Nixon's carefully choreographed trip, arranged in secret by Henry Kissinger, opened a channel between Washington and Beijing that had been frozen since the 1949 Communist revolution. His week-long visit, capped by meetings with Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai, reshaped Cold War geopolitics and set the stage for formal U.S.-China relations seven years later.
When Air Force One touched down at Beijing's airport, Nixon made a point of walking down the ramp alone and extending his hand to Zhou Enlai before anyone else could reach him. He had been told that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles once refused to shake Zhou's hand in 1954, and Nixon wanted the image of reconciliation to be unmistakable to the cameras.
The visit was the product of eighteen months of secret diplomacy, including Kissinger's clandestine 1971 trip to Beijing disguised behind a supposed stomach illness in Pakistan. Nixon, a lifelong anti-communist, understood the political shock value of being the one to open the door, famously remarking that only he could go to China without being accused of being soft on communism.
The trip included a banquet in the Great Hall of the People, toasts of fiery Maotai liquor, and a surreal visit to the Great Wall broadcast live to American television audiences at breakfast time. It produced the Shanghai Communiqué, in which both nations acknowledged their disagreements over Taiwan while committing to normalize relations, a diplomatic sleight of hand that held for decades.
Key people: Richard Nixon, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Henry Kissinger