Abstract
In just one month, Nixon shook the foundations of both international relations and the global economy. On the evening of 15 July 1971, he appeared on national television to announce that Henry Kissinger, during a secret trip to China, had arranged for him to visit Beijing by May of the following year.1 After 20 years of often bitter Sino-American estrangement and diplomatic deadlock, Nixon’s broadcast came as a startling surprise both at home and abroad. It was, according to Dutch radio, ‘the most significant news since World War Two’.2 Not only did it signify a dramatic step towards a rapprochement between two sworn enemies, but it also opened the way to a new world order no longer frozen in bipolarity. With some cause, Nixon later wrote that his short television appearance had produced one of the greatest diplomatic surprises of the century.3 At the time, The Washington Post expressed widely held sentiments when it exclaimed that it was ‘flabbergasted at the momentous development’.4
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Notes
R Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York, 1978), p. 544.
Quoted in R Reeves, President Nixon: Alone in the White House (New York, 2001), p. 364.
J Hanhimäki, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (Oxford, 2004), p. 152; Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, p. 300.
M MacMillan, Seize the Hour: When Nixon Met Mao (London, 2007), p. 1.
Nixon, Memoirs, p. 554; Interview with William Rusher, in D Strober and S Strober, The Nixon Presidency: An Oral History of an Era (Washington, DC, 2003), p. 132.
R Boardman, Britain and the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1974 (London, 1976), p. 165.
See, V Kaufman, Confronting Communism: US and British Policies towards China (Missouri, 2001);
V Kaufman, ‘“Chirep”: The Anglo-American Dispute over Chinese Representation in the United Nations, 1950–71’, English Historical Review, 115 (April, 2000);
R Ovendale, ‘Britain, the United States and the Recognition of Communist China’, The Historical Journal, 26, 1 (1983).
R Nixon, ‘Asia After Viet Nam’, Foreign Affairs, 46 (October, 1967), p. 121.
Y Kuisong, ‘The Sino-Soviet Border Clash of 1969: From Zhenbao Island to Sino-American Rapprochement’, in Cold War History, 1 (August, 2000), p. 46.
C Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, 2001), pp. 260–1.
For detailed accounts of the Sino-American rapprochement, see: W Cohen, America’s Response to China (New York, 1990);
R Garson, The United States and China Since 1949: A Troubled Affair (New Jersey, 1994);
R Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation (Washington, 1985); Kissinger, White House Years;
J Pollock, ‘The Opening to America’, in Cambridge Modern History of China (Cambridge, 1991). For more recent accounts that make use of National Archive documents, see: MacMillan, Seize the Hour; Hanhimäki, The Flawed Architect; Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger;
W Burr, ‘Sino-American Relations, 1969: The Sino-Soviet Border War and Steps towards Rapprochement’, in Cold WarHistory, 1 (April 2001). From the China side, see: Jian, Mao’s China; Kuisong, ‘The Sino-Soviet Border Clash of 1969’.
See Y Komine, Secrecy in US Foreign Policy: Nixon, Kissinger and the Rapprochement with China (Ashgate, 2008), p. 186.
H Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (New York, 1994).
D Reynolds, Summits: Six Meetings that Shaped the Twentieth Century (London, 2007), p. 223.
J Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Cambridge, MA, 2003), p. 183.
J Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York, 2005), p. 172.
H Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York, 1994), p. 729.
A Walter, World Power and World Money: The Role of Hegemony and International Order (New York, 1993), p. 153.
J Spero and J Hart, The Politics of International Economic Relations (California, 2003), p. 24; Reynolds, One World Divisible, p. 405.
R Barnet, The Alliance: America, Europe, Japan — Makers of the Postwar World (New York, 1989), p. 299.
T Zeiler, ‘Nixon Shocks Japan, Inc’, in F Logevall and A Preston (eds), Nixon in the World: American Foreign Relations, 1969–1977 (Oxford, 2008), p. 290.
J Reston, The Lone Star: The Life of John Connally (New York, 1989), p. 407.
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© 2011 Andrew Scott
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Scott, A. (2011). The Nixon Shocks: The Opening to China and New Economic Policy. In: Allies Apart. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230348936_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230348936_3
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