framework for Asia’s future without massive US troop deployments. One
implication seemed to be the end of the US-backed containment of China.
Nixon also made several mainly symbolic gestures to the Chinese govern-
Rapprochement and Normalization
65
ment while pursuing vigorous efforts in secret to develop communications
with the Mao Zedong leadership. 8
Meanwhile, in China, Mao succeeded in removing political rivals in the
early years of the Cultural Revolution, but at tremendous cost. Many burnt
urban areas testified to widespread violence and arson among competing
groups. The party and government administration were severely disrupted.
Experienced administrators were often purged, persecuted, or pushed aside
by proponents of radical Maoist ideals or political opportunists. Expertise in
economics, development, and other fields essential to nation building came
to be seen as a liability in the politically charged atmosphere of repeated
mass campaigns. Political indoctrination and adherence to Mao Zedong
Thought overshadowed education and training in practical tasks. 9
Military forces called into Chinese cities in order to restore order duly
removed millions of disruptive Red Guards and began to lead the process of
reconstituting a party and government infrastructure on the basis of military-
led rule. Not surprisingly in this context, Defense Minister Lin Biao and his
People’s Liberation Army (PLA) associates rose to new prominence in the
Chinese hierarchy. Military representation in various party and government
bodies was high. Not all military leaders were as supportive of the radical
policies and practices of the Cultural Revolution as Lin Biao and his asso-
ciates in the high command. Some experienced civilian and military cadre
had survived in office. But they appeared in the minority in a leadership
featuring factional chieftains like the Gang of Four, involving Mao’s wife
and three other extremist party Politburo members, and such luminaries as
Mao’s speechwriter and sometime confidant Chen Boda and security forces
and intelligence operative Kang Sheng. 10
Under these circumstances, China was not prepared for a national security
shock. Chinese troops were engaged in domestic peacekeeping and govern-
ance. They also for many years followed Maoist dictates under the leadership
of Defense Minister Lin Biao and eschewed professional military training in
favor of ideological training and promoting popular welfare in China. Chi-
nese military programs for developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles
were excluded from the violence and disruption of the Cultural Revolution,
but the PLA on the whole was poorly prepared to deal with conventional
military challenges. 11
In August 1968 the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia and removed
its leadership, putting in power a regime more compatible with Soviet inter-
ests. The Soviet Union also made clear that it reserved the right to take
similar actions in other deviant Communist states. This view came to be
known as the Brezhnev Doctrine, named after the Soviet party leader Leonid
Brezhnev, who ruled from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s. Of course,
Chinese leaders well knew that, from the Soviet perspective, there was no
Communist state more deviant than China. Moreover, since Brezhnev’s take-
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Chapter 4
over, the Soviet Union had backed political opposition to China with increas-
ing military muscle, deploying ever-larger numbers of forces along the Man-
churian border and, as a result of a new Soviet defense treaty with Mongolia,
along the Sino-Mongolian border. The Soviet forces, mainly mechanized
divisions designed to move rapidly in offensive operations, were configured
in a pattern used by Soviet forces when they quickly overran Japanese forces
in Manchuria and northern China in the last days of World War II. 12
The Sino-Soviet dispute had emerged in the late 1950s as an ideological
dispute with wide implications. Fairly quickly it became a major issue in
bilateral relations, notably with the abrupt withdrawal of Soviet assistance
from China in 1960. At that time, the dispute broadened to include stark
differences on international issues and how to deal with the United States.
Chinese accusations of Soviet weakness in the face of the firm US stance
against Soviet missiles in Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 saw
Soviet officials respond by accusing China of accommodating colonial “out-
houses” held by Great Britain and Portugal in Hong Kong and Macau, re-
spectively. Maoist China responded by reminding the world that imperialist
Russia took by far the greatest tracts of Chinese territory by virtue of the so-called unequal treaties imposed on China by imperialist powers in the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries. The Sino-Soviet debate now focused on com-
peting claims to disputed border territories, against the background of new
uncertainty over the legitimacy of the boundaries established by the unequal
treaties. Sino-Soviet negotiations soon after Brezhnev took power, following
the ouster of Nikita Khrushchev in 1964, failed to resolve border uncertain-
ties, prompting the new Soviet leader to make the force deployments and
arrangements noted above in order to deal with the Chinese disputes from a
position of strength. With the declared Soviet ambitions under terms of the
Brezhnev Doctrine and Moscow’s military preparations, the stage was set for
the border dispute to evolve into the most serious national security threat
ever faced by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). 13
The combination of perceived greater threat and internal weakness caused
a crisis and debate in the Chinese leadership that lasted into the early 1970s.
Chinese leadership decision making in the Cultural Revolution was not at all
transparent. Mao seemed to remain in overall command, but official Chinese
media duly reflected competing views on how to deal with the new and
apparently dangerous situation in relations with the Soviet Union. 14
Some commentary, presumably encouraged by some Chinese leaders,
favored reaching out to the United States as a means to offset the Soviet
threat. In November 1968 the Chinese Foreign Ministry under Premier Zhou
Enlai’s direction called for renewed ambassadorial talks with the newly
elected Nixon administration in a statement that was notable for the absence
of the then-usual Chinese invective critical of the United States. The argu-
ment used in media commentary that proposed a reaching-out to the United
Rapprochement and Normalization
67
States was that the United States was in the process of being defeated in
Indochina and was no longer the primary threat to China. It too faced chal-
lenge from the expanding USSR, and China could take advantage of the
differences between the competing superpowers in order to secure its posi-
tion in the face of the newly emerging Soviet danger. 15
Other commentary, presumably backed by other Chinese leaders, strongly
opposed an opening to the United States. These commentaries were associat-
e
d with Lin Biao and his lieutenants, along with the radically Maoist leader-
ship faction, the Gang of Four. They argued in favor of continued strong
Chinese opposition to both the United States and the Soviet Union. Though
weakened by the defeat in Vietnam, the United States could not be trusted in
dealings with China. In particular, any sign of Chinese weakness toward
either superpower likely would prompt them both to work together in seek-
ing to pressure China and gain at its expense. 16
The latter leaders held the upper hand in Chinese leadership councils
during much of 1969. Chinese media rebuked and ridiculed the new US
president as he took office. At the last moment Chinese leaders cancelled the
slated ambassadorial talks in February. The Chinese authorities took the
offensive in the face of Soviet military pressure along the border, ambushing
a Soviet patrol on a disputed island in early March and publicizing the
incident to the world. Far from being intimidated, Brezhnev’s Soviet forces
responded later in the month by annihilating a Chinese border guard unit,
setting the stage for escalating rhetoric and military clashes throughout the
spring and summer of 1969. The clashes were capped in August by an all-day
battle along the western sector of the border that saw the Soviets inflict
hundreds of casualties on the Chinese. Soviet officials followed with warn-
ings to Americans, and other foreigners sure to relay the warnings to the
Chinese, that the Soviet Union was in the process of consulting with foreign
powers to assure they would stand aside as the Soviet Union prepared all-out
attack on China, including the possible use of nuclear weapons. 17
In the face of such threats and pressure, Chinese leaders were compelled
to shift strategy. Zhou Enlai was brought forward to negotiate with Soviet
leaders. It was clear that while negotiating with the USSR would temporarily
ease tensions and the danger of war, China would not accept Soviet demands.
Beijing now viewed the USSR as China’s number one strategic threat. Seek-
ing international leverage, it took measures to improve strained Chinese rela-
tions with neighboring countries and with more distant powers. It was none-
theless evident that, while helpful, these improvements would not fundamen-
tally alter China’s strategic disadvantage in the face of Soviet intimidation
and threat. Only one power, the United States, had that ability. Zhou and
like-minded officials in the Chinese leadership were encouraged that the
United States was weakened by the Vietnam War and that it was also begin-
ning to withdraw sizeable numbers of troops from Asia and dismantle the US
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Chapter 4
military containment against China. On this basis, Beijing could pursue rela-
tions with Washington as a means to deal with the Soviet threat. However,
Lin Biao and others continued to argue that both superpowers were enemies
of China, and in the end they would cooperate to isolate and control China. 18
The debate seemed to get caught up with the broader struggle for power
in this period of the Cultural Revolution. Mao Zedong came to side with the
view associated with Zhou Enlai. Repeated overtures by the Nixon adminis-
tration to China ultimately succeeded in Sino-American ambassadorial talks
being resumed in Warsaw in early 1970. China used the image of restored
contacts with the United States in order to offset and undermine Soviet
efforts to intimidate China. Chinese officials arranged for the meeting to be
held in the secure area of their embassy in Warsaw. The usual venue, a
palace provided by the Poles, was long suspected of being riddled with secret
listening devices that would give the USSR and Warsaw Pact allies the full
transcript of the US-China discussions. The Chinese diplomats also made a
point of being unusually positive to Western reporters during the photo op-
portunity as American officials were welcomed to the Chinese embassy at
the start of the official talks. As Chinese officials presumably hoped, Soviet
commentary on the secret talks and improved atmosphere in US-China rela-
tions viewed the developments as complicating Soviet border negotiations
with China and nuclear armament limitation talks with the United States.
Soviet commentators even charged that Beijing, fearful of Soviet intentions,
was seeking to come to terms with the United States in order to play one
nuclear power against the other. 19
The Nixon administration’s expansion of the Vietnam War by invading
Cambodia in spring 1970 caused China to cancel the talks and slowed for-
ward movement. Mao highlighted a mass demonstration in Beijing on May
20, 1970, where he welcomed the Cambodian leader Norodom Sihanouk,
who had been deposed by the pro-US Cambodian generals who worked with
US-led invading forces. The Chinese chairman, in his last major public state-
ment denouncing the United States, called on the people of the world to rise
up against US imperialism and their “running dogs.” Outwardly, it appeared
that Mao was siding with the Chinese advocates of a harder line against the
United States. However, clandestine US-China communication continued, as
did the withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam and other parts of Asia, so
that by October 1970 Mao was prepared to tell visiting US journalist Edgar
The shift in Mao’s stance was accompanied by other moves that appeared
to undermine the standing of Lin Biao and his radical allies in the Chinese
leadership. A key radical leader, Chen Boda, dropped from public view in
late 1970 in what later was shown to be intensified factional maneuvering
leading up to the alleged coup plans by Lin and his allies. 21
Rapprochement and Normalization
69
What role was played by differences over the opening to the United States
in the life-or-death struggle in the Chinese leadership remains hidden by
pervasive secrecy in Chinese leadership decision making. Emblematic of the
significance of the opening to the United States in Chinese politics at the
time was the unusual greeting of US National Security Adviser Henry Kis-
singer upon his arrival in Beijing on his secret mission in July 1971 to open
US-China relations. The first Chinese official to greet Kissinger on arrival
was not a protocol officer from the foreign ministry or some other appropri-
ate official; it was Marshall Ye Jianying. Ye was one of the most senior
Chinese military leaders. He survived the Cultural Revolution, advised Mao
to use connections with the United States in the face of the Soviet threat, later played a key role in the arrest of the Gang of Four following Mao’s death in
1976, and became president of China. His approach was close to that of Zhou
Enlai and at odds with that of Lin Biao. 22
The announcement of Kissinger’s successful secret trip appeared to repre-
sent a serious defeat for Lin Biao and his allies in their debate with opponents on how to deal with the Soviet Union and the United States. The setback
came amid rising pressures and adverse developments affecting the military
leader. The stakes apparently were very high. Two m
onths later, Lin and his
wife, son, and close aides died as a result of an air crash in Mongolia as they were allegedly trying to escape China following a failed coup attempt against
Mao and his opponents. The military high command in the PLA that had
risen to power under Lin’s tenure as defense minister were arrested, removed
from power, and not seen again until they eventually were brought out for
public trial along with Gang of Four and other discredited radical leaders in
the years after Mao’s death. 23
Though nothing like the intense factional struggles of Maoist China, US
leadership and popular opposition to an opening to China were feared by
President Nixon and his top aides. In particular, it was clear to the American
leaders that they would have to sacrifice US official relations with Taiwan in
order to meet the conditions Chinese leaders set for establishing relations
with the United States. How the Chiang Kai-shek government in Taiwan
would react to this new adverse turn of fate was uncertain. The so-called
China lobby, both supportive of Chiang and the Chinese Nationalists and
strongly anti-Communist, had become a feature of American domestic poli-
tics for more than twenty years. Chiang and the lobby had particular influ-
ence among conservatives in the president’s Republican Party. Nixon had
close and personal ties with the lobby. 24
President Nixon, National Security Adviser Kissinger, and the small
group of top aides involved in the opening to China dealt with potential
domestic opposition through secrecy and what arguably could be seen as
deception. Their motives focused on the advantages for the United States in a
new relationship with China with regard to handling the difficult process of
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Chapter 4
reaching an acceptable peace agreement to end the US involvement in the
Vietnam War and in dealing with the Soviet Union in arms limitation and
other negotiations from a position of greater strength. A new order in Asian
and world affairs featuring positive US-China relations seemed much less
costly and more compatible for US interests than the previous US confronta-
tion with and containment of China. President Nixon and his administration