Nixon & Kissinger on People's Republic of China and Foreign Economic Policy

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Two things on the Chinese front that might interest you.

One is the Chinese Cold War has been through yesterday.

About seven o'clock that night, they had a message for us to tell us about the time.

It shows their interest in us.

Then at 11,

They called me back at night and said, uh, they wanted me to come to five today.

And five are dead.

No, not dead.

It's pretty clear now.

I mean, they wouldn't go to this mess.

The model's not that... At least they were in one.

But they said they were going to call it in.

Quite a hard call.

Right.

Now they've resumed civilian flights, but military flights are still stood down.

It's very hard.

My guess is the Jew in line is pushing his opponent with the help of the army.

The Air Force, which is on the ground as well.

The reason I say that is because two in love is the one leader who has been miserable the last three years.

They are.

And one of the others has been the same.

One other thing.

We will have, by noon for you today, a statement on economic policy, if you can make an economic comment.

Do you recommend that you do it in response to the question?

Oh, I'm not going to make a statement.

I'm going to raise it Monday.

Well, they'll ask you.

They'll probably ask me.

They're not there to do it.

Send me another program.

Very brief.

Very brief, yeah.

Make an announcement.

Yeah, make an announcement.

But it's positive that we've worked out a program.

That's something you know.

Internationally, you know.

That we've worked out a program for the speech that Condi should make next week.

Well, I'd say, well, can I announce it tomorrow?

I think that should be in the end, because you want to build him, you know, show confidence in him, and build him up.

But it's a very constructive approach.

In fact, what it does is to say we don't want to go back to the old system, and it proposes completely, he said, we're willing to give up the surcharge if they are going to have a re-flow of the currencies, which we don't think they will.

because that doesn't go back to the old system.

They're not giving it up until they have the free flow.

It gives up their restrictions on capital and so forth.

And we don't need to do that, actually, because there will be an automatic adjustment of currency.

And what he will say is that we've had proposals of what the trade deficit should be.

and so forth, all of which leads to endless negotiations.

But if you have a brief loan, it takes care of all of them.

Now, they won't accept that, but at least it gives us a positive program.

It shows we want to come to this from the old system.

And we think, or he thinks, and I tend to agree with him, that we might get some improvements in Japanese, but I'll see others on that one.

Now, the real problem is going to be our convergence.

And our recommendation to you, Mr. President, is that if you have an opportunity tomorrow, you might call Gertz and Connolly in and tell them, we are driving and talking for you.

In fact, Connolly is driving and talking for you.

And that is, you had intended to make a speech at the IMF, but now decided that Connolly ought to make it.

And this is what you wanted to say, that you hoped that Gertz would support you.

Well, he's got a memorandum here.

to restore and help the U.S. balance of nations work with NRA, and reverse, to preserve a system of relatively free international trading systems, to reform their international monetary systems, to avoid crises, but we're all NRA.

We regard the importance of the charge of temperance.

We will give it up once other nations make appropriate adjustments in their policies, and respond to their demands.

They tend to pursue negotiations in a cooperative spirit.

Is this good?

Yeah.

And then he says, we have in mind much more impact than the old monetary system.

We want to get a crisis-free monetary system.

That's all he says.

That's not it.

You may not have so much trouble with that.

Because that's in effect what Connolly wants.

It's not necessarily for the next extended needed adjustments in exchange rates.

That's where Connolly leads it.

Because we don't want to negotiate now.

The adjustments, no one knows what the adjustments are.

Everyone will try to figure against the other to get a maximum competitive position, right?

So you have a free flow for it.

You give me a talking point now.

I mean, I mean, suggest this, so that, in your talking points, excuse me, sir, are you prepared to send these back with, but here's the Burns Memorandum to me, and where you can get a line from his Memorandum in the talking points,

In my point, excellent.

And I'll say, except all the general graph I can do, the general graph will be also good.

And then in 330, the cabinet, we recommend we also get it controlled.

Well, it's 330 now, yeah.

Because can't we be there?

But can't we be there in 3 with our guests?

Yes.

Why don't we make the cabinet at 4?

Art is going to take more than a half hour.

Let's be sure so that I may have to send it.

I don't know.

I should say I don't.

Now, one other interesting thing happened this morning.

Harry McCall, if you want to see him.

He's not engaged.

I don't know if you know who she is.

Oh, yeah.

51-year-old.

Very cute.

I know her quite well.

How do you know her?

She used to be the wife of Leland Abrams, and she used to be the actor.

And then before that, she used to be the life of Grandmother Churchill.

For God's sake, I may have met Meredith at the Chicago Convention in 1952, but not at the Lady Boys, I think, in 1948.

Oh, I see that.

Well, she was the vice-principal of the church, and she was having a day-to-day with the neighborhood 25 years ago.

He gets around.

He certainly gets around at any rate.

He does.

He did.

He did, too.

But she is very hostile to us.

But he came in at any rate.

What happened?

He said he wanted us to know.

He's totally opposed to the cut and drop.

He admits that Hugh is the only one that can sway him.

But we ought to try to get Hugh to broaden his governance and that he would support any reasonable attempt of negotiation which keeps Hugh in place.

What do you say?

Well, I don't know.

Maybe he'll think the negotiations are due.

But at any rate, it means that the former... Do you think he's taking that position?

That's probably still must be.

Oh, yes.

Well, maybe they really don't.

Maybe they want a way to do it.

Maybe they want to make a record to show that they're not the president.

Maybe they want to make a record.

Maybe they think it might try to accuse him.

Oh, that would happen, I think.

And whatever he's up to is not in our interest.

This is our business.

But it means, probably, that they'll have a few months of no wild precious to present to them.

At least for him, and not for the other two.

That's a guy who really is a genius artist.

And a CBS person.

It's pretty cool.

They're still going on and on and on saying there's no reason to stay now because they're not having a democratic election.

It's pretty cool.

I doubt that he's in this report.

I mean, nobody's in this report.

It's a stupid matter.

I don't know what he's talking about.

Actually, the interesting thing is that both Severide and Franklin are supposed to be people who drink.

Not really thick.

Severide is brighter than Franklin.

It will give you some idea.

Really?

Is it?

Not that Severide is any better, but Franklin is really dense.

Of course, he's as low-spread as the Canadiens.

That's a good one.

I'm trying to think of anything.

Maybe they're all over here.

You have to be prepared for their positive answers.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm not surprised.

Some odd procedure to call at 11 at night and say the other man is free with fire in the afternoon.

I think it could be that it's allowed in there to tighten up the tracks by then.

There could be a cancellation.

I don't know.

If it is, a tumultuous change .

Correct.

Yeah.

What do you think of infidelity of all kinds of Japanese?

We've got now Reichardt, now Ball.

Now let me tell you what Ball is.

He represents the...

He gets, I don't know how much, a hundred thousand a year from that.

Right.

That's what Mitchell has to say.

Mitchell wanted to put that out.

And, uh...

What Raishaw says is such outrageous nonsense.

If we had told the Japanese, they would have leaked it.

If they had leaked it, it would never have come up.

No one could have done more for the Japanese than you.

Absolutely no one.

that you should stop in Tokyo on the way back from Peking.

That's typically wrong.

It would insult the Chinese and it would insult the Japanese.

The Japanese don't want to be a wasteland.

And we've offered them a visit by you.

They can't accept it now because Sato is going to leave the government at about the time that we could come.

He had his answer.

I mean, they did it over on text.

What did he say?

He, you know, he had some cards.

He said nothing.

You told him, though, that October 13th was the day.

Right.

And, of course, you had told him to do good and to do bad.

But I said, I just want you to know that we don't want to shock you.

We don't want you to think that some things are going to happen on October 13th.

We're going to try to do that.

We got to look at what choices they all have.

We are so often consoled in our fears, like we consoled in our fears about China we've never gone.

They think the Russians are mad, they think Japanese are mad.

So it is with the Russians in another sense.

The Russians think anything of the Chinese now, right?

It's a matter of what effect authority had on the Russians.

How these Russians are going around sucking around T-codes now.

Sucking around T-codes, sucking around those.

We have sent the Russians to their core.

That's the last thing.

I just told the Chinese that the number of the leadership intact so that we can play them against the Russians.

And we hope they don't cancel until November.

I don't know if I agree.

I have done it for you.

I'll know if you agree.

I thought that you were going to go to Alaska from the west coast.

I had that time tried to get together a group of about 40 businessmen for a briefing, and I was going to go out for that tomorrow, I'm sure.

And I was also going to see Regan, and you've been with him for 15, 15 minutes.

So unless you see me after that, I won't speak to you.

Yeah, why would you have to owe you meat for that camel?

I've made my contribution.

No, no, it's better to not be here.

I look like a rock.

I'm going to be here every couple of years.

John.

Uh, let me couple the, oh, uh, aside.

How did you get along with the science here?

Oh, that's very good.

I, uh, I came in sort of a mushy, deliberately.

There was one guy who said, now, are those people who appeal to you?

You say that all that people are people unnecessarily.

not doing you any good.

And I said, well, it depends on the time.

And at the time, I said, people whose conscience was in early position to try to get a reversal policy if he hadn't disagreed with us, but we think they generated the debate.

People who said, I do cause trouble, are the ones who know the other way, who start the other way, who now say they want the same thing we do.

But then when they see us succeed and try to preempt it,

And, you know, so I was making a case, but Stein was very happy about it.

He said, you know, do you think he will support, you know, do you?

Yep.

Because I haven't told him that I'm going to take what he said.

He said, spoke about the need for a fourth-party candidate.

Somebody would ask him a question.

He had two or three people there who I knew, people who I had counseled, and I gave the sort of speech I gave at the end.

But I said, of course, I know you had broken the law, and I thought I'd promise you.

But what we really need now, people have the courage to break the law, and sort of get the ability to be made back into the old hackneyed category.

Did he mention home?

Correct.

He said he was working on the road.

He told me any time I come to the U.S., he wants me to come to the U.S.

I might give him a call when I come to the U.S.

There's some of these initiatives.

I go home.

I'm still in Philadelphia.

Yeah, we've got the, as we get into the campaign, we've got to use everything we can for the vote.

And I'll, uh, and hopefully, Albert and the rest, if they don't work, we'll see what they do.

I think, uh, one of the points, you know, provided to you is

If you say it on a mushy basis, they want you as a celebrity, but mainly the point is, the main thing being, my view is that you go on TV, you put the Frost thing down, but let me say, his audience is maybe three, four people.

When you go, when we ever do put you on television, we're going to go to the big audience and see what it means.

In other words, you take just as much heat for your own.

Only one is the other.

So, and I think my inclination is that once you have taken your trip,

But immediately afterwards is the time.

That will surge to a certain extent.

Immediately afterwards, we might have to go on.

Talking about what the chances are, what the differences are, and so forth and so on.

Putting it on that basis.

That will be the time.

That's on CDL.

I don't care.

That's across the board, too.

I'll leave it at that.

Give all your invitations on CTE to all of them.

Because there will come a time, I think doing something like the foreign relations thing on common law, something like that, or all rights provided, you don't do common law.

I think a couple of universities are very important.

Added appropriate time, perhaps a general trip works out after your trip.

After your trip to China, you're going to be a large celebrity.

and they want to go to campus.

And I think if you mind going, I can do a couple of questions.

Sure.

Care about that?

I have an invitation to Yale at the same time.

I'm excited to go.

I have a question for you.

The reason for being at the University of Cincinnati.

Yes, sir.

I mean, we've never seen the moment that you've got more.

Well, I've been to the Princeton Zoo.

Well, I think if I do one shot a month somewhere, I don't think I'll do well.

So far, all of mine have been off the record.

I know.

See, we're talking about an off-the-record machine.

The on-the-record one.

So we do a certain issue like Philadelphia, which is important to us.

Just go up there and talk to each other.

We might, for example, just might go for a big flight if I have to use something like Southern California.

You're good at the fact that that's California.

I suppose Mr. Haldeman wants to say that he thinks that we'll have some tickets going out in Southern California.

And what does he want to do with it?

Well, he wanted to get the thing tomorrow as a podium of the really tough executives in the area.

But he wants to have a really big dinner for about 500.

Well, I don't think that is the, you see, that's fine, except that we have now got to go for the mass audiences.

Now, the Denver 500, you took the 500 and passed it around to others, but the Ford used a car, for example, to bring it to Walmart.

But no, I'm thinking about it as doing something that will be nationally recognized and talked about.

A university parents would pay the Denver 500 for that.

See you there.

This kind of evaluation we have to use.

In fact, I bet I get out of the 40 as much as you would get out of 500.

There are only 40 that matter.

And 500 is nice.

Well, I'll be happy to do whatever.

Well, I think that our best bet is to do sort of off the record now, if our kind of thing works out.

I can't believe that they've been calling it that long.

Like they told him they would cancel it.

To meet the long interval, call him at 11 and say, how many?

Five.

Suggests that it's a very expensive amount of material, which is...

What I asked them, you know, I gave them a lot of stuff.

I gave them all the questions of the advance plan.

I gave them a lot of questions on just how to serve as airplanes and so forth for my trip.

And radio beams, a lot of boring stuff.

So if they have answers, maybe they're going to do that.

Well, why do you expect that?

What I told Walter, Mr. President, is it'll take 57 for the announcement.

to do it at 9 p.m. so that you can do it on television.

Yeah.

You could open your press conference that way.

Yeah, that would be excellent.

I can't call into the office because why would they call if all of a sudden yesterday they'd say Mauro's alive again?

If they don't give a damn.

That's sort of my feeling.

Oh, if you say Mauro's alive.

Mauro's alive.

I don't think we should hit them until we know what the answer is for the second strike.

If the answer is to go

Just to go ahead with the trip, and to announce it on October 7th, to get them right after we've had a Chinese.

No.

I agree.

The other hand, if you ask us to turn it off, then we don't have a question yet.

No question.

The question was, in fact, the Russians.

The Russians.

The Chinese.

Only if they want a pretext.

The Chinese basically ate down all that's with it.

because it shows Hanoi that they had their best interests at heart when they were...

I believe that there is a power struggle.

It is... With the Air Force stood down and with Jew and lie visible, and no one else visible, it is more likely that Jew and lie is good doing the good work than that he's being good.

He may just decide that before you go in there, you better be in good shape.

With regard to the negotiation,

Let's come back to a question that might be quite obvious to you.

I don't know if you remember, but what about the seven point deal?

I think we often indicate that they are well aware of

The other point, Mr. President, is they have, in the last session I'm sending you, last week, they specifically said, you know, for a long time there was an argument here.

They were prisoners for that time.

They have specifically said we have to overthrow the government.

Well, all you can say is that they have demanded that we turn over the government, that we turn over the 17 million people to the conscience.

So it isn't just them.

That is unconditional surrender.

So we can be much more aggressive now on that.

I'll come over the second idea.

Sure.

Thank you.

Nixon & Kissinger on People's Republic of China and Foreign Economic Policy

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on September 23, 1971

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