Nixon in China

by Margaret MacMillan

  In January 1972, when Kissinger sent his deputy, Alexander Haig, out to China to make the final preparations for the Nixon trip, the radicals continued to cause difficulties. Haig, who was checking out the places Nixon would see, spent an evening in Shanghai, a radical stronghold. At the banquet, something went badly wrong. According to the Chinese, Haig sat silently through the meal and refused to return a toast from one of his hosts. Haig’s version is that the toast was offensively anti-American and that he decided not to reply. Moreover, according to Haig, at the end of the banquet, Wang Hongwen, a leading radical and later to be tried as a member of the Gang of Four, came up to him and rudely announced that the banquet was over. When Haig’s party continued on to Hangchow, they received a cool greeting from the local officials. Although it was bitterly cold, they were all taken out on the famous West Lake, as Nixon would be. There was nothing on the boat to eat, just cups of tea. Zhang Hanzhi, one of the interpreters accompanying the Americans, asked the locals what was going on. All sorts of delicacies had been prepared, she was told, but they had received a phone call from Shanghai to be unfriendly. ‘Everyone is scared of the Shanghai radicals so we withdrew all the food.’ Zhang and the others who had come with the Americans had an emergency meeting and reported the situation back to Chou, who in turn called Mao. ‘Chou En-lai really criticized us very, very seriously. And he said, what happened in Shanghai and Hangzhou almost upset the whole strategy of Mao Tse-tung’s plan of breaking the ice between the U.S. and China.’35

  Haig had been sent out to do more than sightseeing. He had a delicate mission. He had to reassure the Chinese that the United States was firmly on their side against the Soviet threat and he also had to downplay the bombing campaign that the United States was carrying out against North Vietnam. In addition, he was to see if he could get some modification in the wording in the communiqué on Taiwan. ‘I have complete confidence in him,’ Kissinger had told Chou in October, although Haig was, he took care to point out, more of a soldier than a negotiator. It was an impression that Haig, who was both clever and devious, liked to play up.36

  On their arrival in Beijing, Haig and his party were given the obligatory banquet with the repeated toasts in maotai. Just as Haig was collapsing into bed, he was summoned back to the Great Hall to meet Chou. He found the Prime Minister surrounded by senior officials and a host of journalists and cameras. When he saw Haig, Chou began a strident denunciation of American imperialism. At the end, Haig said firmly that he was not prepared to have his country insulted. If necessary, he and his party would leave. Chou at once dismissed most of the officials and the journalists and his tone changed to a more friendly one. How was Kissinger? Chou had heard that he had the flu. And was this Haig’s first trip to China?37

  The two men talked until early in the morning. The Soviets, Haig said, offering what he called a blunt soldier’s assessment, had tried, unsuccessfully of course, to divide the United States from the People’s Republic in the recent conflict on the subcontinent. The Soviet Union was bent on encircling China. That was why they were supporting India, why their Foreign Minister had just visited Japan and why they were encouraging Hanoi to step up its activities in Laos and Cambodia. What was more, the North Vietnamese were unwilling to talk to the United States about ending the war in Indochina; indeed they seemed determined to humiliate the Americans. Haig did his best to portray the American bombing campaign against the North as a way of countering the Soviet Union. ‘We feel strongly that Moscow is urging Hanoi in the direction of continued military action and as such, they are forging another link in the chain which is designed to constrain the People’s Republic.’ Chou was not impressed by the reasoning: ‘The U.S. bombing has increased the Soviet influence in this area’. Nor was Mao impressed when Chou made his report. So the United States was worried about China? ‘Its concerns for us are just like a cat feeling sad for a mouse!’38

  In an indication of just how sensitive the Chinese remained in their dealings with foreigners, Mao and Chou were both annoyed by Haig’s attempt to be reassuring. The United States, Haig said in his late-night conversation with Chou, thought that the ‘viability’ of China should be maintained. After the meeting, Chou turned to the interpreter, Zhang Hanzhi. What does ‘viability’ mean? he asked her. He sent away for English dictionaries and they pored over them together. It struck them both as patronizing and insulting to suggest that China was not a viable country. When he met Haig next, Chou was stiff. Yes, he said, China was not yet a strong country but it was quite capable of looking after itself, just like North Vietnam. Socialist China had been born and had survived in the midst of struggle against foreign aggression and it remained ready to meet enemies from all sides. ‘Facts have proved and will continue to prove that all schemes to isolate, encircle, contain and subvert China will only end up in ignominious defeat.’ Haig apologized for having used the simple language of a soldier, which, he feared, might have been misunderstood.39

  During his conversations in China, Haig also tried, somewhat to Chinese bewilderment, to stress how important it was that Nixon’s trip be a visible success. Within the United States, Haig said, striking a theme which Kissinger had emphasized on his own earlier visits, there was an unholy alliance opposed to the President. The American left (dominated by Moscow), the conservatives who supported Taiwan and unnamed forces in the bureaucracy all wanted Nixon’s trip to fail because it would slow up the rapprochement between the United States and China. (It would also hurt Nixon’s re-election chances, although Haig did not mention that.) Nixon and Kissinger, Haig went on, thought it essential that nothing, no public embarrassment, mar the President’s time in China. ‘It is in our mutual interest’, he assured Chou, ‘that the visit reinforce President Nixon’s image as a world leader.’ As part of that effort, Haig hoped that they might take a look at the draft again. It would be nice, for example, if it could include something positive about opening up trade, for example, between their two countries. More important, it would be helpful for Nixon domestically, particularly in appeasing the conservatives, if they could water down the part on Taiwan in the communiqué and find a formulation ‘somewhat less truthful and somewhat less precise than the language which Dr Kissinger carried away with him during his visit’.40

  ‘How can Nixon talk about being a world leader?’ Mao asked Chou when they discussed the American requests. Nixon could not even lead the United States: ‘He admits that the so-called pro-Soviet, pro-Taiwan and bureaucratic forces all oppose him domestically.’ As for changing their joint communiqué, Mao said, they should give the Americans a scare by adding something about the people of the world wanting revolution. Chou dutifully conveyed the Chairman’s sentiments back to Haig. ‘The image of a man’, he said severely, ‘depends on his own deeds and not on any other factors.’ As far as the wording on Taiwan was concerned, the Americans should realize how much the Chinese had already conceded to find an acceptable formula. And so the Taiwan question and the communiqué itself remained to be settled during Nixon’s visit.41

  It is not surprising that there were times, as Haig admitted, when he felt that the whole Nixon trip might not come off. Both sides, though, had too much at stake to back out lightly, and so Haig’s trip ended on a friendly note. When the Americans passed through Shanghai again to pick up their plane, they found a completely different atmosphere. On Mao’s orders, the top officials responsible for Shanghai had flown down from Beijing to host a lunchtime banquet at the airport. The room was lavishly decorated and everyone was smiling broadly. This time Haig made his toast. As the Americans boarded their plane, each was presented with a giant box covered in pink brocade and filled with sweets. Mao had heard reports of how the Americans had pocketed the sweets left in their hotel rooms and so had ordered a farewell present. Factory workers had worked through the night and the paste was still wet on the boxes. Haig, who had casually expressed an admiration for miniature trees, was given a tiny exquisite evergreen as well.42

  Three weeks
before Nixon was due to arrive in Beijing, the White House advance party, under Ron Walker, left Washington. Haig spoke solemnly to them about their great responsibility to make sure Nixon’s visit went well. ‘The whole tone of our relationships with China [is] going to evolve from the atmospherics, if you will.’ They would find the advance work more difficult and more sensitive than on any other presidential trip. The Chinese would be watching them closely. ‘So be very, very careful.’43

  14

  Getting Down to Business

  THE 22 OF FEBRUARY is George Washington’s birthday. That day, a Tuesday in 1972, Nixon spent the morning at the Diaoyutai, working, according to the official news release, on White House business. He had hoped to create a newsworthy item by signing a bill to end a dock strike back in the United States and then present the pen to Chou En-lai, but this had foundered in the face of Chou’s careful lack of comprehension. Accepting the pen, Chou told Kissinger by way of excuse, might seem like Chinese interference in American internal affairs. The Americans eventually gave up on the idea.1

  Nixon called Haldeman in to go over the previous day’s events. It was very significant, Nixon thought, that at one point Chou had raised his glass in a toast to the President’s next inauguration. As for the coverage in the American media, it was all that Nixon and Haldeman could have hoped for. While press reports of the arrival at the airport had been low key, the ones of the meeting with Mao and the banquet were highly enthusiastic. Nixon was delighted that they had noted his handling of his chopsticks and his clinking glasses with Chou. Kissinger, when he joined them, was in equally good spirits. With the meeting with Mao and Chou’s friendly attitude, the American agreed, they were off to a very good start.2

  Kissinger was on his way to see Qiao Guanhua, the Deputy Foreign Minister, and that afternoon he would join Nixon for the first of the President’s private conversations with Chou En-lai to explore the issues which divided the United States and China and to look at the big strategic picture. (Having the Secretary of State present for these high-level talks was apparently not considered.) Kissinger was very busy that week in 1972. His National Security Adviser did not, said Nixon complacently, get much sleep between the meetings with Chou, another set, usually late at night, with Qiao Guanhua on the final version of the communiqué, and briefings for Nixon.3

  While Nixon and Kissinger met with Chou for the rest of the week, another set of meetings went on in parallel between Rogers and Ji Pengfei, China’s Foreign Minister. They talked, Kissinger wrote dismissively in his memoirs, about those obsessions of the State Department’s East Asian bureau, trade and exchanges. Kissinger had in fact taken considerable pains to ensure that this happened. He had made it clear in his first visit to China that the State Department was not to be trusted. Now, when he met Chou En-lai and Qiao Guanhua on the first day of the Nixon visit to discuss the agenda for the week, he stressed that the conversations between Rogers and his counterpart should be limited to subjects of lesser importance. He was outlining who knew what among the American delegation to ensure ‘that by inadvertence your people do not say anything in the private meetings with the State Department that will be a surprise to them’. They had a complicated system in the United States, Kissinger said wryly; the Chinese did things in so much simpler a way.

  No one outside Nixon’s immediate circle, Kissinger told the Chinese, knew how much information he had passed on to them about American relations with the Soviet Union or about the way he and the President had worked with the Chinese during the crisis between India and Pakistan. No one knew about the assurances he, Kissinger, had already given on Taiwan. Nixon would be repeating those. In a plenary session? asked Chou. No, replied Kissinger, privately. The Americans, though, would give the State Department fuller details once they were all back in the United States. Furthermore, Kissinger went on, no one had seen the draft communiqué, although Rogers had been shown the two paragraphs dealing with Taiwan. There was no need, Kissinger thought, for Rogers in his meetings to discuss the communiqué at all, but it might be useful for the Chinese to outline their position on Taiwan so that the State Department records showed it.4

  When Rogers tried to raise the subject of Taiwan, the Chinese firmly told him they could not discuss it with him because the issue was being dealt with by Kissinger and Chou. Ji in any case had no particular expertise in foreign affairs and showed little aptitude for diplomacy. As Mao once memorably said of him, ‘Sitting here with me till his stool sank into a hole, he did not even break a fart.’ Chou En-lai and Mao tolerated Ji but relied far more on his deputy, Qiao.5

  Charles Freeman, who acted as interpreter in the Rogers–Ji talks, had taught himself to read Chinese characters upside down. He noticed that Ji relied as heavily on his briefing books as did Rogers. When the Chinese, as they tended to do in all their discussions with foreigners, rehashed past grievances, Rogers, whose grasp of history was shaky, found himself debating the origins of the Korean War and whether or not the United States wanted to dominate the world. ‘So’, Freeman recalled, ‘it was a lively, but rather inconsequential, venting of views.’6

  The important issues were being discussed elsewhere. The meetings with Mao and Chou on the day of Nixon’s arrival had set the tone for Nixon and Chou’s discussions. Both men touched on the reasons that it had taken so long for their two governments to talk directly to each other. Each offered assurances that his country had no designs on the other. Each spoke for his own nation; both also were speaking for the benefit of the absent Mao, Nixon to reassure him of the peaceful intentions of the United States towards China, and Chou of his loyalty. It was only possible for China to move towards the United States, Chou remarked, because of the great trust that the people had in Chairman Mao. Nixon agreed eagerly: ‘Chairman Mao takes the long view, as I do.’7 While Chou and Nixon frequently disagreed, they did so in a polite and even friendly spirit.

  There were no clear agendas for the talks, perhaps because so much ground had already been covered by Kissinger and Chou the year before, partly because the fact of the talks themselves was as important as the content. Both men wanted to discuss their common enemy, the Soviet Union, and both had an interest in other issues, from the balance of power in Asia and the Pacific to the Middle East. The Chinese, however, focused on one issue in particular: Taiwan. The position of the People’s Republic was then and has remained ever since that the island is part of China, its status purely a domestic matter. Outsiders, the United States above all, had no business involving themselves. The existence of a separate government and another China was an affront to the Chinese nation and to Chinese nationalism.

  It was impossible to deal with each issue in isolation. When the Chinese talked about Taiwan, they brought in their relations with Japan which they claimed to fear had designs to move troops on to the island. While the Americans were prepared to make concessions on Taiwan and cut back on their support for it, they hoped that, in return, the Chinese would put pressure on North Vietnam to negotiate in good faith with the United States. And both sides had to keep the larger international context in mind. As Nixon said in that late-afternoon plenary on his first day in Beijing, ‘We cannot discuss a critical area like South Asia, and India, without evaluating the policy of the Soviet Union toward that area’.8

  For his first private meeting with Chou that Tuesday afternoon, Nixon went to the Great Hall of the People. They met, not by coincidence, in the Fujian Room, where Kissinger had held his first talk in the summer of 1971. Chou politely asked Nixon to present his views first. The Chinese always insisted on this, on the grounds that it was their custom with guests. It was also, of course, a useful negotiating tactic and one which they used even when they were guests themselves. As Qiao once said to Kissinger, ‘We have two sayings: one is that when we are the host, we should let the guest begin; and the other is that when we are guests we should defer to the host.’9

  Nixon had prepared for this moment with his usual care, talking for hours to Kissinger and
reading widely. Freeman lent him several books on China (which he never managed to get back). In the detailed briefing books which the National Security Council and the State Department prepared, almost every page is marked up with Nixon’s underlinings and scribbled comments. A couple of days before he left Washington, Nixon jotted down his key ideas on one of his favourite yellow legal pads.

  What they want:

  Build up their world credentials

  Taiwan

  Get U.S. out of Asia

  What we want:

  Indo China (?)

  Communication – To restrain Chinese expansion in Asia

  In Future – Reduce threat of confrontation by China Super Power

  What we both want:

  Reduce danger of confrontation & conflict

  A more stable Asia

  A restraint on U.S.S.R.10

  Kissinger gave Nixon much advice beforehand on what to expect when he met the Chinese leaders for the first time. He would find them extraordinarily civilized, at once charming and efficient (so unlike the Russians). Indeed, the Americans would find it hard to resist being seduced by the famous Chinese hospitality. In a memorandum he wrote a couple of weeks before Nixon’s departure, he waxed eloquent: ‘The drama and color of this state visit will surpass all your others.’ And, added Kissinger, who knew his President well, ‘The conversations will be at a far greater intensity and length than any previous diplomatic talks you have conducted.’ Nixon should start out each discussion with the ‘broad philosophic touch’ to show the Chinese that he was master of the big strategic picture. The Chinese wanted to know, as Chou had recently told Zulfikar Bhutto, the new Prime Minister of Pakistan, what principles the Americans based their thinking on. For the Chinese themselves, principles were crucial; they would be firm on those, flexible on tactics.11