The spring of 1975 will not go down in history as a high point for American foreign relations. In Southeast Asia especially, the consequences of a generation of failed diplomacy came to a head, as Cambodia crumbled into chaos and South Vietnam fell to Communism. These events pushed Washington’s global policy to the fore of Bush’s thinking. He began to reconsider the tropes and truisms that had dominated his country’s foreign policy throughout the Cold War, in particular the reality of the domino theory. The notion that Communist states would of their very nature expand into neighboring countries had been widely disputed among America’s foreign policy elite by the mid-1970s, but the events of these months made Bush reconsider.
“The domino theory is alive and well,” he wrote in his journal— though it was not the knee-jerk tumbling of nations predicted by many Cold War hawks of earlier decades. On the contrary, Bush’s domino theory, as expressed in this chapter and the next, was more subtle and sophisticated—and quite revealing of the way he believed international relations functioned. For Bush, the real danger of nations falling to Communism was the effect their loss as allies might have on American credibility, and in turn on the way other nations then embroiled in the Cold War fight might hedge their bets, deciding to mend relations with Moscow and Beijing on the chance that Washington’s word was no longer to be fully valued.
“As Cambodia weakens,” he wrote, “[and] as North Vietnam makes gains, many of our allies are compelled to move toward the PRC.” This fear of Washington’s crumbling credibility connected directly to his continuing anguish over Beijing’s harsh anti-American rhetoric, discussed yet again in these entries. If Washington did not stand up for its principles, if it did not rebuke such public attacks in the political arena while rebuffing Communist assaults against its allies, Bush lamented, then its position of leadership within the international community would ultimately be questioned, and the free world would truly be put at risk.
Bush’s frustrations with Washington’s foreign policy combined with his ongoing disappointment with China’s leaders—who still largely refused to meet him halfway in his plan to improve personal contacts as a means of fostering better relations—to prompt him for the first time in his diary to consider directly his future after the presidential election of 1976. As the notes to this text suggest, Bush had considered his political future almost from the moment he arrived in Beijing. Friends and political allies frequently wanted to learn of his plans, as had Henry Kissinger during his own visit to China the previous November. But until this point, Bush had seemed, at least in the reflections he offered his diary, content with his political lot despite his evident ambition. By late March 1975, however, after half a year at the USLO, his frustrations began to bubble over, leading to a belief that “I should be planning a private life starting in ’76,” and also to withering attacks on China’s leadership. “The Chinese can be tough,” he recorded during these weeks. “They talk about principle. Their principles. And when it is a matter of principle it really means do it their way.” Later he remarked, “They are polite, they are strong, but they always talk about principle. And when they don’t want to give an answer they just obfuscate and sit there. It’s the most frustrating thing in the world.”
These frustrations mounted in the early spring of 1975, though the weeks were not without their highlights. Bush hosted Speaker of the House Carl Albert and House Minority Leader John Rhodes, and his reaction to Albert’s unconventional style of diplomacy— and its potential effect on their Chinese hosts—is particularly noteworthy. So too is Bush’s critique of his own State Department, first for his nagging fear that the USLO was not the department’s first priority, despite China’s importance, and second because of its now-overt campaign against his frequent visitors and guests. The early spring of 1975 would prove daunting for Bush. He still clearly enjoyed his work and life in Beijing, but the strains of his job— especially when coupled with the difficulties facing American diplomacy in general—were beginning to show.
[Monday,] March 10[, 1975]. Primarily in the office. Did attend from six-to-seven the Zambian reception for Vernon Mwanga, an old UN friend.1 The reception at the Zambian embassy was still rather deadly. Chinese on one side, black women on one side, white women on one side, white ambassadors on one side, black women on another side and then Qiao Guanhua and Mwanga and the DCM [deputy chief of mission] for Zambia and couple of Chinese in still another grouping. It seems almost impossible to break through this pattern of segregation that emerges. The diplomats were back from the diplomatic trip. They had a marvelous time, and though they lived in some rustic surroundings—outhouses, bowls to wash in carried in from outside—they enjoyed it immensely. We do not participate in these diplomatic trips.2 Language lesson went well. Beginning to talk about studying and Mrs. Tang, ever patient, asked certain questions.
The Dillon Ripleys and the Paul Austins arrived from Canton.3 Ripley had had his 16-millimeter film impounded at the border. He carried it with him, but it was all sealed up. He was not permitted to utilize his 16-millimeter camera. We are requesting through protocol to see if he can get an exemption. Apparently 16-millimeter cameras are associated with commercial movies and therefore not permitted. We had not encountered this rule before.
Tuesday, March 11[, 1975]. We started a new policy of getting political briefings. We discussed today the so-called “Shanghai clique.” There is a broad theory amongst ROC and USSR that the PRC is divided into major groups: the Shanghai clique, which is the radicals, against the others. We do not hold to this. A good background briefing on all of this with Don Anderson, Lynn Pascoe and John Holdridge. We are trying to arrange some receptions for the Ripleys. It is very difficult. We invite Chinese to come and they accept “in principle” but don’t accept for the day you invite them. You ask dignitaries to come to a reception and there is no reply. We have asked a group of leading academics to come for Wednesday to meet Dillon Ripley and Paul Austin and here it is Tuesday noon and have not heard from any of them. It was the same way in trying to make arrangements in New York that time to get the Chinese to come to our home. They are very different than the U.S. on that.
The Xinhua [News Agency] had a scathing attack on March 10 on U.S. women being downtrodden and the decadence of the capitalist system. I get tired of reading all of this propaganda and being surrounded with it, and I sometimes think that we should react to these things but it is ever thus. China insists on hammering away at the decadence of our society and labeling us as imperialists, etc. I would think that if you want better relations you would lower one’s voice on that kind of thing, but it doesn’t work that way. Sophisticated China watchers say, “Don’t worry, it’s less than it used to be.” And I am sure there is some validity to this.
On March 10 it was a terribly cold storm that charged down from the North. We worried what it would be; but here it is on the 11th warm and clear. Good day for the Wall. Dillon, Austins and Bar went, taking C. Fred to run at the Ming Tombs. Bar had a picnic out at the Wall in the Tombs and I had a quiet lunch at home. That night we had a going-away reception for the Chinese Solid Physics Investigation Group and three from the Chinese Performing Arts Delegation.4 These receptions are very sticky. I did show some flashes of pictures of Washington on the VTR which seemed to interest them but it is very hard to engage in conversation. One of the Chinese physicists had studied at Cal Tech and another one at another west coast institution.5 One spoke excellent English. Dillon [and] Paul milled around and added considerably to the group. That evening with the Harlands, the Balouks from Tunisia and Rolf Pauls and Mrs. Paludan we had dinner at the Kang Le, a very pleasant Chinese evening.
Next day. [Wednesday,] March 12[, 1975]. Bar went to the Summer Palace. I had another one of those ghastly attacks, felt lousy but limped on out for lunch with them at the Summer Palace. Dillon is fun to go there with. He spotted some birds, pointed out some of the paintings along the long archway, the lesser panda and other Chinese animals.6 He saw two birds that he had never seen, one of which was indigenous to Spain and the United States oddly enough, and a duck that sounds like “smoo.”7 He is a delightful guy and so is Paul Austin, both of them are broad gauged, appreciative and wonderful. Sometimes the wives are not quite as sympathetic and understanding. Some people come to China and they don’t seem to understand that we have different things here, that we must be very careful with our help, we must be very careful about overburdening the household staff and making excessive demands on USLO. Both Paul Austin and Ripley understand this well.8
We had a reception for distinguished scientists and academicians to meet Ripley and Austin. We tried something new. We went from five to six-thirty instead of five to six or six to six-thirty. And we had Dillon give a few comments about what the Smithsonian Institution does. We didn’t press it but it worked very well. I asked one question of a ranking member, a Professor Wong who had signed the archaeological things.9 We had this very small discussion out of that question and then broke up the meeting; but we were all ecstatic that we seemed to get much more out of this reception than others. I am determined to find new ways. Indeed Paul Austin has been talking with me about what we can do to have an old-fashioned Fourth of July national day this year, and he is talking about helping us with some of the ingredients.10
That night, the 12th, I rested and others went to the International Club. It was then that Fred made his break after Bar took him for a walk. Instead of running into the USLO as he does, he charged off into the Gabon Embassy across the street, past the PLA guard, in through the outer hall, into a tremendous living room filled with formally clad Africans all the way through the living room back into the dining room—Bar in hot pursuit. Fred heard music and excitement and just wanted to check in. Bar was humiliated, but the Africans were laughing like mad and very pleasant about it.
Thursday a.m. [March 13, 1975]. We went to the Marco Polo Romanian Friendship Commune while the ladies went to the Forbidden City with Martha Holdridge.11 The Commune was most interesting, and notes kept on that separately. We had lunch (six of us) with the British Ambassador Youde, a delightful guy and well informed on China. That afternoon Bar took them to the Temple of Heaven when I worked.12 We had drinks at the USLO for Ambassadors Ogawa, Akwei, and Hiriart of Chile. And then off to the Qin Yang restaurant where the specialty is a marvelous duck served not in pancakes this time but in very light, hollowed-out rolls with plum sauce and onions. Delightful. The whole day was a good one. Bar is knocking herself out for these guests and I do hope they appreciate it. She is marvelous at showing people around and all of that.13
The rumor did not die there, however. In December 1974, Oscar Armstrong, head of the State Department’s China desk, directly denied to a British counterpart in Washington that his government was passing military information to Beijing. The USLO did eventually concede to one of Youde’s diplomats in Beijing that Washington had passed along to the Chinese warnings of potential Soviet attack, but these were hardly as sensitive (or as unknown to the Chinese) as Kissinger’s additional offerings to them.
Bush was not the only American policymaker concerned with Chinese impressions. Following Kissinger’s orders, on December 24 Philip Habib conveyed a personal note to the PRC’s liaison office in Washington which remarked on the Chinese press reports expressing concern for the pace of Sino-American rapprochement. The note reminded Beijing that “the appearance of pressures complicates the process of ensuring public support for what needs to be done.” Lest the rebuke sting too much—and a rebuke it surely was—the Americans further noted that “we offer these comments in a spirit of candor and a constructive effort to proceed with normalization which we remain firmly determined to pursue.”
Importantly, this was not the only message delivered to the de facto Chinese ambassador, though it was the only message relayed to Bush and the USLO. Kissinger also passed word to Beijing, through Habib, that he had authorized the French to serve as a conduit for expressing American plans for Cambodia to Sihanouk. Both for the sake of appearances and out of a clear desire to keep the delicate matter as much under his personal control as possible, Kissinger did not involve Bush in these discussions.
Given Bush’s reference to the Guardian early in this entry, it is possible—though extremely unlikely given the evidence—that Bush was in fact referring to Peter Jenkins, a columnist for the Manchester Guardian. Jenkins commented on foreign affairs and Sino-American relations in particular, though his barbs were more typically aimed at Kissinger than at Beijing’s leaders. Of the Ford-Brezhnev summit, for example, Jenkins wrote: “The continuity of American foreign policy personified in Dr. Kissinger today points in the direction of a new adversary: change.”
Qiao stated of both the United States and the USSR that, “with honey on lips and murder in heart, they prate about ‘détente,’ but actually both are stepping up their arms race and preparing for war. In [these] circumstances, the people of all countries, including European countries, must get fully prepared against a war being launched by either superpower.” As Bush reminded the State Department (undoubtedly with Holdridge’s assistance), “Reference to ‘honey on lips and murder in heart” is old Chinese expression . . . which more literally could be read ‘honey dripping from one’s tongue and daggers concealed in one’s heart.’ Any way you read it,” Bush concluded, “it is pretty offensive.” The USLO noted that at least the United States was not attacked more than the Soviets—it was typically the other way round for the generally anti-Soviet Chinese—but Vixseboxse privately assured Bush that “in private discussions Chinese were much tougher on the Soviets than on us.” Still, what worried Bush most of all, as usual, was the public perception. “This is not the image they are conveying publicly,” he concluded in his cable to Washington about the matter. He advised that “the department may wish to find an appropriate occasion to draw this to the attention of PRC officials in Washington.” Vixseboxse later confirmed to Bush that “Ten Hsiao-Ping had made it very plain in talk with Vanderstoel [the visiting Dutch foreign minister] that the Chinese looked upon the Soviets as China’s main enemy.”
Not everyone in the State Department warmed to the idea of Bush and Moyni-han, two politicians with a penchant for speaking freely, together and unchaperoned in meetings with China’s top officials. In response to Ambassador Bill Sullivan’s request in late February 1975 to visit China, the department’s Oscar Armstrong (who headed the China desk at Foggy Bottom) gently advised Sullivan to await a more propitious moment by noting that “Pat Moynihan made his arrangement” for a visa not through the State Department, but rather “through some special channel, if he used any channel at all except for George Bush.” More to the point, Armstrong also hand-wrote at the bottom of the letter, “Strictly fyi, the 7th floor was decidedly less than thrilled by some aspects of that visit.”
Bush’s penchant for entertaining clearly disturbed State Department officials. The day after Armstrong’s memo to Sullivan, Philip Habib wrote his own warning to Kissinger of the potential difficulties ahead if Bush’s open-door policy were not curtailed. “Before he went to Peking,” Habib reminded Kissinger, “we alerted Bush to the problem he might have in handling requests for all friends for personal visits to Peking. . . . We believe we should accede to Bush’s request [for Senator William Roth of Delaware to visit as his personal guest], while writing to him to point out again that he may be creating potential problems for himself, conceivably including his relations with the Chinese, if he issues many such invitations.”
Though they had no way of gauging if the démarche had any impact on Beijing’s policies, by the end of January American officials were increasingly pleased with what appeared to be a general toning-down of Chinese rhetoric. Perhaps, Richard Solomon, Kissinger’s chief China expert, told him, this was a sign that Zhou En-lai was firmly back in power, as the “‘old Chou’ approach to dealing with the U.S. [respectfully, if cautiously] may be reasserting itself . . . through an] apparent drying up of the stimulated campaign of press sniping which we say begin at about the time of our November trip to Peking.” Since the end of the year, he noted, “there has been sufficiently noticeable a shift in the tone of PRC public and semi-public statements on the U.S. and Sino-American relations that even CIA analysts (who do not know about the Habib-Han conversation) had commented on it.
More intriguing is Lord’s assessment of Bush’s activities since arriving in Beijing. As noted throughout this diary, many in Foggy Bottom found Bush’s desire to personalize Sino-American relations troubling at best. “Bush has energetic plans to try to meet as many significant Chinese as he possibly can, especially political leaders,” Lord wrote. “We doubt that he will have any breakthrough in this regard but you may wish to outline your concept of his proper role in the policy area.”
Zhou in fact significantly reduced his role in Chinese affairs after the Party Congress, acting on Mao’s suggestion that “your health is no good . . . you must relax and take treatment. Leave the State Council to Xiaoping.”
The year 1974 proved no better for the South Vietnamese, nor for the White House’s ongoing efforts to stave off the regime’s inevitable collapse. Nixon pleaded for additional funds for the withering government, which, despite having the world’s fourth-largest air force, proved unable to fully defend itself. His resignation in August left Ford to oversee the bitter end. In September Congress approved a bitterly disputed aid package of $700 million for South Vietnam, though the amount was far less than the administration had desired—and arguably came far too late. The once-vaunted South Vietnamese air force in particular suffered for lack of funds, having trained to fight and to coordinate logistics with ever-present American support. It was forced to curtail air operations by 50 percent. Yet old habits, the product of years of training to fight with American methods, died hard: by one count, the South Vietnamese military expended an astounding average of fifty-six tons of ammunition and arms for every single ton deployed by their adversaries. Indeed, while South Vietnamese leaders bitterly complained of a lack of funds and matériel, accusing Congress of failing to meet its obligations, Washington’s nonpartisan General Accounting Office reported that the South was unable to account for over $200 million of equipment, including 143 small warships. By war’s end, despite frequent partisan charges that Congress had sabotaged the South Vietnamese regime by cutting off essential funding, the Saigon government still had over $15 million in unallocated Congressional funds awaiting use.
By the end of 1975, all of South Vietnam would be in Communist hands, after events described from Bush’s perspective later in the diary. Explanations of the South’s quick fall are as numerous as scholarly works on the Vietnam War itself. To some, Congress’s actions approached treason, or at least, to use Kissinger’s words, “pulling the plug” on South Vietnam and on a generation of American commitments; their impact, he believed, “on the United States in the world would be very serious indeed.” In the opinion of others, of course, Congress had taken steps that were not only responsible but in fact required by the Constitution. As the reader will soon see, Bush himself fell primarily in the former camp, concerned as he was not only with the Vietnamese people but also with American credibility in the wake of Saigon’s fall.
Returning to a frequent theme, the state of progress in Sino-American relations, Bush expressed his concern to Wang that “the probable decline in PRC grain purchases would lead to renewed speculation on the state of our relations despite that [sic] fact that both our sides knew the real facts of the matter.” As Bush reported, “Wang was quite forceful in reiterating Chinese view that relations are moving forward on the basis of the Shanghai Communiqué and are not a function of the level of grain sales.”
More ironically, given the dispute that was even then brewing over this visit, Bush noted that, “as if to emphasize her point that relations are continuing to develop normally, Wang informed me that the performing arts delegation to the United States will be headed by Hao Liang, a famous Peking opera star and recently elected member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.” As described below, this trip in time caused considerable consternation in both capitals, as politics ran roughshod over art in the choice of songs performed.
British policymakers were unimpressed with Mansfield’s report. “Mansfield’s views on the internal situation in China are superficial and occasionally contradictory,” one British diplomat concluded. “He makes some astonishing statements. For example, after remarking (on p. 1 of his report) that ‘periodic political shake-ups are an essential feature of Mao’s thesis. They are regarded as a necessity in order to cleanse the system of ever recurring “elitist” tendencies’ he states quite baldly (on page 4) that: ‘Charity to one another is an integral part of the new China.’ It does not seem to have occurred to him that charity towards their victims has not been characteristic of the many campaigns in support of the current orthodoxy which have been mounted since 1949.” More important than this mild condemnation, the British embassy in Washington viewed any such public comments, even from as distinguished a senator as Mansfield, as unlikely to alter Washington’s predominant view of Sino-American relations and the likelihood of formal recognition in the near future. Mansfield’s calls for immediate recognition of Beijing would fall on deaf ears, they concluded. “There is no present evidence that the pleas for change will produce any movement either in Congress or within the Administration. For well-known reasons, U.S. policy on this issue is likely to remain static in the immediate future, i.e. at least until the Presidential election of 1976. After that, who knows? But even a Democratic President will not find it easy to go all the way publicly with Senator Mansfield, however much he may share his views in private.”
Beijing refused Washington’s request to remove the potentially offensive song, however, and ultimately canceled the visit entirely. As Bush’s counterpart in Washington, Huang Zhen, told the State Department’s Winston Lord and Philip Habib on March 23, “The song ‘People of Taiwan, Our Brothers’ expresses the profound sentiment of the Chinese people who are longing for their Taiwan compatriots. In the Shanghai Communiqué the USG [United States Government] agreed that there is but one China and Taiwan is a part of China. If the US side is not retreating from the Shanghai Communiqué, there is no reason for it to object to the inclusion of such a song in the supplementary program.” Habib responded that Washington’s discussion of the controversial song had not been a “threat,” but rather “a request such as the Chinese had made in a previous instance. It was our hope that the request would be accepted in that spirit.”
This minor event epitomizes Sino-American difficulties in the post-honeymoon period of the administration of President Gerald Ford. American officials feared offending Beijing at every turn, and their Chinese counterparts took nearly every possible opportunity to stand firm on “principles” when it suited their geopolitical needs. The two sides could not solve their intractable problems, first and foremost among them Taiwan. So they instead battled—quibbled, really—over symbolic representations of their real differences. “We think it would be a major mistake to back down on this issue now,” Lord and Habib advised Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on March 24: losing face in Beijing by seeking compromise would do far more damage, they reasoned, than playing the song ever could.
From his post in Beijing Bush worried more about potential Chinese cries of American “censorship” than about any political fallout from the song itself. This reaction is not surprising, given his continuing concern with the public face of the relationship. Indeed he likened this case to the earlier dispute over the archaeological exhibit. “We must avoid charges of State Department censorship which inevitably will arise among certain elements of the press in coverage of the cancellation,” he cautioned. “The issue on the cancellation of the press review for the archeological exhibit was ‘freedom of the press.’ Standing firm meant standing up for freedom of the press. On this question, the issue is different; and the PRC, if clever, can be against ‘censorship’ in the U.S. and pick up support on that question.” There is no record in the Lord files at the State Department that he or his colleagues ever incorporated Bush’s concern—which was in reality a fear of domestic political reprisal stemming from Washington’s stand—into their own more geopolitical arguments to Kissinger, who was traveling at the time.
The Washington Post used the occasion of the Chinese cancellation to question the entire premise of such “cultural exchanges,” noting that “With friendly states whose values we share, the whole idea of official cultural exchanges is redundant. It is only with adversary states whose values we do not share that these exchanges come to pass. On balance, we think, it is well to have exchanges with these states. But it is silly to think there is a way to conduct them in the context of an essentially adversary relationship without [such] recurring snags as the sequence that ended in the cancelled Chinese tour.”
On the substantive front there is much more debate about Yao Wenyuan and what is going on here in China.14 Some, including the Russians, see much more turmoil in the situation than we now think exists. I continue to get depressed by the news on VOA and in the Red and Blue News out of Cambodia.15 It is enormously difficult to have a strong foreign policy when it is being hacked away at in the Congress. I get a depressed feeling about Cambodia and, to a lesser degree but nevertheless a firm one, about Vietnam. I worry about what the Chinese will think. They are so set on principles and here we are apparently unwilling to fulfill our principles. They appear to have principle. We appear not to. It boils down that way. I am very concerned about it, not for the lasting effect, because they know of our basic strengths and where we will firmly draw the line, but we do look impotent and we look like we are a loser on this one. Sihanouk makes it more complicated by being in Peking and talking all the time and making claims. His future at best appears uncertain to me.
Frustrations. We have requested the zoo tour for Ripley as head of the National Zoo in Washington and have no reply at all in the last three days. And we requested two or three business people for Paul Austin to see and we have had no reply at all. You ask Chinese to the house and they accept “in principle,” setting a date at their own convenience. It is unbelievable.
Nice thing this week. Vernon Mwanga, the Foreign Minister of Zambia, and an old friend of mine from the UN, came to call; a most unusual step in the protocol field, given the big-shot nature of foreign ministers generally. He was relaxed, down to earth, gave us some interesting information about his visit with Zhou Enlai and all in all couldn’t have been nicer. I cabled asking that someone at home acknowledge this and thank him for it. That was on Tuesday March 11.
Here we are Friday, March 14[, 1975]. Ripleys and Bar are off to the Forbidden City again. We are going to have a quiet lunch at home.
Just a quick run-through of the events from March 14 on. The Iranian Ambassador, speaking only French, came to see me. My French comes back fairly well in practice and I long since have gotten over the embarrassment of trying in French. I can see a silent chortle or so but the other side of it is that he feels the same way about his English, though it’s better than my French. In Chinese I still feel a certain frustration. When I just sit and chat with Mrs. Tang I lose my embarrassment factor and I can do it, but my problem is practice, practice, practice. I don’t practice enough. I don’t take the time for the practice. But I love the Chinese lessons and I hate it when I have to miss them. Mrs. Tang has enormous dignity and a kind of serenity and I wish I could find out what is really in her heart. Our whole Chinese staff is that way. Mr. Liu, the marvelous fellow who has a reputation for being able to do anything or find his way through any bureaucratic maze—he is unbelievable. Mr. Sun has been most helpful also. Mr. Ren, the little interpreter, seems really good. He went to the rug factory with us and the communes and he is patient and very good. That evening, Friday the 14th, we went to the reception for the prime minister of Guyana, Burnham, [a] departure from the normal state return banquet function.16 They asked me and I went because it was a reception and not official. Deng Xiaoping was there and worked his way rather uncomfortably through the crowd as did the model peasant Zhang Chunqiao, a vice premier also. He normally has a towel wrapped around his head but he sure looked like a peasant. His hand feeling less peasant-like however. The Guyanan Prime Minister had a booming kind of Channel 13 voice and was most gregarious and outgoing. The Vice Premier did not seem too comfortable but everybody at the diplomatic reception appreciated his doing this. It will be interesting to see whether the Chinese are [as] interested in this approach as the Guyanans were.
The reception lasted from 6 to 7:30. Chinese always appear right on the dot and leave right on the dot, you can set your watch by the arrival and set your watch by the departure. Mr. Guo, my driver, is the same way. He will circle the block a time or two in order to arrive punctually and if we are late departing he will speed it up a little. Sidelight—we almost got wiped out the other day when a PLA jeep driver with his head way up in the sky crossed the center line and almost hit Guo. Guo had to veer to the right. Fortunately there were no bicyclists in the right. This is a very heavily traveled place between downtown Peking and our house. Almost a wipeout. Scared the hell out of the Ripleys or the Austins, whichever were with us. After the Guyana reception we went to a beautiful Japanese dinner with the Ogawas. Mrs. Ogawa has a charming grasp of flowers and delicacy and it was quite a contrast to a Chinese meal. The food was excellent but it was served with this great dignity and delicacy.
Saturday, the 15th [March 15, 1975]. I had to work. Bar went off sightseeing with the guests. Paul Austin and I took a walk to the Friendship Store, Austin not having heard from the three Chinese we requested he see on business. But Friday the 14th we went to the zoo. Dillon Ripley was disappointed in the zoo, and he also thought the zoo was well below standards of any other international zoo. He asked about the musk ox.17 There were supposed to be two of them and there was only one there. We had requested to see three zoo people. None were available. I mentioned to Mr. Liu I thought it was a little unusual because when the Chinese zoo people had come they had been given the run of Washington, and I thought it was a little peculiar that we had never heard from them. Saturday noon I get a note from Mr. Liu saying that all three zoo people were out of Peking. We are speculating that the main reason for the failure to go to the zoo was either the condition of the zoo or possibly the dead musk ox. Probably the latter.
In any event, on Saturday, Paul Austin did get to call on a person who is interested in boilers. Coca-Cola has a boiler company. I had a nice lunch at the residence on the 15th, just as on the 14th, with the guests concluding that Mr. Sun was just as good a cook as any other in Peking. That afternoon we went to the Peking Carpet factory, saw their amazing carpet work, handmade. Now I am torn as to whether to get a Peking model or a Tianjin model for the family. I am determined to buy a carpet, have our chop woven into it, and keep them; hand them down from generation to generation—“Don’t [you] remember your old, old grandfather when he used to be over in Peking back in 1975.”18 Finished off the last night of the big visit with dinner at the Sick Duck, named because it is near the hospital. We had marvelous Peking duck. We started off at home with some marvelous Chinese caviar, excellent, and some Chinese vodka, excellent. I don’t know the exact trade name but it is very, very good.
[Sunday, March 16, 1975]. Sunday morning off to church. Ripleys and Austins busily packing and getting ready. Guests flock to the Friendship Store for one last item. The Ripleys and the Austins are supposed to have been intrigued with the Street of the Antiquities, Liulichang. There is so much for guests to see. I hope they have enjoyed their stay. Week coming up is quiet and I am ready for a rest. I have received cabled instructions from the State Department about looking after my stomach. Tonight we will show “Carnal Knowledge.”19 Bar doesn’t want a big one. Last week we showed “Bananas” and it was funny as hell, but fortunately there were no South American ambassadors there. “Carnal Knowledge” they say is depressing, and I am not sure that is what we need out here.
Pouch—we are missing mail all the time, and it is hard to explain to people in the States what this means. I remember in the Navy wondering where is our mail, where is our mail, but it is the same kind of feeling. But here we are thirty years later. You think it could be done better. But it simply reminds me of our isolation here. As far as creature comforts go we are really not isolated. There are some things we can’t have and might say at a given moment that I wish I had, but in terms of things we need, we have them. I have just got my clothes back from Hong Du Tailors. Beautifully done. Take down a model. They copy it and you have one fitting of one suit and then one coat and then one pants and then all come back without alteration. I also bought some brocade and had two vests made. The prices are very reasonable. The suits are around $60, with material being the biggest part of the cost. I have ordered a cashmere overcoat which will cost perhaps $100. But it is just lovely. And the tailoring seems to be excellent.
Middle of March 16. Dictated. Saw the Ripleys and the Austins off at the airport at noon. Now have new passes so we can go through the customs and head on out. We ended up with a good noodle, beer, shrimp luncheon—$6—the Austins and the Ripleys. I believe they had a good time. We discovered the following day that the musk ox, Milton, had died. We were officially notified by the Chinese. The mystery is solved. The Chinese did not want us to go to the zoo; Ripley was not received; Mr. Liu said the three Chinese we requested to see were out of town. But they didn’t attend the reception either, and at the zoo they knew exactly when we got there because we were clocked in. The Canadian correspondent John Burns looked for us and they said, “Oh yes, they have come through.” On Monday, March 17, just in passing Don Anderson was notified that Milton the musk ox had died. They even gave the name of the disease. He had had mange before he arrived in China.20 And the Chinese said, “and perhaps you already knew he was dead since some Americans had been at the zoo.” The Foreign Office knowing very well that it was me, and probably Dillon Ripley and Austin, that attended the zoo.
Tennis in the afternoon and ping-pong. Taking ping-pong lessons. Great interest in all of that. Mr. Liu tells me that Newcombe and three other men and one other woman player from Australia will be here on April 10.21 The Australian ambassador still vague on this. They will play at the International Club or in the workers stadium. They sure operate in very mysterious ways.
“Carnal Knowledge”—we showed it and fortunately only Lois Ruge and John Burns were there. Pretty raunchy for diplomatic entertainment.
Monday, the 17th [March 17, 1975]. Lunch with Foreign Minister Rajaratnam of Singapore at Harland’s New Zealand Embassy along with the UK, Canada, Malaysia and Australian ambassadors and four others in the Singapore party. Singapore is in an interesting position. They will not establish diplomatic relations before Indonesia but they are moving in China’s direction.22
As Cambodia weakens, as North Vietnam makes gains, many of our allies are compelled to move toward the PRC. The domino theory is alive and well, whether some in our country want to recognize it or not. Three pouches came in on March 17. We have had hell with these pouches. Some mail was dated February 5, some as late as March 5. We have a small post and a tough area and yet we seem to be on the tail end of things. We get the worn-out films, it is hard to keep maintenance on old stuff around here, and I get the feeling that because it is a small outfit, this wheel seems to get less grease. I have got to do something about this. Ambassador Klibi of Tunisia came to call. The conversation was entirely in French. I am glad Mr. Humphrey, the French teacher, wasn’t around.
4:30 p.m.—the California agriculture education group of about 20 led by Dean Brown—impressive farmers, all hard-working; all have the appearance of being hard-working, successful people, who have done it themselves in the fields.23 They were an excellent group and appreciative of the briefing we gave at the USLO. So different than some of the blasé friendship types. At night a St. Patrick’s Day party at the Lamberts. A touch of Eire right here in Peking. . . .
[Three lines have been redacted by George H. W. Bush.] I feel embattled here on Cambodia and Vietnam. Our case is right but even our allies seem kind of embarrassed about our position. I am continually amazed on the political side, on the Chinese news side, the FBI’s tape, and others about the amount of criticism that goes on—big character posters and this whole thing of criticize, criticize.24 It is a fundamental part of this China.
[Tuesday, March 18, 1975]. Today in front of USLO on March 18 the whole school down the street was out for drilling—marching to command etc., getting ready, I guess, for the May 1 big day.25 We keep getting various reports of struggles in provinces around China. There are fewer here apparently. When people are caught, they are publicly humiliated etc., led around with signs around their necks. I have still seen no crime first-hand. I did see a couple of Chinese who looked like they were getting pretty crocked at a reception but good god that can happen any place. They have some marvelous expressions to describe things. “Capitalist roader.” And they always talk about the Spirit of Dazhai where the model peasant is from.26 They now have a new campaign which seems to replace the anti-Lin, anti-Confucius campaign. It has to do with the dictatorship of the proletariat and it is repeated over and over again all across this tremendous land. Spring is here. It is warm. You can bicycle with no topcoat. Simply beautiful. Trees are beginning to come out. The dust has not been great so far. I hope it doesn’t descend on us.
We are now having a political meeting every Tuesday to discuss some current events with my own staff briefing me. Today was on the PLA and the history of the army. To some degree its relationship with the center. The last week we talked about the Shanghai group, the right and left influences. Fitzgerald of Australia came for a courtesy call, then a quiet lunch with Mr. Wang sick. He came in politely and said he had to go to the hospital. He looked awful. I hope there is nothing wrong with him. Afternoon getting caught up—digesting the mail from the three pouches. Our children are doing great. The letters from all of them are mature, sensitive—they are doing well in their work, no drugs, no dope, no crime, no troubles. We should knock on wood. I think it would be awful to be way over here and have family problems where you’d want to be home helping out.
On the Fitzgerald call: it is others watching us, other countries studying the relationship between the United States and China. This is still the name of the biggest game in town. Tonight, dinner at 8 with the Groothaerts of Belgium—very European, but she is rather critical of serving Chinese food in one’s home for example.27 They were the ones who complained about their cook. The Chinese took the cook away to satisfy them but never, never replaced the cook for a long, long time to teach a lesson. It is extremely important in China how you treat people. The idea of being willing to do a little work oneself, to carry bags, to bicycle, to get with it and with the people in that sense, though you’ll never be able to mingle with them. This, in my view, is important. Style to some degree is important in my view. When Holdridge and company went out to the technical university he told them Ambassador Bush would like to come by. The leader of the university said, “Fine, just have him bicycle out.” Rather humorous reference, but it showed how word travels in this city. Nancy Tang mentioned, “You’re having many guests.” Why would she, a rather high official, know this?28 Qiao Guanhua, the Foreign Minister, mentions, “I hear you won a prize in tennis.” Xu Huang, head of the DSB, mentioned, “I understand you gave some books to our people on tennis.” The zoo logs us in. Barbara spots the same guy watching twice when she’s at the Ming Tombs. In a way it is comforting. In a way it is rather eerie. End almost, March 18.
Steve Fitzgerald, a very aggressive, young ambassador from Australia came to see me. Fitzgerald digs very hard and gets good information.29 Went over and played tennis with Mr. Wang on March 18. Just hitting. It is great fun. It’s funny how one’s legs give out on him. You always think of that happening when your little baseball players talked about it, but now it’s true. Actually I am not hitting the ball too bad. On March 19 a very relaxed day—getting my health back, catching up on the pouches. The pouches are a terrible thing here. Three of them arrived at once. Mail arrived on about the 18th of March with mail postmarked February 5 through March 5. I get the feeling sometimes that there is no urgency about this post. It is isolated. It is tough. It is separated. And yet we always seem to be on the tail end of things. Send the old projectors up from Hong Kong; send the mail via Hong Kong. I would like to do something about it. It does demoralize morale for families here and I would like to get the bureaucracy moving on the thing.
[Wednesday,] March 19[, 1975]. Ambassador Ogawa and his wife of Japan had the Ford movie—his visit to Japan.30 It was a beautifully done film. Tremendous photography—used the zoom lens. Tastefully edited. Japanese-accented voice speaking very good English. It was very thoughtful of Mrs. Ogawa to do that. Their daughter Cassy, admitted to Johns Hopkins that very day and won [a prize] the day before in Japan for her use of English. The Japanese are marvelous. They are all over the place. They are polite, able and they do a first-class job.
Thursday, March 20[, 1975]. Ambassador Natural of Switzerland called. He is living in a downtown old house owned by John Shoemaker, filled with beautiful relics that can’t be taken out of China. They are all American owned, but the Swiss are building a new embassy to their own design, and he is negotiating currently— trying to get those relics and pottery etc. to be put into the embassy. Quiet lunch with Bar. These lunches are very nice, this one very light in preparation for dinner. Got briefed by Frank Scotten on Vietnam and Cambodia—discouraging sounding.31 I was amazed at his report. It looks like both countries have had it. And yet I am wondering whether the President was not permitted to get too far out on requesting aid if the situation is like it is. He [Scotten] told me that it had deteriorated recently in Vietnam something awful. That night for dinner Mr. Zhuang Zedong came who is the Minister of Sports. Just made a minister at the last People’s Congress. Along with Guo Lei who is the head of the International Affairs Division, a very jovial, large man; Sun Lan, division head; and Liu Qiu, an interpreter. Jennifer, John Holdridge, Don Anderson and Lynn Pascoe joined us. Zhuang has been made Minister. He is a former ping-pong champion. He is well known through all of China, a real celebrity you might say. The waiters and cooks were excited that he was coming and Sun put on an excellent dinner. We talked international affairs. I am told that Zhuang had been disciplined during the Cultural Revolution but here he is now as a young man, in his 30s, as a minister. Still athletic, big, but put on a little weight and smokes an awful lot. We discussed the concept of sports and friendship. Really I have concluded that friendship means sportsmanship. He gave us an example of a championship match with the score 20-19. He thought his ball hit the net; the Japanese player thought the ball hit the net; [but] the referee didn’t see it. The referee awarded the ball to the Japanese who promptly served the next one on purpose into the net, reciprocating friendship. Friendship sounds to me what mother drove into us as sportsmanship.32 There is no question that the Chinese like to win.
The campaign is on. Dictatorship of the proletariat and eliminating bourgeois tendencies. It is gradually replacing the anti-Lin, anti-Confucius campaign. There is a lot of drilling now out on the streets. The other day there were a lot of commands shouted out when I was talking to Steve Fitzgerald. I jumped up, spun around, and there was the whole middle school from down the road being drilled and disciplined out on military drill. In the last few days we have seen many such schools including the very little ones marching by in cadence. Perhaps getting ready for a big parade on May first.
Word that Bemis and Bryans have their visas.33 Am [a]waiting Jake Hamon’s arrival on the guest front.34 I get some feeling that the highest level in the State Department thinks I may be having too many guests but I think it is important. I think it is in keeping with what we are trying to do. It finds ways for us to do things with the diplomats and the Chinese and all in all I will continue to do this. I am constantly amazed at some of the things in the States but it is very hard to figure them out here.35 Elliot Richardson [made some] out-of-character statements about his being the next Secretary of State or running for President. They just don’t sound right. Maybe he sees this as the only avenue from which to seek high political office, but it must have Kissinger climbing a wall.
Weather improving beautifully now. Warm, just right for bicycles, and dust storms, reminiscent of Midland, are here but not nearly as bad as some of those that we have seen in West Texas.
Ambassador of Poland on March 20. A very savvy guy. Stricken with encephalitis when swimming. He said it went in through the ears, something I didn’t understand, but he got this terrible disease that caused him to be paralyzed from the waist down, caused him to lose his balance. There are also other cases of bad diseases here. Within the last two weeks an Australian embassy member got meningitis. He was delirious. They had to have shifts holding him down in the hospital. But miraculously he is going to live. The disease is endemic to China for March, April and May, and the Chinese according to Ambassador Fitzgerald are good at treating it. We don’t have a doctor here. The State Department is sending Dr. Watson out. Things like routine medical care, although we have a chest full of medicine over here, are not good. Schools and doctors are not part of the hardships but part of some of the things that we take for granted in our life, not only in the U.S. but at most posts. Same with good entertainment and that kind of thing.
I mix my reading between Chinese—books on China—and light reading. Am now reading Bill Safire’s story of the downfall of the Nixon people.36 It is discouraging and I have mixed emotions as I read it. I noted a picture of the helicopter with the Kennedy children by the house Bill Clements had bought in McLean. This was a clipping Jane had sent me from the Washington paper. I wondered whether the reporters were swarming around in those days to see who was paying for the helicopter ride.
Giving a little thought now to possibly running for governor of Texas.37 I have time to think these out. The plan might be to go home after the elections in ’76, settle down in Houston in a rather flexible business thing, shoot for the governorship in ’78, though it might be extremely difficult to win. Should I win it, it would be an excellent position again for national politics, and should I lose, it would be a nice way to get statewide politics out of my system once and for all. I hate to undertake yet another losing campaign, and I am a little out of touch with what it all means down there, but I can get a little quiet work done on the situation.38 Tower will be up that year which complicates things.39 New politics doesn’t seem to have affected Bentsen who is going to run for both Senate and President as Lyndon Johnson did, unlike Barry Goldwater’s approach.40
Someone told Bar that many people in the diplomatic corps here use dope. I find that hard to believe in this country. Intriguing but not provable as far as I am concerned, I have heard nothing about that.
Fred may be prejudiced along racial lines. He seems to jump on the Chinese. Actually he comes in friendship but at times it is hard to tell that, particularly [to] a guy with a mop or a broom outside. He is good with Mr. Wang and Guo, [and] likes him enormously. Bar took Fred downtown, went into the store yesterday, came out and there were a hundred people surrounding the car staring at the Guo-driven Chrysler. Really staring at Fred. I told her not to do that anymore. It put Guo in a funny position. Fred can go to the Ming Tombs and run around out there, but I don’t want to have the image of chauffeur-driven dog kind of thing.
[Friday,] March 21[, 1975]. The Austrian ambassador and his wife, a Mr. [Eduard] Tschoep, came to call. Our first his-and-hers diplomatic call. Very formal but very friendly and relaxed and pleasant and smiling. He told me that Leitner, his predecessor, was telling everyone at home that he wished that he had stayed longer. That was not the same Leitner that was bitching here at the end in China at all. A call on Al-Atrash, Ambassador of Syria: Middle East, Middle East, Middle East. These Middle East ambassadors, whenever they talk to the U.S. wherever they are, I am convinced, want to talk about that one situation. Al-Atrash emphasized people-to-people friendship in the United States, how Arabs like the United States etc. but was critical of our policy. I in turn told him that the guerrillatype activities are counterproductive in the United States. Frank Scotten, USIA, came for lunch. He is helping us with our VTR tapes. I had written Paley three months ago.41 Paley apparently passed it on to the president of CBS News who in turn asked their Washington office to contact someone who in turn talked to the fourth guy in Oscar Armstrong’s office who in turn talked to USIS.42 I have heard nothing from Paley but the matter is floundering around at some low level in the bureaucracy. I am now going back to Paley direct. I have never seen such a monstrous bureaucracy and sometimes I can understand Kissinger’s indignation at it. The guy in Oscar Armstrong’s office never even told me he had heard from CBS. The only way we are going to get it done is to get it back on the high level.
Ambassador Bulak of Turkey came to call.43 Then we went down —Harry, Liu, Jennifer and I did—to look for a birthday present for Bar in the China Store.44 Liu is marvelous, great English and most helpful. Dinner that night at the Canadian Embassy with the sports minister and Spain’s ambassador to Japan, former OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] colleague of John Small’s. The Chinese were lecturing the sports minister on throwing Taiwan out of the Olympic games in Canada. Something the sports minister impressed on them was that neither his organization, the Canadian sports federation nor the government was in a position to do anything.45 China harped away on it. He is also trying to get Canada to come to their international meeting of sports federation. He thinks they will do it in ’76 if Taiwan doesn’t come. The Chinese are rigid on their principles. We are having a hassle about what songs will be sung by the traveling troop in the United States. Liberation of Taiwan by force.46
Saturday, [March 22, 1975], dusty day. Put on our skiing goggles and masks and bicycled to downtown, stopping at Hong Du Tailors, getting a laugh out of the entire crowd in our “Man from Mars” outfit. There was the beautiful cashmere overcoat ready to be fitted. The people are so pleasant. The workmanship excellent. Cycled to the theater shop, then by the international post office and then back. It is a lot of work riding against the dust storm, but great exercise. Played tennis in the afternoon, hitting with Mr. Wang. Almost through Bill Safire’s book. He captured the Kissinger problem very well and does a good job on Nixon, the enormous arrogance, the pressures that I only began to see when I first got into the National Committee job are well handled. Early dinner Saturday night.
Sunday [March 23, 1975]. The church service. We don’t know quite how to handle the money gift to Lily Wen’s father.47 I am putting the money in a little at a time, having been advised that it would not be appropriate to give a large sum of money. John Small and I were talking and we don’t know whether the money goes to the church or is turned over to the state or what. It is hard to tell. Telephoned home. Talked to Doro and Mum.48 Very clear connection. It is exactly 9:30 at night Peking and 9:30 morning Florida time.
Note. The Chinese can be tough. They talk about principle. Their principles. And when it is a matter of principle it really means do it their way. How do we get them to understand what our principles are, particularly as you see the demise of Cambodia and Vietnam? This is a different period. All the news, red news and blue news, radio etc., talks about Cambodia and Vietnam. Cambodia, less Vietnam, but still both of them—imperialists. We are hit less than the Russians but we are hit. They talk about the decay of the West and the decay of our society. Things like the security of diplomats is excellent. You ride around totally unfettered and I think back to my host country ambassadorship at the UN when all the rapes, robberies and shootings, dynamitings, protests, and one has to give good credit for security. But what is the price? It is nice to be able to go and have a picnic at the Ming Tombs or wander around downtown Peking and not worry about your security at all. There is robbery and petty thievery but we have not been exposed to it in any way, nor have I ever heard of an example of it in the diplomatic community. A French mission girl was attacked the other day by a guy with a sickle. Hit her over the head, jumped into the Mali embassy and in a minute troops surrounded the place and they hauled him off. The French called him a “fou” meaning he was out of his mind. They hauled him out. Three or six years ago this happened and the guy was shot and the government person who was attacked was so informed. We don’t know what happened to this “fou.”49 The PLA guards are beginning to smile and almost recognize Fred’s existence as he chases balls, runs after the kite etc.
Sunday, March 23. A beautiful picnic at the Ming Tombs following church. Bob Blackburn gave it with all kinds of soup and fancy things. Beautiful hillsides, totally isolated. Spring in the air. It was perfection, surrounded by the great beauty itself. There was a Chinese family cooking on a little gas burner when we came in and having their own picnic. But we went off in the back of the main entrance and had the entire hillside to ourselves except for one couple that wandered out, obviously having enjoyed the quietude of the hills where we arrived. After the doubles game went to see the Nigeria v. Peking women’s basketball match. They packed the stadium for a lousy, mediocre basketball game. Unbelievable. Girls marched out—Chinese in the red suits, Nigerian in the green. Holding each other’s hand[s] on high. Then when one girl would foul another, there would be a great display of “friendship.” They overdid the friendship aspect of it and underdid the basketball aspect. We left after the first twenty minutes. I just can’t imagine 10 or 15 thousand people, and the place was packed, sitting watching that kind of a performance. They seemed to love it. The sports minister was there and the place for the guests was regal. We had gone in the wrong entrance and were ushered into that place over my protest pointing to a seat. The guide said “you and your spouses can sit anyplace.” We finally acquiesced. Then a rather serious functionary appeared and said, “You will have to leave. You will have to sit in your own seats.” I said, “Look we want to sit in the other seats.” Instead of seeming apologetic about it, he was rather imperious. The first time I have seen this kind of behavior towards us. Not unfriendly but slightly arrogant and a little bit demanding. The African girls had that marvelous walk and strut but the Chinese girls were much more athletic looking, trim and tall and much better passing and handling the basketball. China was leading at half. End March 23.
Just read in the wireless file where the CIA insisted the Post Office read mail going to “Mainland China” till ’73. Here we worry about our mail being read and the same thing was true for our country. As you read the home news things take on a different meaning when you are in a country like this. I see where the doctors are on strike or have just ended their strike in New York. What a concept.
[Monday,] March 24[, 1975]. Got a call from Rex Ellis, ABC Hong Kong, who calls in regularly—very clear.50 Roussel has been calling me for two days at the White House and they could never hear, but Hong Kong is very clear. He told me that they had heard there that Cambodia had contacted us saying they would permit U.S. citizens to leave Cambodia without getting shelled. I told him nothing to it. Lots of diplomatic rumors. The red news and the blue news full of Cambodia and Vietnam all the time. Diplomats look at you with a kind of “we feel sorry for you” kind of concept. Really sad—the demise of those two countries. Sihanouk sounding more and more frantic.
Monday, the 24th. Lunch at the residence with Ambassadors Ogawa and Fitzgerald, and Holdridge. Normally Harland would be there but he is in New Zealand. These little regional lunches are informal and very nice. Wang and Sun continue to do a very good job on them. The Hamons arrived that afternoon and we had a little light dinner at the International Club. Jake and Nancy seem to be enjoying everything very much.
Tuesday, March 25[, 1975]. Lunch. Hamons went sightseeing with Bar. I had lunch with them. At five o’clock the French Ambassador and Mrs. Arnaud came on a courtesy call and on business, discussing Cambodia and Sihanouk. Six to seven, the Greek Independence Day reception next door. Tons of diplomats crammed in there. Chinese representation pretty good—minister of education, couple of vice ministers. Dinner at Kang Le with the Hamons. News consists of further deterioration in Cambodia and Vietnam. Kissinger’s trip to the Middle East aborted and it worries me about our foreign policy, this effort to destroy Kissinger—criticizing him enormously at home, and the feud between him and the Congress concerns me. Newspaper reports make it sound at this juncture like he is going to leave and be succeeded by Elliot Richardson. At home I would have some insight into this. Here we simply do not.
Spring is here. Walked through the park on Tuesday the 25th and watched them do the shadowboxing. Watched the kids assemble. Fighting and struggling and dancing and teacher blowing a whistle. Men with their legs stuck up in the trees stretching their muscles for their shadow boxing. Going through these weird and wonderful motions, oblivious to people around them. Of course they’re staring at the Hamons and even more than we are staring at them in action. One man standing under an arch singing in a glorious tenor voice oblivious to our coming or going. The juggling of house guests’ schedules is very complicated from out here. End March 25.
[Wednesday,] March 26[, 1975]. The head of the Consular Group from PRC and three others came for lunch. A man asked why do we make people who want a visa come to Peking. It is very expensive for them to come all the way across China. We replied that maybe the answer would be to have consulates in other places. Also once they get a visa they are free to travel all over, unlike China. The last one was my offering and it was fairly weak. The point, however, is well taken. I am not sure we try to do enough to help reunite families and help on the consular work. It is very complicated and I just can’t get over how unresponsive the Chinese are to these requests. Perfectly normal requests. There seems to be a great caution or a great reserve or a great isolation from things foreign in responses.
The tennis courts are being fixed now. I have furnished them all kinds of information and yet they never discuss it. After I get it and talk about it in the beginning, they never will discuss it. I think they want to be totally self-sufficient. I saw Mr. Wang and about 30 people out sifting lime through screens. Apparently that will now be mixed with red clayish stuff and the courts will be resurfaced hopefully to make them better. But they simply will not ask for help and really don’t want advice, although they are very polite about receiving the information. Magnificent dinner at the Qin Yang restaurant with the Hamons, the Steigers and the Tawliks of Egypt.51 Too much food though—on and on and on came the food. I believe Mr. Sun puts on the best kind of dinner for my stomach. Less pepper, more bland, but still delightful and subtle fragrances. Stamp collecting is my new thing. You can get the history of post-liberation China from the stamps. They are beautiful and tremendously interesting looking. Jake Hamon at 72 is a great sport. He will do anything. Great stamina. Goes to the Wall, to the Ming Tombs yesterday with Bar. Always game to walk. After dinner he and Fred and I took a good long walk. He is just as sharp as he can be. I’d like to be that way at 72.
I don’t know why they use the term Chinese Fire Drill. The Chinese seem to be pretty organized. You see them unloading trucks, etc., and there’s pretty darn good organization. There seems to be an under-utilization of labor in places. Lots of people leaning on the hose in the field, standing around during the work gangs, but still the work gets done. They rebuilt the Norwegian embassy in a week by just putting hundreds of bodies to work on it after the fire. I noticed them unloading a truck in front of our house this morning. Pretty good, pretty good. Pretty well organized. Much marching around now by students, drilling, trumpets, bands. I am wondering if there is going to be a great big parade one of these days —something China hasn’t had in a long time.
Tennis last night. Akwei and I losing to Te and Wang in one set. They both played well, serving better than I’ve ever seen them, and you talk about really happy to win. They deserved to win and they clearly were pleased, though they were very polite about their victory. Reading Shirley MacLaine’s book.52 The naiveté and the emotional kind of acceptance of things (her salute, fist held on high and wink to Chairman Mao), her kind of acceptance of everything Chinese as well organized and perfect, except not for her, leaves me feeling a little strange about her work. End of March 26. I am almost through Safire’s book.
Note. Two great Chinese expressions. First, Xiu Shou Pang Guan. That equals “standing on sidelines with hand in sleeves.” As campaigns come and go people do this, watching to see what develops. A great expression. They also write about the “rust-proof screw” (clean screw) as a thing to be emulated.
[Thursday, March 27, 1975]. Called on Ambassador Naimbaye Lassiman of Chad. Spoke French on the call. The Africans need more attention. They sit in an embassy with little communication and yet occasionally, because of China’s interest in the Third World, they do get excellent contacts. We need to do more, more, more in making these people feel at home, and on demonstrating that we are not “imperialists.” It is an effort, it is hard to communicate, it is hard to get phone calls returned, hard to keep up with when they are in and out of town; but each contact in my view is worth making and even if it is not productive they are nice and warm and friendly people. Lunch with the Ogdens and Henrietta Morris (and the Hamons), welcoming them to the USLO.53 Bar had the 24-hour flu. She has had it two or three times and it is prevalent right now, as is encephalitis this time of year, and meningitis. Both much more serious than what she had. She staged a great recovery and we had a big dinner at the Peking Duck.
Walking in the park is fun before breakfast. You see the tai chi chuan. You see the other form of Chinese boxing which is more vigorous. You see people with their legs in trees. You see one on one pressing muscles going slowly through tai chi chuan but it is two people. You hear people singing. Today we heard a tenor and a baritone in harmony in a little pagoda on top of the one hill in the park. The other day a baritone singing under the arches in the middle of the park. You see families. You see he-ing and she-ing in the park which surprised me, not aggressive petting but sitting close against each other. And quite clearly in love. You see a lot of old people visiting there. You see propaganda all around. This morning school was being lectured. Everyone had a book with Mao on the cover and a teacher had them all sitting in a very disciplined way, giving them a lecture with other teachers standing around. The park is beginning to be beautiful. There is no grass but it is beautiful. The trees and the buds and the hedges. Propaganda billboards.
Sihanouk, Sihanouk, Sihanouk. News still full of Cambodia and Vietnam, decline in U.S. position.54 Red and blue news carrying the break-off of the trips and the defeats for the Americans in all these areas. Obviously China wants us strong and wants us involved in many places and yet publicly they must be on us as imperialists. A dilemma. Studied the most highly classified cables from the time USLO opened. Interesting how history seems to be repeating itself as far as Southeast Asia goes. Feeling better each day. Bar decided to go back for Marvin’s graduation.55 I am very, very happy about this. He’s done a good job that boy.
Peking Duck dinner. Ambassadors from Tunisia, Burma, Pakistan, Serge Romensky of Agence France-Presse and Pilgrim of Guinea. A very good duck dinner at the best duck restaurant. Beer, chou chang wine, thirteen people, price tag 186 kuai, 186 yuan which is about $105–6. The Hamons are great house guests. End March 27.
[Friday, March 28, 1975]. The 28th was the Hamons’ wedding anniversary. We celebrated it at the International Club that night. That morning Jake and I went down and bought some Cuban cigars. They cost 1.60 kuai which is about 90 cents, which is about 4 or 5 times cheaper than a comparable cigar, the Churchill variety, I was told, in Paris or in other markets. I played a little tennis and the rest of the day was mostly around the office.
Saturday the 29th [March 29, 1975]. The Hamons left. We ended the visit with seeing the cultural relics in a special showing. It was the other half of the Washington Museum at the Forbidden City. Beautifully done. Walks in the parks with the Hamons were fun.
The Hamons left on Air France on the 29th and I went out before them to meet John Rhodes and Carl Albert. Mary Albert got off looking stoned, but it turned out she had nothing to drink, was just unstable. Albert has not conducted himself well here. He was particularly bad on Monday the 31st in a meeting with Qiao Guanhua.56 Talking and not letting the translator work. All in all I was amazed. He is such a nice guy and very pleasant in person, but he was very terribly ineffective and I was horribly embarrassed by it all. The Hamons were great house guests and seemed to appreciate everything. They are very, very rich and yet both of them are down to earth, thoughtful to Guo and thoughtful to Wang, Sun and all the rest. In fact they gave tiny little presents to all the help and fortunately the help accepted them. Mr. Wang looking a little apprehensive, but all in all the Hamons handled it with great taste and tact.
The Congressmen appeared, and on Good Friday evening we went to Good Friday service. There were only about ten people in our whole little church. On Sunday the 30th it was a different story. The Church was packed. The Catholic Church had two hundred. Our church was overflowing, largely because of an African christening that went on with two little babies, the church mainly filled with Africans. The Rhodes, Poseys and Dr. Carey joined us for Easter service which was very nice. Then they all went off to the Great Wall and Bar and I cycled down with John Burns to the Great Square for some picture taking. The dust was really bad. We used our goggles and it made a hell of a difference. The people stare at us like mad with the goggles and masks on, but it was necessary. Some places the wind almost made the bike stand on end, you almost felt you were going to be blown over. The weather was warmish. I had a good tennis game in the afternoon playing with old Mr. Chi who suited up for the first time. I played with Finocchi of Italy who doesn’t know the doubles game at all. Mr. Chi couldn’t hit the ball but knew the game well. Always in proper position, careful, thoughtful, marvelous old fellow. Wang and De beat Finocchi and me 6-love. Finocchi and I beat Wang and Chi in two straight sets.
On Easter Sunday evening we went to the Sick Duck where Wang Hairong and Nancy Tang gave the Congressmen a very good verbal exercise. The Chinese are wed on this subject of principle. They canceled out the cultural performance because of refusing to give way on the song about Taiwan liberation. The Philadelphia orchestra came here, yielding totally with what they thought would be a proper program.57 But when we asked them to change the song on liberation of Taiwan which hadn’t even been submitted in the first place as part of the program, they balked and cited principle. They are amazing. They are polite, they are strong, but they always talk about principle. And when they don’t want to give an answer they just obfuscate and sit there. It’s the most frustrating thing in the world.
[Monday, March 31, 1975]. On Monday the 31st, a big part of the day was the meeting [with] Qiao Guanhua, with Rhodes and Albert—Albert interrupting the interpreter, not letting Qiao Guanhua finish. He almost threw up his hands but he is too polite for that. The meeting lasted for two hours and ten minutes during which Qiao Guanhua indicated that they were not in favor of going back to Geneva on the Middle East and the step-by-step approach. They want to see us withdraw but they don’t want to see us withdraw as far as troops go. They want us to fulfill our commitment fully but they are also realistic.
It was a great exercise for Albert and Rhodes to see firsthand some of the frustrations that we experience here. Quiet lunch on the 31st here at the house downstairs with just Bar and I eating these delightful foods. My weight is beginning to creep up. I feel a lot better. Weather is good. Called on the ambassador of Somalia on Monday the 31st, trying to get these African calls going. The Africans are of good value here. We have got to do more with them.
Quiet dinner on the 31st at the house. Relaxed, early evenings. These are marvelous fun events—almost euphoric in the happiness. Great letters from the kids. I don’t know what we’d ever do if the kids weren’t happy when we are way out here. I miss them. And I miss Don, and Jane Kenny, and Tom Lias, and Pete and Rose and Mary Lou, and Aleene, and all the people who have just given so much of their lives to me over the years.58 Great loyalties mean an awful lot. Now I am troubled by the news at home and the seeming weakness of the President—the challenge. It looks to me like, without predicting who will win, I should be planning a private life starting in ’76. In fact, it has an enormous appeal in a lot of ways. Though I expect having been in the public arena, going back to private will be somewhat complicated. Oh well, I don’t fear the future. I look forward to it. Marvin wrote me that death worried him. I sent him an article from the paper about a column Bill Buckley wrote about the courage of Charles Luckey in death, a guy who couldn’t take his own life because of his great faith.59 Also I wrote him about some men who had died and had been brought back to life, all of whom were almost euphoric in their comments on how great death really was. I don’t fear it now. In fact, I can’t say that I welcome it, because I want desperately to live longer and do something and to accomplish things, and to see my kids grown and happy, but I must say that scary teenage feeling is no longer around me. End of March 31.
The congressmen are staying in the guest house next door to Hong Du Tailors. Apparently it was a former Austrian Embassy, very high ceilings, overstuffed chairs, very convenient. The Foreign Minister met them in the Foreign Ministry Guest House which is right diagonally across from the Peking Hotel but behind big walls. I have driven by there a million times on my bike and never realized it was there. I am always amazed about being on time in China. You’re never late. We orbit around, circling, waiting to make sure we are on time.
The difference between Rhodes and Albert at the meeting [with] Qiao Guanhua was amazing. Rhodes was first class. Nice, respectful but forceful, soliciting answers. Albert was platitudinous, interrupted, vague, kept looking at his notes and just didn’t seem to have a grasp of foreign affairs at all. Every time Qiao Guanhua started to reply, Albert would interrupt. Right in the middle of one reply Albert started out on how bright Wang Hairong and Nancy Tang were, hauled into his pocket, handed out his pen, and said “Give them all a pen, Charlie,” handing her a little red pen. He made one statement saying we all agree there is but one Taiwan. They all laughed and then corrected it. Then he kept calling the Shanghai Communiqué the Chinese Communiqué. Qiao Guanhua referred to the relations as generally good but “some frictions occur.” Then he talked about the performing arts troop, indicated they didn’t want to make a big deal of it. I handed Rhodes a note saying is there any way you can get Carl to let Qiao finish.
March 31. Also called on Mr. Darman of Somalia—Middle East, Middle East, Middle East.
[Tuesday,] April 1[, 1975]. Hoarding CODELs [congressional delegations] met with Deng Xiaoping, [and the] foreign minister [Qiao Guanhua]. Nancy Tang was there. Albert did a little better but he still interrupted a lot and just simply doesn’t understand interpretation. It was not a disaster but it was pretty bad. We had a message saying the President wanted him and Rhodes back for a Joint Session of Congress on April 10. Albert raised hell saying that he had pledged his best friend in Oklahoma that he would give a speech that night. It later turns out the speech was going to be in Washington and after we sent a telegram saying he couldn’t be there, he then relented. His view was to let Burton and Tip O’Neill get this through the Congress.60 I feel sorry for Albert. It has been a disappointment to me to see that he is not a big man. His wife is sad, tries hard—not drinking—but very difficult.
Afternoon spent in the office. We were concerned about the press conference and whether they would want to go too much into the policy statements of the Congress but they didn’t. The Speaker and Rhodes handled it very well indeed. We had a large reception for the Chinese, friends, the press, American business people, UOP [Universal Oil Products] and others in Peking.61 Sun knocked himself out. In a reception like this waiters and food are sometimes brought in from the Peking Hotel and the International Club. This time the Peking Hotel. Everyone seemed to enjoy it.
Dinner at the International Club, for just John Rhodes, Bushes, Holdridges, Alberts and Gleysteens.62 Nine for dinner with beer and a bottle of wine—1,907 yuan which is about $10 and I thought the food was darn good. Mr. Fay and Mr. Lo came over to chat, both of them very Western, both of them very pleased to meet our CODELs, had read about them in the paper. Apparently there has been some coverage of this visit. They are being treated pretty well indeed which is somewhat reassuring given the flap we had on the art troop going to the States. Guest house that they are staying in used to be the Indian Embassy. High ceilings, very pleasant. The Foreign Ministry Guest House was the Austria-Hungary Embassy—great big beautiful thing. It must have been some life in Peking in those days. I mentioned to Nancy Tang that I would like to see Zhang Chunqiao, No. 2 Vice Premier. She said it might be possible but it might take a while, which means that I won’t see him, indicating the idea that everybody would have to. I am going to request it anyway through protocol and see what happens. End of April 1.
[Wednesday,] April 2[, 1975]. Last day of Rhodes and Albert visit here. They went off to a commune in the countryside; a very good one, two hours drive out and back, [and] were a little tired when they returned. I received a Mrs. Ellison from the Cleveland Plain Dealer who was on a forty-man tour sponsored by one of the Friendship groups. Showed our Apollo 8 movie to the Chinese staff. It had a Chinese language track on it. They loved it. Took my language lesson. Quiet lunch. Received the Director General of the Bureau of Asian and Pacific Affairs from Ottawa, Mr. R. L. Rogers, and Mr. Small, for a discussion of errors in Southeast Asia. Went to the carpet showroom in the Animal By-Products Corporation. Amazed at the lack of marketing. The guy couldn’t have cared less. “We can’t sell this to you.” “That one is not for sale.” No selling techniques that are used in the United States. It was almost like you had to pull teeth to buy anything or to place orders. They have a long, long way to go in marketing to the West. Because of the balance of payments they want to sell more now but can’t do it.63
Six-thirty, the whole CODEL group met with Zhu De, 90 years old.64 Nancy Tang interpreted. Here was one of Mao’s earliest comrades at arms. He seemed fairly sharp but very, very old and tired easily. We were with him for a few minutes. The speaker did pretty darn well. We had a return banquet at the Cheng Du Restaurant, far too much to eat and by the time it was over everybody was ready to shut ’er down and move on.65 A visit of two or three days is plenty. The Speaker talked to Nancy Tang all the time. He got better about his interpretation and translation etc., but he rather rudely wouldn’t let people finish. He didn’t realize it was rude and he argued, discussing Taiwan in great detail and our defense treaty and many things. Gleysteen was nervously going right up the wall. Frankly I don’t think those things hurt too much because the Chinese must understand our system and this is a good way for them to learn about it.66
Gleysteen raised the question with me about guests coming here and I was a little indignant. Cabinet people and congressmen are giving him a fit. I think we are too damn goosy on the program and they have too little confidence in me in the sense that they seem scared that everybody is going to blow it. It is the result of Kissinger’s strong arm on everything to do with China. I told him these congressmen and Cabinet people are my guests. I understand about the Cabinet people and clearly that might take on significance beyond what would be intended by a private visit, but on the Congress I said, “I’ll abide by your decision but I think it is a big mistake to have a policy where congressmen can’t come unless the secretary of state approves it. These are my friends. They are close personal friends, someone like Rog Morton, and I just want you to know that I disagree with the policy.”67 I also had a feeling we are not being informed on policy. There was much happening on Cambodia that involved Peking and we should have known about it. I think that the State Department makes a big mistake on not keeping ambassadors informed. End of April 2.
[Thursday,] April 3[, 1975]. Youde came around to see whether the Chinese during the Congressional talks had expressed great concern about the fall of Southeast Asia, Cambodia, etc., and also to find out about the art troop, how that was going to work out, whether they would recriminate. The Chinese did blast us in the NCNA but it wasn’t too much at all. I told Youde that Cambodia and Vietnam were not mentioned. One wonders exactly how the Chinese feel about the rapid fall down there and about Cambodia particularly given their commitment to Sihanouk and the question mark about his future. I do worry about the rapid disintegration of our policy in the Middle East. We shouldn’t be expected to bring it peace, or to bring peace to that area alone, but people do expect that of us. Portugal is falling apart.68 The Cyprus and Greece situation still is difficult.69 Pressure on troops to come out of NATO, which is not an imminent thing, but NATO itself is under great pressure.
And then you shift over to Southeast Asia and you see the Cambodia-Vietnamese situations and you have a rather vivid unraveling, that causes us a lot of heartburn.70 Everybody kind of looks at me more in sorrow than in anger about Vietnam. And I bite back a little bit, about our commitments, need to guarantee some kind of self-determination, and wondering when the free elections will come after these people are overthrown. It is amazing how certain ambassadors couldn’t care less about those kinds of things. They want peace and harmony and maybe they have got a point.
Quiet lunch, then a Canadian showing of a wolf movie and a travel movie at the International Club. The International Club has a big theater. You stand around and drink juice and beer and then go in to see it. Actually it is a very nice facility. They are poor marketers though. They could have entertainment. They could have a little bar setup. They could put this thing on a money-making basis, but instead they subsidize it at a very low cost. A nice thing— the operation runs rather haltingly but in a friendly fashion. We are lucky to have it.
Dinner at the Greek Embassy. The European approach to diplomacy is much like the UN. Dinner at 8, not leave until 11, rather formal settings, serving Western food in all the embassies, none of which is as good as our Chinese food but nonetheless you do have a little bit of Greece or Belgium or France here in China. It is a nice change. The evenings somehow seem boring here to me, where they didn’t at the UN so much. That kind of evening seems boring.
We are in the midst of a major staff turnover at USLO. It will be nice to have our own new staff, my own new imprint on things for better or for worse. As people get ready to leave they become hardened, particularly after a couple of years, to the inconveniences and to the frustrations of this life. John Holdridge reflects a very hardline approach now and I think it is an accumulation of frustration as well as a very realistic look.71 Lucian Pye just wrote an article that calls for a realistic appraisal, and I firmly believe that when we stand up for our principles, the Chinese understand.72 So many China lovers in the United States want to do it exactly their way. There is a double standard on their China policy. The Russians get the kind of criticism that the Chinese avoid, and I am sure it drives the Russians right up the wall because the discipline, and the closeness of this society, and the unpredictable ways of doing things, and the stiff-arming approaches is bad, if not worse, here than anything like this in the Soviet Union now or in the past. Compared with other embassies we get as much done as they do, have as much access as they do, but compared with what the Chinese do in the United States, we get nothing and nothing comparable in terms of contacts etc.
The State Department is worrying about my house guests— congressmen and cabinet people. They are uptight, uptight. It is this clutched-in policy, in the whole experience, to one’s chest that worries me. Secretiveness instead of secrecy as Marshall Green called it.73
Flew the Tianjin kite the other day.74 Great silk kites. Crowds gather outside the wall. Kids look in until they are shooed away by the guard. Kite gets as good a crowd as C. Fred, and that’s saying something! Got a new bicycle from the Marines to use. $40. A big sturdy black thing. I waxed it up and it looks pretty good, ready for the kids.
Health. The doctor situation here—you get mixed reviews. Some think they do a great job, but the Polish Ambassador had a very serious infection and they couldn’t figure out what it was. The German was wasting away, almost died, until we got him to a Tokyo hospital. Jerry Ogden had his Chinese wife go down and get some herbs to fix his gut and sure enough it worked. You worry if anything real serious would come up but you can get to Tokyo in four or five hours—we could—to the hospital there. We do not have a doctor here although there is a regional man that is supposed to come in. People get a lot of colds and flu out here. You can go from feeling really awful to feeling almost euphorically well. Great highs and lows. I don’t know whether it is the climate or the society. There is a lot of dust in the air and it is dry. I turn on one of those water vaporizers a lot. Your nose gets dried out and there is a lot of coughing. Of course the Chinese are great spitters and coughers right on the street, [with] Deng Xiaoping making liberal use of the spittoon in our meeting. People appear healthy but there is a fair amount of absenteeism due to colds and flu and things of that nature. It hasn’t rained here in weeks. Dust gets up in the air a lot and into the house. It is like West Texas, only so far it hasn’t been quite as bad as some of the dust storms there. Our goggles and face masks get a laugh out of the crowd as we cycle along. End of April 3.
[Friday,] April 4[, 1975]. I went to the Animal By-Products Import and Export Company to negotiate for carpets. It is unbelievable. Bar and I were there with Mr. Liu who had had the most venerable and respected chop maker in Peking make us chops— beautiful artwork. We wanted to have them sewed into some rugs. We sat down opposite a formidable array of Chinese including the responsible person, the designer, the man who handles the Tianjin carpet factory in Peking and several others. They all drank tea. They discussed the weather and finally we got down to business. We order five 9 × 6 rugs and one 10 × 14. Our chop to be woven in. The design changed. We agreed on the colors. It was a wonderful negotiation. Light, respectful, not too difficult. The price a little over 8,000 yuan for five rugs. A 9 × 6 rug at the Friendship Store cost between 1,200 and 1,900 yuan so I think we made a pretty good deal. They will be ready—one in October-November, the other five in January-February. They did not want any money down. There will be a contract. Traditional design. They asked that we not advertise the price. I think he gave us a pretty good price.
Went to Hungarian national day from 11 to 12. A massive array. Chinese off on one side with Ambassador Ferenc [Gódor]. Much discussion of rumor going around that I had contacted Sihanouk. It was all over the place. Rumors fly through this diplomatic community.75 Four o’clock Mr. Horie, former head of the Bank of Tokyo, came to call.76 Discussed the international economic situation. A most attractive fellow who had been here with a high-level Japanese delegation.
April 4. Had some diplomatic types over to see “The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid.”77 The film cratered and it was all very embarrassing. The film was all worn out. We get in on the tail end of things here—films, etc. End of April 4.
[Saturday,] April 5[, 1975]. Relaxed weekend. Tennis—Akwei and I beat Te and Wang three straight. Very easy. It’s funny. Sometimes these guys are tough and sometimes not so much. Got a message from the White House and had to send a courier on down to give a message from the President to Carl Albert. Rode bikes way downtown and got back very, very tired. Spring has come. It is fun to browse through the shops. There is absolutely no effort to see anything at all. No marketing. You have to dig and look, and tons of people. Oversupply of people. The law of diminishing returns must have set in. At the airlines counter there are 20 to do the job of 3. Counters at the stores—there are always people standing there. Some must be training but some must be just a surplus of people. We are wearing our goggles downtown. People stare more but they are sure great for the weather, keeping the dust out. Watch science shorts on our cassette TV and hit the sack early. End of April 5.
[Sunday,] April 6[, 1975]. Had all the ex-staff over. Got a good clear phone call from the States including word from Marvin that he got into the University of Texas and had chosen that by “process of elimination.” Chinese are status conscious. Discussing the car, Mr. Guo was afraid we might be getting a station wagon when we get a new car. He wants a Cadillac. He told Mr. Liu to tell me he thought that was the only car fitting for my position. The protocol is as stringent and strict here as in any place I know about. Took a ping-pong lesson, got royally beaten by Ho’s assistant; a young kid, who put friendship first and toyed along with me. Lunch at the International Club. Prices cheap, food good. Sundays it’s always full over there. Africans and a hodgepodge of nationalities. Some are rude to the management. Some of the students, particularly Africans, sit over there and drink too much beer, and I think it causes the Chinese some heartburn.
In the afternoon we went to the funeral of Dong Biwu, the only survivor, other than Mao, and founder of the Communist Party.78 He was 90 years old. It was most impressive. It was in the Forbidden City, in the Workers’ Palace end of it. Vast space, literally tens of thousands of people lined up with white carnations, four abreast, waiting to file through. Diplomatic community was led through open parks inside the walls of the Forbidden City up to this most impressive spot inside what had once been a palace I am sure. Ranking dignitaries of his government on the right, family standing near the urn and a large picture on the left. They shook hands with all the diplomatic community and then I am told did the same with all the masses. Black crepe around, floral wreaths, funeral music, perhaps the most impressive and symbolic thing we have done since we have been in China. It was amazingly tasteful and dignified and you wonder whether a man’s family thinks there is a god.79
It was a warm day. I wondered as I shook hands with the widow whether her mind wastes back to the Korean War or some other hostility, or whether she thought back longer to times when Americans had helped the Chinese enormously. A young girl in the line was crying, obviously a niece or grandchild. There must have been fifteen members of the family there. Holdridge, Bar, and I walked across the courtyards representing the United States. I am very, very glad that we went. It is the first one of these that Holdridge has been to also.
In the afternoon Bar and I bicycled downtown. I was wearing blue checked pants and a red tee shirt, and the crowds stared and stared. That was all that I needed. It is warm now. It is fun just to go into plain stores. A glass store or a basket store or a hardware store. They are all the same. Not attractive for marketing, but probing around in the cases and pointing and talking with the little Chinese—you really get the atmosphere of Peking. Ken Jamieson and Ethel arrived on Iran Air.80 Easy to get through customs. Both very pleasant. End of April 6.
Monday, April 7[, 1975]. Determined to increase our contacts with Africans. Today I called on Shibura Albert of Burundi and Langue-Tsobgny of Cameroon. Both conducted in French, both seemed pleased that I called. We have got to find ways to do more with them. And hope that we get a lead or two. Called on Tolstikov at the Soviet Union. Talked for an hour out in his mausoleum. He loves to chat. Always has great theories on China. Feels that their relationship and ours is about the same. Says that Sihanouk showed him and others a letter from me. No comment from me of course. Lunch at home with the Jamiesons, then shopping downtown. Tons of dust. Some of the bicycles looked like they were going backwards. Sand in the air. Most miserable day [we] have had since we have been in China in terms of weather. A busy day though. Plenty of action. Enjoyable. Dinner at the Minzu Restaurant with the Jamiesons, Bushes, Pascoes and Holdridges. One of the Mongolian pot deals.
[Tuesday,] April 8[, 1975]. Lots of wondering about the death of Chiang Kai-shek.81 Nobody expects that this will facilitate the solution of our problems inasmuch as Chiang Kai-shek has not been running things over there anyway. But there is something significant of the fact that Dong Biwu and Chiang Kai-shek died at roughly the same time. Old old men. Then I think of Zhu De and Chairman Mao and even Zhou Enlai and I wonder what the line-up is going to look like a year from now. Jack Service is coming in to see Holdridge, and I will meet with him this afternoon.82
Went to the opening of the Belgium exhibit. Technical, pretty fair display, nothing like the U.S. companies would do however. I’ll be interested to see if China sells anything through this exhibit. It is quite nicely done, with a gathering in the big exhibit hall— Moscow-Russian built years ago—where the ambassador and the minister of trade from Belgium plus a representative of the ministry from China spoke. Then we went through the fair. Long lunch at the Romanians. These Eastern Europeans, though flexible and though needing the U.S. to counterbalance the Soviets, are tough when it comes to the solutions of problems in Southeast Asia. They will not go for free elections or any of the things that we consider fundamental. Hot tennis game to work off the lunch.
Dinner at the house. News agency people canceled because of the death of Dong Biwu. Andersons, Bushes, Horowitz, and Jamiesons. Mrs. Jamieson was not attractive at dinner. Too bad. Arguing with the State Department people. Why do you all pay attention to Shirley MacLaine etc. when Shirley’s book had just come out.83 It was widely reviewed in the U.S. and of course was the main subject in China. What Mrs. Jamieson doesn’t know is that Shirley has disproportionate influence in the United States. People read about her, she gets wide publicity. I am very worried about the whole American policy in Southeast Asia and am awaiting anxiously to see what the president has to say about it. There may not be a domino theory but clearly as the United States has reneged on commitments and pulled back, and is unwilling to support recommendations of the president, the free countries, the Asian countries and others in Southeast Asia are concerned. A good speech by Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore on April 7 spells it out very well.84 These countries cannot depend on the U.S. any longer and thus they have to look toward Russia or more likely China. There could be a conflict between China and North Vietnam over all this.85 Of course there is a domino theory, but it should not be called that because now it is a code word and all those who opposed it are rationalizing and thinking of other explanations.86
[Wednesday,] April 9[, 1975]. Visit from East German Ambassador, Wittik. He is an interesting guy, justifying East Germany’s position, talking mainly about land redistribution and how they formed cooperatives. Wittik’s father worked in the German underground, spent time in a concentration camp prison. Wittik told me that he himself deserted from the German Army during the war. Very pleasant, very anxious to present their side of the FRG-GDR dispute.87 Lunch with the Jamiesons. The worst day in terms of weather that we have had in Peking. Tremendously high West Texas–type wind storm. Dust all over the place. We went to the Hungarian movie show at the International Club. Two travelogs and one ghastly propaganda piece glorifying the Soviet Union. Two excellent travelogs with no voice, done to classical music. Great sights. On the way back, we walked and it was unbelievable—the dust. Dinner at the Big Duck with the Arnauds, Smitters of Canada, and Ballous, Bushes and Jamiesons.88 Note: the people who work at USLO residence are really warm and friendly. The girls have warmed up appreciably. Mr. Wang is doing a great job and Chu— who has had a bad back—is a good young guy. He showed me a smelly plaster that the Chinese put on back injuries. I think I will have to try some when my back gives me grief.
Jerry Ogden had diarrhea problems and he got his wife to go to one of the herb doctors and it cured him instantly. Herb Horowitz had a broken tooth. They wanted to put a great big shiny aluminum cap on it. Herb resisted same. We may get another musk ox to replace Milton. I think it would be good.89 It is funny how little tiny things like this matter here. The cultural artistic troop was canceled going from China to the United States, because of a Taiwan song. Now it seems to me to get a musk ox would be helpful. We’ll analyze it to death before the ox appears, I am sure. Albert and Rhodes are back in the states. On the VOA I heard them talking about Taiwan taking time, Chinese being the main subject—they are interested, very little comment on Vietnam. They did a good job and it was in keeping with the high-level talks we had here. As soon as Albert and Rhodes left, the diplomats were abuzz with what the talks were about etc. I am sure a jillion cables were fired after each one of them asked me how the talks went. End of April 9.
President Marcos and Prime Minister Lee both are talking about reassessment of U.S. role in Southeast Asia.90 Both see PRC and the Soviet Union on the increase and the U.S. on the decrease. Both continue to feel probably that the U.S. is important but both feel that the non-communist countries will probably hang loose and certainly will not depend on the U.S. The domino theory is a valid one. I am wondering what I would have recommended if I had been in a position of major authority as far as funds for Cambodia and Vietnam. First, I don’t know all the facts but from here it appears to be a losing cause. I think we are going to have to take a real hard look at Southeast Asia. The president presumably will be discussing this tomorrow night.91 Certainly we have got to reassure Japan and in every way possible. I don’t quite see what is going to take the pressure off Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines as times goes by. A lot depends on Vietnam. A lot depends on the relationship between North Vietnam and China—not always a happy one. If North Vietnam has its hands full in taking care of its own problems in Vietnam, maybe it won’t be fooling around so much in Laos and Thailand. Laos appears to me to have some real problems.
[Thursday,] April 10[, 1975]. Discovery that through stamps in China you can really get a great feel for the entire society. “Workers: valiant struggles against . . . ,” “to liberate so and so,” “support of Albania,” “return of the glorious fighters from Korea,” “support of the people of Vietnam in their quest for freedom.” Stamp book spells out the entire philosophy and entire pride in art of this society. Relaxed free day. Another match in tennis with Wang and Te for relaxation. Welcoming Levesques, a party at the Morans, lunch at home.92 More Cambodian work in the office. Reading the news, the continuing feeling that Vietnam and Cambodia are totally falling apart, desperately feeling the need for a realignment, restatement of foreign policy. The President coming on tomorrow and that will be interesting to see what he has to say on that. Somewhere between isolation and over-involvement lies a reasonable end, but then, at the same time I am saying this, you hear Thailand talking, about [how] Thailand has just lost 17 people fighting in the North against communist insurgence. The domino theory?
Mr. Wang presented Barbara with all the menus that we have eaten since October. They really work in wonderful ways. He is the most polite fellow. Always available, always willing to try. End of April 10.
[Friday,] April 11[, 1975]. Jerry Levesque, Bob Blackburn’s replacement, is around. Had a meeting with him. We will soon be reshaping the whole staff. The night of the 11th we had a group for buffet and movies. The buffet was a combination of Chinese food and American food. Went quickly. One wine. Very informal. Showed “Night at the Opera.”93 Had a good mix. Italian correspondent, Prince Sagali, Mrs. Katapodis of Greece, the Czechoslovakian ambassador, the Australians, the Egyptians, the French, the Yugoslavs, Sudan and Somalia—all ambassadors, all seemed to enjoy the evening. It was an early evening.
Sihanouk. We continue to have fascinating indirect contact. Sihanouk is a man who without divulging any secrets is obviously trying to carve out a niche for himself. We worry about where he fits in, if at all. He is walking a tightrope. He probably wants to be [a] friend to the United States, or at least keep Cambodia nationalistic, but on the other hand he had no purchase with the Khmer Rouge. At times he talks like he does but I am beginning to conclude that at this point he has very little. The question is how much support does Sihanouk have when and if he gets back to Cambodia—support that is free and independent of the Khmer Rouge. He is not a communist. Cambodians are not communists, they are religious people, the Buddhists all currently want a nationalistic, relatively free Cambodia. But as the Khmer Rouge is within four or five miles of Phnom Penh they lose influence.
We listened to the President’s speech and I wonder how it will be received. He called for $722 million of aid and here I sit with the distinct feeling, having talked to Carl Albert and Rhodes, that he won’t get any military aid for Vietnam. We are going through a very difficult time for U.S. foreign policy. We talk strong, the President’s voice was firm, made all the right sounds, and yet people, I am sure, are wondering what in the world we can really do, what can we deliver? The American people do not see us threatened at all by Southeast Asia—our security, or our well-being. And you add to this the enormous financial problems at home and it makes declarations of actions almost impossible. Time will tell but my prediction is that the Congress will not approve the military aid. In the meantime in a separate file I am keeping the “contact with Sihanouk” story and it should be woven in here.94
Saturday, April 12[, 1975]. We had the Cameroon children, the Ambassador from Gabon, wife of the Ambassador from Burundi all over to see the movie “Big Horn.”95 We invited the USLO children too. It was a good showing. We threw the Frisbee around, played horseshoes, played the game with the things that hook onto your hand outside (plastic ones), then went in and had Cokes and the movie. Lunch at the Club with Chris Ballou, a new officer here, a very attractive fellow, born in China. Jerry Ogden and his Chinese wife are here—attractive. We are putting together a whole new crew. I hate to see some of the others go, but again change is good. People should not be here more than two years—I am convinced of that.
We had a health care and schistosomiasis study group come here, led by Dr. Jung of George Washington University.96 They came for a quick reception [and] seemed to be pleased to be on U.S. soil, so to speak, [and to] have a drink of whiskey. They were an attractive group, mainly doctors, very serious about their work. Some of the doctors in the health care group would come at their own expense. The schistosomiasis group was one of the exchanges, and Jay Taylor accompanied them.97 The Chinese hosts for one group came. That was five to six-thirty, and then at nine we went to a dance at the Cameroon Embassy where I was bearded by Agence France-Presse, Reuters, and the Italian news agency asking about the Sihanouk comment. Sihanouk made a statement saying that he had told us to get out of Phnom Penh etc. etc. I’ll put this in the file. I gave it a “no comment.” We got home very late. I think the Africans were pleased we were there. It is impossible for me dancing.98 The big highlight was a Canadian girl doing the twist or something. She was fantastic. More action that we had seen around here since that girl that used to work in finance of the RNC who got fired by Odell.99 End of April 12. Winds came up—“dafong.” Tremendous wind and dust in the air. It was really a lousy night’s sleep.
Sunday, April 13[, 1975]. Went to our church service. Henrietta Morris joins us. We pick her up at the Peking Hotel and then shoot up to the service. A relaxed day. Friendship Store. Shopping around. Interview with John Burns that he is doing for People magazine—on his way out of China soon, to work for the New York Times. A ping-pong lesson by a Chinese kid who put friendship first, who isn’t as good as Ho, but a very nice fellow.
Consular case of —— who was here with a British tour group headed by Dr. Brown.100 —— freaked out; threatened to kill Mao; threatened to blow up the Forbidden City; threatened the life of Dr. Brown and also the life of our consular officer; struck a Chinese in the hotel room; locked himself in; said he needed the seventh key; [and] cast a spell on Jerry Ogden, the consular officer, by holding his hand in the air and calling him Satan. The China Travel Service would at first not negotiate with the United States Liaison Office, the Brits were leaving early Monday morning for Moscow, and they threatened to tell the Moscow airline people if —— tried to go along. The British tour director, though he behaved well, was trying to get his trip on its way and shake leave of this guy. Great calling back and forth. Good State Department support. They sedated the man late, late Sunday night and kept him in custody Monday in a hospital, and delivered him to the airport, sedated him again, and we sent a marshal, trained security guy, with him to Tokyo where he was delivered to the boy’s father who got out of bed in the middle of the night in Utah and started arranging to go to Tokyo. Good consular work and good support by Department and Embassy-Tokyo. Kept us up at night.
Main topic of conversation is still Sihanouk and the Sihanouk-distorted story of what we tried to do.
Monday, April 14[, 1975]. The ambassador Cesar Romero of Peru and his beautiful German-speaking wife, whom we had met in Zambia, paid a courtesy call.101 They should be a good addition to the diplomatic community. Going-away luncheon—very special and Chinese, at our house for Bob Blackburn. Going-away reception for Ambassador Stachowiak of Poland. 5:00 p.m. A great big affair, less deadly because we were outdoors and the Polish Gardens diametrically across from us looked beautiful. They have this tremendous embassy with apartments, massive swimming pool, [and] good tennis court. Our place looks minuscule in comparison. Showed the movie “40 Carats” that night with the Gerd Ruges.102 Getting ready to go on the trip to Hong Kong and Canton. People are still wearing their padded clothes. I am told that on some mysterious signal from somewhere everyone changes to summer garb. Took a long walk Sunday after trying unsuccessfully to fly a couple of my Tianjin kites. Everyone stared at Fred. We had to tell [them] that he was a dog, “xiaogo.” Some didn’t know what he was. Some of the kids did. High school kids kind of barking at him as he went along. Little kids kind of ran alongside him. Others scared to death, jumped out of the way. Old people seemed to smile a lot. Some old cancer victims from the hospital next door were sitting outside near the park with their pajamas and bathrobes on, smiled warmly as we went by. Kids were following along behind us. Spring was in the air and it is very pleasant. We walked past the park, past the big, multistory apartment buildings that are up past the British Embassy and all around the block. Saw the soldiers lining up for their diplomatic guard duty, being lectured by some officer. They went on past and watched lots of action in the park. Then walked along the streets where the cyclists stared like mad at Fred. Cycling we are using our goggles a lot with the dust in the air. They help.
Note: My heart aches for the people in Cambodia who have battled for what they thought was right down there. It is going to be a lot of misery. Sihanouk’s position is not clear but he doesn’t appear to have too much flexibility from the Khmer Rouge. Watson Wise called.103 He used to be so pushy at the U.N. and then at the National Committee, always asking some special favor, mainly wanting to be appointed ambassador. He wrote saying he was here representing an important furniture company. It turns out to be some small outfit. I told him he could not get a visa. He wrote back saying he figured out some way to get in and he now found out about the house guest visit visas. I told him we can’t do it. He called today and asked if he could stay with Holdridge whom he has never met or heard of. I heard him on the phone when the line was dead saying, “Who was that fellow I saw yesterday—was it Cross?” and then when I got on the phone he said, “My good friend Chuck Cross told me to give you a call on this.” Life goes on just the same.
[Tuesday,] April 15[, 1975]. Lunch at the New Zealand Embassy. Morning in the office with the briefings by our political people for me, this one on Sino-U.S. relations, tracing the troubled history since liberation until now. Very interesting. Call from the Ambassador of Mauritius and dinner at Egyptian Embassy. The Ambassador from Mauritius is based in Pakistan but he is also accredited to Peking. Very nice guy—friend of Byroade’s.104 Interested in being sure the U.S. keeps its position in the Indian Ocean, thinks we need to do a better PR job showing the number of ship days, how many Russian ships there are there compared to ours.105 He seems very friendly to the United States. Dinner at French [embassy]. Topic was the subject of Vietnam and Cambodia. Paludan, the Danish Ambassador, and the French tut-tutting. I always get the feeling at these talks that there are other sides, [besides the] position is clearly that all the violations and corruption and the lack of elections by South Vietnam is disgusting. And nothing comparable for the North. It does seem we are betting on the wrong people in some places.
1 Vernon Mwanga, foreign minister for Zambia, later served as Zambian minister of information.
2 As mentioned previously, because it lacked official embassy status, the USLO, by custom and agreement with the Chinese, did not participate in such “official” activities for visiting diplomats.
3 S. Dillon Ripley directed the Smithsonian Institution from 1964 to 1984 and was a frequent correspondent of Bush’s. He traveled to China accompanied by his wife, Mary. J. Paul Austin, who was accompanied by his wife, Jeanne, was a member of the Smithsonian’s board of regents and chairman of the board of the Coca-Cola Company.
4 The performing arts troupe eventually canceled their trip to the United States at the eleventh hour, over a dispute that reveals much about the nature of Sino-American relations at the time. They were scheduled to perform in five American cities, opening their tour in Los Angeles on April 3 and closing in Washington on April 26. During routine preparatory work for the visit, however, American officials decided that one song on the Chinese program, “People of Taiwan, Our Brothers,” contained lyrics liable to disrupt Washington’s sensitive relations with Taiwan. The image of Chinese singers declaring “We are determined to liberate Taiwan” from a Washington stage did not appeal to the State Department, which during the third week of March formally asked the Chinese for a different selection. There was some precedent for this request, as Chinese officials had altered the program for the Philadelphia Symphony’s historic visit in 1973. (See my footnote to the entry for March 29, 1975.)
5 One of the scientists to whom Bush refers was most likely Zhou Peiyuan, who headed numerous Chinese scientific missions abroad, including a month-long visit of physicists to the United States beginning in September 1975. With degrees from the University of Chicago and the California Institute of Technology, Zhou had been a research fellow at Caltech and at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study during the 1930s.
6 Ripley had spent his academic career as an ornithologist and had headed Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History before assuming his Smithsonian post.
7 The reference is most likely to the smew, Mergellus albellus, found in northern Europe and Asia.
8 Bush had earlier imposed on Ripley for help in outfitting the USLO in a particularly “American” fashion. “We are sitting in a lovely Residence but with no pictures on the wall,” Bush wrote after two weeks in Beijing. “I am wondering if you know of any cheap, but tasteful, prints or pictures that could be rolled up in a tube and sent to us here. I would, of course, be glad to pay for them and I would trust your judgment completely. Perhaps the Smithsonian has a series of early American prints (copies) that we could frame out here and scatter around a few little rooms in the Liaison Office and in the Residence?” No record exists as to whether Ripley fulfilled this request.
9 In the coming weeks an extension would be sought for China’s now-famous archaeological exhibit, on tour in the United States (and the subject of some controversy, as Bush has already described), thus necessitating further negotiations and agreements that would have to be signed by the USLO. Bush in fact hesitated to support asking Beijing for the extension, not because he disliked Chinese art or wanted to limit its availability in the United States but rather because he feared making a request and thus putting the Chinese in the position of granting or rejecting yet another American favor. His response and his recognition of a growing power dynamic within the Sino-American relationship is indicative of his growing frustrations with Beijing’s policymakers. “We are setting ourselves up for yet another cave-in,” he warned the State Department later in March, “and are simply going through the motions of making the request to satisfy the museum [San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum] while further eroding our negotiating position with the MFA [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] Furthermore, in their eyes the Chinese feel they have been very generous . . . and our continued pressure for further extension may begin to negate some of the goodwill generated by the successful exhibition.”
10 Bush would later call in Washington’s aid in this plan. On June 17, 1975, he wrote the State Department: “There is not a hotdog roll to be found in China. Is there any way you could ship us 700 hotdog rolls for guaranteed delivery prior to July 4? We also need 100 large bags of potato chips in same shipment.” This was the “great hotdog bun crisis of 1975” to which he alludes in his preface to this book.
11 In the early 1960s, in an effort to build stronger ties with Romania—just as Romanian leaders struggled to edge their country out of Moscow’s orbit in favor of a nonaligned brand of Communism—Chinese leaders named one of their state farms the Marco Polo Bridge Sino-Romanian Friendship People’s Commune.
12The Temple of Heaven is a complex of Taoist buildings in Beijing. Construction began in 1420 and continued for several decades thereafter. It is the largest of Beijing’s four major Taoist temples.
13Barbara Bush later noted that her enthusiasm for taking guests to these sights did wane over time. “Well, if we had at least a guest a week and probably more because they usually didn’t stay a week, I went every single time. . . . I went every single time there, every single time to the Great Wall, every single time to the Ming Tombs. We’d go to the Great Wall, we’d then stop at the Ming Tombs on the way back, I’d take my cocker spaniel in the car and he’d run in the Ming Tombs. And that was great. Occasionally we’d go and there would be a whole herd of something there that would be a little nerve racking. But, I probably went, you know, maybe 52 times.”
14See Bush’s entry, and my footnote, for March 4, 1975.
15On March 13 the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted against increasing aid to Cambodia. Three days earlier, North Vietnam had invaded South Vietnam, driving south and routing South Vietnamese forces.
16Forbes Burnham was Guyana’s prime minister from 1966 to 1980.
17President Richard Nixon presented the Chinese with two musk oxen (Milton and Mathilda), raised in Washington’s National Zoo, during his 1972 trip to China; he received two giant pandas for the zoo in return. The National Zoo is part of the Smithsonian Institution, hence Dillon Ripley’s particular interest in the fate of the oxen.
18By “chop,” originally a signature or identifying mark carved by furniture or cabinet makers to identify their work, Bush here means a family crest.
19Directed by Mike Nichols, Carnal Knowledge premiered in 1971.
20Mange is a skin or ear condition caused by mites, which occurs primarily in domesticated animals.
21John Newcombe, an Australian tennis star, was the winner of five career grand slam events.
22Singapore ultimately established formal diplomatic ties with China in 1990, after Indonesia did so in 1989.
23Brown was co-founder of the California Agricultural Education Foundation, designed to develop leadership skills among the state’s agriculturalists.
24Big-character posters, quite literally handmade posters proclaiming a political ideal in letters large enough to be easily read by a crowd, formed an integral part of the Cultural Revolution. They were employed by political activists, in particular students, for denunciation of enemies or exhortations to the political cause of the day.
25May Day, traditionally celebrating workers and the international labor movement, was a national holiday in most Communist countries, typically marked in the Soviet bloc by massive parades of military might.
26Bush refers to the model commune of Dazhai. During the Cultural Revolution the slogan “In Agriculture, Learn from Dazhai” was ubiquitous. (My thanks to Andrew Scobell for explaining this reference.)
27Jacques Groothaert served in Belgium’s foreign service for nearly forty years and was ambassador to Mexico before moving to Beijing in 1972. Accompanied by his wife, Madelyn, he served in China until 1976.
28Bush seems not to have considered this as evidence that the State Department might be right to fear the impact of his frequent guests on his diplomatic position with the Chinese. It is curious that he did not pass Nancy Tang’s comment on to Foggy Bottom.
29More occurred at this meeting than Bush recorded in his journal. Of particular note, Fitzgerald told Bush that his sources had confirmed that Taiwan’s government was actively trying to procure a nuclear weapon, presumably because they no longer had faith that Washington would provide sufficient security. Bush passed this news on to Washington with little comment.
30President Ford had visited Japan during November 1974. It was his first trip abroad as president and immediately preceded his summit with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev at Vladivostok.
31Scotten worked as an East Asian affairs officer for the United States Information Agency (USIA), the umbrella network responsible for overseeing all American information programs, including the Voice of America. He had recently worked in Vietnam, helping to organize information and propaganda efforts for South Vietnamese forces.
32Such admonitions from his mother later guided Bush’s own views of personal diplomacy. When asked to describe the approach he took to his first diplomatic posting at the United Nations, especially given his lack of formal diplomatic experience, Bush recalled that he merely fell back on his mother’s advice: “Be kind. Don’t be a big shot. Listen, don’t talk. Reach out to people. [It] doesn’t have anything to do with diplomacy; it has to do with life. Treat people with respect and recognize in diplomatic terms that the sovereignty of Burundi is as important to them as our sovereignty is [to us]. Slightly different scale, I might add. But nevertheless this is just a value thing. This isn’t any great diplomatic study from the Fletcher School or something. This is just the way you react to things.”
33Gerry Bemis was a longtime correspondent of Bush’s, their relationship dating back to family vacations in Kennebunkport, Maine. D. Tennant Bryan, accompanied by his wife, Mary, was editor and publisher of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and chairman of the board of Media General, Inc., a communications conglomerate.
34Jake Hamon made his career in the Oklahoma and Texas oil fields. He and his wife, Nancy, were longtime benefactors of the arts in Dallas, as well as the Dallas Public Library.
35That day Bush had in fact written William Gleysteen, at that time deputy assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs, with a lengthy and heated objection to the department’s oversight over his choice and number of guests. He was not above either falling back on his record of high-level political service or making a none-too-veiled political threat at the letter’s close: “I served in the Congress for four years and served as Chairman of our party for two years. Thus many of my closest personal friends happen to be members of the House and Senate—not professional friends, close personal friends. When I left Washington at one of several going away parties I naturally said to these people ‘come see us’ and I meant it. Frankly, I think it would be very useful to have them do just that. I cannot conceive of any member of Congress that I invited doing anything that would embarrass our policy but I can see how some might understand it a little better. . . . In the future, I will simply advise members of the House and Senate that I am not free to invite them without their first getting approval of the Secretary of State. However, I would strongly urge that this be carefully thought out back there. I do understand Congress pretty well, and I do not believe this would be understood very well on the Hill. . . . In short if it is a firm decision I will abide by it, but I want to be clearly on the record as disagreeing with it. I will do my best to see that it causes no problems but if pressed I will simply tell the truth and say that I am not free to invite members of Congress without prior State Department approval.”
36The reference, as in chapter 4, is to William Safire’s Before the Fall (1975).
37Two days earlier, Bush had voiced his ongoing political ruminations in a letter to Pete Roussel, a long-time political associate and frequent sounding board, who was working for Donald Rumsfeld at the White House at the time. The letter reveals that, to Bush, all short-term considerations were seen within the context of one overriding goal: a presidential bid. “For your info only. If the Texas Gov thing in ’78 makes any sense at all I’d maybe take a look at it hard—Go back to Houston after the ’76 elections, win or lose for Republicans, involve myself in academia and business, move around the state plenty and try one last gasp for ’78 keeping in mind that I wouldn’t do it unless there was a possibility of taking a shot at something bigger in ’80—not necessarily on the latter, but having it way off dimly in the future. Just a reminiscence—not a hard thought, certainly not a plan at this point. As you know well a GOP Gov in our state is tough.”
38Bush expressed a similar lack of certainty regarding his desire to run for office once more in a letter composed two weeks earlier to Clements—who would become Texas governor in his own right in 1979–83 and 1987–91. Writing during the first week of March, Bush confided, “I loved our talk at the house. I have plenty of time to think out here. There is plenty to do, but I find that for the first time in my adult life I can control my own time pretty well. I have been thinking some about the future. The advice you gave me is very good indeed. I do not have elective politics completely out of my system, but I am deeply interested in foreign affairs and in the security of our country.” Seven months in Beijing had brought little clarity to Bush’s thinking, though he did express enthusiasm for remaining a while longer in Beijing. Writing Clements that October, he admitted, “As to Bentsen’s vulnerability in Texas, certainly you and Rita and the Connollys would be good judges. My problem is that at this point I just don’t have the burning desire to give up this kind of work and spend another year of my life campaigning across our tremendous state. I don’t think being in Peking for a year has hurt me politically, but it has put me out of touch (temporarily, I hope) with the main issues. I had a little talk with the President about my future when I saw him in Texas. You and I didn’t have a chance to visit about that. All in all, I think it is best that I remain here for now, that I work hard and try to do a decent job, and that I forgo the Senate race. I can’t see very clearly into the future, but this doesn’t worry me at all.”
39John Tower was the Republican senator from Texas, having first been elected to replace Lyndon Johnson in 1961.
40Lloyd Bentsen was a four-term Democratic senator from Texas and vice presidential nominee in 1988. Bentsen had been Bush’s competitor in 1970 for Texas’s senate seat. He later served as secretary of the treasury during the Clinton administration. Barry Goldwater was a long-serving Arizona senator and the Republican candidate for president in 1964.
41William S. Paley was founder of the CBS radio and television network.
42Oscar Armstrong, a career foreign service officer and Asian specialist, was born in China to missionary parents. He served in the American consulate in Beijing from 1947 to 1949, departing after the Communist takeover. He subsequently served as head of public affairs for the State Department’s East Asian Bureau during the mid-1960s and during Bush’s tenure in Beijing was head of PRC and Mongolian affairs for that bureau.
43Adnan Bulak, who began his service in Beijing in 1974, would later serve as Turkey’s ambassador to France.
44Probably Harry Thayer, a Yale graduate and recent arrival at the USLO, who later served as Washington’s ambassador to Singapore and as director of the American Institute in Taiwan.
45Montreal hosted the 1976 summer Olympics. Host nations do not determine the list of participating nations.
46See Bush’s entry, and my footnote, for March 10, 1975.
47As noted in chapter 4, Lily Wen’s father was a Nationalist officer, killed fighting the Communists during the civil war.
48Bush refers to his daughter, Dorothy.
49Bush may have misspoken when he first referred to this incident as having occurred “the other day,” or, equally likely, this story may have grown in the retelling from the original incident. It was a well-worn cautionary tale. Steve Allen notes in his memoir that the Bushes and the Allens discussed the matter over a lunch at the USLO several months later. However, Allen dates the story to 1965. The earlier date correlates, at least more closely, with Bush’s later statement that the incident occurred “three or six years ago.” John Holdridge tells a remarkably similar story in his own memoirs, yet with important differences. A butcher shop employee “took the bill-hook used to pull the carcasses, went storming outside the Friendship Store and in a rage struck down the first foreigner he encountered. This happened to be the wife of a French diplomat, who was pushing her little boy in a stroller just outside the store. Fortunately, while she suffered a jagged cut over the ear, she was not seriously injured; her attacker then rushed across the street into the Iraqi embassy compound from which he was later dragged by the omnipresent PLA guards. We heard that he was later shot.” For our purposes, the specific details of this story would seem less important than what they tell us about how the American (and international) community in Beijing communicated with each other about the dangers, and the safeties, of their temporary home. In each retelling, though details varied, the message was the same. The perpetrator was summarily dealt with, and peace was restored with an iron fist.
50Ellis later reported from Saigon for ABC, witnessing the final American helicopter flights off the roof of the U.S. embassy.
51William and Janet Steiger had befriended the Bushes when William represented Wisconsin in Congress. Janet Steiger later became the first woman to head the Federal Trade Commission.
52MacLaine’s 1973 travels in China spawned You Can Get There from Here (New York: Norton, 1975), a narrative of her journey and impressions, as well as a documentary film, The Other Half of the Sky, directed by MacLaine and Claudia Weill, which was nominated for an Academy Award as best documentary.
53Jerome Ogden, a career foreign service officer, subsequently served as consul general in Guangzhou and Shanghai. He later told one reporter that, during his entire three-year stint in Beijing during the 1970s, he processed a total of three visas from Chinese citizens to visit the United States. Henrietta Morris had recently arrived at the USLO to work in the administrative pool.
54On March 25, 1975, Hue fell after a three-day siege. South Vietnamese troops retreated en masse. Da Nang had fallen by March 30; 100,000 South Vietnamese soldiers surrendered. On March 31 the North’s Ho Chi Minh Campaign—the final push toward Saigon—began.
55Marvin Bush graduated in 1975 from the Woodberry Forest School, a small all-male boarding school.
56Sources documenting this visit are provided in the endnotes.
57The Philadelphia Orchestra, arguably the nation’s finest, toured China September 10–23, 1973, under the direction of Eugene Ormandy. As this was the first such trip to mainland China for an American orchestra, the group’s leaders, with support from the State Department and the USLO, worked with Chinese officials to ensure that their playlist carried no unintended political themes that might have repercussions. Indeed the full program had been decided upon before the orchestra departed American shores. But Chinese officials insisted upon a last-minute addition for the final performance of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, apparently owing to the personal intervention of Jiang Qing. John Holdridge contends that Zhou Enlai subsequently took the opportunity to initiate a campaign against Jiang. The People’s Daily included an editorial a fortnight after the concert denouncing such music, claiming that it “watered down the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses.” Such cryptic charges and power struggles were part and parcel of the Cultural Revolution, but the important lesson from the USLO’s perspective was that, for PRC officials, even music was political.
58These individuals all served on Bush’s staffs in Washington and New York. Don Rhodes first joined Bush’s 1964 congressional campaign as a volunteer and later became a close friend and associate. It was Rhodes, for example, who helped arrange travel for Bush’s friends and family on their visits to China. Jane Kenny later served as special assistant to Bush in his vice presidential office. Thomas L. Lias was special assistant to Bush when he was ambassador to the United Nations and served as his executive assistant when Bush was chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC). He went on to be deputy director of Bush’s 1980 presidential campaign. Peter Roussel was press officer for Bush when he served in Congress, and he was later press secretary for Bush’s U.N. office and then at the RNC. Roussel went on to serve as deputy press secretary in the Reagan administration. Rose Zamaria, Mary Lou Schwarzmann, and Aleene Smith were all members of the staff in Bush’s congressional office.
59The original text reads “Luckheed.” The article, “Death of a Christian,” was written by William F. Buckley, founder of the conservative journal National Reiew. It concerns Charles Pinckney Luckey, minister of a Congregational church in Connecticut, who was stricken with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare brain disorder. There is no cure for the disease, and virtually all who contract it die within a year. Pastor Luckey, upon learning of the destructive personality and behavioral changes that often result from the ravages of the disease, considered taking his own life to spare his friends and family “the horrible beast within himself.” He ultimately decided against suicide, believing such an act would violate his faith.
60Phillip Burton, a Democrat, represented his California district in Congress for ten terms beginning in 1963. Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, a titan of American politics, would become speaker of the House in 1977.
61Universal Oil Products Company (now UOP LLC), a company that researches and licenses petroleum refining technologies, signed its first contracts with China in 1975.
62William Gleysteen, a career foreign service officer specializing in East Asia, was subsequently appointed ambassador to South Korea in 1978.
63China’s share of world export volume had dropped significantly from the 1950s to the 1970s, standing at 0.81 percent between 1970 and 1976. Aid from the Soviets had wholly disappeared as a result of the two countries’ titanic split, and, with the Cultural Revolution now entering its final throes, China’s economy was hardly booming. The impact of the foreign investment that would follow the Sino-American rapprochement had yet to be fully felt. In 1973, for example, Chinese trade totaled $4.89 billion in exports and $4.975 billion in imports. The economic liberalization now associated with Deng Xiaoping’s leadership did not fully begin until after Mao’s death.
64In 1975 Zhu was chairman of the National People’s Congress standing committee. Born in Sichuan in 1886, he served in the army of the Kuomintang, the Nationalist Party, but secretly joined the Communist Party in 1922. He became a leading military figure during the civil war, rising to become commander-in-chief of the People’s Liberation Army, and was later named vice chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He was in fact only 88 in 1975.
65The original transcription reads “shutter down.” Resident Bush School experts in West Texas linguistics suggest that Bush is here employing the local vernacular of “shut her down,” which may be transcribed as “shut ‘er down,” meaning to close down or cease operations, typically for the night.
66Philip Habib later briefed Kissinger on Albert’s tone and behavior, noting that “the talk with Chiao [Qiao Guanhua] was badly marred by the Speaker’s repeated interruptions before Chiao could finish his statements let alone have them translated. With Teng, the performance was much better. On several occasions the lubricants served at dinner prompted blunt comments from the speaker. He told Vice Foreign Minister Wang Hai-jung [Wang Hairong], for example, that he was tired of China’s ‘holier than thou attitude,’ and he went on to make a number of ungarnished [sic] comments about ‘just wars and unjust wars,’ which were probably healthy for the Chinese to hear. . . . The net effect may have been to lessen the stature of the delegation in Chinese eyes.”
67Rogers Morton served as secretary of the interior from 1971 to 1975. Morton would visit Bush later that spring.
68Almost a year before this diary entry, on April 25, 1974, the Movimento das Forças Armadas (Armed Forces Movement), made up of elements of the Portuguese army, overthrew Portuguese dictator Marcello Caetano. Portugal had become a member of NATO in 1949, so this issue was of great concern to the United States. General António de Spinola was the most prominent leader of the coup, which was prompted by anger within the armed forces over Portugal’s costly wars to maintain its colonial possessions in Africa. General Spinola and his more moderate followers advocated a gradual decolonization, with the former African colonies remaining in a confederation with Portugal. Almost immediately after the coup, battles erupted between Spinola’s moderate forces and leftist elements of the military. Spinola was driven from power by the more revolutionary elements, including, much to the dismay of Portugal’s NATO allies, a powerful Portuguese Communist Party. However, the Portuguese people ultimately voted for centrist candidates to craft their constitution and gave the left wing comparatively few votes. After months of social and political chaos, moderate forces prevailed, and Portugal enjoyed its first parliamentary elections in April 1976.
69Bush here refers to the ongoing conflict between Greece and Turkey, both members of NATO, over the island of Cyprus.
70On April 1, 1975, Lon Nol, prime minister of Cambodia, fled the country in the wake of the Khmer Rouge takeover. All American embassy personnel were evacuated from Cambodia on April 12. On March 9 North Vietnam began its final offensive into the South. By April 30 the North had taken Saigon.
71“Martha and I left China with some regret, but also a certain amount of combat fatigue,” Holdridge later concluded. “We were simply tired of hearing too many ‘bu fang bien’s’ (‘It’s not convenient’) and ‘bu qing chu’s’ (‘It’s not clear’), the standard responses from Chinese officials to requests (such as for permission to travel) and to difficult questions.”
72Pye, a China specialist who spent his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was author of numerous books on contemporary Chinese affairs. In the 1975 article to which Bush refers, he argued that American policy toward China had heretofore been based on idealism, from the “romanticizing of the Nationalists . . . to the vision of the Chinese Communists as mere ‘peasant reformers,’” and that a dose of realism was needed to put America’s China policy back on track. In a vein clearly in line with Bush’s own thinking as expressed in these diary pages, Pye criticized the disparity between the negative rhetoric that Chinese leaders aimed at the United States and America’s continued restraint. Washington policymakers, he argued, needed “to accept the truth that good relations cannot be built by sweeping disagreements under the carpet.”
73Marshall Green, a foreign service officer, was at the time Washington’s ambassador to the South Pacific island nation of Nauru. He had previously served as ambassador to Indonesia (1965–69) and assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs (1973–75).
74This was a Chinese kite shaped like a bird. Bush is pictured with his Tianjin kite in the photograph section of this book.
75According to Henry Kissinger’s memoir, Years of Renewal, on orders from the State Department Bush had attempted to obtain a face-to-face meeting with Sihanouk but had been rebuffed by the Cambodian leader. When informed that Beijing’s diplomatic community was pressing Bush for details, Kissinger personally advised, “When your diplomatic friends talk to you about these things you might smile mysteriously and not comment.”
76Shigeo Horie was chairman of the board and president of the Bank of Japan, at that time the largest commercial bank in Japan.
77The reference is to a 1972 film chronicling a bank robbery by the Jesse James and Cole Younger gangs.
78Dong was considered one of the “five elders,” the oldest group of Chinese Communists who had helped found the CCP. In 1948 he was made the head of the North China People’s Government, one of the first large areas controlled by the party. Dong became vice chairman of the PRC in 1959.
79Sources documenting this event are provided in the endnotes.
80As noted in chapter 1, the Canadian-born John Kenneth Jamieson was chairman and chief executive officer of Exxon Corporation from 1969 to 1975.
81Chiang Kai-shek was president of the Republic of China (Taiwan) from 1950 to his death in 1975. The man who rose to power over mainland China only to lose it, Chiang at first worked closely with the Soviet Union, then opposed it; was once allied with the CCP, then fought a bitter civil war against it; then joined with the CCP to fight the Japanese invasion of China; then resumed fighting the CCP until his ultimate defeat in 1949.
82John “Jack” Service grew up in China, the child of missionary parents, and subsequently joined the foreign service. Stationed in China during World War II, Service was dismissed from the State Department amid charges that he had been sympathetic to the Communist cause after 1949. The main piece of evidence used against him was that he had correctly predicted the Communist victory before 1949. He successfully sued to regain his job and was reinstated in 1957. He eventually left the State Department in favor of an academic career and became curator of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California at Berkeley.
83Of her experience in China MacLaine said, “In China I saw an entire nation, once degraded, corrupt, demoralized, and exploited, that was changing its very nature. . . . I realized that if what we call human nature can be changed, then absolutely anything is possible. And from that moment, my life changed.”
84Lee Kuan Yew was Singapore’s first prime minister after it obtained independence. He held the office from 1959 to 1990. Under his rule Singapore emerged from the developing world to become one of Asia’s economic powers.
85In 1979 Chinese and Vietnamese military forces clashed along their mutual border following Beijing’s response to Hanoi’s occupation of Cambodia.
86A list of historical treatments of the domino theory may be found in the bibliographic essay.
87The reference is to the Federal Republic of Germany (commonly known as West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
88Ballou was James Lilley’s replacement in charge of “special communications,” meaning he was assigned to the USLO through the CIA. We know this because, as with Lilley, Kissinger told the Chinese of his presence and his peculiar status, to ensure that his work would not inadvertently disrupt the steady progress of Sino-American relations. Indeed, in late March 1975, Lord—acting on Kissinger’s instructions while the latter was out of town—informed Huang Zhen that, “as with his predecessor, Mr. Ballou is being assigned to USLO to maintain a special communications channel. He is not authorized to go out in Peking to do intelligence work.”
89“Milty is dead,” Bush advised the State Department, “but a young and virile bullwinkle could do a lot of good relations (diplomatic relations, that is).”
90Ferdinand Marcos was president of the Philippines.
91President Ford’s speech before a joint session of Congress on April 10 would include a request for $722 million in aid for South Vietnam in its fight against the North. “Fundamental decency requires that we do everything in our power to ease the misery and the pain of the monumental human crisis which has befallen the people of Vietnam,” Ford declared. “Millions have fled in the face of the Communist onslaught and are now homeless and are now destitute. I hereby pledge in the name of the American people that the United States will make a maximum humanitarian effort to help care for and feed these helpless victims.” Saigon would fall to North Vietnamese forces less than three weeks later, on April 28.
92Jerry Levesque and his family had recently arrived in Beijing for his work at the USLO.
93The reference is most likely to A Night at the Opera (1935), starring the Marx Brothers.
94This file has proved impossible to locate. Sihanouk would continue to dominate much of Bush’s time in Beijing, as revealed in later footnotes that rely on available diplomatic records.
95Big Horn was a Canadian-produced short film that debuted in 1970.
96Schistosomiasis is a parasitic disease contracted from contaminated fresh water. Though it is unheard of in the United States, hundreds of millions of people are infected with it yearly around the world; it is typically contracted by swimming in infected waters. This research group’s trip took an unexpected turn several weeks later, when its deputy director, Stanford University’s Dr. Paul Basch, suffered a heart attack, thus giving these traveling doctors a closer view of China’s medical system than they had expected.
97A career foreign service officer and China specialist, Jay Taylor returned to China, after it was accorded full diplomatic recognition, as political counselor of the American embassy in Beijing. After leaving the foreign service he authored The Dragon and the Wild Goose (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1991), a study of the Sino-Indian relationship, and The Generalissimo’s Son: Chiang Ching-kuo and the Revolutions in China and Taiwan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).
98African embassies in Beijing developed a reputation for hosting dance parties with music far more upbeat than that to which most foreign service officers might have learned to dance at cotillion or in prep school. “Having been trained only in ballroom-style dancing,” Holdridge later recalled, “I found that I had to learn very quickly the kind of free rock-and-roll style favored by our hosts. (My adaptation was something akin to jogging in place to the beat!)”
99“Robert Odell chaired the RNC’s finance committee while Bush was party chairman.
100I have chosen to withhold this individual’s name from publication in order to preserve the privacy of the medical history.
101Espejo-Romero served in Beijing until 1977.
102Set in Greece and New York (and centered on a May-December romance similar to that in the 1967 classic The Graduate), 40 Carats was released in 1973.
103A fellow Yale graduate who had also made his money in Texas oil—though a full generation before Bush’s own move to the oilfields—Wise had been appointed a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly in 1958 by Dwight Eisenhower, and he later served as a special counselor to NATO.
104Henry Byroade had been an army officer in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II before transferring to the State Department. He later served as Washington’s ambassador to Egypt, Pakistan, South Africa, Afghanistan, Burma, and the Philippines.
105“Ship days” refers to the days at sea and on station spent by a naval vessel in a particular area.