New Film on Nixon's 1972 China Visit Screened in NYC

In 1972, US President Richard Nixon took a trip that would pave the road for the normalization of US-China relations…The first US Presidential visit to Communist China.

The trip is the subject of a new film.

[Mike Chinoy, Senior Fellow, US-China Institute, USC]:
“The experience of going to China with Nixon, and what that meant for the reporters or people who were active with the reporters.”

Assignment: China follows the reporters who traveled in China with Nixon.

The writer of the film, US-China Institute Senior Fellow Mike Chinoy, says trip had an enormous impact re-establishing relations between the US and mainland China, which had been severed since the Communist take over in 1949.

[Mike Chinoy, Senior Fellow, US-China Institute, USC]:
“I can’t think of any other combination of size and importance of the place. I can think of many places where there’s still bad relations, but these were a unique convergence of circumstances, and where a presidential trip as opposed to some other kind of initiative is what opened the door.”

The film was screened at the Asia Society in New York on January 31st. After the screening, some of those who accompanied Nixon in 1972 discuss their impressions of China during the trip. The Chinese regime sent minders to strictly control journalists’ movements and even members of Nixon’s entourage say they were shown only what the regime wanted them to see. Yet they felt that the sprit of the Chinese people shone through.

[Nicholas Platt, Former US Ambassador]:
“I came away with the impression, strong impression, that communism is a very thin veneer, and that we were dealing with Chinese. I’d been dealing with Chinese from Hong Kong, from Taiwan and so on and so forth. But that these people we were dealing with were Chinese.”

Journalist Max Frankel was impressed how, even under communism, Chinese people retained a certain entrepreneurial spirit.

[Max Frankel, Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist]:
“And I knew of course that Chinese people elsewhere, in the United States but also in Indonesia and throughout Asia, when turned loose in an entrepreneurial fashion have enormous creativity and work ethic, which I never saw in the Soviet Union. And I remember saying to somebody, if these people are ever turned loose, watch out.”

Nixon’s trip paved the way for full diplomatic ties to be established and many Chinese people have now been able to exercise their entrepreneurial spirit.

Yet US-China relations remain rocky, with disagreements over the Chinese regime’s abuse of human rights, military policy and the issue of Taiwan. The film gives an insight into a time when there was even more uncertainty and US efforts to open, what was then, one of the most closed societies on Earth.