China syndromeIs West Turning Away from Nixon's Approach to China?
In 1972 US President Richard Nixon shocked the world, and many in his administration, by announcing his intention to normalize relations with Communist China. Forty-eight years on, America and China are embarking on another perilous voyage, filled possibly with even greater uncertainty than encountered in the 1970s. Western powers fear Beijing is out to re-shape the liberal world order, subscribing to a growing view that not only does the Chinese Communist Party want to ensure its continued rule at home but to make China the number one global power.
In 1972 US President Richard Nixon visited the People’s Republic of China, ending years of estrangement between the two countries and lifting the bamboo curtain China had been hidden behind since Mao Zedong launched his Cultural Revolution in 1966.
“The week that changed the world,” was how Nixon dubbed his bold trip, which was pulled off after months of secret negotiations conducted by his then-National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger. Reminiscing later about the visit, Nixon said: “We were embarking on a voyage of philosophical discovery as uncertain, and in some ways as perilous as the voyages of geographical discovery of an earlier time.”
The U.S. leader had shocked the world a few months before the trip by announcing his intention of undertaking one, a plan that surprised many in the White House, too, including Alexander Haig, one of Nixon’s advisers.
Haig was taken aback when Kissinger left the Oval Office one day and told him, “Al, this fellow wants to open relations with China.” Haig responded: “Not a cold war warrior like Nixon.” To which Kissinger retorted, “I think he has lost control of his senses.”
Forty-eight years on, America and China are embarking on another perilous voyage, filled possibly with even greater uncertainty than encountered in the 1970s. The coronavirus pandemic has triggered, say analysts, the start of an historic decoupling of the world’s two leading economies, America and China.
It has given added impetus to an increasingly shared narrative in the U.S. and in other Western democracies that China cannot be trusted, the result of a series of aggressive policy moves by Beijing, say Western officials. They cite a growing military assertiveness by China with Asian neighbors, a crackdown on the former British colony of Hong Kong, predatory lending practices seemingly aimed at catching countries in a manipulative debt trap, and weaponizing commerce.
Western powers fear Beijing is out to re-shape the liberal world order, subscribing to a growing view that not only does the Chinese Communist Party want to ensure its continued rule at home but to make China the number one global power.
