NARRATION: It was one of the boldest foreign policy decisions in modern history. 

ARCHIVAL (2-27-72):
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: This was the week that changed the world.

NARRATION: Richard Nixon’s 1972 trip to China shocked the world and left a consequential legacy.

WINSTON LORD (U.S. AMBASSADOR TO CHINA, 1985-1989): I think one of the greatest diplomatic achievements for the United States under eight or nine presidents of both parties has been our Taiwan and China policy.

NARRATION: So how did we get to the point where it seems to be threatening to unravel?

ARCHIVAL (NBC, 8-5-22):
NEW REPORT: Soaring tensions between China and the U.S. as China ramps up a massive show of force near Taiwan.

KHARIS TEMPLEMAN (LECTURER, CENTER FOR EAST ASIAN STUDIES STANFORD UNIVERSITY): The decisions made in the 1970s by Nixon and his successors created the possibility that we would face a crisis over Taiwan.

NARRATION: In the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the United States and communist China were bitter enemies. 

WINSTON LORD: We had been at war in Korea. We had no contact. There was a great anti-communist feeling in the United States generally, and many people felt the Chinese were even more unpredictable and dangerous than the Russians.

NARRATION: So it came as a surprise when President Richard Nixon flew to China in 1972 to pay that regime a visit. 

ARCHIVAL (NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY, 1972):
NEWS REPORT: As the first American president ever to visit China, President Nixon is met by Prime Minister Zhou Enlai.

NARRATION: Nixon went sightseeing . . . 

ARCHIVAL (NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY, 1972):
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: This is a great wall, and it had to be built by a great people.

NARRATION:. . . and visited a ballet, and dined with his communist hosts.

JANE PERLEZ (HOST, “FACE-OFF: THE U.S. VS CHINA”): American people were shocked to see Nixon dining in the Great Hall of the People and toasting his Chinese hosts. The Chinese had been painted for so many years as evil communists.

NARRATION: It was a huge reversal – for Richard Nixon in particular. 

KHARIS TEMPLEMAN: Nixon’s a fascinating character in this story because his initial appearance on the national stage is as a really deep hawk on communism.

ARCHIVAL (1960):
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: The only answer to communism is a massive offensive for freedom.

KHARIS TEMPLEMAN: So for him then to go from that starting point to meeting with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, it’s such a dramatic shift over his career.

ARCHIVAL (1972):
PATRICK BUCHANAN (PRESIDENT NIXON’S SPEECHWRITER): If you had told me that I would be sitting in the Great Hall of the People in Peking, China, clinking glasses with Zhou Enlai while the band played Home on the Range, I would have said you’re out of your ever-loving mind.

NARRATION: It was all an effort to forge a powerful if unlikely new alliance against the Soviet Union. 

KHARIS TEMPLEMAN: Nixon saw the Soviet Union as the greatest threat to U.S. interests around the world. If he could find other countries that would undercut the Soviet Union’s position and influence, that would be a win for the United States.

WINSTON LORD: There was no assurance that a presidential visit to China was going to be a success.

NARRATION: Winston Lord and his boss, national security advisor Henry Kissinger, joined Nixon in a meeting with China’s leader, Mao Zedong. They knew that one issue could derail negotiations. 

WINSTON LORD: Taiwan was clearly the most sensitive, divisive issue between us. We knew we had to talk about that issue.

NARRATION: For more than 20 years, the United States had supported Mao’s main rival, Chiang Kai-shek, who had been driven from power and exiled in Taiwan.

KHARIS TEMPLEMAN: It was a natural alliance between a Chinese regime that was trying to hold off the expansion of communism, and an American regime that also had the same goal.

NARRATION: Mao had long wished to overthrow Chiang and claim Taiwan, an island he saw as rightfully part of communist China. But the United States stood in the way. 

KHARIS TEMPLEMAN: The United States is the main economic power that Taiwan relies on, it’s the main military power that Taiwan sources much of its kit from.

ARCHIVAL (CBS, 60 MINUTES, 4-27-71):
NEWS REPORT: For two decades now, it has been part of American China policy to train and equip the half-million-man army.

KHARIS TEMPLEMAN: Keeping the United States on side is the central part of their foreign policy strategy. If the United States were to break off relations Taiwan would be incredibly isolated. They would lose their main patron, their main source of support.

NARRATION: For his part, Nixon’s notes from the trip indicate he saw Taiwan as an “irritant” to a potential deal with the Chinese.

JANE PERLEZ: The meeting with Mao was about much more than Taiwan. It was about changing the balance of power in the world.

NARRATION: In modest concessions to Mao, Nixon affirmed the objective of withdrawing all U.S. forces from Taiwan and simply acknowledged Mao’s view that Taiwan was a rightful part of China. 

KHARIS TEMPLEMAN: The word acknowledges in English has a certain amount of ambiguity in it. I can acknowledge that you’re upset, but I don’t agree with it. That was actually a real kind of diplomatic sleight of hand to basically say, we’ll deal with the Taiwan issue later.

NARRATION: Nixon and Mao would essentially agree to disagree about Taiwan for the time being. 

WINSTON LORD: Mao said the Taiwan issue can wait 1,000 years. Maybe he said 100 years – anyway, a long time. Both sides essentially were saying, let’s kick this issue down the road, manage it as best we can while we get on with balancing the Soviet Union and other mutual interests.

NARRATION: Soon after Nixon’s China trip, the Soviet Union agreed to a nuclear arms limitation deal, a step toward avoiding an apocalyptic standoff. 

JANE PERLEZ: The Soviet Union came to the table because it didn’t want to be actually left out in the cold. It was an almost unthinkable thing that he managed.

NARRATION: But Taiwan’s fate was uncertain, and it would become even more so in a few years, when President Carter established official diplomatic ties with China. 

ARCHIVAL (CBS, 12-19-78):
NEWS REPORT: Mr. Carter noted that the United States no longer will recognize Taiwan as a nation.

ARCHIVAL (ABC, 2-8-79):
NEWS REPORT: Mr. Carter had to terminate the mutual defense treaty the U.S. had with Taiwan since 1954.

FREDRICK F. CHIEN (TAIWAN’S MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, 1990-1996): We felt that we were let out. We were abandoned by the United States.

NARRATION: Frederick Chien was Taiwan’s vice foreign minister at the time. Ever since Nixon’s trip to China, he’d been marshaling support among anti-communists in Washington.

FREDRICK F. CHIEN: Carter was totally unprepared for the reaction.

ARCHIVAL (NBC, 12-19-78):
ROBERT BAUMAN (REPRESENTATIVE, R-MD): We are going to reject this dropping of a faithful ally.

ARCHIVAL (NBC 2-21-79):
NEWS REPORT: The Foreign Relations Committee wants the United States to appear to protect Taiwan.

NARRATION: To underscore U.S. support for Taiwan, Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act.

ARCHIVAL (NBC, 2-21-79):
JACOB JAVITS (SENATOR, R-NY): It is not a pledge to go to war over Taiwan, but it is a pledge to regard any effort to subdue Taiwan by force, direct or indirect, as a matter of very grave concern to our country.

KHARIS TEMPLEMAN: That act remains U.S. law today, and it remains the basis for the U.S. ambiguous commitment to defend Taiwan.

NARRATION: Since then, the United States has tried to keep the peace between China and Taiwan.

ARCHIVAL (NBC, 3-11-96):
NEWS REPORT: Tonight the U.S. is assembling a massive naval task force near Taiwan. 

NARRATION: Case in point: In 1996, the United States sent war ships into the waters between them to deter Chinese aggression.

ARCHIVAL (CNN, 3-11-96):
REPORTER: The United States is walking a very delicate line, trying to keep the Chinese engaged while at the same time trying to make sure that the Chinese know that they can’t act with this kind of belligerence, in fact, toward Taiwan.

NARRATION: Half a century on, the opening to China is remembered as one of Nixon’s greatest achievements. It was even dramatized in a hit opera.

ARCHIVAL (“NIXON IN CHINA,” WETA, PBS, 4-15-88):
OPERA SINGER: Your flight was smooth I hope?
OPERA SINGER: Oh yes, it was very pleasant!

JANE PERLEZ: Nixon goes down in history as the man who opened China to the United States, and that opening has brought big economic gains to both the United States and to China.

WINSTON LORD: I don’t think Nixon or anyone else foresaw the astonishingly fast rise of Chinese economy, the greatest economic advancement in the history of the world.

NARRATION: But China’s rise has changed the global balance of power.

JANE PERLEZ: They’re rich, they’ve got a big military, they’ve got a big voice on the stage of the world, and they think it’s their turn.

NARRATION: Xi Jinping, the leader of the People’s Republic of China, has made it clear that regaining control of Taiwan is a priority. 

ARCHIVAL (12-31-24):
XI JINPING (TRANSLATED): No one can prevent the historical trend toward the unification of the motherland.

KHARIS TEMPLEMAN: The P.R.C. has never renounced its claim to rule over Taiwan. Whether the rest of the world likes it or not, they’re going to resolve this issue one way or another in their favor.

ARCHIVAL (ABC, 10-14-24):
NEWS REPORT: China is holding large-scale military drills around Taiwan.

NARRATION: In recent months, China has ramped up shows of force around Taiwan . . .

ARCHIVAL (ABC, 10-14-24):
NEWS REPORT: The drills are a dress rehearsal for what China would need to do to take over the island of Taiwan.

NARRATION:. . .raising the possibility that the U.S. could be pulled into war. 

ARCHIVAL (WALL STREET JOURNAL 2-26-23):
NEWS REPORT: A war would come at a heavy cost. Casualties and equipment, losses that  we haven’t seen since the Second World War.

KHARIS TEMPLEMAN: The United States does potentially face a choice at some point in the not too distant future. We may have to pay a high price to defend Taiwan. The alternative is to walk away, to back down. It would mean the end of democracy and freedom in Taiwan.

(END)