before our unbreakable departure deadline—Zhou raised the issue of a visit by President Nixon. Both Zhou and I had made glancing references to it but had avoided being specific because neither of us wanted to deal with a rebuff or to appear as a supplicant. Zhou finally adopted the elegant solution of moving into the topic as a procedural issue:
ZHOU: What is your thinking on an announcement of the visit?
KISSINGER: What visit?
ZHOU: Would it cover only your visit or also President Nixon’s visit?
KISSINGER: We could announce my visit and say that Chairman Mao has extended an invitation to President Nixon and he has accepted, either in principle or at a fixed time, next spring. What is your pleasure? I think there are advantages in doing both together.
ZHOU: Then would it be possible for the two sides to designate some of our men to draft an announcement?
KISSINGER: We should draft in the context we have been discussing.
ZHOU: Both visits.
KISSINGER: That would be all right.
ZHOU: We shall try it. . . . I have an appointment at six o’clock that will last until ten o’clock. My office is free to you. Or you can go to your residence for discussions. You can have supper and rest and a film.
KISSINGER: We will meet at 10:00.
ZHOU: Yes, I will come to your residence. We will work deep into the night. 20
As it happened, the communiqué could not be finished that night because of a deadlock over who would be said to have invited whom. Each side wanted the other to look more eager. We split the difference. The draft needed the Chairman’s approval, and Mao had gone to bed. Mao finally approved a formulation in which Zhou, “[k]nowing of President Nixon’s expressed desire to visit the People’s Republic of China,” was said to have “extended an invitation,” which Nixon had then accepted “with pleasure.”
We finished drafting the terms of a statement for the visit of President Nixon just before the deadline for our departure on the afternoon of Sunday, July 11. “Our announcement will shake the world,” said Zhou, and the delegation flew back, concealing its excitement for the hours before the world could be shaken. I briefed Nixon at his San Clemente “Western White House.” Then, simultaneously on July 15, from Los Angeles and Beijing, the secret trip and the invitation were both made public.
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.
ZHOU: What is your thinking on an announcement of the visit?
KISSINGER: What visit?
ZHOU: Would it cover only your visit or also President Nixon’s visit?
KISSINGER: We could announce my visit and say that Chairman Mao has extended an invitation to President Nixon and he has accepted, either in principle or at a fixed time, next spring. What is your pleasure? I think there are advantages in doing both together.
ZHOU: Then would it be possible for the two sides to designate some of our men to draft an announcement?
KISSINGER: We should draft in the context we have been discussing.
ZHOU: Both visits.
KISSINGER: That would be all right.
ZHOU: We shall try it. . . . I have an appointment at six o’clock that will last until ten o’clock. My office is free to you. Or you can go to your residence for discussions. You can have supper and rest and a film.
KISSINGER: We will meet at 10:00.
ZHOU: Yes, I will come to your residence. We will work deep into the night. 20
As it happened, the communiqué could not be finished that night because of a deadlock over who would be said to have invited whom. Each side wanted the other to look more eager. We split the difference. The draft needed the Chairman’s approval, and Mao had gone to bed. Mao finally approved a formulation in which Zhou, “[k]nowing of President Nixon’s expressed desire to visit the People’s Republic of China,” was said to have “extended an invitation,” which Nixon had then accepted “with pleasure.”
We finished drafting the terms of a statement for the visit of President Nixon just before the deadline for our departure on the afternoon of Sunday, July 11. “Our announcement will shake the world,” said Zhou, and the delegation flew back, concealing its excitement for the hours before the world could be shaken. I briefed Nixon at his San Clemente “Western White House.” Then, simultaneously on July 15, from Los Angeles and Beijing, the secret trip and the invitation were both made public.
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.
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