by Jung Chang
after he finished eating, he slumped on the table … But suddenly he spoke, mumbling, and it took me a long time to work out that he wanted me to telephone the Foreign Ministry … “Invite the American team to China.” …
I was dumbstruck. I thought: this is just the opposite of what he had authorised during the day!
Mao’s standing orders were that:
his “words after taking sleeping pills don’t count.” Did they count now?
I was really in a dilemma … I must make him say it again.
… I pretended nothing was happening and went on eating … After a little while, Mao lifted his head and tried very hard to open his eyes and said to me:
“Little Wu … Why don’t you go and do what I asked you to do?”
Mao … only called me “Little Wu” when he was very serious.
I asked deliberately in a loud voice: “Chairman, what did you say to me? I was eating and didn’t hear you clearly. Please say it again.” So Mao repeated, word for word, haltingly, what he had said.
Wu then checked with Mao about the pills rule:
“You’ve taken sleeping pills. Do your words count?”
Mao waved at me: “Yes they do! Do it quickly. Otherwise there won’t be time.”
Mao kept himself awake until Wu returned with the news that she had done what he asked.
Mao’s change of mind changed his fortunes. The invitation, the first ever from Red China to an American group, caused a sensation. The fact that it was a sports team helped capture the world’s imagination. Chou En-lai switched on his charm, and his totalitarian regime’s meticulously orchestrated theater, to produce what Kissinger called “a dazzling welcome” for the Ping-Pong team. Glowing and fascinated reports littered the American and major Western press day after day. Mao the old newspaperman had hit exactly the right button. “Nixon,” wrote one commentator, “was truly amazed at how the story jumped off the sports pages and onto the front page.” With one move, Mao had created the climate in which a visit to China would be a political asset for Nixon in the runup to the 1972 presidential election.
“Nixon was excited to the point of euphoria,” Kissinger wrote, and “now wanted to skip the emissary stage lest it take the glow off his own journey.” By the end of May it was settled, in secret, that Nixon was going.
MAO HAD NOT only got Nixon, he had managed to conceal that this had been his objective. Nixon was coming thinking that he was the keener of the two. So when Kissinger made his first, secret, visit in July 1971 to pave the way for the president, he bore many and weighty gifts, and asked for nothing in return. The most startling offer concerned Taiwan, to which the US was bound by a mutual defense treaty. Nixon offered to drop Washington’s old ally, promising to accord full diplomatic recognition to Peking by January 1975, provided he was re-elected in 1972.
By the end of the trip Chou was talking as if Peking pocketing Taiwan was a matter of course. It was only at this point that Kissinger made a feeble gesture: “We hope very much that the Taiwan issue will be solved peacefully.” But he did not press Chou for a promise not to use force.
As part of the recognition package, Nixon offered to get Peking into the UN straight away: “you would get the China seat now,” Kissinger told Chou when proposing this behind-the-scenes fix, adding that “the President wanted me to discuss this matter with you before we adopted a position.”
And there was more, including an offer to tell the Chinese everything about America’s dealings with Russia. Kissinger: “Specially, I am prepared to give you any information you may wish to know regarding any bilateral negotiations we are having with the Soviet Union on such issues as SALT [Strategic Arms Limitation Talks].” A few months later Kissinger told the Chinese: “we tell you about our conversations with the Soviets; we do not tell the Soviets about our conversations with you.”
Along with this came top-level intelligence. Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller was reported as being “almost mesmerised at hearing … the amount of sensitive information that we had made available to the Chinese.” The intelligence included information about Soviet troop deployments on China’s border.
Kissinger also made two commitments on Indochina: to pull out all US forces, mentioning a twelve-month deadline; and to abandon the South Vietnamese regime, promising to withdraw “unilaterally” even if there were no negotiations — and that US troops would not return. “After a peace is made,” Kissinger said, “we will be 10,000 miles away, and [Hanoi] will still be there.” Kissinger even made a promise that “most, if not all, American troops” would be out of Korea before the end of Nixon’s next term, without even trying to extract any guarantee that Mao would not support another Communist invasion of South Korea.
Mao was being given a lot, and on a platter. Kissinger specifically said that he was not asking China to stop giving aid to Vietnam, and Mao was not even requested to soften his bellicose anti-American tone, either in the world at large or during the meetings. The minutes show that Chou was hectoring (“you should answer that question … you must answer that question”), and constantly referring to “your oppression, your subversion, and your intervention.” He in effect suggested that Nixon must make more and more concessions for the privilege of coming to China, and being allowed to recognize Peking. Kissinger did not ask for reciprocal concessions. Chou’s outlandish claim that China was not “aggressive”—“because of our new [Communist] system,” no less — went unchallenged. And Chou’s reference to American “cruelties” in Vietnam earned no reproof about Mao’s cruelties in China. On a different occasion, when North Vietnam’s negotiator had obliquely criticized the Nixon administration, Kissinger had shot back: “You are the representative of one of the most tyrannical governments on this planet …” Now, Kissinger described Chou’s presentation as “very moving.”
When Mao heard the report of the first day’s talks, his ego soared, and he remarked to his top diplomats that America was “changing from monkey to man, not quite man yet, the tail is still there … but it is no longer a monkey, it’s a chimpanzee, and its tail is not very long.” “America should start its life anew,” he proclaimed, expanding on his Darwinian approach, viewing America as a slowly evolving lower primate. “This is evolution!” Chou, for his part, compared Nixon to a loose woman “tarting herself up and offering herself at the door.” It was now, during this first Kissinger visit, that Mao drew the conclusion that Nixon could be manipulated, and that Peking could get a lot out of America without having to modify its tyranny, or its anti-American ranting.
IMMEDIATELY AFTER KISSINGER’S secret visit, it was announced that Nixon had been invited to China and had accepted. Kissinger returned to Peking in October 1971 to prepare for the president’s visit. His second trip coincided with the annual UN vote on China’s seat, which Taiwan held, and the public presence in Peking of the president’s top adviser turned the tide. On 25 October, Peking displaced Taipei in the UN, giving Mao a seat, and a veto, on the Security Council.
This was just over a month after the flight and death of Lin Biao. The news that there had been a plot to kill him had left Mao in a state of deep depression. Taiwan’s defeat and Nixon’s coming visit lifted his spirits immeasurably. Laughing broadly and joking, he talked for nearly three hours in full flow to his top diplomats. Looking at the UN vote, he declared that: “Britain, France, Holland, Belgium, Canada, Italy — they have all become Red Guards …”
Before China’s delegates left for the UN, Mao made a point of reminding them that they must continue to treat the USA as Public Enemy No. 1, and fiercely denounce it “by name, an absolute must.” He wanted to make his debut on the world stage as the anti-American champion, using the UN as a new platform.
Nine days before Nixon was scheduled to arrive in China on 21 February 1972, Mao passed out, and came very close to death. The prospect of Nixon’s imminent arrival helped to restore him. New shoes and clothes were made for him, as his body had become swollen. The sitting-room where he w
as to receive Nixon had been converted into a makeshift ward, with a large bed and medical facilities. Staff moved some of these out of the room, and screened off the bed and the other medical equipment. The vast room was lined with old books, which impressed the Americans, who did not know that many were loot from brutal house raids in the not-so-distant past.
On the morning when Nixon arrived, Mao was tremendously excited, and kept checking on the president’s progress. As soon as he heard that Nixon had reached the guest house, the Imperial Fishing Villa, Mao said he wanted to see him, straightaway. Nixon was getting ready to take a shower, when Chou, behaving “slightly impatiently,” Kissinger noted, hustled them to be on their way.
During the relatively brief 65-minute meeting (the only one between Nixon and Mao on this trip), Mao parried every attempt to engage him in serious issues. This was not because he had been ill, but because he did not want to leave a record of his positions in the hands of the Americans. Nothing must damage his claim to be the global anti-American leader. He had invited Nixon to Peking to promote that claim, not to waive it. So when Nixon proposed discussing “current issues like Taiwan, Vietnam and Korea,” Mao acted as if he were above such lesser chores. “Those questions are not questions to be discussed in my place,” he said, conveying an impression of lofty detachment. “They should be discussed with the Premier,” adding that: “All those troublesome problems I don’t want to get into very much.” Then he cut the Americans short by saying: “As a suggestion, may I suggest you do a little less briefing?” When Nixon persisted in talking about finding “common ground” and building a “world structure,” Mao ignored him, turned to Chou to ask what time it was, and said: “Haven’t we talked enough now?”
Mao was especially careful not to pay Nixon any compliments, while Nixon and Kissinger both flattered Mao fulsomely. Nixon told Mao: “The Chairman’s writings moved a nation and have changed the world.” Mao returned no thanks and made only one, condescending, comment on Nixon: “Your book, Six Crises, is not a bad book.”
Instead, Mao used banter to put Nixon and Kissinger down, exploring how much they would swallow. When Nixon said: “I have read the Chairman’s poems and speeches, and I knewhe was a professional philosopher,” Mao turned away to look at Kissinger, and started this exchange.
MAO: He is a doctor of philosophy?
NIXON: He is a doctor of brains.
MAO: What about asking him to be the main speaker today?
Mao kept disrupting his exchanges with Nixon to make remarks like: “We two must not monopolise the whole show. It won’t do if we don’t let Dr. Kissinger have a say.” This transgressed both protocol and common politeness, and was definitely slighting Nixon. Mao would never have dared to talk this way to Stalin. But, having upgraded Kissinger at Nixon’s expense, Mao did not really invite Kissinger’s views. He merely engaged in repartee about Kissinger using “pretty girls as a cover.”
Mao clearly felt he could push Nixon quite far. At the end of the visit there was to be a joint communiqué. Mao dictated one in which he could denounce America. “Aren’t they talking peace, security … and what not?” he said to Chou. “We will do the opposite and talk revolution, talk liberating the oppressed nations and people all over the world …” So the communiqué took the form of each side stating its own position. The Chinese used their space for a tirade against America (though not by name). The American side did not say one word critical of Mao’s regime, going no further than a vague and much qualified platitude about supporting “individual freedom.”
IN SPITE OF all his efforts to come across as the champion of anti-Americanism, Mao caught a lot of flak from his old allies. The fiercest came from Albania, which mattered to Mao because it was the only Eastern European regime he had detached from Russia’s orbit. Albania’s dictator, Hoxha, penned Mao a nineteen-page letter expressing his fury over what he called “this shitty business.” Actually, Hoxha cunningly used rhetoric to extract colossal amounts of extra aid, basically saying: You are consorting with the enemy, but you can buy our silence for more money. Mao paid up.
The biggest problem was Vietnam, which counted far more than Albania internationally. The Vietnamese were worried that Mao was trying to use them as a bargaining chip with the US. When Chou went to Hanoi immediately after Kissinger’s first visit, to explain Peking’s move, he got an earful from North Vietnam’s leader. “Vietnam is our country,” Le Duan protested; “you have no right to discuss the question of Vietnam with the United States.” After Nixon’s visit, Chou returned to Hanoi, and got an even worse reception. Prince Sihanouk was there at the time, having decamped from Peking in indignation during Nixon’s stay in China. He has left a rare picture of a flustered Chou, who, he records, “looked worn and still appeared heated by the discussion he just had with his North Vietnamese ‘comrades.’ He seemed irritated,” and “not himself.” Mao tried to salvage some influence by pouring in even more aid, which rose to unprecedented levels from 1971, peaking in 1974.
All these bribes to keep old allies quiet meant a tighter squeeze on the Chinese population. Nor did its extra burdens stop there. As more and more countries recognized Peking in the wake of Nixon’s visit, the number of states to which China sent aid jumped from 31 prior to 1970 to 66. On tiny and immeasurably more prosperous Malta (pop. c. 300,000), Mao lavished no less than US$25 million in April 1972. Its prime minister, Dom Mintoff, returned from China sporting a Mao badge.
Mao often had to pay over the odds to buy himself back into favor with states he had earlier tried to subvert. One former target, President Mobutu of Zaïre, told us how generously he was funded by Mao, who — unlike the IMF and the World Bank — let him defer loans indefinitely, or repay them in worthless Zaïrean currency. In the years 1971–75, foreign aid took up a staggering average of 5.88 percent of China’s entire expenditure, peaking at 6.92 percent in 1973—by far the highest percentage in the world, and at least seventy times the US level.
While Mao dished out money and food, and built expensive underground railway systems, shipyards and infrastructure for countries far richer than China, most of the 900 million Chinese hovered just above survival levels. In many areas, peasants recall that the hungriest years after the Great Famine of 1958–61 were those from 1973 to Mao’s death in 1976—the years immediately after Nixon’s visit.
Nixon has often been credited with opening the door to China. Inasmuch as a number of Western statesmen and businessmen, plus some press and tourists, were able to enter China, he did increase the Western presence in China. But he did not open the door of—much less from—China, and the increased Western presence did not have any appreciable impact on Chinese society while Mao was alive. Mao made sure that for the vast majority of its population, China remained a tightly sealed prison. The only people who benefited at all from the rapprochement were a small elite. Some of these were allowed to see relatives from abroad — under heavy supervision. And a tiny number could lay hands on the half-dozen or so contemporary Western books translated in classified editions, one of which was Nixon’s own Six Crises. From 1973 some foreign-language students were sent abroad, but the very few who were lucky enough to be allowed out had to be politically ultra-reliable, and lived and worked under the closest surveillance, forbidden even to step out of their residence unescorted.
The population as a whole remained rigidly quarantined from the few foreigners allowed into China, who were subject to rigorous control. Any unauthorized conversation with them could bring catastrophe to the locals involved. The lengths to which the regime would go were extraordinary. For Nixon’s one-day visit to Shanghai, which coincided with Chinese New Year, the traditional occasion for family reunions (like Christmas), thousands of rusticated youths who were visiting their families were expelled back to their villages of exile, as a precaution against the extremely remote possibility of any of them trying to complain to the president.
The real beneficiaries of Nixon’s visit were Mao himself, and his regime. F
or his own electoral ends, Nixon de-demonized Mao for mainstream opinion in the West. Briefing White House staff on his return, Nixon spoke of the “dedication” of Mao’s cynical coterie, whom Kissinger called “a group of monks … who have … kept their revolutionary purity.” Nixon’s men asserted, falsely, that “under Mao the lives of the Chinese masses have been greatly improved.” Nixon’s favorite evangelist, Billy Graham, lauded Mao’s virtues to British businessmen. Kissinger suggested that Mao’s callous crew would “challenge us in a moral way.” The result was an image of Mao a whole lot further from the truth than the one that Nixon himself had helped purvey as a fierce anti-Communist in the 1950s.
Mao became not merely a credible international figure, but one with incomparable allure. World statesmen beat a path to his door. A meeting with Mao was, and sometimes still is, regarded as the highlight of many a career, and life. When the call came for Mexico’s president Luis Echeverria, his entourage literally fought to join the audience group. The Australian ambassador told us that he did not dare go to the toilet, even though his bladder was bursting, in case the privileged few should suddenly leave without him. Japan’s prime minister Kakuei Tanaka, on the other hand, relieved himself at Mao’s place. Mao escorted him to the lavatory, and waited for him outside the door.
Statesmen put up with slights that they would never have condoned from other leaders. Not only were they not told in advance if they would see Mao, they were summoned peremptorily at the moment most convenient to the chairman, whatever they were doing, even in the middle of a meal. Canada’s prime minister Pierre Trudeau, who had not even asked to see Mao, suddenly found himself being bossed about by Chou—“Well, we have to adjourn now. I have other business and so do you”—without even telling him what for.