Watching President Trump's visit to China, with all its policy implications, is a fascinating lesson in global geopolitics. But curiously the media seems to be silent on just how America got to its current relationship with China in the first place.
For those around in the day, there is still a strong memory of the lack of any American relationship with China when President Richard Nixon took office in January of 1969. America was then deep in the midst of the Cold War -- a war with all things Communist that had begun almost the moment World War II had ended. As time moved on Communist control of Eastern Europe was center stage. Eventually this included a decidedly hot war in Korea, followed by another in Vietnam. And it is almost an understatement that American policy makers of the day saw any relationship with Communist China—which had been openly assisting the North Koreans with their war against the Western ally of South Korea— as pretty close to treachery.
All of which contributed to a stunned world's reaction when, on the night of July 15, 1971, Nixon — he who had made his reputation as a decidedly hardline anti-Communist — appeared on the nation's television screens to announce, seemingly out of the blue, that he had directed his National Security Advisor, Dr. Henry Kissinger, to secretly visit Beijing and begin peace talks with Communist China and its decidedly infamous leader, Chairman Mao Zedong. And also reveal that Nixon himself would be traveling to China in person.
Thus it was that for almost a week in February of 1972 Nixon, accompanied by First Lady Pat Nixon and a small entourage, visited China. They met the legendary Chairman Mao, who was already starting down the road to ill health. But ill health or not, Mao insisted on greeting Nixon, joking that "I believe our old friend Chiang Kai-shek would not approve of this." Chiang, of course, was Mao's rival for the leadership of China, a decided fighter against Communism and for freedom who had been forced to abandon the mainland in favor of veritable isolation on the island of Taiwan.
Mao also amused Nixon by joshing that "I voted for you during your last election." Mao added, "I like rightists... I am comparatively happy when these people on the right come into power." Nixon loved it. To say the least, Nixon made the most of his visit. Specifically including a visit to the legendary "Great Wall of China." At the conclusion the two leaders issued the "Shanghai Communique" that had the two countries pledging that they would work together to normalize relations.
Nixon made a point while there of saying this:
This was the week that changed the world, as what we have said in that Communique is not nearly as important as what we will do in the years ahead to build a bridge across 16,000 miles and 22 years of hostilities which have divided us in the past. And what we have said today is that we shall build that bridge.
Note well the line from Nixon that said what was important was "what we will do in the years ahead to build a bridge across 16,000 miles and 22 years of hostilities which have divided us in the past. And what we have said today is that we shall build that bridge."
Indeed, Nixon did just that. And notably, when the 1972 election rolled around, the American people signaled their approval, as Nixon won in a 49-state landslide.
Which makes it particularly relevant and important that over the last few days, some 54 years later, a literal builder of great buildings, now President Donald Trump has arrived in Beijing to continue on with the bridge-building Nixon had vowed to begin on his opening-the-door trip to China all those many years ago.
Not for nothing are observers calling this Trump trip, in the words of The Hill's Niall Stanage, the "most important foreign trip of President Trump's second term to date." Indeed that is so.
All of which serves as a reminder of a truism in the world of American presidents. Once elected to a second term, with the reality of a limited number of days facing a term-limited President, Presidents not unusually are determined to make their legacy in history at moments exactly like Trump is now shaping his legacy in history. In this case by reaching out to the massive Asian country with billions of people and doing his best to treat it as a friend if not an ally.
Will President Trump's China statecraft work? Decades from now will China and the United States be allies? Friends? Rivals? We shall see.
But one thing is certain. What Americans are seeing President Trump lead in China, whether the media wants to admit it or not, is the direct result of the work decades ago of President Richard Nixon. Nixon was the original architect of modern U.S.-China relations. And President Trump, he the guy who made a considerable success by building on the works of earlier New Yorkers with gleaming new skyscrapers, has continued Nixon's work.
