Chapter 15
Nixon’s Shameful Collusion with Beijing

III. Nixon and Others Admiring the Communist Devils

Lord was seeing Mao Zedong for the first time then, and he told me his impression at the time: “It’s hard to imagine what kind of impression such an important historical figure as Mao Zedong would leave on you, even if you only met him at a cocktail party. He had a kind of power that could seize your attention. Afterwards, both Kissinger and I agreed that even if you didn’t know who he was, you would be drawn to him; he had that kind of charm. Mao Zedong was completely different from Zhou Enlai. Zhou Enlai was a very elegant official, every gesture demonstrating his refinement. But Mao Zedong was much rougher, like a union leader or a peasant leader. He had an aura of authority.”

Simply put, Mao Zedong was like a bandit, Zhou Enlai like a client of a prostitute, and the American officials like tourists experiencing a haunted house scare.

Margaret MacMillan, professor at the University of Toronto and author of Nixon and Mao: The Seven Days that Changed the World, believes that during that meeting Nixon and Mao had very different tones. MacMillan said: “Nixon prepared a whole set of fancy compliments; he even quoted Mao’s poetry and hoped to discuss foreign policy and important strategies. But Mao brushed these topics aside lightly and said: ‘Leave those questions to others; let’s just chat.’ So the meeting became very strange.”

Despite the strangeness, the whole world was watching. Nixon’s message was very clear. He first quoted from Mao’s Man Jiang Hong: To Comrade Guo Moruo: “Many things have always been urgent; heaven and earth turn, time is pressing. Ten thousand years is too long; only strive for the moment.” Then he clearly said: “Now is the time to strive for the moment; it is time for our two peoples to climb the peak of great causes and create a new, better world. In this spirit, I ask you all to raise your glasses with me — for Chairman Mao, for Premier Zhou, and for the friendship between the peoples of China and the United States that can bring friendship and peace to the whole world — cheers!”

Look at Nixon’s shameful collusion before Mao, isn’t this a historical replay of Roosevelt’s shameful collusion before Stalin?

Thus, two countries that had been enemies for more than twenty years, with completely different social systems and ideologies, announced “peace.” This naturally shocked people around the world, but it was the result political speculators longed for. There were two unspeakable secrets behind that historic meeting.

The first was that the three Americans who met the bandit Mao were Nixon, National Security Advisor Kissinger, and his assistant Lord, but Secretary of State Rogers was left behind at the hotel. According to Ji Chaozhu’s recollection, this was because the State Department and the White House had disagreements on some negotiation points with the Chinese Communist Party, so Nixon deliberately excluded Secretary Rogers from many important meetings.

The other secret was what Lord said: “At the end of the meeting, Nixon and Kissinger embraced each other. The Chinese brought photos and films taken during the meeting, along with a draft communiqué listing who was present. All these documents naturally included me. But Nixon told the Chinese to remove Mr. Lord from all photos, films, and communiqués, leaving only him and Kissinger. The Chinese must have found this a bit odd, but from then on, all the photos and books the world saw about that historic meeting only showed Nixon and Kissinger, without my shadow. I have to admit, because I couldn’t keep this secret, I later told the truth to my Chinese wife.”

It seems the criminal Nixon’s habit of eavesdropping, faking, and perjuring couldn’t be hidden even in Beijing. One can imagine how much damage this did to America’s national interests. No matter how many secrets there were at the time, and no matter how many political rifts came later, that bandit meeting between the US and China itself marked a milestone of “dog-dog collusion.”