Bush ’ s China Diary — What You Are About to Read T

This is the diary George H. W. Bush kept while in China from October 1974 until December 1975. These are his own words, dic­ tated from the small American outpost in the heart of massive Bei­ jing. As head of the United States Liaison Office (USLO), Bush was Washington’s chief representative in China, a crucial job that was not easily defined. The United States and the People’s Republic of China did not establish formal diplomatic relations until 1979. Washington instead placed its official Chinese embassy in the Re­ public of China (Taiwan) after 1949, refusing to recognize the le­ gitimacy of the Communist regime which came to power on the mainland after China’s bloody civil war. Neither was Mao Zedong’s Communist government eager to treat with an American govern­ ment it repeatedly chastised as the leader of reactionary forces worldwide. In the chilly Cold War that followed, the two coun­ tries exchanged little trade, hardly any cultural contacts, and scant few formal talks. Instead they exchanged bullets and blood during the Korean War, and came close to doing more of the same dur­ ing the frequent crises of the 1950s and 1960s. Bush landed in China soon after the first tentative thaw in the two countries’ otherwise frosty relationship. In 1971 President Richard Nixon announced his intention to go to China. His na­ tional security adviser and trusted aide Henry Kissinger had only recently returned from secret meetings on Chinese soil. These en­ counters quite literally changed the globe’s geopolitical map. Both the Americans and the Chinese hoped that improved relations might