Nixon's Opening to China
Nixon went to China in February 1972 and shook hands with Zhou Enlai, whose hand an American secretary of state had refused in 1954. The two countries had no diplomatic relations and had fought each other in Korea, and the United States recognised the government on Taiwan as the government of China. What made the opening possible was the Sino-Soviet split. Border clashes on the Ussuri river in 1969 had brought China and the Soviet Union close to war, and Mao concluded that the more distant enemy was the more useful friend. Nixon's own anti-communist record was the political cover that made it survivable at home. The preparation was conducted in secret through Pakistan and Romania, and Kissinger flew to Beijing in July 1971 from Islamabad, having reported a stomach complaint. The visit itself was a week of ceremony and television — the Great Wall, the banquet, the Peking opera — with the substance in the Shanghai Communiqué, which handled Taiwan by stating that the United States acknowledged that Chinese on both sides of the strait maintained that there is one China, and did not challenge that position. The formulation is still the basis of the relationship. The effect on Moscow was immediate and intended: a summit and the SALT agreements followed within three months. Nixon called it the week that changed the world, which for once was not much of an exaggeration. The trip also had a domestic function that everyone understood. A president facing re-election went where no American leader had been, on live television, with a press corps he otherwise despised, and the phrase about only Nixon being able to go to China entered the language as a description of political credibility.
- Year: 1972 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
