Xi meets Kissinger: Recalling Henry Kissinger’s role in normalising US-China ties

Kissinger has visited China regularly since leaving office. In his latest visit, he also met China’s top diplomat Wang Yi and defence minister Li Shangfu. This visit follows several top US government officials and diplomats, such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, visiting China recently.

China’s state media reported Wang Yi as saying that Kissinger has made “historic contributions to the ice-breaking development in China-US relations” and the United States’ China policy needs “Kissinger’s diplomatic wisdom and Nixon’s political courage.”

China, the US, and the prickly Taiwan question

Henry Kissinger was appointed as the National Security Adviser in 1969, by newly elected President Richard Nixon. At the time, the Cold War was at its peak , dividing the world into, highly polarised camps representing different ideologies – the US claimed to champion capitalism and democracy, whereas the USSR championed communism.

Under the Truman Doctrine, the US’s policy of ‘containment’ towards USSR’s allies, the United States sought to prevent the ‘spread’ of communism in countries all over the world, even using military force if needed. Thus, for the US, communist China was not ‘real’ China, and the recognition was extended to Taiwan instead.

The island of Taiwan was administered by the imperial Qing dynasty, but its control passed to the Japanese in 1895. After Japan’s defeat in World War II, the island passed into the hands of China’s Nationalist Party or the Kuomintang.

When the communists, led by Mao Zedong won the civil war in mainland China and established the People’s Republic, Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Kuomintang, fled to Taiwan in 1949. There, he set up the government of the Republic of China, and remained its President until his death in 1975.

Beijing has never recognised the existence of Taiwan as an independent political entity, arguing that it has always been a Chinese province. The issue of Taiwan and the politics around its recognitions by the US, was (and remains) at the heart of tensions between China and the United States.

Moreover, the US military also had a significant presence in many Asian countries including Vietnam, Cambodia, and even Taiwan in the 1960s.

A thaw, Nixon and Kissinger

However, after the Sino-Soviet split, which began in the early 1960s, the US was now of the view that China could be an ally that could be counted to stand up against the USSR. China, too, was eager to look for new partners after the split with the Soviets.

This was reflected in Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign, where he argued for normalisation of ties.

“Chinese Communists: Short range—no change. Long range—we do not want 800,000,000 living in angry isolation. We want contact … [want] China—cooperative member of international community and member of Pacific community,” Nixon would write in a note in the very first two days in office.

He would eventually ask his NSA, Henry Kissinger, to work out channels through which the Chinese could be contacted. One of them was Pakistan, a friendly country to both the US and China.

To China, via Pakistan

In August 1969, an American diplomat passed on word, saying, “The Pakistanis are working in the belief that President Nixon told President Yahya [Pakistan’s President Yahya Khan] that the US wished to seek an accommodation with Communist China and would appreciate the Pakistani’s passing this word to [Chinese Premier] Zhou Enlai and using their influence to promote this.”

National Security Council staffer Hal Saunders then met Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US, Agha Hilaly. He wrote of their meeting, “What President Nixon had in mind was that President Yahya might at some natural and appropriate time convey this statement of the US position in a low-key factual way [to China]. We would like to establish a single channel for any further discussion of this subject should President Yahya have any questions about what President Nixon intended.” Kissinger then became the point of contact for the US.

“President Nixon stated it as his personal view—not completely shared by the rest of his government or by many Americans — that Asia can not move forward if a nation as large as China remains isolated … He asked President Yahya to convey his feeling to the Chinese at the highest level,” Saunders wrote. This is what was deemed as “political courage” by Wang Yi, recently.

Over the next few months such conversations went on and in exchange for a meeting of high-level officials, the US offered to remove two of its destroyers from the Taiwan Strait. It also announced certain relaxations on economic sanctions in December 1969.

Apart from Pakistani officials, the Americans also reached out to Romania and Poland – both communist countries. In 1971, Kissinger met Corneliu Bogdan, the Romanian ambassador to Washington. Kissinger reported that the Romanian President had sent his vice-premier to Beijing. Zhou Enlai gave him a note saying the key issue with the US was the American “occupation of Taiwan.” Zhou said the US President would be welcome to discuss this issue in Beijing.

This culminated in Kissinger visiting China while officially on a trip to Pakistan in 1971. They discussed, among other things, Taiwan. Kissinger said the talks were “the most searching, sweeping and significant discussions I have ever had in government.”

According to an article in The Diplomat, “The United States asked for the meeting to be kept secret. Indeed, the visit by Kissinger and a close-knit entourage of assistants was meticulously planned in such a way as to conceal it even from part of the US delegation that was then visiting Pakistan with Kissinger. The person running Kissinger’s diary had to keep three different diaries designed for three different groups of individuals accompanying Kissinger on his trip to Pakistan.”

Outcomes of the trip

President Nixon shaking hands with Zhou Enlai, standing at the foot of the Air Force One stair ramp, on February 21, 1972, symbolically ending 17 years of Sino-American tension. (Via Wikimedia Commons)

As a result of this meeting, Nixon was finally able to visit China in 1972, becoming the first US President to do so. The trip would also lead to the establishment of Liaison Offices in Beijing and Washington, which functioned as informal diplomatic posts the next year.

The Shanghai Communique was signed, where both countries mentioned that “neither should seek hegemony in the Asia–Pacific region and each is opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony,” in a reference to the USSR.

“The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves,” it further said.

And thus began the process of full normalisation of relations between the United States and the PRC. In 1978, under Jimmy Carter and Deng Xiaoping, a normalisation agreement was signed between the two countries. Embassies would be established and the US would withdraw its forces from Taiwan. PRC was recognised as the government of China and the US would maintain only unofficial relations with Taiwan.

While many have lauded the covert operations, others have criticised America’s attitude towards Taiwan in the process.

The late Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, a historian at Georgetown University, noted in her article ‘Taiwan Expendable? Nixon and Kissinger Go to China’: “A case can even be made that some secrecy helped facilitate the effort, although they carried it to an extreme … that needless complications arose. Less defensibly, however, they willingly betrayed an ally, conceding Taiwan’s interests before negotiations began. Nixon and Kissinger forfeited not simply the right of Taiwan’s people to self-determination, but potentially their ability to avoid Communist rule, and they did so at a time when a popular movement for representative government in Taiwan was seeking greater US support.”