According to that vision, world affairs were conducted in the shadow of the conflict of the two nuclear superpowers. As Deng argued in his U.N. speech:

  Since the two superpowers are contending for world hegemony, the contradiction between them is irreconcilable; one either overpowers the other, or is overpowered. Their compromise and collusion can only be partial, temporary and relative, while their contention is all-embracing, permanent and absolute. . . . They may reach certain agreements, but their agreements are only a facade and a deception.10

  The developing world should use this conflict for its own purposes: the two superpowers had “created their own antithesis” by “arous[ing] strong resistance among the Third World and the people of the whole world.”11 Real power lay not with the United States or the Soviet Union; instead “the really powerful are the Third World and the people of all countries uniting together and daring to fight and daring to win.”12

  The Three Worlds theory restored China’s freedom of action at least from the ideological point of view. It permitted differentiation between the two superpowers for temporary convenience. It provided a vehicle for an active, independent role for China through its role in the developing world, and it gave China tactical flexibility. Still, it could not solve China’s strategic challenge, as Mao had described it in his two long conversations in 1973: the Soviet Union was threatening in both Asia and Europe; China needed to participate in the world if it wanted to speed its economic development; and a quasi-alliance between China and the United States had to be sustained even as the domestic evolution in both countries pressed their governments in the opposite direction.

  Had the radical element achieved enough influence with Mao to lead to the removal of Zhou? Or had Mao used the radicals to overthrow his number two associate just as he had done with Zhou’s predecessors? Whatever the answer, Mao needed to triangulate. He sympathized with the radicals, but he was too significant a strategist to abandon the American safety net; on the contrary, he sought to strengthen it so long as America appeared as an effective partner.

  A clumsy American agreement to a summit between President Ford and Soviet Premier Brezhnev in Vladivostok in November 1974 complicated U.S.-Chinese relations. The decision had been made for purely practical reasons. Ford, as a new President, wanted to meet his Soviet counterpart. It was determined that he could not go to Europe without meeting some European leaders eager to establish their relations with the new President, which would crowd Ford’s schedule. A presidential trip to Japan and Korea had already been scheduled during the Nixon presidency; a twenty-four-hour side trip to Vladivostok would make the least demand on presidential time. In the process, we overlooked that Vladivostok was acquired by Russia only a century earlier in one of the “unequal treaties” regularly castigated in China and that it was located in the Russian Far East, where military clashes between China and the Soviet Union had triggered the reassessment of our China policy just a few years earlier. Technical convenience had been allowed to override common sense.

  Chinese irritation with Washington in the wake of the Vladivostok meeting was evident when I traveled to Beijing from Vladivostok in December 1974. It was the only visit during which Mao did not receive me. (Since one could never request a meeting, the slight could be presented as an omission rather than a rebuff.)

  Misstep aside, the United States remained committed to the strategy inaugurated in the Nixon administration, whatever the fluctuations of internal Chinese and American politics. Should the Soviets have attacked China, both Presidents I served, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, would have strongly supported China and done their utmost to defeat such a Soviet adventure. We were also determined to defend the international equilibrium. But we judged the American national interest and global peace best served if the United States maintained the capacity for dialogue with both Communist giants. By being closer to each of them than they were to each other, we would achieve the maximum diplomatic flexibility. What Mao described as “shadowboxing” was what both Nixon and Ford were convinced was required to build a consensus for foreign policy in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the coming into office of a nonelected President.

  In this international and domestic environment, my last two conversations with Mao took place in October and December 1975. The occasion was the first visit to China of President Ford. The initial meeting was to prepare the summit between the two leaders; the second concerned their actual conversation. In addition to providing a summary of the dying Chairman’s last views, they demonstrated Mao’s colossal willpower. He had not been well when he met Nixon; now he was desperately ill. He needed the assistance of two nurses to rise from the chair. He could barely speak. Chinese being a tonal language, the stricken Mao made his interpreter write down her interpretation of the wheezes issuing from his broken hulk. She would then show them to him, and Mao would nod or shake his head before the translation. In the face of his infirmities, Mao conducted both conversations with extraordinary lucidity.

  Even more remarkable was the way these conversations at the edge of the grave exhibited the turmoil within Mao. Sarcastic and penetrating, taunting and cooperative, they distilled one final time revolutionary conviction grappling with a complex sense of strategy. Mao began the conversation of October 21, 1975, by challenging a banality I had uttered to Deng the day before to the effect that China and the United States wanted nothing from each other: “If neither side had anything to ask from the other, why would you be coming to Beijing? If neither side had anything to ask, then why did you want to come to Beijing, and why would we want to receive you and the President?”13 In other words, abstract expressions of goodwill were meaningless to the apostle of continuous revolution. He was still in quest of a common strategy, and as a strategist he recognized the need for priorities even at the temporary sacrifice of some of China’s historic goals. Therefore he volunteered an assurance from a previous meeting: “The small issue is Taiwan, the big issue is the world.”14 As was his habit, Mao pushed the necessary to its extreme with his characteristic combination of whimsy, aloof patience, and implicit threat—at times in elusive, if not unfathomable, phrasing. Not only would Mao continue to be patient as he had indicated he would be in the meeting with Nixon and the follow-up meetings with me, he did not want to confuse the debate about Taiwan with the strategy for protecting the global equilibrium. Therefore he made what would have seemed an incredible assertion two years earlier—that China did not want Taiwan at this moment:

  MAO: It’s better for it to be in your hands. And if you were to send it back to me now, I would not want it, because it’s not wantable. There are a huge bunch of counter-revolutionaries there. A hundred years hence we will want it [gesturing with his hand], and we are going to fight for it.

  KISSINGER: Not a hundred years.

  MAO: [Gesturing with his hand, counting] It is hard to say. Five years, ten, twenty, a hundred years. It’s hard to say. [Points toward the ceiling] And when I go to heaven to see God, I’ll tell him it’s better to have Taiwan under the care of the United States now.

  KISSINGER: He will be very astonished to hear that from the Chairman.

  MAO: No, because God blesses you, not us. God does not like us [waves his hands] because I am a militant warlord, also a communist. That’s why he doesn’t like me. [Pointing to the three Americans]15 He likes you and you and you.16

  There was an urgency, however, in getting the issue of international security right: China, Mao argued, had slid to last place in American priorities among the five power centers of the world, with the Soviet Union having pride of place, followed by Europe and Japan: “We see that what you are doing is leaping to Moscow by way of our shoulders, and these shoulders are now useless. You see, we are the fifth. We are the small finger.”17 Moreover, Mao claimed, the European countries, though outranking China in terms of power, were overwhelmed by their fear of the Soviet Union, summed up in an allegory:

  MAO: This world is not tranquil, and a storm—the wind and rain—are coming. And at the approach of the rain and wind the swallows are busy.

  TANG: He [the Chairman] asks me how one says “swallow” in English and what is “sparrow.” Then I said it is a different kind of bird.

  KISSINGER: Yes, but I hope we have a little more effect on the storm than the swallows do on the wind and rain.

  MAO: It is possible to postpone the arrival of the wind and rain, but it’s difficult to obstruct the coming.18

  When I replied that we agreed about the coming of the storm but maneuvered to be in the best position to survive it, Mao answered with a lapidary word: “Dunkirk.”19

  Mao elaborated that the American army in Europe was not strong enough to resist the Soviet ground forces there, and public opinion would prevent the use of nuclear weapons. He rejected my assertion that the United States would surely use nuclear weapons in defense of Europe: “There are two possibilities. One is your possibility, the other is that of The New York Times”20 (referring to the book Can America Win the Next War?, by New York Times reporter Drew Middleton, which doubted whether America could prevail in a general war with the Soviet Union over Europe). At any rate, added the Chairman, it did not matter, because in neither case would China rely on the decisions of other countries:

  We adopt the Dunkirk strategy, that is we will allow them to occupy Beijing, Tianjin, Wuhan, and Shanghai, and in that way through such tactics we will become victorious and the enemy will be defeated. Both world wars, the first and the second, were conducted in that way and victory was obtained only later.21

  In the meantime, Mao sketched the place of some pieces of his international vision of the wei qi board. Europe was “too scattered, too loose”;22 Japan aspired to be hegemonial; German unification was desirable but achievable only if the Soviet Union grew weaker and “without a fight the Soviet Union cannot be weakened.”23 As for the United States, “it was not necessary to conduct the Watergate affair in that manner”24—in other words, destroy a strong President over domestic controversies. Mao invited Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger to visit China—perhaps as part of the entourage of President Ford’s visit—where he could tour the frontier regions near the Soviet Union like Xinjiang and Manchuria. Presumably this was to demonstrate American willingness to risk confrontation with the Soviet Union. It also was a not very subtle attempt to interject China into the American domestic discussions, since Schlesinger had been reported as having challenged the prevailing détente policy.

  Part of the difficulty was a problem of perspective. Mao was aware that he did not have long to live and was anxious to ensure that his vision would prevail afterward. He spoke with the melancholy of old age, intellectually aware of limits, not yet fully prepared to face that, for him, the range of choices was fading and the means to implement them disappearing.

  MAO: I’m 82 years old now. [Points toward Secretary Kissinger] And how old are you? 50 maybe.

  KISSINGER: 51.

  MAO: [Pointing toward Vice Premier Deng] He’s 71. [Waving his hands] And after we’re all dead, myself, him [Deng], Zhou Enlai, and Ye Jianying, you will still be alive. See? We old ones will not do. We are not going to make it out.25

  He added, “You know I’m a showcase exhibit for visitors.”26 But whatever his physical decrepitude, the frail Chairman could never remain in a passive position. As the meeting was breaking up—a point usually inviting a gesture of conciliation—he suddenly spewed defiance, affirming the immutability of his revolutionary credentials:

  MAO: You don’t know my temperament. I like people to curse me [raising his voice and hitting his chair with his hand]. You must say that Chairman Mao is an old bureaucrat and in that case I will speed up and meet you. In such a case I will make haste to see you. If you don’t curse me, I won’t see you, and I will just sleep peacefully.

  KISSINGER: That is difficult for us to do, particularly to call you a bureaucrat.

  MAO: I ratify that [slamming his chair with his hand]. I will only be happy when all foreigners slam on tables and curse me.

  Mao escalated the element of menace even further by taunting me about Chinese intervention in the Korean War:

  MAO: The UN passed a resolution which was sponsored by the U.S. in which it was declared that China committed aggression against Korea.

  KISSINGER: That was 25 years ago.

  MAO: Yes. So it is not directly linked to you. That was during Truman’s time.

  KISSINGER: Yes. That was a long time ago, and our perception has changed.

  MAO: [Touching the top of his head] But the resolution has not yet been cancelled. I am still wearing this hat “aggressor.” I equally consider that the greatest honor which no other honor could excel. It is good, very good.

  KISSINGER: But then we shouldn’t change the UN resolution?

  MAO: No, don’t do that. We have never put forward that request. . . . We have no way to deny that. We have indeed committed aggression against China [Taiwan], and also in Korea. Will you please assist me on making that statement public, perhaps in one of your briefings? . . .

  KISSINGER: I think I will let you make that public. I might not get the historically correct statement.27

  Mao was making at least three points: First, China was prepared to stand alone, as it had in the Korean War against America and in the 1960s against the Soviet Union. Second, he reaffirmed the principles of permanent revolution advanced in these confrontations, however unattractive they might be to the superpowers. Finally, he was prepared to return to them if thwarted on his current course. The opening to America did not, for Mao, imply an end of ideology.

  Mao’s prolix comments reflected a deep ambivalence. No one understood China’s geopolitical imperatives better than the dying Chairman. At that point in history, they clashed with the traditional concept of self-reliance for China. Whatever Mao’s criticisms of the policy of détente, the United States bore the brunt of confrontation with the Soviets and most of the military expenditures for the non-Communist world. These were the prerequisites of China’s security. We were in the fourth year of reestablishing relations with China. We agreed with Mao’s general view on strategy. It was not possible to delegate its execution to China, and Mao knew it. But it was precisely that margin of flexibility to which Mao was objecting.

  At the same time, to make sure that the world understood the continuing ties and distilled the correct conclusions, a Chinese statement announced that Mao “had a conversation with Dr. Kissinger in a friendly atmosphere.” This positive statement was given a subtle perspective in the accompanying picture: it showed a smiling Mao next to my wife and me but wagging a finger, suggesting that perhaps the United States was in need of some benevolent tutoring.

  It was always difficult to sum up Mao’s elliptical and aphoristic comments and sometimes even to understand them. In an oral report to President Ford, I described Mao’s stance as “sort of admirable” and reminded him that these were the same people who had led the Long March (the yearlong strategic retreat, across arduous terrain and under frequent attack, that had preserved the Chinese Communist cause in the civil war).28 The thrust of Mao’s comment was not about détente but about which of the three parties of the triangular relationship could avoid being engulfed at the beginning of evolving crises. As I told President Ford:

  I guarantee you that if we do go into confrontation with the Soviet Union, they will attack us and the Soviet Union and draw the Third World around them. Good relations with the Soviet Union are the best for our Chinese relations—and vice versa. Our weakness is the problem—they see us in trouble with SALT and détente. That plays into their hands.29

  Winston Lord, then head of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department and my principal planner for the secret visit as well as later China policy, added a subtle interpretation of ambiguous Mao comments, which I passed on to the President:

  The Chairman’s basic message and principal themes were clear. They clearly formed the strategic framework for the Kissinger visit, indeed for the evolution in our relations in the past couple of years. But there were several cryptic passages that are unclear. The tendency is to dig for the subtleties, the deeper meanings behind the Chairman’s laconic, earthy prose.

  In most instances the larger meaning is apparent. In others, however, there may be nothing particularly significant, or a somewhat senile man might have been wandering aimlessly for a moment. . . . To cite just one example of ambiguity: “Do you have any way to assist me in curing my present inability to speak clearly?” The odds are that this was basically small talk about his own health. It is very doubtful that he was seriously asking for medical assistance. But was the Chairman saying that his voice within China (or in the world) was not being heard, that his influence is being circumscribed, and that he wants U.S. help to strengthen his position through our policies? Does he want us to help him “speak clearly” in the larger sense?30

  At the time, I thought Lord’s comments probably farfetched. Having since learned more about internal Chinese maneuvering, I now consider that Mao meant it in the larger sense.

  In any event, the October trip to pave the way for Ford’s visit took place in a very chilly atmosphere, reflecting the internal Chinese tensions. It seemed so unpromising that we reduced the presidential visit from five to three days, eliminating two stops outside Beijing and replacing them with brief visits to the Philippines and Indonesia.