Henry kissinger zhou enlai biography

At 4:00 am, July 9, 1971, the Chaklala Airbase in Pakistan's capital was still enveloped in the darkness of night. A man wearing a black suit, a black hat and black glasses, walked toward a Boeing 707 with his entourage. Waiting for him on board was the Chinese reception team headed by Zhang Wenjin, Director-General of the Department of European and American Affairs of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, together with Wang Hairong, Tang Longbin and Tang Wensheng from the Protocol Department.

Once on board, the man in black took off his disguise and revealed his face. He was Dr. Henry Kissinger, then Assistant to the US President for National Security Affairs. He would soon become the first US government official to set foot on the Chinese territory after the founding of the People's Republic of China. His secret visit was code-named "Marco Polo" as it was much like Marco Polo's adventure to the mysterious oriental land in the 12th century. Both Chinese and American officials were on high alert in their very first meeting. The deed box held by the two American agents were chained to their wrists. The Chinese were in tunic suits and the Americans in dark suits. Neither side seemed to be ready to start a conversation. Finally, it was Kissinger, the veteran diplomat, that broke the ice. "I'm glad to meet Nancy Tang," said Kissinger, referring to Tang Wensheng on the Chinese side. Tang was born in New York, and Nancy was her English name. Kissinger joked that Tang could run for the president of the United States but he couldn't. That's because Kissinger was born in Germany while Tang was born in the United States. The US Constitution stipulates that to serve as president, one must be a natural born citizen of the United States. Kissinger's little joke worked, and the atmosphere in the cabin soon warmed up. 

Still, the friendly atmosphere during the flight was not enough to let both sides drop guards. Because everyone knew th

Even with the excisions, these documents go well beyond the accounts of the talks that Nixon and his national security assistant Henry Kissinger provided in their memoirs. The memoirs summarized major points of discussion, such as the Vietnam war and Nixon's articulate defense of the U.S.'s military presence in the Pacific, but they never hinted at the discussions of India-Pakistan issues and their accounts of the talks on the Soviet Union were cursory. Significantly, they only hinted at the pledges on Taiwan that Nixon made to Zhou, e.g., not to support Taiwanese independence, to "discourage Japan from moving into Taiwan" as the United States reduced its presence there, and not to support "any military attempts by the Government of Taiwan to resort to a military return to the Mainland." Further, Nixon pledged to remove U.S. military forces from Taiwan in conjunction with the resolution of the Vietnam war. Although Nixon and Kissinger saw those and other assurances on Taiwan as essential for U.S.-China rapprochement, they insisted on secrecy to minimize problems with Taiwan, an old Cold War ally, and its political allies in the United States.

Cold War and domestic political considerations very likely made Nixon and Kissinger less than eager to disclose the specifics of the pledges on Taiwan or the candid discussions of Soviet policy.

Burr, ed., The Kissinger Transcripts: The Top Secret Talks with Beijing and Moscow , A National Security Archive Document Reader, (New York, The New Press, 1999), 59-65.

283. Editorial Note

On July 9, 1971, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Henry Kissinger arrived in Beijing for three days of secret meetings with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. Although the purpose of the visit was to prepare for the announcement of President Richard Nixon’s trip to China, Kissinger and Zhou conducted an extensive review of regional and global issues, including the Soviet role in Sino-American relations. The subject first arose in connection with a news briefing three days earlier in Kansas City, Missouri, where the President asked Americans to reexamine their presumption of preeminence in international affairs. Twenty-five years after the Second World War, Nixon declared, the United States needed to move beyond involvement in Vietnam toward engagement with the Soviet Union and China, relaxing political tensions with the former and economic restrictions with the latter. Without revealing Kissinger’s secret trip, Nixon linked ping-pong diplomacy to triangular relations, hinting that further developments might eventually “open doors” in Beijing, if not Moscow. (Public Papers: Nixon, 1971, pages 802–813) Meeting with Kissinger on the afternoon of July 9, Zhou—referring to American involvement in Vietnam and Korea—offered an informal response to Nixon’s remarks:

“We believe that the peoples of any country should be capable of solving their own affairs without outside interference by others. There is the fact that twenty-five years after the Second World War, your hands are stretched out too far and people suffer from it in another country. Now if you do not withdraw, there will be a sticky situation. The President was right in Kansas City when he said that 25 years ago nobody would believe the U.S. could be in such a difficult position today. But Chairman Mao foresaw this at the time. He wrote an article shortly after World War II on the international situation. The word had spread that an attack was imminent against the USSR. Ch