Nixon in China
Page 37
Taiwan, inevitably, was the main cause of long hours of work late into the night, and it was Taiwan that very nearly prevented any communiqué from being issued at all. The fundamental problem, which had not been solved on either of Kissinger’s visits or on Haig’s, was that the Chinese wanted the Americans to recognize that the island was an integral part of China. Moreover, they wanted a firm deadline for the Americans to withdraw militarily from Taiwan. ‘Since you are to acknowledge’, Qiao said on the day the Nixon party arrived, ‘that the Taiwan question is a question of the Chinese people themselves, then the logical and inescapable conclusion would be the final and complete withdrawal of American forces.’ The Americans could not go that far; publicly abandoning Taiwan would cause major domestic problems for Nixon and also leave a bad impression with American allies around the world. Qiao cleverly countered with his own reference to public opinion: the Chinese people had ‘very strong feelings’ on the issue of Taiwan.
Kissinger fell back on the tactics he and Nixon had used before: he could and would make private commitments. Surely, he argued, the fact that the United States had kept its promise not to have nuclear weapons on Taiwan was evidence of the Americans’ good faith. When Qiao pressed him for an acknowledgement in the communiqué that Taiwan was a province of China, Kissinger resisted: ‘We would like to find a formulation which is at least vaguer, not because it affects what we will do, which you know, but because it enables us to return without looking as though we have surrendered on this point.’ On the other hand, when Kissinger wanted the Chinese to state clearly that they would not use force to join Taiwan with the mainland, Qiao dug his heels in. ‘Frankly speaking, we cannot agree to that because it is a fundamental violation of our principle – that it is an internal affair.’ Nevertheless, he pointed out, the Chinese were making a significant concession in not insisting that the United States renounce its defence treaty with Taiwan.8
During the week in Beijing, the two sides inched towards each other. As the time for Nixon’s departure for Hangzhou drew closer, the pace of the meetings stepped up. On Friday, the last full day the Americans were in Beijing, Kissinger and Qiao held four meetings, not finishing up until the early hours of Saturday. The wording of the Chinese statement on Taiwan, which reiterated China’s longstanding position that Taiwan was a part of China and its fate an internal matter, was agreed relatively quickly. Because the Americans were changing their position, however, virtually every word in the four sentences expressing the American view on Taiwan was the subject of intense bargaining. The Americans acknowledged that all Chinese, both those on the mainland and those on Taiwan, held that there was only one China and that Taiwan was part of it. The word ‘acknowledge’, though, later caused problems with some officials in the State Department who felt that the United States could have followed the Canadian example to simply ‘take note of the Chinese position. On the other hand, Kissinger managed to avoid using the word ‘recognize’, which would have implied that the United States accepted China’s claims to sovereignty over Taiwan.9
Although the Chinese still had not renounced the use of force, they conceded that the Americans might indicate a link between a peaceful settlement of the issue with the withdrawal of American forces from Taiwan. Qiao fretted over the word ‘withdrawal’; did it imply that some forces could be left behind? Kissinger agreed to say that the ‘ultimate objective’ of the United States was the withdrawal of ‘all’ American forces, but he managed to put it in the context of the reduction of tensions in the Taiwan Strait. Where Kissinger wanted to say that, with the prospect of a peaceful settlement of the issue by the Chinese themselves, the United States ‘anticipates’ withdrawing its forces, Qiao wanted the stronger ‘will’. They finally compromised on ‘affirms’. Nixon and Chou approved all the changes and, by Saturday morning, the communiqué was apparently finally done. Haldeman planned to release it to the American press, who were increasingly restless at the lack of hard news on the communiqué or anything else, on the Sunday night.10
They were not the only ones who were restless. Rogers and his advisers from the State Department were increasingly concerned about being left out of the negotiations on the communiqué. Holdridge, from State, who was part of the Kissinger team, had long since learned that his loyalties had to lie with Kissinger and did not leak any information on the progress of the talks. When the State Department put forward a suggestion for wording on Taiwan, Kissinger merely handed the confidential memorandum to Qiao as an example of the sort of pressures he had to deal with. From time to time, during that week in Beijing, Kissinger went through the motions of consulting Rogers and his aides, showing them excerpts from the communiqué, but none of them saw the completed version until their plane took off for Hangzhou. Nixon handed over the communiqué to Rogers during the flight. He himself was supposed to sit with Chou and, in his memoirs, claims that they were talking ‘quite freely’ to each other by this point. In fact, after a few perfunctory remarks, Nixon left his seat and moved up to spend the rest of the flight with Haldeman, grumbling about how difficult the press were and how he was fed up with Rogers.11
At Hangzhou, the Chinese called the Americans’ attention to the new terminal building at the airport, built, so they announced proudly, in forty days by 10,000 workers. Observant reporters noticed that, along the main streets, shop windows were unusually full of consumer goods. Groups of brightly dressed children were playing, apparently oblivious to the motorcade rushing past. The Nixons’ villa was on the island of Three Towers Reflecting the Moon. It was, Nixon recalled, ‘a bit musty but clean’. Spring comes early to Hangzhou and the magnolias were already in bloom.12
In spite of his strictures, Nixon was obliged to do some more sightseeing that afternoon. With Chou as their guide, he and Pat Nixon floated by boat across the lake to admire spots with names like Listening to Orioles among the Willows. The scenery, Nixon said politely, looked ‘like a postcard’. Officials accompanying the party chatted about a bowl of fruit on board. The pears tasted like apples, said an American. ‘We have pears that taste like bananas, too,’ a Chinese replied proudly. As they walked through Flower Park, Mrs Nixon giggled at a cage of lovebirds. ‘Lovey dovey,’ she remarked to Chou, who muttered something in Chinese. Nixon and Chou inspected one of the redwoods the Americans had presented to the Chinese people. Chou worried that it might be a bit crowded by other trees. Nixon thought the tree would grow slowly. Smiling for the cameras, the Nixons fed huge goldfish, with breadcrumbs thoughtfully provided by the Chinese. ‘I never saw goldfish that big,’ Nixon commented.
Kissinger – his labours, or so he thought, largely over – took the opportunity to stroll through one of the West Lake’s most beautiful glades. As he was gazing at the water and the distant hills beyond, Walter Cronkite appeared, dressed, so Kissinger said, as though he was going on an Arctic expedition and staggering under the weight of the cameras around his neck. The press were everywhere. ‘It was a grisly afternoon,’ said the experienced journalist and old China hand Theodore White, ‘all organized for television crews and cameras, for symbolism and manipulation, with posts and positions roped off, stakeouts set, each journalist assigned his two square feet of observation.’
Nixon suddenly decided to call an impromptu press conference at his villa. The shivering journalists stood outside on a terrace while he apologized for the news blackout of the previous few days. The extreme secrecy, he assured them, was at the request of the Chinese. He understood the difficulties the press faced in doing their job. Indeed, he was going to write to their bosses and suggest they be given a raise. After the White House photographers had snapped a group picture, he invited each journalist to step inside for an individual photograph with him.13
That night there was the inevitable banquet. Pat Nixon chatted brightly to the wife of a Chinese official while Nixon and Chou sat silently, with, said one journalist, ‘the look of men who for the moment have had more than enough of one another’. Nixon and his host, the cha
ir of the local revolutionary committee, exchanged toasts, ‘mercifully brief for once’. Hangzhou, said Nixon, was rightly renowned all over the world. He hoped that the future of the Chinese and American peoples and their friendship would be equally bright and beautiful.
Behind the scenes, although Nixon may not yet have known it, a major storm was brewing over the communiqué. That afternoon, Rogers had shown the final version of it to his advisers for the first time. They immediately raised a number of issues. The communiqué said that all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait maintained that Taiwan was a part of China. This ignored the existence of the large number of Taiwan’s inhabitants who supported Taiwan’s independence. Marshall Green, the senior official for East Asia, was particularly horrified at the section where the United States set out its responsibilities in Asia. ‘Mr Secretary, there is a serious problem.’ The communiqué listed American defence commitments to, for example, South Korea and Japan, but did not mention the treaty with Taiwan. This was all too similar to what had happened in 1950, just before the Korean War, when Dean Acheson, then Secretary of State, had made a speech in which he referred to the United States’ defensive perimeter as running from the Aleutian Islands, near Alaska in the north, southwards to include the Philippines but, crucially, had not mentioned South Korea. Many people, at the time and since, believed that this sent a signal to Kim Il Sung of North Korea and his patron, Stalin, that the North could attack South Korea without fear of an American response. When Green pointed out the unfortunate parallel, Rogers exclaimed, ‘My God, you’re right.’14
In his memoirs, Kissinger dismissed all the concerns raised by the State Department as nitpicking and trivial. Years later his loyal assistant, Winston Lord, still maintained that the impetus behind the demands that the communiqué be amended came partly from the State Department’s pique at being left out of the key negotiations in Beijing, and partly out of a desire to make mischief by insisting on difficult terms: ‘They figured it would be more embarrassing to us if we didn’t get them’. Some of the State Department’s concerns, it is true, involved quite minor matters in the communiqué, but others, notably the implied renunciation of the United States’ obligation to defend Taiwan, clearly did not. Rogers tried to contact Nixon in the late afternoon, but Haldeman said firmly that the President was resting and could not be disturbed. In any case, said Haldeman, Nixon had already approved the communiqué.15
At the banquet, Ron Ziegler, the press secretary, noticed that Green was in a grim mood and listened to his complaints. Ziegler may have contacted Haldeman. Rogers had also got through to Nixon himself. By the time the banquet ended, it had become clear that the communiqué could not be left as it was. ‘All hell has broken loose over this,’ John Scali, a White House press adviser, told Green late that night, ‘and it is because of you.’ In his villa, Nixon stormed about in his underwear. According to Kissinger, he threatened to deal with the State Department once and for all. Or was it, as Green suspected, that Kissinger had created an awkward situation with the wording on Taiwan which, if it were not rectified, was bound to cause a wave of opposition back in the United States?16
There was nothing for it but to send Kissinger back to reopen his discussions with Qiao late that Saturday evening. Kissinger was clearly embarrassed and, at first, tried to minimize the importance of the changes he was requesting. Rogers, he said, needed to feel that he and the State Department had contributed something to the final document. It would be a good idea to have them on side; a ‘mutinous bureaucracy’ could cause lots of trouble for him and for Nixon. Rogers and his colleagues had been fussing about words. ‘All Chinese’ sounded a bit ridiculous in English; perhaps the communiqué could just say ‘the Chinese’ on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. The sense was really the same. ‘That’s one point,’ said Qiao noncommittally ‘Now will you please continue.’ Kissinger brought up a few minor changes, in words or punctuation. He also asked whether they might include something in the communiqué about Rogers and Ji having useful talks as well as Nixon and Chou. Then he reached the crux of the matter.
The communiqué was a bit ambiguous, Kissinger said, when it came to United States’ commitments to its allies in Asia. It mentioned Japan and South Korea but not the Philippines or Thailand with which the United States also had defence treaties. Kissinger carefully did not bring up Taiwan. He appealed to Qiao: ‘You see, it’s also a problem for you because supposing we say these two, then every other ally in the whole Pacific will say “what about us?” and we will have to be issuing statements every day.’ Perhaps, Kissinger suggested, they could solve the problem either by having the United States list all its commitments or by watering down the particular references to Japan and South Korea so that they did not appear to specify a military relationship.
Qiao heard Kissinger out and merely asked for a brief recess, as Kissinger assumed, no doubt correctly, to consult Chou. In private, Qiao was furious. The Chinese did not really need the communiqué at all. ‘The United States comes to China and it needs the communiqué. Nixon can make his visit to China as a tourist.’ When he returned, Qiao let the Americans see something of his anger. He had thought, he said, that they were meeting just to discuss a few matters of style. The document after all was finished and had been approved at the highest levels. ‘When I sent you off early this morning I was relaxed, thinking we had solved this.’ The Chinese and the Americans had spent huge amounts of time and energy on the Taiwan issue ever since Kissinger’s first visit in 1971. How could they reopen it now? Kissinger was deeply apologetic. His colleagues in the State Department did not realize how sincerely the Chinese had negotiated, how they had made concession after concession. ‘If you persist in your position,’ said Qiao, ‘there will be no need for further discussions tonight. And we will discuss it again tomorrow and the result will be no communiqué.’ The Chinese could not accept any of the American suggestions on Taiwan. ‘Cannot be. Not a matter of words.’
In fact, he was prepared to negotiate. Both China and the United States now had a vested interest in demonstrating that they had taken a major step towards a more normal relationship. Not to issue a communiqué, after all the press reports that one was being negotiated, would mark Nixon’s trip as a failure. As Saturday night turned into Sunday morning, the two men managed to find a compromise. Qiao agreed that the United States would not mention any of its commitments at all and simply refer to its ‘close ties’ and ‘support’ for South Korea and its ‘existing close bonds’ with Japan. Kissinger for his part dropped his attempt to change ‘all’ Chinese to ‘the’ Chinese. Qiao took the occasion to extract another concession. There had been a slight mistake in translation, he said. A sentence to the effect that neither side ‘will seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region’ ought to have read neither side ‘should’. In other words, instead of a promise, Qiao wanted a moral obligation. Kissinger got the point immediately: the revised wording would allow the Chinese to accuse the Americans of behaving badly whenever they chose. After more hard bargaining and a few more changes, the two sides finally had a deal to take to Nixon and Chou. Qiao permitted himself a rare joke. ‘As to specific wordings, we can see to it that it is a very beautifully worded document.’ Nixon was awakened early on the morning of 27 February and gave his approval. Chou called Mao’s villa in Beijing and a secretary read the draft out to the Chairman. Mao also approved it.17
An exhausted Kissinger lashed out at Green later that day for getting Rogers stirred up over the communiqué. Green, for the first time in his association with Kissinger, snapped back. ‘Since when was the Secretary of State offering constructive criticisms defined as poormouthing?’ Rogers rightly had done his duty to advise the President. Kissinger backed down. In any case, Rogers was now back in line after Nixon ordered him to make sure that both he and the State Department gave their full support to the communiqué.
Nixon had another piece of welcome news that day when a press report came in from the United States that Senator Ed M
uskie, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, had broken down in tears at a press conference in New Hampshire as he denied accusations that he had made racial slurs about the state’s large French Canadian population. ‘Rather fascinating’ was all Haldeman put in his diary. In fact Haldeman, and quite possibly Nixon himself, had a very good idea of what lay behind the story. Muskie, who had been attacking Nixon, with considerable success, on his failure to get the United States out of Vietnam, was a prime target of the Committee to Re-Elect the President, or CREEP as it was aptly known. CREEP, which reported directly to Nixon, carried out the usual campaign activities, such as raising funds and preparing materials, but it had another, darker side. One of its employees, a young California lawyer called Donald Segretti, ran a corps of ‘pranksters’ to disrupt the Democratic campaign. Their pranks were not innocent: they forged letters on Democratic letterhead, printed phoney flyers and spread slanderous rumours about Democratic politicians. The story about Muskie’s remarks in New Hampshire, along with another that his wife drank and had mental troubles, had been planted by the Segretti team. Muskie never recovered from that news conference in February 1972, but, in the long run, although Nixon could not know it as he savoured his triumph in China, another step had been taken towards the Watergate scandal.18
On the morning of Sunday, 27 February, the Americans and the Chinese flew onwards on Chou’s plane to Shanghai. A giant billboard in Chinese characters greeted them: ‘We Will Certainly Liberate Taiwan’. The American party was housed in the elegant Jinjiang Hotel, which had been built as the Grosvenor Mansions by the tycoon Sir Victor Sassoon in the 1930s. Nixon was on the top floor, with Kissinger on the next floor down and then Rogers and his State Department advisers below that. ‘The symbolism’, said Green, ‘escaped no one.’19