Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan

From the Publisher

With the publication of her landmark bestseller Paris 1919, Margaret MacMillan was praised as “a superb writer who can bring history to life” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). Now she brings her extraordinary gifts to one of the most important subjects today–the relationship between the United States and China–and one of the most significant moments in modern history. In February 1972, Richard Nixon, the first American president ever to visit China, and Mao Tse-tung, the enigmatic Communist dictator, met for an hour in Beijing. Their meeting changed the course of history and ultimately laid the groundwork for the complex relationship between China and the United States that we see today.

That monumental meeting in 1972–during what Nixon called “the week that changed the world”–could have been brought about only by powerful leaders: Nixon himself, a great strategist and a flawed human being, and Mao, willful and ruthless. They were assisted by two brilliant and complex statesmen, Henry Kissinger and Chou En-lai. Surrounding them were fascinating people with unusual roles to play, including the enormously disciplined and unhappy Pat Nixon and a small-time Shanghai actress turned monstrous empress, Jiang Qing. And behind all of them lay the complex history of two countries, two great and equally confident civilizations: China, ancient and contemptuous yet fearful of barbarians beyond the Middle Kingdom, and the United States, forward-looking and confident, seeing itself as the beacon for the world.

Nixon thought China could help him get out of Vietnam. Mao needed American technology and expertise to repair thedamage of the Cultural Revolution. Both men wanted an ally against an aggressive Soviet Union. Did they get what they wanted? Did Mao betray his own revolutionary ideals? How did the people of China react to this apparent change in attitude toward the imperialist Americans? Did Nixon make a mistake in coming to China as a supplicant? And what has been the impact of the visit on the United States ever since?

Weaving together fascinating anecdotes and insights, an understanding of Chinese and American history, and the momentous events of an extraordinary time, this brilliantly written book looks at one of the transformative moments of the twentieth century and casts new light on a key relationship for the world of the twenty-first century.


Margaret MacMillan is the author of Women of the Raj and Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History, a Silver Medal for the Arthur Ross Book Award of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Governor General’s Literary Award for nonfiction. It was selected by the editors of The New York Times as one of the best books of 2002. Currently the provost of Trinity College and a professor of history at the University of Toronto, MacMillan takes up the position of warden of St. Antony’s College, Oxford, in July 2007. She is an officer of the Order of Canada, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a senior fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto.


From the Hardcover edition.

The New York Times - John Lewis Gaddis

[MacMillan] candidly describes the brutality of Mao’s regime, pointing out that even the courtly Zhou Enlai, so respected by the Americans and by MacMillan herself, was responsible for multiple deaths and imprisonments. She shows why Nixon and Kissinger kept their approaches to the Chinese secret from allies and most of their own advisers, while suggesting that they relished the secrecy too much, carrying it beyond what was necessary. She reveals how generous the Americans were in giving the Chinese sensitive intelligence on Soviet military deployments, and how explicitly they promised to withdraw their own military forces from Taiwan and, eventually, South Vietnam. Her portrayals of key personalities throughout, as one might expect from the author of “Paris 1919,” are superb.

The Washington Post - Oliver Schell

what makes reading MacMillan all the more worthwhile is our current, moralistic penchant for refusing to talk to countries such as Cuba, Syria and Iran. Nixon and Mao reminds us that sometimes the national interest is best served by maintaining relations with adversaries -- even dictatorships we consider utterly repellent.

Publishers Weekly

Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to Beijing to open relations with Communist China was both a Cold War milestone and compelling political theater. Diplomatic historian MacMillan, author of the acclaimed Paris 1919, gives a lively account of the pomp and protocol surrounding the trip: the awkward banquets, the toasts to peace and friendship (punctuated by occasional anti-imperialist lectures), the Great Wall pilgrimages, the proletarian operas (Nixon attended The Red Detachment of Women, in which peasants and revolutionaries battle landlords). MacMillan's even better on the behind-the-scenes negotiations, as the two sides wrangle over every word of the climactic Shanghai communiqué. More than Nixon and the cloistered Mao, the central figures are Henry Kissinger and Chinese premier Chou En-Lai, tasked with finding common ground and finessing differences with subtle verbiage and winks and nods. The author fills in the background with colorful, incisive biographical sketches and a lucid history of Sino-American relations. The encounter seems to have had little impact on the issues discussed during the trip—the Vietnam war, the fate of Taiwan, relations with the Soviets. Still, MacMillan argues, it opened the door to today's necessary relationship between the two Pacific powers, and she turns a potentially dry diplomatic story into a fascinating study in high-wire diplomacy, full of intrigue and drama. Photos. (Feb. 20)

Foreign Affairs

In the mid-1960s, having failed to win either the presidency or the governorship of California, Richard Nixon had ample time to think about international relations, his primary policy interest. Like most China specialists, he concluded that the United States should end its efforts to isolate China. Few analysts doubted the reality of the Sino-Soviet split, and Nixon was among those who recognized that opening diplomatic ties with Beijing might strengthen the U.S. position in the Cold War. If China was no longer an urgent threat requiring containment, the United States would be able to reinforce the lines against the Soviet Union and marshal its power for a single great war. Moscow, meanwhile, would have to worry about China as well as its western front: the Soviets reportedly had 500,000 troops stationed on the Chinese border.<

Gloria Maxwell - Library Journal

Richard Nixon's 1972 trip to China took the American people by surprise, but this was a trip that had been in the making for some time. National security adviser Henry Kissinger had made a secret preliminary trip in 1971 to establish parameters for a visit by Nixon and a meeting with Mao Tse-Tung. At the time of the meeting in February 1972, the United States was bogged down in Vietnam, and China was recovering from the effects of the Cultural Revolution. Beginning with Nixon's trip to Beijing, the story then moves backward, relating the events that led up to the journey and telling the stories of how Mao, Nixon, Kissinger, and Chou En-Lai all rose to meet at this particular historical moment. Of more interest are the private negotiations that took place, as each side fought to gain an advantage, however slight. Historian MacMillan provides a detailed overview of the touchy situation as it related to Taiwan and China's persistent argument that Taiwan was, and always would be, part of mainland China. Barbara Caruso does a very credible job of reading, making this an enjoyable listening experience. Highly recommended for all audio collections.

Library Journal

The award-winning author and University of Toronto history professor considers what Nixon and Mao got out of their historic handshake in February 1972. With a six-city tour. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An account of the stunning 1972 visit by President Richard Nixon, long a Red-hater and -baiter, to the People's Republic of China. Canadian historian MacMillan (Paris 1919, 2002, etc.) begins as Nixon enters Chairman Mao's study, on Feb. 21 that year, for his lone meeting with the declining dictator, who was approaching 80 and in failing health. He then moves back four days, to the departure of the president's plane for China and proceeds with a chronological account of Nixon's weeklong visit, interrupting occasionally to offer contextual asides. These cutaways include biographies of the four principals (Mao, Nixon, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, Prime Minister Chou En-Lai); sketch the history of Communist China and Nationalist Taiwan; trace the course of the Vietnam War; and examine China's relations with the West and with the Soviet Union. We learn why Nixon made the decision to go and how Kissinger escaped from his press entourage in Pakistan to make a preliminary visit to China. We get glimpses of the president's famous yellow legal pads (on which he jotted down his "talking points" for the diplomatic sessions). We see the infighting between Kissinger and Secretary of State William Rogers, who found himself out of the loop; we learn more about Nixon's cold treatment of his wife and Mao's fondness for nubile farm girls. First-rate popular history featuring a compelling cast, swift narration and rigorous analysis. Agent: Caroline Dawnay/PFD

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Table of Contents

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Inside the waiting plane at Andrews Air Force Base, the rest of Nixon's party, which included his secretary of state, William Rogers, and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, watched the ceremonies on television. Winston Lord, a young aide to Kissinger, joked nervously that if the plane blew up, they would all see themselves going sky high. As Nixon was boarding the plane, one of the waiting reporters handed him an atlas of China that had the seal of the CIA on its cover. "Do you think they'll let me in with this?" asked the president, sharing a rare joke with the press as he climbed aboard Air Force One.

He, the man who had made his name as a dogged and vociferous anti- Communist, was reversing two decades of American policy by traveling to Beijing, into the very heart of Chinese Communism. As the plane climbed into the air, Nixon felt like an explorer: "We were embarking," he said in his memoirs, "upon a voyage of philosophical discovery as uncertain, and in some respects as perilous, as the voyages of geographical discovery of a much earlier time period."

He was taking a considerable gamble: that conservatives at home would not attack him and that liberals would not be disappointed in the results of his trip. He was pleased by the many fervent messages he had received wishing him well-but also concerned. "I told Henry that I thought it really was a question of the American people being hopelessly and almost naïvely for peace, even at any price," he recalled. Kissinger was, as always, reassuring. Americans were excited by the boldness of Nixon's move.

Nixon also did not know whether the Chinese themselves would overcome their decades of hostility to the United States and make his visit a success. Although every detail of his trip had been negotiated with the Chinese, Nixon did not know, when he clambered aboard his plane, whether he would have a meeting with Chairman Mao Tse-tung, who, from his seclusion in Beijing, still controlled China. If Nixon came back to the United States without having met Mao, his trip would be regarded as a failure and, worse, a humiliation for the United States.

After the trip was over, the Nixon people always maintained that they'd felt quite confident about a meeting. "Well, we knew in our gut," said Winston Lord, "that Mao would meet Nixon." The Americans had no firm promise, though, only vague assurances from the Chinese. "I know," Lord remembered, "that we made unilateral statements that Nixon would, of course, be seeing Mao. We said that we would like to know when this would be, but we knew that this was going to happen. It would have been unthinkable if it didn't."

It was a gamble that Nixon was prepared to take because he felt that it was crucial for the United States. He had always taken risks-as a young soldier in the army, when he passed the time (and made a lot of money) playing poker, and, later, as a politician. He had not spent those long and often difficult years making his way to the presidency to be a caretaker. And the United States needed some good news. The war in Vietnam had cost the country much, in lives, in money, and in reputation. It had led to deep divisions at home and a loss of influence and prestige abroad. The failure of the United States to finish, much less win, the war had contributed to a decline in American power. But it had only contributed; the extraordinary military and economic dominance that the United States had possessed from the end of the Second World War to the start of the 1960s could not last forever.

That dominance had been, in part, the product of the times. In 1945, other world powers lay defeated or, like Britain, so weakened by the huge costs of victory that they could no longer play a world role. The Soviet Union had great military strength and, by 1949, its own atomic bomb, but it had to make good the hideous costs of Hitler's invasion and of the war. By the end of the 1960s, though, western Europe and Japan had revived. The Soviet Union, although it would never be an economic power to match the United States, was investing heavily in its military. Newly independent countries such as India were playing their parts in the world. China's potential remained a question mark; the Communists had brought unity, but for much of the time since 1949 Mao's policies had sent the country down wasteful and destructive paths. Nevertheless, the Chinese revolution had become a model and an inspiration in many Third World countries.

Throughout the 1960s, Nixon worked on a political career that most people thought was over after his defeat by John F. Kennedy in the presidential race of 1960 and his even more humiliating failure to win the governorship of California in 1962. And he continued to develop his ideas on his favorite area of public policy, international relations. In the summer of 1967, he was invited to California to give the Lakeside Speech at Bohemian Grove, an institution that could only exist in North America, where rich and powerful men enjoy the arts and the simple, contemplative life for a couple of weeks in carefully rustic luxury. Nixon later said that he got more pleasure out of that speech-"the first milestone on my road to the presidency"-than any other in his career. In what would become known as the Nixon Doctrine, he argued that the United States could no longer afford to fight other nations' wars. Although the United States would offer support, its allies must be prepared to stand on their own feet. On the other hand, there were encouraging signs on the world scene. The Soviet leaders were still striving for Communist domination of the world, but they did not want war with the United States. Moreover, the Communist monolith had broken apart and China and the Soviet Union were at loggerheads. Nixon came to this realization, he told Chou when they finally met, in those years in the 1960s when he was out of office and traveling about the world.

Nixon, it has often been said, especially by his supporters, was the only American president of the late twentieth century who could have taken advantage of the split in the Communist world and made the breakthrough in China-U.S. relations. The man and the times were right for each other. As Nixon himself once told an interviewer, the mark of a leader "is whether he can give history a nudge." For the United States to refuse to deal with a major Asian power and one, moreover, that was the world's most populous country had never made much sense. As Nixon himself had written in a 1967 article in Foreign Affairs, "Taking the long view, we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates and threaten its neighbors." In a revealing comparison, he said that dealing with China was like dealing with angry blacks in America's ghettos: "In each case a potentially destructive force has to be curbed; in each case an outlaw element has to be brought within the law; in each case dialogues have to be opened." In the short term, China would simply have to be contained; in the longer term, though, it ought to be brought back into the community of nations. His article did not show the slightest sympathy for Chinese Communism; nor did it hold out much hope for an immediate change in China's relations with the world. By the time he was president, however, Nixon was starting to become more optimistic. In the election campaign, he repeated his warnings about the dangers of leaving China outside the international system and referred obliquely to it in his inaugural address in January 1969: "We seek an open world-open to ideas, open to the exchange of goods and people-a world in which no people, great or small, will live in angry isolation."

By the early 1970s, both the United States and China realized that the world had changed and that they needed new friends. As Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security adviser and close collaborator, wrote years later, "For both sides necessity dictated that a rapprochement occur, and the attempt had to be made no matter who governed in either country." And while public opinion did not matter in China, it did in the United States, and Americans, by and large, no longer felt the antipathy and fear toward Chinese Communism that had been such a feature of American politics in the 1950s.

Moreover, Nixon had banked the political capital he needed at home. Dealing with Communists was always tricky during the Cold War. American public opinion had been slow to recognize the threat from the Soviet Union immediately after the Second World War, but once convinced that the threat was real, it had become seized with the idea that Communists were very powerful and that they were everywhere, in Russia, in the center of Europe, in Asia, and throughout American society. Nixon himself had ridden to power by calling to those fears, no matter how exaggerated they sometimes were. His anti-Communist credentials were beyond challenge. From the time he had first entered politics in California, running against the liberal Democrat Jerry Voorhis in 1946, he had charged that his opponents were soft on Communism or worse. Nixon's campaigning, with its insinuation and accusation and its reliance on unproven statistics and stories, won him the name "Tricky Dick," but it worked. Americans listened to his repeated and forceful warnings about the threat that Communism posed to the United States and to American society. They watched as he stood up to Communists around the world, whether swapping boasts with the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow or defying the mobs who spat at him and tried to turn his car over in Venezuela.

Nixon's other great advantage was that he had the determination, the intelligence, and the knowledge to sense the currents in history and to take advantage of them. And he loved foreign policy. Indeed, he much preferred it to dealing with importunate congressmen and the minutiae of schools or highway building. "I've always thought this country could run itself domestically without a President," he told the journalist Theodore White in an interview during the presidential campaign. "All you need is a competent Cabinet to run the country at home. You need a President for foreign policy; no Secretary of State is really important; the President makes foreign policy." While presidents had always given State of the Union addresses to Congress, Nixon also started making annual reports on the world situation. And he made it quite clear from the moment he took office that he was going to use an enhanced National Security Council to run major foreign policy issues out of the White House. His first appointment, the morning after his inauguration in January 1969, was with his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. The first formal meeting he called was of his new NSC. Six weeks later, he was off on his first foreign trip, to see European leaders, among them a man he revered, Charles de Gaulle.

In the long and rambling conversations he had with his few intimates, Nixon returned constantly to the subject of the great leader, the man who boldly went on ahead, dragging his nation with him and changing the world. De Gaulle, of course. Winston Churchill-a favorite, it seems, with many American presidents, including George W. Bush. And General George Patton. The movie, starring George C. Scott, was one of Nixon's favorites, and he kept a biography of Patton beside his bed. Such great leaders, in Nixon's view, were usually lonely and often misunderstood, but they nevertheless worked indefatigably to advance the interests of their nations. "There were never tired decisions," he told Kissinger in one of their phone conversations, "only tired commanders."

The world, with its great issues, was, for Nixon, where the leader could show what he was made of. He had prepared himself thoroughly for this moment. As vice president, he had traveled more than any of his predecessors; in the 1960s, before his run for president, when he was meant to be a private citizen, he had toured the world incessantly, meeting with local leaders and browbeating American diplomats as though he were still in office. A low-ranking foreign service officer who had to entertain him in Hong Kong remembered his "tremendous intellectual curiosity." Nixon asked question after question, "picking my brain for everything and anything I could tell him about China." Marshall Green, later assistant secretary of state with responsibility for East Asia during the Nixon administration, met Nixon in Indonesia in 1967 and had long conversations with him, which Nixon tape-recorded for later reference. "I remembered him as the best informed on foreign affairs of all the luminaries who visited Jakarta during my four years there," Green said. The result of all the travel and the hours of questioning and conversation was that Nixon was the best-prepared president on foreign policy until Clinton. He also knew many foreign heads of state and foreign ministers personally.

Excerpted from Nixon and Mao by Margaret MacMillan Copyright © 2007 by Margaret MacMillan. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.