That handshake 40 years ago this month abruptly ended more than two decades of U.S. and Western isolation of China. It ushered in a new era as China emerged from what Nixon called “its angry isolation’’ to transform itself into the world’s second largest economy and a political giant with a say in international affairs.
The gesture opened a week of unimaginable TV images: A Chinese Army band playing the Star Spangled Banner, Nixon visiting the Great Wall, and the president and White House National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger chatting amiably with aging revolutionary Mao Zedong — sworn foes who opted to forge a less contentious relationship.
“This was a phenomenal diplomatic coup,’’ said Marvin Kalb, who reported on foreign affairs for CBS News during Nixon’s presidency.
It also marked the beginning of a competitive, and at times, tense relationship between the U.S. and China. The two today are deeply divided over China’s booming export economy and have yet to resolve the thorny issue of Taiwan, which has maintained a quasi independence from the mainland.
There is not “a simple word that captures the nature of this relationship,’’ said Samuel R. Berger, who served as President Bill Clinton’s national security adviser. “We’re not enemies. We’re not rivals. But we’re not yet partners.’’
Today, the China that Nixon visited exists only in the history books. In 1972, Max Frankel, who covered the trip for the New York Times, found a nation that “was poor, poor, poor, poor. You could not imagine how poor.’’ People relied on bicycles in the city and primitive plows in the country.
Now China is a modern manufacturing giant as well as a magnet for scores of American companies — Ford Motor, Apple, Nike, General Motors, H.J. Heinz, Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
Ohio, too, has strong economic ties to China. In 2010, Ohio sold $2.3 billion worth of goods to China, making it the 10th largest exporting state to China in the United States.
Eaton Corp. of Cleveland, a manufacturer of electrical components, has 10,000 employees and 27 operations in China, and its Asia-Pacific headquarters is in Shanghai.
Procter and Gamble of Cincinnati, which entered the China market in 1988, has annual sales of $2.5 billion in China. Goodyear Tire and Rubber has nearly 1,000 stores in China and when it completes a new $700 million plant in May, the company will produce 11.5 million tires a year in China.
Other Ohio companies with operations in China include Diebold of North Canton, the Timken Corporation in Canton, and Sherwin-Williams Paint in Cleveland.
Yet its very economic success and its booming trade surplus with the United States has prompted sharp complaints from Democrats such as Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney.
Brown authored a bill that cleared the Senate last October, which if it passes the House, would allow the U.S. to treat currency manipulation as an unfair subsidy. Romney has assailed the Chinese for manipulating their currency to make their exports cheaper, and vowed to slap tariffs on some Chinese goods.
“Romney leveled a diatribe against China, which was one of the toughest I have ever heard by a mainstream politician,’’ Berger said. “In most campaigns, the rhetoric against China goes to the extreme and that’s true on both sides. But after a president is elected, the reality is we need each other.’’
“There are real grievances,’’ Berger said. But they must be resolved “in the context that this is a relationship that we don’t want to destroy.’’
For Nixon, the 1972 China trip was the beginning of a dizzying five months. In May, he traveled to the Soviet Union to sign the world’s first nuclear arms limitation treaty. Then in June, Nixon schemed to try and convince the CIA to block an FBI investigation into the break-in of the Democratic National Committee in Washington by Nixon campaign operatives.
Those five months symbolized the lofty heights and sordid depths of Nixon’s tumultuous presidency: First president to visit China; first president to visit Moscow, first president to resign from office.
He was capable of grand diplomatic gestures that had enduring impact. And yet, as his White House taped conversations show, he could be a small-minded and deeply vindictive man who conspired to lash back at his real and perceived enemies.
“To be fair to him, he had a great sense of international strategy,’’ said Frankel, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the trip. “He thought in big global terms and about historical alignments. Once an election liberated him from crass campaigning, he could indulge those insights.’’
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, nobody in American politics had a stronger anti-Communist reputation than Nixon. He was a fervent supporter of Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalists who fled China in 1949 to establish their regime in Taiwan.
Nixon gradually changed his mind about China as he traveled the world in the 1960s. The more he learned of a deepening ideological split between the Soviet Union and China, the more he was convinced that the U.S. could exploit that division.
Once in office, Nixon and Kissinger peppered China with signals that they were eager for a rapprochement. There were handwritten notes between Zhou and the White House, secretly exchanged through a sympathetic Pakistani government. Except for Nixon, Kissinger and a handful of top aides, nobody in the American government knew about the China initiative.
“Nixon and Kissinger were in active negotiations on arms control (with the Soviets),’’ said Seymour Topping, former managing editor of the New York Times, who in 1971 became the first Western reporter to interview Zhou.
“They thought if they got together with the Chinese, it would worry the Russians. That’s exactly what happened.’’
When Nixon announced in 1971 that he would visit China the following year, Americans and U.S. allies were stunned. Nixon’s trip was so implausible that similar political conversions came be to called “Nixon-to-China” moments. As Mr. Spock said on “Star Trek,” “There is an old Vulcan proverb: Only Nixon can go to China.’’
About the Author