what result did president nixon hope to achieve by improving relations with china?

Written by: Gregory L. Schneider, Emporia State University

By the end of this section, yous will:

• Explicate the continuities and changes in Cold War policies from 1945 to 1980

Suggested Sequencing

Use this Narrative toward the kickoff of the chapter to discuss foreign policy during Nixon's presidency and the importance of his visit to the People'southward Republic of China.

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From February 21 to 28, 1972, President Richard Nixon became the offset president to visit the People'southward Republic of Cathay (PRC), traveling there specifically for talks with communist leader Mao Zedong. The visit, which Nixon dubbed "the week that inverse the world," produced smashing theater. Nixon met with Mao in the leader'due south report, toured the Great Wall of China with First Lady Pat Nixon, and attended a banquet in his honor with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai.

President Nixon shaking easily with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai immediately upon landing in People's republic of china in 1972. Outset Lady Pat Nixon is on the left.

Meetings betwixt American and Soviet leaders had happened many times over the preceding years. Called summits, these meetings typically produced improved relations between the two superpowers. For case, Nixon's meeting with his Soviet counterpart Leonid Brezhnev in 1971 led to an artillery control agreement known as the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (Salt), cultural exchanges, and a trade agreement. The thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations was office of a Nixon strategy known equally détente, a means to lessen tensions betwixt the 2 superpowers and maybe utilize the Soviets to utilize force per unit area on their North Vietnamese marry to negotiate an end to the Vietnam War.

That Nixon would be the first president to visit "Red Prc" and negotiate with Mao would take shocked partisans on both sides in the 1950s. The communists had established the Communist china in October 1949, after a long civil war that resulted in a communist victory over the American-backed authorities of Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang fled to Taiwan and installed his Guomindang government on the isle. Mao turned to the Soviets for assistance in building up Red china, securing economic and military help from Stalin in 1950.

The Americans isolated the PRC and backed Taiwan as the legitimate government of China, refusing to allow the PRC a seat in the United Nations (Un). The Korean War (1950-1953) pitted the two countries confronting each other again afterward People's republic of china intervened in the conflict to back up Democratic people's republic of korea. At dwelling house, anti-communists charged the Truman administration and the Democrats with the "loss" of China to the communists. During his time in the House and Senate, Nixon fervently supported the domestic anti-communism that dominated the politics of the late 1940s and early 1950s, and he strongly backed the attempt to keep Mao's China out of the UN.

Nixon had been chosen equally Dwight Eisenhower'due south running mate in 1952 in part because of his anti-communist and conservative credentials. He played the role very well during his viii years as vice president. His defeats in the 1960 presidential ballot (by John F. Kennedy) and in the California gubernatorial race (by Edmund "Pat" Brown) two years subsequently seemed to finish Nixon'south political career. However, he regained his stature in the Republican Party and faithfully supported Barry Goldwater in 1964. Past 1967, he was well poised to be the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 1968. With the Democrats experiencing huge problems as a result of the Vietnam War, anti-war protests, race riots, and civil unrest at home, Nixon understood that the GOP had a stiff chance of winning the election that year.

Nixon ran as vice president alongside Dwight Eisenhower in the 1952 election.

In 1967, Nixon's commodity "Asia After Vietnam" was published in the distinguished periodical Foreign Affairs. In information technology, Nixon argued that although Vietnam had occupied a significant part of the nation's attention, development of the economies of the region should be important new goals of American diplomacy. But more than that, Nixon hinted that a new relationship with Prc could be initiated, and that the United States could begin to end its role in Vietnam by adopting a policy designed to support the S Vietnamese regime militarily while catastrophe direct American involvement. The influential article burnished Nixon'south foreign policy credentials.

Both policies came into effect one time Nixon became president. He began to withdraw American troops from the war in 1970, after a disastrous invasion of neighboring Cambodia led to massive anti-war protests on college campuses. Nixon "Vietnamized" the war, and by the fourth dimension of his reelection in 1972, fewer than 100,000 American troops remained in the South.

The opening of People's republic of china came virtually thanks to a strategic convergence of events after 1969. Mao had earlier unleashed two disastrous social revolutions in Communist china inside a decade'south time. The starting time was the Dandy Leap Frontward, designed to communalize agriculture and end private ownership of property. Mao encouraged fake product statistics and had peasants produce steel in backyard furnaces, melting every metal utensil and cooking pot they could find. But collectivized agronomics was less productive than individual land ownership. Cathay exported many of the commodities it produced in order to repay its debts to the Soviet Union; from 1958 to 1961, all the same, a famine killed as many as 40 million Chinese people. Mao was rebuked and his power ended.

In the late 1950s, Mao Zedong encouraged peasants to set backyard furnaces like these in an attempt to maximize steel production in Cathay.

Five years later, afterwards regaining power and aligning himself with the military machine, Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to promote his view of communism. The Cultural Revolution was a disastrous period lasting almost 10 years (with its loftier point from 1965 to 1969). The economy was shut downwards, students roamed the streets punishing those suspected of pro-backer "revisionism" against Mao, and a reign of terror featuring massacres of perceived enemies was the norm until Mao changed course and used the military to fissure down on the very people he had once encouraged. The regime killed between five and x million of its own people and imprisoned millions of other supposed enemies of the country during this menstruation.

Meanwhile, relations between the Soviet Union and Communist china disintegrated, and by the time Nixon took office in Jan 1969, the Soviets and Chinese were openly at state of war with each other on the Ussuri River. The Soviets fifty-fifty asked how Nixon would respond if they should use nuclear weapons against the Chinese. The president was aghast and said he would non approve.

Considering of America's interest in getting out of Vietnam and Cathay'due south interest in reopening itself to the world subsequently the catastrophes of the Great Leap Frontwards and the Cultural Revolution, both countries had reason to improve relations. Nixon saw an opening, and his national security advisor Henry Kissinger used the Pakistani government as a hugger-mugger channel to begin talks with China's Zhou Enlai. Feigning an illness while visiting Pakistan, Kissinger secretly traveled to Beijing for talks with Zhou, which he saw as "historic." In February 1971, he secured an invitation from Zhou for Nixon to visit China.

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (left) coming together with Chairman Mao Zedong in the early 1970s.

Vietnam and Taiwan were major stumbling blocks for both countries on the path to improved relations, however, with the Chinese insisting that the U.s. intermission off its relations with Taiwan before relations with China could be normalized. Kissinger and Nixon, for their part, clearly wanted the Chinese to play a part in pressuring the North Vietnamese to negotiate an end to the conflict in Vietnam. Talks were already going on in Paris between Kissinger and North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Le Duc Tho. In April 1971, a U.Due south. table tennis team was in Japan when they were invited to play in China. This bit of "ping pong affairs" represented the first contact between Chinese and American citizens since 1949, a symbol of the hope for improved relations between the two countries.

In June 1971, Nixon stunned the globe when he announced he would go to Mainland china to meet with Mao. He every bit shocked conservative anti-communists, who saw the meeting as a betrayal of America's Taiwanese ally, with criticism coming particularly from William F. Buckley Jr.'s magazine National Review. On February 21, 1972, Nixon was greeted in Beijing by Zhou Enlai and met with Mao for several hours, discussing the pathway to normalized relations. Then he toured the state and met with prominent Chinese leaders. Last talks at Shanghai produced an agreement to facilitate the normalization of diplomatic relations between the ii powers, known as the Shanghai Communiqué. In the understanding, the two sides worked toward diplomatic recognition, with the Nixon administration agreeing that as a result of this normalization, the United States would end its official recognition of Taiwan and withdraw military forces from the island, which China claimed was part of its "People's Democracy."

On returning from the trip, Nixon immediately reported to a joint session of Congress. His approval ratings shot up, making it clear that the American public approved of his celebrated trip. Yet, the Taiwanese government did not approve of Nixon's opening of relations with Prc. As a effect, Nixon sent California governor Ronald Reagan to assure the Taiwanese that they had zip to fear, although the Shanghai Communiqué showed that the simply way for the United States to normalize relations was to end its support for Taiwan.

Normalization of relations with Cathay was not fully achieved until 1979, when Jimmy Carter and China's new leader Deng Xiaoping reached an agreement including, every bit an essential component, that the The states would fulfill its promise to cut off recognition of Taiwan. Zhou Enlai died in early on 1976 and Mao a few months later, and Chiang Kai-shek was gone too. Seven years after Nixon's historic trip, China entered the United Nations and, under the leadership of Deng, soon became a ascendant power in Asia and the world economy. Nixon's opening of Communist china secured the ascension of that nation to great-power status. It is unclear what it had accomplished for the United States, which, in the ensuing years, faced a government in China often opposed to its interests in Asia and elsewhere.

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Review Questions

1. Why were the Chinese interested in coming together with Nixon?

1. Nixon promised them aid.
2. Mao's revolution was working.
3. China'south human relationship with the Soviet Matrimony was disintegrating.
4. China had just been granted Almost Favored Nation condition and wanted U.S. investment.

ii. U.S. recognition of Taiwan marked a turning betoken in the normalization of relations with Red china considering

1. Mao Zedong considered Taiwan role of China
2. Chiang Kai-shek and American forces were preparing an invasion
3. People's republic of china wanted to exploit Taiwan'due south economy
4. the United States was thinking of making Taiwan a territory

3. Initially, the United states of america refused to open diplomatic relations with the People's Commonwealth of People's republic of china for all the following reasons except

1. the Chinese maintained shut diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union
2. Communist china declared war against the United States in the Korean Conflict
3. the United States recognized Taiwan equally the legitimate regime of China
4. the American regime fought to keep the Chinese communists out of the Un

4. Earlier he was elected president, Richard Nixon wrote in his essay "Asia afterward Vietnam" that the Us should

1. maintain a military presence near the Chinese edge
2. develop a new relationship with Communist china
3. avoid economic interest in Eastern asia
4. encourage a counter-revolution in Communist Red china

5. All the following were major issues the U.s. and China needed to deal with before they could open up normal diplomatic relations except

1. America'southward recognition of Taiwan equally the legitimate Chinese government
2. the role Red china would play in helping to bring an end to the war in Vietnam
3. the economic success of the Groovy Leap Forrad and the Cultural Revolution
4. the war between Cathay and the Soviet Union

6. Conservative anti-communists in the The states viewed President Nixon's visit to China as

1. a positive economical stride that would open markets in the world's nigh populous nation
2. an abandonment of Nixon's own anti-communist credentials
3. a fashion to bring a quick finish to the Vietnam War
4. a betrayal of America'due south East Asian ally Taiwan

Complimentary Response Questions

1. Explain why President Richard Nixon's trip to Prc was a political shock to the world.
2. Explain how the decision to invite President Richard Nixon to China was office of a "diplomatic convergence" after 1969.

AP Practice Questions

"13. Both sides view bilateral trade every bit some other expanse from which mutual benefit can be derived, and agreed that economic relations based on equality and mutual do good are in the interest of the peoples of the two countries. They agree to facilitate the progressive development of trade betwixt their two countries.

14. The ii sides agreed that they volition stay in contact through various channels, including the sending of a senior US representative to Peking from time to time for physical consultations to further the normalization of relations between the two countries and continue to substitution views on issues of mutual interest.

15. The two sides expressed the promise that the gains achieved during this visit would open up new prospects for the relations between the two countries. They believe that the normalization of relations betwixt the two countries is non only in the involvement of the Chinese and American peoples but as well contributes to the relaxation of tension in Asia and the world."

Articulation Communiqué of the United States of America and the People's Commonwealth of China (Shanghai Communiqué), February 28, 1972

Refer to the excerpt provided.

ane. Which of the following all-time describes the context relevant to the extract?

1. The The states agreed to end the restrictions created past the Chinese Exclusion Human activity of 1882.
2. The United States declared hostilities in the Korean Disharmonize officially over.
3. The United states of america and China were planning articulation economical ventures in Due east Asia.
4. At that place was a strained Cold War relationship between the United States and Prc.

2. Those who criticize the sentiments expressed in the excerpt would most likely also criticize

1. the American recognition of the Soviet Union
2. America's entry into World State of war 2
3. the institution of the United nations
4. the creation of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe

3. The excerpt of the communiqué provides evidence for which of the following in regard to American foreign policy goals?

1. The United states was seeking to be a more than dominant forcefulness in East Asia.
2. The thought of détente was expanding to Prc.
3. America supported mutual coexistence for Taiwan and China.
4. The United States desired a quick end to the Vietnam War.

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Primary Sources

President Nixon'south Toast to Premier Chou En-Lai, February 21, 1972 https://www.youtube.com/scout?five=Ni38rNeo-ZU

"Shanghai Communique." 1972. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Shanghai_Communiqu%C3%A9

"Mao Zedong Meets with Richard Nixon, February 21, 1972." https://china.usc.edu/mao-zedong-meets-richard-nixon-february-21-1972

Suggested Resource

Dallek, Robert. Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Ability. New York: Harper, 2007.

Kissinger, Henry. On China. New York: Penguin Books, 2012.

MacMillan, Margaret. Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World. New York: Random House, 2007.

Westad, Odd Arne. The Cold War: A Global History. New York: Basic Books, 2017.

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Source: https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/richard-nixon-opens-diplomatic-relations-with-china

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