Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World

The actual diplomatic discussions and priorities of the two countries (Taiwan for the Chinese, Indochina for the Americans) are a little dry, but what makes the book fun is the insight it gives to the frequently funny ways countries dance around each other, read between the lines of their leaders' public statements, and use other countries as go-betweens trying to open up communications. Establishing diplomatic relations seems a lot like trying to figure out if a potential romantic partner is interested without actually asking straight-up. I think, thusly, that I would make a pretty poor diplomat.

This book by Margaret MacMillan revolves around a one-hour meeting in February, 1972 between Richard Nixon, the President of the United States and Mao Tse-tung, the Chairman of the People’s Republic of China. This rather momentous event marked the re-establishment of dialogue between the two countries after twenty years of estrangement following the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949. As it runs to 400 pages, there is much more to than that. The book is for the general reader, it outlines the circumstances that brought the meeting about, sketches out the relevant biographical details of the main people involved, and offers a short history of China to show how the Chinese Communist State had come into being and developed. There are no great insights or discoveries, but the book illustrates well how international diplomacy is conducted and narrates a story that is important in and of itself.
For their part, the American reasons for better relations with China were mostly two-fold. First, they wanted help in Vietnam. The Nixon government wanted to get out of Vietnam, “Peace with Honor”, but to do that they needed to have the North Vietnamese government be more cooperative at the Paris Peace talks. They knew the Chinese were a major sponsor of the Vietnamese Communists and wanted the Chinese to apply pressure to the Vietnamese to come to a settlement with the Americans. They also wanted help to balance their relationship with the Soviet Union. A Chinese-American rapprochement would pressure the Soviets to be more conciliatory in, for example, the ongoing SALT nuclear arms reduction talks they were having with the Americans. A lesser aim was to open China to American business, but Nixon and Kissinger, the main players in the negotiations, considered this something to be left to the State Department.
For their part, the Chinese had three reasons to bargain with the Americans. First for them was Taiwan. The Americans had about ten thousand troops in Taiwan, and the Chinese wanted them out, they wanted the Americans to not support any independence movement for Taiwan, and in fact they wanted the Americans to support a “one-China” policy. Next, they had had a terrible split with the Soviets, their former Communist allies, and it was so bad that in 1969 an open war had almost broken out. There were artillery and tank battles on their common border and the Soviets had sent bombers on simulated runs targeting Chinese nuclear facilities. Lastly, the hangover of the Cultural Revolution had left China very isolated, with few embassies in foreign countries and few foreign countries with embassies in China. They wanted to open up.
The move to open up China-US relations largely came from the Americans, but the Chinese reciprocated in their turn. “Only Nixon could go to China.” President Nixon had made his career as a red-baiting anti-Communist but by the late 1960s he was beginning to think of an opening to China. He was a realist and internationalist in foreign policy, who ran foreign policy himself by using his National Security advisor to more-or-less freeze the State Department out. Nixon first told his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger that he wanted to establish relations with the Chinese in 1969, and he started sending feelers to the Chinese in the same year. The Americans sent messages through the French, Cambodians and Poles that they would be willing to talk to the Chinese. As well, they started lifting some restrictions on travel and trade. Kissinger held talks with the Chinese ambassador in Paris, but the real breakthrough came in talks mediated by the Pakistani dictator Yahya Khan, who personally carried messages back and forth between Washington and Beijing. This was all done in secret, as Kissinger and Nixon worried that this opening would generate too much opposition. They didn’t even tell the Secretary of State or the Vice-President. Only the Joint Chiefs of Staff knew, because they had a spy on the National Security Council.
This long courtship resulted in the famous “ping-pong” diplomacy, when the American ping-pong team was invited to China to participate in a ping-pong tournament in April, 1971. This symbol of Chinese opening reached a climax when the team was received by Chou En Lai, the Chinese Prime Minister. There was one of the stranger exchanges in the history of 20th Century international relations. A long-haired American ping-pong player named Glen Cowan asked Chou, “What do you think of the hippie movement?” Chou, “Spirit must be transformed into material force before the world can move forward.”
Next followed an invitation for Kissinger to visit Beijing to arrange a visit by Nixon, which he did secretly in the summer of 1971. Over two days, Kissinger and Chou ironed out the details of the invitation and the broad strokes of their respective positions on a number of issues of importance to them both. He revealed his successful visit when he returned to the United States, and he announced that he would go again in the autumn.
In October 1971, when Kissinger was in Beijing for his second visit, the Republic of China took over the United Nations seat for China from Taiwan. Until then, the United States had led a coalition to keep the Kuomintang-led island as the official representatives for China, but over time, they continued to lose support as Communist-led China accrued supporters in the General Assembly. By 1971, the vote outcome was inevitable. George Bush, the American ambassador to the UN, led the doomed charge to keep the seat for Taiwan while Nixon and Kissinger supported him verbally but were secretly relieved that a major obstacle between China and the US was being resolved.
In February, 1972, President Nixon and his entourage, including his wife, Pat, Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State William Rogers, a whole load of other diplomats and security personnel, and 90 members of the press arrived in China for a week. They were met by Chou En Lai and a small greeting party at the airport. No crowds were allowed to watch the motorcade as the Americans were driven to their quarters for a lunch. The event was barely covered by the Chinese press. The Chinese had kept the Americans guessing about when the meeting between Nixon and Mao would take place, and even refused to guarantee that there would be a meeting. Despite this inauspicious beginning, Chairman Mao was really looking forward to it and wanted to see Nixon right away. He asked Chou to bring Nixon over that afternoon.
Mao was very sick when Nixon came. He had been bedridden for months with congestive heart failure and pneumonia. In fact, the Chinese had commandeered the respirator and oxygen that had been sent ahead for Nixon in case of emergency for Mao’s use. That equipment, along with the other medical equipment, was hidden in the room where Nixon and his entourage met Mao. A bloated Mao was propped up on a couch in a new suit and shoes, and when Nixon and Kissinger came into the room, Mao had to be helped to stand up by one of his pretty young assistants in order to shake hands. Mao was breathing heavily and speaking in bursts, so that the Americans thought that he had just had a stroke. Actually, Nixon and Mao didn’t talk about much. They complemented each other on their books. Mao mouthed pleasantries and when Nixon tried to bring up serious topics such as the balance of power in Asia, Mao wouldn’t go there. He said he was the philosopher, Chou was the politician, and these matters should be discussed with him. He only said that Taiwan would continue to be a problem and that Chinese newspapers would continue to attack the US and he expected that American newspapers would continue to attack China. After an hour, the meeting was over, but Nixon had been very touched and regarded Mao, the totalitarian mass murderer, as a great man for the rest of his life.
The rest of the week was spent in touring and negotiating. There were formal banquets and toasts, and Kissinger and Chou and the Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Qiao Guanhua spent the time negotiating a communique that would outline areas of Chinese and American agreement and disagreement in matters of international relations important to them both. All of them watched a revolutionary opera written by Mao’s bloodthirsty wife, Jiang Qing, who would be later executed for her crimes in the Cultural Revolution. As far as the communique goes, neither of them got everything they wanted. The Chinese continued to support the North Vietnamese with money, arms and troops and the Americans would not commit to a date to withdraw their troops from Taiwan.
Nevertheless, the meeting was hailed as a great success. It opened China and the US up to trade and exchanges with each other and was central to a cooling of the Cold War. Nixon believed that he would be remembered for two things: Watergate and his trip to China. Chinese and American allies in Asia were both surprised and alarmed at the rapprochement. North Vietnam and China grew so estranged that China invaded Vietnam in 1979. Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Australia were all shocked (in Japanese shokku) by the visit; however, over the years they all normalized relations with the Chinese as well.
Tensions remained, so that official diplomatic relations between the US and China were not established until 1979. In 2021, we can see that there are still many tensions between the United States and China. Nevertheless, we are in a better place because the two countries have been talking to each other since 1972. The official Communist Party assessment on Chairman Mao was 70% good and 30% bad and perhaps we can say the same thing about the meeting itself. The right wing in America was very upset at this opening, and in the fact that Nixon was shaking the hand of a mass murderer. They compared this to Munich for a reason. In the years since, we can see that China has not become a model democratic member of the state system. It continues as a dictatorship, albeit one more open now than in 1972. The situation in Taiwan has still not been resolved and the future because of that seems very uncertain.
tThis book is worth reading. MacMillan is an excellent historian. She knows how to do her research and present it so that people want to read it. She has an interesting story here, and she doesn’t let the reader down. If you are a specialist in this subject, you will probably find many of her digressions on, for example, 20th Century Asian history, or short biographical sketches of Nixon or Kissinger somewhat superfluous, but these are things that really help put everything in context for the general reader. Why and how did Nixon and Mao meet in 1972? Why should we care? Now we know.

[Abandoned at Pg. 117]

Readable with MacMillan's usual talent for setting the context and creating compelling pen portraits of the key players (Nixon, Mao, Zhou Enlai, Kissinger). Some very interesting observations of Nixon and Zhou Enlai in particular, and fascinating details (Nixon stopped over twice on the way to China and prepared very extensively for the meeting, Mao was very ill and it took one month of intensive medical interventions to get him remotely fit for the meeting). Ultimately, too much background setting for my taste making reading on less than worthwhile.

Really interesting. Of course I'd heard vaguely about the opening of China, but this book detailed the complex and delicate negotiations required to get us into China (Nixon and Mao exchanged letters hand carried by the Pakistani ambassador) as well as the stories of the great but troubled diplomats--Nixon, Mao, Kissinger, and Chou--who made it happen.

I was surprised that the famous ping pong match was more spur-of-the moment, and the players more ridiculous, than I expected for such a significant event. I was surprised that the author was so decidedly anti-Taiwan. And I was surprised by how engaging I found the book.

This was a great in-depth into the history, people and thinking that went into Nixon's famous trip into China during 1972. Most certainly, the week Nixon spent in China changed the course of world history. One could argue whether it was inevitable or not that China would eventually emerge on the world stage, but it's hard to imagine someone like Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter making the first forays. After reading Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power this past summer, I had a lot of the background knowledge into the Nixon Administration's foreign policy decisions, but Macmillan's equal focus on Mao was quite interesting. A great read for anyone looking to better understand the history of the US/China relationship.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book about the week that Nixon went to China to meet with Mao for the first time.

They were both complex, intense, flawed men but, even with all of their huge egos, they managed to see how beneficial (and how historically significant) it would be for them to meet and open relations between the US and China and they worked extremely hard to make that vision a reality. Highly recommended to those history buffs out there.

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Good, brisk account of Nixon's visit to China, which was called "Red" China by many at the time. MacMillan dryly describes the complicated relationship among Nixon, Kissinger (NSA at the time) and William Rogers, Nixon's hapless Secretary of State. Kissinger and Nixon were off the ranch a lot of the time when it came to foreign policy, preferring private machinations and negotiations rather than using the normal diplomatic channels. MacMillan concludes that Nixon disliked Kissinger, and that Kissinger returned it with interest.

MacMillan is less successful in her analysis of Mao and his leadership. It is clear that the Chairman wanted the trip, and when he was lucid (without ever mentioning Trudeau's Doonesbury satire of the visit, we understand where he got the character of "Honey"), Mao had a very firm grasp as to what Nixon and China stood to gain from a normalization of relations.

But I can't help thinking that he would be surprised by the results forty years on.

A very readable account that will undoubtedly springboard the reader to more in-depth analyses of Nixon and Kissinger, and perhaps even Mao Tse Dung.