Nixon and Mao

by Margaret MacMillan

  From the Taiwanese perspective, there were only a few bright spots in 1971. The United States finally agreed to sell Taiwan’s navy two submarines and to hold joint military training exercises, which had been in abeyance since 1968. In August, the USS Oklahoma City, flagship of the Seventh Fleet, visited a Taiwanese port. The authorities organized an enthusiastic welcome with singers, acrobats, and dancers. Another event that occurred that month may have done even more to boost local morale. The Tainan Giants won the Little League World Series in baseball. Two-thirds of Taiwan’s 14 million inhabitants watched the games on television.19

  Wild rumors came out of Taiwan. On his October visit, Kissinger, who had been alerted by American intelligence, passed on a warning to Chou that the Guomindang might use its American-made airplanes to cause trouble: “We have a report that the Chinese Nationalists on the Taiwan General Staff are considering flying an R-104 reconnaissance aircraft over the mainland in order to disrupt our policy and our talks.” The American government was trying to put a stop to it. Such planes often came to harass them, Chou said, but the Chinese would assume that anything taking off from Taiwan was being flown by Guomindang pilots. As Nixon prepared to make his trip to China, the Chinese informed the Americans of reports that Chiang Kai-shek would use a plane painted with People’s Republic markings to try to shoot down Air Force One. Chiang’s more moderate son, Chiang Ching-kuo, promised that there would be no unusual incidents or maneuvers in the strait during Nixon’s visit.20

  The Taiwanese watched the Haldeman show in Beijing with gloomy fascination. (Some on the island remained happily unaware: “Oh, is that near Taipei?” asked a farmer’s wife.) The press in Taiwan said that people all around the Pacific no longer trusted the United States as an ally. Nixon, Shen thought, had made a great mistake in going to China at all. And why had Nixon been so humble when he met Mao? He might as well have been on his knees doing the kowtow to an emperor. The scene at the opening banquet, when Nixon went around the tables toasting everyone indiscriminately, was, in Shen’s view, particularly demeaning: “This was something no Oriental guest of honor with any sense of personal dignity would have done.” Shortly after Nixon’s visit concluded, the Taiwanese government issued a defiant statement reaffirming its intention to overthrow the illegitimate regime on the mainland. It also decided that it might look elsewhere for new friends. The Taiwanese foreign minister said he would not rule out “shaking hands with the devil.” Rumors went around Taipei that the Soviets might lease one of Taiwan’s outlying islands as a naval base.21

  On the whole, the reaction of the government was less violent than it might have been. Most ordinary Taiwanese were mainly confused and uneasy about what the future held, partly, said an American diplomat, because their own government had done so little to prepare them for this moment. Their reaction to the Nixon visit, the Australian ambassador in Taipei reported, was one of “essential helplessness in the face of events happening or to happen elsewhere.” Even the supporters of Taiwan’s independence as a separate country shared the growing feeling of isolation.22 Were they, as the American diplomat put it, “an annoying fragment complicating the implementation of a grand American strategy devised in Washington”?

  CHAPTER 19

  THE SHANGHAI COMMUNIQUÉ

  ON SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26, THE AMERICAN PARTY PREPARED to leave Beijing for the last stage of the visit. Nixon’s mood had not improved since the banquet the night before. As he sat in the airport waiting room, Chou politely called his attention to various pictures of China on the walls. Nixon tried to ignore him, but was eventually forced to look. His smile grew strained, then disappeared. “What the hell are you talking about?” he snapped. If the Chinese prime minister understood, he remained his usual imperturbable self.1

  They were all flying together in a Chinese plane (this had caused great concern to the Secret Service) to Hangzhou, just south of Shanghai. The Chinese had insisted on putting this, one of China’s most beautiful cities, on the itinerary. For its tree-covered hills and, above all, its West Lake, with its bridges, pavilions, and temples, Hangzhou had been a favorite subject of China’s writers and artists for centuries. Mao spent much time at his villa by the lake, especially during the winter months; he had also planned much of the Cultural Revolution there. It was possible, or so the Americans hoped, that he might be available there for a second meeting with Nixon. It would give the visit even more significance; it would also appease Rogers, who was deeply aggrieved that he had been cut out of the one meeting in Beijing. Kissinger raised the matter with Chou and Qiao in their private talks but was told that the chairman’s bronchitis made it difficult. There was no second meeting.2

  By way of compensation, the two sides held a second plenary session at the Beijing airport. The Chinese had originally scheduled fifteen minutes, but Nixon had asked that the meeting be stretched out to half an hour: “It would make some of our people who have not had a chance to sit in on the private sessions feel that they have a part to play, too.” Nixon and Chou spoke blandly about how good their talks had been. There were, of course, still differences between them, but they had made a good start on finding common ground. Nixon also took the opportunity to warn the Chinese, yet again, not to believe what the American press or American politicians said.

  Perhaps, said Chou, they should invite their foreign ministers to report on their own discussions. That, said Kissinger sardonically in his memoirs, did not take long. Rogers led off; his talks with Ji, the foreign minister, had been frank and friendly. And useful in clearing up misunderstandings. For example, when the Chinese had been concerned that they might need to be fingerprinted for visas to the United States, he had been able to make one quick phone call to Washington and reassure them that the procedure was no longer required. “That’s a very serious and earnest attitude,” Chou commented. No mention was made of the communiqué, even though its wording had finally—or so Nixon and Kissinger confidently thought—been settled the night before with the Chinese. Kissinger would show it to Rogers only in confidence, he assured Qiao, and then only when they reached Hangzhou.3

  In his memoirs, Nixon made only a brief mention of any problems over the communiqué. Both sides, as already agreed, stated their positions over Taiwan, the Chinese at first rather belligerently, in Nixon’s opinion. “Thanks largely to Kissinger’s negotiating skill and Chou’s common sense, the Chinese finally agreed to sufficiently modified language.” In his own memoirs, Kissinger devoted considerably more space to what he admitted were delicate and tricky negotiations. The transcripts of his talks, mainly with Qiao but occasionally with Chou present as well, show just how difficult they were.4

  Qiao, who was a trusted colleague of Chou’s, was, like his superior, clever, tough, and, when he chose, charming. Like Chou, he came from an upper-class background and had studied and lived abroad, in Japan and then in Germany, where he had earned a doctorate in philosophy. He had first worked for Chou during the civil war and had joined the Foreign Ministry after the Communists took power. Like Chou, Qiao was a skilled negotiator who had learned his craft in the negotiations at the end of the Korean War. More recently, he had headed the Chinese team that negotiated with the Soviets after the confrontations of 1969. Kissinger found Qiao a worthy opponent, and his subordinate, Zhang Wenjin, a stubborn nuisance with a fondness for splitting hairs. Kissinger’s own assistants Winston Lord and John Holdridge, from the State Department, rarely intervened in the discussions. The Americans had no inkling of the strains the men on the other side were under.

  In 1967, as the Cultural Revolution was getting into full swing, Zhang, who was then ambassador in Pakistan, had been summoned back to Beijing along with many other diplomats. Radicals had seized him at the airport and clapped a dunce’s cap on his head. They had then held him in the Foreign Ministry, where he had been forced to kneel for hours on a wooden bench, holding his leather shoes, signs of his bourgeois failings, above his head. As a protégé of Chou’s, Qiao had also been caught up
in the disputes in the Foreign Ministry. His enemies had accused him of being a rightist, an all-purpose but damning label. (Later on, after Mao’s death, he faced the completely different charge of being part of the Gang of Four.) His personal life was also complicated; his wife had died suddenly in 1970, and a year later he had fallen in love with a much younger woman in the Foreign Ministry. Zhang Hanzhi, who was extremely pretty and charming, was the daughter of an old friend of Mao’s and something of a favorite of the chairman’s. She had once tried to teach him English and now worked as an interpreter for Chou. There was much gossip about her relationship with Qiao, and it was not until the end of 1973 that they were given permission to marry. Not surprisingly, given the turmoil in his political and private lives, Qiao suffered from fits of depression and melancholy.5

  While most of the communiqué had been settled on Kissinger’s and Haig’s earlier trips, three issues still remained: trade and exchanges, the recent conflict between India and Pakistan, and Taiwan. The communiqué was unusual in that both sides were going to state their respective positions where they disagreed, but they still had to agree on the actual wording and set out those areas where in fact they did agree. In an intense series of meetings, in the intervals either in the morning or late at night when their presence was not required at the Nixon-Chou meetings or at social events, Kissinger and Qiao went over the communiqué line by line. They argued over words and grammar. Did “should” imply a moral obligation, for example? Could Nixon endorse a common statement that talked about revolution in the world? (In this case, they agreed merely to refer to “important changes and great upheavals.”) Should the American names to be listed as participants in the talks have middle initials? That one had to be referred to Nixon himself, who ruled against initials.

  Behind the quibbles lay real and important issues. Two great powers were taking a public stand on significant questions where they differed but also demonstrating that they had found some common ground. The words they used in the communiqué were going to be read and studied—in Moscow, Hanoi, Tokyo, in capital cities worldwide. And the commitments, to work on normalizing relations between China and the United States, while not binding, would be hard to break once made publicly. The transcripts of Kissinger’s and Qiao’s talks show masters of their craft at work. They assure each other that they do not want to be tricky. They swear that they are being completely frank with each other. They do much thinking aloud. It was a useful device, said Kissinger, because both sides could advance positions without being committed to them. At times they flattered each other shamelessly. “Our efficiency,” sighed Qiao, “is not as high as yours.” The Chinese, said Kissinger, were so much more subtle than most Americans.6

  On South Asia, one of the outstanding issues, the Americans wanted to say simply that the peoples of South Asia had the right to determine their own future without the threat of force and without outside interference, while the Chinese wanted to stress that India must obey the United Nations’ resolutions and withdraw its forces from Pakistan’s territory in Kashmir. After a brief discussion, both sides agreed on what was an unconventional way to have a joint communiqué: while there would be common statements, each would also have a separate section with its own wording.

  The wording on trade and exchanges was also relatively easy to settle, and here the two sides were able to agree that it was desirable to expand the contacts and understanding between their two peoples, whether through cultural and academic exchanges or sport. The Chinese were nervous about allowing foreigners into China and not particularly interested in trade or tourism, but Kissinger was reassuring. The words in the communiqué would be window dressing: “We both know that basically they don’t mean anything.” He was obliged by “sentimental” public pressure back home to push for more contacts between their two countries. “The maximum amount of bilateral trade possible between us, even if we make great efforts, is infinitesimal in terms of our total economy,” he pointed out. “And the exchanges, while they are important, will not change objective realities.” The Chinese were hardened revolutionaries, he said; “pedants” from American universities were not going to make any impression on them. These are interesting predictions viewed from our twenty-first-century vantage point: Wal-Mart’s imports from China amounted to some $18 billion in 2006 and place that one company ahead of Canada, Russia, and Australia as a trading partner with the People’s Republic; almost 900,000 Americans a year visit China; and many of China’s new leaders hold degrees from American universities.7

  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 acknowledgment 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 defense treaty with Taiwan.8

  During the week in Beijing, the two sides inched toward 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, finally finishing up in the early hours on Saturday. The wording of the Chinese statement on Taiwan, which reiterated China’s long-standing position that Taiwan was a part of China and its fate an internal matter, was agreed on 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 and 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 p
ut 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 the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan.” Nixon and Chou approved all the changes, and Saturday morning, the communiqué was apparently finally done. Haldeman planned to release it to the American press, which was increasingly restless at the lack of hard news on the communiqué or anything else, on Sunday night.10

  The reporters 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 the communiqué to Rogers during the flight. He himself was supposed to sit with Chou, and in his memoirs, he 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 journalists were and how he was fed up with Rogers.11