Nixon and Mao (21 page)

Nixon, for all his distrust of the press, understood how important it was that his visit receive favorable coverage. With public opinion for so long hostile to Communist China, Americans still had to be persuaded that their president was doing the right thing in opening up relations. Nixon, as always, was also conscious of his own place in history. When Kissinger made his second, public, trip to China in the fall of 1971, part of his mission was to discuss press coverage. Staff from the White House whose job it was to prepare for presidential visits reviewed the schedule and checked out possible sites for photo opportunities. At the beginning of 1972 Alexander Haig, Kissinger’s assistant, spent a week in China working on the final arrangements with a party of technical experts. On February 1, an advance party of nearly one hundred staffers arrived in China to prepare for Nixon’s visit. One of their most pressing tasks was to set up the communications that would make live press coverage possible.

The Chinese expected to work with the advance team on the trip, but they were amazed by the detailed planning it undertook to make sure, among other things, that the president would get maximum press coverage. At the Beijing airport, for example, the Americans carefully worked out the best place for Nixon’s plane to land so that it would stop at the right distance and the right angle for good shots of Nixon’s descent toward the waiting reception party. The runway was carefully measured and marked up with paint.
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Because of China’s relative isolation, the Chinese had not kept up with the sort of technology the Americans took for granted. When Kissinger flew in on the president’s plane for his October 1971 visit, the Chinese took over the controls for the flight from Shanghai to Beijing. The Chinese pilots glanced at the inertial navigation systems in the cockpit and then ignored them completely, flying visually, with one making hand signals to the other.
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The Chinese had never seen a Xerox copier and were fascinated by the one the American advance party brought. (When the Americans realized that the Chinese were copying all their documents out by hand, they arranged to leave their copier behind.) China did not have the facilities to transmit to satellites or ways to ship film quickly out of the country. Nor were the Chinese media expected to get stories out quickly. The senior Chinese journalist (one of only a handful) who was assigned to cover the Nixon visit remembered being struck by how quickly American journalists worked, how they used news flashes for a breaking story, and how one would write a lead paragraph and others finish up a story. “We will have to compete in speed,” she told herself. “We will have to make some reforms in the way we do things.” She also looked longingly at their equipment, the portable telephones and the microphones on long sticks.
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While the Americans were prepared to bring in whatever they needed, they found that they had to be careful of Chinese sensitivities. On his October 1971 visit, Kissinger raised the issue of a ground station for satellite transmissions. Perhaps, he suggested, the necessary equipment could be flown in on a Boeing 747, which could then act as a self-contained unit. Chou offered to buy the plane, equipment and all, adding, “If we cannot buy it, we will rent it from you.”
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The compromise reached was that the Chinese would put up a suitable building (which they did in record time) and rent it to the Americans. The Americans would provide the equipment, which the Chinese in turn would rent. (The negotiations proved difficult because the Chinese became convinced that the Americans were undercharging them and insisted, to the confusion of American officials, on paying more than the asking price.) Chou also expressed a certain skepticism about the American hope that the visit would enhance Nixon’s image as a world leader. “This we find difficult to understand,” he told Haig. “The image of a man depends on his own deeds and not on any other factors. We do not believe that any world leader can be self styled.”
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In the three weeks before Nixon arrived, the advance party worked around the clock to set up press facilities, figure out camera angles at all the places the president and Mrs. Nixon might visit, and make sure that the Chinese knew what they needed. Could they get a telex going? Were there going to be phone lines at the Great Wall? Were there forklifts in China capable of unloading heavy equipment? The Chinese were bewildered but cooperative. Their technical experts fell on unfamiliar new technology with enthusiasm and asked to copy all the manuals into Chinese.
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Huge U.S. Air Force planes flew into Shanghai to disgorge tons of equipment, including gallons of chemicals for developing film. As the first plane landed and the first big network control truck rolled out, Tim Elbourne, the White House staffer responsible, stood with his astonished Chinese colleagues and wept with pride.
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Back in the United States, the administration continued to try to add names to the list of journalists who would be arriving with the president. The lucky ones received special briefings. Beijing was cold in the winter, they were warned; many journalists rushed off to buy special fur coats and long underwear. They should look after their health; if they went into a Chinese hospital, they might never come out. They must expect to work very long hours, because they would have far fewer staff than they were used to.
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Two chartered planes carried the reporters, camera crews, and their support staff, along with their briefing books and equipment, to China just ahead of Nixon. The journalists, including television stars such as Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid, the writer James Michener, and William F. Buckley Jr., a conservative the White House was wooing, traveled together on one plane. A young Barbara Walters, one of only three women in the group, was annoyed to find herself relegated to what was nicknamed the Zoo Plane, which carried the photographers and technicians.
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On the way out to China, the journalists practiced, just as the official party was doing, using chopsticks on the airline food. They also played cards for the Chinese currency they had all been issued. According to the reporter Helen Thomas, some of her colleagues even gave up drink and immersed themselves in their books and papers on China and their guidebooks. As she said, in what was a common metaphor used by most Americans from Nixon on down, visiting China was like going to the moon. Even the most experienced and worldly-wise old hands rushed to their windows to take their first pictures of China as the planes crossed into Chinese airspace.
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In Beijing, the press corps was housed near Tiananmen Square, in the cavernous Soviet-style Minzu Hotel (Nationalities Hotel, in English). In the rooms, plainer than most of the journalists were used to, boxes of candy, fresh fruit, tea, and stamps had been thoughtfully laid out. In the bathrooms the wooden toilet seats had been freshly lacquered; unfortunately, the extract of sumac in the lacquer brought out painful boils on those who were allergic to it. (The advance party had already encountered what they’d nicknamed “Baboon bottom.”)
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Next door was a new building with a basketball court and bowling alley, thrown up in a matter of weeks after one of the Americans in the advance party had mentioned that the journalists might like to exercise.

Chinese, many of them journalists themselves, were assigned to each American, as interpreters, guides, and minders. A young student brought in from a local university was deeply impressed by the Americans’ dedication to their work; he consequently decided to become a journalist.
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Many of the Chinese, although the Americans never knew it, had been brought back from the countryside, where, as intellectuals, they had been undergoing thought reform. The Chinese were invariably polite and openly curious about American ways of doing such things as filing stories, as well as exposures and film speeds. Sometimes the Chinese had to admit that they were baffled. “I understand almost everything you are saying,” said one to a television producer. “The feed, the uplink, the standup, but there is one thing you keep saying that I don’t understand. Please explain what is ‘the Fucking Audio?’”
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PARTWAY THROUGH THE BANQUET,
Chou En-lai stepped up onto the stage on one side of the hall. Speaking through his personal interpreter, he welcomed President and Mrs. Nixon on behalf of Chairman Mao and the Chinese government. The president, Chou went on, was visiting China “at the invitation of the Chinese Government.” This innocuous phrase had caused much difficulty on Kissinger’s first, secret, trip; the Chinese had wanted to make it look as though Nixon had asked to come to China.

The banquet, like Nixon’s trip itself, was about symbols, about handshakes and the exchange of toasts between leaders whose countries had for decades treated each other with suspicion. It was about status, about fears of being snubbed as Dulles had once snubbed Chou, and about losing or maintaining prestige in the eyes of the world or, equally important, in the eyes of the Chinese and the American peoples. It also carried echoes of the long and sometimes difficult relationship between the Chinese and foreigners. No matter whether or not China really was the kingdom at the center of the world, Chinese governments down through the centuries had used rituals that implied that their emperor was chosen by heaven to rule the world and that all other rulers were his inferiors. Presents sent to the Chinese emperor and trade with China were both described as tribute. It may not have been a realistic view of the actual relationships between China and foreign nations, but it was a very powerful one. Inferior rulers—in other words, all those outside China—had to ask for permission to enter the emperor’s lands; they were not invited by the emperor, because that would have implied a relationship of equals.
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Continuing his toast, Chou En-lai sounded a more modern note. In a reflection of the Chinese Communist view that the masses of the world would one day unite, he said that the Chinese people sent cordial greetings to the American people. Both peoples wanted a normalization of their relationship: “The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.” All present there knew why there had been a twenty-year freeze between their two nations. Thanks to efforts on both sides, contact had been reestablished. Of course, it was not going to be easy: “The social systems of China and the United States are fundamentally different, and there exist great differences between the Chinese Government and the United States Government.” Neither side wanted war, though, and both were willing to work together on a basis of mutual respect. “We hope,” Chou concluded, “that, through a frank exchange of views between our two sides to gain a clearer notion of our differences and make efforts to find common ground, a new start can be made in the relations between our two countries.” He lifted his glass in a toast to the Americans and Chinese in the room and to friendship between the Chinese and American peoples.
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Coming down from the stage, Chou circled the tables of the official party, toasting each person in turn. One of the Americans noticed that he only touched his lips to his glass each time.
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After a few more courses, it was Nixon’s turn to reply. He wanted his toast to appear spontaneous even though he and his staff had been working on it for weeks. This had led to an awkward scene with Charles Freeman, his young interpreter from the State Department, just before the banquet. Freeman, who came from an old New England family, was an immensely civilized, cultivated, and witty man with, among other abilities, a great gift for languages. He had learned Chinese in the United States and Taiwan and spoke an elegant fluent Mandarin studded with allusions to classical literature. Although both Nixon and Kissinger did not like to use State Department interpreters for fear they might leak information, Freeman was told earlier that evening that he would be interpreting for Nixon. When he asked for the prepared text of the toast, Dwight Chapin, the appointments secretary, said that there wasn’t one. Freeman pointed out that he had worked on earlier drafts and that he also knew Nixon was planning to quote some of Chairman Mao’s poetry. “And if you think I’m going to get up in front of the entire Chinese Politburo and ad lib Chairman Mao’s poetry back into Chinese, you’re nuts.”
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Fortunately, Ji Chaozhu, who was Chou En-lai’s interpreter, agreed to fill in, and Mao’s poetry was translated back into Chinese correctly. Nixon glowered at the unfortunate Freeman throughout the dinner, making him so nervous that he took up smoking again. Two days later, after Freeman had shown his usefulness in interpreting, Nixon offered a tearful apology and said fulsomely to Chou En-lai that Freeman might well be the first American ambassador to China. “It was odd,” thought an embarrassed Freeman as Chou muttered something that sounded like “That’ll be the day.”
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Nixon’s reply to Chou started with compliments to his hosts for their hospitality. The food was “magnificent,” as was the army band. “Never have I heard American music played better in a foreign land.” Like Chou, he admitted that there were many differences between China and the United States. Nevertheless, together both peoples could build a peaceful world, in which the young, like his own daughters, could be free from the fear of war. “So, let us, in these next five days, start a long march together, not in lockstep, but on different roads leading to the same goal, the goal of building a world structure of peace and justice in which all may stand together with equal dignity and in which each nation, large or small, has a right to determine its own form of government, free of outside interference or domination.” Coming to the passage that Freeman had so dreaded, he quoted Mao: “Chairman Mao has written, ‘So many deeds cry out to be done, and always urgently. The world rolls on. Time passes. Ten thousand years are too long. Seize the day, seize the hour.’”
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Nixon raised his glass in a toast to the absent Mao, to Chou En-lai, and to the friendship of the Chinese and American peoples. The band struck up “America the Beautiful.” Nixon was delighted to learn that Chou had chosen the tune himself because it had been played at Nixon’s inauguration, and when Chou raised his glass to Nixon’s next inauguration, Nixon thought it “very significant.”
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To the sound of music, the president did his round of toasts at the important tables. “It was really quite spectacular,” thought Haldeman, watching Nixon with the pride of a good stage manager. “He moved very forcefully, took a firm stand in front of the individual, looked him squarely in the eye, raised his glass and clinked the other person’s, took a quick sip, then he raised his glass again and gave a little staccato bow to the individual, and then he turned, marched to the next individual, and repeated the performance.”
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