A Guide to Nixon's China Journey

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Renewed Concern. The beginning of that dialogue has stirred up all sorts of hopes and interests about China among Americans. Some of the interest is pure fad—the fascination with baggy peasant suits and spicy Szechwan cooking, for instance. But the fact is that the last 23 years of ill will and hatred represent an aberration in the history of Sino-American relations, and the renewed concern about China is a restoration of normalcy. America's attachment to China dates back to the mid-19th century, when the U.S. derived considerable moral satisfaction from befriending the helpless, prostrate country and exerting its diplomacy to limit the exploitation by other Western powers. In the ensuing decades, China became the prime beneficiary of the U.S. missionary movement, which along with Christianity brought education, health services, and a political philosophy that helped spark China's first democratic revolution in 1911.

In a historic tumble of events, the missionary movement was swept aside by a larger, more militant native movement, which combined raw terror with a renascent Chinese nationalism. In the process, China has been transformed into a new society whose ideology and structure would defy reconciliation with the U.S. —unless the U.S. too became a Maoist-style revolutionary society. Still, the old legacy of American friendship toward China, combined with a large measure of Yankee curiosity, undoubtedly helped account for the overwhelming approval with which the American people welcomed Nixon's new policy toward Peking.