RN

by Richard Nixon

  Kissinger’s trip was given the codename Polo after Marco Polo, another Western traveler who made history by journeying to China. Everything went without a hitch. His indisposition in Islamabad received only minor attention from reporters covering him. They accepted the story that he would be confined to bed for at least a couple of days and began making arrangements for their own entertainment.

  Because of the need for complete secrecy and the lack of any direct communications facilities between Peking and Washington, I knew that we would have no word from Kissinger while he was in China. Even after he had returned to Pakistan it would still be important to maintain secrecy, so before Kissinger left, we agreed on a single codeword—Eureka—which he would use if his mission were successful and the presidential trip had been arranged.

  Although I was confident that the Chinese were as ready for my trip as we were, I did not underestimate the tremendous problems that Taiwan and Vietnam posed for both sides, and I tried to discipline myself not to expect anything lest I begin to expect too much.

  On July 11 Al Haig, who knew our codeword, phoned me to say that a cable from Kissinger had arrived.

  “What’s the message?” I asked.

  “Eureka,” he replied.

  Kissinger’s description of his time in China was fascinating. The Chinese had agreed to virtually everything we proposed regarding the arrangements and schedule for my trip. The preliminary talks had covered the whole range of issues and problems that lay between our two countries. He found the Chinese tough, idealistic, fanatical, single-minded, remarkable, and uncomfortably aware of the philosophical contradictions involved in their arranging a visit by their capitalist archenemy. “These were men in some anguish,” Kissinger said.

  Most of all, Kissinger was impressed by Chou En-lai. The two men spent seventeen hours together in meetings and informal conversation, and Kissinger found that “he was equally at home in philosophic sweeps, historical analysis, tactical probing, light repartee. His command of facts, and in particular his knowledge of American events, was remarkable.” At one point Chou asked about my Kansas City speech, and Kissinger had to admit that he had read only the press reports. The next morning at breakfast Kissinger found a copy of my speech, with Chou’s underlinings and marginal notations in Chinese, lying on the table with a note requesting that he return it because it was Chou’s only copy.

  In a brilliant summing up of his long report after the trip, Kissinger wrote:

  We have laid the groundwork for you and Mao to turn a page in history. But we should have no illusions about the future. Profound differences and years of isolation yawn between us and the Chinese. They will be tough before and during the summit on the question of Taiwan and other major issues. And they will prove implacable foes if our relations turn sour. My assessment of these people is that they are deeply ideological, close to fanatic in the intensity of their beliefs. At the same time they display an inward security that allows them, within the framework of their principles, to be meticulous and reliable in dealing with others. . . .

  Our dealings, both with the Chinese and others, will require reliability, precision, finesse. If we can master this process, we will have made a revolution.

  On July 15 I made the televised announcement that I would be going to Peking. Most of the initial reactions were overwhelmingly positive. Max Lerner wrote, “The politics of surprise leads through the Gates of Astonishment into the Kingdom of Hope.”

  Some commentators joined the more partisan Democrats in tempering their praise with speculation that my motives had been political. Most of the serious criticism, however, came, as I had expected, from the conservatives. Congressman John Schmitz of California charged me with “surrendering to international communism” by accepting the invitation. George Wallace did not actually condemn the trip, but he warned me against “begging, pleading, and groveling” before the Chinese Communists. He told reporters that he suspected the trip was actually a diversionary tactic to get people’s minds off “inflation and the high cost of pork chops.”

  The reaction abroad to our China initiative was generally favorable, but there were some understandable reservations. Our friends in Taiwan were terribly distressed. However, they were reassured that we did not withdraw our recognition of their government and did not renounce our mutual defense commitment. The Japanese presented a particularly difficult problem. They resented the fact that they had not been informed in advance, but we had no other choice. We could not have informed them without informing others, thus risking a leak that might have aborted the entire initiative.

  As soon as I returned to Washington from San Clemente, I held a briefing for the bipartisan leadership in the Cabinet Room. I stressed the need for secrecy, because the more we had to put things into words, the less freedom of movement we would have in our dealings with the Chinese. I understood how difficult it would be for many of them, but I had to ask that they trust me. To a man, they came through splendidly. John Stennis said, “The President has made a good move; now it’s up to him to follow through, and I’m going to back him up.”

  Mike Mansfield said, that the China initiative was like the Manhattan Project: secrecy was absolutely essential to the success of each.

  Kissinger returned to China on October 20 for Polo II. This time his six-day trip was publicly announced. Its purpose was to prepare the agenda for the meetings I would have with the Chinese leaders and to work out the basic language of the communiqué that would be issued at the end of my trip.

  The draft communiqué that I had approved for submission to the Chinese had followed the standard diplomatic formula of using vague and conciliatory language to patch over the most heated and insoluble problems.

  Kissinger was somewhat taken aback when Chou stated that our approach to the communiqué was unacceptable. He said that unless it expressed our fundamental differences, the wording would have an “untruthful appearance.” He dismissed our proposed draft as the sort of banal document the Soviets would sign without meaning it and without planning to observe it.

  The Chinese then handed Kissinger a counterdraft that took his breath away. If ours had smoothed over differences, theirs underscored them. With great self-control, Kissinger read it and calmly said, “We cannot have an American President sign a document which says that revolution has become the irresistible trend of history, or that ‘the people’s revolutionary struggles are just’!”

  The Chinese seemed disconcerted, but Kissinger continued. We could not allow any references to racial discrimination; we opposed it as much as did the Chinese, but mention in this communiqué would be interpreted as criticism of American domestic problems. Similarly, their proposed references to China as “the reliable rear area” of North Vietnam, and to Chinese support for the Indochinese peoples’ “fighting to the end for the attainment of their goal” were unacceptable phrasing while Americans were fighting or being held prisoner in Indochina.

  After this initial session, Kissinger found that the Chinese were willing to compromise on a communiqué that would state the underlying goals of the summit while retaining each side’s basic position expressed in noninflammatory language.

  Kissinger summed up these long and sometimes difficult sessions by saying that the Chinese were willing to pursue their objectives by banking on the thrust of history rather than on the specific wording of a communiqué. “They will continue to be tough,” he wrote, “but they essentially accept our arguments that we can often do more than we say, that the process must be gradual, and that some issues must be left to evolutionary pressures. This involves great risks for them, at home and abroad, given their past public demands and dissidents in their own camp.”

  Kissinger reported that toward the end of the talks Chou had specifically pointed out that they could be in real trouble if my administration was not in power. “He shares what he described as your wish that you preside over the 200th anniversary of America’s birth.”

  While Kissinger was in Chin
a on Polo II, the United Nations General Assembly moved to vote on the question of admitting the People’s Republic of China as a member nation. I instructed Kissinger to stay away an extra day so that he would not have just arrived home when this controversial vote was taken.

  As early as August we had publicly withdrawn our opposition to consideration of this question and indicated our support of the concept of the “two Chinas,” Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China on Taiwan and the Communist People’s Republic of China, each to have membership in the world organization.

  It had not been easy for me to take a position that would be so disappointing to our old friend and loyal ally, Chiang. I had learned as early as the spring, however, that the traditional vote bloc opposed to Peking’s admission had irreparably broken up, and several of our erstwhile supporters had decided to support Peking at the next vote. Personally, I have never believed in bowing to the inevitable just because it is inevitable. In this case, however, I felt that the national security interests of the United States lay in developing our relations with the P.R.C. Besides, regardless of what happened in the UN, I was determined to honor our treaty obligations by continuing our military and economic support for an independent Taiwan.

  On October 25 the UN voted 76 to 35, with 17 abstentions, to expel Taiwan and to admit the P.R.C. as the sole government representing China. This went much further than we had expected: we had thought that our greatest problem would be in convincing Taiwan to stay after the P.R.C. had been admitted to equal status.

  A few days before leaving for China, I invited the great French writer and philosopher André Malraux to the White House.

  Malraux had known Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai in China during the 1930s and had kept up intermittent contact with them through the years. His description of the Chinese leaders in his Anti-Memoirs was among the most valuable and fascinating reading I had done in preparation for my trip.

  Malraux was then seventy years old. Time had not dimmed the brilliance of his thought or the quickness of his wit. Even after his elegant French had been filtered through a State Department interpreter, his language was original and striking.

  During the talk I had with him in the Oval Office, I asked whether just a few years ago he would have thought that the Chinese leaders would agree to meet with an American President.

  “This meeting was inevitable,” he replied.

  “Even with the Vietnam war?” I asked.

  “Ah yes, even so. China’s action over Vietnam is an imposture. There was a period when the friendship between China and Russia was cloudless, when they allowed Russian arms to pass over their territory on the way to Vietnam. But China has never helped anyone! Not Pakistan. Not Vietnam. China’s foreign policy is a brilliant lie! The Chinese themselves do not believe in it; they believe only in China. Only China!

  “For Mao, China is a continent—it is an Australia by itself. Only China is important. If China has to receive the Sultan of Zanzibar, then China will. Or the President of the United States. The Chinese don’t care.”

  I asked Malraux for his impressions of Mao. “Five years ago,” he said, “Mao had one fear: that the Americans or the Russians, with ten atom bombs, would destroy China’s industrial centers and set China back fifty years at a time when Mao himself would be dead. He told me, ‘When I have six atomic bombs, no one can bomb my cities.’ ” Malraux said that he had not understood what Mao meant by that. He continued, “Then Mao said, ‘The Americans will never use an atom bomb against me.’ I did not understand that either, but I am repeating it for you because often it is what one does not understand that is most important. I did not ask Mao any more questions about it, because one does not ask Mao questions.”

  Malraux rushed on with a torrent of words and ideas.

  “You will be dealing with a colossus,” he said, “but a colossus facing death. The last time I saw him he told me, ‘We do not have a successor.’ Do you know what Mao will think when he sees you for the first time?” he asked. “He will think, ‘He is so much younger than I!’ ”

  That evening at a dinner in his honor in the Residence, Malraux advised me on how to approach my conversation with Mao.

  “Mr. President, you will meet a man who has had a fantastic destiny and who believes that he is acting out the last act of his lifetime. You may think he is talking to you, but he will in truth be addressing Death. . . . It’s worth the trip!”

  I asked him again what came after Mao. Malraux replied, “It is exactly as Mao said, he has no successor. What did he mean by it? He meant that in his view the great leaders—Churchill, Gandhi, de Gaulle—were created by the kind of traumatic historical events that will not occur in the world anymore. In that sense he feels that he has no successors. I once asked him if he did not think of himself as the heir of the last great Chinese emperors of the sixteenth century. Mao said, ‘But of course I am their heir.’ Mr. President, you operate within a rational framework, but Mao does not. There is something of the sorcerer in him. He is a man inhabited by a vision, possessed by it.”

  I remarked that this kind of mystique was present in many great men. People who knew Lincoln said that they always felt he was looking beyond the horizon—as if there were a space between the earth and the sky where his gaze was focused. On the day of his assassination he had told his Cabinet about a dream he had the night before: he had seemed to be in some “singular indescribable vessel” moving with great rapidity toward an indefinite shore. “We don’t know where or what the shore is but we must avoid the shoals in trying to reach it,” I said.

  Malraux said, “You have spoken of avoiding the shoals to reach the shore. I feel that Mao has the same view. And even though both you and he are aware of the shoals, neither of you knows what lies on the shore beyond. Mao knows, however, that his harbor is Death.”

  Later, over coffee, Malraux told me, “You are about to attempt one of the most important things of our century. I think of the sixteenth-century explorers, who set out for a specific objective but often arrived at an entirely different discovery. What you are going to do, Mr. President, might well have a totally different outcome from whatever is anticipated.”

  At the end of the evening I escorted Malraux to his car. As we stood on the steps of the North Portico, he turned to me and said, “I am not de Gaulle, but I know what de Gaulle would say if he were here. He would say: ‘All men who understand what you are embarking upon salute you!’ ”

  On February 17, 1972, at 10:35 A.M. we left Andrews Air Force Base for Peking. As the plane gathered speed and then took to the air, I thought of Malraux’s words. We were embarking upon a voyage of philosophical discovery as uncertain, and in some respects as perilous, as the voyages of geographical discovery of a much earlier time.

  Diary

  As Henry and Bob both pointed out on the plane, there was almost a religious feeling to the messages we received from all over the country, wishing us well. I told Henry that I thought it was really a question of the American people being hopelessly and almost naïvely for peace, even at any price. He felt that perhaps there was also some ingredient of excitement about the boldness of the move, and visiting a land that was unknown to so many Americans.

  We stopped briefly in Shanghai to take aboard Chinese Foreign Ministry officials and a Chinese navigator; an hour and a half later we prepared to land in Peking. I looked out the window. It was winter, and the countryside was drab and gray. The small towns and villages looked like pictures I had seen of towns in the Middle Ages.

  Our plane landed smoothly, and a few minutes later we came to a stop in front of the terminal. The door was opened, and Pat and I stepped out.

  Chou En-lai stood at the foot of the ramp, hatless in the cold. Even a heavy overcoat did not hide the thinness of his frail body. When we were about halfway down the steps, he began to clap. I paused for a moment and then returned the gesture, according to the Chinese custom.

  I knew that Chou had been deeply insulted by Foster Dulles’s
refusal to shake hands with him at the Geneva Conference in 1954. When I reached the bottom step, therefore, I made a point of extending my hand as I walked toward him. When our hands met, one era ended and another began.

  After being introduced to all the Chinese officials, I stood on Chou’s left while the band played the anthems. “The Star-Spangled Banner” had never sounded so stirring to me as on that windswept runway in the heart of Communist China.

  The honor guard was one of the finest I have ever seen. They were big men, strong-looking, and immaculately turned out. As I walked down the long line, each man turned his head slowly as I passed, creating an almost hypnotic sense of movement in the massed ranks.

  Chou and I rode into the city in a curtained car. As we left the airport, he said, “Your handshake came over the vastest ocean in the world—twenty-five years of no communication.” When we came into Tien-amen Square at the center of Peking, he pointed out some of the buildings; I noticed that the streets were empty.

  Madame Chou was waiting for us when we arrived at the two large government guesthouses where our official party was to stay. We had tea in the sitting room, and then Chou said that he was sure everyone would like to rest before the state banquet.

  About an hour later I was getting ready to take a shower when Kissinger burst in with the news that Chairman Mao wanted to meet me. Late that night I described the atmosphere of the meeting.

  Diary

  Coming in on the plane Rogers had expressed concern that we ought to have a meeting with Mao very soon, and that we couldn’t be in a position of my seeing him in a way that put him above me, like walking up the stairs or him standing at the top of the stairs.

  Our concerns in this respect were completely dissipated at about two o’clock when Henry came into the room breathlessly, and told me that Chou was downstairs and said that the Chairman wanted to see me now at his residence. I waited about five minutes while Henry went downstairs, and then we drove to the residence.