Nixon and Kissinger cooked up this idea of pitting the Soviet Union and China against each other with the United States as a third corner of the triangle to create a stable balance of power, says Evan Thomas, journalist and author of Being Nixon: A Man Divided. The fate of Taiwan was not addressed, and the issue still stalks U.S.-China. That lack of attention has been very costly for the relationship, inflating our sense of agency and fostering undue expectations among policymakers here and in the American public more generally about our capacity to shape events in China to our liking. This was the week that changed the world. The visit and subsequent normalization of relations with the West provided the ideological cover necessary for the economic reforms of the 1980s that launched China from a pariah state to the economic juggernaut that it is today. [citation needed] Eisenhower made a state visit to Taiwan in 1960, during the period when the United States recognized the Republic of China government in Taipei as the sole government of China. What has the Nixon visit meant to you? [14], President Nixon, his wife, and their entourage left the White House on February 17, 1972, spending a night in Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station, Oahu, Hawaii. In one Chinese record from December 1970, Mao Zedong confided to Edgar Snow that he liked Nixon's "reactionary" approach to foreign policy and desired to speak with him directly. The visitwasa visual spectacle for the US President, his entourage, and much of the rest of the world, which closely watched the American leaders travels inside the world's largest communist country. A pivotal moment in twentieth century diplomatic history, historians and other observers nevertheless continue to debate the visit, its legacies, and some of the myths that have come to surround it. Nixon, always a fan of the big play, had high hopes that his trip to China would be the kind of seismic geopolitical event that changed the course of history. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. The trip provided the opportunity, which it seized, to alter its own troubled relationship with the Soviet Union, to reduce tensions with the U.S. which had regarded the PRC as an implacable enemy and, for some leaders, to foster a potential source of help as China sought to compensate for years lost to that turmoil. In a meeting with Taiwan's military leaders on February 26, a day before the issuance of the landmark China-US joint communique in Shanghai, Chiang told the generals that Taiwan must have a new . Nixon visited the PRC to gain more leverage over relations with the Soviet Union. Alford: I think that, as with so much else in the U.S.-China relationship for the past two centuries, treatment of the Nixon trip remarkably has been viewed almost exclusively through a U.S. prism, with almost no attention to the Chinese side. On February 21, 1972, Air Force One landed in Beijing. Today, the relationship between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America is now one of the most important and vital bilateral relationships in the world, and every successive U.S. president, except for Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden (although he has already visited when he was Vice President), has visited the PRC. The trip is consistently ranked by historians, scholars, and journalists as one of the most importantif not the most importantvisits by a U.S. president anywhere in the world. Tiger Leaping Gorge. The PRC leadership worried that their well-armed Soviet neighbors had designs on expanding their territory into Asia. Rigger said Kissinger might have led Zhou Enlai to believe the US would not stand in the way of China having what it wanted with respect to Taiwan. Fifty years after Nixons history-making journey, Harvard Law Today turned to two China experts to understand its significance, both then and now. Nevertheless, Mao felt well enough to insist to his officials that he would meet with Nixon upon his arrival. From February 21 to 28, 1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon traveled to Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. And in the Shanghai Communique, the U.S. crucially acknowledged the Chinese position that Taiwan is a part of China. Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window), Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window), Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window), Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window), Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window), HUM Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images, How Ping-Pong Diplomacy Thawed the Cold War, https://www.history.com/news/nixon-china-visit-cold-war, How Nixons 1972 Visit to China Changed the Balance of Cold War Power. The U.S. had diplomatic relations with the ruling Communist Party's arch enemy, the nationalists based in Taiwan. Almost as soon as the American president arrived in the Chinese capital, CCP Chairman Mao Zedong summoned him for a quick meeting. [26], Nixon's visit to China was well-planned. So too did photos of first ladyPat Nixon inspecting a kitchen at a Beijing hotel. On February 22, 1972, the Peoples Daily printed a picture of Chairman Mao shaking hands with Richard Nixon. Mao spoke simply and inelegantly, but clearly communicated approval of the visit and its diplomatic utility. "I suppose it was 'putting it off' in the sense that the US wasn't handing the island over as part of normalisation (which is not something the US could have done anyway), but [Zhou] did not think the US should continue to provide military help to Taiwan. Buildings and monuments can also be included. The enemy of my enemy is my friend was a very Nixonian idea., Since direct diplomatic ties between China and the U.S. were severed, Nixon had to work through private back channels in Pakistan and Romania to make overtures to the Chinese, who proved receptive. "This sets it on a collision course with the US, especially as China aims to become the prominent, if not dominant, power. China is modernizing rapidly, a fact which makes its ancient treasures all the more precious. Keenly aware of the support Taiwan enjoyed in the US, especially among lawmakers, Nixon understood that "the discussions with the Chinese cannot look like a sell-out of Taiwan" or like we were "dumping our friends". By the late 1960s, frequent border skirmishes between the Soviets and the Chinese verged on all-out war. The U.N. expulsion, the Nixon visit, and the severing of diplomatic ties by many countries afterwards catapulted Taiwan into a diplomatic isolation that is still ongoing. In fact, they werent even sure my uncles had survived the Cultural Revolution. For the 50th anniversary of the "week that changed the world"--- the summit between the United States and China from February 21-28, 1972 during which US President Richard Nixon met with Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong---this video features excerpts from China experts on the significance of what is considered one of the major diplomatic turning points in modern history. But the story is still playing itself out we are only fifty years into a historical event that may require several more decades before its eventual outcome is known. The Wilson Centers Digital Archive contains a considerable number of documents surrounding the Nixon visit to China. Nixon in China, opera in three acts by John Adams (with an English libretto by Alice Goodman), which premiered at the Houston Grand Opera in 1987. What Lessons Can We Learn from The Week that Changed the World?. Visitors can also flip through images on a touchscreen display from the yellow legal pads on which Nixon scribbled copious notes. An iconic black-and-white photo released afterwards shows Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger sitting with Mao, a translator and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. One famous landmark in China that you absolutely need to experience is the Dujiangyan Panda Base (also known as the Chengdu Research Base Of Giant Panda Breeding). According to Winston Lord, then a national security aide who later became US ambassador to China, most of the Shanghai Communique was negotiated during their second trip to Beijing, except for aspects relating to Taiwan, which was "the most sensitive and that we had to keep haggling about [it] during Nixon's trip itself in February 1972", he later recalled. It has statues of Nixon and Zhou Enlai, a video documentary and artifacts, like a tin of panda cigarettes from a banquet. Magnus also said the Shanghai Communique had limited relevance in the 2020s "other than as a historical signpost". "It underscored the vision and the extraordinary ability of our leaders back then to take a long view and make sound strategic decisions that may affect future generations.". Tiffany & Co. will open its Fifth Avenue flagship store, what it now calls the Landmark, on April 28, after a three-year renovation. Unknown to Nixon and the rest of the American diplomats at the time, Mao was in poor health and he had been hospitalized for several weeks up to only nine days before Nixon's arrival. They arrived the next day in Guam at 5 pm, where they spent the night at Nimitz Hill, the residence of the Commander, Naval Forces, Marianas. Nixon did not shift the Wests policy toward Communist China; it was already happening. The trip would begin a new period of Chinese-American relations. WINSTON LORD: It was just filled with books and manuscripts all over the place - in the back of Mao, where he sat and all the tables. He was also tasked with an even more challenging job: to draft a joint statement for the presidential visit with then Chinese premier Zhou Enlai. The visit helped to break several decades of US-PRC hostility and launched a new cooperative course in the relationship that generally persisted until the end of the Cold War, if not longer. Alford: The U.S. and PRC were certainly not going to agree on everything and the intentional ambiguity that marked the Shanghai Communiqu proved beneficial for decades. It was a stunning development in international politics, one that has often been hailed as a week that changed the world.. But whether the visit truly changed the course of world history, as I said earlier, its far too early to tell. Before his election as president in 1968, former Vice President Richard Nixon hinted at establishing a new relationship with the PRC. Wu: There are areas of profound disagreement, but also narrower areas where the two sides may choose to cooperate. In the five decades since, Taiwan has remained separate from the mainland. The normalization of ties culminated in 1979, when the U.S. established full diplomatic relations with the PRC. Charles Kraus is the Deputy Director of the History and Public Policy Program at the Wilson Center. France had already severed diplomatic ties with Taipei and normalized relations with the Peoples Republic in 1964, and Canada and Italy did so in 1970. In the aftermath of the Chinese civil war, the communists had captured mainland China and declared the founding of the Peoples Republic in 1949. JAMES SHEN: Well, Mr. President, I'm going back to Taiwan. At one point Nixon intervened, cautioning Zhou that "if too much was said publicly, that would be seized upon by Americans who opposed the opening to China from both right and left as an excuse to disrupt normalisation". And what we have said today is that we shall build that bridge. Throughout the week the President and his senior advisers engaged in substantive discussions with the PRC leadership, including a meeting with CCP chairman Mao Zedong, while First Lady Pat Nixon toured schools, factories and hospitals in the cities of Beijing, Hangzhou and Shanghai with the large American press corps in tow. RUWITCH: Where they wanted to cooperate most was in counterbalancing the Soviet Union, which both saw as a threat. The closest the U.S. and China had come to diplomatic contact was 15 years earlier in 1954, when top officials from both nations attended the Geneva Convention to negotiate new political boundaries between North and South Korea, and North and South Vietnam. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. MacMillan provides vivid thumbnail biographies of the four major players in the drama of that weeklong visit, Nixon, Mao, Henry Kissinger and Chou En-lai, each a fascinating character in his own right. But despite the intensity of the discussions, the Americans appeared to have failed to have "fully absorbed the centrality of Taiwan to PRC interests", according to the late US diplomat Alan Romberg, a leading expert on cross-strait relations. I cant help but see his behavior on this front as redolent of the duplicity we saw in his approach to the Vietnam War and race relations at home, and that eventually did him in. SCMP China Series: 50 years since Nixon visited China. Being so large, Yangtze is China's most important waterway, providing water to farmland that gives food to one-third of the population. Part of Kissinger's mission was to hammer out the finer details of United States president Richard Nixon's historic trip to China that both sides had agreed to in July, including setting the date and discussing press coverage to convince the hostile public in the US to warm towards communist China. But its fate is as unresolved as ever. On 15 July 1971 at 19:00 local time, US President Richard Nixon walked into an NBC television studio in California and announced to the world that he had accepted an invitation from Premier Zhou . In a rare public acknowledgement of the warming relationship, the PRC invited the U.S. ping pong team to a series of exhibition games in Beijing in 1971, a cultural exchange that became known as ping-pong diplomacy., READ MORE:How Ping-Pong Diplomacy Thawed the Cold War. While the visit was a public relations boon for both nations, Nixon and Kissinger failed to secure Chinas help in ending the war in Vietnam, and no real progress was made on the status of Taiwan. [citation needed], Within a year after Nixon's visit, a number of U.S. allies including Japan, Great Britain, and West Germany had broken relations with Taiwan in order to establish them with China. When I accompanied then-Dean Martha Minow to Taiwan in 2013, we had a very stimulating conversation with then-President Ma Ying-jeou S.J.D. On July 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon addressed the nation in a live televised broadcast to make an unexpected announcement: he had accepted an invitation from Beijing to become the first U.S. president to visit the Peoples Republic of China, a Communist nation of 750 million that, next to the Soviet Union, was Americas fiercest adversary in the Cold War. Watergate scandal, interlocking political scandals of the administration of U.S. Pres. The U.S. had literally turned a cold shoulder to Chou in 1954, says Thomas. The Soviets, who previously rejected calls for limiting their nuclear arsenal, changed their tune when Nixon reopened talks with China. It's been 50 years since President Nixon went to China, a trip that changed the world's balance of power. The aftermath of the Watergate scandal later in 1972 led Nixon to deprioritize further diplomatic efforts with the PRC. At the time, Lord says, Beijing appeared to be happy with the arrangement. This meeting was arranged and facilitated by Pakistan through its strong diplomatic channels with China. The statement enabled the U.S. and PRC to temporarily set aside the "crucial question obstructing the normalization of relations"[23] concerning the political status of Taiwan and to open trade and other contacts. Richard M. Nixon that were revealed following the arrest of five burglars at Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in the Watergate office-apartment-hotel complex in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 1972. U.S. President Nixon shakes hands with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai at, important strategic and diplomatic overture, U.S. established full diplomatic relations with the PRC, Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, visit by Deng Xiaoping to the United States, Visit by Deng Xiaoping to the United States, "China and the United States: Nixon's Legacy after 40 Years", "Ulysses S. Grant: International Arbitrator (U.S. National Park Service)", "CHINA POWER Kissinger's Visit, 40 Years On", "Getting to Beijing: Henry Kissinger's Secret 1971 Trip", "Nixon In China Itinerary, Feb. 17 -28, 1972", "Nixon Asserts That Western Rightists Pleased Mao", "Nixon's China's Visit and "Sino-U.S. Joint Communiqu", "1972 Election - 1972 Year in Review - Audio - UPI.com", "Assignment: China The Week that Changed the World", "Memorandum of Conversation between Chou En-lai and Henry Kissinger", "EXCERPT OF MAO ZEDONG'S CONVERSATION WITH JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER KAKUEI TANAKA", "MAO ZEDONG, 'SETTLEMENT OF THE QUESTIONS OF RESTORATION OF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS BETWEEN CHINA AND JAPAN STILL DEPENDS ON THE GOVERNMENT OF THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY', How Nixon's China Visit affected U.S. Inflation for 50 Years, "China State Dinners: President Jimmy Carter and President Richard Nixon talk with Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping of China", Nixon's Trip to China, including the President's recollections documented on White House tapes, Index of articles on Nixon's foreign policy, including China, Nixon's Trip to China: Records now Completely Declassified, Including Kissinger Intelligence Briefing and Assurances on Taiwan, Presidential transition of Dwight D. 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The US-China rapprochement, symbolized by Nixons visit, substantially altered the international balance of power and arguably concluded the Cold War in East Asia. The 1979 communique on the establishment of official ties between China and the US said the US government "acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is a part of China". Some in the administration of former president Donald Trump even suggested that the communique be scrapped in a bid to seek closer ties with Taiwan. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! From Shanghai, the Nixons traveled to Beijing.[16]. A masterful account of one of the most dramatic moments in American diplomatic history, President Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972. Mao said that he had no interest in Japan's Communist Party, and "also voted" for Kakuei Tanaka. The Great Hall of the People and 100 Yuan Note. Only after the Nixon visit did my father dare to reach out to his brothers, leading to the family being reunited many years later. According to Kissinger, he spent nearly 25 hours over the following week combing through the details of Nixon's upcoming trip and a host of regional issues relating to Taiwan, their shared concerns about the Soviet Union, the Vietnam war and the ongoing South Asian conflict over Bangladesh. LOPEZ: Yeah. Soon after Nixon settled into his hotel, he was told that Mao Zedong, the aging chairman of the Communist revolution wanted to meet with him. And its only one of several important what if moments, where we can second-guess the counterfactual about what wouldve happened otherwise. In the two decades since China's Communist Revolution, the countries' Cold War relationship. How could Mao pull off such a stunt after two decades of intense anti-US propaganda? Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger came to believe that by thawing relations with the Chinese and bringing them into the society of nations, America could gain a powerful new ally in its negotiations with both the North Vietnamese and the Soviets. The week-long visit, from February 21 to 28, 1972, allowed the American public to view images of mainland China for the first time in over two decades. The two sides hadnt spoken for decades, and the United States was at war with the Communist North Vietnamese in Chinas backyard. We strive for accuracy and fairness. HLT: Why was the trip, and the agreement coming out of it, significant? With Nixon's China visit in February of '72 WU: The U.S. adopted the one-China policy, which means there's one China and Taiwan is part of China. This landmark sits on over 7-acres of land and took a total of 400 years to construct. While in Shanghai, Nixon spoke about what this meant for the two countries in the future: This was the week that changed the world, as what we have said in that Communique is not nearly as important as what we will do in the years ahead to build a bridge across 16,000 miles and 22 years of hostilities which have divided us in the past. Instead they, including Kissinger himself, still largely saw the Taiwan issue as more of a practical obstacle rather than China's "central question of concern", as Zhou had claimed. But there was another American at the meeting that day in Mao's cluttered study. But the U.S., he said, had to take the long view in all of this. Taipei eventually left the U.N. And Beijing was voted in in the fall of 1971. Early in his first term, Nixon, through his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, sent subtle overtures hinting at warmer relations to the government of the PRC. [13] For this ambitious goal to be reached President Nixon had carried out a series of carefully calibrated moves through Communist China's allies Romania and Pakistan. From the moment U.S. President Richard Nixon landed in China on February 21, 1972, he understood that global politics would undergo a transformation that would last well into the 21st century. [1] The seven-day official visit to three Chinese cities was the first time a U.S. president had visited the PRC; Nixon's arrival in Beijing ended 25 years of no communication or diplomatic ties between the two countries and was the key step in normalizing relations between the U.S. and the PRC. It is over 6,300 kilometers long, which makes it the third-longest river in the world. [22], The Chinese agreed to a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question. A longtime contributor to HowStuffWorks, Dave has also been published in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and Newsweek. Photographs of Nixon standing on top the Great Wall, viewing The Red Detachment of Women,or toasting Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai circulated widely around the globe. President Nixon shaking hands with Premier Chou Enlai at the foot of the Air Force One stair ramp, while First Lady Pat Nixon and Chinese officials stand nearby, February 21, 1972. In China, from the beginning of the Sino-Soviet split in 1956, there was a perceived necessity for external allies to counterbalance the power of the Soviet Union. Nixons announcement of his upcoming trip to China was a shock to most Americans, but the bold political gesture quickly won popular support. Bush argued that Kissinger's visit would undermine Washington's effort to preserve Taiwan's seat at the UN. Harvard Law School provides unparalleled opportunities to study law with extraordinary colleagues in a rigorous, vibrant, and collaborative environment. All rights reserved. He would give a one or two-sentence answer and say, that's something for Premier Zhou Enlai to handle. "I don't think anyone set aside ideological rivalry; instead, they both were practising Mao's Theory of Contradictions," she said. The largest Buddha is over 55-feet tall, while the smallest is less than an inch tall. In addition to the widespread support among developing nations, pundits believed Kissinger's secret trip to Beijing and the subsequent announcement of Nixon's state visit helped tilt the balance in China's favour at the UN and on the world stage. Copyright 2022 NPR. National Security Council staffer (and later U.S. Code-named "[Operation Marco] Polo II" and publicly announced weeks before Kissinger left for China, it was effectively a full-scale dress rehearsal for the historic presidential visit. So, the fact that Nixon, as president, would be willing to embark in outreach to Beijing came as a surprise. While very much a product of the end of history hubris here that reached its apogee with the collapse of the Soviet Union, that attitude seemed to me at that time to be woefully inattentive to Chinas history and contemporary circumstances and not especially discerning about our own country or the course of world history. Nixon himself had won early political fame as an anti-communist hawk with his pursuit of Alger Hiss, a former State Department official accused of spying for the Soviet Union. The communiqu also contained an acknowledgment that the U.S. does not challenge the view that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of China and therefore helped shape the policy of U.S. strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan that remains today. Kissinger's second trip to China was different from the first exploratory visit which took many US allies and officials at Nixon's White House by surprise with its strict secrecy. All Rights Reserved, International Dimensions of Decolonization in the Middle East and North Africa: A Primary Source Collection, The Jupiter Missiles and the Endgame of the Cuban Missile Crisis: Sealing the Deal with Italy and Turkey, Iraqi Archives and the Failure of Saddams Worldview in 2003, The CIA and the Committee for Free Asia under Project DTPILLAR, FJHUMMING: Radio Libertys Russian Language Broadcasts from Taiwan. She, by the way, remembers Nixons visit to her hometown of Hangzhou during which all but selected individuals were ordered to stay inside.
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