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 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 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 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 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 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 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, intelligence agency reports on the origins of COVID-19, calls for bans on the Chinese-owned video service TikTok, fears about the future of Taiwan, and concerns over China’s expansion into Africa and Latin America (as Jeff Abbott reports 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 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 in 1969, “Give Peace a Chance.”

Elsewhere this week on our website, Ruth Conniff looks at the rise in the exploitation of migrant child labor; Sage Lenier pens an op-ed on the need for climate education; Jacob Goodwin examines the teacher shortage and the role that new legislation proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders could play in alleviating it; and Ed Rampell reviews 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 on April 10 in Madison, Wisconsin. You can also see an interview 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

P.S. – In just three days from now, The Progressive is again participating in The Big Share. The Big Share is an annual day of giving hosted by Community Shares of Wisconsin to support a group of seventy local nonprofits dedicated to building an equitable and just community and protecting our environment. Each year, the donations that come in during The Big Share significantly improve our ability to produce not only our print publication but also our daily online content. You can join in this collective effort by donating between now and midnight on March 7 at: https://www.thebigshare.org/. Thank you for donating, sharing, engaging, and helping to make The Progressive a better publication!

P.P.S. - The new 2023 Hidden History of the United States calendar is now available. You can order one online.

P.P.P.S. – If you like this weekly newsletter, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you know someone who would like to subscribe to this free weekly email, please share this link: http://tiny.cc/ProgressiveNewsletter.

P.P.P.P.S. – If you don’t already subscribe to The Progressive in print or digital form, please consider doing so today. Also, if you have a friend or relative who you feel should hear from the many voices for progressive change within our pages, please consider giving a gift subscription.

P.P.P.P.P.S. – Thank you so much to everyone who has already donated to support The Progressive! We need you now more than ever. If you have not done so already, please take a moment to support hard-hitting, independent reporting on issues that matter to you. Your donation today will keep us on solid ground in 2023 and will help us continue to grow in the coming years. You can use the wallet envelope in the current issue of the magazine, or click on the “Donate” button below to join your fellow progressives in sustaining The Progressive as a voice for peace, social justice, and the common good.