Chinesepod - Nixon visit paved way for China rise

Opinion / China Watch

Nixon visit paved way for China rise

(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-11-06 11:14

Almost 35 years after U.S. President Richard Nixon startled the world by
visiting China, the boldness of the trip and his meeting with Mao Zedong
still capture the imagination.

The week-long visit in February 1972 has often been portrayed as a
remarkable success that allowed a U.S. president to repair ties with
China, put pressure on the Soviet Union and help ease Washington's path
out of the Vietnam War.

"This was the week that changed the world," Nixon declared at the end of
the visit.

But prominent Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan -- author of a new
book on the event -- suggests the Americans gave too much away to
Beijing, only achieved mixed results and sowed the seeds for China's
formidable economic rise.

The United States had refused to recognize China after 1949, and
bilateral ties had been icy for years.

By the end of the 1960s, however, both nations needed each other. A
diplomatically isolated and backward China, trying to recover from the
disastrous reforms known as the Cultural Revolution, fretted about a
possible attack by the neighboring Soviet Union.

The United States, also worried about Moscow, wanted to boost its
position in Asia and hoped China could help persuade North Vietnam to
call a halt to hostilities. So Nixon reversed two decades of official
policy and went to Beijing.

Although the hour-long talk between Nixon and Mao rarely went beyond
generalities, the meeting was hugely significant.

"It was an earthquake in the Cold War landscape and meant the Eastern
Bloc no longer stood firm against the West," MacMillan writes in "Nixon
in China."

MacMillan, author of the best-selling book "Paris 1919", says Washington
took a huge risk before Nixon's trip.

As part of a bid to show good faith, national security adviser Henry
Kissinger gave China reams of secret U.S. spy data on the Soviet Union.

"They came rather as supplicants to the Chinese and they handed over huge
amounts of intelligence and I think they left the Chinese with the
impression that really the Americans needed them more than the Chinese
needed the Americans," MacMillan told Reuters in an interview.

In truth, the Chinese desperately needed help to escape what China's
State Information Minister Cai Wu calls the chaos of the Cultural
Revolution.

"Nixon's visit opened a door at that time for China to the rest of the
world," he said during a recent visit to Ottawa.

Almost hidden among the fanfare, banquets and media frenzy was the joint
commitment to boost academic contacts as well as trade -- topics which
did not interest Kissinger or Nixon.

"The maximum amount of bilateral trade possible between us, even if we
make great efforts, is infinitesimal in terms of our total economy,"
Kissinger told deputy Chinese Foreign Minister Qiao Guanhua.

In reality, the academic visits quickly helped China build up vital
knowledge and skills. And the promise of greater access to U.S. markets
was crucial.

After Mao died in 1976, his successors launched economic reforms that
turned China into the powerhouse that is now, running a $200 billion
trade surplus with the United States. China helps keep its rival afloat
by buying vast amounts of U.S. debt.

As time passed, other drawbacks of the Nixon visit became clear to
Washington. Although the trip did deliver the desired shock to Moscow, it
also proved an unpleasant surprise to allies such as Japan.

And despite Nixon's hopes, the China card did not result in effective
pressure on North Vietnam to reach a peace deal.

Even without Nixon's visit, she feels, China and the United States would
eventually have come to an understanding.

Now, as a confident China seeks to exert its influence and track down
sources of raw materials, more problems seem likely with a weakened
United States.

"There are areas where they are going to clash more and more. I think
commodities are going to be a real problem," said MacMillan.

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