WHAT, if anything, did Richard Nixon bring back from Peking?
Above all, the event itself, the fact that it took place. Rarely had a U.S. President spent so long a time—a full week—in a foreign land. The visit, moreover, was to a country with which the U.S. did not even have diplomatic relations and which for two decades had been a virtual enemy. That paradox was obscured by the pageantry and (most of the time) by the warm atmosphere. As summits go, the meeting was a glittering technical success, stage-managed with precision.
Until the final communique, his negotiating sessions with Premier Chou En-lai were kept entirely secret so as not to jeopardize the delicate talks, as Nixon later explained to the press. No leaks escaped to upset the routine, no emotions exploded to disturb the surface tranquillity. There was no shoe pounding, no confrontation of raw power, as occurred at the Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting in Vienna. There was none of the Big Daddyism that Lyndon Johnson exhibited in 1966 at his Asian summit in the Philippines. Security was not obtrusive; crowds did not have to be controlled because they rarely gathered.
Nixon, comporting himself with dignity but with an enthusiasm that sometimes made him seem overeager, said nothing of importance in public during the entire trip. His ingratiating small talk was more pedestrian than usual; his toasts were ringing evocations of a world without walls. He even quoted Mao Tse-tung: "So many deeds cry out to be done . . . Seize the day. Seize the hour."
Hidden Talks. All this was elaborate scrollwork, hiding content. The substance of the week's talks was finally revealed in a 1,500-word joint communique released just before the President left Shanghai to return to the U.S. It contained no great surprises, no great letdowns. If the communique had said any less than it did, the trip would surely have been considered a failure. It might have said a little more; it largely dwelled on the need for friendship without getting down to many specifics.
The sharpest language was reserved, in fact, for matters of disagreement. In a departure from the normal communique form, each side was given a chance to present its own views and beat the drum for its own cherished cause. The U.S. announced that it was trying to reduce world tensions and preserve freedom, while the Chinese pledged their faith in the liberation of the oppressed and revolution "as the irresistible trend of history." It was stock propaganda. At the same time, each nation sought to reassure its nervous allies. The U.S. tried to cheer up South
Viet Nam and South Korea (though not, pointedly, Taiwan); China gave encouragement to the Viet Cong and North Korea. The U.S. said it places the "highest value on its friendly relations with Japan"; the Chinese protested any "revival and outward expansion of Japanese militarism."