Free On China by Henry Kissinger Page B

itself as essentially a geopolitical “free agent” of the Cold War. In the face of its relative weakness, it played a fully independent and highly influential role. China moved from hostility to near alliance with the United States and in the opposite direction with the Soviet Union—from alliance to confrontation. Perhaps most remarkably, China managed, in the end, to break free of the Soviet Union and come out on the “winning” side of the Cold War.
    Still, with all its achievements, Mao’s insistence on turning the ancient system upside down could not escape the eternal rhythm of Chinese life. Forty years after his death, after a journey violent, dramatic, and searing, his successors again described their now increasingly well-off society as Confucian. In 2011, a statue of Confucius was placed in Tiananmen Square within sight of Mao’s mausoleum—the only other personality so honored. Only a people as resilient and patient as the Chinese could emerge unified and dynamic after such a roller coaster ride through history.

CHAPTER 9
    Resumption of Relations: First Encounters with Mao and Zhou
    T HE MOST DRAMATIC EVENT of the Nixon presidency occurred in near obscurity. For Nixon had decided that for the mission to Beijing to succeed, it would have to take place in secrecy. A public mission would have set off a complicated internal clearance project within the U.S. government and insistent demands for consultations from around the world, including Taiwan (still recognized as the government of China). This would have mortgaged our prospects with Beijing, whose attitudes we were being sent to discover. Transparency is an essential objective, but historic opportunities for building a more peaceful international order have imperatives as well.
    So my team set off to Beijing via Saigon, Bangkok, New Delhi, and Rawalpindi on an announced fact-finding journey on behalf of the President. My party included a broader set of American officials, as well as a core group destined for Beijing—myself, aides Winston Lord, John Holdridge, and Dick Smyser, and Secret Service agents Jack Ready and Gary McLeod. The dramatic denouement required us to go through tiring stops at each city designed to be so boringly matter-of-fact that the media would stop tracking our movements. In Rawalpindi, we disappeared for forty-eight hours for an ostensible rest (I had feigned illness) in a Pakistani hill station in the foothills of the Himalayas. In Washington, only the President and Colonel Alexander Haig (later General), my top aide, knew our actual destination.
    When the American delegation arrived in Beijing on July 9, 1971, we had experienced the subtlety of Chinese communication but not the way Beijing conducted actual negotiations, still less the Chinese style of receiving visitors. American experience with Communist diplomacy was based on contacts with Soviet leaders, principally Andrei Gromyko, who had a tendency to turn diplomacy into a test of bureaucratic will; he was impeccably correct in negotiation but implacable on substance—sometimes, one sensed, straining his self-discipline.
    Strain was nowhere apparent in the Chinese reception of the secret visit or during the dialogue that followed. In all the preliminary maneuvers, we had been sometimes puzzled by the erratic pauses between their messages, which we assumed had something to do with the Cultural Revolution. Nothing now seemed to disturb the serene aplomb of our hosts, who acted as if welcoming the special emissary of the American President for the first time in the history of the People’s Republic of China was the most natural occurrence.
    For in fact what we encountered was a diplomatic style closer to traditional Chinese diplomacy than to the pedantic formulations to which we had become accustomed during our negotiations with other Communist states. Chinese statesmen historically have excelled at using hospitality, ceremony, and carefully cultivated personal relationships