Nixon’s historic trip to China: how the landmark Shanghai Communique shaped ties for the next 50 years
- Joint statement released on last day of US president’s visit in 1972 is arguably the most important breakthrough agreement in the history of US-China relations
- Critics argue the visit and communique were the beginning of the US’ dilemma over Taiwan, especially surrounding its strategic ambiguity
SCMP China Series: 50 years since Nixon visited China
Kissinger’s second trip to China was different from the first exploratory visit which took many US allies and officials at Nixon’s White House by surprise with its strict secrecy. It was described as “a masterpiece of undercover work” by the late Harvard professor Roderick MacFarquhar.
Code-named “[Operation Marco] Polo II” and publicly announced weeks before Kissinger left for China, it was effectively a full-scale dress rehearsal for the historic presidential visit. Kissinger, who had just emerged from the glittering success of the first visit, also took Nixon’s Air Force One, the “Spirit of ’76”.
While it was Nixon, an ardent anti-communist, who made the about-face decision to open up relations with China in 1969, Kissinger was initially sceptical and called Nixon’s idea a “flight of fantasy”. But he soon became preoccupied with seeking detente with the largely isolated communist regime and was more than eager to win personal credit for it. With the first visit in July, he nonetheless became the first senior American official to set foot in China since the Communist Party took control more than two decades before.
According to Shelley Rigger, a Taiwan expert and a political scientist at Davidson College in North Carolina, the need to balance the power of the rising Soviet Union brought Beijing and Washington together.
“I don’t think anyone set aside ideological rivalry; instead, they both were practising Mao’s Theory of Contradictions,” she said.
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For Beijing, the Soviet Union was the primary contradiction, while the primary issues for the US were the Soviets and the Vietnam war.
“The secondary contradiction between the US and China was set aside so that both could focus on the primary contradiction,” Rigger said.
But the second visit in October 1971 was very different to the first because it coincided with the United Nations General Assembly’s annual debate and vote over membership for the People’s Republic of China.
Just a few days before Kissinger left for Beijing, America’s ambassador to the UN George H.W. Bush argued that Kissinger’s visit would undermine Washington’s effort to preserve Taiwan’s seat at the UN. Bush, who later became the de facto ambassador to China and then US president, described the vote as “fighting the battle of people who obviously do want to see us lose” and urged Nixon to reschedule the trip, according to a transcript of the White House meeting.
Despite Bush’s fight, Beijing took over the seat at the UN previously occupied by Taiwan with a landslide victory in the General Assembly vote. In addition to the widespread support among developing nations, pundits believed Kissinger’s secret trip to Beijing and the subsequent announcement of Nixon’s state visit helped tilt the balance in China’s favour at the UN and on the world stage.
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During Kissinger’s second China mission there were closed-door talks between Kissinger and Zhou, mostly over the drafting of the communique, while relying solely on Chinese interpreters – a departure from past protocols. According to Kissinger, he spent nearly 25 hours over the following week combing through the details of Nixon’s upcoming trip and a host of regional issues relating to Taiwan, their shared concerns about the Soviet Union, the Vietnam war and the ongoing South Asian conflict over Bangladesh.
When Kissinger presented the first draft communique to Zhou, it was rejected immediately after the Chinese premier checked with Mao. “This is useless: this is a typical diplomatic document that papers over differences. It’ll have no credibility, because how can two nations that have hated each other and fought each other and been isolated from each other for 22 years, suddenly put a document out like this that suggests they’re friends?” Zhou was quoted by Lord as saying.
Zhou challenged Kissinger, who appeared more interested in a Soviet-style communique that highlighted areas of agreement despite their divergent views on most issues. Instead, Zhou came up with a Chinese draft, with “the brilliant ‘our side-your side’ formula” as American diplomat Richard Holbrooke called it, in which each side stated its own position on areas of disagreement.
The negotiations over the communique went for months, finishing when Nixon’s week-long China visit had almost drawn to a close and ultimately boiling down to semantics, especially in relation to Taiwan.
At one point Nixon intervened, cautioning Zhou that “if too much was said publicly, that would be seized upon by Americans who opposed the opening to China from both right and left … as an excuse to disrupt normalisation”.
While Zhou Enlai described the Taiwan issue as “the crucial question”, Nixon also viewed it as a touchstone for both sides. But despite the intensity of the discussions, the Americans appeared to have failed to have “fully absorbed the centrality of Taiwan to PRC interests”, according to the late US diplomat Alan Romberg, a leading expert on cross-strait relations. Instead they, including Kissinger himself, still largely saw the Taiwan issue as more of a practical obstacle rather than China’s “central question of concern”, as Zhou had claimed.
As Kissinger himself explained during his second China trip: “The trouble is that we disagree, not that we don’t understand each other. We understand each other very well. The Prime Minister [Zhou] seeks clarity, and I am trying to achieve ambiguity.”
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In the end, the final version of the communique, released at the scenic Jinjiang Hotel, Shanghai’s first guest house for foreign dignitaries, on the eve of Nixon’s departure back to the US, provided ambiguous assurance to China about Taiwan.
Washington “acknowledged” the PRC’s claim to the island – that “Taiwan is part of China” – and stated it “does not challenge” that claim.
“But the United States never made clear what this meant, and the US has never subsequently clarified its formal position,” commented Jerome Cohen, a law professor at New York University.
While Nixon’s China trip and the Shanghai Communique marked the start of Washington’s decades-long engagement with Beijing, critics have long argued they were the beginning of the US’ dilemma over Taiwan, especially surrounding its strategic ambiguity over the self-ruled island. Some in the administration of former president Donald Trump even suggested that the communique be scrapped in a bid to seek closer ties with Taiwan.
Rigger said Kissinger might have led Zhou Enlai to believe the US would not stand in the way of China having what it wanted with respect to Taiwan.
“I suppose it was ‘putting it off’ in the sense that the US wasn’t handing the island over as part of normalisation (which is not something the US could have done anyway), but [Zhou] did not think the US should continue to provide military help to Taiwan. It’s no wonder leaders in both Beijing and Taipei have a hard time trusting the US,” she said.
George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford University’s China Centre, also said Kissinger’s goal was flawed in design.
“Kissinger’s strategic goal – to kick Taiwan into the long grass to allow the US and China to pursue parallel and aligned interests – worked a treat. However, the goal was itself flawed in that it left the issue of Taiwan unresolved, not least because it was not a burning issue to be resolved at the time for either side. But over time, Taiwan has itself become more important, as well as democratic, and China’s strategic and territorial goals have become more forcefully asserted and politically articulated,” Magnus said.
But Tao Wenzhao, a US expert from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, disagreed and insisted those lingering issues over Taiwan were resolved.
“The three communiques cannot be separated, especially when it comes to the Taiwan issue,” he said, adding that the normalisation communique in 1979 and the 1982 communique helped clarify and resolve issues from the Shanghai Communique.
The 1979 communique on the establishment of official ties between China and the US said the US government “acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is a part of China”. The communique issued on August 17, 1982 stated that the US took no position on Taiwan’s sovereignty and that this was an issue the two sides of the Strait should resolve.
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Niu Jun, a historian and expert on international affairs from Peking University, said that besides the Taiwan aspect, the section on common interests – especially the joint commitment on opposing hegemony – also stood out in the 1,800-word document.
“It was unprecedented, and probably the most meaningful part in the communique. It is still relevant today because it helped stabilise the region and it would be impossible for China to open up to the outside world without a stable regional environment in the Asia-Pacific,” he said.
“It underscored the vision and the extraordinary ability of our leaders back then to take a long view and make sound strategic decisions that may affect future generations.”
Rigger also said that of the three China-US communiques, the Shanghai Communique was the most important. “Without it, there would not have been a normalisation communique in 1979 (at least, not at that time). Nor would there have been a 1982 communique – in part because the Shanghai Communique emerged from a negotiating process in which Beijing was misled into thinking the US would not continue to support Taiwan militarily. It’s not clear to me that PRC leaders would have accepted the Shanghai Communique if they had known the US would continue to sell arms to Taiwan,” Rigger said.
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However, pundits admit the original Shanghai Communique might not provide much guidance for the challenges of today.
Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Stimson Centre in Washington, said the lessons for Beijing and Washington from Nixon’s visit and creating the joint statement were quite different.
“The Chinese might say that the lesson is [that the] US needs to return to the correct path set by the Shanghai Communique and treat China as a friend again. The Americans will say that [the] Chinese attitude of finger-pointing is precisely the lesson – that engagement in the hope to change China is a mistake,” she said.
Magnus also said the Shanghai Communique had limited relevance in the 2020s “other than as a historical signpost”.
“It’s instructive that the US and China were able to reach a modus vivendi in spite of political and ideological differences in 1972 and afterwards. However, it’s quite clear that China is now far bigger and far more influential than in 1972, and has the will and the capacity to try and reshape the global governance system and institutions in its own interests,” he said.
“This sets it on a collision course with the US, especially as China aims to become the prominent, if not dominant, power. I fear no communique can paper over this existential competition.”
