Western Europe was seen in precisely the same context; the discussions were a primer on containment of the Soviet Union. Since Europe had been my field of study for twenty years and I knew many of its leaders, Zhou peppered me with questions about European politics, policies, and personalities. A number of Western European leaders had recently been invited to Peking to be lectured (to their amazement) about the importance of European unity, Atlantic cohesion, and a strong NATO defense. Later on I came to refer to China only half-jokingly as one of our better NATO allies.
Zhou, the student of balance of power, had difficulty coming to grips with European attitudes substantially at variance with his recollections of the Twenties. He could not understand why Europe was so reluctant to transform its economic strength into military power, or why a continent capable of defending itself would insist on relying on a distant ally. It was clear that China, if it had comparable resources, would not accept a similar dependency. Because Zhou judged Europe economically strong, militarily weak, and psychologically uncertain, he urged us to get our priorities straight. Transatlantic trade disputes, he insisted, must not be permitted to get in the way of defense cooperation against the Soviet Union. American policy in Europe had to be wise enough, Zhou argued, to distinguish between form and substance, between healthy assertions of independence and unreliable submissiveness. We needed to be especially solicitous of French President Georges Pompidou, he said; French claims to independence might irritate us but we should never forget that France was conducting the strongest foreign policy in Europe, which inevitably enhanced Western security. However annoying French tactics might prove from time to time, Zhou emphasized, we must never forget that a strong France also restrained German temptations toward Moscow. For Zhou shared the view of several of West Germany’s allies that Chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik (his Eastern treaties with the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Poland) contained the risk that what started as gestures of reconciliation would turn into a free-wheeling German nationalism that might demoralize Europe.
Zhou Enlai had high regard for the British Prime Minister, Edward Heath. The subject of Heath gave Zhou an opportunity for a homily on the general Chinese preference for conservative leaders over socialist ones; they were less likely to be taken in by Soviet blandishments and faced fewer internal pressures in supporting a strong defense. In fact, Zhou suspected that Europe, especially, might be tempted to channel Moscow’s “ill waters” toward the East. The Chinese clearly looked to the United States to prevent this danger, though how we might do so if they truly suspected us of the same tendency they never explained.
Once the common interest in containing Soviet power was firmly established, Indochina appeared in a different light. Zhou understood that if the Paris Agreement came apart, one of two unfavorable scenarios would unfold: Either the war would resume, and with it the Chinese dilemma of having to run risks in its relations with us on behalf of North Vietnam, a country that it profoundly distrusted. Or, even worse from Peking’s point of view, Hanoi would achieve hegemony in Indochina without a fight, discredit the United States internationally as a paper tiger, and create on China’s southern border a powerful Vietnamese state, with a long tradition of anti-Chinese feeling, dependent for its military supplies entirely on the Soviet Union.
The fact was that in Indochina, American and Chinese interests were nearly parallel. A unified Communist Vietnam dominant in Indochina was a strategic nightmare for China even if ideology prevented reality from being explicitly stated. Zhou Enlai was therefore sincere when he protested his commitment to the strict implementation of the Paris Agreement, for its result if successful would be to deny Hanoi hegemony and to buffer it with three independent states, Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam. Interestingly enough, he had always urged a ceasefire much like what we had achieved, the implication of which inevitably would permit the South Vietnamese government to survive. Unlike many of our domestic opponents, he never pressed us to overthrow Thieu and to install Hanoi’s puppet regime.
On Laos and Cambodia, Zhou began with his favorite device for dissociating from Hanoi, well tested in the crises of 1972. He disclaimed any special knowledge of events in these two countries — an unlikely proposition considering the meticulousness of Chinese preparation for meetings with American leaders and their historical relationship to Indochina. But the fiction permitted him to escape into ambiguity where he did not want to make his differences with Hanoi explicit. As it turned out, Zhou’s emphasis was practical. In Laos, Zhou hoped that the peace negotiations between the Royal Laotian Government and the Pathet Lao would prosper and result in a truly neutral coalition; China would welcome an early cease-fire. He spoke highly of the Laotian King Savang Vatthana (“a patriot and honest”) — not one of Hanoi’s favorites — and supported the legitimacy of neutralist Premier Souvanna Phouma. In other words, China favored what we did in Laos: a neutral, peaceful, non-Communist regime independent of Hanoi.
Zhou also lifted a corner of the veil that had mystified us about one of China’s strangest projects during the Vietnam war. For nearly a decade Chinese troops had been building a road in northern Laos through the forbidding mountains and jungles bordering the two countries. Up to 20,000 Chinese soldiers, protected by Chinese antiaircraft batteries, had been engaged in this project on the territory of another sovereign state. Souvanna often asserted to us that it was done against Laotian wishes; the Chinese claimed it was authorized by prior agreement. I was never able to disentangle the legal claims. Souvanna refused to state publicly that the road was unauthorized; whether out of fear or because he knew something he was reluctant to affirm, it was impossible to tell. Peking refused to substantiate its claim of Lao approval; again, we could not know whether because it wished to grant us no status to inquire into its activities close to its borders or because no unambiguous proof existed.
By February 1973, at any rate, the legal basis for Chinese road-building in Laos interested us much less than its strategic purpose. And on this subject Zhou was elliptically clear. For most of the war we had thought the road was intended to supply the Hanoi-controlled Pathet Lao. We had occasionally made plans — never carried out — to bomb it. Only gradually did it dawn on us that no supplies ever came down the road and that it sat on the flank of the advancing North Vietnamese. I put forward my theory through the device of telling Zhou of Thai fears that the road might be aimed at them. He replied that China was interested in good relations with Bangkok; road construction would continue, but the road would end well before the Thai border. If that was the case, the only purpose of the road could be to contain and if necessary to threaten Hanoi. For all the years of the Vietnam war, Peking had been building a foothold in Laos on the flank of the advancing North Vietnamese to counteract the possible domination of its presumed ally over all Indochina!
China’s emerging split with Hanoi became even clearer when we turned to Cambodia. China’s official position was similar to Hanoi’s: support for the Communist insurgency formally headed by Prince Norodom Sihanouk. But there the similarity ended. Hanoi treated Sihanouk as a barely tolerated appendage to the Communist Khmer Rouge; Zhou gave the Prince pride of place. Hence Zhou did not — indeed, could not — adopt the peremptory insistence of Pham Van Dong and Le Duc Tho that we overthrow the Lon Nol government in Phnom Penh. Zhou was too familiar with Cambodian conditions not to grasp that Sihanouk’s balancing act depended on the continued existence of two contending forces to be balanced. It was only natural for Zhou to say:
I do not mean that the forces that he [Lon Nol] represents do not count. . . . We understand our respective orientations. Because it is impossible for Cambodia to become completely red now. If that were attempted, it would result in even greater problems.
It was astonishing for a leader of the country that considered itself the fount of revolution to state that the complete communization of a country might magnify its problems. But it was the truth. Complete communization would render Sihanouk irrelevant, de
moralize Saigon, and virtually hand Indochina to Hanoi.
Zhou’s attitude suggested that we might yet reach a practical agreement. If the forces represented by Lon Nol could survive a settlement, there was something to talk about. If our basic precondition — that those who had relied on us not be turned over to Communist rule — was met, Sihanouk might well emerge in an important, perhaps decisive, role as a link between contending forces and as their balancer. I therefore proposed an immediate meeting between a representative of Lon Nol’s government and Sihanouk’s Prime Minister Penn Nouth to negotiate a coalition structure. We would not insist, I said, that Lon Nol himself participate in such a government so long as the forces he led were represented.
Zhou replied that Cambodia was a complicated problem. It was not simply a civil war, he said; outside forces (meaning the North Vietnamese) were deeply engaged. There were also many factions in the Sihanouk-led insurgent movement with different points of view (meaning that some — the Khmer Rouge — rejected any compromise). Not every element of the insurgency agreed to the central role for Sihanouk I had outlined (meaning that the Khmer Rouge wished to use him as a figurehead at best). Still, Zhou said he would pass our ideas to the interested parties, primarily Sihanouk, “in our [China’s] wording” — meaning that in conveying our position (flatly rejected by Hanoi’s leaders only a few days before) he would identify himself with it to a degree. After consulting with the parties, Zhou said, he would be in touch with us again. For the first time, China was approaching an active role in Indochinese peace negotiations.
There was every reason to do so. For China’s interest in Cambodia, so oddly parallel to our own, was much more urgent. What was involved for us in holding Hanoi to the Paris Agreement was above all our global credibility. What was involved for China was an issue of national security, the emergence at its southern border of a well-armed major power of close to fifty million people and a fanatic leadership allied with the Soviet Union. Cambodia in that sense was the linchpin of Indochina; its collapse spelled the disintegration of South Vietnam and hence hegemony for Hanoi. Zhou’s major concern, therefore, was less for a Khmer Rouge victory than for a structure that would best guarantee Cambodian independence and neutrality. He understood that we had a common problem: how to transcend the passions of the Cambodian parties lest in their fratricidal hatred they destroyed each other and all hope for the survival of their country.
We agreed on the objective, Zhou said. The question was how to accomplish it. I used the occasion to remind Zhou why a decent outcome was important to the United States, in the common interest, for reasons transcending Indochina:
[P]recipitate American withdrawal from Southeast Asia would be a disaster. . . . The most difficult task which President Nixon has in his second term is to maintain an American responsibility for the world balance of power, or for an anti-hegemonial policy by the United States. Therefore it is not desirable for the United States to be conducting policies which will support the isolationist element in America.
Zhou did not contradict this statement; in the months to come he acted as if he agreed with it.
The Liaison Offices
AS our policies and China’s were beginning to move in parallel, our clumsy means of communication became inadequate. Lacking diplomatic relations (because of America’s recognition of Taiwan), we had communicated in two channels. Most of the day-to-day business had gone via Paris, where Peking’s Ambassador was Huang Zhen, a former general and veteran of the Long March and a member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. I knew him well as a colleague of many secret encounters. His counterpart was our Ambassador to France, Arthur Watson. But in the Nixon Administration, at least in Nixon’s first term, especially sensitive messages to key foreign governments were passed in special “backchannels” directly under the control of the White House. We created a backchannel to China through China’s mission to the United Nations in New York, headed since 1971 by the distinguished Huang Hua (who was later elevated to Foreign Minister).
Initially Peking stressed that it preferred the Paris channel. The UN mission was to be used only for emergencies — perhaps it did not want us to have the benefits of a Chinese embassy without diplomatic recognition. Soon the necessity of rapid communication and the importance of candid discussion had caused both sides to stretch the definition of “emergency” more and more widely. From November 1971 until May 1973, I traveled secretly to New York on a score of occasions for face-to-face meetings with Huang Hua, usually in a CIA-provided “safe house” in mid-Manhattan, a seedy apartment whose mirrored walls suggested less prosaic purposes.
But this romantic environment left much to be desired in diplomatic logistics. Furthermore, if our joint strategic assessment was correct, Peking and Washington needed to show in dramatic ways that the two nations were in fact drawing closer. From Peking’s point of view — and, properly understood, from ours as well — such public gestures signaled that the United States would not be indifferent to military pressure against China.
I had come to Peking in February 1973 with no clear-cut plan for increasing visible contacts. I had intended to propose some modest step, such as an American trade office in China; we remained convinced that Peking still did not want to open any office in Washington so long as Taiwan’s representatives were there. Unexpectedly, Zhou Enlai decided to make a major advance that amounted to establishing de facto diplomatic relations between our two countries. In the best Middle Kingdom tradition he maneuvered so that it appeared that the proposal had come from me. It was flattering and gave me a stake in what had been accomplished. It was only marginally true.
As we talked about bilateral relations, I mentioned the utility of a permanent point of contact. Zhou allowed himself to seem mildly interested. He asked me whether I had any idea how to implement it. Consular representation did not interest him; it was too technical. Neither did the idea of a trade office in any of its variations strike a spark. He obviously wanted to emphasize political and not commercial relationships. So I dusted off the idea of a liaison office, which had been prepared for Hanoi and peremptorily rejected there. We had not yet, in Pham Van Dong’s view, earned the privilege of permanent association and regularized harassment. Zhou perked up. I was neither very specific nor did I presume to offer reciprocity in Washington, so certain were we that Peking’s envoys would never appear where Taiwan’s representatives were established.
Zhou said he would “consider” my “proposal” of a liaison office. It was not clear to me that I had formally made it. The next day he “accepted” it. He added a subtle wrinkle, however. China would insist on reciprocity: a Chinese liaison office should be established in Washington as well. He was prepared to discuss technical arrangements immediately — thus proving that he had given our “proposal” more thought than we had. The liaison offices as envisaged by him were, as an observer has remarked, “embassies in all but name.”2 Their personnel would have diplomatic immunity; they would have their own secure communications; their chiefs would be treated as ambassadors and they would conduct all exchanges between the two governments. They would not become part of the official diplomatic corps, but this had its advantages since it permitted special treatment without offending the established protocol order.
At first the plan was for professional diplomats of middle rank to head the liaison offices. Upon reflection Nixon and I decided to appoint David K. E. Bruce, one of our ablest ambassadors and most distinguished public figures. He would symbolize the importance we attached to the assignment; we would trust him completely with our most sensitive information. He would not chafe at the absence of routine chores by which a lesser man might have judged the importance of the job. And he had the wisdom and experience to ensure the success of the essential business of the liaison office: to maintain the maximum degree of harmony in the respective perceptions of two capitals professing contradictory ideologies, evolving from diametrically opposite histories, and now united by comparable
necessities.
Zhou Enlai reciprocated by designating Huang Zhen from Paris. I had come to like enormously this warm and sensitive man whose hobby was painting. Like all Chinese diplomats he was rigidly disciplined. Yet he always managed to convey the intangibles behind his instructions. He was masterly, especially during the most complicated part of the Vietnam negotiations, in conveying unimpaired Chinese goodwill without compromising his government with its fractious allies in Hanoi. He managed to instill trust even when we later had to go through some difficult periods caused by domestic pressures in both countries. Both sides demonstrated the importance they attached to the evolving relationship by sending their very best men to each other’s capital.
This was how we found a practical solution to the dilemma that our dispute over Taiwan prevented full normalization while our common concerns with the balance of power required regular and intimate political contact. The principle that formal diplomatic ties had to await an agreement over Taiwan remained intact. But the reality was that, when diplomatic relations were eventually established (on January 1, 1979), the event essentially consisted of changing the signs on the gates of the Liaison Offices to read “Embassy.” In less than two years we had advanced from tentative handwritten notes sent through intermediaries to close political relations even more intimate than most countries with formal diplomatic ties enjoyed with Peking.
A Meeting with Mao
DURING his lifetime, Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Communist Party of China, was shrouded in mystery and reverence much as were the emperors whom he replaced. He lived in a modest house within the walls of the old imperial palace, the “Forbidden City.” His pronouncements were cited with awe by our Chinese hosts, who seemed able to read precise meanings into his most obscure observations. Even Premier Zhou Enlai insisted that all critical decisions came from Mao, and he sometimes recessed a meeting with me on the excuse of needing guidance from the Chairman. When he returned with pithy, fire-breathing revolutionary rhetoric, it was highly plausible that it came, as Zhou said, on the specific orders of Mao and reflected his thought. Whether Zhou intended this as a measure of dissociation from the Chairman or to add emphasis to his remarks, I was never quite sure.
Years of Upheaval Page 10