In my meeting with Ceauescu the next day, I said that, even short of the ultimate ideal of re-establishing full diplomatic relations with China, there could be an exchange of high-level personal representatives. He agreed to pass this word along to Peking, and this was the beginning of the “Romanian channel.”
A month later, on November 22, I dictated a memorandum for Kissinger:
On a very confidential basis, I would like for you to have prepared in your staff—without any notice to people who might leak—a study of where we are to go with regard to the admission of Red China to the UN. It seems to me that the time is approaching sooner than we might think when we will not have the votes to block admission.
The question we really need an answer to is how we can develop a position in which we can keep our commitments to Taiwan and yet will not be rolled by those who favor admission of Red China.
There is no hurry on this study but within two or three months I would like to see what you come up with.
In fact, things were to move much faster than I had anticipated.
On December 9 Chou En-lai sent word through President Yahya that my representative would be welcome in Peking for a discussion of the question of Taiwan. Chou stressed that the message did not come from him alone but had been approved by Chairman Mao and by Lin Piao, still a powerful figure at that time. With characteristic subtlety, Chou concluded with a play on words. “We have had messages from the United States from different sources in the past,” he said, “but this is the first time that the proposal has come from a Head, through a Head, to a Head.” Through Pakistani Ambassador Agha Hilaly we replied that any meeting should not be limited to a discussion of Taiwan, and we proposed that Chinese and American representatives meet in Pakistan to discuss the possibility of a high-level meeting in Peking in the future.
On December 18, American writer Edgar Snow had an interview with his old friend Mao Tse-tung. Mao told him that the Foreign Ministry was considering the question of allowing Americans of all political colorations—left, right, and center—to visit China. Snow asked whether a rightist like Nixon, who represented the “monopoly capitalists,” would be permitted to come. Mao replied that I would be welcomed, because as President I was, after all, the one with whom the problems between China and the United States would have to be solved. Mao said that he would be happy to talk to the President, whether he came as a tourist or as President. We learned of Mao’s statement within a few days after he made it.
Early in 1971 the Romanian channel became active. Ambassador Corneliu Bogdan called on Kissinger with the news that after our conversation in October, Ceausescu had sent his Vice Premier to Peking, and Chou En-lai had given him a message for me. It read:
The communication from the U.S. President is not new. There is only one outstanding issue between us—the U.S. occupation of Taiwan. The P.R.C. has attempted to negotiate on this issue in good faith for fifteen years. If the U.S. has a desire to settle the issue and a proposal for its solution, the P.R.C. will be prepared to receive a U.S. special envoy in Peking. This message has been reviewed by Chairman Mao and by Lin Piao.
Chou En-lai had also commented that in view of the fact that I had visited Bucharest in 1969 and Belgrade in 1970, I would be welcome in Peking.
We were encouraged by this message. As Kissinger noted, the tone was reassuringly free of invective, and the absence of any references to Vietnam indicated that Peking would not consider the war an insurmountable obstacle to U.S.-Chinese rapprochement.
I did my best to make sure that the Lam Son operation at the beginning of 1971 did not cut off this budding relationship as the Cambodian operation had threatened to do the year before. In a press conference on February 17 I stressed that our intervention in Laos should not be interpreted as any threat to China. In Peking the People’s Daily, the official government newspaper, vehemently rejected my statement: “By spreading the flames of war to the door of China, U.S. imperialism is on a course posing a grave menace to China. . . . Nixon has indeed fully laid bare his ferocious features, and reached the zenith in arrogance.”
On February 25, 1971, five days after this tirade was published, I submitted to Congress my second Foreign Policy Report. This time a section dealing with the People’s Republic of China canvassed the possibilities for an expanded relationship between our nations and reflected the eventuality of Peking’s admission to the UN. It concluded:
In the coming year, I will carefully examine what further steps we might take to create broader opportunities for contacts between the Chinese and American peoples, and how we might remove needless obstacles to the realization of these opportunities. We hope for, but will not be deterred by a lack of, reciprocity.
We should, however, be totally realistic about the prospects. The People’s Republic of China continues to convey to its own people and to the world its determination to cast us in the devil’s role. Our modest efforts to prove otherwise have not reduced Peking’s doctrinaire enmity toward us. . . . So long as Peking continues to be adamant for hostility, there is little we can do by ourselves to improve the relationship. What we can do, we will.
On March 15 the State Department announced the termination of all restrictions on the use of American passports for travel to mainland China. On April 6 a breakthrough occurred in a totally unexpected way: we received word from the American Embassy in Tokyo that an American table tennis team competing in the world championships in Japan had been invited to visit the P.R.C. in order to play several exhibition matches.
I was as surprised as I was pleased by this news. I had never expected that the China initiative would come to fruition in the form of a Ping-Pong team. We immediately approved the acceptance of the invitation, and the Chinese responded by granting visas to several Western newsmen to cover the team’s tour.
On April 14 I announced the termination of the twenty-year-old embargo on trade between us. I also ordered a series of new steps taken for easing currency and shipping controls applying to the P.R.C. The same day Chou En-lai personally welcomed our table tennis players in Peking.
When I spoke to the convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, a few days later, I was asked about the meaning of the recent events involving the P.R.C. I replied that we were seeing an ordered policy process beginning to bear fruit. I said that I would have to disappoint the editors if they were looking for hot head-line news, but the very nature of the new relationship made that impossible. I concluded with an observation that I am sure many of my listeners dismissed as simply a personal digression; in fact, it was a direct clue.
“The other day was Easter Sunday,” I began. “Both of my daughters, Tricia and Julie, were there—and Tricia with Eddie Cox—I understand they are getting married this June—and Julie and David Eisenhower.
“And the conversation got around to travel and also, of course, with regard to honeymoon travel and the rest. They were asking me where would you like to go? Where do you think we ought to go?
“So, I sat back and thought a bit and said, ‘Well, the place to go is to Asia.’ I said, ‘I hope that sometime in your life, sooner rather than later, you will be able to go to China to see the great cities, and the people, and all of that, there.’
“I hope they do. As a matter of fact, I hope sometime I do. I am not sure that it is going to happen while I am in office. I will not speculate with regard to either of the diplomatic points. It is premature to talk about recognition. It is premature also to talk about a change of our policy with regard to the United Nations.”
At this point a bull in the form of Ted Agnew inadvertently careened into this diplomatic China shop. During a long postmidnight session with a group of reporters in his hotel room after he arrived for the Republican Governors Conference in Williamsburg, Virginia, Agnew told them that the favorable media coverage of the table tennis team’s visit to Peking had helped the Communist Chinese government score a propaganda triumph. He noted that some reporters had sent bac
k almost lyrical descriptions of the contented and productive lives led by the residents of Peking.
Agnew had expressed his reservations about our trade and visa overtures to the Chinese Communists at a recent NSC meeting, but I had never imagined that he would discuss his doubts with reporters. I told Haldeman to get word to Agnew to stay off this topic.
The tempo began to speed up considerably. On April 27 Ambassador Hilaly came to the White House with another message from Chou En-lai via President Yahya. After the ritual insistence that Taiwan was the principal and prerequisite problem, which had to be resolved before any relations could be restored, the message added that the Chinese were now interested in direct discussions as means of reaching that settlement, and therefore “the Chinese government reaffirms its willingness to receive publicly in Peking a special envoy of the President of the U.S. (for instance, Mr. Kissinger) or the U.S. Secretary of State or even the President of the U.S. himself for a direct meeting and discussion.”
In some important respects this message raised as many problems as it solved. Taiwan was still mentioned as the central issue. Further, the Chinese spoke of publicly receiving an envoy in Peking. I felt that in order for the initiative to have any chance of succeeding, it would have to be kept totally secret until the final arrangements for the presidential visit had been agreed upon. With advance warning conservative opposition might mobilize in Congress and scuttle the entire effort.
Kissinger and I spent the next few days trying to decide who to send to Peking for these initial talks.
The best man, we agreed, would be David Bruce, but we ruled him out because he was our negotiator in Paris and the Chinese would undoubtedly resent our sending someone so closely identified with Vietnam. We also considered Cabot Lodge, but he was even more identified with Vietnam than was Bruce.
“Well, what about Bill then?” I asked. “If we send the Secretary of State, they’ll sure as hell know we’re serious.” Kissinger rolled his eyes upward. I knew that he would have opposed Rogers on personal grounds regardless, but in this case he had good policy reasons. The Secretary of State had too high a profile for these first talks. Besides, there was almost no way he could go to China secretly.
Finally I said, “Henry, I think you will have to do it.”
He objected that, like Rogers, he had too much visibility.
I said, “I am confident that a man who can come and go undetected in Paris can get in and out of Peking before anyone finds out.”
At my news conference on April 29 I gave another major clue to what was afoot. But once again even the most rigorous monitors and analysts of Nixon rhetoric failed to pick up the point I was making.
Since none of the reporters had asked me anything about the specific possibility of a visit to China, I asked it of myself. At the end of my reply to a general question about our China policy, I said, “I would finally suggest—I know this question may come up if I don’t answer it now—I hope, and, as a matter of fact, I expect to visit mainland China sometime in some capacity—I don’t know what capacity. But that indicates what I hope for the long term. And I hope to contribute to a policy in which we can have a new relationship with mainland China.”
About the same time the issue of Life containing Edgar Snow’s December interview with Mao appeared on the newsstands. Now it was public that Mao would welcome me to Peking.
Messages and signals had been going back and forth for more than two years. We had proceeded carefully and cautiously through the Yahya and Romanian channels. Now Kissinger and I agreed that we had reached a point at which we had to take the chance of making a major proposal, or risk slipping back into another long round of tentative probing. I decided that the time had come to take the big step and propose a presidential visit.
On May 10, therefore, Kissinger called in Ambassador Hilaly and gave him a message for Chou En-lai via President Yahya. It stated that because of the importance I attached to the normalizing of relations between the two countries, I was prepared to accept Chou’s invitation to visit Peking. I proposed that Kissinger undertake a secret visit in advance of my trip in order to arrange an agenda and begin a preliminary exchange of views.
The die was cast. There was nothing left to do but wait for Chou’s reply. If we had acted too soon, if we had not established a sufficiently strong foundation, or if we had overestimated the ability of Mao and Chou to deal with their internal opposition to such a visit, then all our long careful efforts would be wasted. I might even have to be prepared for serious international embarrassment if the Chinese decided to reject my proposal and then publicize it.
For almost two weeks we waited, wondering what kind of decision-making process was under way in Peking.
Then on May 31 we received a message from President Yahya Khan through Ambassador Hilaly. It read:
1. There is a very encouraging and positive response to the last message.
2. Please convey to Mr. Kissinger that the meeting will take place on Chinese soil for which travel arrangements will be made by us.
3. Level of meeting will be as proposed by you.
4. Full message will be transmitted by safe means.
Two nights later, we gave a state dinner for President Somoza of Nicaragua. After Pat and I had finished having coffee with our guests in the Blue Room, I went to the Lincoln Sitting Room to do some paperwork and reading. In less than five minutes Kissinger walked in. He must have run most of the way from the West Wing, because he was out of breath.
He handed me two sheets of typewritten paper. “This just arrived in the Pakistani Embassy pouch,” he said. “Hilaly rushed it over, and he was so excited when he gave it to me that his hands were shaking.”
Kissinger stood beaming as I read the message:
Premier Chou En-lai has seriously studied President Nixon’s messages of April 29, May 17, and May 22, 1971, and has reported with much pleasure to Chairman Mao Tse-tung that President Nixon is prepared to accept his suggestion to visit Peking for direct conversations with the leaders of the People’s Republic of China. Chairman Mao Tse-tung has indicated that he welcomes President Nixon’s visit and looks forward to that occasion when he may have direct conversations with His Excellency the President, in which each side would be free to raise the principal issue of concern to it. . . .
Premier Chou En-lai welcomes Dr. Kissinger to China as the U.S. representative who will come in advance for a preliminary secret meeting with high level Chinese officials to prepare and make necessary arrangements for President Nixon’s visit to Peking.
“This is the most important communication that has come to an American President since the end of World War II,” Kissinger said when I had finished reading.
For nearly an hour we talked about the China initiative—what it might mean to America and how delicately it must be handled lest we lose it. It was close to midnight before we noticed the time, and Kissinger rose to go.
“Henry, I know that, like me, you never have anything to drink after dinner, and it is very late,” I said, “but I think this is one of those occasions when we should make an exception. Wait here just a minute.”
I got up and walked down the corridor to the small family kitchen at the other end of the second floor. In one of the cabinets I found an unopened bottle of very old Courvoisier brandy that someone had given us for Christmas. I tucked it under my arm and took two large snifters from the glass cupboard. As we raised our glasses, I said, “Henry, we are drinking a toast not to ourselves personally or to our success, or to our administration’s policies which have made this message and made tonight possible. Let us drink to generations to come who may have a better chance to live in peace because of what we have done.”
As I write them now, my words sound rather formal, but the moment was one not just of high personal elation, but of a profound mutual understanding that this truly was a moment of historical significance.
On July 6 I flew to Kansas City to address a large group of Midwestern news media ex
ecutives attending one of the periodic briefings on administration policies that we held in different parts of the country.
Kissinger was in the middle of a ten-day mission to the Far East and just days away from his secret trip to Peking. Before he got there I wanted to place on the record an outline of the reasons for approaching China.
I told the gathering that the potential of China, though obscured to most American observers by its isolation, was such that no sensible foreign policy could ignore or exclude it. “That is the reason why I felt that it was essential that this administration take the first steps toward ending the isolation of mainland China from the world community,” I said. Despite the recent flurry of activity I said that I did not hold out any great hopes of rapid advances in our relations. “What we have done is simply opened the door—opened the door for travel, opened the door for trade,” I said. “Now the question is whether there will be other doors opened on their part. . . . Mainland China, outside the world community, completely isolated, with its leaders not in communication with world leaders, would be a danger to the whole world that would be unacceptable, unacceptable to us and unacceptable to others as well. So consequently, this step must be taken now. Others must be taken, very precisely, very deliberately, as there is reciprocation on the other side.”
My speech received relatively little attention in Kansas City. As we were to learn later, however, it received a great deal of attention in Peking.
We arranged that Kissinger would fly to Vietnam for consultations early in July and then stop in Pakistan on the way back. There he would develop a stomachache that would require him to stay in bed and not be seen by the press. Then, with President Yahya’s cooperation, he would be taken to an airport where a Pakistani jet would fly him over the mountains into China. The stomachache was scheduled for July 9-11. Kissinger would then fly to San Clemente to report to me.
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