REPARTEE WITH MAO

By Henry Kissinger

When he met with China's leaders during Nixon's first term, writes Kissinger, "we developed between us a habit of candor, honesty and long-range thinking." It was this, he adds, that became "the key to the Chinese-American relationship at a point when few concrete results were achievable and our bonds depended on intangibles. Our ties were cemented not by formal agreements but by a common assessment of the international situation." In two long talks with Mao in 1973, Kissinger helped solidify those ties.

During his lifetime, Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of the Communist Party of China, was shrouded in mystery and reverence much as were the emperors he replaced. When I visited Peking in February 1973, Mao's portrait was everywhere. The emphasis on personality in a Marxist system was astonishing. It was as if the titanic figure who had risen from humble origins to rule nearly one-quarter of mankind did not trust the permanence of the ideology in whose name he had prevailed. In fact, in attempting to inflict upon his country the tour de force of a lasting revolution, he reawakened the historical Chinese yearning for continuity. By a remarkable irony, the leader who seems to have survived in the hearts of his countrymen is not the epic giant who made the Chinese revolution but his more anonymous disciple Chou Enlai, who worked unobtrusively to assure the continuity of life rather than the permanence of upheaval. In February 1973, however, Mao towered above everyone.

Around 11 p.m. on Feb. 17, while Chou and I were meeting in the state guesthouse, we were summoned to a meeting with Mao. The Chairman's domicile was modest, like that of a middle-level functionary. Inside, Mao stood in front of a semicircle of easy chairs. Books were everywhere.

The purpose of the meeting was to underline that friendship between the U.S. and China was to be consummated while Mao was still alive. As we headed for the easy chairs, he said: "I don't look bad, but God has sent me an invitation." Somehow it did not seem incongruous that the dialectician of materialism should invoke the Deity. No being of lesser rank could presume to interrupt the Chairman's labors. Even more striking was the casualness with which Mao treated the imminent end of his rule and hinted at the urgency to complete certain business.

Mao engaged me in a joshing Socratic dialogue. His observations seemed random but formed a pattern spelling out a series of directives for his subordinates. Both Presidents Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson had died within the previous two months, he noted. With them the old China policy and the old Viet Nam policy had been buried. "At that time, you opposed us. We also opposed you. So we are two enemies," he laughed.

"Two former enemies," I replied.

"Now we call the relationship a friendship," he insisted.

We reviewed the world situation until almost 1:30 a.m. In Mao's view the Soviet threat was real and growing. He warned against a fake detente that would sap resistance to Soviet expansionism and confuse the peoples of the West. The U.S. should take a leading role in world affairs, by which he meant constructing an anti-Soviet alliance. As had Chou, Mao stressed the importance of close American cooperation with Western Europe, Japan, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey. We should build up our defenses and keep our eye on the Soviet challenge rather than squabble over short-term problems with our allies. I commented, only half humorously, that he was one of our better NATO allies.

For all his preoccupation with foreign policy, the Chairman could not avoid Peking's internal problems. Repeatedly, Mao warned me about the pressures on him from radicals, but he did it so allusively that my dense Occidental mind did not immediately follow. "You know China is a very poor country," said Mao. "We don't have much. What we have in excess is women."

Thinking that Mao was joking, I replied in kind: "There are no quotas for those, or tariffs."

"If you want them we can give a few of those to you, some tens of thousands," shot back Mao. "Let them go to your place. They will create disasters. That way you can lessen our burdens." He laughed uproariously.

Mao returned to the theme twice more--by which time I understood he was making a point, though not yet what. Years afterward, Bette Bao, Chinese-born wife of my colleague Winston Lord, explained it: women--meaning Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, leader of the radical faction--were stirring up China and challenging the prevailing policy.

Maoism sought to overcome China's past, but, like traditional Confucianism, the philosophy saw society as an ethical and educational instrument. The object of the Great Cultural Revolution unleashed by Mao in 1966--and where but in China would a bloody political upheaval call itself "cultural"?--was precisely the eradication of those elements of modernity that were not uniquely Chinese, an assault on Western influences and bureaucratization. By February 1973, the aged Chairman had realized that while the Cultural Revolution had dramatized his country's independence, it had simultaneously doomed it to impotence. China, he indicated not without melancholy, would have to go to school abroad. He himself was learning English.

But the aged Chairman was too old to carry to its conclusion another revolution against the instincts of many of his countrymen and, deep down, his own. Within a year of this conversation Chou En-lai was retired and within another year his successor, Deng Xiaoping, was toppled by the very forces Mao seemed to be resisting in 1973, once again delaying the modernization that one side of Mao recognized as essential. Did Mao encourage the radicals who later came to be called the Gang of Four, or did they take advantage of his growing feebleness? Probably a little of both.

The visit to Peking, writes Kissinger, "became the last normal diplomatic enterprise before Watergate engulfed us. "He returned to Peking nine months later, in November 1973. By then, a U.S. Congress that was increasingly challenging the authority of the President had voted to forbid all American military action in Indochina. With this prohibition, Kissinger notes, "our principal bargaining leverage was lost." As a result, an American proposal for a cease-fire in Cambodia was aborted--the Khmer Rouge had no need to negotiate for something that had already been handed to them by Congress--and Chou Enlai, who had agreed to lend China's weight to the proposal, was seriously embarrassed. The Chinese, says Kissinger, were "no longer sure of how steady or reliable a partner we would prove to be." Nonetheless, on Nov. 12, Mao again summoned Kissinger, along with two American colleagues and Chou, to a meeting.

Mao greeted us with his characteristic mocking, slightly demonic smile. He looked better than I had ever seen him, joking with my companions David Bruce and Winston Lord about Bruce's age (then 75), Lord's youth (36) and his own seniority over both of them. He was 79.

During this meeting Mao substituted precision for his characteristic allusions. He began by asking what Chou and I had been discussing.

"Expansionism," replied Chou, making clear that containing the Soviet Union remained the top priority for China. "Who's doing the expanding, him?" inquired Mao, pointing at me--as if all this were new to him and Chou had not been reporting daily. "He started it," answered Chou, "but others have caught up." Mao went along cheerfully with Chou's implication that the Soviets were now the principal threat, but he discouraged any undue sense of danger that might tempt accommodation. The Soviets' courage, he said, did not match their ambitions, as demonstrated during the Cuban missile crisis and America's alert during the previous month's Mideast war. He illustrated his contempt for Soviet leaders by the story of his enlustrated his contempt for Soviet leaders by the story of his encounter in 1969 with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin, who had come uninvited to Peking airport to discuss the easing of Sino-Soviet tensions:

"I [told Kosygin] that I originally said this struggle was going to go on for 10,000 years. On the merit of his coming to see me in person, I will cut it down by 1,000 years. Another time [a Rumanian official] came also to speak on behalf of the Soviet Union. This time I again made a concession of 1,000 years. You see, my time limit is becoming shorter and shorter, and when the Rumanian President Ceausescu came two years ago, and he again raised the issue, I said: 'This time I can make no more concessions.' " Committed now to a struggle of 8,000 years, the Chairman saw no point in tactical maneuvers. Of course, a million Soviet troops right up against the Chinese border discouraged thoughts of flexibility.

Mao's principal concern was not our Soviet policy but our domestic situation, specifically Watergate. What good was a strategy of containment if we sapped our capacity to implement it by our domestic divisions? He contemptuously dismissed the whole affair as a form of "breaking wind." He saw no objective reasons for an assault on a President who had done a good job: "The number of unemployed has been cut down and the U.S. dollar is relatively stable. So there doesn't seem to be any major issue. Why should the Watergate affair become all exploded in such a manner?"

It was not possible to explain to the absolute ruler of the Middle Kingdom the finer points of a constitutional system that placed even the highest officials under the rule of law. At the same time, Mao had a point. Watergate interested him primarily for its impact on our fitness to resist Soviet expansionism. The geopolitical consequences threatened to dwarf the original offense.

Moscow, according to Mao, looked strong but was actually overextended. It had to be wary of Japan and China; it had to keep an eye on South Asia and the Middle East; and in Europe it had to maintain forces larger than those facing China. Hence, Mao concluded, the Soviet Union could not attack China "unless you first give them the Middle East and Europe so they are able to deploy troops eastward." The converse was also true. The U.S. was thus the key to global security. The real danger was the potential victims' lack of understanding of the requirements of the geopolitical balance. It was Mao's core conviction that while our European allies were wavering for various reasons, they would not in the end succumb to Soviet blandishment. It was important, therefore, not to confuse temporarily irritating tactics with long-term trends. We must stick to a firm line even if some of our friends seemed hesitant; in time they would gain courage from our leadership.

Mao spoke in lapidary sentences each of which required physical effort to articulate. Perhaps his stroke-induced infirmity imposed the need for the dialogue form to give him the chance to regroup. Perhaps he had always preferred dialogue. Whatever the reason, Mao spoke in short paragraphs.

After about an hour, Mao suddenly brought up Taiwan, hinting obliquely at a solution. He had heard that the three Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, still had embassies in the U.S. I affirmed it. Chou helpfully chipped in that though maintaining diplomatic relations with the U.S., the Baltic states did not have access to the United Nations. Did this mean that China might acquiesce in a separate legal status for Taiwan, contenting itself with excluding Taiwan from the U.N.?

As a matter of principle, Mao said, the U.S. had to sever relations with Taiwan if we wanted diplomatic U.S. had to sever relations with Taiwan if we wanted diplomatic relations with Peking. But this was not an insoluble dilemma. He was in no hurry about implementing his principles. "We can do without Taiwan for the time being, and let it come after 100 years. Why be in such great haste?" As for relations between Peking and Washington, they need not march to the slow drumbeat of internal Chinese disputes; there was no need to wait so long: "I think they need not take 100 years. But that is to be decided by you. We will not rush you." Was it another hint that normalization could be separated from the issue of Taiwan? And that the rate of normalizing relations was up to us? Lest we miss the point, he compared the situation in Taiwan with that in Hong Kong and Macao, where China was in no hurry either (and had, in fact, diplomatic relations with the countries "occupying" them). Taiwan was not an important issue, he said. "The overall international situation important."

Turning to Japan, Mao noted that his neighbor was inherently insecure and sensitive. "Their first priority is to have good relations with the U.S.," he said approvingly. "We only come second." The apostle of world revolutions would do his best to keep Japanese priorities that way; he did not want a free-floating Japan playing off other countries against each other.

After 2 1/2 hours, Mao ended by returning to his opening theme: Would Watergate sap the authority of a President with whom he more or less agreed? What kind of new President might emerge from this turmoil? He was "suspicious" that isolationism might return if a Democrat took office.

Mao was particularly uneasy about possible American troop withdrawals from Europe, a perennial proposal of Senate Democrats. I said that essentially our foreign policy was nonpartisan; there might be a difference between our two parties in the willingness to be "very brutal very quickly in case there is a challenge." Mao mused that what I really meant was the willingness to risk war. I sought to curb the speculation: "We will not start a war." Mao was not all that pleased with such a reassurance: the Soviets, he said, "bully the weak, and are afraid of the tough." In other words, do not deprive Moscow of the fear that we might prove bellicose.

Chou En-lai disappeared from the direction of affairs within two months after my visit. The official explanation was illness. Throughout my entire visit, Chou had been uncharacteristically subdued. Was his tentativeness due to the knowledge that his cancer was drawing his physical life to a close? Or was it the result of his imminent political demise? Did Mao engineer it as he had with every other deputy, or did Chou yield to the inevitable, either political pressures or the specter of mortality?

I was never to have another serious talk with Chou. A year later I visited him in what was called a hospital but looked like a guesthouse. We chatted casually; Chou looked unchanged to my amateur eye. But whenever I raised a serious topic, Chou changed the subject. His doctors, he said, had prohibited him from discussing such problems. Why political problems impaired his health more than small talk was never explained. It was a painful session--probably for both of us. Whatever the cause of Chou's decline, his name was never mentioned by any of my Chinese interlocutors after this trip.

At the end of the November 1973 visit, Chou said he thought it was the starting point of a major advance. It was not to be. Both Chou and I were engulfed by our nations' domestic dramas. But if the hopes of the end of 1973 were not to be fulfilled, at least we preserved the essence of a relationship crucial to world peace amid stresses in both countries. Statesmen have often done much worse.

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