The story of how Nixon came to meet Mao in 1972 has been told by journalists, historians and many of the principals themselves. It has been memorialized in film and mythologized as opera. "Nixon to China" must be one of the most widely understood terms of art in politics and diplomacy.
In that sense, the rapprochement between the US and China makes a compelling topic for Margaret MacMillan, a Canadian historian now widely noted for writing seamless, big-picture historical narratives. In her previous work, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, she examined the negotiations that followed World War I, showing how a varied cast of outsize egos literally redrew the map of the world.
In Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed the World, MacMillan seeks to present the frigid week in February 1972 that former US president Richard Nixon spent in China in much the same way. She retells the tale engagingly, from Mao Zedong's (毛澤東) enigmatic outbursts, to Zhou Enlai's (周恩來) seductive diplomacy, to Henry Kissinger's obsessive distrust of the State Department.
Yet the momentous event that changed the world is a common conceit for popular works of history, and it is an unsatisfying premise for examining the opening salvo of the complex and unsettled relationship between the US and China.
The re-establishment of relations was, of course, a milestone, but it was also an artifact of the Cold War. It did not alter history the way any of MacMillan's four protagonists, Nixon, Kissinger, Mao and Zhou, thought it would. MacMillan acknowledges as much, but she has the delicate task of treating her main actors as visionaries when none of them foresaw the outcome.
The US has yet to abandon Taiwan and force it to return to Chinese rule, perhaps China's most important goal in opening its door to Nixon. China did not pressure North Vietnam to make major concessions to end the Vietnam War on terms favorable to the US, one of Nixon and Kissinger's dominant concerns. Their common rival, the Soviet Union, took two decades to collapse.
One event that arguably did more to change the world came a few years later, after Mao and Zhou had died, Nixon had resigned in disgrace, and Kissinger no longer had a patron in the White House. That was when Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) abandoned Maoist policies in both domestic and foreign relations and overhauled China's economy. Today China and America are no longer cards for each other to play. They have become giants warily circling each other in what could be the decisive contest of the 21st century.
In describing Kissinger's intensive negotiations over the wording of the Shanghai Communique during Nixon's visit, MacMillan reports that he urged his Chinese hosts not to waste time discussing trade. "The maximum amount of bilateral trade possible between us, even if we make great efforts, is infinitesimal in terms of our total economy," Kissinger said. MacMillan, with characteristic understatement, calls these "interesting predictions." In 2006 China's trade surplus with the US exceeded US$230 billion.
Yet it is clear that MacMillan did not write the book for the weighty reasons she claims. She wrote it because it is a gripping, old-fashioned drama from the "great men" school of history. It has larger-than-life characters whose motivations ranged from the sordid to the profound. They staked their reputations on bridging the chasm between the world's richest country and its most populous one at a time when far more modest strategic realignments seemed likely to upset the Cold War balance of power.
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