BOLD AND AMBITIOUS GAMBLE
Fifty years have passed since American President Richard Nixon made his historic trip to China. On February 21, 1972, when Air Force One landed in Beijing, two decades of enmity between America and China ended. Firstly, a beaming President Nixon alighted to respectfully shake the hand of an approving Premier Zhou Enlai. Doing so, he purposely corrected a 1954 insult by John Foster Dulles. But this was as if an American president had traveled to Mars. Therefore, images of smiles, banquets, Nixon meeting with Chairman Mao Zedong and Nixon at the Great Wall were enthralling. However, not to the leaders of the Soviet Union. It was their power that Nixon and Zhou sought to neutralize with a bold and ambitious gamble. It was in the mutual interest of America and China to come together and launch modern China.
POLITICAL AND CORPORATE EMBRACE
Nixon to China occurred only six years after the start of Mao’s cultural revolution to purge western influence. But then Mao surprised everyone by insisting upon warmly receiving Nixon immediately upon the staunch anticommunist’s arrival. Nixon and Zhou started America and China on the road to reconciliation. In the decades to follow, subsequent American leaders worked with China’s brilliant Chairman Deng Xiaoping and others to develop China into a dynamic economic partner. However, for all its mutual benefits, the American political and corporate embrace of China has evolved in a problematic manner. Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Belt and Road initiative, COVID-19, the South China Sea, Korea, intellectual property theft, hoarding of earth minerals, climate, environmental mismanagement, and a return to Mao’s socialist vision highlight the critical issues before the world’s foremost competitors.
THE NEW XI-PUTIN AXIS
Therefore, the 2022 juxtaposition of Xi Jinping’s modernized and dynamic China swinging back toward alignment with Vladimir Putin’s diminished Russia is all the more disturbing. Furthermore, during the 1972 “week that changed the world,” America and China came together because of the Soviet Union. Today, deteriorating relations are accelerated by China first enabling and now rescuing Russia. But the nature of Putin’s brutal and unnecessary invasion of Ukraine must give Xi’s China pause. Therefore, 50 years on, Putin’s quagmire challenges the American and Chinese relationship unlike anything since 1972. However, the 1972 Shanghai Communique included China’s bedrock policy that national sovereignty and territorial integrity are paramount. Consequently, as China emerges as America’s geopolitical competitor, the deliberate Xi’s new Axis with an erratic Putin has become problematic. A steady if competitive relationship with America is far more profitable and consequential for China.
UKRAINE QUAGMIRE
Putin launched his quixotic military drive into neighboring Ukraine only twenty days after he and Xi forged their 2022 version of the Shanghai Communique, announcing a “new era.” Moreover, in denouncing the post-Soviet, American-led liberal democratic world order, the autocrats envisioned a friendship that “has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.” However, Beijing may now have buyer’s remorse as it grapples with how to rescue its erstwhile spouse from global economic sanctions and a military quagmire. Avoiding taking a stand and coldly abstaining at the United Nations, China urges Ukrainian “peace talks” and stresses its supposed respect for “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries.” But Beijing also parrots Moscow’s flimsy assertion that America and NATO are to blame for “provoking” Putin’s blundering but brutal invasion. Consequently, one can only imagine how realistic and responsible leaders such as Nixon and Zhou would react to all this.
LOOKING FOR A WAY OUT
Therefore, China may be looking for a way out as a beleaguered Russia needs somewhere to export fuel and food, its currency collapses, and its people can’t use credit cards. This is not what Xi bargained for. Enabling Russian aggression awkwardly contrasts with the elegance of the 1972 Shanghai communique and China’s current official foreign policy. Moreover, each side stated opposing world views while outlining joint support for trade, dialogue, and national integrity. Likewise, deliberate ambiguity regarding Taiwan. However, America and China offered their peoples and the world hope, rather than today’s Xi-Putin accommodation. Fueled by over $3 trillion in American and other foreign investment, China’s economy has grown to be the world’s second largest. But criticized for its human-rights record, handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and trade practices, China found resonance in Putin’s false complaints against America and the west.
RAMIFICATIONS OF ENGAGEMENT
The ramifications of Ukraine and assistance for Russia may hasten or temper Xi’s apparent sense of urgency regarding Taiwan. As American elder statesman Henry Kissinger notes in his Nixon to China fiftieth anniversary remarks, “the key to international order is restrained conduct and peaceful discussion between these two great societies.” However, China’s ambassador to Washington, Qin Gang, has warned: “to maintain peace and stability, the U.S. side should honor its commitments on the Taiwan question, and work with China to oppose and contain ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces.” Therefore, although Nixon to China was an unqualified success, the world has yet again changed. For decades, engagement with China has come to be seen by critics as a strategic blunder, wherein a global power aided and abetted the rise of a peer competitor. But others see political and corporate collaboration as a constructive success.
REASON AND REALISM
Ukraine received assurances in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum that, in exchange for turning over Soviet nuclear weapons, America and Russia would guarantee its security. However, Putin has now recklessly abandoned the possibility of a neutral Ukraine. Meanwhile, within its interpretation of the 1972 Shanghai Communique, America has maintained the right to supply Taiwan with defense weapons. Therefore, will the carefully crafted result of Nixon to China soon completely unravel, or can sensible competitors America and China recover the promise of the Nixon and Zhou rapprochement? Likewise, will a realistic China reexamine its apparently counterproductive embrace of a cornered Russia and potentially doomed Putin? In conclusion, Putin has ignited Cold War II. Xi’s autocratic China and President Joseph Biden’s democratic America share responsibility for global stability. Differences and challenges notwithstanding, today’s leaders would be wise to reaffirm the promise and benefits of Nixon to China, especially given Vladimir Putin’s insanity.
Dennis M. Spragg is the author of America Ascendant, the Rise of American Exceptionalism and Glenn Miller Declassified. His forthcoming book is America and Britain, the Essential Alliance. Recent and related commentaries include Cold War II, America and China – An Historic Crossroads, American Leadership – Beyond Afghanistan and The Biden Doctrine – A Dangerous and Defining Moment.