When John Adams and Alice Goodman wrote Nixon in China<\/em>, just a decade and a half after the events it depicted, they recognised that the meeting it recreated was the stuff of grand opera. Rather than merely two politicians coming face to face, it marked the end of one era and the beginning of a new one \u2013 the moment when two great societies with very different systems finally engaged with each other after decades of silence.<\/span><\/p>\n This year marks a half-century since Nixon\u2019s visit. Between 21 and 28 February 1972, he met the ageing Mao Zedong, China\u2019s paramount leader, and negotiated the first stages of the rapprochement between two countries that had no diplomatic ties in 1949, following Mao\u2019s communist revolution.<\/span><\/p>\n For Nixon, the mission came at a time when the complex problems of the Cold War were becoming more pressing. He had come to office in 1969 with impeccable qualifications as a Cold Warrior, having made his name as Eisenhower\u2019s vice-president in the 1950s, sent out to do rhetorical battle with the Soviet Union. Yet as president he faced a range of difficulties. The US was in flames, its cities riven with unrest. Overseas, his country was caught in the murderous quagmire of the Vietnam War, unable to defeat its opponents or to withdraw honourably. Nixon had been elected in part because he claimed to have a plan to end that war.<\/span><\/p>\n Meanwhile, friction with the Soviet bloc was building. In August 1968, months before Nixon was first elected president, Warsaw Pact tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia to snuff out the \u201cPrague Spring\u201d period of political liberalisation.<\/span><\/p>\n Nixon certainly hoped that he could reduce tensions in these hotspots for the US through a policy of detente. And his subsequent efforts to improve relations with China provided an opportunity for a dramatic turn of events that would signal an entirely new sort of diplomacy. <\/span><\/p>\n US politicians of both parties had mooted a thaw with Beijing in the mid-1960s. However, the outbreak of the violent Cultural Revolution<\/a> in 1966, during which China dramatically scaled back diplomatic relations with almost all outside powers, left little possibility of a rapprochement under Nixon\u2019s predecessor, Lyndon Johnson. Over the following years, the Chinese leadership seemed to be in turmoil. Mao was old, and it was increasingly unclear who would succeed him.<\/span><\/p>\n Yet, even in his first weeks and months in office, Nixon began to set in motion the launch of a new policy \u2013 albeit discreetly at first. The new US national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, was given the task of organising the first visit to China by a US official since the 1949 revolution. In 1971, following mediation by Pakistan, Kissinger flew secretly to Beijing for talks. And on 15 July 1971, Nixon announced his planned trip.<\/span><\/p>\n Listen | Rana Mitter talks to Matt Elton about Nixon\u2019s visit to China in 1972 and how it changed the course of the Cold War, on this episode of the HistoryExtra<\/em> podcast:<\/strong><\/p>\n![\""Photo\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2022\/02\/GettyImages-1354435492_cmyk-ef3b527.png?quality=90&resize=492%2C413"\" "\\"\"Female\\"")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Remote rapprochement<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n