No. [3], Improved relations with the Soviet Union and the PRC are often cited as the most successful diplomatic achievements of Nixon's presidency. Key materials from February 1972 include the verbatim records and agreements of US-China bilateral exchanges, including: Memorandum of Conversation between Chairman Mao Zedong and President Richard Nixon, February 21, 1972, Memorandum of Conversation between Richard Nixon and Zhou Enlai, February 22, 1972, Joint Communiqu of the United States of America and the People's Republic of China (Shanghai Communiqu), February 27, 1972, Although declassified Chinese language records from the February 1972 are generally lacking (the Chinese Foreign Ministry Archives never released any materials dated later than 1966), the Digital Archive does feature a number of sources from before and after the visit. A longtime contributor to HowStuffWorks, Dave has also been published in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and Newsweek. Watergate scandal, interlocking political scandals of the administration of U.S. Pres. The Chinese, it turned out, had their own strategic reasons to re-open dialogue with the United States. Soon after Nixon settled into his hotel, he was told that Mao Zedong, the aging chairman of the Communist revolution wanted to meet with him. It was recorded on the Nixon tapes. While the visit was a public relations boon for both nations, Nixon and Kissinger failed to secure Chinas help in ending the war in Vietnam, and no real progress was made on the status of Taiwan. The conventional wisdom here treats almost every major decision in China as being driven by its antipathy toward the U.S. The Great Hall of the People is the landmark on the back of the 100 Yuan banknote. According to Winston Lord, then a national security aide who later became US ambassador to China, most of the Shanghai Communique was negotiated during their second trip to Beijing, except for aspects relating to Taiwan, which was "the most sensitive and that we had to keep haggling about [it] during Nixon's trip itself in February 1972", he later recalled. "It's instructive that the US and China were able to reach a modus vivendi in spite of political and ideological differences in 1972 and afterwards. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. That lack of attention has been very costly for the relationship, inflating our sense of agency and fostering undue expectations among policymakers here and in the American public more generally about our capacity to shape events in China to our liking. This undue focus on ourselves shows up again in the 1980s and 1990s, when far too many Americans including policymakers and academics assumed that the PRC wanted nothing more than to emulate us and converge toward an idealized version of our economy, law and society. Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window), Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window), Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window), Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window), Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window), HUM Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images, How Ping-Pong Diplomacy Thawed the Cold War, https://www.history.com/news/nixon-china-visit-cold-war, How Nixons 1972 Visit to China Changed the Balance of Cold War Power. Nixon in China, opera in three acts by John Adams (with an English libretto by Alice Goodman), which premiered at the Houston Grand Opera in 1987. The next morning, February 21, at 7 am the Nixons left Guam for Shanghai. The fate of Taiwan was not addressed, and the issue still stalks U.S.-China relations. The communique issued on August 17, 1982 stated that the US took no position on Taiwan's sovereignty and that this was an issue the two sides of the Strait should resolve. Shelley Rigger, a professor of political science at Davidson College, says the way Nixon warmed relations with China in secret did not go down well in Taiwan. JOHN RUWITCH, BYLINE: Shortly after landing in Beijing, as the first U.S. president to set foot in China for more than two decades, Nixon was summoned. It was also the subject of a PBS documentary film, American Experience: Nixon's China Game. Part of Kissinger's mission was to hammer out the finer details of United States president Richard Nixon's historic trip to China that both sides had agreed to in July, including setting the date and discussing press coverage to convince the hostile public in the US to warm towards communist China. She, by the way, remembers Nixons visit to her hometown of Hangzhou during which all but selected individuals were ordered to stay inside. "This sets it on a collision course with the US, especially as China aims to become the prominent, if not dominant, power. The first, Sino-American Confrontation, 1949-1971" provides insights into the contentious relationship from the founding of the PRC roughly up through National Security Advisor Henry Kissingers secret visit to China in 1971. In the end, the final version of the communique, released at the scenic Jinjiang Hotel, Shanghai's first guest house for foreign dignitaries, on the eve of Nixon's departure back to the US, provided ambiguous assurance to China about Taiwan. The U.N. expulsion, the Nixon visit, and the severing of diplomatic ties by many countries afterwards catapulted Taiwan into a diplomatic isolation that is still ongoing. RUWITCH: He says the U.S. wanted help ending the war in Vietnam and a reduced threat of confrontation with China. For the 50th anniversary of the "week that changed the world"--- the summit between the United States and China from February 21-28, 1972 during which US President Richard Nixon met with Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong---this video features excerpts from China experts on the significance of what is considered one of the major diplomatic turning points in modern history. LOPEZ: Yeah. Known as the "city of sails" thanks to its fabulous harbor and yachting community, Auckland is one of New Zealand's most beautiful cities, as well as the largest, with an incredible skyline and some fabulous beaches. Wu: There are areas of profound disagreement, but also narrower areas where the two sides may choose to cooperate. Nixon himself had served as vice president during the Eisenhower administration, which had been steadfast in its support of the ROC, when the Chinese Communists attempted to retake the islands of Kinmen and Matsu. Alford: It also irks me that Nixon is seen as a global strategic genius. Copyright 2022 NPR. Today, the Potala Palace is a museum. Had Nixon not helped foster that atmosphere, arguably there would have been no need for a Nixon goes to China moment or it would have been much less dramatic. It was a breakthrough, says Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Shanghai's Fudan University. With the premiere of HBO's "White House Plumbers," the Watergate scandal is having yet another moment, 51 years after the original break-in that ultimately led to Richard Nixon's resignation. RUWITCH: Where they wanted to cooperate most was in counterbalancing the Soviet Union, which both saw as a threat. The visit and subsequent normalization of relations with the West provided the ideological cover necessary for the economic reforms of the 1980s that launched China from a pariah state to the economic juggernaut that it is today. JAMES SHEN: Well, Mr. President, I'm going back to Taiwan. His attacks on Jerry Voorhis and Helen Gahagan Douglas for being soft on communism were instrumental in his early electoral victories and, as Mark noted, he sought to deploy that same strategy against Kennedy in the 1960 presidential race. Zhou Yi analyzes a speech made by a senior Chinese official at an unexpected venue - a tourism conference - in March 1975 to decode broad shifts in Chinese foreign policy at the end of the Mao era. It is arguably the most important breakthrough agreement in the history of the US-China relations. They'd probably like the U.S. out of Asia. Another element that is not well understood is how divided U.S. allies were in their China policy in the early 1970s. One could, however, also argue that some of the massive distrust that marks the U.S.-PRC relationship today stems in part from the fact that the public in China and, to a lesser degree, the U.S. was not apprised of the extent to which Beijing and Washingtons positions regarding Taiwan diverged in 1972 and, then again, when the Carter administration normalized relations in the late 1970s. While Nixon publicly portrayed himself as a populist hardliner, he was a close reader of history and a shrewd strategist. The Nixon trip certainly caught Taiwan off guard, as did the normalization of U.S.-PRC relations during the Carter administration. Mao, even then, was quite frail. The visit and subsequent normalization of relations with the West provided the ideological cover necessary for the economic reforms of the 1980s that launched China from a pariah state to the economic juggernaut that it is today. It is over 6,300 kilometers long, which makes it the third-longest river in the world. HLT: What have been the implications of that trip for Taiwan? In a rare public acknowledgement of the warming relationship, the PRC invited the U.S. ping pong team to a series of exhibition games in Beijing in 1971, a cultural exchange that became known as ping-pong diplomacy., READ MORE:How Ping-Pong Diplomacy Thawed the Cold War. Good Americans, Bad Americans, and the US-China Rapprochement. Chen Jian - From Mao to Deng: Chinas Changing Relations with the United States. What has the Nixon visit meant to you? Examining China's perceptions and tactics in negotiating with the United States during the Cold War, this Working Paper features an introduction by Yafeng Xia and translations of more than 30 original documents from the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Mark Wu is the Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law. Nixon's unprecedented presidential trip to China in 1972 steadied a rocky diplomatic relationship. Those islands featured repeatedly during the famous 1960 presidential debates when Nixon repeatedly tried to cast Kennedy as soft in his willingness to defend allies against communism. There certainly is antipathy there, but in trying to understand its policy decisions, we shouldnt be ignoring either domestic considerations there or Chinas need to address certain challenges that all nations face. The U.S. had literally turned a cold shoulder to Chou in 1954, says Thomas. "I don't think anyone set aside ideological rivalry; instead, they both were practising Mao's Theory of Contradictions," she said. In a coded cable sent back to the White House, Kissinger shared the good news with Nixon in one word: Eureka.. You still don't know.'" [27] This resulted in putting off deliberations over the establishment of a Beijing-Washington hotline, which was first proposed during the visit to China and discussed between Kissinger and Zhou in November 1973 meetings. Location: Luoyang, Henan. One famous landmark in China that you absolutely need to experience is the Dujiangyan Panda Base (also known as the Chengdu Research Base Of Giant Panda Breeding). dialogue: President Nixon Visits China: The Week That Changed the World. During the ensuing two decades, various factions in the party would fight over whether economic and political reform was necessary. And Beijing is still trying to get its hands on Taiwan. inflation. Later that decade, I made my first of what became scores of trips to China that have informed my research and teaching greatly. History alone does not provide direct answers to these critical questions. The communiqu also contained an acknowledgment that the U.S. does not challenge the view that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of China and therefore helped shape the policy of U.S. strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan that remains today. From February 21 to 28, 1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon traveled to Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. Yafeng Xia - Negotiating the Return of Civilians: Chinese Perception, Tactics and Objectives at the First Fourteen Meetings of the Sino-American Ambassadorial Talks. And it kept its defense treaty with Taiwan intact. Are China, the rising power and the worlds second largest economy, and the United States, the dominant power in the world, likely to chart a perilous course toward the Thucydidess Trap? Accuracy and availability may vary. Richard Nixon Library,WHPO-8521-17a, National Archives Identifier:40509550. In the aftermath of the Chinese civil war, the communists had captured mainland China and declared the founding of the Peoples Republic in 1949. Zhou was quoted by Lord as saying. Nixon repeatedly tried to cast Kennedy as soft in his willingness to defend allies against communism. Despite their shared Communist ideology, there was plenty of mistrust between the PRC and the Soviet Union. The Prime Minister [Zhou] seeks clarity, and I am trying to achieve ambiguity.". Mao also joked that "I voted for you during your last election. The Shanghai Tower is the tallest structure in China. But as the tumultuous 1960s came to a close, the Nixon administration was facing several major challenges: a disastrous war in Vietnam, social strife at home, and stalled nuclear arms negotiations with the Soviets. And of course, fifty years after the fact, the Nixon visit is now being evaluated in an entirely new and revisionist light, given the precarious state of US-China relations today. SHELLEY RIGGER: The Taiwanese absolutely saw this process as a betrayal. Russia's war against Ukraine has largely overshadowed the 50th anniversary of Nixon's landmark trip to China in 1972, which established the basis for a normalization of relations between the two powers. [32], In 1979, there was a state visit by Deng Xiaoping to the United States from January to February, the first official visit to the U.S. by a senior leader of the P.R.C. It has thrived economically and politically. [citation needed] Eisenhower made a state visit to Taiwan in 1960, during the period when the United States recognized the Republic of China government in Taipei as the sole government of China. [citation needed], Nixon held many meetings with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai during the trip, and made visits to the Great Wall, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. During Kissinger's second China mission there were closed-door talks between Kissinger and Zhou, mostly over the drafting of the communique, while relying solely on Chinese interpreters - a departure from past protocols. The visitwasa visual spectacle for the US President, his entourage, and much of the rest of the world, which closely watched the American leaders travels inside the world's largest communist country. Ailing Chinese leader Mao Zedong wanted to meet. J. Stapleton Roy, Douglas Spelman, and Yafeng Xia revisit a critical turning point in the history of the Cold War, President Nixons visit to China in 1972, on an episode of the Wilson Center's dialogue. The following list is the most famous Chinese landmarks, which . While it was Nixon, an ardent anti-communist, who made the about-face decision to open up relations with China in 1969, Kissinger was initially sceptical and called Nixon's idea a "flight of fantasy". At the time, Lord says, Beijing appeared to be happy with the arrangement. On February 21, 1972, Richard Nixon became the first sitting United States president to set foot in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). An overview of Richard Nixons February 1972 visit to China and associated Wilson Center publications and Digital Archive resources. President Richard Nixon and his US entourage, along with Zhou Enlai and Jiang Qing, at a performance of "The Red Detachment of Women" in February 1972. Repercussions of the Nixon visit continue to this day; near-immediate results included a significant shift in the Cold War balance, driving an ideological wedge between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, resulting in significant Soviet concessions and its eventual fall.

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