Nixon Visits China: Cold War Balance Shifts
Richard Nixon stepped off Air Force One in Beijing on February 21, 1972, and shook hands with Premier Zhou Enlai, a gesture deliberately staged to erase the insult John Foster Dulles had delivered in 1954 when he refused to shake Zhou's hand at the Geneva Conference. Nixon, the Cold Warrior who had built his career on anti-communism, was the only American president who could visit Mao without being accused of being soft on communism. Henry Kissinger had secretly visited Beijing the previous July to arrange the trip. The strategic calculation was brilliant: by opening relations with China, Nixon exploited the Sino-Soviet split and forced Moscow to negotiate from a weaker position. The Shanghai Communique issued at the trip's end acknowledged Taiwan as part of China without formally recognizing the People's Republic, a diplomatic ambiguity that has governed US-China-Taiwan relations for over fifty years.
February 21, 1972
54 years ago
Key Figures & Places
People's Republic of China
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President of the United States
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Richard Nixon
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Sino-American relations
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Richard Nixon
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China–United States relations
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China
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United States
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Nicaragua
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Costa Rica
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Anastasio Somoza García
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Nicaraguan National Guard
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Legación
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Asesinato
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Augusto César Sandino
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Santos López
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1972 visit by Richard Nixon to China
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Arthur Cook
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Shooting sports
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1948 Summer Olympics
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Northern Mariana Islands
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United States Virgin Islands
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Puerto Rico
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Samoa
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President
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Mao Zedong
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1895
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كيفين روز
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