On China (42 page)

There was an urgency, however, in getting the issue of international security right: China, Mao argued, had slid to last place in American priorities among the five power centers of the world, with the Soviet Union having pride of place, followed by Europe and Japan: “We see that what you are doing is leaping to Moscow by way of our shoulders, and these shoulders are now useless. You see, we are the fifth. We are the small finger.”
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Moreover, Mao claimed, the European countries, though outranking China in terms of power, were overwhelmed by their fear of the Soviet Union, summed up in an allegory:

When I replied that we agreed about the coming of the storm but maneuvered to be in the best position to survive it, Mao answered with a lapidary word: “Dunkirk.”
¹⁹

Mao elaborated that the American army in Europe was not strong enough to resist the Soviet ground forces there, and public opinion would prevent the use of nuclear weapons. He rejected my assertion that the United States would surely use nuclear weapons in defense of Europe: “There are two possibilities. One is your possibility, the other is that of
The New York Times
”
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(referring to the book
Can America Win the Next War?
, by
New York Times
reporter Drew Middleton, which doubted whether America could prevail in a general war with the Soviet Union over Europe). At any rate, added the Chairman, it did not matter, because in neither case would China rely on the decisions of other countries:

In the meantime, Mao sketched the place of some pieces of his international vision of the
wei qi
board. Europe was “too scattered, too loose”;
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Japan aspired to be hegemonial; German unification was desirable but achievable only if the Soviet Union grew weaker and “without a fight the Soviet Union cannot be weakened.”
²³
As for the United States, “it was not necessary to conduct the Watergate affair in that manner”
²⁴
—in other words, destroy a strong President over domestic controversies. Mao invited Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger to visit China—perhaps as part of the entourage of President Ford’s visit—where he could tour the frontier regions near the Soviet Union like Xinjiang and Manchuria. Presumably this was to demonstrate American willingness to risk confrontation with the Soviet Union. It also was a not very subtle attempt to interject China into the American domestic discussions, since Schlesinger had been reported as having challenged the prevailing détente policy.

Part of the difficulty was a problem of perspective. Mao was aware that he did not have long to live and was anxious to ensure that his vision would prevail afterward. He spoke with the melancholy of old age, intellectually aware of limits, not yet fully prepared to face that, for him, the range of choices was fading and the means to implement them disappearing.

He added, “You know I’m a showcase exhibit for visitors.”
²⁶
But whatever his physical decrepitude, the frail Chairman could never remain in a passive position. As the meeting was breaking up—a point usually inviting a gesture of conciliation—he suddenly spewed defiance, affirming the immutability of his revolutionary credentials:

Mao escalated the element of menace even further by taunting me about Chinese intervention in the Korean War:

Mao was making at least three points: First, China was prepared to stand alone, as it had in the Korean War against America and in the 1960s against the Soviet Union. Second, he reaffirmed the principles of permanent revolution advanced in these confrontations, however unattractive they might be to the superpowers. Finally, he was prepared to return to them if thwarted on his current course. The opening to America did not, for Mao, imply an end of ideology.

Mao’s prolix comments reflected a deep ambivalence. No one understood China’s geopolitical imperatives better than the dying Chairman. At that point in history, they clashed with the traditional concept of self-reliance for China. Whatever Mao’s criticisms of the policy of détente, the United States bore the brunt of confrontation with the Soviets and most of the military expenditures for the non-Communist world. These were the prerequisites of China’s security. We were in the fourth year of reestablishing relations with China. We agreed with Mao’s general view on strategy. It was not possible to delegate its execution to China, and Mao knew it. But it was precisely that margin of flexibility to which Mao was objecting.

At the same time, to make sure that the world understood the continuing ties and distilled the correct conclusions, a Chinese statement announced that Mao “had a conversation with Dr. Kissinger in a friendly atmosphere.” This positive statement was given a subtle perspective in the accompanying picture: it showed a smiling Mao next to my wife and me but wagging a finger, suggesting that perhaps the United States was in need of some benevolent tutoring.

It was always difficult to sum up Mao’s elliptical and aphoristic comments and sometimes even to understand them. In an oral report to President Ford, I described Mao’s stance as “sort of admirable” and reminded him that these were the same people who had led the Long March (the yearlong strategic retreat, across arduous terrain and under frequent attack, that had preserved the Chinese Communist cause in the civil war).
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The thrust of Mao’s comment was not about détente but about which of the three parties of the triangular relationship could avoid being engulfed at the beginning of evolving crises. As I told President Ford:

Winston Lord, then head of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department and my principal planner for the secret visit as well as later China policy, added a subtle interpretation of ambiguous Mao comments, which I passed on to the President:

At the time, I thought Lord’s comments probably farfetched. Having since learned more about internal Chinese maneuvering, I now consider that Mao meant it in the larger sense.

In any event, the October trip to pave the way for Ford’s visit took place in a very chilly atmosphere, reflecting the internal Chinese tensions. It seemed so unpromising that we reduced the presidential visit from five to three days, eliminating two stops outside Beijing and replacing them with brief visits to the Philippines and Indonesia.

On the day I returned from China, Schlesinger had been dismissed as Secretary of Defense and replaced by Donald Rumsfeld. I was advised about it after the fact and would indeed have preferred it not happen; I was sure it would generate controversy over foreign policy in Washington, with arguments challenging the diplomatic process in which we were currently engaged. In fact, the dismissal had nothing to do with Mao’s invitation that Schlesinger visit China. Ford’s move was an attempt to batten down the hatches for the imminent political campaign, and he had always been uncomfortable with the acerbic Schlesinger. But, undoubtedly, some in the Chinese leadership read the Schlesinger dismissal as a demonstrative rebuff of the Chinese taunt.

A few weeks later, the first week of December, President Ford paid his inaugural visit to China. During Ford’s visit, the internal Chinese split was evident. Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, one of the architects of the Cultural Revolution, appeared only once for a few minutes at a reception during a sporting event. Still powerful, she conducted herself with aloof, icy politeness during her demonstratively brief stay. (Her one appearance during the Nixon visit had been to host her revolutionary ballet.)

Mao chose a nearly two-hour meeting with Ford to make the split within the Chinese leadership explicit. Mao’s condition had deteriorated somewhat from when he had received me five weeks earlier. However, he had decided that relations with America needed some warming up and conveyed this by a jocular beginning:

Mao went on to observe that he expected “nothing great” to occur in U.S.-Chinese relations for the next two years, that is, during the period of the 1976 presidential election and its aftermath. “Perhaps afterwards, the situation might become a bit better.”
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Did he mean that a more united America might emerge or that, by then, Chinese internal struggles would have been overcome? His words implied that he expected the shaky relationship to last through the Ford presidency.

The more significant explanation for the hiatus in the U.S.-China relationship concerned China’s internal situation. Mao seized on a comment by Ford that he appreciated the work of the head of the Beijing Liaison Office in Washington (Huang Zhen) and hoped he would stay: