Why did Mao welcome Nixon to Beijing in 1972?

The short answer

• Mao and Khrushchev read 1956 differently. Khrushchev’s condemnation of Stalin and peaceful coexistence with the West suggested to Mao that Moscow was retreating from revolution. The suspicion ran both ways. In a 1957 Moscow speech Mao said socialism would triumph even after a nuclear war killed half of humanity, alarming Soviet leaders. Later disagreements were judged against these doubts. Because both claimed Lenin’s doctrine, a dispute over policy became a contest over its rightful heir.
• National interests collided. An alliance did not remove the two states’ different interests. Moscow sought naval facilities in China and influence over its defense; Beijing wanted the atomic bomb and independence. Mao rejected the joint fleet and shelled Kinmen without warning Moscow in 1958. In 1959 the Soviets withdrew their promise of a sample bomb and stayed neutral in China’s border dispute with India. Requests for cooperation looked like attempts at control, and the alliance ceased to serve either side well before it formally ended.
• The Leap divided the comrades. The Great Leap brought domestic and foreign disagreements together. Khrushchev mocked the communes as a Soviet mistake already tried and abandoned, while Mao believed Soviet leaders had encouraged Peng Dehuai’s criticism at Lushan. Moscow withdrew its experts in July 1960, at the height of famine, leaving many Chinese convinced that an ally had deserted them at their weakest. Beijing later blamed the famine partly on Soviet “perfidy”; that explanation also spared its leaders some blame for their own decisions.
• The Brezhnev Doctrine frightened Beijing. In August 1968 Soviet tanks crushed Czechoslovakia’s reform movement. Moscow claimed a right to intervene when a socialist country strayed, and Beijing knew that Soviet leaders considered China to have strayed far. Divisions massed on the border and in Mongolia turned the Cultural Revolution’s anti-Soviet rhetoric into a military fear. China had a small nuclear force and a vast but poorly equipped army, and could not meet that threat alone.

What it changed

Nixon in Beijing. Nixon’s week in China in February 1972 ended two decades of American refusal to deal with the People’s Republic. The Shanghai Communiqué set out both sides’ views and found a formula on Taiwan. Liaison offices opened in 1973, followed by full diplomatic relations in January 1979 under Deng Xiaoping. American trade, technology and students became central to the reforms after Mao.

China takes its seat at the UN. The General Assembly voted 76 to 35 on 25 October 1971 to give the People’s Republic China’s UN seat, including its permanent Security Council place. The Republic of China’s representatives left. The vote showed how many governments had awaited an American signal. Beijing saw a formal end to two decades of isolation; Taipei faced the beginning of a long loss of recognition.

The ring opens. Japan established relations with Beijing in September 1972 and broke them with Taiwan. West Germany, Australia and many others followed within months; the Philippines and Thailand did so in 1975. The map’s blue ring of 1964 opens in the east, even though the Soviet border remains a front line. China had escaped encirclement without settling its dispute with Moscow.

A Cold War triangle. Washington, Moscow and Beijing could now each use relations with one of the others to influence the third. The Soviet Union hurried into arms agreements with the United States in May 1972. Vietnam resented China’s dealings with its enemy and drifted toward Moscow; the rift led to a China–Vietnam war in 1979. The triangle offered China more room to maneuver than either alliance or isolation.