![]() ![]() The first part of the scheme was distraction. Pakistan - itself embroiled in violent civil unrest that would split the country - was the medium. ![]() Even the American State Department was cut out of the loop after diplomats expressed concern about the repercussions of establishing relations with the PRC. (for instance, Mr Kissinger).”Īrrangements for Kissinger’s visit were completely secret. The breakthrough came in an April 1971 message from Zhou Enlai, which read in part, “The Chinese government reaffirms its willingness to receive publicly in Peking a special envoy of the U.S. “Yanks in Peking!” celebrated the cover of Time Magazine, but at the government level neither side wanted to risk public rebuke by extending its hand until it had confidence that the other would be receptive. More than 100 secret meetings had taken place between the two sides by the time the U.S. The ping-pong diplomacy of April 1971 was just the public tip of a diplomatic iceberg. ![]() The efforts were sometimes comical: American embassy officials in Warsaw, directed to communicate President Richard Nixon’s desire for further negotiations but not knowing for sure what their Chinese counterparts even looked like, tracked down Chinese diplomats as they exited a fashion show at the Yugoslavian embassy in Poland, shouting, in effect, “Call us!” An alliance, or at least a rapprochement, with China might break the Cold War stalemate.īut with no diplomatic ties, attempts to open communication were awkward, conducted through third parties like Pakistan, France, Poland, and Romania. Although it didn’t face hostile neighbors, a long and costly war in Vietnam had been just part of the global Cold War it waged with the USSR. The Chinese leadership was willing to compromise its ideological foundations to find a strategic partner. Soviet generals even considered launching a nuclear strike against China, according to the research of historian Chen Jian. Dozens, at least, died on both sides in fighting over disputed islands in the Ussuri River. observers in early 1969, when border disputes between China and the USSR came close to full-scale war. That the so-called Communist World was not only divided, but deeply so, became apparent to U.S. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968 intensified ’s fear of Soviet expansionism. By the mid-1960s, amid the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, Máo Zédōng 毛泽东 was considering how to improve relations between China and the United States to offset the increased threat of the Soviets. Although the two Communist powers had been allies, their relationship had grown tense since the late 1950s. The United States perceived China and the Soviet Union as a unified bloc. The Korean War had put soldiers of the two countries in combat against one another, and the enduring image of Sino-American relations during this era was American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles rejecting Chinese Premier Zhōu Ēnlái 周恩来’s outstretched hand at a 1954 peace conference in Geneva. In 1971, there were no formal relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, founded in 1949. ![]()
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