We must recognise the fact that the Government installed in Formosa has no chance of ever again becoming the Government of China unless it is enabled to do so as a result of a third world war. When we say that that Government should be the Government of China we not only take an unrealistic view but a menacing one. The Australian Government should have recognised the Communist Government in China.47
Showing what McMahon had called ‘its smiling face’, China was moving to engage with the international community. Most notably, in what the press soon termed ‘ping-pong diplomacy’, the PRC sent invitations to table tennis groups around the world to participate in the thirty-first World Table Tennis Championships in Peking, to be held during April and May. Encouraged by this move, hopeful that Labor’s policy of recognition might give it some credit, and looking to embarrass the government further over the cancelled wheat sales, the federal secretary of the ALP, Mick Young, suggested that Whitlam seek an invitation to visit China.48 It was a risky proposal, but one that Whitlam took up. On 14 April, he sent a telegram to Chinese premier Zhou Enlai:
Australian Labor Party anxious to send delegation to People’s Republic of China to discuss the terms on which your government is interested in having diplomatic and trade relations with Australia.49
Whitlam announced his move the next day, hoping to contrast the ALP’s initiative with the government’s inertia. The risky contrast was immediately palpable. Despite his awareness that there had to be change and advice that he not respond,50 McMahon reacted with the same instincts that had guided his actions while foreign minister: political self-preservation. From a perspective of domestic politics, he could not afford the kind of criticism that had led the DLP to withhold preferences at the 1969 election. Moreover, he could not allow his own, barely healing party to fracture again, a possibility that a radical departure from long-drawn battlelines might provoke. McMahon thus seized upon Whitlam’s telegram to go on the attack. Still speaking of the PRC in the ‘red’ language of the 1950s, he told the National Press Club on 15 April that China should not be admitted to the UN without an assurance that it would not pursue political objectives through force or insurgency operations and that the retention of a seat for the ROC was a paramount goal.51 In the House, he suggested there were parallels between the telegram and Evatt’s letter to the Soviet minister Molotov during the Petrov Affair. He said that Whitlam’s attempts at engagement would fail. He called it all just politics.52
But then Whitlam announced that the ALP had received a response. On 10 May, a telegram from the People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs — a front for the PRC to interact with nations that did not recognise it — invited an ALP delegation to visit the country. The risks of acceptance were quickly apparent. What some in the ALP had believed was a political stunt was now very real. Whitlam hesitated about going, but soon concluded that the risks were worth it.
McMahon was not nearly as daring, but he was aware of the politics involved. In a domestic sense, he saw that Whitlam’s decision to accept the invitation to visit afforded him space to begin shifting the government’s policy towards engagement with the PRC. After a cabinet discussion held at his initiative, McMahon gave a speech to the Citizens Club in Sydney on 13 May, announcing that the government would ‘explore the possibilities of establishing a dialogue with the People’s Republic (of China)’, with a view to normalising bilateral relations eventually.53 It was ‘indication of flexibility’ only, and limited in scope: an expansion of cultural exhanges, changes for visas and entry permits, and visits by sports teams, press, and artistic groups. The core issue, of diplomatic relations between Australia and the PRC, was completely separate.
The announcement was all politics, an attempt to show that his government was not following a trail blazed by the ALP, that it had its own initiative. But it was not well received. McMahon, apparently speaking from a rewrite of more conciliatory papers from the Department of Foreign Affairs, had appeared to suggest an almost total change in policy, particularly towards the Soviet Union. When he finished, the room stayed silent but for one person. Sir Frank Packer was the only person to applaud.54
McMahon was trying to find some political advantage, hoping to have the benefits of recognition and attack at the same time. He was also anxious to ensure that he not get out of step with the US. On the same day as his speech, McMahon sent a letter to Nixon seeking ‘an indication of your present thinking’ and reiterating that time was running out for a solution to the problems posed by the PRC’s inevitable admission to the UN and the ROC’s likely ejection from the Security Council.55 Nixon did not trouble himself to respond until mid-July.56
Meanwhile, hampered by lack of contacts within the Chinese government, Australia’s ambassador to France, Alan Renouf — McMahon’s old flatmate — was told to ‘make the initial move’ and approach the Chinese ambassador to France, Huang Chen.57 Renouf met the ambassador on 27 May. But upon being told that Australia sought, in the long term, to normalise relations with the PRC, Chen replied that obstacles to recognition were solely of the Australian government’s making. Australia followed the US, had participated in the ‘aggressive war’ in Vietnam, had diplomatic relations with Taiwan, advocated the ‘two-China’ or ‘one China, one Taiwan’ formula, and had acted in a ‘hostile way’ towards the PRC, he told Renouf. Until Australia removed these obstacles, no relations could be normalised.58 Subsequent meetings proved that matters would go no further: the PRC was not interested in discussing anything less than diplomatic relations.59 ‘On this I had nothing to say,’ Renouf cabled to Canberra.60 They were at an impasse.
Matters were still there when Whitlam, leading a delegation that included nine handpicked journalists, departed Australia for Hong Kong in late June. Arriving in China on 2 July, the Labor leader announced that Australia would ‘learn more about China in the next fourteen days than it had ever previously’.61 He was more correct than he could ever have thought.
As McMahon frustratedly declared that Australia could not get ‘any common sense’ out of the Chinese in its talks in Paris,62 Whitlam and his party proved the opposite. They had meetings with the acting foreign minister, Ji Pengfei, and the minister for trade, Bai Xiangguo. Then, on 5 July, Whitlam was granted an audience with Chinese premier Zhou Enlai.
Conducted in the East Room of the Great Hall of the People, this was no benign photo opportunity. Zhou’s invitation for the press to witness the meeting ensured that it was fraught with dangers that were amplified by Whitlam’s being the first Western political figure to visit the PRC. Whitlam was not now playing only to an Australian audience: this meeting would have international significance. The political risks were immense.63 Navigating those risks required finesse and firmness. After discussing ALP policy, Zhou sought to induce Whitlam to denounce Australia’s alliance with the US. Zhou invoked SEATO: ‘You cannot call SEATO a defensive treaty,’ the Chinese premier joked, but Whitlam was forthright: ‘It is moribund.’64
Zhou spoke of the Chinese relationship with Russia, via the Sino-Soviet pact, and how it had soured, what kind of a warning it could serve. ‘Is your ally very reliable?’ he asked. He moved on to Australian politics. The present government ‘is not friendly’ to China, he said, and cited McMahon’s remark that diplomatic relations with China were ‘far off now’.
Whitlam remained silent. Refusing to enter into any party politics, he would only promise that diplomatic relations would be pursued should the ALP win the election due the next year.
Zhou seemed to shrug. ‘They do not want to establish diplomatic relations. He [McMahon] seems to be quite confident. It is probably because your party is in China.’
‘This may be,’ Whitlam replied cautiously. ‘I must say, even to the credit of my opponents, they are catching up with the realities of life on China, to a certain extent. They know Dulles’ politics have failed dismally, and if president Nixon says he wants to visit China, can Mr McMahon be far behind?’
Zhou did not wait for the translation. He began to laugh heartily. Soon, he moved to wrap the meeting up. ‘What is past is past and we look forward to when you can take office,’ the Chinese premier told Whitlam, ‘and you can put into effect your promises.’
It had been a good meeting, but the memory of Zhou’s laughter was to linger with Whitlam. Why had the Chinese premier laughed so? Whitlam had no inkling as to its cause. ‘I was not in on the joke,’ he later remarked.65
When McMahon heard news of the meeting, he seemed to be staggered. Then he seemed hesitant, unsure what to make of it. ‘He is obviously concerned,’ Alan Reid observed. ‘… There is almost a jealousy about it. But he clearly does not know what to do about China.’ McMahon wanted to claim credit for driving the review of Australia’s policy towards China, but ‘the real story’, in Reid’s opinion, ‘appears to be that the Department [of Foreign Affairs] did it of its own volition.’66
The prime minister was indecisive, blowing in the wind. He had his spine stiffened by a meeting with the DLP leader, senator Vince Gair, on 7 July, and then the next day met Harry Bland. He told Bland that Whitlam had ‘goofed’ on China, but it was clear that he was trying to convince himself, that he was trying to preserve his hopes: ‘He probably believes that Whitlam has scored a major political point but he just doesn’t want to admit it even to himself,’ thought Reid.67 He was hardly going to find direction from the press: the reception to the news was neither gushing nor harsh. McMahon decided to rely on the old touchstones. After checking his speech with the United States embassy in Canberra, he spoke to an audience of Young Liberals in Melbourne on 12 July:
It is time to expose the shams and absurdities of [Whitlam’s] excursion into instant coffee diplomacy … He went on playing his wild diplomatic game, knocking our friends one by one until he was virtually alone in Asia and the Pacific, except for the communists … I find it incredible that at a time when Australian soldiers are still engaged in Vietnam, the Leader of the Labor Party is becoming a spokesman for those against whom we are fighting.
McMahon’s audience was favourable. His speech was punchy. His attack hit all the right notes — notes that had worked for twenty years. And the memorable metaphor ensured that the peroration of McMahon’s speech would haunt him. ‘In no time at all,’ McMahon said, ‘Zhou Enlai had Mr Whitlam on a hook and he played him as a fisherman plays a trout.’68
The affair made the Liberals excited. The opening and the prospect of an easy attack led some to have visions of victory and glory. Fraser told Howson that the government should call an election and capitalise on Whitlam’s visit.69 McMahon felt confident enough to declare, to another gathering of Liberal Party members, that ‘China has been a political asset to the Liberal Party in the past and is likely to remain one in the future.’70
But that future was extremely short. On 15 July, McMahon received word that Nixon was about to take a decisive step on US-China relations.71 Within two hours, Nixon appeared on television to read a statement that was, simultaneously, being broadcast in Peking. His assistant for national security, Henry Kissinger, he announced, had just returned from a secret diplomatic trip to China, where he had met with Zhou Enlai between 9 and 11 July. He himself, Nixon said, hoped to be able to accept an invitation to visit Peking by May 1972. He looked forward to meeting with Chinese leaders. He hoped to normalise relations between the US and China, to exchange views on questions of concern. ‘I have taken this action,’ Nixon said, ‘because of my profound conviction that all nations will gain from a reduction of tensions and a better relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.’72
When he heard this, McMahon was aghast. He had, at least, avoided the fate of the tearful Japanese prime minister, who had heard of it via the press, but this was small salve to the considerable embarrassment and sense of betrayal he felt. Only the day before, Nixon had written to him and said nothing of Kissinger’s visit, nothing of Nixon’s willingness to go to China. If anything, that letter had indicated that Nixon had come to no firm decisions on nothing whatsoever. McMahon could not have failed to feel humiliated by the Americans. As he sadly told Graham Freudenberg much later, ‘We thought we were being helpful.’73 So much for that. ‘He was, in a sense,’ commented Richard Woolcott later, ‘unlucky on it.’74 But luck did not explain it all. McMahon had repeatedly failed to heed warning signs that the US would make its own decisions on China; he had repeatedly failed to seize opportunities for himself to recast and solve the problem. He had made his own luck — and lost.
When Whitlam learned of Kissinger’s visit, while in Japan, he could not help but be amused. Now he had an explanation for Zhou’s hearty laughter. Of course, after that visit, McMahon would not be far behind. Surprised and stunned by the news, he felt ‘extraordinary vindication’, he said later.75 The joke was now his to share in, and it augured well for him: ‘The mandate of heaven had clearly been withdrawn.’76
In public, McMahon tried to hide his discomfort. He told unconvinced reporters that ‘normalising relations with China’ had been Australia’s policy for some time, and refused to answer questions about it. He was ‘shaken and embarrassed’, wrote one journalist; Labor was gleeful, happy to rub salt in McMahon’s wounds.77 When Lance Barnard, Whitlam’s deputy, was asked to provide a memorable line, he invoked a fish: McMahon was like a stunned mullet, he said.
Stunned though he might be, McMahon made no secret of his anger in private. The editor of the Canberra Times, John Allan, who had received a telephone call from McMahon complaining about an editorial on his ‘prime ministerial clangers’, told the US embassy that McMahon was ‘almost psychotic’ about his humiliation. The Americans were unsurprised: they had already assessed that McMahon was ‘on edge and almost frenzied in trying to stay on top of his job’.78 When McMahon wrote to Nixon on 18 July, he complained that Australia was ‘placed in a quandary by our lack of any foreknowledge’ and continued, sharply, that ‘it should have been possible to advise your friends and allies of the broad trends in your thinking.’ But the most pressing cause for McMahon’s complaint was the damage that Nixon had done to McMahon’s politicking:
Our relations with the People’s Republic of China have in recent weeks been a matter of deep public controversy in Australia following a visit to Peking by members of the Australian Labor Party, including the Leader of the Opposition Mr Whitlam. We have felt obliged to criticise many of the things which Mr Whitlam said and did in Peking including some quite gratuitous attacks and criticism of our friends and allies including the United States … Some of it would have been cast differently had we been given an indication of changes in American policy along the lines I have mentioned.
Reasonable as it was for McMahon to write it, the complaint surely undercut his admonishment that, by Nixon’s secrecy, there existed the assumption that ‘our relations are not as close as they should be’.79 A meeting between Jim Plimsoll and US secretary of state William Rogers, in which Rogers explained his government’s reasoning, failed to placate McMahon. Rogers’ suggestion that ‘it had just not been possible to let many know’ had McMahon seething. ‘But they trusted the Pakistanis!! [sic]’ he scrawled on the report of the meeting. ‘Not us!! Or Japan!!’80 Two days later, McMahon canvassed making a national broadcast on China to wrest back the initiative, to elevate these developments to ‘national matters’, outside the sphere of domestic politics.81 But with his colleagues, McMahon’s frustration was clear. His disappointment was palpable. It was a ‘failure’ of his prime ministership, he told Howson over dinner on 20 July, and for that he blamed Nixon and his secrecy. Howson tried to coax McMahon to move on. ‘The main task is for him [McMahon] to get some rest, because he certainly looks tired and is a little tense and terse. He must also learn to delegate responsibility a little more; he wants to do everybody’s job himself.’82
All McMahon could do was continue to criticise. All he could do was hope t
hat there were enough people who did not trust Whitlam, the ALP, or China, but who would trust instead in his own government’s close relationship with the US. ‘Whitlam did not even know that Kissinger was there,’ he said. ‘That’s how much the Chinese trust him. It makes a mockery of the man.’83
It was feeble. McMahon was the man who had been made a mockery. If Australia looked ‘less flat-footed, less ignorant, less obscurantist, less imitative’ because of Whitlam’s visit, as the Labor leader declared on his return, then domestically, it was the McMahon government that looked all of these things.84 McMahon was flailing, blaming anyone he could. In a speech to the American National Club, he was sarcastic and meddling. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if Zhou Enlai didn’t get the best of president Nixon [when they meet],’ he said to a startled audience, ‘which in turn will adversely affect Nixon’s election chances in 1972.’85
But McMahon was not going to stop trying to resolve the issue. At Frank Packer’s suggestion, he explored trying to accompany Nixon when he visited China, but was told that the Chinese would be unlikely to accept this without some material change in Australian policy.86 Looking for a scapegoat and a new change, he decided to remove Les Bury as minister for foreign affairs. Not offering any reasons, he told Bury late in July that he wanted him gone. On 30 July, when Hasluck queried this — having already heard the news from an outraged Bury — McMahon said that he had little confidence in Bury’s ability to handle the House ‘convincingly’ when questions about China inevitably arose:
He (the P.M.) seemed to be worried at the possibility of criticism of him over China. He then said that Bury was tired and sick and seemed to be running down. He (McMahon) himself had to ‘do everything in Foreign Affairs’ … If it was not for McMahon himself nothing would be done. He told me of the ‘simply colossal’ job he was doing in foreign affairs but he seemed to me to be trying to reassure himself as much as to give information to me. In short, he wanted a new Minister for Foreign Affairs before Parliament met.87
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