The basis for the quasi-alliance had been the Chinese conviction that the United States’s contribution to global security was indispensable. Beijing had entered the relationship looking to Washington as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism. Now Mao and Zhou began to hint that what looked like feebleness in Washington was in reality a deep game—trying to set the Soviets and Chinese against each other in a war designed to destroy them both. Increasingly, however, the Chinese accused the United States of something worse than treachery: ineffectualness. This is where matters stood when, at the end of 1973, China’s domestic travail began to parallel our own.

  CHAPTER 11

  The End of the Mao Era

  AT EVERY STAGE of China’s diplomatic revolution, Mao was torn between Sinocentrist pragmatism and revolutionary fervor. He made the necessary choices and opted for pragmatism cold-bloodedly though never happily. When we first met Mao in 1972, he was already ill and speaking—with some irony for an avowed atheist—about having received an “invitation from God.” He had destroyed or radicalized most of the country’s institutions, including even the Communist Party, increasingly ruling by personal magnetism and the manipulation of opposing factions. Now, as his rule was nearing its end, Mao’s grip on power—and his capacity to manipulate—were both slipping away. The crisis over Lin Biao had destroyed Mao’s designated successor. Now Mao had no accepted heir, and there was no blueprint for a post-Mao China.

  The Succession Crisis

  Instead of choosing a new successor, Mao attempted to institutionalize his own ambivalence. He bequeathed to China an extraordinarily complex set of political rivalries by promoting officials from both sides of his vision of China’s destiny. With characteristic convolution, he fostered each camp and then set them against each other—all while fomenting “contradictions” within each faction (such as between Zhou and Deng) to make sure no one person became dominant enough to emerge with authority approaching his own. On the one side stood a camp of practical administrators led by Zhou and subsequently Deng; on the other were the ideological purists around Jiang Qing and her faction of Shanghai-based radicals (to whom Mao later applied the derisive label “the Gang of Four”). They insisted on a literal application of Mao Zedong Thought. Between them stood Hua Guofeng, Mao’s immediate successor—to whom fell the awesome (and eventually unmanageable) task of mastering the “contradictions” that Mao had enshrined (and with whose brief career the next chapter will deal).

  The two principal factions engaged in numerous disputes over culture, politics, economic policy, and the perquisites of power—in short, on how to run the country. But a fundamental subtext concerned the philosophical questions that had occupied China’s best minds in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: how to define China’s relationship with the outside world and what, if anything, it could learn from foreigners.

  The Gang of Four advocated turning inward. They sought to purify Chinese culture and politics of suspect influences (including anything deemed foreign, “revisionist,” bourgeois, traditional, capitalist, or potentially anti-Party), to reinvigorate China’s ethic of revolutionary struggle and radical egalitarianism, and to reorient social life around an essentially religious worship of Mao Zedong. Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, a former actress, oversaw the reform and radicalization of traditional Beijing opera and the development of revolutionary ballets—including The Red Detachment of Women, performed for President Nixon in 1972, to the American delegation’s general stupefaction.

  After Lin fell from grace, Jiang Qing and the Gang of Four survived. Ideologues under their sway dominated much of the Chinese press, universities, and the cultural sphere, and they used this influence to vilify Zhou, Deng, and China’s supposed tendency toward “revisionism.” Their conduct during the Cultural Revolution had made them a number of powerful enemies, however, and they were unlikely contenders for succession. Lacking association with the military establishment or the Long March veterans, they were unlikely aspirants for the top position: an actress and theatrical producer seeking posts that only a small handful of women had reached in all of Chinese history (Jiang Qing); a journalist and political theorist (Zhang Chunqiao); a leftist literary critic (Yao Wenyuan); and a former security guard, plucked from obscurity after agitating against his factory’s management and possessing no power base of his own (Wang Hongwen).1

  The Gang of Four stood opposite a camp of relative pragmatists associated with Zhou Enlai and, increasingly, Deng Xiaoping. Though Zhou himself was a dedicated Communist with decades of devoted service to Mao, for many Chinese he had come to represent order and moderation. Both to his critics and to his admirers, Zhou was a symbol of China’s long tradition of mandarin gentleman-officials—urbane, highly educated, restrained in his personal habits and, within the spectrum of Chinese Communism, his political preferences.

  Deng possessed a blunter and less refined personal style than Zhou; he punctuated his conversations by spitting loudly into a spittoon, producing occasional incongruous moments. Yet he shared, and went beyond, Zhou’s vision of a China that balanced its revolutionary principles with order and a quest for prosperity. Eventually he was to resolve Mao’s ambivalence between radical ideology and a more strategically based reform approach. Neither man was a believer in Western principles of democracy. Both had been uncritical participants in Mao’s first waves of upheaval. But in contrast to Mao and the Gang of Four, Zhou and Deng were reluctant to mortgage China’s future to continuous revolution.

  Accused by their critics of “selling out” China to foreigners, both the nineteenth- and twentieth-century sets of reformers sought to use Western technology and economic innovations to bolster China’s strength while preserving China’s essence.2 Zhou was closely identified with the Sino-U.S. rapprochement and with the attempt to return Chinese domestic affairs to a more normal pattern in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, both of which the Gang of Four opposed as a betrayal of revolutionary principles. Deng and likeminded officials, such as Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, were associated with economic pragmatism, which the Gang of Four attacked as the restoration of aspects of the capitalist system.

  As Mao grew increasingly frail, the Chinese leadership was locked in a power struggle and a debate over China’s destiny, profoundly affecting Sino-U.S. relations. When China’s radicals gained in relative power, the U.S.-China relationship cooled; when America’s freedom of action was limited by domestic upheavals, it strengthened the radicals’ arguments that China was unnecessarily compromising its ideological purity by tying its foreign policy to a country itself riven by domestic disputes and incapable of assisting China’s security. To the end, Mao attempted to manage the contradiction of preserving his legacy of continuous revolution while safeguarding the strategic rapprochement with the United States, which he continued to deem important for China’s security. He left the impression that he sympathized with the radicals even as the national interest impelled him to sustain the new relationship with America, which, in turn, frustrated him with its own domestic divisions.

  Mao, in his prime, could have overcome internal conflicts, but the aging Mao was increasingly torn by the complexities he had created. Zhou, the Mao loyalist for forty years, became a victim of this ambivalence.

  The Fall of Zhou Enlai

  Political survival for the second man in an autocracy is inherently difficult. It requires being close enough to the leader to leave no space for a competitor but not so close as to make the leader feel threatened. None of Mao’s number twos had managed that tightrope act: Liu Shaoqi, who served as number two with the title of President from 1959 to 1967 and was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution, and Lin Biao had both been destroyed politically and lost their lives in the process.

  Zhou had been our principal interlocutor at all meetings. We noticed on the visit in November 1973 that he was a shade more tentative than usual and even more deferential to Mao than customarily. But it was compensated for by a conversation of nearly three hours with Mao, the most comprehensive review of foreign policy strategy we had had yet. It ended with Mao escorting me to the anteroom and an official release announcing that the Chairman and I had had “a far-ranging discussion in a friendly atmosphere.”

  With Mao’s apparent imprimatur, all negotiations ended rapidly and favorably. The final communiqué extended the joint opposition to hegemony from “the Asia-Pacific region” (as in the Shanghai Communiqué of 1972) to the global plane. It affirmed the need to deepen consultations between the two countries at “authoritative levels” even further. Exchanges and trade were to be increased. The scope of the liaison offices was to be expanded. Zhou said he would recall the head of the Chinese Liaison Office from Washington to instruct him on the nature of the agreed intensified dialogue.

  Contemporary Chinese historians point out that the criticisms of the Gang of Four against Zhou were reaching a crisis point at this time. We were aware from the media that an anti-Confucian campaign was taking place but did not consider that it had any immediate relevance to foreign policy or Chinese leadership issues. In his dealings with Americans, Zhou continued to exhibit unflappable self-assurance. On only one occasion did his serenity leave him. At a banquet in the Great Hall of the People in November 1973, in a general conversation, I made the observation that China seemed to me to have remained essentially Confucian in its belief in a single, universal, generally applicable truth as the standard of individual conduct and social cohesion. What Communism had done, I suggested, was to establish Marxism as the content of that truth.

  I cannot recall what possessed me to make this statement, which, however accurate, surely did not take into account Mao’s attacks on Confucians who were alleged to be impeding his policies. Zhou exploded, the only time I saw him lose his temper. Confucianism, he said, was a doctrine of class oppression while Communism represented a philosophy of liberation. With uncharacteristic insistence, he kept up the argument, no doubt to some degree so as to have it on record for the benefit of Nancy Tang, the interpreter who was close to Jiang Qing, and Wang Hairong, the grand-niece of Mao, who was always in Zhou’s entourage.

  Shortly afterward, we learned that Zhou was stricken with cancer and that he was withdrawing from the day-to-day management of affairs. A dramatic upheaval followed. The visit to China had ended on a dramatic high. The meeting with Mao was not only the most substantive of all previous dialogues; its symbolism—its length, the demonstrative courtesies such as escorting me to the anteroom, the warm communiqué—was designed to emphasize its significance. As I was leaving, Zhou told me that he thought the dialogue had been the most significant since the secret visit:

  ZHOU: We wish you success and also success to the President.

  KISSINGER: Thank you and thank you for the reception we have received as always.

  ZHOU: It is what you deserve. And once the course has been set, as in 1971, we will persevere in the course.

  KISSINGER: So will we.

  ZHOU: That is why we use the term farsightedness to describe your meeting with the Chairman.3

  The dialogue provided for in the communiqué never got underway. The nearly completed negotiations on financial issues languished. The head of the liaison office returned to Beijing but did not come back for four months. The National Security Council officer in charge of China reported that bilateral relations were “immobilized.”4 Within a month, the change in Zhou’s fortunes—though not its extent—became visible.

  It has since emerged that in December 1973, less than a month after the events described here, Mao obliged Zhou to undergo “struggle sessions” in front of the Politburo to justify his foreign policy, described as too accommodating by Nancy Tang and Wang Hairong, the Mao loyalists in his entourage. In the course of the sessions, Deng, who had been brought back from exile as a possible alternative to Zhou, summed up the prevailing criticism as follows: “Your position is just one step away from [the] Chairman. . . . To others, the Chairmanship is within sight, but beyond reach. To you, however, it is within sight and within reach. I hope you will always keep this in mind.”5 Zhou was, in effect, accused of overreaching.

  When the session ended, a Politburo meeting criticized Zhou openly:

  Generally speaking, [Zhou] forgot about the principle of preventing “rightism” while allying with [the United States]. This is mainly because [he] forgot about the Chairman’s instructions. [He] over-estimated the power of the enemy and devaluated the power of the people. [He] also failed to grasp the principle of combining the diplomatic line with supporting revolution.6

  By early 1974, Zhou disappeared as a policymaker, ostensibly on account of his cancer. But illness was not a sufficient explanation for the oblivion into which he fell. No Chinese official referred to him again. In my first meeting with Deng in early 1974, he mentioned Mao repeatedly and ignored any reference I made to Zhou. If a negotiating record was needed, our Chinese opposite numbers would cite the two conversations with Mao in 1973. I saw Zhou only one more time, in December 1974, when I had taken some members of my family to Beijing with me on an official visit. My family was invited to the meeting. In what was described as a hospital but looked like a State Guesthouse, Zhou avoided any political or diplomatic subjects by saying his doctors had forbidden any exertions. The meeting lasted a little more than twenty minutes. It was carefully staged to symbolize that dialogue about Sino-American relations with Zhou had come to an end.

  There was no little poignancy at such an end to a career defined by ultimate loyalty to Mao. Zhou had stood by the aging Chairman through crises that obliged him to balance his admiration for Mao’s revolutionary leadership against the pragmatic and more humane instincts of his own nature. He had survived because he was indispensable and, in an ultimate sense, loyal—too loyal, his critics argued. Now he was removed from authority when the storms seemed to be subsiding and with the reassuring shore within sight. He had not differed from Mao’s policies as Deng had done a decade earlier. No American dealing with him noted any departure from what Mao had said (and in any event, the Chairman seemed to be monitoring the meetings by reading the transcripts every evening). True, Zhou treated the American delegations with consummate—though aloof—courtesy; that was the prerequisite for moving toward partnership with America, which China’s difficult security situation required. I interpreted his conduct as a way to facilitate Chinese imperatives, not as concessions to my or any other American’s personality.

  It is conceivable that Zhou may have begun to view the American relationship as a permanent feature, while Mao treated it as a tactical phase. Zhou may have concluded that China, emerging from the wreckage of the Cultural Revolution, would not be able to thrive in the world unless it ended its isolation and became a genuine part of the international order. But this is something I surmise from Zhou’s conduct, not his words. Our dialogue never reached an exchange of personal comments. Some of Zhou’s successors tend to refer to him as “your friend, Zhou.” To the extent that they mean this literally—and even if it has a sardonic undertone—I consider it an honor.

  Politically hobbled, emaciated, and terminally ill, Zhou surfaced in January 1975 for one last public gesture. The occasion was a meeting of China’s National People’s Congress, the first convocation of its kind since the start of the Cultural Revolution. Zhou was still technically Premier. He opened with a declaration of carefully worded praise for the Cultural Revolution and the anti-Confucius campaign, both of which had nearly destroyed him and both of which he now hailed as “great,” “important,” and “far-reaching” in their influence. It was the last public declaration of loyalty to the Chairman whom he had served for forty years. But then halfway through the speech, Zhou presented, as if it were simply the logical continuation of this program, a completely new direction. He revisited a long dormant proposal from before the Cultural Revolution—that China should strive to achieve “comprehensive modernization” in four key sectors: agriculture; industry; national defense; and science and technology. Zhou noted that he was issuing this call—effectively a repudiation of the goals of the Cultural Revolution—“on Chairman Mao’s instructions,” though when and how these were issued was left unclear.7

  Zhou exhorted China to achieve the “Four Modernizations” “before the end of the century.” Zhou’s listeners could not fail to note that he would never live to see this goal realized. And as the first half of Zhou’s speech attested, such modernization would be achieved, if at all, only after further ideological struggle. But Zhou’s audience would remember his assessment—part forecast, part challenge—that by the end of the twentieth century, China’s “national economy will be advancing in the front ranks of the world.”8 In the years to come, some of them would heed this call and champion the cause of technological advancement and economic liberalization, even at serious political and personal risk.

  Final Meetings with Mao: The Swallows and the Coming of the Storm

  After the disappearance of Zhou, in early 1974, Deng Xiaoping became our interlocutor. Though he had only recently returned from exile, he conducted affairs with the aplomb and self-assurance with which Chinese leaders seem naturally endowed, and he was soon named Executive Vice Premier.

  By that time, the horizontal line concept was abandoned—after only one year—because it was too close to traditional alliance concepts, thus limiting China’s freedom of action. In its place Mao put forward the vision of the “Three Worlds,” which he ordered Deng to announce at a special session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1974. The new approach replaced the horizontal line with a vision of three worlds: The United States and the Soviet Union belonged to the first world. Countries such as Japan and Europe were part of the second world. All the underdeveloped countries constituted the Third World, to which China belonged as well.9