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Dear Progressive Reader,
An anniversary passed mostly unremarked this week. Fifty-one years ago, in February 1972, President Richard Nixon, his wife Pat, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and others sat down with Chinese leader Mao Zedong, Premier Zhou Enlai, and leading members of the Communist Party of China (CCP). The New York Times called the visit historic, noting ([link removed]) at the time that it was, “the first time a chief executive of the United States has visited the world's most populous country during his term of office. This precedent‐shattering event testifies both to a momentous change in American foreign policy and to the new stature of the Chinese People's Republic as one of the world's greatest powers. Whatever results from this visit, the mere fact that it is taking place demonstrates the willingness of the highest leaders on both sides to put aside ancient prejudices, and to begin the effort to see whether a new and mutually
beneficial relationship can be forged.”
The meetings between these two nations, long considered bitter enemies, led to the release on February 27 of a document known as “The Shanghai Communique.” The text reads much like the transcript ([link removed]) of a dinner conversation, but it contains some very significant agreements that led to years of peaceful relations between the two powers. “The United States believes that the effort to reduce tensions is served by improving communication between countries that have different ideologies so as to lessen the risks of confrontation through accident, miscalculation, or misunderstanding. Countries should treat each other with mutual respect and be willing to compete peacefully, letting performance be the ultimate judge,” the communique says.
For their part, the Chinese said (a year before the Paris Peace Accords ([link removed]) would be signed between the United States and leaders of both North and South Vietnam), “Wherever there is oppression, there is resistance. Countries want independence, nations want liberation and the people want revolution—this has become the irresistible trend of history. All nations, big or small, should be equal: big nations should not bully the small and strong nations should not bully the weak. China will never be a superpower and it opposes hegemony and power politics of any kind.” The Chinese side stated “that it firmly supports the struggles of all the oppressed people and nations for freedom and liberation and that the people of all countries have the right to choose their social systems according their own wishes and the right to safeguard the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of their own countries
and oppose foreign aggression, interference, control, and subversion. All foreign troops should be withdrawn to their own countries.”
Much has changed in the world and in U.S.-China relations in the half-century since the agreement was reached. When I first travelled to China in 1978, Richard Nixon was still remembered as a hero and a great statesman—in spite of the revelations ([link removed]) of Watergate and all of his years of brutal foreign policy. In the early 1980s, I would work in the wholesale department of China Books and Periodicals ([link removed]) in San Francisco, mailing literature, political texts, posters, and greeting cards from the Peoples Republic of China to bookstores and college classrooms across the United States. By 1987, the opera Nixon in China ([link removed]) had been composed, celebrating the historic meeting between the two powers.
Today the U.S. relationship with China has changed dramatically. All indications are that we are ratcheting up the rhetoric and building an increasing hostility between our two nations. Between the recent balloon shootdown ([link removed]) , intelligence agency reports ([link removed]) on the origins of COVID-19, calls ([link removed]) for bans on the Chinese-owned video service TikTok, fears ([link removed]) about the future of Taiwan, and concerns over China’s expansion into Africa and Latin America (as Jeff Abbott reports ([link removed]) this week), it seems like a new “Cold War” has firmly
settled in. With that in mind, perhaps it is time to again look at this fifty-one-year-old symbol of accord between out two countries. “Peace in Asia and peace in the world requires efforts both to reduce immediate tensions and to eliminate the basic causes of conflict. The United States will work for a just and secure peace: just, because it fulfills the aspirations of peoples and nations for freedom and progress; secure, because it removes the danger of foreign aggression,” the leaders concurred ([link removed]) in 1972. “No country should claim infallibility and each country should be prepared to reexamine its own attitudes for the common good. . . . There are essential differences between China and the United States in their social systems and foreign policies. However, the two sides agreed that countries, regardless of their social systems, should conduct their relations on the principles of respect for
the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states, non-aggression against other states, non-interference in the internal affairs of other states, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.” Perhaps we should, as John Lennon sang ([link removed]) in 1969, “Give Peace a Chance.”
Elsewhere this week on our website, Ruth Conniff looks at ([link removed]) the rise in the exploitation of migrant child labor; Sage Lenier pens an op-ed ([link removed]) on the need for climate education; Jacob Goodwin examines ([link removed]) the teacher shortage and the role that new legislation proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders could play in alleviating it; and Ed Rampell reviews ([link removed]) the new film Ithaka about the efforts to free WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange. The film is currently on a national tour, and The Progressive will be hosting a screening ([link removed])
on April 10 in Madison, Wisconsin. You can also see an interview ([link removed]) that I did with Assange’s father John Shipton and his half-brother Gabriel Shipton (who is one of the film’s producers) at our offices in 2021.
Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.
Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher
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