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Nixon in China: The Meeting with Mao

Seven months after the secret visit, on February 21, 1972, President Nixon arrived in Beijing on a raw winter day. It was a triumphant moment for the President, the inveterate anti-Communist who had seen a geopolitical opportunity and seized it boldly. As a symbol of the fortitude with which he had navigated to this day and of the new era he was inaugurating, he wanted to descend alone from Air Force One to meet Zhou Enlai, who was standing on the windy tarmac in his immaculate Mao jacket as a Chinese military band played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The symbolic handshake that erased Dulles’s snub duly took place. But for a historic occasion, it was strangely muted. When Nixon’s motorcade drove into Beijing, the streets had been cleared of onlookers. And his arrival was played as the last item on the evening news.²¹

As revolutionary as the opening itself had been, the final communiqué had not yet been fully agreed—especially in the key paragraph on Taiwan. A celebration would have been premature and perhaps weakened the Chinese negotiating position of studied equanimity. Too, the Chinese leaders knew that their Vietnamese allies were furious that China had given Nixon an opportunity to rally the American public. A public demonstration for their enemy in the capital of their ally would have proved too great a strain on the ever-tenuous Sino-Vietnamese relationship.

Our hosts made up for the missing demonstrations by inviting Nixon to a meeting with Mao within hours of our arrival. “Inviting” is not the precise word for how meetings with Mao occurred. Appointments were never scheduled; they came about as if events of nature. They were echoes of emperors granting audiences. The first indication of Mao’s invitation to Nixon occurred when, shortly after our arrival, I received word that Zhou needed to see me in a reception room. He informed me that “Chairman Mao would like to see the President.” To avoid the impression that Nixon was being summoned, I raised some technical issues about the order of events at the evening banquet. Uncharacteristically impatient, Zhou responded: “Since the Chairman is inviting him, he wants to see him fairly soon.” In welcoming Nixon at the very outset of his visit, Mao was signaling his authoritative endorsement to domestic and international audiences before talks had even begun. Accompanied by Zhou, we set off for Mao’s residence in Chinese cars. No American security personnel were permitted, and the press could be notified only afterward.

Mao’s residence was approached through a wide gate on the east–west axis carved from where the ancient city walls stood before the Communist revolution. Inside the Imperial City, the road hugged a lake, on the other side of which stood a series of residences for high officials. All had been built in the days of Sino-Soviet friendship and reflected the heavy Stalinist style of the period similar to the State Guesthouses.

Mao’s residence appeared no different, though it stood slightly apart from the others. There were no visible guards or other appurtenances of power. A small anteroom was almost completely dominated by a Ping-Pong table. It did not matter because we were taken directly to Mao’s study, a room of modest size with bookshelves lining three walls filled with manuscripts in a state of considerable disarray. Books covered the tables and were piled up on the floor. A simple wooden bed stood in a corner. The all-powerful ruler of the world’s most populous nation wished to be perceived as a philosopher-king who had no need to buttress his authority with traditional symbols of majesty.

Mao rose from an armchair in the middle of a semicircle of armchairs with an attendant close by to steady him if necessary. We learned later that he had suffered a debilitating series of heart and lung ailments in the weeks before and that he had difficulty moving. Overcoming his handicaps, Mao exuded an extraordinary willpower and determination. He took Nixon’s hands in both of his and showered his most benevolent smile on him. The picture appeared in all Chinese newspapers. The Chinese were skillful in using Mao photographs to convey a mood and a direction of policy. When Mao scowled, storms were approaching. When he was photographed wagging a finger at a visitor, it indicated reservations of a somewhat put-upon teacher.

The meeting provided us our first introduction to Mao’s bantering and elliptical style of conversation. Most political leaders present their thoughts in the form of bullet points. Mao advanced his ideas in a Socratic manner. He would begin with a question or an observation and invite comment. He would then follow with another observation. Out of this web of sarcastic remarks, observations, and queries would emerge a direction, though rarely a binding commitment.

From the outset, Mao abjured any intention to conduct either a philosophical or strategic dialogue with Nixon. Nixon had mentioned to the Chinese Vice Foreign Minister, Qiao Guanhua, who had been sent to escort the presidential party from Shanghai to Beijing (Air Force One had stopped in Shanghai to take a Chinese navigator aboard), that he was looking forward to discussing philosophy with the Chairman. Mao would have none of it. Asserting that I was the only doctor of philosophy available, he added: “What about asking him to be the main speaker today?” As if by habit, Mao was playing at the “contradictions” between his guests: this sarcastic evasion could have served the purpose of creating a potential for a rift between the President and the National Security Advisor—presidents being generally unappreciative of being upstaged by their security advisor.

Nor was Mao willing to take a Nixon hint to discuss challenges posed by a number of countries he enumerated. Nixon framed the main issues as follows:

We, for example, must ask ourselves—again in the confines of this room—why the Soviets have more forces on the border facing you than on the border facing Western Europe. We must ask ourselves, what is the future of Japan? Is it better—here I know we have disagreements—is it better for Japan to be neutral, totally defenseless, or is it better for a time for Japan to have some relations with the United States? . . . The question is which danger the People’s Republic faces, whether it is the danger of American aggression or Soviet aggression.²²

Mao refused the bait: “All those troublesome questions I don’t want to get into very much.” He suggested they be discussed with the Premier.

What, then, did Mao wish to convey through his apparently meandering dialogue? The perhaps most important messages were things that did not happen. First, after decades of mutual recrimination over Taiwan, the subject in effect did not come up. The sum total of discussions devoted to it was as follows:

MAO: Our common old friend, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, doesn’t approve of this. He calls us Communist bandits. He recently issued a speech. Have you seen it?

NIXON: Chiang Kai-shek calls the Chairman a bandit. What does the Chairman call Chiang Kai-shek?

ZHOU: Generally speaking we call them Chiang Kai-shek’s clique. In the newspapers sometimes we call him a bandit; we are also called bandits in turn. Anyway, we abuse each other.

MAO: Actually, the history of our friendship with him is much longer than the history of your friendship with him.²³

No threats, no demands, no deadlines, no references to past deadlock. After a war, two military confrontations, and 136 deadlocked ambassadorial meetings, the Taiwan issue had lost its urgency. It was being put aside, at least for the time being, as first suggested by Zhou at the secret meeting.

Second, Mao wanted to convey that Nixon was a welcome visitor. The photograph had taken care of that. Third, Mao was eager to remove any threat from China to the United States:

At the present time, the question of aggression from the United States or aggression from China is relatively small; that is, it could be said that this is not a major issue, because the present situation is one in which a state of war does not exist between our two countries. You want to withdraw some of your troops back on your soil; ours do not go abroad.²⁴

This cryptic sentence that Chinese troops stayed at home removed the concern that Vietnam might end like Korea with massive Chinese intervention.

Fourth, Mao wanted to convey that he had encountered a challenge in pursuing the opening to America but that he had overcome it. He offered a sardonic epitaph to Lin Biao, who had fled the capital in September 1971 in a military airplane that crashed in Mongolia, in what was reportedly an abortive coup:

In our country also there is a reactionary group which is opposed to our contact with you. The result was that they got on an airplane and fled abroad. . . . As for the Soviet Union, they finally went to dig out the corpses, but they didn’t say anything about it.²⁵

Fifth, Mao favored accelerated bilateral cooperation and urged technical talks on the subject:

Our side also is bureaucratic in dealing with matters. For example, you wanted some exchange of persons on a personal level, things like that; also trade. But rather than deciding that we stuck with our stand that without settling major issues there is nothing to do with smaller issues. I myself persisted in that position. Later on I saw you were right, and we played table tennis.²⁶

Sixth, he stressed his personal goodwill to Nixon, both personally and because he said he preferred dealing with right-wing governments on the grounds that they were more reliable. Mao, the author of the Great Leap Forward and the Anti-Rightist Campaign, made the astonishing remark that he had “voted for” Nixon, and that he was “comparatively happy when these people on the right come into power” (in the West at least):

NIXON: When the Chairman says he voted for me, he voted for the lesser of two evils.

MAO: I like rightists. People say you are rightists, that the Republican Party is to the right, that Prime Minister Heath²⁷ is also to the right.

NIXON: And General De Gaulle.²⁸

MAO: De Gaulle is a different question. They also say the Christian Democratic Party of West Germany is also to the right. I am comparatively happy when these people on the right come into power.²⁹

Nevertheless, he warned that if the Democrats gained power in Washington, China would establish contacts with them, too.

At the beginning of the Nixon visit, Mao was prepared to commit himself to the direction it implied though not yet to the details of the specific negotiations about to begin. It was not clear whether a formula on Taiwan could be found (all other issues having been essentially settled). But he was ready to endorse a substantial agenda of cooperation in the fifteen hours of dialogue that had been scheduled between Nixon and Zhou. The basic direction having been set, Mao counseled patience and hedged should we fail to come up with an agreed communiqué. Rather than treat that setback as a failure, Mao argued it should spur renewed efforts. The impending strategic design overrode all other concerns—even deadlock over Taiwan. Mao advised both sides not to stake too much on one set of negotiations:

It is alright to talk well and also alright if there are no agreements, because what use is there if we stand in deadlock? Why is it that we must be able to reach results? People will say . . . if we fail the first time, then people will talk why are we not able to succeed the first time? The only reason would be that we have taken the wrong road. What will they say if we succeed the second time?³⁰

In other words, even if for some unforeseen reason the talks about to begin were to deadlock, China would persevere to achieve the desired result of a strategic cooperation with America in the future.

As the meeting was breaking up, Mao, the prophet of continuous revolution, emphasized to the President of the heretofore vilified capitalist-imperialist society that ideology was no longer relevant to relations between the two countries:

MAO: [pointing to Dr. Kissinger] “Seize the hour and seize the day.” I think that, generally speaking, people like me sound a lot of big cannons. [Zhou laughs.] That is, things like “the whole world should unite and defeat imperialism, revisionism, and all reactionaries, and establish socialism.”³¹

Mao laughed uproariously at the implication that anyone might have taken seriously a slogan that had been scrawled for decades on public surfaces all over China. He ended the conversation with a comment characteristically sardonic, mocking, and reassuring:

But perhaps you as an individual may not be among those to be overthrown. They say that he [Dr. Kissinger] is also among those not to be overthrown personally. And if all of you are overthrown we wouldn’t have any more friends left.³²

With our long-term personal safety thus assured and the nonideological basis of their relationship certified by the highest authority on that subject, the two sides commenced five days of dialogue and banquets interspersed with sightseeing trips.

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Nixon in China: The Meeting with Mao

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