Nixon In China: A Major Moment But Now Just History

I’m a big history buff, so I was quite excited when I heard that a grandson of Richard Nixon was traveling to China to retrace his grandfather’s groundbreaking visit to China in 1972. Christopher Nixon Cox’s trip last week saw him travel first to Beijing, then make stops in Hangzhou and finally my adopted hometown of Shanghai, as he followed the path his grandfather took more than 40 years ago on a trip that paved the way for the restoration of Sino-US ties after more than 20 years of hostility. The Cox trip started with lots of media fanfare, including photos of him posing at landmarks and meeting with Chinese officials including State Councilor Yang Jiechi in Beijing. But then the brouhaha and media attention quickly faded. I was closely watching for the latest reports, wanting to see who would greet this younger Nixon delegation in Shanghai and what places they would visit in China’s commercial capital that is vastly different now from the city the former US president visited in 1972.

So I was somewhat disappointed when the story disappeared from nearly all the headlines by the time Cox reached Hangzhou, when the only mention I could find was on the homepage of the US-based Richard Nixon Foundation. The news was even slimmer by the time he reached Shanghai, his last stop, with not even the Nixon Foundation printing any stories. The only mention I found about his last stop was a brief report on the local evening news, which simply said that Cox was in Shanghai but didn’t include any video or description of what he did.

Several factors were probably behind the trip’s rapid disappearance from the headlines after the first stop in Beijing. Perhaps most importantly, nothing substantive happened on Cox’s trip, which was really just a publicity stunt to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of his grandfather’s birth. Cox and his wife were young and attractive enough for some nice photo opportunities, but otherwise both seemed to come from very white-collar, unremarkable yuppie backgrounds in the US.

I suspect an equally important and more subtle factor behind the lack of interest was also the simple fact that most young Chinese today simply take for granted that US-China relations have been generally good for a long time despite the occasional disagreement. More broadly speaking, most Chinese also take for granted that their country is a solid member of the global community, meaning a visit like Cox’s is both common and expected.

That was hardly the situation when Nixon made his historic visit in 1972. In researching my recent book about the media in China, I devoted one chapter to Nixon’s trip and how it came about. The process was shrouded in secrecy since the US and China had been enemies since 1949 and both Nixon and Mao Zedong feared any signs of rapprochement might draw attacks from their opponents. I read with fascination how diplomats from Pakistan and Eastern Europe acted as mediators, helping both sides to first determine whether they wanted a meeting at all. That was followed by two secret trips to China by then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, laying the groundwork for Nixon’s trip in February 1972.

Even reporting in the Chinese media was muted, with little or no mention of the trip until it briefly exploded into the headlines with Nixon’s arrival on February 21, 1972, only to quickly disappear again a week later. One reporter I interviewed, who was working in Shanghai at that time, told me even he and his locally based peers didn’t know about the trip beforehand or the final stop in Shanghai. All Chinese media coverage of the trip came strictly from Beijing-based Xinhua reporters, he said.

I was only seven at the time, but still have some vague memories of that major moment that saw Nixon meet with Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai in the Chinese capital. My biggest memory wasn’t about the trip at all, but rather the two pandas that China gave the US as a gift. The pair, Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling, came to live at the National Zoo in my hometown of Washington D.C., where thousands of adoring youngsters like myself lined up for an hour or more to see them.

Interestingly, the English name of the document that resulted from that famous trip wasn’t taken from the Chinese capital but rather from China’s commercial center, which was where the Shanghai Communique was issued, laying the foundation for future US-China relations.

Returning to the subject of Shanghai, I did some research on Nixon’s visit to the city to see where exactly he went on this shorter, more touristy part of his trip after his more substantive meetings in Beijing. The places he visited reads like a list of the city’s neglected relics, including the Soviet-style Exhibition Center on Nanjing Road and the art deco Jinjiang Guest House where he stayed.

During my more than four years living in Shanghai, my only trip to the Exhibition Center was appropriately enough for the annual meeting of the Shanghai People’s Congress during my days as a reporter for Reuters. My only recollection of the building itself was how large and cavernous it was inside, and also how neglected it seemed. I also remember there was no cellphone signal inside, no doubt to make sure everyone inside was paying attention to the numerous speeches at the gathering.

In many ways it seems appropriate that the places Nixon saw in Shanghai have become little more than historical footnotes themselves, a sort of afterthought paying tribute to the China he saw during his landmark trip that has now become the domain of historians. The modern city that is Shanghai today bears little resemblance to the one Nixon saw, drawing attention to how much China has changed over the last 30 years, both economically and also in its increasing role in the global community.