President Nixon holds his chopsticks in the ready position as Premier Zhou Enlai (left) and Shanghai Communist Party leader Zhang Chunqiao reach in front of him for some tidbits at the beginning of the farewell banquet on Feb. 27, 1972. Credit: Bettmann/Contributor
In 1967, as race riots spread across the United States and as the Vietnam War raged on, an astounding 70 percent of Americans agreed on one thing: the greatest threat to U.S. security was the People’s Republic of China. At the time, China was in the throes of one of the most violent, anti-democratic upheavals of the century, The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and Americans feared that the contagion of Mao’s “people’s war” would spread from Indochina around the world.
So, it was surprising when, against this backdrop, then-presidential candidate Richard Nixon issued a call for amity in the pages of Foreign Affairs. Still famed for his anti-Communism, he warned Americans that they needed to come to grips with “the reality of China.”
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“Taking the long view,” he wrote, “we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside of the
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