Nixon and Mao Read Online Free PDF Page B

John Scali, a press adviser on foreign affairs in the White House, was blunt: “I felt I was listening to the views of a romantic, vain, old man who was weaving obsolete views into a special framework for the world as he wished it to be.” 70 Nixon, however, was enthralled, even though the sage’s severe facial tic made his every statement painful to listen to: “Time had not dimmed the brilliance of his thought or the quickness of his wit.” 71 And Malraux had been a friend of the Kennedys.
    The CIA sent the president analyses of Mao’s and Chou’s personalities. Old China hands sent in lots of unsolicited advice. The State Department drew up background papers on all the outstanding disputes—on property, for example—between the United States and China and on major policy issues. (It is not clear that Nixon ever saw these because they had to go through Kissinger, who had no love for the department.) 72 Kissinger and his NSC staff prepared their own briefing books and sent the president extracts from books and articles they felt he should read. Nixon did his homework meticulously, bearing down particularly hard in the week just before his trip. 73
    On the plane, Nixon and Mrs. Nixon, along with his close advisers, including Henry Kissinger, sat in comfort at the front; the State Department personnel were relegated to the back of the plane. The flight to China was carefully planned so that Nixon would arrive as well rested as possible. He also took advantage of the time to go over his papers and practice using chopsticks. While two planeloads of journalists went on ahead to Shanghai, Air Force One (or, as Nixon preferred to call it, especially for this trip, the Spirit of ’76) stopped in Hawaii at an air force base for a couple of days. The president’s party, including Kissinger, was housed with the commanding officer, while the lower ranks stayed in the greater comfort of a local luxury hotel. Clare Boothe Luce, who with her husband, Henry Luce, had used their publications, such as
Time,
to support the other China, the one in Taiwan, gave a dinner for some of the party at her spectacular house overlooking the Pacific. “You liberals,” she said, “don’t really understand this trip.” But, she added, times were changing and the Communist Chinese would recognize that the United States had always been a friend to China. 74 On February 21, with military music and hula girls, the plane took off for Guam, where there was another overnight stop. That left a short flight to Shanghai for the next day. In Shanghai, after a brief welcome and a rapid breakfast, Chinese pilots came on board (this had been the subject of intensive negotiations) and piloted the plane for its final leg to Beijing.
    The presidential plane was to land at the civilian airport in Beijing at 11:30 A.M., on Monday, February 21, a time chosen carefully to ensure that Nixon’s arrival would make television news in all time zones back in the United States, where it would be 10:30 P.M. on the East Coast and 7:30 P.M. on the West. Nixon had been worrying about his first moments in the Chinese capital for days. On the flight earlier that day from Guam to Shanghai he had gone over the details of the Beijing arrival yet again with his chief of staff. “He’s very concerned,” wrote Haldeman in his diary, “that the whole operation at Peking airport be handled flawlessly since that will be the key picture of the whole trip.” 75

CHAPTER 2
    ARRIVAL

    A S AIR FORCE ONE FLEW NORTH FROM SHANGHAI TOWARD BEIJING, Nixon anxiously went over the arrangements for his arrival and pestered Kissinger with questions about the Communist Chinese.
    In the heart of Beijing, an old and sick Mao Tse-tung woke up early and had his first shave and haircut in months. As Nixon’s plane neared the Chinese capital, Mao’s subordinates phoned him repeatedly to report its progress.
    The morning was cold and gray and slightly hazy. At the last moment before the plane’s