Quotes of the Day

Richard M. Nixon, the disgraced, personality-challenged 37th President of the United States, was not famous for introspection. But in 1993 he reflected: "I will be known historically for two things. Watergate and the opening to China."

Watergate has been supplanted by Monicagate and other Washington scandals, but the relationship between China and the U.S. is still big news. Given today's trade and diplomatic ties between these two giants, it is worth recalling that just 35 years ago American policy held that "China" was the small island called Taiwan, and that Washington regarded the mainland as a hostile, totalitarian hell. The idea that a staunchly conservative Republican President could normalize relations with the closed communist state was so revolutionary at the time that the phrase "like Nixon in China" has now become a popular analogy for hard-liners acting against their longstanding convictions.

How this momentous event came about is the subject of Margaret MacMillan's fascinating book Seize the Hour: When Nixon Met Mao. She begins with the historic encounter itself—a meeting on Feb. 21, 1972, that the American delegation was not sure would actually take place. Yet as Nixon was going over his briefing books and practicing how to use chopsticks en route to Beijing, the seriously ill Mao was getting his first shave and haircut in months. As soon as Air Force One landed and Nixon greeted Premier Zhou Enlai with a prolonged handshake, Mao ordered Zhou to bring the President immediately to his house in Zhongnanhai.

To some extent, both leaders had anticipated the moment. In 1967, Nixon, then a defeated candidate for both the presidency and the California governorship, had written in Foreign Affairs magazine: "We simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations." Two years later, as President, he let it be known that he wanted to visit the mainland before leaving office. On hearing this, Henry Kissinger, his National Security Adviser, smiled at a colleague and said, "Fat chance." Kissinger would soon find himself responsible for the trip's logistics and official communiqués. As for Mao, he had told a party conference in 1956: "In 12 years, Britain, America, West Germany and Japan will all want to do business with us."

With the Nixon trip as the leitmotiv, MacMillan, a University of Toronto historian, deftly weaves together biographies of all the principals (including their wives), contemporary geopolitics (China and the Soviet Union were at odds over their interpretations of communism), and a perceptive understanding of Chinese sensibilities. She explains, for example, the importance of that Nixon-Zhou handshake and a later one between Nixon and Mao that appears on the book's cover: the Chinese feared a replay of their humiliating snub at the 1954 Geneva conference on Indochina and Korea, when U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles spurned Zhou's proffered hand.

The writing is crisp, the research impressive, and the anecdotes rich. Alexander Haig, a Kissinger aide who had experienced the effects of Moutai on a China reconnaissance trip, cabled Washington: "Under no repeat no circumstances should the President actually drink from his glass in response to banquet toasts." Walter Cronkite, one of the most senior among the two planeloads of journalists accompanying the President, wore electric socks to keep his feet warm at the Great Wall, but they gave him a series of shocks.

Nixon, who clearly preferred foreign to domestic policy, emerges as a true wonk. He writes his own wide-ranging speeches, makes intelligent comments on staff memos, and scribbles perceptive notes to himself. In Washington, Nixon had jotted down the trip's priorities: "1. Taiwan—most crucial. 2. V.Nam—most urgent." One of the juiciest subplots in Seize the Hour involves the efforts of Nixon and Kissinger to keep Secretary of State William Rogers out of the loop. The State Department didn't know in advance of Kissinger's first secret trip to the mainland. And it was Kissinger, not Rogers, who was present for the one-hour meeting between Nixon and Mao. But in reviewing the final communiqué, which failed to include a reference to a defense treaty with Taiwan, the State Department insisted on revision—and thus got revenge.

The book's title comes from one of Mao's poems, which Nixon quoted in his banquet toast on the day he met the Chairman: "Time passes. Ten thousand years are too long. Seize the day, seize the hour." With intelligence and verve, Margaret MacMillan has seized the true spirit and significance of "Nixon in China."

• Ann M. Morrison
• A sparkling new book tells the inside story of one of the most momentous events of the cold war era