Real War (21 page)

Exacerbating this conflict was a deep-rooted distrust and dislike between the two peoples themselves. Historically, the Chinese have despised the Russians, just as they have had contempt for the Indians. The Soviet leaders constantly denigrated the Chinese. Russian leaders as far back as Khrushchev privately warned their American counterparts against the Chinese disregard for human life—which, given the Soviet record, invites its own wry commentary. At our U.S.–Soviet summit meetings, Brezhnev repeatedly warned me against the Chinese threat, and described the Chinese leaders as brutal and barbaric in their treatment of their own people; he urged that “we Europeans” should unite to contain the potential great threat from China. The Chinese, for their part, make clear in their private conversations that they consider the Russians crude, ruthless barbarians. On neither side are these sentiments the stuff of which lasting friendships are made.

Hua Guofeng told me of a conversation between Mao and Soviet Premier Kosygin in 1965, in which Mao told Kosygin
that the debate between China and the Soviet Union would go on for ten thousand years. Kosygin protested, and as their conversation ended he asked Mao whether he had finally convinced him that ten thousand years was too long an estimate. Mao replied that Kosygin had indeed been persuasive, and that because of this he would knock off a thousand years—but that the debate would go on for at least nine thousand years.

The Sino-Soviet split developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, barely a decade after Mao took power; by 1961 it was virtually complete. Among the contributing factors were Chinese disappointment at not getting more Soviet assistance in developing their nuclear capacity, and the abrupt withdrawal in 1960 of Soviet technicians from China, leaving many development projects uncompleted. Following this break, the ideological warfare between the two communist giants grew more intense, as did their rivalry on the international scene. China then was more hard-line than Russia in its confrontation with the West, and was vigorous in its support of “wars of national liberation.” Still in the first flush of its communist power, China sought to expand communist power—Chinese style—every-where that it could, and in doing so it followed Mao's dictum: “Every communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

At that point, the Sino-Soviet split made the Sino-Soviet bloc less menacing to the world, but it did not make China less menacing. That came later, as China began to change.

When
Air Force One
—or
The Spirit of '76,
as we then called it—landed at Peking's airport on February 21, 1972, I was keenly aware that the world would never again be the same. How it would change would depend heavily on the nature of our talks during the following week. But profound change was inevitable. The trip itself, and the calculated decisions on both sides to proceed with it, had already set that change in motion.

At the head of the waiting delegation was Zhou Enlai, his frail frame covered by a heavy overcoat. Years earlier, at the
Geneva Conference in 1954, Zhou had been deeply offended when he extended his hand to John Foster Dulles at a public gathering and Dulles refused to shake it. This had been one of those small ceremonial slights that may seem justified, even necessary, at the time, but that can rankle for years afterward and even have substantial diplomatic consequences. I was determined that my first act on arriving in China would be to undo the act of omission. As I came down the ramp, Zhou began to applaud. I returned the gesture, and then, as I reached the bottom step, I stretched out my hand to Zhou. When he took it, it was more than a handshake. We both knew that it marked a turning point in history.

Nearly five years earlier, in a 1967 article in the quarterly
Foreign Affairs,
I had written that “taking the long view, we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates and threaten its neighbors. There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation.” But I also argued that for the short run we needed “a policy of firm restraint, of no reward, of a creative counterpressure designed to persuade Peking that its interests can be served only by accepting the basic rules of international civility,” so that China could finally be pulled “back into the world community—but as a great and progressing nation, not as the epicenter of world revolution.” The time when “the dialogue with mainland China can begin,” I wrote, would be when the leaders in Peking were persuaded “to turn their energies inward rather than outward.” One of my first acts as President was to direct that we explore privately the possibilities of a rapprochement with China. This proceeded at first as a sort of slow ritual dance, but the steps rapidly gained momentum in 1971 until, on July 15, I made the surprise announcement that I would visit China in early 1972.

•  •  •

This opening to China represented a wrenching change for the United States, not to mention for me personally. We had supported the government on Taiwan for more than twenty years. They were staunch allies, and in a world where too many governments behaved irresponsibly, they had always played a constructive international role and conducted themselves
with a high degree of responsibility. They were one of our major trading partners; beyond this, they were our friends. Taiwan's leaders, including Chiang, were also my personal friends. In our negotiations with China we refused to renounce our treaty commitment to Taiwan, and we stated clearly in the communiqué our firm position that the Taiwan question should be settled peacefully. But we knew that the entire shift in American policy was intensely painful to Taiwan, and this in turn was painful to us.

The opening to the United States also represented a wrenching change for China. For years the United States had been the number one enemy, the target of China's most vitriolic propaganda. The Chinese made this change because it was in their interest; because at that point they needed the United States, just as the United States needed China.

Both we and the Chinese approached that first opening toward each other with caution, uncertainty, even trepidation. Neither of us knew just what to expect, and both of us had been conditioned by years of hostility. Under Chiang's Nationalist rule, China was our ally in World War II, but Mao and Chiang had long been enemies. China then became our own bitter enemy after the communist conquest of the mainland in 1949. In the Korean War U.S. troops fought Chinese troops; in Vietnam China supplied and aided our North Vietnamese enemy.

For generations, American attitudes toward China had alternated between romantic attachment and dread. It used to be common for Americans to refer to the Chinese as “the yellow peril.” Theodore Roosevelt used the term, as did Albert Beveridge; in our own time, Americans as distinguished as Herbert Hoover and Douglas MacArthur referred to the Chinese that way in conversations with me. So too, for that matter, did Leonid Brezhnev. Hoover, who spent years in China as a mining engineer, spoke of the Chinese to me in the mid-1960s as being “bloodthirsty” not only toward foreigners, but also toward their own people. To many, the sheer numbers of China's people were menacing, and exclusionary immigration laws were enacted to keep them out.

In part, this reflected the fact that China was distant, mysterious,
different,
and that even in our own cities the “Chinatowns” were exotic enclaves. In part, it reflected racist condescension.
In part, it reflected the reality that even as Chinese civilization flourished, for most of the Chinese people life was harsh and cruel, and had been for centuries—so that in China, where people were plentiful, and where famine or flood often took those that the warlords did not, it appeared to Western eyes that life was cheap.

Yet Americans and Chinese, when they get to know one another, usually do get along extraordinarily well. The U.S. record with regard to China in the pre-Mao period, while mixed, is better than that of most Western powers. Though the United States did to some extent exploit the advantages that European countries seized in China, the United States never established concessions of its own. American missionaries in China were sometimes resented, but many did fine humanitarian work. Large numbers of Chinese studied in the United States. The hostilities that existed between China and the United States in the 1949-1972 period were the result of politics, not of personality; they stemmed from a clash of national interests, not a clash of national cultures. Therefore, as policies changed and interests shifted, hostility could more readily be replaced by respect, cordiality, even friendship.

To a considerable extent, this happened in my own dealings with China's leaders. We began our talks with no illusions about our philosophical differences, and with no effort to conceal or paper them over. But we were cordial. We were respectful. And, in exploring together both our common interests and our divergent interests, we developed a high degree of trust and a considerable personal rapport. When I returned to China in 1976 and 1979 as a private citizen—though as a guest of the Chinese government—I found myself genuinely looking forward to renewing old acquaintances among the Chinese leaders, as well as to making new ones; for their part, my Chinese hosts were unfailingly gracious and warmly hospitable. In cementing a new relationship these things are important. Great nations act on the basis of interest, not sentiment, but good personal relationships can do a great deal toward making differences manageable and ties stronger.

•  •  •

China turned toward the United States because it saw itself surrounded by potentially hostile forces. To the north—the direction
from which, historically, the “barbarian” invasions had come—stood the Soviet Union, no longer comradely, with huge concentrations of troops stationed menacingly along its border with China. To the south was India. China had had a border clash with India in 1962 and more recently had seen the ease with which, with Soviet aid, India dismembered China's ally, Pakistan. Despite the contempt that the Chinese felt toward the Indians, with India on the way toward adding a nuclear capability to its Soviet-supplied arsenal, India's potential had to give China pause.

To the northeast, China saw Japan. Japan was already the third largest economic power in the world, and though it did not have nuclear weapons, it had the industrial base to develop them if it ever chose to do so. Within recent memory Japan had invaded and occupied China. Though the Chinese did not now fear Japan, they had enormous respect for its potential. As for the United States, the Chinese knew that we had no territorial designs on them—which they could not say about the Soviets. Though our system was opposed to theirs, our interests were opposed to those of the Soviet Union, the neighbor that posed the most serious and most immediate threat to China itself. So the Chinese had reason to want better relations with us.

What we had to show the Chinese was that we could be counted on: that we had a clear enough view of our own interests, and a sufficient will to defend those interests, to be a reliable friend. Further, the Chinese had to be persuaded that as a society, the United States had the strength and the stamina to be reliable over the long term.

For China, the new relationship with the United States represented a “great leap forward” into the world of independent great-power politics. It meant accommodating positions that cut directly against the grain of revolutionary communist ideology. For a regime as dogmatic as Mao's had been, this was a tremendous change. Revolutionary Chinese ideology told China to oppose the U.S.–Japanese defense treaty, and to oppose the U.S. presence in Asia. Yet China's interests dictated otherwise, and China's leaders recognized this—privately if not publicly. When it came to the choice, interests prevailed. Even on the intensely emotional issue of Taiwan, China, while not retreating from its own position, had to accept the fact that we
would not accede to the demand that we abandon our commitment to Taiwan.

In my conversations with Hua in 1976 I stressed that there are times when a great nation must choose between ideology and survival. This, essentially, is what China did in responding to our initiatives and embarking on the new relationship.

Less than a decade has passed since that opening to China in 1972 and already our relations have been transformed—and so has China's approach to the world. Mao had the authority to make the turn toward the United States; his successors have had the wisdom to make use of it, and to change Mao's policies so that the opportunities it created can be used.

Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew commented to me in 1967 that “Mao is painting on a mosaic. Once Mao dies and the rains come, what he has painted will wash away.”

Now Mao has died, and the rains are coming. How much of what he painted will be washed away is not yet clear. When I was in Peking in 1979 heroic pictures of Mao still dominated the cityscape, but the huge official posters carrying his revolutionary slogans were being quietly taken down.

Certainly Mao's revolutionary ideas have made a massive impression. The Communist Party remains China's organizing force. Premier Hua still prefaces many of his comments with, “As Chairman Mao said . . . ” Mao remains a god. But China is changing, and the more it changes, the more the ancient mosaic of China itself emerges.

Mao had a strong sense of history, and also a strong sense of his own mortality. When we first met in 1972 it was clear that he could see the end of his own life approaching. He wanted to be sure that the directions he had set China on would last, and he also wanted China to be secure enough so that they could last; so he took the revolutionary step of reaching out to the United States and fundamentally altering the balance of power in the world. One of the ironies of history is that this daring
move has, since Mao's death, both enhanced China's security and accelerated its turn away from Mao's own internal policies.