Premier Zhou Enlai. The incomparably better Chinese even tried to lose a few matches.

Operation Marco Polo

Kissinger was by then fully immersed in everything to do with China. He talked to all sorts of experts, academics, economists, scientists and commissioned studies to help him understand all aspects of a country that fascinated him more and more. Through the Warsaw Channel, the Chinese and American ambassadors began exchanging cautious messages about a possible high-level visit.

But the Chinese suspended the Warsaw talks after the US attack on Cambodia, leaving open an interesting and, at first sight, unexpected channel of communication.

This was Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yahya Khan, through whom the Chinese and the Americans secretly exchanged messages. Two decades earlier, the Chinese had been given access by their ally India, but when territorial disputes arose between them, the Pakistanis allied themselves with the Chinese against the Indians.

Pakistan then consisted of West Pakistan and East Pakistan (later Bangladesh), and when the Pakistani army brutally cracked down on Bengali demonstrators in East Pakistan demanding more autonomy in March 1971, the US was suspiciously silent.

Nixon resisted Congressional pressure to put pressure on the violent Yahya Khan, which few understood. But Nixon needed the Pakistani for access to China, so true to his ‘realpolitik’ style, he pushed aside other concerns.

Things were now moving fast. Nixon appointed Kissinger as special envoy and the months-long organisation of the secret mission, haphazardly named Marco Polo, began. Even the Foreign Secretary was not informed about it. Kissinger was given the task of preparing an official visit to President Nixon, who received the invitation in May 1971. He called the invitation “the most important communication received by an American President since the Second World War”.

Kissinger was known for his love of secrecy in diplomacy, so organising a mission of this kind was right up his street. For example, he was already chasing a Chinese delegation through the streets of Warsaw after a Yugoslav fashion show, and months later he was hosted in Beijing. His first secret visit to China was via an official visit to Pakistan, where he cancelled all engagements due to alleged stomach problems. Then, unbeknown to most of the American delegation, he secretly hopped on a plane to Beijing, wearing a headscarf and sunglasses.

There, he first shook hands excitedly with Premier Zhou Enlai. The gesture had a powerful symbolism, for no one has forgotten how, in 1954, the then US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, refused to shake hands with Enlai.

Kissinger was pampered in Beijing and was totally impressed by Zhou and Mao as well as by Chinese civilisation. He spent hours wandering around the Forbidden City, sightseeing, while he and Zhou were establishing a new international order. Several more visits followed, during which both sides deepened their strategic dialogue and prepared for the presidential visit and the normalisation of relations.

A week that changed the world

Nixon travelled to China in February 1972 and stayed for a week. His visit formalised the end of the bipolar division of the world. It received more media coverage than any other event of the period, in the US, China and around the world. He basked in the glamour and kindness of his hosts, as if they all wanted to wipe out the last twenty years of hostility. Among other things, he visited the Great Wall of China and was guest of honour at a spectacular banquet. One after another, meetings with Mao and Zhou and all the others who counted in the Chinese top came and went.

This was done under the spotlight, and Kissinger was active behind the scenes, as is his old habit. On the US side, he was in charge of co-preparing a joint document that would summarise the essence of the talks and dictate the direction of future relations. Each side first stated its position on a set of common themes, including the most neuralgic ones, of which Taiwan naturally stood out, but also touching on Vietnam and the security situation in Asia in general.

The so-called Shangai Communiqué was produced, which stated that normalisation of relations between the US and China was in the interests of all countries, that they would avoid international conflict and that neither would seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region. They committed themselves to educational and cultural exchanges and to trade opening, in the light of the desire for future fully open diplomatic relations (which did not formally take place until Jimmy Carter‘s presidency in 1979).

Both Nixon and Kissinger returned home as heroes, and the latter soon became a universally recognised authority on all issues related to China. This has remained the case to this day, with the centenarian Kissinger still writing and analysing China’s changing role in international relations.

The far-reaching and fatal consequences of the visit were soon clear. They were first manifested during the regular annual debate at the United Nations on who should represent China there, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or Taiwan, as has been the case since the creation of this international organisation. Zhou has made it clear on several previous occasions that, in order to establish diplomatic relations with Beijing, the US must recognise that the PRC is ‘the only legitimate authority in China’ and that Taiwan is ‘an inalienable part of Chinese territory that must once again become part of the motherland’.

During his visits, Kissinger promised that Washington would withdraw two-thirds of its troops from Taiwan as soon as the Vietnam War was over. He also said that the US does not advocate a policy of a divided China, or a policy of China and Taiwan as two entities, and that it is therefore in favour of a ‘one China’ policy. Not all influential US politicians agreed with this – for example, it was vehemently opposed by George W. Bush, who was then US ambassador to the United Nations. But since 1972, the One China policy has been the official policy of all US administrations. Kissinger also signalled Washington’s desire to end the war in Vietnam, even if unilaterally.

When it came to discussions on representation at the United Nations, the US initially advocated a compromise whereby mainland China would replace Taiwan, but Taiwan would still retain membership. But neither Beijing nor Taipei accepted this. The Americans quickly caved in under Chinese pressure and Taiwan lost its seat, even though the majority of US public opinion was against it.

And that was not all, the Americans also cancelled the mutual security treaty with Taiwan and broke off official relations. But the US military maintained a presence on the island anyway. Kissinger tried to explain to Enlai that the US could not completely abandon Taiwan, which had been its ally since the end of the war.

But the US willingness to compromise was almost limitless. There was therefore a general expectation that China would act similarly and fairly, slowly establishing a liberal-democratic order and avoiding expansionist tendencies. These were two of the greatest blunders of American foreign policy, the consequences of which are most evident today.

So what role did the Americans play in China’s rise, and did their policy of appeasement towards China seal their own fate decades later? It was certainly never the intention of Mao and his successors to become liberal, but ‘only’ to become confident, rich and powerful, something that the West was simply unwilling to admit.

After 1972

In 1973, the two sides first opened representative offices in the capitals, which, although not yet embassies, were headed by very eminent people, including the future President, George W. Bush.

In the aftermath of Nixon’s visit, it often seemed as if the Americans wanted the relationship more than the Chinese, because the latter remained haughty and, on the domestic political stage, were keen to continue to humiliate and denigrate the US.

But the Americans have benefited greatly from the ‘new’ friendship. Economically, they gained a huge market and, with Kissinger’s help and his pressure on Congress, China, despite not being a market economy, was granted most-favoured-nation status. Later, when China joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001, it was the Americans – again with Kissinger’s help – who were their biggest supporters. But hopes that integration into global supply chains would encourage it to respect trade rules and behave more responsibly quickly faded.

Moreover, the Sino-American friendship also frightened the Soviets, who toned down their aggressive behaviour towards the two superpowers. They began to negotiate with the Americans on strategic arms limitation (SALT) and adopted the biological and anti-ballistic weapons conventions.

Their trade relations have also improved. The Chinese alliance helped the Reagan administration to boldly confront and defeat the Soviets in the last phase of the Cold War, although the latter also fell apart because of internal dissent and the inability of the Soviet economy to keep the political system alive.

After Mao’s death, the Chinese also finally broke with his destructive economic policies and the pragmatic Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s successor, was epitomised by the statement: ‘It does not matter whether the cat is black or white, the main thing is that it catches mice’.

The profound reforms he initiated would have been impossible without the help of the US, which needed foreign capital, know-how and technology. With the so-called Four Modernisations in agriculture, industry, technology and defence, China has seen a complete turnaround. They have gradually de-collectivised agriculture, liberalised wages and prices, decentralised trade, introduced technology transfers between sectors and attracted foreign investment. The US has also transferred a lot of military technology and industry to China. When Coca-Cola appeared on the shelves, some saw this as the ultimate victory for US imperialism.

China became a member of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in 1980, a decade before the Soviet Union. The right to private property was recognised for the Chinese in 1992. Within two decades, it became an economic superpower and soon the largest trading partner of the USA. The idea of China as a superpower seemed completely absurd just a few years earlier, especially in the midst of, say, the Cultural Revolution.

Quo vadis, China?

Despite the thaw in relations between China and the US, they have often been strained. They cooled off, above all, after the events and the massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989, which shocked the Americans and the whole world, and from which they have never really recovered.

The end of the Cold War also reshuffled the geostrategic cards. The Soviet Union collapsed and has still not got back on its feet economically. The US was asleep on its laurels and China, among other things, became the driving force of the international market with a dramatic rise in purchasing power and GDP. But the Chinese set the rules of the game themselves and the assumption that they would adapt and change once they were wearing jeans and eating at McDonald’s was illusory.

Under the leadership of the authoritarian Xi Jinping, China is hoping for more, with the clear aim of replacing the US at least in the Pacific region, if not globally. It is seen as a threat by all countries in the region, and Beijing wants the world to look at it with respect and even awe anyway.

It does not choose between tools – it forces even its neighbours to violate trade practices, it manipulates its currency, it threatens Taiwan latently, it builds military capacity and pushes the US outside the ring of Japan and the Philippines, it builds artificial islands in the South China Sea and militarises them, it violates the human rights of its own people. It is doing all this and more with patience and deliberation, because it is not bound to a democratic change of power through elections, so it is in no hurry to go anywhere. This is one of its major advantages compared with the West.

What, then, is the real legacy of the policy of opening up China, which was carried out, above all, by Nixon and Kissinger? And where was it created, in the White House or in the boardrooms of the big corporations? Did the advocates of rapprochement underestimate China’s potential and dig their own grave with generous help? Or was the country anyway on the road to reawakening and would sooner or later dominate the region and the world again, as it had done centuries and millennia ago?

It may be too late to seek answers to such and similar questions, but it is certainly not too late to think about how to set the rules of the game in relations with China in such a way that they are not just China’s rules.