Nixon in China
This week: a conversation with Chas Freeman on the fiftieth anniversary of President Nixon’s breakthrough visit to China. Listen today at 2 pm, or anytime at our website.
Nearing the fiftieth anniversary of Nixon’s meeting with Mao, U.S.-China relations are in bad shape. Chas Freeman — translator with Nixon on that trip — describes on this week’s show his view of the last fifty years. It all started with a 1972 meeting that, Freeman tells us, had Cold War goals:
It was a purely geo-political maneuver to enlist China in the containment of the Soviet Union. And it involved switching from the containment of China by Taiwan to the containment of the Soviet Union by Beijing. That was all. Yet it proved to be the beginning of a process that really has altered not just China, but the world. China has become a very serious competitor in the capitalist economies of the world. In fact, so serious a competitor that whereas in 1972 we were worried about Chinese weakness, vulnerability, and poverty, we’re now worried about Chinese strength and prosperity.
On the matter of Taiwan, Freeman says:
Our Taiwan policy has been a tremendous success. We broke relations with Taiwan. We derecognized it as a state, we withdrew our forces from it. We ended our defense commitment to it. And yet it has democratized. It has a robust democracy with a great respect for civil liberty. It is prosperous above European levels. It has been enormously successful in areas of high technology like chip manufacturing. All of these things have happened despite the absence of a normal U.S.-Taiwan relationship. I’d say that’s a hell of a success.
And he tells us how he thinks Xi Jinping would assess Nixon’s visit to China:
I think he would say it was very beneficial to China; that it was a wise strategic decision by Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai; that it did not solve all problems, but it set in motion developments that could help solve problems; that there’s no way around dealing with the United States; and that, as he has said frequently in dealing with the United States, China should put cooperation first and competition second. We, of course, reverse the order. We put animosity or competition first and only then admit we might cooperate on a thing or two. I think Xi Jinping has the order right.
Watch: YiYi
Speaking of Taiwan, it’s a good time to watch the late filmmaker Edward Yang’s masterpiece which follows a middle-class family in Taipei over the course of one year, beginning with a wedding and ending with a funeral.
The Winter Olympics
Here’s Dave Zirin and Jules Boykoff on the politics of the 2022 Beijing Olympics, writing particularly with regard to increasing U.S. hostilities toward China:
Last year, a Pew Research poll found that 67 percent of the Americans polled held negative feelings toward China. This was a remarkable 21 percent increase in only three years. Beyond this, a Gallup poll found that between February 2020 and February 2021, the number who viewed China as their country’s “greatest enemy” more than doubled, jumping from 22 percent to 45 percent. This enemy-speak has repercussions. Last year, anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 339 percent in the United States.
Listen: Clubhouse
Skip the Super Bowl and join Chris Lydon and rock star-podcaster Kaiser Kuo in a conversation on China. They’ll be over on the Clubhouse app tonight, Sunday 2/13, at 8 pm.
This week’s ephemeral library
Walken on Walken. Osnos on the Olympics and China’s future.Nathan Chen’s Rocketman (in case you missed it). There is Nothing Normal About One Million People Dead from Covid. Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diary. Heeding the Lessons of James Joyce’s Ulysses 100 Years Later. Surely This is How Wordle Was Created.
That’s all for this week, folks. Brady has retired so join us tonight on Clubhouse. We’re experimenting with a new medium: social audio. Who knew?
The OS Diplomats
