Open Negotiations
Given his supreme authority in China, Mao, once convinced of the need to deal with the United States, could direct that his officials work with the Americans. He could also ensure that no word came out in China of Kissinger's first visit and the painstaking negotiations leading up to it. He could not, though, guarantee how the Americans would behave or prevent the American press from jumping on the story. Fortunately, Nixon, with Kissinger in a crucial supporting role, was determined to carry off the opening to China and do so before public opinion could form, for if the preliminary negotiations had been conducted publicly, the Americans would have found themselves with a very public controversy. The Chinese Communists, who had little understanding of how an open society worked, would have concluded that the American government was not sincere in wanting an opening and would have pulled back.
While secrecy is not always necessary in human affairs, in negotiations of this delicacy, with such huge potential for misunderstandings, it was essential. Nixon and Kissinger claimed, perhaps unfairly, that the State Department always leaked, but they were probably right to keep knowledge of their first contacts with China restricted to a very small number.
After all this secrecy, Nixon and Kissinger were, finally, during their visit in February 1972, able to officially get down to brass tacks in a series of meetings with Chou En-lai that served to confirm what had previously been covertly discussed. Nixon and Chou touched on the reasons that it had taken so long for their governments to talk directly to each other. Each assured the other that his country had no designs on the other. Each spoke for his own nation, both were also speaking for the benefit of the absent Mao, Nixon to reassure him of his peaceful intent, and Chou of his loyalty. It was only possible for China to move toward the United States, Chou remarked, because of the great trust that the people had in Chairman Mao. Nixon agreed eagerly: "Chairman Mao takes the long view, as I do." While Chou and Nixon frequently disagreed, they did so in a polite and even friendly spirit.
The main threat to China, from Chou's perspective, was the Soviet Union. The Soviets, he told Nixon, were socialists in word only, in reality they were imperialists and troublemakers. Soviet leaders from Stalin onward had been false to China. They had talked of handing back the territory Russia had taken in the time of the czars; of course, they had not done so. After the Second World War, the Soviet Union had signed a treaty with Chiang Kaishek and left the Chinese Communists on their own. In the conflict between China and India at the start of the 1960s, the Soviets had encouraged India to attack China. And, of course, in 1969 the Soviets had threatened a major war with China itself.
The result of these talks: The Shanghai Communique.