Hard Words To Hard-Liners

Nixon delivers blunt advice to China's leaders

* "I checked my handgun at the gate," Richard Nixon quipped within earshot of a dozen armed Chinese police and soldiers standing guard around the U.S. embassy in Beijing. His sarcasm drew whoops of laughter from foreign service officers, who had lodged three complaints in as many days against "harassment" by the Chinese troops stationed outside the compound. With Sino-American relations at their lowest in years, the former President was back in Beijing last week on a "private" visit, attempting to salvage what he could of the relationship he had launched with such drama in 1972. If any outsider had the...

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