“THE WEEK THAT CHANGED THE WORLD”

Following years of icy silence between the US and China, on 21 February 1972 president Richard Nixon arrived in Beijing for an unprecedented diplomatic mission. Rana Mitter explores how the two sides viewed an encounter that augured China’s entrance onto the global stage

- Rana Mitter

Two worlds collide US president Richard Nixon (centre) and secretary of state William Rogers (right) at the Great Wall of China during their groundbreaking visit in February 1972

The moment has been immortalised in music – and a breathtaking piece of stagecraft. In the opening scene of the 1987 opera Nixon in China the presidential plane, named “The Spirit of ’76”, lands onstage. The door opens and out steps the singer playing US president Richard Nixon, greeted by another as Chinese premier Zhou Enlai.

When John Adams and Alice Goodman wrote Nixon in China, just a decade and a half after the events it depicted, they recognised that the meeting it recreated was the stuf fof grand opera. Rather than merely two politicians coming face to face, it marked the end of one era and the beginning of a new one – the moment when two great societies with very different systems finally engaged with each other after decades of silence.

This year marks a half-century since Nixon’s visit. Between 21 and 28 February 1972, he met the ageing Mao Zedong, China’s paramount leader, and negotiated the first stages of the rapprochement between two countries that had no diplomatic ties in 1949, following Mao’s communist revolution.