How Kissinger’s Secret Trip to China Transformed the Cold War
50 years ago, the U.S. dealt a blow to the Soviet Union, but also helped create a geopolitical monster.
Opening up.
Source: Xinhua via Getty Images
This month marked the 100th birthday of the Chinese Communist Party, a centennial that President Xi Jinping celebrated by promising that China’s enemies will have their “heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel.” It also marks the 50th anniversary of a more hopeful moment in Sino-American relations: Henry Kissinger’s secret trip to Beijing in 1971.
The meetings between Kissinger1, then President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, and Premier Zhou Enlai ended a generation of hostility and set the stage for a historic strategic partnership. Today, as China and the U.S. careen toward confrontation, it is tempting to view the opening to Beijing as the beginning of nearly 50 years of errant engagement of a fundamentally hostile power. But it is worth remembering that the opening began as a smart, hard-headed policy that helped win the Cold War and transformed China’s relationship with the world.