South Bend, February 2/3, 1972
Sapporo, Japan
Today the Eleventh Winter Olympic Games were opened in Sapporo. It is the first Winter Olympics carried out in Asia. The opening ceremony, which was telecast via satellite throughout the world, was a splendid event. However, it was strange and highly unusual to see the slopes and runs of a Winter Olympics with an open view on the sea. Sapporo also proves that winter sports are no longer the exclusive domain of the Alpine countries. It is not so much the terrain that is all important, for mountains with snow and winter sports facilities can be found in many places. What counts for the Olympic competition are the exceptional talent and the team.
South Bend, [Middle of February], 1972
How to Write about America?
It almost takes courage to write positively about America, for it has become widespread fashionable to criticize America and to drag it through the mud. I have not come here to criticize or to glorify America, but to observe and try to understand it.
South Bend, February 17, 1972
The Journey to China
Today President and Mrs. Nixon embarked on their historic journey to China. The good wishes that accompany them come from the heart. A new wave of enthusiasm for China is surging in America. TV stations are continuously carrying programs on the history of China. Pearl S. Buck, who had lived on as a legend, was brought back to memory. There is also an attempt at explaining the Communist Revolution. China has remained for the West a big puzzling question. Just opening the gates to Peking and trying to introduce a way of understanding with the People’s Republic of China would already be achievement enough for this journey. After years of hate campaigns, what impact will the arrival of the President of the United States have on the Chinese population?
February 22, 1972
The Arrival in Peking
Although, upon arriving at the Peking airport, the reception of the American President was more on the cool side, the ice broke on the second day. The addresses by Premier Chou En-lai and President Nixon at the state dinner in the Great Hall of the People left no doubt that both sides are seeking an understanding. But only when the pictures of President Nixon’s meeting with Mao Tse-tung were released in the Chinese press, the interest of the Chinese population in this historic event was awakened. People stood in line to get a copy of the Peking “People’s Daily.”
These days a change in attitude between America and China is coming about. TV reports are bringing China closer to viewers by a human approach. Mao’s Long March is presented as a heroic deed. The images from Peking show that Nixon’s courageous visit has come at the right time. A twenty-year long anti-American propaganda has not been able to destroy a secret admiration for America. Also in America long hidden sympathies for China have been brought to light. Along with the fact that the contacts between the United States and Mainland China have been revived makes this journey an historical event of the first order.
February 28, 1972
The Shanghai Communiqué
Shortly before President Nixon and the American delegation returned home, a joint communiqué was issued today in Shanghai. Therein, the American side assents to the Chinese point of view that Taiwan or Nationalist China is a constituent part of the People’s Republic of China. The solution of the Taiwan question is a matter of Chinese domestic affairs in which no interference from outside should take place. This is obviously the price the United States had to pay for the reconciliation with the People’s Republic. Thereby, America is in agreement with the one China policy. However, since the resolution on China in the United Nations last October, this does not come as a surprise anymore.
[The passage referring to Taiwan in the Shanghai Communiqué of February 28, 1972 reads: “The Government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government of China; Taiwan is a province of China which has long returned to the motherland; the liberation of Taiwan is China’s internal affair in which no other country has the right to interfere” (Henry Kissinger, White House Years, p. 1492).]
Returning Home
President Nixon had dared to take a courageous step. On his return he and Mrs. Nixon were given an enthusiastic reception at the airport of Andrews Air Force Base in Washington. It may well have been the first time that Nixon radiated a kind of charisma. He was the outstanding personality of the day. But there were also critical voices heard that he had made concessions without getting much in return. To what extent this is true, the future will show. In any case it is a fact that in the past week a decisive shift in power politics in the world has occurred.