Nixon and Mao
Page 34
The marriage was happy for only a few years. The couple fought, among other things, over Jiang’s decision to get herself sterilized after she bore Mao a daughter. Her health deteriorated, and in 1956 she was treated in the Soviet Union for cervical cancer. When Mao resumed his womanizing, without bothering to conceal it from her, she was deeply hurt. Mao’s doctor once discovered her weeping on a bench outside Mao’s quarters in the Zhongnanhai. She begged Li not to say anything. “Just as no one,” she complained to him, “Stalin included, could win in a political battle with her husband, so no woman could ever win the battle for his love.” By the end of the 1950s Mao and Jiang lived increasingly separate lives. Understandably, perhaps, she became even more sensitive to slights than before and obsessed with her health. Dr. Li was constantly called in to examine her for largely imaginary illnesses. When she could not sleep, it was because someone had tampered with her pills, and when she found her bath too hot, it was a plot by her nurses to harm her. Li thought her main problem was that she was bored and lonely. She was also terrified that Mao would abandon her as he had abandoned his other wives. Mao tried in vain to reassure her. She was useful to him as a secretary, and he valued her devotion and her complete dependence on him.13
In the 1960s, Mao needed someone like Jiang to make his Cultural Revolution, and she leaped at the opportunity he offered her. “I was Chairman Mao’s dog,” she famously said when she was on trial after his death. “When he said ‘Bite,’ I bit.” Her health miraculously improved. She reveled in her new power and her moment in the sun, the adoring crowds, the banners with her sayings, the army generals who obsequiously asked for her guidance. She dashed about the country in her private plane with its silk sheets to stir up revolution and held herself up as the model of the new proletarian culture. Top officials in Beijing got urgent calls in the middle of the night to stand by for a gift from Jiang; a basket of turnips she had grown arrived in a special car. With an astonishing lack of self-awareness, she invited Roxanne Witke, a young American academic, to watch her at work in her lavish private garden in Canton as she solemnly laid out specimens of her orchids.14
Those who had slighted her in the past now paid a heavy price. Jiang turned the Red Guards loose on Liu Shaoqi’s wife, Wang Guangmei, one of the party elders who had relegated her to a minor role in Yan’an. Wang was accused of the crime of dressing like a bourgeois by wearing flowered dresses and a necklace on state visits abroad; she was paraded in front of jeering crowds in an evening dress and a necklace made of gilded ping-pong balls. Rivals, even colleagues, from Jiang’s Shanghai days were paraded through the streets in dunce caps. Shanghai police records were purged, and acquaintances from that period who might have kept incriminating material about her affairs or her dealings with the Guomindang police had their houses ransacked by people who claimed to be Red Guards; every scrap of paper, including a child’s school notes, was carted off to Jiang to be destroyed.15
Jiang condemned China’s film industry as steeped in old-fashioned and incorrect values. It shut down because she was too busy to come up with clear guidelines for the sorts of films she wanted. She did, however, have more success in the field of Chinese opera. The traditional operas, with their plots revolving around mythical beings and great historical figures of the past and their classical singing and dancing, were clearly retrograde. Under her guidance, six model revolutionary operas were created; they were the only ones performed all over China until Mao’s death. It was one of these that the Nixon party was to see.
Jiang was determined that the evening would be a success. She sent off Qiao Guanhua, the deputy foreign minister, to brief the Nixons on what they were about to experience. She also agonized over whether to wear a dress. In the China of 1972 dresses were frowned upon as bourgeois, while shapeless suits were good proletarian wear. In the end, she was wearing a suit when she welcomed the Nixon party to the special theater in the Great Hall of the People. Nixon found her “unpleasantly abrasive and aggressive” as she shot questions at him. Why had Jack London committed suicide? Why hadn’t Nixon come to China before now? Nixon had a question of his own: Who had written the opera? It was “created by the masses,” said Jiang proudly. As she later told Roxanne Witke, “One could not have expected him to grasp the magnitude of her personal responsibility for the creation of a new model theater for the nation.”16
Perhaps by design the opera—The Red Detachment of Women—was about Hainan Island, which had been reunited, as Taiwan had still not been, with Communist China. Interpreters whispered the plot in the Americans’ ears, but it was not difficult to follow, because the good characters—peasants, Communists guerrillas—bounded about looking noble and upright, while the villains—landlords and their minions—slunk around with averted faces. In spite of the propaganda, Nixon found it an enjoyable spectacle. “This is certainly the equal of any ballet that I have seen, in terms of production,” he told American reporters. “It was,” thought Haldeman, who had also enjoyed the performance, “rather an odd sight to see the P clapping at the end for this kind of thing, which would have been horrifying at home, but it all seems to fit together somehow, here.” Ron Walker, the White House advance man, took some Chinese records home, where he entertained his friends with spirited imitations of the dancing until he fell and had to have knee surgery.17
It snowed that night and on Wednesday, the next day. The Americans watched with some amazement as thousands of ordinary citizens came out with shovels and brooms to clean the streets. That evening, the Chinese put on another entertainment, with table tennis and gymnastics, two sports at which they excelled. The crowd was made up largely of military personnel and athletes, all dressed in colored uniforms and seated by sections. They had been carefully briefed to applaud the Americans loudly as they came in. During the evening, as the lights played on each section, there were more loud cheers for the television cameras. Haldeman was deeply impressed by the organization.
Nixon told reporters the next day that he had never seen such athletes, calling the exhibition “Just superb.” In his diary, he struck a more somber note: “Not only we but all the people of the world will have to make our very best effort if we are going to match the enormous ability, drive and discipline of the Chinese people.” The United States must take care to build a good relationship with China as it developed. “Otherwise,” he later wrote, “we will one day be confronted with the most formidable enemy that has ever existed in the history of the world.” That night, Nixon did not sleep well and got up at 5:00A.M. to smoke a Great Wall cigar and jot down his thoughts about the trip.18
Nixon had tried to avoid sightseeing, but the Great Wall itself was too good a photo opportunity to miss. Early on Thursday morning, when the Americans back home were settling down to their evening television, the Nixon party, accompanied by Chou and Marshal Ye, drove thirty-five miles to where the wall swoops down north of Beijing. There are many myths about the Great Wall: that it is the only man-made structure that can be seen from the moon; that it was first built, all four thousand miles of it, by the Qin emperor in the second century B.C.; and that it existed down through time to hold off the barbarians who threatened the most sophisticated and advanced civilization in the world. Its mere existence, despite invasions and revolutions, is seen in China as a sign of the will of the Chinese people themselves to endure and triumph. It symbolizes, says a recent Chinese encyclopedia, “the great strength of the Chinese nation.” In reality, the wall, which cannot be seen from the moon, was built piecemeal over the centuries, sometimes to protect China itself but also by warring kingdoms in the periods when China was not united, to defend themselves, and sometimes as an aggressive move by Chinese rulers to stake out a claim in barbarian territory. In its early and greatest phase, the Tang dynasty did not bother with walls at all, preferring to reach out to the world and, if necessary, deal with threats through diplomacy or force. The section of the wall that Nixon saw was not built by the Qin emperor but was constructed a mere four hundred ye
ars ago under the Ming dynasty.19
The wall near Beijing is still an extraordinary sight as it coils its way up and down the hills, and Nixon had a marvelously clear day for his visit. He went hatless in spite of the cold, and his party, who felt obliged to follow his lead, shivered along as he climbed a short distance upward. The bolder sightseers made snowballs and threw them into the valleys below. The American press corps swarmed around the president. Walter Cronkite hopped along as the electric socks he had brought against the cold gave him a series of shocks. The White House advance party had worked out the best sites for photographs, and the live television cameras were already positioned in two of the wall’s towers. Nixon shook hands with all the Chinese present for the cameras. “Imagine climbing all these mountains carrying stones,” he said to an American journalist. To Marshal Ye, he praised the architecture and said what a pity it was that they did not have time to climb all the way up the summit. “Haven’t we already had our summit meeting in Beijing?” Ye replied and quoted a line from Mao to the effect that you are not a real man until you get to the Great Wall. Ron Ziegler urged the reporters to ask Nixon for his impressions. “I think that you would have to conclude,” the president said solemnly, “that this is a great wall and that it had to be built by a great people.” And, in words that have been repeated approvingly ever since in China, he added, “A people who could build a wall like this certainly have a great past to be proud of and a people who have this kind of a past must also have a great future.”20
After fifteen minutes at the wall, Nixon headed off to another of China’s architectural glories, the tombs of the Ming emperors, with their great avenue of stone guardians and animals. Clearly bored with the whole expedition by this point, Nixon managed to summon up a few more thoughts for the journalists. The tombs were not that old in terms of China’s thousands of years of history, he pointed out, but they were yet more evidence of the rich history of the Chinese people, “a reminder that they are very proud in terms of cultural development and the rest.” It had been worth coming all the way from Washington to see the wall and now the Ming Tombs. Would he advise Americans to apply for tourist visas? a reporter asked. Nixon said he would. The journalists, who were desperate for hard news, fell on this tidbit. Perhaps there had been some agreement reached on exchanges.21
That evening, Nixon, who was already annoyed that Chou had suddenly added a Peking duck dinner to the schedule, asked Haldeman and Kissinger to cut down on the time allocated for the Forbidden City the following morning. Perhaps they could also cut out some of the toasts at the remaining banquets. He was persuaded to back down on the latter when Kissinger pointed out that it would offend his Chinese hosts. On Friday morning, though, Nixon galloped through the Forbidden City in an hour and a half. He saw what he needed to, in Haldeman’s view, and generated some more pictures and quotations. “Give me a pair of those,” he said when he was shown earplugs that an emperor had worn to screen out criticisms. When Chou called his attention to a display of ancient eating utensils that included gold spoons, Nixon joked for the benefit of the reporters that he thought the Chinese only used chopsticks. “How do you think we eat soup?” Chou retorted.22
By this point in the trip, Nixon, who was having trouble sleeping, was tired and grumpy. He grumbled to Haldeman about his problems and how nobody in the press understood him. He was also worried about the communiqué, which was still not settled, although Kissinger and his Chinese counterpart, Qiao Guanhua, had been working long hours on the wording. His own conversations with Chou were running out of steam because the two men had covered the main issues by now. When they met that afternoon for an hour, Nixon told Chou he was through talking. The two men chatted in a desultory way about Africa and the Middle East. Libya was a strange country, they agreed. Why, Chou wondered, was it not possible for Israel to return the occupied territories to the Arabs? It was very difficult, Nixon replied, but he would make sure that Kissinger kept the Chinese informed about the delicate negotiations Kissinger was conducting on that very subject.
Chou also took the opportunity to reiterate China’s suspicions of the Soviet Union. While he still hoped that Sino-Soviet relations could be mended, he had to say that China would not negotiate under the threat of attack. It was curious, Chou thought, that the Soviets, who were so strong, seemed to have such a fear of China. “Pathological,” Nixon agreed. When Nixon went to the Soviet Union for his summit meeting in May, Chou advised, he hoped that the president would make it clear that the United States and China were not colluding against the Soviet Union. Nixon assured Chou that he would. He also had something to ask Chou. Would the Chinese consider releasing John Downey, a CIA pilot who had been shot down over China twenty years previously? Downey’s mother was old and sick. It might be possible, Chou said; it appeared that Downey had been behaving rather well recently. Downey was freed a year later and resumed his interrupted life, going to Harvard Law School and ending up a judge.23
Nixon excused himself before the hour was up. This was the night of his banquet for the Chinese, and he wanted to be present to receive his guests. Many of them had been unable to decipher the invitations, which the Americans had inadvertently printed in a classical script no longer used on the mainland. The Chinese provided the cooks, but all the ingredients—from Florida oranges to California champagne—had been flown out from the United States. At each table there were packages of American cigarettes with the presidential seal and, much to the surprise of the Chinese, the inevitable health warning from the American surgeon general. Although a band played a cheerful selection of American tunes, such as “Billy Boy” and “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain,” the mood was subdued. Nixon sat silently, rousing himself to talk to Chou only when the cameras were on him. As one journalist said, it all seemed rather anticlimactic after the events of the week. In his toast, Nixon praised the Great Wall and the Chinese people, with their great past and their great future, and said how, in their talks, he and Chou had begun to remove the wall between their two peoples. Two journalists from North Vietnam refused to raise their glasses. In his reply, Chou agreed but said that there still were great differences in principle between the two sides. Rumors went around among the journalists that there was still trouble over the communiqué.24
CHAPTER 18
AUDIENCE REACTIONS
WHILE AMERICAN AUDIENCES WERE WATCHING HALDEMAN’S spectacular from China, SO were others, with reactions that ranged from Albania’s outrage to Canada’s approval. Some of China’s allies, such as North Korea and North Vietnam, which were already tilting toward the Soviet camp, watched with alarm but muted their criticisms for fear of alienating their giant neighbor. In India, Mrs. Gandhi publicly warned the United States and China not to think they could collude in South Asia. Asian countries that had defense treaties with the United States—including South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, New Zealand, and Australia—wondered what the American commitment now meant. The head of Australia’s foreign service wrote to his ambassador in the United States, “The proposition that the United States is Australia’s best friend does not any longer command general support.”1 The British, who had invested much in their “special relationship” with the United States, were irritated at the way the Americans had kept them in the dark over the opening to China. The British prime minister, Edward Heath, was particularly hurt because he had assumed that he and Nixon had a good relationship. “He never really recovered,” said an American diplomat, “from Nixon’s not informing him on such major policy.” Heath from that point on invested more energy in improving Britain’s relationship with the European Union.2
During Nixon’s week in Beijing, Joseph Kraft, an American journalist, went with a Russian acquaintance to a reception at the Soviet embassy for Soviet Armed Forces Day. “A sadder party there never was,” he reported. The Soviets were very apprehensive about the meaning of Nixon’s trip. When Kraft told the ambassador that Nixon hoped his visit to Beijin
g would improve the atmosphere at his forthcoming Moscow summit, the ambassador was incredulous: “We’ll have to see about that.”3
The Soviets had been concerned ever since they had first gotten wind of contacts between the United States and the People’s Republic after Nixon’s election. The KGB, the Soviet secret police, had planned a campaign of disinformation to keep the Americans and the Chinese apart. At the news of the first armed clashes between Soviet and Chinese soldiers in March 1969, an “emotional” Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador in Washington, had told Kissinger that they should all be worried about China. That fall, Dobrynin had conveyed a solemn warning from Brezhnev to Nixon: it would be a “very grave miscalculation” if “someone” in the United States were tempted to profit from the rift between China and the Soviet Union at the latter’s expense. Dobrynin had also persistently and anxiously questioned Kissinger in their private meetings about what the Americans were up to. The Soviet press was full of dire warnings about an alliance between the Chinese and “world imperialism.” As Kissinger commented in his memoirs, “It was heavy-handed Soviet diplomacy that made us think about our opportunities.”4
For all their concern, the Soviets had not expected a sudden breakthrough in the Sino-American relationship. The United States and the People’s Republic, they thought, had been enemies for too long, and the war in Vietnam remained to keep them apart. As a result, when Nixon pressed for an early summit with Brezhnev, the Soviets procrastinated. Nixon needed it more than they did, they assumed, because an improved relationship with the Soviet Union would help his chances of reelection. They also hoped, by withholding the summit, to get major concessions from the Americans on West Berlin (still an issue between East and West) and on SALT, the major arms control talks going on in Geneva.