Acting on his own in the morning, Zhou told Kissinger he found the offer interesting. But when a suspicious Chairman Mao later learned details of the talks, he sharply criticised his premier, authorised a leftist campaign against him and let the deal die.

Already afflicted with cancer, this marked the beginning of Zhou's political decline. Thus did the secretive Kissinger, making an offer which almost certainly would not have withstood political scrutiny at home, help weaken the Chinese leader he most admired.

This is just one example of the mistrust, misadventure and misunderstanding that have marked US and Chinese relations over the past 30 years, recounted in fascinating detail in this book, which accurately calls itself 'an investigative history'.

A Great Wall traces the decline of these relations through six US presidents from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton.

The early years were a period of limited unity to oppose the Soviet 'polar bear' - which had one million troops along the Chinese border and had fought bloody skirmishes with People's Liberation Army units in 1969. But as the USSR weakened and finally collapsed, the main reason for co-operation disappeared with it. But this did leave the leading source of tension: China's determination to regain sovereignty over Taiwan and American insistence that it be done peacefully - with the US reserving the right to supply military equipment for the island's defence.

Patrick Tyler, a former New York Times Beijing correspondent, makes three main points about these ties.

First, Washington has reneged on promises by four presidents that it would show restraint in military sales to Taipei. Second, while the political will of the Taiwanese people was not an issue when Nixon first called back in 1972, it is today. Third, this has helped make 'the Chinese civil war . . . a permanent feature of the American political process'.

His conclusion: '. . . a more rational sorting out of national priorities in both countries' is needed before there can be much-improved relations in the coming century.

Tyler tells his tale with clear writing and riveting anecdote, based on hundreds of interviews in both countries, plus access to recently declassified documents. The story has remarkable moments: In the 1960s, the US considered a joint Soviet-American strike against Chinese nuclear weapons sites. A decade later, Nixon and Kissinger sought an alliance with China against the Russians.

A failing Chairman Mao, who nearly died just before the 1972 Nixon visit, exerted enormous will power to stay alive and in control - but forced Premier Zhou and other leaders to suffer because he thought treating cancer a waste of time.

White House adviser Zbigniew Brzezinki schemed to keep China policy away from Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and his top Asian hand, Richard Holbrooke (now US ambassador to the United Nations), because he wanted the glory for himself.

Deng Xiaoping treated his American interlocutors with varying degrees of self-confidence as he went up and down, and up again, the Beijing political ladder.

Overall, it is a story of grand intrigue and astonishing pettiness, deceit and betrayal, between two great nations which need but do not truly comprehend each other. But anyone who reads A Great Wall will be much closer to such an understanding.

A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China by patrick Tyler Public Affairs $190