Source: China Daily

01-08-2009 15:30

Towards the end of the 1960s, President Nixon, after entering the White House, wanted to improve Sino-US relations so as to increase US assets by conducting a foreign policy of "maintaining the global balance".

Chairman Mao Zedong meets then US president Richard M.  Nixon at Zhongnanhai in Beijing on Feb 21, 1972.[Xinhua]

He stressed that US policy in Asia has entered a dead alley and repeatedly expressed his desire to move in the direction of a "Sino-US rapprochement" and taking the initiative through Pakistan and Raomania to pass on messages to China.

In the early 1970s, Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai, proceeding from the strategic requirements of adjusting the big triangular relations between China, the United States and the Soviet Union, sent out such messages through such means as requesting the American writer Edgar Snow to pass on the message and inviting the American Table Tennis Teams to visit China, to the effect that China is willing to have contact with the American side and to bring about a thaw in the statement of Sino-US relations.

On 21 April, the Chinese Government sent a verbal message to the US Government on the US proposal of holding a high-level dialogue between the two sides:" If the relations between China and the USA are to be restored fundamentally, the US must withdraw all its armed forces from China's Taiwan and the Taiwan strait area.

A solution to this crucial question can be found only through direct discussions between high level responsible persons of the two countries.

Therefore, the Chinese Government reaffirms its willingness to receive publicly in Beijing a special envoy of the President of the US(for instance, Mr. Kissinger) or the US secretary of State or even the President of the US himself for a direct meeting and discussions. "