Nixon's 1972 visit to China: What happened 50 years ago and why it matters today

File: Premier Zhou Enlai (R) and U.S. President Richard Nixon shake hands at an airport in Beijing, China, February 21, 1972. /Xinhua

On the morning of February 21, 1972, when he strode down the stairs of Air Force One after landing in Beijing, U.S. President Richard Nixon was quick to extend his hand toward Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai.

"Your hand has reached across the world's broadest ocean to shake mine," Premier Zhou told the first sitting U.S. president to visit the People's Republic of China. "It's been 25 years of no communication."

"When our hands met, one era ended and another began," Nixon wrote about the encounter later in his memoir.

Fifty years later, China and the United States are now holding a series of commemorative activities to honor the beginning of the era that has seen increasingly interwoven contacts and exchanges in different fields between the world's two largest economies today, and to take stock of the history and look into the future.

Leading up to the visit

File: Chairman Mao Zedong (L) meets with U.S. President Richard Nixon at Zhongnanhai in Beijing, China, February 21, 1972. /Xinhua

On the first day of Nixon's trip, or rather, just hours after his arrival in the Chinese capital, Chairman Mao Zedong met with him at Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound in downtown Beijing. They talked for more than an hour, and had a "serious and frank" exchange of views on China-U.S. relations and world affairs.

The face-to-face meeting between the two leaders came after years of testing and contact between the Chinese and the American sides.

In the late 1960s, when great changes took place in the world situation, both governments readjusted their diplomatic policies. In 1970, China and the United States resumed talks on the ambassador level.

Since his first days in office, Nixon had repeatedly signaled his desire to secure a U.S.-China rapprochement. To that end, he took the initiative through Pakistan and Romania to pass on messages to China.

When China marked its 21st National Day on October 1, 1970, Mao invited American writer Edgar Snow to join the celebration on Tian'anmen Rostrum, sending a signal to the U.S. that China was willing to improve relations with it. Then on December 18, he asked Snow to pass the message to Washington that Nixon would be welcome to Beijing for talks.

In the following April, a chance encounter between Chinese and U.S. table tennis players on the sidelines of a championship in Japan helped make the first U.S. group's visit to China and bring the two peoples closer, which later became known as "Ping-Pong diplomacy".

Nixon then sent his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, on a secret trip from July 9 to 11, 1971, to pave the way for his visit. Premier Zhou Enlai held talks with him on China-U.S. relations and the Taiwan question. Both sides reached agreement on the visit.

Days later, China and the United States announced the visit to the world at exactly the same time.

"Knowing of President Nixon's expressed desire to visit the People's Republic of China, Premier Zhou Enlai, on behalf of the Government of the People's Republic of China, has extended an invitation to President Nixon to visit China at an appropriate date before May 1972. President Nixon has accepted the invitation with pleasure," read the Chinese announcement released on July 16, 1971.

The world was shocked.

'The week that changed the world'

On the first day of Nixon's historic week-long visit to China, Zhou hosted a welcoming banquet for him at the Great Hall of the People.

In his toast, Zhou said the door to China-U.S. friendly exchanges had finally been opened, but also acknowledged "fundamental" and "great" differences in terms of social systems and governments of the two countries.

"However, these differences should not hinder China and the U.S. from establishing normal state relations," he said. "China and the United States needed to be clear about their differences and find common ground so as to reach a new starting point in bilateral ties."

Nixon responded by saying it was their common interests, which transcended the differences between the United States and China, that brought them together.

When he hosted a banquet honoring Zhou at the Great Hall of the People on the night of February 25, the day before he left Beijing for Hangzhou in eastern China, Nixon called on both sides to "build a new world order in which nations and peoples with different systems and different values can live together in peace, respecting one another while disagreeing with one another."

In the following days, Zhou accompanied Nixon from Hangzhou to Shanghai, where the two countries issued the Joint Communique of the People's Republic of China and the United States of America.

According to the Shanghai Communique, released on February 28, 1972, Washington has acknowledged that "there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China." China and the United States also acknowledged their differences, but agreed on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, including non-interference in the internal affairs of other states.

Hours after the issuance of the historic communique, Nixon wrapped up his visit to China, calling it "the week that changed the world."

Looking into the future

The Shanghai Communique, which established the principles of the one-China principle, has become the political foundation for the normalization of China-U.S. relations, and the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1979.

China and the United States have since built one of the world's most important and intertwined relationships. In 2020, they accounted for over one-third of the global economic output and over 50 percent of global growth. The people-to-people exchanges are even more prosperous.

However, the previous U.S. administration wrote off the engagement and launched relentless assaults on the China-U.S. relationship, plunging it to a historic low. Now, with U.S. President Joe Biden at the helm of the White House, China-U.S. relations are ushering in another critical moment.

Commenting on Nixon's ice-breaking trip, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in August 2020 said, "What has happened since then demonstrates that this monumental choice made by the two sides is the right one."

The differences between China and the United States have not affected the peaceful coexistence and cooperation between them, and they should not affect their bilateral ties in the future, he said.

During a virtual summit with Biden last December, President Xi Jinping said the most important event in international relations over the past 50 years was the reopening and development of China-U.S. relations, which has benefited the two countries and the whole world.

"The most important event in international relations in the coming 50 years will be for China and the U.S. to find the right way to get along," he said.

"History is a fair judge."