Chapter 8: The Road to Reconciliation
1 Richard M. Nixon, “Asia After Viet Nam,”
Foreign Affairs 46, no. 1 (October
1967): 121.
2 Ibid., 123.
3 Edgar Snow, “Interview with Mao,” The New Republic 152, no. 9, issue 2623 (February
27, 1965): 21–22.
4 The extent of Chinese support is shown in the
records of recently declassified conversations between Chinese and
Vietnamese leaders. For a compilation of key conversations with
editorial commentary, see Odd Arne Westad, Chen Jian, Stein
Tønnesson, Nguyen Vu Tung, and James G. Hershberg, eds., “77
Conversations Between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in
Indochina, 1964–1977,” Cold War International History Project
Working Paper Series, working paper no. 22 (Washington, D.C.:
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, May 1998). For an
analysis of the People’s Republic’s involvement in Hanoi’s wars
with France and the United States, see Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2000).
5 Zhang Baijia, “China’s Role in the Korean and
Vietnam Wars,” in Michael D. Swaine and Zhang Tuosheng with
Danielle F. S. Cohen, eds., Managing
Sino-American Crises: Case Studies and Analysis (Washington,
D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006),
201.
6 Snow, “Interview with Mao,” 22.
7 Ibid., 23.
8 Yawei Liu, “Mao Zedong and the United States: A
Story of Misperceptions,” in Hongshan Li and Zhaohui Hong, eds.,
Image, Perception, and the Making of
U.S.-China Relations (Lanham: University Press of America,
1998), 202.
9 Lyndon B. Johnson, “Address at Johns Hopkins
University: Peace Without Conquest: April 7, 1965,” no. 172,
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United
States (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1966), 395.
10 “Text of Rusk’s Statement to House Panel on U.S.
Policy Toward Communist China,” New York
Times (April 17, 1966), accessed at ProQuest Historical
Newspapers (1851–2007).
11 Liu, “Mao Zedong and the United States,”
203.
12 Chen Jian and David L. Wilson, eds., “All Under
the Heaven Is Great Chaos: Beijing, the Sino-Soviet Border Clashes,
and the Turn Toward Sino-American Rapprochement, 1968–69,”
Cold War International History Project
Bulletin 11 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, Winter 1998), 161.
13 Ibid., 158.
14 Ibid.
15 As described by Donald Zagoria in a farsighted
article in 1968, an influential cross-section of the Chinese
leadership, including Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi, favored a
conditional reconciliation with Moscow. In a conclusion that
outpaced the analysis of many observers, Zagoria suggested that
strategic necessities would ultimately drive China toward
reconciliation with the United States. Donald S. Zagoria, “The
Strategic Debate in Peking,” in Tang Tsou, ed., China in Crisis, vol. 2 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1968).
16 Chen and Wilson, eds., “All Under the Heaven Is
Great Chaos,” 161.
17 Li Zhisui, The Private Life
of Chairman Mao, trans. Tai Hung-chao (New York: Random
House, 1994), 514.
18 Richard Nixon, “Inaugural Address: January 20,
1969,” no. 1, Public Papers of the Presidents
of the United States (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1971), 3.
19 See Henry Kissinger, White
House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 168.
20 Chen Jian, Mao’s China and
the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2001), 245–46.
21 Chen and Wilson, eds., “All Under the Heaven Is
Great Chaos,” 166.
22 Ibid., 167.
23 Ibid., 170.
24 Ibid., 168.
25 Xiong Xianghui, “The Prelude to the Opening of
Sino-American Relations,” Zhonggong dangshi
ziliao [CCP History Materials],
no. 42 (June 1992), 81, as excerpted in William Burr, ed., “New
Documentary Reveals Secret U.S., Chinese Diplomacy Behind Nixon’s
Trip,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, no. 145
(December 21, 2004), http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB145/index.htm.
26 Ibid.
27 Chen and Wilson, eds., “All Under the Heaven Is
Great Chaos,” 170.
28 Ibid., 171.
29 Ibid.
30 For an account of the incident synthesizing
recent scholarship, see Michael S. Gerson, The
Sino-Soviet Border Conflict: Deterrence, Escalation, and the Threat
of Nuclear War in 1969 (Alexandria, Va.: Center for Naval
Analyses, 2010), 23–24.
31 See Kissinger, White House
Years, 182.
32 “Minutes of the Senior Review Group Meeting,
Subject: U.S. Policy on Current Sino-Soviet Differences (NSSM 63),”
134–35. See also Gerson, The Sino-Soviet
Border Conflict, 37–38.
33 Elliot L. Richardson, “The Foreign Policy of the
Nixon Administration: Address to the American Political Science
Association, September 5, 1969,” Department of
State Bulletin 61, no. 1567 (September 22, 1969),
260.
34 Gerson, The Sino-Soviet
Border Conflict, 49–52.
35 “Jing Zhicheng, Attaché, Chinese Embassy, Warsaw
on: The Fashion Show in Yugoslavia,” Nixon’s
China Game, pbs.org, September 1999, accessed at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/china/filmmore/reference/interview/zhicheng01.html.
36 Ibid.
37 “Memorandum from Secretary of State Rogers to
President Nixon, March 10, 1970,” in Steven E. Phillips, ed.,
Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS),
1969–1976, vol. 17, China
1969–1972 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office
2006). 188–91.
38 See Kuisong Yang and Yafeng Xia, “Vacillating
Between Revolution and Détente: Mao’s Changing Psyche and Policy
Toward the United States, 1969–1976,” Diplomatic History 34, no. 2 (April
2010).
39 Edgar Snow, “A Conversation with Mao Tse-Tung,”
LIFE 70, no. 16 (April 30, 1971),
47.
40 Ibid., 48.
41 Ibid., 46.
42 Ibid., 48.
43 Ibid., 47.
44 Ibid., 48.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 See Zhengyuan Fu, Autocratic Tradition and Chinese Politics (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 188; and Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, 120. Mao’s
physician surmised that Mao’s translator, who lacked a background
in literary Chinese, missed the hidden meaning and translated the
phrase literally. Another possibility is that Mao’s translator
understood the expression quite well, but was too terrified to
translate a pun that Mao had merely implied, and that—if
volunteered in English—would have seemed dangerously disrespectful.
Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, shouted the same line in defiance at the
close of her trial in 1980. Ross Terrill, Madame Mao: The White-Boned Demon (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1999), 344.
48 Oxford Concise
English-Chinese/Chinese-English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Hong
Kong: Oxford University Press, 1999), 474. I am indebted to my
research assistant, Schuyler Schouten, for the linguistic
analysis.
49 “Editorial Note,” FRUS 17, 239–40.
50 “Tab B.,” FRUS 17,
250.
51 Ibid.
52 Snow, “A Conversation with Mao Tse-Tung,”
47.
53 “Tab A.,” FRUS 17,
249.
54 “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for
National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon,
Washington, January 12, 1971,” FRUS 17,
254.
55 Yang and Xia, “Vacillating Between Revolution
and Détente,” 401–2.
56 Ibid., 405, citing Lin Ke, Xu Tao, and Wu Xujun,
Lishi de zhenshi—Mao Zedong shenbian gongzuo
renyuan de zhengyan [The True Life of
Mao Zedong—Eyewitness Accounts by Mao’s Staff ] (Hong Kong,
1995), 308. See also Yafeng Xia, “China’s Elite Politics and
Sino-American Rapprochement, January 1969–February 1972,”
Journal of Cold War Studies 8, no. 4
(Fall 2006): 13–17.
57 See Kissinger, White House
Years, 710.
58 “Message from the Premier of the People’s
Republic of China Chou En-lai to President Nixon, Beijing, April
21, 1971,” FRUS 17, 301.
59 Ibid.
60 See Kissinger, White House
Years, 720.
61 “Message from the Government of the United
States to the Government of the People’s Republic of China,
Washington, May 10, 1971,” FRUS 17,
318.
62 “Message from the Premier of the People’s
Republic of China Chou En-lai to President Nixon, Beijing, May 29,
1971,” FRUS 17, 332.