The visit burnished Nixon’s image at home – but not for long
The immediate reaction in the US was highly favourable. Nixon had hoped to make a major gesture of statesmanship ahead of the 1972 presidential election (about which the Chinese were very aware), and his visit to China fulfilled that aim to the letter. Nixon won by a landslide and, though the China visit was not the only reason, it certainly burnished his image. Nixon and his national security adviser (later secretary of state) Henry Kissinger took advantage of the new warmth with China to introduce other strategies to lessen tension in the Cold War – notably, the ending of the draft of US soldiers for the war in Vietnam, and a policy of detente with the Soviet Union.
Protracted negotiation
Nixon’s China mission is often regarded as the culmination of a process, and the end of the rift between the US and China. In truth, it was the beginning of a more protracted negotiation. Full diplomatic ties would not actually be confirmed for almost seven years; indeed, during the early and mid-1970s, much of the most visible interaction was cultural rather than political. The most famous manifestation of this was “ping-pong diplomacy”, the exhibition table tennis matches played in China and the US in the months before and after Nixon’s visit.
Nixon himself had little time to develop the diplomatic opening, resigning in 1974 after the Watergate scandal exposed the darker side of his administration. His successor, Gerald Ford, visited China and tasked secretary of state Henry Kissinger with further nurturing relations. However, there were various stumbling blocks – among the most sensitive of which was Taiwan.
In 1949, at the end of China’s civil war, the defeated Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek had fled to Taiwan, where they declared themselves the official government of all China. Despite controlling only Taiwan’s main island and a few offshore territories, Chiang’s government retained the Chinese seat at the United Nations until 1971. By the mid-1970s, it was clear that the US was moving toward recognition of Beijing, but Chiang’s island was a sticking point: China’s communist leaders wanted Washington to abandon his regime completely. Yet even if the administrations of Ford and his successor, Jimmy Carter, had wanted to concede this matter, there were still powerful forces in Congress who demanded that the US should permit Taiwan the capacity to defend itself.
The Carter administration eventually negotiated the opening of formal diplomatic relations with China on 1 January 1979. This was dependent on the agreement in the US of a “One China” policy – though without specifying whether the rule of Beijing or Taipei over that “One China” should ultimately prevail. Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act, governing America’s relationship with that diplomatically unrecognised but important island, decreeing that the US should give Taiwan assistance to enable it to defend itself. To the anger of Beijing, that act is still very much in operation today.
Rather than the end of the rift between the US and China, Nixon’s visit was the beginning of a protracted negotiation