Mark Wu is the Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law. The 1972 visit by United States President Richard Nixon to the People's Republic of China was an important strategic and diplomatic overture that marked the culmination of the Nixon administration's resumption of harmonious relations between the United States (U.S.) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) after years of diplomatic isolation. 10. RUWITCH: But the chairman did do the meeting, putting a huge stamp of approval on the controversial visit, and setting the tone in a way that only Mao could do. Overall, I think were in a period of strategic competition, with a lingering sense of mistrust on both sides. Code-named "[Operation Marco] Polo II" and publicly announced weeks before Kissinger left for China, it was effectively a full-scale dress rehearsal for the historic presidential visit. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. Sky Tower in Auckland, North Island. While Nixon publicly portrayed himself as a populist hardliner, he was a close reader of history and a shrewd strategist. February 27 marked the joint issuing of the Shanghai Communiqu, a statement of Chinese and American foreign policy views that has remained the basis of Sino-American bilateral relations. Lord described Mao's purposeful and episodic language as a "very skillful performance. The outreach by Nixon and [National Security Adviser Henry] Kissinger was of great consequence, of course, but the portrayal of China as entirely passive waiting for the U.S. to come along irks me. So what they want, President Nixon writes, build up their world credentials. With the first visit in July, he nonetheless became the first senior American official to set foot in China since the Communist Party took control more than two decades before. The Great Hall of the People is the landmark on the back of the 100 Yuan banknote. It laid a foundation for the eventual establishment of relations between Beijing and Washington. Potala Palace The Potala Place in Lhasa was home to centuries of Dalai Lamas until the current Dalai Lama fled Tibet during the 1959 uprising. If we scratch away the theatrics, The Week that Changed the World looks less momentous than many have portrayed it. And Nixon knew that no single made-for-TV moment was more important than the first time that he met face-to-face with Chou Enlai, the same man whom the U.S. Secretary of State had publicly snubbed in 1954. When the Chinese Communist Party gained power over mainland China in 1949 and the Kuomintang retreated to the island of Taiwan after the de facto end of the Chinese Civil War, the United States continued to recognize the Republic of China (ROC) as the sole government of China, now based out of Taipei. While on a diplomatic trip to Pakistan, Kissinger feigned a stomach illness that would keep him locked away in his hotel room for several days. Rigger said Kissinger might have led Zhou Enlai to believe the US would not stand in the way of China having what it wanted with respect to Taiwan. But the visit helped to achieve Nixons larger political goal of realigning the balance of power on the global stage. Mark Wu: On July 15, 1971, President Nixon shocked the world by announcing that he was planning to visit the PRC the next year. Nixon's visit played a role in leading to the September 1972 Japan-China Joint Communiqu. Equally important, historians of China have flipped the script. But he soon became preoccupied with seeking detente with the largely isolated communist regime and was more than eager to win personal credit for it. Mark Wu: On July 15, 1971, President Nixon shocked the world by announcing that he was planning to visit the PRC the next year. It's no wonder leaders in both Beijing and Taipei have a hard time trusting the US," she said. 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. [25], John T. Downey and Richard Fecteau, CIA operatives who were held captive in China from November 1952, were released after Nixon's visit to China. Later that decade, I made my first of what became scores of trips to China that have informed my research and teaching greatly. "Both would agree that Nixon's trip and US-China rapprochement was [the] result of a common threat, without which US-China relations are bound to change.". Yet, reflections on the history of Chinese-American relations in the 20th-centuryand the past four decades in particularmay offer some time-tested wisdom, thus letting us occupy a more informed and discerning position to deal with vital challenges facing both the United States and China. RUWITCH: Nixon wished him good health and said he knew how painful his visit was for Taiwan. 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. Despite this, in 1972 Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit mainland China while in office. "[6], Due to secrecy surrounding diplomatic negotiations during the visit and various media restrictions, American press in China often followed Pat Nixon's sightseeing. Only after the Nixon visit did my father dare to reach out to his brothers, leading to the family being reunited many years later. The closest the U.S. and China had come to diplomatic contact was 15 years earlier in 1954, when top officials from both nations attended the Geneva Convention to negotiate new political boundaries between North and South Korea, and North and South Vietnam. Although fictional, it illustrates how the Nixon visit impacted the subsequent lives of numerous Chinese American families. He was also tasked with an even more challenging job: to draft a joint statement for the presidential visit with then Chinese premier Zhou Enlai. In addition to the widespread support among developing nations, pundits believed Kissinger's secret trip to Beijing and the subsequent announcement of Nixon's state visit helped tilt the balance in China's favour at the UN and on the world stage. Chen Jian - From Mao to Deng: Chinas Changing Relations with the United States. These China landmarks are recognized as some of the country's top attractions and can be seen on the six Chinese banknotes from 1 to 100. Bush argued that Kissinger's visit would undermine Washington's effort to preserve Taiwan's seat at the UN. It is over 6,300 kilometers long, which makes it the third-longest river in the world. I think its only one of a series of contingent events that altered the course of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. RUWITCH: At the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, Calif., there's a room covering the February 1972 China trip. Unknown to Nixon and the rest of the American diplomats at the time, Mao was in poor health and he had been hospitalized for several weeks up to only nine days before Nixon's arrival. Photographs of Nixon standing on top the Great Wall, viewing The Red Detachment of Women,or toasting Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai circulated widely around the globe. Throughout the 1950s and much of the 1960s, the U.S. and PRC maintained a frosty relationship. But the story is still playing itself out we are only fifty years into a historical event that may require several more decades before its eventual outcome is known. JOE LOPEZ: This is an interesting one here, this section - what they want, what we want, what we both want. [8] Two decades before becoming president Herbert Hoover lived in China as a mining manager from 1899 to 1901,[9] being also somewhat proficient in Mandarin. Tiger Leaping Gorge. The visit inspired John Adams' 1987 opera Nixon in China. Yes, China was still experiencing the turmoil of the latter years of the Cultural Revolution, but lets not forget that the PRC had its own agenda which it used the visit to help advance. You should at least consider visiting all of these seven tourist landmarks: the Great Wall on Mao Loyalty Ridge, the Forbidden City, the Terracotta Army, the best giant panda base, 20-Yuan Hill on the Li River, Mount Everest, and Dunhuang Mogao Caves.. Good Americans, Bad Americans, and the US-China Rapprochement. Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? But Tao Wenzhao, a US expert from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, disagreed and insisted those lingering issues over Taiwan were resolved. The fate of Taiwan was not addressed, and the issue still stalks U.S.-China relations. WINSTON LORD: It was just filled with books and manuscripts all over the place - in the back of Mao, where he sat and all the tables. The next morning, February 21, at 7 am the Nixons left Guam for Shanghai. On July 15, 1971, the President announced on live television that he would visit the PRC the following year.[2]. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. inflation. The Shanghai Tower is the tallest structure in China. 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. The second collection, Sino-American Cooperation, 1972-1989," details the new, cooperative phase in relations that followed Nixons visit in 1972 and lasted until the brutal crackdowns on Chinas pro-democracy movement in 1989. Later interviews with correspondents who traveled with the President show how eager they were to be on the trip, which some labeled the most important summit meeting ever. Washington "acknowledged" the PRC's claim to the island - that "Taiwan is part of China" - and stated it "does not challenge" that claim. Over the course of a week, he met with Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong, negotiated with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, and toured historical and cultural institutions including the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, Shanghai, and Hangzhou. Almost as soon as the American president arrived in the Chinese capital, CCP Chairman Mao Zedong summoned him for a quick meeting. RUWITCH: Where they wanted to cooperate most was in counterbalancing the Soviet Union, which both saw as a threat. 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. The week-long visit, from February 21 to 28, 1972, allowed the American public to view images of mainland China for the first time in over two decades. However, it's quite clear that China is now far bigger and far more influential than in 1972, and has the will and the capacity to try and reshape the global governance system and institutions in its own interests," he said. Pete Millwood - No, Not Only Nixon Could Go to China. Although Mao was ill, the two chatted for an hour while cameras captured the world leaders smiling and joking with one another. I cant help but see his behavior on this front as redolent of the duplicity we saw in his approach to the Vietnam War and race relations at home, and that eventually did him in. Fifty years ago today, President Nixon landed in Beijing for the historic weeklong trip that effectively ended the United States' long isolation from the People's . The Digital Archive also contains the record of a talk between Zhou Enlai and the U.S. table tennis team, an important stepping stone to the Nixon visit. [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. That said, it seems to me that without some measure of principled engagement (meaning an engagement in which we do not abandon our values), no global regime (be it about climate change, trade, rights or anything else) will flourish. Most importantly, but for the opening, I would not, while in the mid-1980s creating the first academic program in U.S. law in the PRC, have met my wonderful wife. 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. China is modernizing rapidly, a fact which makes its ancient treasures all the more precious. And its only one of several important what if moments, where we can second-guess the counterfactual about what wouldve happened otherwise. And while Taiwans democratization is predominantly attributable to domestic factors, I do think a secondary consideration has been to distinguish itself from the PRC internationally. The following list is the most famous Chinese landmarks, which . LOPEZ: What we both want, reduced danger of confrontation and conflict, a more stable Asia and a restraint of USSR. Nor would there have been a 1982 communique - in part because the Shanghai Communique emerged from a negotiating process in which Beijing was misled into thinking the US would not continue to support Taiwan militarily. Rigger also said that of the three China-US communiques, the Shanghai Communique was the most important. Resolving the Vietnam War was a particularly important factor. A blog of the History and Public Policy Program. So, the fact that Nixon, as president, would be willing to embark in outreach to Beijing came as a surprise. The Nixon trip certainly caught Taiwan off guard, as did the normalization of U.S.-PRC relations during the Carter administration. Ambassador to China) Winston Lord noted that, by flexibly dealing with both the Soviet Union and China, the United States sought to pressure both countries to reduce their support for North Vietnam in their new prioritization of relations with the United States. They're building global credentials. The fate of Taiwan was not addressed, and the issue still stalks U.S.-China. Being so large, Yangtze is China's most important waterway, providing water to farmland that gives food to one-third of the population. Location: Luoyang, Henan. In one Chinese record from December 1970, Mao Zedong confided to Edgar Snow that he liked Nixon's "reactionary" approach to foreign policy and desired to speak with him directly. "But the United States never made clear what this meant, and the US has never subsequently clarified its formal position," commented Jerome Cohen, a law professor at New York University. LORD: There were several very comfortable chairs we sat in, with tea served in between. Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Stimson Centre in Washington, said the lessons for Beijing and Washington from Nixon's visit and creating the joint statement were quite different. MacMillan provides vivid thumbnail biographies of the four major players in the drama of that weeklong visit, Nixon, Mao, Henry Kissinger and Chou En-lai, each a fascinating character in his own right. Astill rather tedious negotiating and acculturation process was necessary before the formal exchange of diplomatic relations could be achieved in 1979, and before business, military, cultural, and people-to-people ties could flourish over the next few decades. Every moment of the weeklong visit was carefully orchestrated and staged, with TV cameras broadcasting it all to rapt audiences worldwide. It was recorded on the Nixon tapes. Nixons visit was not only symbolic; it was also substantive. And they're telling. [citation needed] The American ruling class was concerned that communists might dominate schools or labor unions.[5]. Cambridge, MA 02138, 2022 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, International Legal Studies & Opportunities, Syllabi, Exam and Course Evaluation Archive, Sign Up for the Harvard Law Today Newsletter, Consumer Information (ABA Required Disclosures). I remember as a student in Cambridge, England being excited seeing Nixons reception in Beijing covered extensively on the BBC and itching to get there. 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. No. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. "It underscored the vision and the extraordinary ability of our leaders back then to take a long view and make sound strategic decisions that may affect future generations.". What has the Nixon visit meant to you? Mao also joked that "I voted for you during your last election. "The Chinese might say that the lesson is [that the] US needs to return to the correct path set by the Shanghai Communique and treat China as a friend again. Mine was one of those. And at the end of it, he had this to say. While Nixon's China trip and the Shanghai Communique marked the start of Washington's decades-long engagement with Beijing, critics have long argued they were the beginning of the US' dilemma over Taiwan, especially surrounding its strategic ambiguity over the self-ruled island. At the time, Lord says, Beijing appeared to be happy with the arrangement. But over time, Taiwan has itself become more important, as well as democratic, and China's strategic and territorial goals have become more forcefully asserted and politically articulated," Magnus said. We understand each other very well. 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. 2, Taiwan. This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. Nixon and Kissinger cooked up this idea of pitting the Soviet Union and China against each other with the United States as a third corner of the triangle to create a stable balance of power, says Evan Thomas, journalist and author of Being Nixon: A Man Divided. You still don't know.'" "[18] Nixon, charmed, said "you voted for the lesser of two evils," and Mao replied, "I like rightists, I am comparatively happy when these people on the right come into power. [33] Deng met with then-sitting President Jimmy Carter and ex-President Nixon at a state dinner in the White House.[34][35]. These days we see the same inattention but with the opposite coloration. A pivotal moment in twentieth century diplomatic history, historians and other observers nevertheless continue to debate the visit, its legacies, and some of the myths that have come to surround it. William P. Alford: Thank you, Mark. Feb. 21, 2022 3 AM PT. 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. Landmarks can include historical, cultural, natural, and human-made constructions. Sky Tower, Auckland, North Island. [11][12] Transcripts of White House meetings and once confidential documents show Nixon began working to open a channel of communication with Beijing from his first day in the White House. In China, from the beginning of the Sino-Soviet split in 1956, there was a perceived necessity for external allies to counterbalance the power of the Soviet Union. Buildings and monuments can also be included. RUWITCH: Indeed, just months earlier, the Nixon administration had tried to keep Taiwan in the United Nations under a two-Chinas formula. RUWITCH: He asks if Nixon had a message for Taiwan's president, Chiang Kai-shek. 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. On 15 July 1971 at 19:00 local time, US President Richard Nixon walked into an NBC television studio in California and announced to the world that he had accepted an invitation from Premier Zhou . Domestic events in China that followed the visit, such as Deng Xiaoping prevailing in the leadership struggle, will likely prove even more important. It is arguably the most important breakthrough agreement in the history of the US-China relations.
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