Glad to be back once again in the saddle after a long hiatus. Uh, actually, we haven't talked since December, have we? Since uh before the holidays. A lot has happened since then. I was actually supposed to go back to the USA for January and February, which was the original reason for our hiatus. But unfortunately, we do have some bad news.

My father-in-law got diagnosed with stomach cancer. But on the bright side, uh he was able thanks to some strings being pulled or as we say in uh Chinese, guānxi, connections and networking, he was able to start treatment at Beijing's People's Liberation Army General Hospital number 301, which is considered the best hospital in China. in China. Not just the best in Beijing, not just one of the best in the country, the best.

It's where uh Chairman Mao, Zhou Enlai, and Kang Sheng all spent their final days. And when Xi Jinping and other top government brass uh get sick or need a medical procedure, they go there. So, he is literally in the best of hands. In fact, his current doctor is considered one of the foremost world's foremost experts on stomach cancer. Not just China's foremost expert, he is one of the world's foremost experts on stomach cancer. So, he's getting top of-the-line frontline treatment. So, we're hoping for the best.

It's been rough for all of us. I gotta admit, my winter break, uh, it it really was not a break, you could say. It was, uh, it was a lot of helping around the house, taking care of the in-laws, and all such and such. But the new semester has begun, and we're back in the saddle of teaching and research. So, I guess that's all we can hope to ask for.

So today we're going to be covering the first half of the year of 1971. A year which marks the beginning of a 2-year long process that is seen as one of the most important series of meetings in world history. Not just Chinese history, but world history. And is still one of the most controversial meetings among Marxists on both sides of the Pacific to this very day.

That's right. We're going to start with the negotiations between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America, the two geopolitical archenemies. Negotiations that ended up in the culminating of Richard Nixon's trip to China in 1972.

In this episode, we'll talk about the phenomenon of ping pong diplomacy and how that culminated into a secret meeting with Premier Zhou Enlai and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in July 1971, which is where we'll end the episode.

Yes, folks, in 1971, China began to slowly but surely open up to the world. Well, I mean, not really. As we've seen in prior episodes, foreign delegations and diplomatic relations between China and various countries seeking national liberation or post-colonial development and various pro-Beijing parties. You know, it was still very much a thing during the tumultuous years of 1966 through 1968. But I guess you could say this is where China really opens up diplomatically to the western capitalist powers. I don't know. There's actually been a recent debate on this question of when did China open up or was it ever closed to begin with. I think there's actually a new book coming out. The name of it escapes me. It's supposed to come out in July of 2026. I posted about it at uh on my uh Twitter account, but the name of the book and the name of the author, I'm having a brain fart. It's a new book that is supposedly challenging the idea that prior to 1971, Mao's China was a hermit kingdom. uh sort of like you know people talk about the Democratic People's Republic of Korea today being a hermit kingdom and you know was that really true? But I digress. I don't know. You guys be the judge of it.

So let's get into it. So let's pour up some poor tea. Grab some Asian snickity snacks from your local HMart or your 99 Ranch supermarket or your local Asian farmers market. Change into your pajamas and panda slippers. Turn down the lights and let's get into it.

The year 1971 began on January 1st as uh you know years tend to do in the Gregorian calendar with an editorial in People's Daily and Red Flag called ‘Advance Victoriously along chairman Mao's revolutionary line’. The editorial was uh was very interesting because between the 9th Congress in 1969 and into December of 1970, many people spoke of the cultural revolution in the past tense.

But in this editorial, the opposite was in fact true. As you guys might know, there is no past, present, or future tense in the Chinese language.

You kind of have to do it through context. But what you'll notice is that in English translations, you see them start to use the present tense once again. The editorial announced “This year will witness the deepening of the struggle criticism transformation movement of our current great proletarian cultural revolution.” Notice that it says current.

“We should firmly grasp revolutionary mass criticism on the political and ideological front, the cultural and educational front and the economic front in all spheres of the superstructure and to continually criticize the ideological trends of modern revisionism with Soviet revisionism at its center and eliminating the remaining pernicious influence of the counterrevolutionary revisionist line of the renegaded hidden traitor scab Liu Shaoqi”

and uh what's interesting is is that in that issue of red flag and then also in that issue of Peking review that came out that time you see them once again encouraging mass criticism sessions in the factories and workplaces like you saw during the uh mass movement campaigns that you see in late '66 through mid 68.

So that's interesting. The editorial concluded, "This year the party, the army, and the people of the whole country should continue to implement the grand strategic principles of heighten our vigilance, defend the motherland, be prepared against war, be prepared against natural disasters, and do everything for the people."

"The People's Liberation Army should continue to enhance revolutionization and militancy in army building by carrying out the four requirements of the four good units. Militia building must be done well and carried through organizationally, politically and militarily."

"It is necessary to support the army and cherish the people and support the government and cherish the people, strengthen the unity between the army, the government, and between the army and the people, and be better prepared ideologically, materially, and organizationally against any war of aggression. "

"Furthermore, we must be determined to liberate our sacred territory of Taiwan province. We are now engaged in a great and most glorious cause never attempted by our forefathers. Our goals must be attained. Our goals can be certainly attained. The whole party, the whole army, the whole people of all nationalities in the country shall unite still more closely."

"Comrades, let us advance victoriously along Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line under the leadership of the party central committee with Chairman Mao as its leader and vice chairman Lin as its deputy leader. Long live the People's Republic of China. Long live the Communist Party of China. Long live the great proletarian cultural revolution and carry it out until its end."

Another notice in that issue as well is that in provincial daily newspapers in every part of the country was a call from the party center to hold provincial party congresses in every province, every autonomous region and independent municipalities like Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing. Everywhere in China above the municipal level was to hold a provincial party congress.

While the party committees had been reconstituted on a national level, you know, there was now once again a solid Politburo, a solid central committee. There were now municipal party committees and grassroots level village and district party committees and county party committees that had been reconstituted across summer of 1969 through December of 1970. and the workplace party committee reconstitution had been all but complete.

There had still been no provincial party congresses to solidify these reconstitutions with provincial level party work being carried out almost entirely by the party groups within the provincial revolutionary committees.

The central committee said it was time to change that and said that by the end of the year all provinces should have new provincial party committees elected by congresses on a Marxism Leninism Mao Zedong Thought basis.

However, I'm going to wait to get into that a little deeper with the next chronological episode because the provincial party congresses start in January, but they don't end until late August. And this episode will be finishing with July of 71.

So, I think it might help to begin the next chronological episode with a quick discussion and analysis of the provincial level reconstitution and the provincial level party congresses and how that unfolded before.

Well, you know that big thing that happens in September of 1971 where a certain someone catches a little plane to Moscow or tries to and uh doesn't go so well, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Anyways, let's get back to the main theme of this month's episode. China opening up to the West. Well, like I just said a few minutes ago, that's very much a misnomer.

As I've talked about foreign guests and delegates visiting China multiple times across the podcast, and not just the Albanians and the Vietnamese, but the first 6 months of 1971 are definitely a noticeable PR blitz that ends with a meeting that changed the world.

On January 2nd, a 100,000 strong rally at Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, welcomed a self Vietnamese uh communist delegation that had been touring the provinces since December.

The tide was gradually turning in Vietnam against the US and South Vietnamese puppet forces, but the war was still a few more years away from being over. and the Vietnamese people still needed all the solidarity and support they could get from the Chinese. So this tour and subsequent rally were a major morale boost for the South Vietnamese comrades who were on the trip.

6 days later, the PRC table tennis or ping pong team arrived back in Beijing after a successful European tour that visited Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland. The Chinese government had decided to dip their toe in the waters of using sports, particularly ping pong, to open the country up to broader diplomacy by sending ping pong teams to their lone ally in Europe, Albania, of course, along with some more neutral Western European states like the Nordic countries and even one non-aligned states who they weren't particularly friendly with, Yugoslavia.

And you know what? It surprisingly turned out to be an enormous success. Many Chinese officials saw this as a sign that using friendly pingpong meets could be a way to reopen lines of communication with Western imperialist countries, especially with the Soviets once again building up troops and equipment in Siberia and Mongolia.

Now, I know I was going to say that I was going to talk about the the party congresses, the provincial and independent municipality party congresses in the next chronological episode.

But I want to talk real quick though about one of them and that is on January 10th, the Shanghai Municipal Party Congress was held and elected not only a new municipal party committee but also elected Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan's uh revolutionary committee team to lead the new party committee.

The Shanghai delegates resolved to go all out, achieve high and greater and faster and more economic results and build socialism to the fullest extent. Shanghai radio announced that Shanghai had formed a new party committee that was based on the 3in1 combination but in an interesting way.

Instead of party cadres, mass orgs, and PLA, it was also going to be old, middle-aged, and young cadres. So, how about that? Another thing to notice is that the workers headquarters still greatly dominated the municipal party committee.

On January 23rd, a bit of foreshadowing occurred in the press. The People's Daily ironically thanked their American lords for in recent American press sending cables to the Chinese embassy in Warsaw, suggesting that China may be a superpower someday, but made it clear that they rejected the idea of China being a superpower that would lord over other nations.

Still, the fact that the Chinese were flattered by such talk rather than responding with vicious vitriol and venom was an interesting change in earlier rhetoric. All was not necessarily well within the halls of power though. Do you guys remember what happened last time at the Lushan conference in the last episode?

Well, on the 26th of January, the party center in response to Chen Boda's behavior at the Lushan conference in September of 1970 distributed a nationwide packet of evidence of various historical crimes committed by the anti-party element Chen Boda.

It was clear Chen was in big trouble and not just in terms of private behind closed doors admonishment and demands to self-criticize by the polit bureau. He was now being publicly seen as a black element within the party.

Then Zhou Enlai as premier and international face of China decided that he didn't have much time for this whole Chen Boda business. And on the 28th, he personally received the president of the Japanese Pingpong Association in preparation for China's return to international tournaments.

Yes. Yes. Yes. My friends, gasp. The Chinese were talking to the Japanese. the Japanese of all people on how to get China back into the international athletics community on a big scale.

Two days later, the Chinese gymnastics team left for Baathist party led Baghdad for a fortnight-long friendship tour of Iraq, where they performed for 10,000 people, including Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan Al Bakr and his vice president and premier Saddam Hussein.

On February 2nd, Chairman Mao and Zhou Enlai met with a proposal to let 1,000 foreign leftists and workers visit China in then in this year. This was a raising of the cap. Originally, it was only going to be a couple of hundred.

And Mao did something interesting. He said, I think we should add rightists to the list of people that may come. that is delegations from pro-s Soviet revisionist parties.

So not only did he want groups like you know the revolutionary union or the black panthers or the you know gauche proletarien in uh France to come. He he wanted people from the CPUSA or the PCF and uh PCI to come and uh see revolutionary China for themselves.

6 days later on February 8th, Finland and China signed a trade treaty that would allow the free flow of goods between the two countries. Finland had had diplomatic relations with the PRC since 1954, but trade between the two countries had stalled in 1966, and Finland never really fully committed to the one China policy.

But with this treaty, Finland declared the People's Republic to be the one true China with the ROC in Taiwan to be an illegitimate state. and Taiwan was to be seen as a province of China by Finnish authorities. Finland also reaffirmed its belief that the PRC should have a seat at the UN.

On the 10th of the month in Cairo, Chai Zemin signed a recognition agreement with Nigeria, affirming that the Nigerians saw the PRC as the sole legal government of the Chinese people and declared that Nigeria would back China having a seat at the UN.

While back-channel discussions between the USA and China were going better than ever, on the surface things were, well, obviously still tense.

A Chinese state council statement indignantly condemned US escalation of the Vietnam War in Cambodia and Laos and pledged to take effective measures to help defeat them. Cities across China held mass demonstrations in support of the government's condemnation of US aggression.

Half a million people marched in Beijing and demanded further military and financial aid for the Vietnamese, Laotian, and Kampuchean people.

Then something very interesting happened that week. The Xinhua news agency reported something that was very, very interesting.

The party central committee was calling for the resuscitation of the old Communist Youth League. The CYL had been replaced by the Red Guards in 1966 and had been officially dissolved in January of 1967 because the central committee of the CYL was very pro-Liu Shaoqi.

But with the university red guard movement having been disbanded 3 years prior in July of '68 and the red guard detachment in China's middle and high schools still existing but being essentially toothless after school extracurricular clubs that were really no different from the pre-1965 youth league. It made sense that reconstituting the Communist Youth League might be a good idea at the time.

It would have be a two-year long process and the Communist Youth League would not be officially revived until 1973 and the middle and high school Red Guards would continue to ostensibly exist until 1977 as a parallel organization.

But this was still a big thing. Soon, talk of reviving the All-China Federation of Trade Unions and the All-China Women's Federation also began stirring among the party center. But we will talk more about that in our episode about 1973.

On February 19th, Zhou Enlai submitted to Mao a foreign ministry paper on letting Americans visit China for both political and non-political purposes. With 830 US applicants already having submitted their applications since Nixon took power, Mao said he'd think about it, but he was more concerned with the issue of Chen Boda that day.

In the same meeting, Mao granted Zhou Enlai approval to invite non-members of the Politburo to the Politburo meeting so that he could underline the imperative to criticize Chen Boda. Mao complained that the central military commission conference had barely criticized Chen Boda and that this should be the focus within party ranks from now on.

Across late February, once again, the Chinese press flip-flop between calls for Sino-American friendship and calling for the crushing of American imperialism. Reacting to the wild war cries of US press conference about operations in Laos, the People's Daily labeled Nixon a diabolical warmonger.

The friendship endeavors once again swung back to more safer nations. On the 25th, the North Korean football team were treated to a banquet by the National Sports Commission in Beijing and went on a two-week friendship tour, despite many in the party leadership still viewing the DPRK as a puppet of Soviet social imperialism.

But you know, and hey, at this point, you take what you can get. And as I said in the last episode, Mao and Kim had spent the year of 1970 trying to rekindle their old friendship and once again lock arms in anti-imperialist solidarity, even with their ideological differences.

In terms of scientific development, China was actually doing not too bad. the GDP per capita (editor's note: questionable, at least GDP PPP should be used as a measure) and industrial output were doing much better. Food security was still, you know, it still wasn't as good as developing as many developing countries. But there were no more mass shortages or starvation. And that's really important.

The most important thing though was that China was able to launch its second ever satellite, the East Is Red 2 from the desert in Inner Mongolia. Based on the first, it carried a sensor suite and weighed 50 kg more.

Something that made the Chinese scientific community very happy and made a lot of space programs around the world, particularly the Americans and the Soviets, sit up and take notice. China had gone to space not once but twice now showing that the Chinese were going to continue to make progress into the space age alongside their American and Soviet colleagues.

Oh, and yes, yes, I know I said I only talk about the provincial party congresses at the beginning of the next chronological episode, but I had to mention this one because I'm biased like that. you know, living in Shaanxi myself.

On March 5th, the New Party Congress in Shaanxi elected Revolutionary Committee chairman Li Ruishan to the head of a resurrected provincial party committee. Now, what's interesting is that the 1971 Shaanxi CPC provincial party congress was not held in Xi’an like it usually is, but was in fact held in Yan’an, which I think is very interesting and was definitely a flex.

By the way, I actually kind of like Li Ruishan. He was an OG, a veteran of Yan. He was a rebel cadre during the 1960s, personally took part in the power seizures and uh was actually one of the few top leaders who tried at least to stay a leftist into the 1990s. He was able to avoid being toppled during the coup in the late 70s.

uh He was not implicated as part of the Gang of Four clique or the Lin Biao clique and he stayed on the central committee until 1985 but due to being unrepentant about his red past he eventually got sidelined to some low-level agricultural paper pushing job until his death in 1997.

So, uh, you know, Li Ruishan got lucky to have a good revolutionary committee chairman and provincial party committee secretary. But I digress. Again, we will talk more about the party provincial congresses in the next episode.

Meanwhile, on March 7th, Zhou Enlai took a trip to Hanoi where he met with Le Duan. Low had taken notice of the Chinese government's recent overtures to more and more capitalist countries, but Zhou assured him that support for people's revolutionary struggles must never be sacrificed for the sake of diplomacy.

Then on March 28th, history was made. The 1971 World Table Tennis Championships was held in Nagoya, Japan with the Chinese national team making their triumphant comeback after being absent since 1966. Their Chinese athletes competed and got to fraternize with fellow competitors from Austria, Czechoslovakia, the UK, West Germany, Hungary, India, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Romania, the Soviet Union, Sweden, and Yugoslavia.

Many countries which would have been unthinkable for a Chinese person to visit or fraternize with citizens of outside of you know pro-Beijing communist party delegations or embassy work. At that point the Chinese really did clean up. They won 11 gold, eight silver and two bronze. So good for them.

Many radicals within the central committee, particularly former central cultural revolution group members and many leftists in the military and workers congresses opposed sending a team to this 1971 championships in Nagoya.

And even many of the players on the national Ping Pong team believe that China should not have sent them due to the fact that Japan was an imperialist state and still had yet to apologize for their aggression against the Chinese people during World War II. Ultimately, however, Chairman Mao reviewed and approved the plan and submitted it to the team.

Mao and Zhou instructed its members not to conduct propaganda to foreigners and that while they should not initially initiate conversations with the American team, they should shake hands with the American players at matches and if the American players struck up conversations first to be cordial.

However, once in Japan, the Chinese players immediately engaged in conversations with other foreign teams after they were greeted by their American counterparts.

On March 30th, 1971, American player Graham Steenhoven and the head of the Chinese delegation Sun Zhong struck up not one but two friendly short conversations. Steenhoven had told Sun that the United States had just lifted its ban on travel to China.

He also expressed his regret that the ban meant that the American team did not get to attend the 1961 World Table tennis championships which had been held in China. He hoped the US team would be able to compete in China in the future.

The Chinese delegation relayed this interaction to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Sports Commission requesting instructions on how to respond.

The Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Commission of Sports did not respond positively, honestly viewing it as inappropriate to invite American athletes to China before inviting American Maoists like the Revolutionary Union or October League.

Zhou Enlai agreed, but requested that Chinese officials obtain the American delegation's mailing address and inform them via official letter of China's position on the Taiwan issue.

Mao initially agreed that the American communists should visit before athletes, but two days later, he changed his mind and called for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to invite the American Ping Pong team to visit China.

The third incident, and perhaps the most dramatic incident that really got the ball rolling even further, was the unexpected but dramatic meeting between the American player Glenn Cowan and the Chinese team captain Zhuang Zedong, the three-time world championship winner of many table tennis events. On the morning of the championship, Cowan overslept and missed his own team's bus.

So, he hopped on the next bus to the stadium, which well just so happened to belong to China's national team. Many of the Chinese players were initially suspicious of Cowan. But Zhuang Zedong had read that Mao Zedong had hung out with Edgar Snow just a few months prior and knew the line of the Communist Party was to support proletarian internationalism, particularly towards the American working class and oppressed nationalities.

So he decided, sure, why not go up and talk to an American? Maybe he's a comrade. Zhuang approached Cowan on the bus, shook his hand, and spoke to him through an interpreter. He presented him with a silkscreen portrait of Huangshan Mountain, a famous product from Hangzhou.

Cowan wanted to give something back, but all he could find from his back was a comb. The American hesitantly replied, "I can't give you a comb. I wish I could give you something, but I can't." Cowan would later reciprocate Zhuang's gesture by gifting them a T-shirt embroidered with a peace sign.

When they exited the bus, journalists snap photos of the two together. Two days later, the US team received an official invitation to travel to China and play exhibition matches against the Chinese team with the Chinese with the United States accepting the invitation.

In the midst of this budding peace on March 18th, 1971, communists, socialists, and anarchists around the world celebrated the centenary of the establishment of the Paris Commune, the first elite very short-lived working-class socialist government in human history. The Chinese press put out a provocative editorial called "Long Live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" in commemoration of the centenary of the Paris Commune.

In the editorial, the Communist Party of China declared that the 1917 Russian and 1949 Chinese revolutions were the culmination of the uprising of 1871 and that the current Cultural Revolution was the latest stage in the realization of the Paris Commune.

While I can't find any footage of any parade or rally in Beijing for that day or any other day in March, April or May in celebration of the Paris Commune, posters, dazibaos and subsequent editorials were published all around China and many commemorative meetings were held on local levels, particularly in Shanghai, no surprise there, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Paris Commune. One worker proclaimed, "The Commune was never defeated. People's China is now the Paris Commune."

On April 7th, the US table tennis team received their invitation to China. A press conference was held that very same day, and the next day, a statement from the team was ran in all major newspapers across the country.

Zhou Enlai was happy to hear the news and told the diplomat Huang Hua that the visit of the US table tennis players offers a very good opportunity to open relations with the USA.

Two days later, the US table tennis squad and a team of journalists minus a South Korean-American player, whose anti-communist police compelled him to decline visiting China, arrived in Hong Kong. Later that afternoon, the Canadian table tennis team arrived in Beijing.

The first of several Western teams, who competed in Japan last week, had been invited. The next morning, a 15-strong party around the US table tennis team walked from Hong Kong and into China. They were received by party and army officials and were given Little Red Books in English and Chairman Mao badges.

On the 13th, the British national table tennis team entered Guangdong from Hong Kong and were met with another delegation of workers, cadres, and soldiers who also handed out Mao badges and Little Red Books.

In response, on April 14th, the US government lifted its ban on all Chinese visitors to the United States and relaxed its trade restrictions with Nixon's calling for America to trade with China and the USSR on a roughly equal basis.

That same day, in the Great Hall of the People, Zhou Enlai received table tennis players and reporters from Canada, Colombia, Nigeria, the UK, and the USA.

Zhou Enlai told the US table tennis players that your visit has opened a new chapter in relations between the Chinese and American people. Ping-pong diplomacy, it seemed, was going completely according to plan, and a new chapter in Chinese-American relations was slowly but surely beginning.

During the meeting, Glenn Cohen asked Zhou Enlai his view on the hippies. Zhou, thinking back to the Red Guard movement, responded surprisingly positively, saying they manifest young people's frustrations, but not necessarily with mature thought.

On April 20th, Australia's Ping Pong team arrived in Guangzhou, accompanied, like the teams before them, by their own journalists.

On the 21st, US magazines and newspapers printed Edgar Snow's account of his December 18th, 1970 conversations with Chairman Mao, including an open invitation to Nixon to have a visit for some negotiations.

Also that day, Zhou Enlai sent a letter to President Nixon via Pakistan calling for a meeting with Kissinger or above to fundamentally restore relations.

But not all was well entirely in the halls of power.

That evening, Lin Liguo, the son of Lin Biao, met with other Air Force officials to discuss the Chen Boda inquiry. The inquiry's request for Lin Biao and Mao to speak had been ignored. This meeting, which ended up with Lin Liguo storming off in anger, will become a major foreshadowing for our next chronological episode, which you won't want to miss.

Still, on the diplomatic front, things were looking good. The morning of the 27th, People's Daily carried an editorial called "Salute the American people who are fighting valiantly," a tribute to the anti-war movement in the United States, as well as various national liberation movements like the Black Panthers and the Brown Berets, as well as, of course, various new communist movement groups and pre-party formations inspired by Mao Zedong Thought.

That morning over breakfast, Nixon received Zhou Enlai's letter inviting Kissinger, the US Secretary of State, or Nixon himself to Beijing for talks to restore relations. Nixon then told a press conference that he wants a more normal relationship with the Chinese and I expect to visit in some capacity one day.

May Day 1971 was an interesting one because of just how many foreigners were on the roster. Half a million people filled Tiananmen Square for the usual May Day celebrations. Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk was made guest of honor for the parade. One of 2,000 foreign dignitaries invited.

But something funny happened that made many on the roster take notice. Lin Bao, vice chairman and designated successor to Mao, was late, very late. Zhou Enlai made excuses for Lin Biao, saying he hadn't been feeling well that day. Mao was vocally skeptical about this and said that Lin had always been idealistic about his health.

Near the end of the parade, Lin Bao finally arrived and sat opposite of Mao, but they ignored each other and Lin declined to give a speech. Lin, visibly nervous, stayed just long enough to be photographed, have dinner, and then left immediately without speaking to any of his comrades.

Two days later, People's Daily launched Palestine International Week with a salute to the Palestinian guerrillas. Li Xiannian led a 10,000-strong rally in support of Palestine with many Fatah, PFLP, and DFLP leaders on the Tiananmen roster.

On May 5th, the Chinese ambassadors to France and San Marino, as well as their two counterparts, signed a mutual recognition agreement. France and San Marino had maintained diplomatic relations with China since 1954, but also maintained relations with Taiwan.

This treaty would change that. And with that, yet two more European nations switched over to the One China policy and called for the People's Republic of China to replace the Republic of China's seat at the UN General Assembly.

On May 10th, two American academics arrived in Nanjing, the first to visit China in over 20 years. The team of American scientists and professors had been in Hanoi, studying US defoliant poisoning, and had come to the conclusion that America was committing war crimes by using illegal biological and chemical weapons against Vietnamese civilians and wanted to report their findings to Vietnam's ally China.

Meanwhile, in DC, it became official. Henry Kissinger officially agreed with Zhou Enlai and began mapping his itinerary. The trip, codenamed Operation Polo, was to be kept secret initially. The idea was that if the meeting ended in failure or in a deadlock, it'd be erased entirely from history and no one would ever know about it.

However, if it was a success, they would later publicize it and get the ball rolling on normalization of diplomatic relations between the US and PRC in full. Kissinger, being very serious about keeping this secret, proposed that his planned meeting with Zhou Enlai had to happen in China to stop the Pakistanis from taping it in a memo to Nixon.

On the other side, diplomacy with other states continued. Staff from the North Korean embassy visited the China-North Korea Friendship People's Commune outside Beijing and began to help locals plant crops, showing that the DPRK and China were both open to expanding joint agricultural ventures.

On May 20th, something really interesting happened. Soviet border negotiators came to Beijing and had an 11-day trip around Shanghai, Jiangsu, Jilin, and Zhejiang, meeting leaders and seeing sites.

This was extremely important because while technically the Soviets and Chinese had been on ceasefire since 1969, you know, with the border conflict and all, the Soviets were once again amassing troops and equipment on the Siberian-Hong Kong and Chinese-Mongolian border.

Chinese reconnaissance planes and US CIA spy planes noticed that in the early spring of 1971, 44 Soviet infantry divisions had moved towards China along with a large amount of T-62 tank divisions and Scud missile systems.

Most concerning, however, was the SS-12 Scaleboard nuclear missiles that were beginning to be stationed along the northeastern Sino-Soviet border. In other words, now the Soviet Union could easily nuke Beijing and Shanghai very quickly.

While the Chinese had hoped that the May 1971 friendship tour with the Soviet border negotiators might curry some favor with the Soviet military brass, the fact of the matter was that the PLA and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs came to the consensus that at this point Soviet social imperialism was still the primary contradiction against the Chinese nation.

And talking to the American imperialist, the secondary contradiction about the issue wasn't such a bad idea.

I mean, yeah, you know, 44 infantry divisions, a bunch of T-62 tanks, Scud missiles, and a bunch of nukes that could nuke the capital within minutes. Thinking you might want to put out a line to old Nixon in that case.

The next day at a meeting at the White House, President Nixon told Kissinger that he had a hunch that he could visit China, but kept him in the dark about the plans about how to do so.

Meanwhile, Zhou Enlai received American Maoist and Fanshen author William Hinton and his family at his official residence in Beijing, who had arrived yesterday at Zhou's invitation.

Zhou and Hinton briefly discussed Sino-American relations and Zhou expressed hope that soon there would be a breakthrough in friendship between the two countries.

On May 25th, the first visit by US academics to the PRC came to a close. The two biologists had toured cities and met Joan Lie and Prince Sihanouk.

On May 26, Austria and China's ambassadors to Romania signed a communique in Bucharest, establishing full diplomatic relations between Austria and China and called for the opening of embassies in each other's capitals.

Meanwhile, back in Beijing, Zhou briefed the Politburo that rapprochement with the USA could enable peaceful reunification with Taiwan and prevent Soviet hegemony. Many in the Chinese government began to believe that with Vietnamization occurring in Vietnam, with American infantry troop levels dropping from 540,000 to 300,000 and America shifting their war effort towards bombing campaigns against Laos and Cambodia rather than ground operations in Vietnam, that the US was in a position of weakness, a perfect time to bring the Americans to the negotiating table.

Chinese economists also mentioned that inflation and the cost of the Vietnam War was forcing Nixon to take the US off the gold standard, which if any of you guys took AP US history or freshman college US history, you might remember that known as the Nixon shock.

Domestic anti-war protests were tearing the social fabric apart in the US and many youth in America were beginning to flirt with Maoism, Trotskyism, and other radical left-wing ideologies.

Some Chinese political analysts posited that Nixon's primary foreign policy goal despite the escalation of bombing campaigns was achieving, quote, "peace with honor," which required a gradual withdrawal that would spread out over the next few years. That wouldn't look like an outright defeat.

The Chinese defense analyst came to the conclusion that the US was desperately needing Beijing to stop fueling the North Vietnamese war machine and was looking for a diplomatic cover for an American exit.

Zhou agreed in full and, at the risk of looking like China was collaborating with their arch enemy against the nominally socialist Warsaw Pact countries, gave the green light to meet with the Americans.

The meeting continued the next day and Zhou told delegates to work on the basis of a new, more open foreign policy paradigm with all countries including Western imperialist powers. After the meeting, Zhou sent a telegram directly to Nixon recommending that Kissinger come to Beijing before the end of June and suggested that the trip be made openly.

On June 3rd, Mao made a call to Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu. Mao bluntly said that the USSR had continued to piss on our heads and told Ceausescu that he will stay firm with them even if relations worsened further with the rest of the Warsaw Pact.

The next day, Zhou met with the entire Central Committee for an extended work conference where he gave a report about the conference a few days prior with the Politburo on the possibility of Sino-American talks. His report was met with hesitant agreement. Later that afternoon, the US government replied to Zhou Enlai via Telegram proposing that Kissinger come to China on July 7th and demanded that the trip remain a secret.

On June 5th, Ceausescu and the Romanian delegation arrived in southern China and began a tour of the south, starting in Nanjing accompanied by Zhou Enlai, Zhang Chunqiao, and Xǔ Shìyǒu . Two days later, the American anti-Vietnam War activist group, the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, received a government invitation to visit China.

On June 10th, the White House authorized 47 types of nonstrategic exports to China, such as agricultural machinery, consumer products, and steel.

Two days later, in an attempt to smooth out relations with the UK, Ji Pengfei, deputizing for ailing foreign minister Chen Yi, attended the newly renovated British diplomatic mission for a birthday celebration for Queen Elizabeth. How about that?

On June 20th, after a cholera outbreak hit the Republic of Chad hard, the Chinese Red Cross Society decided to demonstrate their proletarian internationalism and diplomatic acumen by donating vaccines for 200,000 people plus 1 million RMB with no expectations of the Chadian government paying them back.

On the 23rd, the 15-strong friendship delegation from the US Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars arrived in Guangzhou to commence a one-month visit.

The day after, Wu led a rally in Beijing celebrating PRC-DPRK militant friendship. Guo Moruo, Li Xiannian and the Korean ambassador all made speeches, showing that no matter their past differences around Juche and Marxism-Leninism and the Sino-Soviet split, the Chinese and North Korean people would continue to stand against American imperialism and global capitalism no matter what.

That same day, however, a Canadian delegation arrived in Beijing, hosted by trade minister Bai Xiangguo.

On July 7th, 1971, the Communist Party of China celebrated its 50th anniversary with a celebration that not only included a lengthy editorial, but a large party in Beijing that included many foreign dignitaries from enemy nations, as well as leadership from both pro-Beijing and pro-Soviet communist parties. Even Trotskyist parties were invited. It was a sign that China wasn't playing around.

They wanted to show that the Communist Party of China 50 years later was still a militantly Marxist-Leninist anti-revisionist organization, but was also dedicated to peace between nations and willing to take part in new forms of statecraft and diplomacy.

A week later, Zhou Enlai and Ji Pengfei received British Trotskyist Ken Coates in Coates' capacity as head of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. Now, you might be thinking, why were Trotskyists being invited to China in the midst of the Cultural Revolution? Didn't Trotsky view Mao as a dirty, murderous Stalinist or at least China as a deformed worker state? Well, uh, yes.

But we have to remember, and I've heard this from elderly British militant tendency, uh, Socialist Workers Party UK and Socialist Workers Party USA types, that at the end of the day, the Trotskyists were still a major part of the anti-Vietnam War movement and viewed American imperialism as the greater evil than Chinese Stalinism.

And at the end of the day, anti-imperialist friendship trumped anti-Stalinism. So, I guess it makes some sense. Still surprised me a bit, though.

All right, here my friends. Here we go. I'm cracking my knuckles, refilling my coffee, and we're about to get into it.

The secret meeting that changed the world. You might want to get a refill on your drink, too. Use the bathroom and curl up with a pet cuz things are about to get way interesting for the last few minutes of this episode.

So, in the early morning hours of July 9th, 1971, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger flew to Islamabad, Pakistan, and boarded a plane under the cover of darkness. The American press and indeed most of the State Department and CIA were deceived into thinking that Kissinger was struck down by food poisoning.

He arrived in Beijing under the cover of darkness and immediately was greeted by a military delegation and then began the negotiations immediately in the back of the limo. Yep. They got straight to business. No small talk, no chitchat. The moment they got in the car, the negotiations began.

When they arrived in the Western Hills, Zhou Enlai greeted him, and the famous picture of Zhou and Kissinger shaking hands was snapped, and they got right down to business.

The next day, Zhou Enlai started another meeting with Kissinger and said that China had been building air raid shelters against attacks by the USA, USSR, or both.

Kissinger, despite this, told Zhou Enlai that Nixon would be willing to support a policy statement that there are not two Chinas and that Taiwan is in fact a part of China.

Zhou Enlai surprisingly said that he saw no great importance in the China UN seat and wouldn't take it unless it represented all of China, including Taiwan.

Kissinger replied that Nixon was uniquely positioned to throttle the Taiwan independence movement because he couldn't stand to be attacked from the right. The question of Taiwan was tabled and Kissinger and Zhou began to talk about Vietnam.

During the conversations, Kissinger expressed openness to ending the war in Vietnam and pulling out all American personnel by sea, land, and air, all by gradually. Over a Beijing roast duck dinner at Quanjude on Qianmen Street. Sounds good to me.

Zhou Enlai asked provocatively if Kissinger had heard of the Cultural Revolution. Kissinger tried to avoid the subject, but Zhou pressed on and debriefed Kissinger on the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to the present day.

Kissinger repeatedly gave vague responses and kept trying to redirect the conversation back to the question of the wars in Indochina. But Zhou kept poking Kissinger.

Kissinger then finally replied, "We have uh we have not had the benefits of the Cultural Revolution which the prime minister describes right now. Uh we have a large somewhat undisciplined and uh with respect to publicity not always reliable bureaucracy. A bureaucracy which, as you found out in Warsaw, operates in a very formalistic manner. Therefore, anything which goes through regular diplomatic channels goes through a very cumbersome bureaucratic process and uh we cannot guarantee that it will be fully protected from publicity."

Translated from Kissinger realpolitik speech, at least what I, I Drew Smith think he's trying to say without offending Zhou is uh that he:

I'm not going to debate Maoist ideology with you, but speaking of smashing bureaucracies, the US government is a leaky, useless mess that ruins everything it touches. That is why I snuck into your country in secret. And that is why you and I must handle all future negotiations directly, bypassing my own government's official channels.

Zhou and Kissinger in the end ended up agreeing. Bureaucracy sucks, albeit they agreed about it for very different reasons.

Then Zhou got straight to the point. "Mr. Secretary, I want President Nixon to visit next May." Kissinger immediately agreed, but proposed an earlier visit to get it done before the next presidential election campaign.

After lunch, Zhou excused himself to attend a preparatory meeting of sponsoring countries for the Asian African table tennis friendly invitational tournament. While watching the game, Zhou stepped away to finalize a schedule for a simultaneous joint announcement of Kissinger's trip for Time magazine and US broadsheets.

Zhou then proposed setting up discreet communications via embassies in Paris as opposed to Canada, which he felt would be too obvious.

Meanwhile, while Kissinger was continuing to talk with other Chinese officials and Zhou was meeting with the Ping Pong athletes across town, Yao Wenyuan addressed a massive rally in Tiananmen Square commemorating the 10th anniversary of the PRC-DPRK friendship treaty and attacked aggressive US imperialism with Kissinger only a few kilometers away.

Tiananmen Square was filled with hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers, peasants, and soldiers waving the Little Red Book and holding up pictures of Mao shouting "Down with the United States. Victory to the Vietnamese, Laotian, and Kampuchean people."

After six meeting sessions totaling 17 long hours and lots of Beijing roast duck, Kissinger left Beijing and was flown back to Pakistan with journalists none the wiser. __