Nixon, embroiled in the Watergate scandal at home, was seeking to isolate the Soviet Union and exit a prolonged and bloody Vietnam War that had divided American society. Premier Zhou Enlai’s translator wrote in a memoir that, to the best of his recollection, Nixon said, “This hand stretches out across the Pacific Ocean in friendship” as he shook hands with Zhou at the airport.įor both sides, it was a friendship born of circumstances, rather than natural allegiances.Ĭhina and the Soviet Union, formerly communist allies, had split and even clashed along their border in 1969, and Mao saw the United States as a potential counterbalance to any threat of a Soviet invasion. had recognized as the government of China after the communists took power in Beijing in 1949. Nixon’s 1972 trip, which included meetings with Chairman Mao Zedong and a visit to the Great Wall, led to the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1979 and the parallel severing of formal ties with Taiwan, which the U.S. Billboards carried slogans such as “Down with American Imperialism,” part of the upheaval under the Cultural Revolution that banished intellectuals and others to the countryside and subjected many to public humiliation and brutal and even deadly attacks in the name of class struggle. Nixon landed in Beijing on a gray winter morning 50 years ago on Monday. President Richard Nixon and then first lady Pat Nixon lead the way as they take a tour of China's famed Great Wall, near Beijing, Feb.
But the relationship has never - and will never - be easy.”įILE - Then U.S. Now they are mainly in the security realm. “Perhaps 50 years ago the reasons were mainly economic. “The U.S.-China relationship has always been contentious but one of necessity,” said Oriana Skylar Mastro, a China expert at Stanford University. The Cold War is long over, but on both sides there are fears a new one could be beginning.ĭespite repeated Chinese disavowals, America worries that the democratic-led world that triumphed over the Soviet Union could be challenged by the authoritarian model of a powerful and still-rising China. The relationship between China and the United States was always going to be a challenge, and after half a century of ups and downs, is more fraught than ever. President Richard Nixon flew into communist China’s center of power for a visit that, over time, would transform U.S.-China relations and China’s position in the world in ways that were unimaginable at the time. BEIJING - At the height of the Cold War, U.S.
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