Nixon's Visit to China (1972): The Week That Changed the World

Richard Nixon’s visit to China from 21 to 28 February 1972 was the first trip by a sitting US president to the People’s Republic of China. It ended more than two decades without official contact between the two countries, produced the Shanghai Communiqué and reshaped the Cold War balance between Washington, Moscow and Beijing. Nixon himself called it “the week that changed the world”.

Background: two decades of hostility

After the Chinese Communist Party won the civil war and proclaimed the People’s Republic of China in October 1949, the United States continued to recognise the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek on Taiwan as the government of China. American and Chinese troops then fought each other in the Korean War from late 1950 to 1953. For the next twenty years the two countries had no diplomatic relations, almost no trade and only occasional, formal ambassadorial talks in Warsaw.

By the late 1960s both sides had reasons to rethink. The Sino-Soviet split had turned Moscow and Beijing from allies into rivals. In March 1969 Chinese and Soviet troops clashed on Zhenbao (Damansky) Island on the Ussuri River, and further clashes followed that year. Chinese leaders now saw the Soviet Union as the greater danger, and some feared a Soviet nuclear strike.

Nixon, elected in 1968, had already hinted at a new approach. In a 1967 article in Foreign Affairs he argued that the world could not afford to leave China “forever outside the family of nations”. As president he hoped that better relations with Beijing would give him leverage over Moscow, help him withdraw from the Vietnam War on acceptable terms and secure his place in history.

Secret diplomacy and ping-pong

The opening was prepared in secrecy. From 1969 messages passed between Washington and Beijing through Pakistan’s president, Yahya Khan, and through Romania’s leader, Nicolae Ceaușescu. The United States eased trade and travel restrictions, and Chinese leaders signalled interest in a high-level visit.

The first public sign came in April 1971. During the World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya, Japan, China invited the American team to visit. The players toured China from 10 to 17 April and were received by Premier Zhou Enlai. The episode, quickly nicknamed “ping-pong diplomacy”, showed that Beijing was ready to talk.

In July 1971 Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, made a secret trip. During a tour of Asia he claimed to be ill in Pakistan and flew from Islamabad to Beijing, where he held talks with Zhou Enlai from 9 to 11 July. On 15 July 1971 Nixon stunned the world by announcing on television that he had accepted an invitation to visit China.

Kissinger returned to Beijing in October 1971 to prepare the summit. While he was there, on 25 October, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 2758, which gave China’s seat at the United Nations to the People’s Republic and expelled the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek’s government.

What happened during the visit

Nixon’s aircraft landed in Beijing late on the morning of 21 February 1972, after stops in Hawaii and Guam. Zhou Enlai met him on the airport tarmac. Nixon made a point of walking down the steps to shake Zhou’s hand, a gesture meant to make up for the 1954 Geneva Conference, when US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was said to have refused to shake Zhou’s hand.

That same afternoon Nixon and Kissinger were called, at short notice, to meet Mao Zedong in his study in Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound in central Beijing. Mao was 78 and in poor health. The meeting lasted about an hour and was mostly philosophical, but it carried enormous symbolic weight: Mao’s personal welcome signalled to the Chinese public that the visit had his approval.

The rest of the week combined negotiation with spectacle. Nixon and Zhou held formal talks, while Kissinger and Vice Foreign Minister Qiao Guanhua worked through the night on the text of a joint statement. Secretary of State William Rogers held separate, less important meetings and was largely kept out of the key negotiations.

The public events were carefully staged for American television, which broadcast them live by satellite. Viewers saw banquets in the Great Hall of the People, where a Chinese military band played American songs, and a performance of the revolutionary ballet The Red Detachment of Women, hosted by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing. On 24 February Nixon visited the Great Wall at Badaling and the Ming Tombs. First Lady Pat Nixon toured schools, a commune, a hospital and the Beijing Zoo.

From Beijing the party flew to Hangzhou and then to Shanghai, where the joint communiqué was released on 27 February. Nixon left China on 28 February.

The Shanghai Communiqué

The Shanghai Communiqué was unusual in form. Instead of hiding disagreements behind vague language, each side stated its own positions in separate paragraphs. China restated its support for revolutionary movements and demanded the withdrawal of US forces from Taiwan. The United States set out its commitments in Asia, including its support for South Korea and its ties to Japan.

On Taiwan, the most sensitive issue, the United States declared that it “acknowledges” that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintained that there was but one China and that Taiwan was part of China, and that it did not challenge that position. Washington also stated its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves and set the ultimate goal of withdrawing US forces from the island.

Both sides agreed that neither should seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region and that each opposed efforts by any other country to establish such hegemony. This clause was widely read as aimed at the Soviet Union. The two governments also agreed to expand trade, cultural, scientific and journalistic exchanges.

Key people

• Richard Nixon (1913–1994), US president from 1969 to 1974, a long-time anti-communist who made the opening to China his signature foreign policy achievement.
• Mao Zedong (1893–1976), chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, who approved the rapprochement despite the radical ideology of the Cultural Revolution.
• Zhou Enlai (1898–1976), premier of China, who managed the negotiations and most of the public diplomacy of the visit.
• Henry Kissinger (1923–2023), Nixon’s national security adviser, who made the secret 1971 trip and drafted the communiqué with Chinese officials.

Consequences

The visit transformed the Cold War from a contest between two blocs into a triangle. The Soviet Union, worried about a US-Chinese alignment, became more willing to deal with Washington. Only three months later, in May 1972, Nixon travelled to Moscow and signed the SALT I and ABM agreements with Leonid Brezhnev.

Relations with China advanced more slowly. In 1973 the two countries opened liaison offices in each other’s capitals, functioning as embassies in all but name. Full diplomatic relations came only on 1 January 1979, when President Jimmy Carter’s administration switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing. The Taiwan Relations Act passed by Congress the same year kept unofficial ties with Taiwan.

The visit did not end the Vietnam War, as Nixon had hoped it might help to do. China continued to aid North Vietnam, and US involvement lasted until the Paris Peace Accords of January 1973. Allies such as Japan, which had not been told in advance of the July 1971 announcement, were shaken by the surprise.

Some gestures of goodwill became famous. China gave two giant pandas, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, to the National Zoo in Washington, where they arrived in April 1972; the United States sent a pair of musk oxen in return.

By the numbers

Myths and facts

Myth: Nixon and Mao negotiated the agreement. In fact Mao met Nixon only once and spoke in broad, philosophical terms. The detailed bargaining was done by Zhou Enlai, Kissinger and their aides.

Myth: The visit established formal diplomatic relations. It did not. The Shanghai Communiqué opened a path, but formal recognition took almost seven more years.

Myth: The Shanghai Communiqué settled the Taiwan question. Its wording was deliberately ambiguous. The United States “acknowledged” the Chinese position rather than endorsing it, and Taiwan has remained one of the most sensitive issues in US-China relations ever since.

Legacy

The visit became one of the best-known images of the Cold War, captured in the handshake between Nixon and Zhou at Beijing airport. The phrase “Nixon goes to China” entered political language as a shorthand for a leader whose record allows him to take a step his opponents could not. The episode inspired the opera Nixon in China by John Adams, first staged in 1987.

For China, the opening helped end its diplomatic isolation and prepared the ground for the economic reforms under Deng Xiaoping after 1978, which depended on access to Western markets and technology. For the United States, it set the pattern of engagement with Beijing that lasted for decades.

Timeline

• 1969, March: Chinese and Soviet troops clash on Zhenbao (Damansky) Island.
• 1971, 10–17 April: The US table tennis team tours China in “ping-pong diplomacy”.
• 1971, 9–11 July: Henry Kissinger holds secret talks with Zhou Enlai in Beijing.
• 1971, 15 July: Nixon announces that he will visit China.
• 1971, 25 October: UN Resolution 2758 gives China’s UN seat to the People’s Republic.
• 1972, 21 February: Nixon arrives in Beijing and meets Mao Zedong.
• 1972, 24 February: Nixon visits the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs.
• 1972, 27 February: The Shanghai Communiqué is issued.
• 1972, 28 February: Nixon leaves China.
• 1979, 1 January: The United States and the People’s Republic of China establish full diplomatic relations.

Why it matters

Nixon’s week in China ended more than twenty years of mutual hostility between the United States and the world’s most populous country. It turned the Cold War into a three-way game, eased the way to arms control with Moscow and opened the long road to China’s integration into the world economy.