By LIN LIAN ONG
The enemy is not the Soviet Union, but the consequences from the confrontations between China and the United States, said a former ambassador at an international forum Thursday.
Nicholas Platt accompanied former President Richard Nixon on the historic trip to Beijing that signaled the reopening of diplomatic relations between the United States and China in 1972.
Platt recounted his experiences in his speech “United States-China Relations: A Retrospective.” He previously spoke on his visit to China at BYU 25 years ago.
There were five areas Platt covered in his speech on his visit to China, including why they went, what they found, what they accomplished, how the allies felt and where they should go from there.
It is obvious a peaceful world can never be achieved through agreement on any matter affecting the politics, military or social balance if one quarter of the world was left out, Platt said, although this is now a trade cliche
Nixon’s trip was seen as one of the great geo-strategic maneuvers of American diplomatic history, Platt said. Even though, at the time, Americans were bombing Hanoi in Vietnam.
There was no guarantee Nixon would be able to meet with Chairman Mao Zedong then because of the latter’s poor health.
The sight of the mogul TV unit parked next to the Great Wall and hooking it up to world television was significant in itself.
“Indeed, it was the TV coverage that gained in a week the bipartisan public support that was required for the new relationship with China,” Platt said.
The opening of communication with China was the most significant achievement of the trip. In concrete terms, the results were modest, Platt said. There was no formal establishment of diplomatic relations, no public agreement signed and no secret deals, but only an artfully-worded communication which set forth the different positions of each side.
Allies of the United States in Asia greeted the visit in different ways. Taiwan saw it as a betrayal, but the visit turned out as an economic boom in later years.
The Japanese, who already had much more contact with China than the United States, were worried the United States was moving ahead of them.
Other friendly countries in the region saw the visit as a welcomed reduction to tension caused by the Vietnam War.
For the first time since Japan annexed Manchuria, the visit left the United States with constructive relations with both Japan and China. This gave the United States an enormous advantage in the region over the USSR, Platt said.
