Nixon and Mao by Margaret MacMillan Read Free Book Online Page B

China, though, a number of American allies had already established diplomatic relations. The British had recognized the People’s Republic in January 1950, partly because Britain had extensive interests to protect in the East, most notably Hong Kong, but also because Britain’s long-standing policy was to deal with governments that had established control. Several of the smaller European countries followed suit, although France held back, partly because it feared the Communist Chinese threat to its position in Indochina. The People’s Republic accepted a British representative but did nothing to send its own to London. The outbreak of the Korean War in the summer of 1950 precluded any further improvements. Chinese entry into the Korean War on the side of North Korea in the late autumn of 1950 hardened American attitudes, both toward the Chinese Communists and toward any dealings with them. For their part, the Chinese Communists showed no inclination to deal with any imperialists. In 1954, a year after the Korean armistice, there was a sudden thaw when Chinese Foreign Ministry officials in Beijing unexpectedly accepted an invitation from the British chargé d’affaires to see a film of the coronation of Elizabeth II. In September the Chinese government sent its first representative to London. French recognition of the People’s Republic of China came ten years later in a sudden move by de Gaulle, which his defenders claimed was to exploit the differences between China and the Soviet Union but was in fact designed to demonstrate his and France’s independence from the United States. De Gaulle hoped to be the first major Western leader to visit China, but he was driven from office unexpectedly in the turmoil of 1968. By the late 1960s, Belgium and Italy were moving toward recognition; so was Canada, whose foreign policy usually meshed with that of the United States on major issues. The United States was finding itself increasingly alone in its insistence that the Communists not be recognized as the legitimate government of China.
    Because the diplomatic corps was so small, diplomats from different blocs who normally would have seen little of one another tended to get together. Only the North Vietnamese, the Albanians, and the North Koreans kept themselves aloof. The Finns had a sauna club. The Soviets built a hockey rink at their embassy and had games every Sunday morning, featuring the Soviet Union against a “world” team made up mainly of Canadians and the Mexican ambassador, who played enthusiastically but very badly. The British brought movies in once a month from Hong Kong. To pay for shipping they held “girl-racing evenings” in which the prettiest British secretaries jumped ahead on squares laid out at the roll of dice; the Soviets adored these events and were morose when a temporary freeze in relations between the Soviet Union and the West obliged them to boycott the British embassy. 19
    Now, as the Nixon motorcade sped through Tiananmen Square, where a giant portrait of Mao gazed down on vast empty spaces, almost the only spectators were a small crowd of foreign diplomats hoping to get a glimpse of the momentous visit. A small Canadian girl puttered about on a miniature motorcycle, and a couple of the British men climbed lampposts to snap pictures of the cars. For the isolated little diplomatic community in Beijing, this was a rare break in their usual routine.

CHAPTER 3
    CHOU EN-LAI

    I N THEIR CAR ON THE DRIVE IN FROM THE AIRPORT, CHOU TURNED to Nixon and said, “Your handshake came over the vastest ocean in the world—twenty-five years of no communication.” 1 It had crossed over much more than that: the long years of humiliation that the Chinese had endured at the hands of the outside world; the Americans’ own memories of retreating in Korea in the face of Red Chinese attacks; the decades of fear and suspicion on both sides since the proclamation of the People’s Republic in 1949. The handshake