PART TWO

Richard Nixon's Long March

EN ROUTE. Everywhere we turn,we come upon the logo of this

voyage. "The Visit of President RichardM. Nixon to the People's Republic ofChina." It is thus emblazoned on ourbaggage tags, stationery, rucksacks. Atfirst it puts you ofE. But if you sit downand doodle, asking yourself: what is aself-effacing way to say it, answers leapnot instantly to mind. It is, after all, avisit. The U.S. principal is, after all,the President of the United States. Andthere is no getting around it that hisname is Richard M. Nixon, or that hisdestination is—CAUTION. It may appearstilted that every time one alludes tothe area in question, one speaks of it asthe "People's Republic of China." Ac-tually, it is not only proper but reassur-ing that we continue to do so. You see,we recognize a government which iscalled "The Republic of China," andthat government sits in Taiwan. Strictlyspeaking it is bad form to visit a terri-tory of a government you recognize,which territory is in mutinous conten-tion with the recognized government.Thus one would not, a few years ago,have dispatched the Queen of Englandto Biafra. And if one had done so, onewould have avoided designating it as avisit to Nigeria. Accordingly, the con-stant references to PRC were, one sup-posed, diplomatic appeasers, for thebenefit of Chiang Kai-shek. About thelast he would get.

Even so there is the narcissistic over-tone, which mocks republican tradition,reminding us of the distance we havetraveled since Benjamin Franklin andThomas Paine, the exemplar and theideologue of republican anti-pomp.There is Bonapartism in the air in theseparts—Lyndon Johnson would not haveventured to a Bar-B-Q without thePresidential sea! engraved on his bluejeans, and there is the beginning, inNixon's court, of Transylvanianchrome. After all, it would have suf-ficed, for purposes of communication,to refer to the "Presidential Visit to

the People's Republic of China," leav-ing it to our grandchildren to reach forthe almanac to remind themselves whowas President of the United States atthe Peking Summit, and to tbeir grand-fathers to hope that the almanac inquestion will be written in English,rather than Chinese.

The omens were not good. For in-stance, we were required to land atShanghai before going on to Peking.Why? Shanghai is four hours fromGuam, less than two hours from Pe-king. The ostensible reason for landingthere was to pick up a Chinese "naviga-tor." Nobody on the U.S. team thoughtto object that our regular navigatorscould home in on Peking all by them-selves, and if absolutely necessary,could have got a little help from theStrategic Air Command. No, the gentle-men Chinese had something symbolic inmind, which they did not, typically,divulge. The history-minded recalledthat the emperors of yore required thatvisiting nabobs pause well outside theconfines of the capital to sue for per-mission to go further.

AND THEN, It was somewherealong the line suggested that the Presi-dential party plop down in a Boeing747, which would have made unneces-sary, for instance, the use of two 707sfor the press. A frozen no. As it is, wewere permitted only to put down in thesleek American jet, after which we weremade to travel {to Hangchow andShanghai) in one of theirs (made inRussia). Another bad omen: we wereallowed to carry ofT the aircraft only asingle suitcase. Why? You figure it out.I can understand being told to bringonly a single suitcase to the Normandylanding. Hardly to the capital of a na-tion of 800 million people, a very smallpercentage of whom would be dis-tracted by the necessity of carrying afew dozen extra bags. Hardly the way

to get off to a good start with WalterCronkite, I mused.

Aboard the plane, on the endless trip,we read, mostly. Theodore White, thegifted old China hand, renowned nowfor his series on the making of Ameri-can Presidents, was ecstatic at the pros-pect of revisiting old haunts, and ofjustifying his early optimism about thevector of Chinese Communism. Wetease each other. He looks up from hispile of clips from time to time, offeringme anti-Red Chinese tidbits in returnfor anything favorable I can supply himfrom my own pile. At one point hebeamed. "I have a clip here that saysthe Red Chinese have killed 34 millionpeople since they took over. What willyou offer me for that?" I rummageabout and offer him the clip that saysthe Red Chinese have reduced illiteracyfrom 80 per cent to 20 per cent, but hescoffs, like a pawnshop broker. "Hell, Ibave that one." I scrounge some morefor pro-Chinese Communist data andfinally tell him, disconsolate, that I can'tfind one more item to barter for his;and he smiles contentedly at his tacticalvictory. But has he lost the war?

Peking. The press speculated fever-ishly over the astonishingly spare re-ception given to President Nixon at theairport. He himself had only a fewminutes' notice that he would come outof Air Force One onto an all but deso-late scene. He went through the gauntritual with the kind of smile you wearwhen you congratulate the man whobeat you in the election. They stoodthere at attention during the playing ofthe two national anthems, Mr. and Mrs.Nixon, Chou En-lai, Rogers, Kissinger,the lot of tbem, like wax figures inMme. Tussaud's museum, and one feltthe jolt of surprise that, the music over,they should have come to life, to marchon bravely, in the silence—no music,no applause, no bustle, no crowd-roar—to review the honor guard, dutifullythere to do its listless bit. The motor-

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cade swung on determinedly, fifty min-utes into the heart of Peking. The onlycrowds were towards the end of thejourney, in the thick of the central city.And they weren't Chinese ogling to seethe President of the United States, butChinese en route, at lunch time, fromone side of the avenue to the other,stopped by police until the processionwent by. That would appear to bavebeen the single concession of the gov-ernors of the People's Republic ofChina: they did not make PresidentNixon stop for the red lights.

W E JOKED about it, at the presstable. One correspondent, reflecting onthe tumultuous public reception recentlygiven to Haile Selassie, reminded ustbat, after all, the Ethiopian govern-ment is older than the American Gov-ernment—absif invidia. A second won-dered whether the Western press hadn'tunderestimated the success of the Cul-tural Revolution. "Maybe the Chinesewe saw are all there are left?" Butthrough it, Chou's shaft had penetrated.There was Wounded Pride in the air.Everyone knows that in a totalitariancountry the size of the crowd tends tobe a decision of the masters. But Nixonhad seen crowds reach up, piercing thescreen of official impassivity, to touchhis hand. It was so in Poland in 1959,when he was Vice President and hun-dreds of thousands of Poles, defying theofficial chill, cheered and cheered andcheered. Nothing like that would hap-pen to Nixon, not even after the bene-

diction later in the afternoon from MaoTse-tung. He never, anywhere, causeda public ripple.

It wasn't so much that the peoplewere hostile to him, though they hadevery right to be after a generation'ssaturation bombing, as that they wereindifferent to him, somehow tuned out;leaving these matters, as they had beentaught to do, to their masters, whocould be trusted to advise them when itserved the purposes of the People's Re-public to cheer lustily, as they had donefor the Lion of Judah. We were, afterall, among people who have not yetbeen informed that an American astro-naut walked on the moon in 1970.

Then Mao Tse-tung gave Nixon anaudience, and although the peopleweren't thereupon turned on, the offi-cial atmosphere flushed out. That nightI espied Personal Diplomacy. Everyonecould see Richard Nixon in the largebanquet hall, seated alongside Chou ata round table of a dozen or so digni-taries, but I saw him best, not alonefrom the advantage of being seated onlytwenty yards away (the correspondentswere strung out alphabetically). Iwatched him through binoculars, afterhis remarks, raising his glass to toastChou En-lai and the three or fourChinese officials seated at his table.Then—to the astonishment of everyoneand the consternation of the SecretService—he strode purposefully one byone to the three surrounding tables andgreeted Chinese official after Chineseofficial, his face red with the sweat ofquite genuine idealism, bowing, smilingradiantly, touching each individual

glass. He looked altogether noble,ffushed with the righteousness of greatpurpose, and the two dozen Chinese—old generals, commissars, politicians—were quite visibly startled, first at beingapproached at ail, then at being wooedso ardently.

K. iNDLY make no mistake about themoral courage all this required. It isunreasonable to suppose that anywherein history have a few dozen men con-gregated who have been responsible forgreater human mayhem than the hostsat this gathering and their spiritual col-leagues, instruments all of Mao Tse-tung. The effect was as if Sir HartleyShawcross had suddenly risen from theprosecutor's stand at Nuremberg anddescended to embrace Goering andGoebbels and Doenitz and Hess, beg-ging them to join with him in the mak-ing of a better world. Never mind thedifference, that the latter were con-victed butchers, aggressors, and geno-cide-makers, and the former, by thenarrowest quirk of the Cultural Revolu-tion, are not: all that that difference re-minds us of is that history is indeedthe polemics of the victor.

We were, after all, in Peking. Andamong the pamphlets distributed to theAmerican press in the hotel corridors'literature racks was a speech by MaoTse-tung less than two years old. "Whilemassacring the people in other coun-tries," goes this particular thought ofChairman Mao, "U.S. imperialism isslaughtering the white and black people

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in its own country. Nixon's fascist atro-cities have kindled the raging ffames ofthe revolutionary mass movement in theUnited States. The Chinese peoplefirmly support the revolutionary strug-gle of the American people. I am con-vinced that the American people whoare fighting valiantly will ultimately winvictory and that the fascist rule in theUnited States will inevitably be de-feated." Moreover, in contemporary Pe-king, you cannot pass by a monumentwithout staring into the face of JosefStalin. That was the backdrop ofNixon's performance.

On top of that, there was the mom-ing's performance at the airport. Ifcharity covers the Big Lie, here wascharity's test. Mr. Nixon began hisspeech by thanking Premier Chou forhis government's "incomparable hospi-tality." At the hands of an ironist, thatstatement would have brought down thehouse. With Mr. Nixon, one merelyscratched one's head; nervously. Hewent on to pull out every stop.

—He quoted Mao.—He said that he wished the United

States and China might undertake a"long march" together, which fawninghistorical reference was as if Chou hadsaid that China wanted to find itselfside by side with America the very nexttime we face the rockets' red glare.

—He talked about things like equaldignity for the people of the nationsof the world, to the premier of thelargest totalitarian country in the his-tory of the world.

—And then . . . and then, he toastedChairman Mao, Chou En-Iai, and thewhole lot of them. I would not havebeen surprised, that night, if he hadlurched into a toast of Alger Hiss.

Premier Chou was more cautious. Hehad begun the day with a snub, hewould end it with condescension. Be-hind him in the huge hall the ffags ofthe two countries hung grandly—theusual business, at state banquets. Ex-cept that the U.S. flag was just a littlesmaller than the Red Chinese ffag.Proletarian subtlety. Then, not a wordfrom Chou in acceptance, if that is theword for it, of Richard Nixon. Hedidn't even say that Nixon is an amiablerunning dog. The stress, always, wasPeople to People, it being Commun-ism's theoretical insistence that theAmerican people are okay, but theirleaders are awful, and something of alacuna in Communist theory just how itcame about that Okay People electfascist, warmongering leaders.

There was not a word, in Chou'sspeech, which would have earned him ademerit in Communist theology class.Came the toast: "I propose a toast"—to President and Mrs. Nixon? No. ". . .to the health of President and Mrs.Nixon." The difference between toast-ing someone, and toasting someone'shealth is, well, noticeable. (Two ban-quets later, at Hangchow, Nixon slidunobtrusively into the more cautiousformulation.) And, finally, Choutoasted "to the friendship betweenChinese [sic] and American peoples,"

which sentiment fiirted not at all withheresy, friendship among all peoples be-ing a postulate of Marxist dogma. Theimplications were not—are not—im-mediately apparent. But watching theface of Chou through the binoculars,one could not help but reflect that thefissured smile of the airport hadbroadened, as it might have done onthe face of his hero Stalin, when theboys got together to toast peace, dig-nity, and self-determination for all peo-ples, back at Yalta.

E'VERY DAY, the correspondents weregiven a choice of a half-dozen ChineseCommunist achievements to witness,and it soon occurred even to the best-disposed among us that our affablehosts had lost sight of the critical per-spective. It has after all been a verylong time—fifteen? twenty years?—since reporters in any force have beenpermitted to visit China. Totalitariansocieties are very good at hiding thingslike concentration camps, Liu Shao-ch'is, and material misery. Why are theyso poor at hiding ideological infantil-ism? Perhaps because it is like hidinggrass. But I mean, there was the Presi-dent of the United States and his mod-erately cosmopolitan staff, plus all ofus, seated in the ballet hall, a newbuilding which, incidentally, makes theLexington Avenue subway look likeDisneyland. Would we view a Chineseclassic? A modern classic?

It was a thing called "The Red De-tachment of Women," which is China'sGone with the Wind or, better. UncleTom's Cabin. The synopsis was printedand given to each of us, and from it Iquote exactly.

The heroine, Ching-hua, is the prop-erty of a "despotic landlord" who (ActI) gives orders to one of his "runningdogs" to sell her. She is mercilesslybeaten, escapes, and is retrieved by twoRed Army men who feel "profoundproletarian feelings" towards her. Theyembrace her (Act II) into a Red De-tachment of Women where she is warm-ly received by "the soldiers and vil-lagers whose class feelings for her areas deep as sea." During a liberationmaneuver against her former slavemas-ter she goofs (Act III) out of an ex-cess of zeal, and is warned (Act IV)that "only by emancipating all mankindcan the proletariat achieve its own finalemancipation."

I feel quite sure that, at this point inthe ballet, Richard Nixon was prompted

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to poke Pat under the seat, but betweenhim and her was seated Madame MaoTse-tung, who is the iron patroness ofthis kind of thing—it was her resent-ment of an opera insufficiently servileto Maoism that touched off the Cul-tural Revolution in 1965; and anyway,one might as well have frolicked acrossthe body of Anna Pauker, as acrossChiang Ching. In Act V, our heroine'sprincipal Red protector is overwhelmedby the Kuomintang, but when he re-covers consciousness, "he stands rock-firm and faces the pack of bandit troopsin righteous indignation." Only (Act VI)to die "a heroic death with the fearlessheroic spirit of a Communist" but not,you will be glad to learn, until after hehas managed (at not inconsiderable op-eratic length) to "denounce the diehardreactionaries." At which point the RedArmy moves in, and "the broad revo-lutionary masses flock to join the RedArmy amidst resounding battle songs."The last sentence in the synopsis is amodest thought for today: "Forward,forward, under the banner of Mao Tse-tung, forward to victory!"

THE MUSE ringing in our ears, thenext morning we visited Peking Uni-versity, probably the most shatteringsingle experience of the journey be-cause one had the sense of participat-ing in a show trial. Our host was theactive head of the university, who gothis advanced degree in physics fromthe University of Chicago in 1926,which solved the language problem,right? Wrong. The poor derelict, whoseEnglish had been previously ascertainedto have been as good as Eric Sevareid's,spoke through an interpreter. Becausethe room was full of Red Guard thugs,and it was obvious that they desired tohear his answers so that, if necessary,they could later on correct him forideological irregularities.

Cautiously, during the question pe-riod, we probed the circumstances ofhis and his university's humiliation,without of course exactly letting on. Weknew that he knew that we knew thathe was reduced to puppetry, but bettera puppet alive, than to stand rock-firmand face the pack of bandit troops.Someone asked him what had been theerrors of Peking University before theGreat Proletarian Cultural Revolutioncaught up with them, and he repliedthat the errors, partly his own responsi-

bility, had been to imitate Russian uni-versities by forgetting the imperative ofproletarian politics and lending itselfinstead to the cultivation of an aca-demic elite. Translated, that means Pe-king U sought excellence. How had helearned the exact nature of his delin-quencies? A "Mao Thought PropagandaTeam" came to the university in the fallof 1968 and stayed on a whole year.After they left, the governing of theuniversity was turned over to a "revolu-tionary council," of which this wretchedman had become the spokesman, sur-rounded by brachycephalic peasantswho, knowing only how to praise thethoughts of Chairman Mao, need knowaught else, in order to correct the ven-erable professor.

We puzzle that our hosts should haveproudly invited us to view contempo-rary Chinese Communist academic life.One recalls Evelyn Waugh's Azania,where the young black prince, incom-pletely educated in Western habits, gavea state banquet to two very Britishladies come to inspect the local situa-tion in behalf of the Royal Society forthe Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.In his toast, the prince solemnly averredthat, in Azania, they worked indus-triously to devise means of being cruelto animals, that they had not yetachieved English standards, but thatthey were every day making progress.

There came the long lull, when thesight-seeing became routine, the ban-quets had piled upon each other, twelvecourses every time, toasts and moretoasts, and the speculation became raz-zled on just what Nixon and Chouwould finally come up with—somethinggrainier, we hoped, than the soapsudswe had been fingering for days now. Iremember the cartoon in Punch afterthe summit conference in Washingtonbetween Sir Anthony Eden and Presi-dent Eisenhower. The artist depictedEden in long tweed skirt and shawlsitting contentedly on a bench in frontof the White House, Eisenhower inknickers and sportcoat; holding hands.The caption summarized the Joint Com-munique: " 'Darling?' 'What, darling?''Nothing, darling. Just darling, dar-ling.' "

Time, meanwhile, a little time, topause over some of the mannerisms ofthe principals. Chou's own, distinctivetics, we are unfamiliar with, but onenotices that his government is given toapproaching all problems numerically.When, for instance, it was observed

years ago that the revolution continuedto tolerate those unclean elements,Chairman Mao promulgated the EourPurifications Movement, among whoseaccomplishments was the repeal of thepremature Three Freedoms and OneGuarantee. The Maoists were histori-cally scarred by the Fifth Extermina-tion Campaign Chiang Kai-shek hadmounted against them in the Thirties,which of course they survived by citingthe proverb. "One spark can consume ahundred miles of prairies." The FivePrinciples first enunciated by Chou atthe Bandung Conference way back in1955 were reaffirmed at the banquetgiven for Mr. Nixon, notwithstandingthat the Cultural Revolution has elimi-nated the Four Olds (old ideas, oldculture, old customs, old habits), sometime after withdrawing from the Hun-dred Flowers, whose blooming was amistake, as recognized at the EightGreat Rallies of the Cultural Revolu-tion, which was precipitated by Ma-dame Liu's misdirected modification ofthe Ten Conditions on Agriculture inher (totally inadequate) Later Ten Con-ditions on Agriculture.

MR. NIXON would not likely, atproclamation-time, herald the SeventhDay Principles of Nixon-Mao, but weknew that he would certainly call theagreement the most momentous docu-ment since the Ten Commandments.We were right.

Mr. Nixon had just come from visit-ing the Great Wall. Undeniably, theGreat Wall is the greatest wall in thehistory of the world. Absolutely nodoubt about it. But look what the GreatWall did to Mr. Nixon. "[The GreatWall] is a certain symbol of what Chinain the past has been and of what Chinain the future can become. People whocould build a wall like this certainlyhave a great past to be proud of and a ,people who have this kind of a past \must also have a great future." Mr.Nixon floats through that kind of thingwithout ever having to face the difficul-ties of it. as he would unquestionablyhave to do if he were a member ofthe House of Commons. The troublewith the statement is a) the China thatbuilt the Great Wall, not many genera-tions after Socrates drank the hemlock,is onlv dimly related to Mao's China, ifyou discount the fact that the EmperorChin and the incumbent both dispose of

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slaves; b) the whole emphasis of Mao'sChina is to forget, not remember.China's past; and c) anyway, peoplewho have a great past don't necessarilyhave a great future, e.g., Portugal. Thestatement was therefore inaccurate,maladroit, and anti-historical: But whocared?

And then the ballet of the night be-fore, said Mr. Nixon, was "very drama-tic—excellent theater [C+ would havebeen a generous rating], and excellentdancing [B] and music [C—] and reallysuperb acting [B—]. I have seen balletsail over the world, including the SovietUnion and the United States. This iscertainly the equal of any ballet I haveseen." Bullsticks. It is not the equal ofany ballet Mr. Nixon has seen. Oh dear.One has the feeling that if Mr. Nixon,in his second term, having decided topatch up our difficulties with the Devil,travels down to conduct a summit con-ference, he will tell Charon that he hasused ferries all over the world, but thatCharon's is absolutely the equal of anyhe has ever ridden on.

The moment came. If we assumethat Henry Kissinger exacted from ChouEn-lai the promise that he would nottake the occasion of President Nixon'svisit to China to dilate on the depravi-ties of the United States and its foreignpolicy, then you would not have beensurprised, sitting in the packed mini-auditorium that served us in Shanghaias the press room in which the jointcommunique was distributed to the rav-enous press, that the Chinese sectionof the communique employed civil lan-guage. It is not known how much thisordeal of self-restraint cost our hosts,whose public rhetoric has for so manyyears now been tuned to the running-dog mode. It is as if, suddenly, youasked Arthur Rubinstein please to playhis recital on an atonal scale.

S'TILL they managed it. And. at theother end of the communique. RichardNixon, having surrendered on the prin-cipal point, nestled into the cliches inwhich all statesmen can relax. In par-ticular Western statesmen, because ourtypes, when we talk about democracy,national sovereignty, and individualfreedom, however we allow for signi-ficant differences in the practice, havein mind something not altogether dif-ferent from democracy, justice, and in-dividual freedom. While the other side.

recognizing the uses of these distinc-tively Western ideals, uses the languagea bit ill-fittingly, but so doggedly nowthat the intellectual slouch is no moreremarkable than the bagginess of thetrousers of Mao-man.

The eyes raced over the communique—Presidential Press Secretary RonaldZiegler would seconds hence enter theroom to answer questions (we did notknow that it would be Kissinger whowould answer them), and it was re-quired that we become instantly fami-liar with the rather verbose statement,the end-point of the endless week: thiswas our summit, and we could notdawdle. The gentleman on my right.

august representative of the New YorkTimes, quickly got the point. "Scoreone for them, zero for us," he whis-pered. Except that New York Timesdispatches do not do that kind of thing,he played, later in the press room, withthe lead: "President Nixon departedfrom China today, leaving Taiwan be-hind."

Henry Kissinger, who more closelythan any man in living memory super-intends Presidential foreign policy, wasvisibly nervous, his wisecracks (he isgenuinely witty) edgy and forced. Whenthe inevitable question about Taiwancame up he was as ready for it as thebride to answer: "I do." It is verydifficult, he said, to talk about—hecouldn't call it a "country." since it wasprecisely this point that our hosts werecontending. To call it an "area," on theother hand, would have been a little un-feeling. So be referred to It, throughout,as an "issue," which, indisputably, it is.He said tbat because of the particularsensitivity of the Issue, he would say

what he had to say otie time only; thathe would not return again to the Issue,no matter how elliptically or ingetiiouslyother questioners in the room might ap-proach the subject. The fact of thematter, he said, is that the President'sannual World Report, issued only amonth ago, reiterated the United StatesGovernment's determination to stand bythe mutual defense treaty with Taiwan."Nothing has changed on that position."

Of course, everything had changed,and everyone in the room knew it, in-cluding Kissinger, although it is truethat his understanding of public com-munications is anomalously underdevel-oped. Mr. Nixon had caved in: hewould mention, in the communique,Vietnam and Korea, but there wouldbe no mention of U.S. fidelity to Tai-wan, inclusio unius, exclusio alterius.The rest was summit boilerplate:—professions of faith in peace and na-tional sovereignty, anti super-powertalk, and of course the talk about fu-ture talk.

"This was the week that changed theworld," Nixon would say giddily a fewhours later at the final banquet. Foronce, there was no hyperbole. Mr.Nixon has adjusted American andAsian politics. The countdown for Tai-wan independence has begun.

Of course, Taiwan will be there aslong as the United States Governmentmaintains the treaty. But before it isformally rescinded, it is likely to bereduced to mere metaphor, the vectorof American foreign policy in Asiahaving been clearly charted. Our recog-nition and support for an independentTaiwan are, the Chinese part of thecommunique states, the "crucial ques-tion obstructing tbe normalization ofrelations between China and the UnitedStates." American know-how is famousfor eliminating obstructions. The Demo-cratic Party Presidential candidateswill, one by one (with a conspicuousexception) call for reconsidering themutual defense treaty.

Four years ago Henry Kissinger, be-fore joining the staff of President-electNixon, evaluated Defense SecretaryClark Clifford's attack on PresidentThieu on the matter of the shape ofthe negotiating table at Paris. He saidto a friend, "If the United States slipsthe rug from under the Thieu govern-ment, the word will go out among thenations of the world that it is perhapsrisky to be an enemy of the UnitedStates. But to be its friend is fatal." D

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