Why did Nixon go to China?

Conservatives were anti-red and, in 1973, any Liberal wanting to go... kinda obvious given the stereotype accorded libs at the time...so why would he go?

:shrug:

It was love at first sight.

and possibly stick it to the Vietnamese. Both could be considered "mission accomplished".

I don't think he could have completely forseen that China could be transformed from one of the most radical anti-imperialist forces into a complete sweatshop for capitalism, however that was a side-effect.

The US developing friendly relations with China scared the crap out of the Soviets, who share a rather large chunk of border with the Chinese (with a history of skirmish).

It was part of Kissenger's plan to make our withdrawal from Vietnam not catastrophic in terms of statecraft and the balance of power.

Pretty clever move, actually, although not exactly original thinking.

China had previously brought USSR-allied India to its knees just a few years earlier -- even the fiery anti-imperialist Nehru was completely broken and ended up begging for an American carrier to drop nuclear weapons on the advancing Chinese forces.

The imperialist alliances (or something like it) with China & the military dictatorships (of various varieties) in Pakistan attempted to outflank USSR influence in Iran, Afghanistan, and Myanmar.

Ping Pong Diplomacy was the bait...

Hooked Gaffed and into Ice Bag in 8 months...

First Henry

then Nixon....

China 1, USA 0

Cheap Labor was big bait

Western Corps suckered in with infrastructure investment and modern cutting edge shit and...

China 2, USA 0

Western monies flows into China...

More Meat flows into China..

2009

China eating good, finest of wines, etc

USA misery rate going up

China 3, USA 0

The Pubs thought they were calling the shots...HAH!!!!

Klingon saying.

with Vietnam in the news he needed something to offset it. To bad he decided to cheat later with CREEP & the plumbers.

and I agreed to the extent that if it had been a Democrat, the conservatives would have derided him fiercely.

I always figured that his trip was largely to throw the USSR off-balance and to ensure that the US withdrawal from Vietnam would go off without a hitch. Recall that China and Vietnam had a brief border war soon after the last US troops left Vietnam in 1975. I figured Taiwan was a topic as well, considering that things were getting heated between China & the US over Taiwanese calls for independence.

The declassified documents from Nixon's trip to China:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB106/press.htm

The USSR and PRC were both much poorer than the US, and had different outlooks, but were both communist in their different fashion. By visiting China, Nixon and Kissinger turned them from likely antagonist into neutral parties, averting the possibility of a USSR-PRC repprochement which would have seriously threatened the US.

Additionally, after fighting the Korean war and then the Viet Nam wars, it began to seem as if the various land wars in Asia were just proxy conflicts for an eventual showdown between the US and China - which would probably have gone nuclear. Although the US would probably have won any nuclear exchange (to the extent that such things can be 'won') it would have left the US enormously vulnerable to a soviet attack, and given the size of China even if we had bombed all the coastal cities it's unlikely we could have achieved any kind of definitive long-term victory.

Establishing a new understand with China allowed us to pull out of Viet Nam the following year without the fear that it would seriously damage our overall strategic position. If Nixon hadn't gone to China, then the Viet Nam war would likely have dragged on further and possibly ended in a global conflict. Thus, it was in our interest to reach a peaceful accomodation with the PRC, just as it was in our interest to reach a detente (even if a frosty one) with Brezhnev's USSR.

everything that he did. He was more out for Nixon than any party!