President Reagan went to China bearing gifts in the fond hope that the Chinese leaders will be duly impressed and influenced. They cast him in a different role, though not quite – the role of a tributary bearing tribute. This is typical of the Chinese. They are past masters in the art of cutting a visitor down to size if they so choose. They did it to Mr. Nehru when he visited Beijing in 1954; on his own testimony he was ushered into Chairman Mao Zedong’s presence as if he was a tributary. They did it to President Nixon when he went to their country in 1972; the chief executive of the mightiest nation in the world was not even sure that he would be received by the “great helmsman” and he was delighted when he received the invitation or more appropriately, the summons. President Reagan does not appear to have mesmerized himself to the same extent that Mr. Nixon had. It does not look as if he expected his mission to change this world as his predecessor did and proclaimed at the end of the trip. But there are points of similarity. Mr. Nixon went to Beijing in search of a China card which he could use in his dealings with the Soviets and of votes in the presidential election which was due later in the year. The same two objectives have inspired Mr. Reagan’s journey – the same search for a China card in his confrontation with the Soviets and the same search for vote in the presidential election later this year.
Mr. Nixon won a landslide victory and the general belief is that the China visit contributed to it. Mr. Reagan too might get re-elected but it is doubtful whether the China trip would have anything to do with it. Mr. Nixon was reversing a stupid policy which had landed America into the disastrous and unpopular Vietnam war; the American people naturally welcomed it. Mr. Reagan can claim no such credit. It is open to question whether the so-called China card helped Mr. Nixon strengthen the detente with the Soviets; he was already pursuing the policy of easing tensions and Mr. Brezhnev was more than willing to respond. But the Chinese, for their own reasons, were then bitterly hostile to the Soviet Union and were prepared to go along with the United States in the use of the China card. Indeed, they said explicitly that they saw themselves as an Asian wing of NATO. The position today is very different. If the Chinese had lost their balance in the seventies, they have regained it. If they were genuinely frightened of the Soviets, they have overcome that fear. If they believed that their interests lay with the Americans, they have rejected that proposition and come to recognise that they must maintain a balance in their relations with the two superpowers. So they censored Mr. Reagan’s anti-Soviet tirade and announced within hours of his arrival in Beijing that a top Soviet minister would soon be visiting them to discuss economic ties between the two countries. They certainly continue to want access to US technology, including nuclear reactors and military equipment, and market. But they want them on terms of equality and self-respect. This is not the stuff out of which Mr. Reagan and his aides can weave a dream world of either a Sino-US honeymoon or of a joint Sino-US crusade against the “evil empire” the rest of us call the Soviet Union.