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Transformation
Despite the
subtitle of Margaret MacMillan’s new book, Nixon and
Mao: The Week That Changed the World, the 400 pages here cover more than
that week in 1972 itself, and it’s in giving us the background and the
follow-on that MacMillan excels. The week in 1972 is recent enough for many
readers to know and understand at a high level what happened, but we need
someone like MacMillan to guide us through the whys and hows,
as well as the details that come from a close examination of what happened
during Nixon’s visit to China.
She provides a cogent history of the American relationship with China over
the decades preceding and following 1972. She also gives us context and
background about Nixon and Mao, as well as Henry Kissinger and Chinese premier
Chou En-Lai. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of Chapter 13, “Getting
Ready,” pp. 208-213:
In
February 1972, Ron Walker, head of the White House advance team, arrived in China
with his party of nearly a hundred technicians and specialists to prepare for
Nixon’s visit. They took with them tons of equipment and emergency supplies,
from American toilet paper to whiskey, to a world where there were, in those
days, no ice cubes, no telexes, and no hamburgers. They found the Chinese
hospitable, polite, and very concerned about making the Nixon trip a success.
What exactly did the president eat for lunch? What temperature would he like
his villa to be?
Both sides
found their new relationship challenging, occasionally difficult, and
frequently bewildering. What, asked a young interpreter who had listened to
the popular American song “American Pie,” did the line about the Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost mean? An American who tried to explain was startled when the
interpreter said she had never heard of Jesus. From time to time, the Chinese
joined the Americans to watch movies the team had brought from the United States,
such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid. One day, to much embarrassment, a Chinese
official walked in on a showing of The
Graduate just as Mrs. Robinson was undressing. There were potentially
more serious incidents, too, like the evening a homesick technician smoked
too much of the marijuana and drank too much of the vodka he had brought with
him and set his hotel room on fire.1
Walker,
code-named Road Runner after the hyperactive cartoon character, was used to
dropping in on cities and towns around the world and bullying and cajoling
the locals to make sure that every detail for a presidential visit,
including thorough press coverage, was in place. This time, he complained to Washington that he was
finding it hard to get clear answers to his demands and questions. When the
Chinese head of protocol demurred over a particular arrangement, Walker snapped back, “I
don’t give a rat’s ass what you say, we’re going to
do it this way. We always do it this way.” The Chinese was puzzled: “What’s
a rat’s ass?” When it gradually dawned on him, there was a major crisis, and
a senior official had to fly out from Washington
to smooth everything over.2 The agreement that Nixon would visit China
was the first, most important step, but there were many times in the next few
months when it looked as though the visit might never take place. The minuet,
in Kissinger’s description, was performed on the edge of a cliff, by dancers
who were never quite sure what moves others were about to make.
After
Kissinger’s first visit, the Chinese and the Americans used the Paris channel
to talk about everything from refueling the American airplanes to relations
with the Soviet Union.3 In October, Kissinger traveled back to
Beijing to start drafting the joint communiqué that was to be issued by both
sides at the conclusion of the president’s visit and to continue work on the
arrangements for Nixon’s trip. “China,” Kissinger told Chou,
“despite its long experience in handling outsiders, has never undergone
anything like the phenomenon of a visit by an American President.”4 Kissinger
flew on Air Force One so that the Chinese could get used to dealing with the
president’s aircraft. He also brought a much larger party, which included
communications and security experts as well as Dwight Chapin, Nixon’s
appointments secretary, from the White House advance team. This time, too,
there was an official representative from the State Department, an experienced
China
hand named Al Jenkins. “My task,” said Kissinger in his memoirs, “was to give
him a sense of participation without letting him in on any key geopolitical
discussions, especially the drafting of the communiqué.”5
Kissinger
left from the United States
this time and landed in Shanghai
on October 20. From there two Chinese pilots took over the Controls just as
they would when Nixon arrived. In their conversations in Beijing,
the Chinese also insisted that Nixon should travel in a Chinese plane for
part of his trip within China.
It was not usual, Kissinger said, for American presidents to travel on any
planes but their own. “It’s on our territory,” Chou said simply, pointing out
that he himself would accompany Nixon. “We will be responsible, and your
Secret Service men can also have a look in our plane because everything will
be all right.”6
In Beijing, although the
American party had no way of knowing it, the repercussions from Lin Biao’s flight were still causing trouble in the upper
echelons of the Communist Party. Chou En-lai was
much preoccupied with trying to clean up the mess and in fending off attacks
from the radicals. At the Diaoyutai, where the
Americans were again housed, a ripple from offstage reached them when they
discovered copies in their rooms of an English-language news release condemning
American imperialists and calling on the people of the world to overthrow
them. Kissinger gathered all the releases up and handed them over to a
Chinese official with the comment that some previous guests must have left
them behind. Chou was furious and embarrassed over what may have been an
attempt by radicals in the official Chinese news agency to derail the
delicate process of opening up relations with the Americans. He immediately
reported the incident to Mao, who made light of it: “Tell the Americans,
these are nothing but empty words.” The next day, as Kissinger was driven to
the Great Hall of the People, the Chinese deputy foreign minister tried to
explain that just as the Americans communicated with one another through
newspapers, so did the Chinese through slogans. He showed Kissinger a wall
where a poster denouncing the United
States had been freshly covered up with a
welcome for the Afro-Asian Ping-Pong Tournament.7
The
American party stayed in Beijing
for a week trying to work out the details, both small and large, of Nixon’s
visit. (To guard against Chinese listening devices, they played a tape of
Johnny Cash songs; whenever they wanted anything like a cup of tea from the
Chinese, they turned the music off and spoke loudly.)8 The
Americans toured some of the sights Nixon would see: the Great Wall, the Ming
Tombs, and the Summer
Palace. Jiang Qing,
Mao’s wife, put on one of her famous revolutionary operas for them.
Interestingly, the program also contained a performance of a Beethoven
symphony by the Beijing Philharmonic, which was appearing for the first time
since the Cultural Revolution had started. The communications experts met,
trying to reconcile the huge demands of the Americans for rapid
communications with the antiquated state of the Chinese telephone system and
to make arrangements for satellite transmission. The Americans wanted to
bring the president’s special armored limousine; the Chinese insisted that he
would be perfectly safe in one of their cars. The issue was finally settled
when Nixon said he did not care about which car he used. The American chief
of security bewildered the Chinese when he asked them to round up all the
usual troublemakers before Nixon arrived. His Chinese counterpart complained
about the American’s arrogant manner.9
The
Americans, Kissinger told Chou, would bring their own interpreters; but, he
said, “in private meetings between the Chairman and the President we may want
to rely on your interpreters in order to guarantee security.” He could not,
Kissinger claimed, trust American interpreters not to talk to the newspapers.
The Chinese agreed with understandable alacrity. Using their interpreters
would give them greater control over the record of Nixon’s conversations.
Finding enough English speakers was something of a problem, however; the
Chinese brought them in from all over the country, often from the farms where
they had been sent during the Cultural Revolution.10
On the
whole, Kissinger and Chou concentrated on the big political issues: the
Soviet Union, the tension in South Asia, Japan,
Korea,
and the United Nations. Taiwan
was at the top of China’s
list, Vietnam
on the Americans’. Kissinger was usually accompanied only by Winston Lord. He
did not want, he told Chou, to share the discussions of major issues “with
colleagues not in my own office.”11 Jenkins from the State
Department was therefore sent off to talk to one of Chou’s subordinates about
issues Kissinger considered less important, such as trade, or was kept
occupied with trips to see an oil refinery and a chemical plant. With Chou,
Kissinger said, it was as though the two of them were resuming a seamless
conversation: “Everything ever said to me by any Chinese of any station was
part of an intricate design— even when with my slower Occidental mind it took
me a while to catch on.” 12
In their
twenty-five hours of conversations, Kissinger and Chou covered much of the
world and much past history, but they kept coming back to Taiwan. And it was Taiwan
that caused them the most trouble when they came to drafting the communiqué
for the conclusion of Nixon’s trip. Kissinger had come prepared with a
detailed draft, which he handed over to the Chinese on October 22. “It is
such a long one,” commented Chou. The draft contained much fine language
about how the Chinese and Americans recognized each other’s differences but
how they wanted to work together for international peace and security.
Neither side was seeking hegemony—a favorite accusation of the Chinese
against the superpowers. The draft also skated over the key areas of dispute,
such as Taiwan,
expressing the hope that the issue could be settled peacefully. It was the
sort of standard communiqué issued when nations still had important matters
to work out. Mao disliked it intensely, perhaps because as an old revolutionary
who still dreamed of leading a world revolution, he was put off by the idea
of subscribing to something so bland and conventional. The United States, he told Chou later
that night, was talking about peace and security. “We have to emphasize
revolution, liberating the oppressed nations and peoples in the world,” he
said. It was all empty talk, Mao went on, when the Americans said they would
not interfere in other countries’ internal affairs and swore that they were
not seeking to dominate the world: “If they did not seek hegemony, how could America
expand from 13 states to 50 states?” Chou should tell the Americans that it
was better for everyone to speak frankly. Anything short of that would be
“improper.”13
Chou duly
complied with his instructions. On the morning of October 24, he told
Kissinger that they must face the fact that there were significant
differences between the positions of their respective countries. To do
otherwise would be dishonest, the sort of thing the Soviet
Union might do. The Americans, Chou lectured Kissinger, were
behaving like Metternich had after the Napoleonic Wars: trying to suppress
revolution and maintain order by relying on old friends. Metternich had failed
in the end because he could not hold off revolution forever. The Americans
were facing something similar in the present: “This awakening consciousness
of the people is promoting changes in the world, or we might call it
turmoil.” Look at Vietnam,
at the rest of Asia, at Africa, at Latin America, even Europe,
he said. The Americans should understand the power of revolution; after all,
they had once been revolutionary themselves, when they fought for their
independence. Both the United States
and China
wanted peace but, Chou demanded, “shall this generation of peace be based on
hopes for the future or on old friends?” That was a fundamental difference
between their two countries. If the United States preferred to behave
like Metternich once had, it would also find itself facing revolutionary
challenges after a few years. “Of course,” Chou concluded blandly, “perhaps
limited by your system, you are unable to make any greater changes, while we,
due to our philosophy, foresee such a thing. 14
In many
respects, the meeting between Nixon and Mao in 1972 changed the world. Thanks
to MacMillan, readers of Nixon and
Mao can examine more closely the importance of what happened, and why and
how it all came about.
Steve Hopkins,
July 25, 2007
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