Nixon and Mao (41 page)

Sato was, it turned out, promising more than he could deliver on the textile issue, because of furious opposition from Japanese textile manufacturers and their allies in the government. The Okinawa treaty moved ahead, but Nixon did not get the quota he wanted. Comments came out of the White House, perhaps from Nixon himself, suggesting that the United States was worried about Japan sliding back into militarism or going Communist. In private, Nixon talked about “Jap betrayal.” As Kissinger prepared to leave on his secret trip to China in the summer of 1971, the United States’ relations with Japan were already strained.
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For fear of leaks, Nixon and Kissinger had decided not to inform their allies (or, indeed, their own State Department) about the trip until the day of Nixon’s televised announcement. Alexis Johnson, who was undersecretary of state for political affairs, was summoned to San Clemente on July 15; there he found a frantic Rogers, “left behind as usual by the President,” trying to track down ambassadors in Washington, where the working day had already ended. When Johnson finally managed to get hold of the Japanese ambassador, Ushiba Nobuhiko cried out, “Alex, the Asakai nightmare has happened.” In Japan, Sato had three minutes’ warning, and the American ambassador was lying in a barber’s chair when he heard the news on an American armed forces broadcast. The Japanese were furious and humiliated. In Washington, the normally calm Ushiba had a stormy interview with Marshall Green at the State Department, in which he accused the United States of betraying a lack of trust toward Japan. Sato tried to put a brave face on it, but he tearfully unburdened himself about the Americans to the Australian prime minister, saying, “I have done everything they asked but they have let me down.” Sato’s own political position was seriously undermined, and in Johnson’s opinion, the Japanese and American governments never recovered the trust and confidence they had formerly had in each other.
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The Japanese probably should have guessed that something was in the wind. The signs of a thaw between China and the United States were clearly visible by 1971, and American diplomats had tried to tip the Japanese off to expect more developments. “If I had only listened more carefully to what you were saying,” a Japanese diplomat told Charles Freeman of the State Department disconsolately, “this would have not been the surprise that it was.” Chou had also apparently hinted that spring to a Japanese trade negotiator that the two countries were about to start serious discussions. For the Japanese, it was as much the way the Americans handled the announcement as the trip itself. A new word entered the Japanese language:
shokku.
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And there was more to follow. On August 15, 1971, Nixon announced a package of measures to deal with inflation and a growing American trade imbalance with the world. The United States stopped backing the dollar with gold, effectively devaluing its currency, and placed a surcharge on imports. Nixon knew that both measures would hurt Japan. “We’ll fix those bastards,” he said. The second
shokku
led to the yen going sharply upward against the dollar and restrictions on Japanese exports to the United States.

Then, in October, while Kissinger was on his second trip to China, Japanese delegates at the United Nations found themselves committed to supporting the American delegation in resisting Taiwan’s expulsion at a time when the American government itself was abandoning the struggle. Sato’s government—reasonably, under the circumstances—decided that given the American example, the time had come to push ahead to expand Japan’s trading and diplomatic relations with mainland China.
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Nixon and Kissinger tried halfheartedly to make it up to the Japanese. In September, they flew to Anchorage to meet the emperor Hirohito while his plane was being refueled on the way from Japan to Europe. Nixon described their meeting as a historic event, “a spiritual bridge spanning East and West.” To Chou a month later, Kissinger was dismissive: “Not a very profound conversation, Mr. Prime Minister.” The Americans also invited Sato to Washington for a summit in January 1972. In his private conversation with Nixon and Kissinger, Sato was polite but critical. Japan was rather concerned about Nixon’s visit to China. Kissinger said that he had been very firm with the Chinese, who could be under no illusions that the Americans intended anything but to stand by their commitments to their friends. “We have made no deal,” Nixon interjected. The announcement of Kissinger’s trip, Sato went on, had come as a great shock to the Japanese people, who thought—wrongly, of course—that it had been arranged behind Japan’s back. Nixon was unapologetic; the important thing, in his view, was that on policy issues their two nations must consult fully. The Japanese, he noted, appeared to be moving quickly to establish full relations with the People’s Republic of China. “If Japan were to crawl, or to run to Peking,” Nixon warned, “its bargaining position would evaporate.” He was not so much worried that Japan would give away too much to get full diplomatic relations with China as that this would happen before the United States could do the same. In an election year, he did not want allies or Democrats taking the limelight.
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Sato left the United States pessimistic over the future of the Japanese-American relationship. His own political position had been irretrievably undermined by the series of
shokku
s. He resigned in the summer of 1972 and was replaced by Tanaka Kakuei, who moved rapidly to open up Japan’s relations with the People’s Republic of China. Japan’s relationship with the United States remained highly important, but as a senior official had said at the end of 1971, “it will be necessary for us to recognize, once again, that Japan is an Asian nation.”
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If Japan felt tremors from the shift in American policy, Taiwan was hit by an earthquake. After Truman had guaranteed Taiwan’s defense, its Guomindang rulers had confidently but unwisely assumed that the United States would be their friend and protector in perpetuity. They had not noticed that a new generation of Americans, less affected by the early Cold War and the battle for Korea, was moving into influential positions in government, the media, and the academic world. They had counted, too, on the ability of the China lobby to keep American governments in line. They had failed to see that it was slowly fading away, although they should perhaps have taken notice when its chief organizer abruptly resigned in 1969 and moved to London to start producing plays and when the
New York Times
referred to the “once powerful China Lobby.” The Guomindang government did little to prepare its own citizens for the possibility that American allegiances might one day shift. An old and stubborn Chiang kept tight control on the media and refused to allow any consideration of such issues as dual membership for both his government and that of the mainland in the United Nations. “There is no room for patriots and traitors to live together,” he declared.
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As the signs of a major shift in American policy—from Nixon’s first use of the term “People’s Republic” to ping-pong diplomacy—multiplied, the leadership in Taiwan drifted glumly along in a state of indecision. When Nixon made his announcement in the summer of 1971 that Kissinger had secretly visited Beijing, the first reaction in the capital, Taipei, was “utter disbelief.” To James Shen, the Taiwanese ambassador in Washington, Kissinger was reassuring: in his conversations with Chou, he had stressed that the United States had no intention of turning its back on its loyal ally and friend. He had not made any secret deals with the Chinese over Taiwan. Just before he left on his second trip, Kissinger saw Shen again. He had no intention, Kissinger said, of bringing up the issue of Taiwan, but it was possible that Chou might. In any case, Nixon was going to make completely clear that the American relationship with Taiwan was “nonnegotiable.” He himself, Kissinger went on, with his many friends in Taiwan, found going to China “exceedingly painful,” yet he had no choice but to accept the assignment. Was this, the ambassador wondered, sincere or a case of crocodile tears?

In October, shortly before Kissinger’s second trip to China, Nixon sent Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, to Taipei to talk to Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang sat like a stone, looking straight ahead. Reagan, who was a strong supporter of Taiwan, later said that he regretted helping Nixon out. Shortly after Reagan’s visit, Taiwan was expelled from the United Nations. To add to Taiwan’s humiliation, a number of countries made it clear that they were going to switch their recognition to the People’s Republic of China. Japan, Taiwan’s prominent supporter and most important trading partner, hinted that it was starting negotiations with Beijing. For many Taiwanese, it was not just their status but their newfound prosperity that was threatened.
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From the Taiwanese perspective, there were only a few bright spots in 1971. The United States finally agreed to sell Taiwan’s navy two submarines and to hold joint military training exercises, which had been in abeyance since 1968. In August, the USS
Oklahoma City,
flagship of the Seventh Fleet, visited a Taiwanese port. The authorities organized an enthusiastic welcome with singers, acrobats, and dancers. Another event that occurred that month may have done even more to boost local morale. The Tainan Giants won the Little League World Series in baseball. Two-thirds of Taiwan’s 14 million inhabitants watched the games on television.
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Wild rumors came out of Taiwan. On his October visit, Kissinger, who had been alerted by American intelligence, passed on a warning to Chou that the Guomindang might use its American-made airplanes to cause trouble: “We have a report that the Chinese Nationalists on the Taiwan General Staff are considering flying an R-104 reconnaissance aircraft over the mainland in order to disrupt our policy and our talks.” The American government was trying to put a stop to it. Such planes often came to harass them, Chou said, but the Chinese would assume that anything taking off from Taiwan was being flown by Guomindang pilots. As Nixon prepared to make his trip to China, the Chinese informed the Americans of reports that Chiang Kai-shek would use a plane painted with People’s Republic markings to try to shoot down Air Force One. Chiang’s more moderate son, Chiang Ching-kuo, promised that there would be no unusual incidents or maneuvers in the strait during Nixon’s visit.
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The Taiwanese watched the Haldeman show in Beijing with gloomy fascination. (Some on the island remained happily unaware: “Oh, is that near Taipei?” asked a farmer’s wife.) The press in Taiwan said that people all around the Pacific no longer trusted the United States as an ally. Nixon, Shen thought, had made a great mistake in going to China at all. And why had Nixon been so humble when he met Mao? He might as well have been on his knees doing the kowtow to an emperor. The scene at the opening banquet, when Nixon went around the tables toasting everyone indiscriminately, was, in Shen’s view, particularly demeaning: “This was something no Oriental guest of honor with any sense of personal dignity would have done.” Shortly after Nixon’s visit concluded, the Taiwanese government issued a defiant statement reaffirming its intention to overthrow the illegitimate regime on the mainland. It also decided that it might look elsewhere for new friends. The Taiwanese foreign minister said he would not rule out “shaking hands with the devil.” Rumors went around Taipei that the Soviets might lease one of Taiwan’s outlying islands as a naval base.
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On the whole, the reaction of the government was less violent than it might have been. Most ordinary Taiwanese were mainly confused and uneasy about what the future held, partly, said an American diplomat, because their own government had done so little to prepare them for this moment. Their reaction to the Nixon visit, the Australian ambassador in Taipei reported, was one of “essential helplessness in the face of events happening or to happen elsewhere.” Even the supporters of Taiwan’s independence as a separate country shared the growing feeling of isolation.
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Were they, as the American diplomat put it, “an annoying fragment complicating the implementation of a grand American strategy devised in Washington”?

CHAPTER 19

THE SHANGHAI COMMUNIQUÉ

O
N SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26, THE AMERICAN PARTY PREPARED
to leave Beijing for the last stage of the visit. Nixon’s mood had not improved since the banquet the night before. As he sat in the airport waiting room, Chou politely called his attention to various pictures of China on the walls. Nixon tried to ignore him, but was eventually forced to look. His smile grew strained, then disappeared. “What the hell are you talking about?” he snapped. If the Chinese prime minister understood, he remained his usual imperturbable self.
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They were all flying together in a Chinese plane (this had caused great concern to the Secret Service) to Hangzhou, just south of Shanghai. The Chinese had insisted on putting this, one of China’s most beautiful cities, on the itinerary. For its tree-covered hills and, above all, its West Lake, with its bridges, pavilions, and temples, Hangzhou had been a favorite subject of China’s writers and artists for centuries. Mao spent much time at his villa by the lake, especially during the winter months; he had also planned much of the Cultural Revolution there. It was possible, or so the Americans hoped, that he might be available there for a second meeting with Nixon. It would give the visit even more significance; it would also appease Rogers, who was deeply aggrieved that he had been cut out of the one meeting in Beijing. Kissinger raised the matter with Chou and Qiao in their private talks but was told that the chairman’s bronchitis made it difficult. There was no second meeting.
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By way of compensation, the two sides held a second plenary session at the Beijing airport. The Chinese had originally scheduled fifteen minutes, but Nixon had asked that the meeting be stretched out to half an hour: “It would make some of our people who have not had a chance to sit in on the private sessions feel that they have a part to play, too.” Nixon and Chou spoke blandly about how good their talks had been. There were, of course, still differences between them, but they had made a good start on finding common ground. Nixon also took the opportunity to warn the Chinese, yet again, not to believe what the American press or American politicians said.

Perhaps, said Chou, they should invite their foreign ministers to report on their own discussions. That, said Kissinger sardonically in his memoirs, did not take long. Rogers led off; his talks with Ji, the foreign minister, had been frank and friendly. And useful in clearing up misunderstandings. For example, when the Chinese had been concerned that they might need to be fingerprinted for visas to the United States, he had been able to make one quick phone call to Washington and reassure them that the procedure was no longer required. “That’s a very serious and earnest attitude,” Chou commented. No mention was made of the communiqué, even though its wording had finally—or so Nixon and Kissinger confidently thought—been settled the night before with the Chinese. Kissinger would show it to Rogers only in confidence, he assured Qiao, and then only when they reached Hangzhou.
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In his memoirs, Nixon made only a brief mention of any problems over the communiqué. Both sides, as already agreed, stated their positions over Taiwan, the Chinese at first rather belligerently, in Nixon’s opinion. “Thanks largely to Kissinger’s negotiating skill and Chou’s common sense, the Chinese finally agreed to sufficiently modified language.” In his own memoirs, Kissinger devoted considerably more space to what he admitted were delicate and tricky negotiations. The transcripts of his talks, mainly with Qiao but occasionally with Chou present as well, show just how difficult they were.
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Qiao, who was a trusted colleague of Chou’s, was, like his superior, clever, tough, and, when he chose, charming. Like Chou, he came from an upper-class background and had studied and lived abroad, in Japan and then in Germany, where he had earned a doctorate in philosophy. He had first worked for Chou during the civil war and had joined the Foreign Ministry after the Communists took power. Like Chou, Qiao was a skilled negotiator who had learned his craft in the negotiations at the end of the Korean War. More recently, he had headed the Chinese team that negotiated with the Soviets after the confrontations of 1969. Kissinger found Qiao a worthy opponent, and his subordinate, Zhang Wenjin, a stubborn nuisance with a fondness for splitting hairs. Kissinger’s own assistants Winston Lord and John Holdridge, from the State Department, rarely intervened in the discussions. The Americans had no inkling of the strains the men on the other side were under.

In 1967, as the Cultural Revolution was getting into full swing, Zhang, who was then ambassador in Pakistan, had been summoned back to Beijing along with many other diplomats. Radicals had seized him at the airport and clapped a dunce’s cap on his head. They had then held him in the Foreign Ministry, where he had been forced to kneel for hours on a wooden bench, holding his leather shoes, signs of his bourgeois failings, above his head. As a protégé of Chou’s, Qiao had also been caught up in the disputes in the Foreign Ministry. His enemies had accused him of being a rightist, an all-purpose but damning label. (Later on, after Mao’s death, he faced the completely different charge of being part of the Gang of Four.) His personal life was also complicated; his wife had died suddenly in 1970, and a year later he had fallen in love with a much younger woman in the Foreign Ministry. Zhang Hanzhi, who was extremely pretty and charming, was the daughter of an old friend of Mao’s and something of a favorite of the chairman’s. She had once tried to teach him English and now worked as an interpreter for Chou. There was much gossip about her relationship with Qiao, and it was not until the end of 1973 that they were given permission to marry. Not surprisingly, given the turmoil in his political and private lives, Qiao suffered from fits of depression and melancholy.
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While most of the communiqué had been settled on Kissinger’s and Haig’s earlier trips, three issues still remained: trade and exchanges, the recent conflict between India and Pakistan, and Taiwan. The communiqué was unusual in that both sides were going to state their respective positions where they disagreed, but they still had to agree on the actual wording and set out those areas where in fact they did agree. In an intense series of meetings, in the intervals either in the morning or late at night when their presence was not required at the Nixon-Chou meetings or at social events, Kissinger and Qiao went over the communiqué line by line. They argued over words and grammar. Did “should” imply a moral obligation, for example? Could Nixon endorse a common statement that talked about revolution in the world? (In this case, they agreed merely to refer to “important changes and great upheavals.”) Should the American names to be listed as participants in the talks have middle initials? That one had to be referred to Nixon himself, who ruled against initials.

Behind the quibbles lay real and important issues. Two great powers were taking a public stand on significant questions where they differed but also demonstrating that they had found some common ground. The words they used in the communiqué were going to be read and studied—in Moscow, Hanoi, Tokyo, in capital cities worldwide. And the commitments, to work on normalizing relations between China and the United States, while not binding, would be hard to break once made publicly. The transcripts of Kissinger’s and Qiao’s talks show masters of their craft at work. They assure each other that they do not want to be tricky. They swear that they are being completely frank with each other. They do much thinking aloud. It was a useful device, said Kissinger, because both sides could advance positions without being committed to them. At times they flattered each other shamelessly. “Our efficiency,” sighed Qiao, “is not as high as yours.” The Chinese, said Kissinger, were so much more subtle than most Americans.
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On South Asia, one of the outstanding issues, the Americans wanted to say simply that the peoples of South Asia had the right to determine their own future without the threat of force and without outside interference, while the Chinese wanted to stress that India must obey the United Nations’ resolutions and withdraw its forces from Pakistan’s territory in Kashmir. After a brief discussion, both sides agreed on what was an unconventional way to have a joint communiqué: while there would be common statements, each would also have a separate section with its own wording.

The wording on trade and exchanges was also relatively easy to settle, and here the two sides were able to agree that it was desirable to expand the contacts and understanding between their two peoples, whether through cultural and academic exchanges or sport. The Chinese were nervous about allowing foreigners into China and not particularly interested in trade or tourism, but Kissinger was reassuring. The words in the communiqué would be window dressing: “We both know that basically they don’t mean anything.” He was obliged by “sentimental” public pressure back home to push for more contacts between their two countries. “The maximum amount of bilateral trade possible between us, even if we make great efforts, is infinitesimal in terms of our total economy,” he pointed out. “And the exchanges, while they are important, will not change objective realities.” The Chinese were hardened revolutionaries, he said; “pedants” from American universities were not going to make any impression on them. These are interesting predictions viewed from our twenty-first-century vantage point: Wal-Mart’s imports from China amounted to some $18 billion in 2006 and place that one company ahead of Canada, Russia, and Australia as a trading partner with the People’s Republic; almost 900,000 Americans a year visit China; and many of China’s new leaders hold degrees from American universities.
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Taiwan, inevitably, was the main cause of long hours of work late into the night, and it was Taiwan that very nearly prevented any communiqué from being issued at all. The fundamental problem, which had not been solved on either of Kissinger’s visits or on Haig’s, was that the Chinese wanted the Americans to recognize that the island was an integral part of China. Moreover, they wanted a firm deadline for the Americans to withdraw militarily from Taiwan. “Since you are to acknowledge,” Qiao said on the day the Nixon party arrived, “that the Taiwan question is a question of the Chinese people themselves, then the logical and inescapable conclusion would be the final and complete withdrawal of American forces.” The Americans could not go that far; publicly abandoning Taiwan would cause major domestic problems for Nixon and also leave a bad impression with American allies around the world. Qiao cleverly countered with his own reference to public opinion: the Chinese people had “very strong feelings” on the issue of Taiwan.

Kissinger fell back on the tactics he and Nixon had used before: he could and would make private commitments. Surely, he argued, the fact that the United States had kept its promise not to have nuclear weapons on Taiwan was evidence of the Americans’ good faith. When Qiao pressed him for an acknowledgment in the communiqué that Taiwan was a province of China, Kissinger resisted: “We would like to find a formulation which is at least vaguer, not because it affects what we will do, which you know, but because it enables us to return without looking as though we have surrendered on this point.” On the other hand, when Kissinger wanted the Chinese to state clearly that they would not use force to join Taiwan with the mainland, Qiao dug his heels in: “Frankly speaking, we cannot agree to that because it is a fundamental violation of our principle—that it is an internal affair.” Nevertheless, he pointed out, the Chinese were making a significant concession in not insisting that the United States renounce its defense treaty with Taiwan.
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During the week in Beijing, the two sides inched toward each other. As the time for Nixon’s departure for Hangzhou drew closer, the pace of the meetings stepped up. On Friday, the last full day the Americans were in Beijing, Kissinger and Qiao held four meetings, finally finishing up in the early hours on Saturday. The wording of the Chinese statement on Taiwan, which reiterated China’s long-standing position that Taiwan was a part of China and its fate an internal matter, was agreed on relatively quickly. Because the Americans were changing their position, however, virtually every word in the four sentences expressing the American view on Taiwan was the subject of intense bargaining. The Americans acknowledged that all Chinese, both those on the mainland and those on Taiwan, held that there was only one China and that Taiwan was part of it. The word “acknowledge,” though, later caused problems with some officials in the State Department, who felt that the United States could have followed the Canadian example to simply “take note of” the Chinese position. On the other hand, Kissinger managed to avoid using the word “recognize,” which would have implied that the United States accepted China’s claims to sovereignty over Taiwan.
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Although the Chinese still had not renounced the use of force, they conceded that the Americans might indicate a link between a peaceful settlement of the issue and the withdrawal of American forces from Taiwan. Qiao fretted over the word “withdrawal”; did it imply that some forces could be left behind? Kissinger agreed to say that the “ultimate objective” of the United States was the withdrawal of “all” American forces, but he managed to put it in the context of the reduction of tensions in the Taiwan Strait. Where Kissinger wanted to say that with the prospect of a peaceful settlement of the issue by the Chinese themselves, the United States “anticipates” withdrawing its forces, Qiao wanted the stronger “will.” They finally compromised on “affirms the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan.” Nixon and Chou approved all the changes, and Saturday morning, the communiqué was apparently finally done. Haldeman planned to release it to the American press, which was increasingly restless at the lack of hard news on the communiqué or anything else, on Sunday night.
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