Nixon and Mao (46 page)

In 1976, Pat Nixon suffered a stroke but did not tell anyone until Nixon found her struggling to make breakfast. She kept going with the strong sense of duty that had carried her through her life and died in 1993. When Nixon himself died in a New York hospital a year later, President Clinton proclaimed a national day of mourning. Nixon’s coffin was carried from New York to California by the same Air Force One that had first taken him to China all those years before, and his funeral was organized by Ron Walker, the advance man for that momentous trip. He was buried beside Pat Nixon at the Richard M. Nixon Memorial Library, near where he had grown up in Yorba Linda. As all the living former presidents, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush senior, sat with their wives in the front row, Clinton asked Americans to forgive Nixon, saying, “May the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to a close.” An emotional Kissinger delivered the eulogy. He admitted Nixon’s faults but praised him for his outstanding conduct of foreign policy. Nixon had never given up, Kissinger said: “In his solitude he envisaged a new international order that would reduce lingering enmities, strengthen historic friendships, and give new hope to mankind.”
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To the end, Nixon regarded the opening to China as the greatest achievement of his life. As he said on his last trip to China, in 1993, “I will be known historically for two things. Watergate and the opening to China…. I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but Watergate, that silly, silly thing, is going to rank up there historically with what I did here.” He hoped that his initiative had brought the United States and China into a working relationship that would benefit both and bring stability to Asia.
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Nixon and Kissinger both witnessed the full normalization of relations in the late 1970s from the sidelines. By then, changes in China and the United States made it possible for the two countries to take another step forward in their relationship. Both were concerned about the Soviet Union, which was aggressively expanding its military and its influence. China was stirring out of the nightmare of the Cultural Revolution, and Deng was firmly in control. The seeds of China’s extraordinary development over the next two decades had been planted. Learning from the outside world, making money, individual initiative—all were not only permissible but, indeed, encouraged. In 1978, when the new Democratic administration under Jimmy Carter determined to push ahead on normalization, it found a receptive audience in Beijing. The two sides agreed to establish full diplomatic relations. The United States cut its formal ties with Taiwan, withdrew the last of its troops, and gave notice that the defense treaty would be terminated. In January 1979, Deng was welcomed enthusiastically in the United States. American television audiences were charmed when he wore a cowboy hat in Texas and kissed little children. The White House gave him a twenty-one-gun salute, and the band at the Kennedy Center played “Getting to Know You.”
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Nixon was also around to witness the growing strains in the relationship between China and the United States in the late 1980s. Ever since they first made contact, relations between the two countries have had their ups and downs. Perhaps they are bound to be rivals, for each in its own way aspires to be a model for others. Each has a tendency to think it is right, that it is more moral than other nations. They have come to know each other well, but they do not always understand each other. The Americans hope that the Chinese are becoming more like them; repeatedly they have been disappointed. The Chinese are repeatedly surprised by and suspicious of American concerns for democracy and human rights. American protests, notably after Chinese authorities brutally put down the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989, strike them as interference on a par with that of the Western imperialists during the century of humiliation.

In April 1993, two decades after he had first been there, Nixon went back to Hangzhou. “The growth of this place,” he told his companions, “is really unbelievable. And you know, I like to think that I had something to do with it.” Yet China’s increasing prosperity has brought its own difficulties and caused tensions. American consumers love the prices of goods made in China; American labor and some American businesses do not. The United States’ trade deficit with China grew sharply in the new century; in 2005 alone it neared $200 billion. As China’s economy continues to expand rapidly, the Chinese government is moving to secure sources of raw materials, especially oil, in parts of Africa and central Asia that the United States has until now considered its own. It is not just China’s growing economic power that worries Americans. Chinese firms, many of them close to the military, are enthusiastic exporters—often to some of the most troubled parts of the world—of weapons, from handguns to missiles. And, according to official figures, China’s defense budget has increased at least 10 percent every year for the past decade. In Washington, military planners have adopted what they describe as a long-range “hedging strategy” to prepare for the eventuality that there might, one day, be a conflict between the United States and China. The United States has quietly been strengthening its forces in the Pacific and encouraging Japan to enhance its military establishment. The Soviet Union is gone, but perhaps, the pessimists think, there is a new Cold War in the making between the United States and China.
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Taiwan, of course, remains the major unsettled issue between the United States and China. It is neither independent nor a part of China. The Americans have never quite been able to give up their interest in it; the formal links are gone, but the unofficial ones remain strong, whether through trade or personal contact or, from time to time, the sale of American military equipment. The Chinese have found this irritating and still maintain that Taiwan must be reunited with the motherland. When leaders of Taiwan’s lively independence movement visit the United States, the Chinese government reacts angrily. When the presidential election in 2000 brought a pro-independence candidate into office, the Chinese government responded with solemn warnings. Today in Taiwan there is talk of a compromise that will fudge reality, just as it has been fudged since1972. Why not a thirty-to-fifty-year “interim agreement” under which Taiwan would give up on formal independence and China would renounce the use of force? The danger with such an ingenious solution is that it leaves the door open for trouble. What if hard-line nationalists in China grow impatient with the lack of clarity about whether or not Taiwan belongs to China? There have already been plenty of warning shots: Chinese submarines in waters claimed by Taiwan, missile tests, planes in Taiwan airspace. What if Japan, whose own relations with China are troubled, decides that Taiwan must be defended? And what choices will the United States then face?

The present troubles between China and the United States tempt us to look backward and wonder what mistakes might have been made in the past. It was probably a mistake for the United States to back the Guomindang for as long as it did, but on the other hand, the risks of abandoning a long-standing ally were also great. It was a mistake on Mao’s part when his new Communist regime in China threw its lot in with the Soviet Union and perhaps missed the chance of coming to an accommodation with the United States in 1949. There is always the question, though, of how ready the Americans would have been to talk to a new Communist regime in those tense early days of the Cold War. It is true that they were able to come to an accommodation with Tito’s Yugoslavia, but only after it was clear that he had broken with the Soviet Union. It is a pity that the Cold War and Korea and then Vietnam intervened to keep China and the United States apart for so long.

The breakthrough of the 1970s, most would agree now, was not only overdue; it was good for both countries, and their new relationship had great potential—which still remains—to act as a stabilizing force in world politics. It is possible, though, to ask whether the United States was too eager and whether it gave away too much. Should, for example, Nixon have visited China first, without knowing whether or not he would see Mao, and without a firm agreement on the Shanghai communiqué? Should the Americans have handed over quite so much confidential material about the Soviets and, moreover, given the impression that the United States was eager to have an alliance with China against the Soviet Union?

American behavior raised expectations among the Chinese that could not always be met. The China of the 1970s was both weak and apprehensive about its place in the world. The Americans may have unwittingly done more than merely reassure the Chinese leadership; they may have fed into the old Chinese belief that China was at the center of the world. Did Kissinger have to be quite so deferential, even, at times, obsequious? The decision to use Chinese interpreters in his own and Nixon’s conversations with the Chinese may have been politic, a gesture of reassurance. Was it necessary to explain away the presence of an American interpreter in the meetings? “We will tell the press,” Kissinger warned Chou, “we have Mr. Holdridge there to check on your interpreter. I apologize to your interpreter. It is only so our people won’t say we put ourselves at your mercy—which we are doing.” When relations got on to a more normal footing, as they were bound to after those first euphoric moments in 1972, the Chinese were surprised when the Americans treated them as merely one power among several, suspicious when the White House and the State Department appeared to be following different policies, and aggrieved when the United States was not able to live up to its promises. Nixon and Kissinger went too far, for example, in making assurances to China about withdrawing American forces from Taiwan, which they were not, in the end, able to keep.
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For Nixon and the Americans, the visit was a bold and dramatic move that placed Nixon himself in the center of great events and the United States as the pivotal power between China and the Soviet Union. The China card did not produce as much as the Americans hoped for, but cards, particularly if they have a will of their own, usually do not. For a time the Soviet Union was more amenable in its negotiations with the United States, and unease about China certainly played a part in that. The North Vietnamese did not stop fighting and ultimately gave way very little in the Paris negotiations to end the war. China’s new relationship with the United States did, however, help deepen the suspicion with which the Vietnamese regarded the Chinese and paved the way for the later war between China and a newly reunited Vietnam.

For the Chinese, there were also losses and gains as a result of the Nixon visit. They agreed to wait on Taiwan, and they are still waiting. On the other hand, the visit was an acknowledgment of China’s importance in the world and marked the end to the isolation of the 1960s. Although the legacy of the Cultural Revolution was to lie heavily on China until Mao’s death, the beginnings of the reawakening and revitalization of China after 1976 lie in this period.

We now take for granted that whatever the ups and downs between China and the United States, there was bound to be a relationship, that the gap between 1949 and 1971 was an aberration that could not last. Yet we should remember that the long chill between the United States and Cuba has lasted for more than four decades, and that with Iran for nearly three. Nixon’s visit occurred because both sides came to the conclusion at the same time that it was a good idea. Yet it took individuals—four men, in this case—to make it happen. Nixon and Mao, Kissinger and Chou. Two men who, for all their faults, possessed the necessary vision and determination and two men who had the talent, the patience, and the skill to make the vision reality. In one of their conversations, Chou told Kissinger of an old Chinese proverb: “The helmsman who knows how to guide the boat will guide it well through the waves. Otherwise he will be submerged by the waves. A far-sighted man will know how to till the helm.” Or as Mr. Spock will say aboard his spaceship many centuries from now, quoting an old Vulcan proverb: “Only Nixon can go to China.”
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I
N WRITING THIS BOOK, I HAVE ACCUMULATED MANY DEBTS OF
gratitude. I have used, and probably abused, the wonderful libraries at the University of Toronto, especially Robarts and its interlibrary loan facility, and the Graham Library at Trinity College. That college, of which I have been lucky enough to be the provost, gave me time and support to work on this book, and I am very grateful to its board of trustees, my two marvelous assistants, Brenda Duchesne and Jean McNeil, and my generous colleagues, in particular Geoffrey Seaborn, Derek Allen, and Bruce Bowden, who took over my responsibilities when I went on a research leave.

I have had outstanding research assistants, among them Erin Black, Jake Hirsch-Allen, Sadia Rafiquddin, Rebecca Snow, and Kate Snow. Early on Maria Banda did an invaluable search of the available literature. Wynne Lawrence carried on her work and wrestled my bibliography into shape. Matthew Hogan not only searched the National Archives in Washington for me but proved to be an inspired picture researcher. On the pictures, I also received much assistance from Kristine Sasala, Jeff Harper of Hardcorps Publishing of Missouri, Rich Remsberg of Rich Remsberg Photography, Veronica Fletcher from the Ollie Atkins Photograph Collection, and Sahr Conway-Lanz from the Nixon Presidential Materials Project. Andrew Galbraith was indefatigable in finding Chinese books in Beijing and Hong Kong, and Tony Yixi Zeng and Jonathan Jen-fu Yang researched and translated Chinese sources. In Beijing, Joseph Caron, the Canadian ambassador, and his colleagues gave me invaluable assistance in making contacts with Chinese academics and diplomats, and the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs was gracious enough to be my host. Herbert Levin and Robert Edmonds, both of whom have firsthand experience in dealing with China as diplomats, gave me the benefits of their insights and helped me make contact with several of those who participated in the events of the early 1970s. I am also grateful to James Mann and Rosemary Foot for taking time to give me their insights and advice. Jennifer Polk kindly located the
Star Trek
quotation for me. Thanks, too, to all of those I list elsewhere who generously agreed to give up their time and allow me to interview them.

A number of friends have given me much valuable advice and help, and I would like to single out in particular Bernie Frolic, Blair Seaborn, and Peter Snow. I have benefited greatly from my conversations over the years with Conrad Black, Bob Bothwell, Dominic Patten, and Allan Gotlieb about international relations and American politics and with Tom Rawski, Evelyn Sakakida Rawski, and Alfred Chan about Chinese history and politics. If I were to list all those who fed me meals and gave me drinks and who put up with me when I was absentminded, these acknowledgments would be very long indeed, but I hope they know how grateful I am.

This is the first book where I have worked closely with an agent or, rather, agents; Caroline Dawnay, Emma Parry, and Michael Levine not only give their profession a good name but are full of wise advice and, when it is needed, encouragement. I have been equally lucky in my publishers and editors: Grant McIntyre, Peter James, Caro Westmore, Roland Philipps, and Lucy Dixon at John Murrays; David Davidar, Diane Turbide, Elizabeth McKay, and Eliza Marciniak at Penguin Canada; and Gina Centrello, Kate Medina, Robin Rolewicz, Benjamin Dreyer, and Steve Messina at Random House, and all the efficient and nice people who work with them. Finally, as I always must, I thank my family: my mother, who read everything with a kindly but critical eye; my brothers and sister, to whom this book is dedicated; and my many nephews and nieces.