Chinese state visit

Last Sunday, in the early evening, I was sitting in a hotel room in San Francisco watching the day, a brilliant day, fade over the bay into a purple backdrop against the Berkeley Hills which were beginning to be peppered with the lights going on in a thousand homes.

A big cruise ship was anchored in the bay and all its lights came on and a spotlight picked out its yellow, elliptical funnel. Down below me the cable cars clicked in the slots up the long grade of California Street, the riders hanging on the steps like a swarm of volunteers on an emergency troop train. A very ordinary, a very San Francisco scene, always calm and always bright. 

Suddenly, the air erupted with a 'rat a tat tat!!' And that, said a man, is gunfire, which is not a particularly morbid thought in the city that holds the record, of all American cities, for random street crime. I threw open the window and peered, pretty wearily, down into the blobs of trees that enclose the little park on Nob Hill. There was another louder rattle like a splatter of machine guns, except that – what I imagine doesn't happen with machine guns – it was followed by spraying little lights that winked and went out, and then another barrage and tiny fountains of colour. Of course it wasn't gunfire, it was fireworks! And, as the night came on, they kept ripping and crackling all over town. 

That's when I had the second thought. San Francisco has the largest Chinese population of any city outside Hong Kong. They were simply busy introducing the New Year, the Year of the Ram, which we are told, and I trust you're as puzzled as I am, celebrates artistry and pessimism. 

Well, that was the day Mr Deng, the senior deputy premier of communist China – but, we are assured, after many turns of fate, absolutely top man – the day he chose to fly to the United States, the first Chinese leader to come here after 30 years of what we might call 'distrust and enmity' and what Mr Deng, after he'd been greeted by a Marine band, tactfully called 'a period of unpleasantness.' 

He was standing beside President Carter who was looking as toothsome as a man who'd just welcomed a brother freed from jail on some unjust charge. And when I heard Mr Deng make his little speech, I simply didn't know, and I don't know, how to describe this baffling scene. I imagine Alice, the Alice of Wonderland, might have a word for it, and another word when, as the evening came on, who should walk into the White House sleek and smiling in a dinner jacket but Richard M. Nixon, another fugitive from a period of unpleasantness. 

All the other guests at the state dinner given for Mr Deng on his first evening in Washington went in by the back door of the White House, but we learned that of all the magnificos present, the diplomatic corps, the cabinet, the judges of the Supreme Court, Mr Nixon ranked fourth in line of precedence after the president. So he went in by the front entrance. 

Mr Carter's speech of welcome was mercifully brief and so was Mr Deng's response but they managed, in about two minutes, to give such a totally different account of what Mr Deng was doing there that to any ordinary citizen trying to understand the purpose of the visit, chaos was come again. Mr Carter said it was to share the prospect of a fresh flow of commerce, ideas and people. Mr Deng said that the factors making for war are visibly growing. This was an uncomfortable note to strike and the administration officials who were present were relieved when he went on to say that he was here to explore ways to develop our contacts in the political, economic, scientific, technological and cultural fields. 

To most Americans there, that meant that China is desperately in need of tractors, oil drilling equipment, steel, computers and so on, but then Mr Deng airily allowed that the United States and China would unite to put curbs on the polar bear, since, he said, we hold a similar view of the threat of the USSR. Mr Carter must have called on all his reserves of Christian charity and forbearance to hear this without groaning out loud because he's been at painful pains to announce that the new recognition of China intends and implies no threat to the Soviet Union and he appears to get the message to the Russians almost every other day that the United States will not sell arms to China. Mr Carter, I think, certainly believes this and the Russians may just possibly believe it. But France is going to sell China anti-aircraft missiles and Britain is going to sell her jet fighters and the Soviet press is instructed to say that they're being put up to it by the United States. 

So while we're all nodding and smiling at the American-Chinese honeymoon – which perhaps because I'm in San Francisco reminds me of the mutual congratulations ceremonies that attended the birth of the United Nations here 34 years ago – we ought to give a thought to the men in the Kremlin and what their response might be to the present Chinese foreign policy, which is certainly new and vigorous whatever suspicions we may harbour about any drastic changes in the running of China itself. 

If you look out from Moscow at the Chinese, I'll bet you do not see what Mr Carter saw in his State of Union address as a new 'foundation of international cooperation' which excludes no nation. You see China signing first a treaty of friendship with Japan. Then you see the successor to Chairman Mao, Chairman Hua himself, paying friendly visits to Romania and Yugoslavia. Then you see the big man, the little big man, Mr Deng, being given a state dinner at the White House, you see the United States swearing to build up the backward technology of China, and arms from America's allies going at last to Peking. 

A famous political scientist in Washington, sensing the way things were going last summer, five months before Mr Carter dropped his bombshell about normalising relations with China, wrote an ominous sentence. 'There are Russians,' he wrote, 'who are not willing to wait until China, perhaps armed and modernised by the United States, has become a mega superpower.' Now this will sound naive or too premature a prophecy to people who have recently been into the Chinese interior and seen the desperate poverty of the masses of the people and the primitiveness of their technology, which were so artfully hidden from the foreigner by the iron regime of Chairman Mao. 

In other words, as the Belgian China expert, Simon Leys puts it, 'Deng arranged for his generals to examine the latest equipment of the European armies but China is not financially able to do anything rash in this area. Nonetheless, after it had played with the latest models of Western weaponry, the Chinese supreme command was convinced that its foot soldiers in sandals were not up to facing Soviet armoured divisions. The only hope of the Chinese army's ever acquiring minimum credibility depends on Deng's modernisation programme which now enjoys the unconditional support of the military.' 

Well, the Russians certainly know as well as we do the history of the power struggles inside China during the past 20 years and the massive repression and slaughter that accompanied them but for every Russian that says that China cannot possibly be a military threat, for a generation at least, there will be ten old Russians to recall that, as late as 1933 or 4, Nazi Germany was known to have no air force beyond a division of gliders. In short, the Carter administration is, I think, going to have to be highly sensitive to Russian sensitivity and to brace itself for some new, alarming move to counter the American embrace of China. 

But, as I say, for the moment we have been fascinated and dazed by the triumphal visit of Mr Deng and more than curious about the sight of Mr Nixon dining as the third honoured guest in the White House. If you think I jest in saying that it sounds like a missing scene from Alice in Wonderland, just consider two men. 

Mr Deng was the son of a wealthy landlord, went to Paris after the First War and joined the Communist Party, for over ten years was a soldier, fighting first Chiang Kai-shek, then the Japanese, then Chiang again. He helped to draft China's communist constitution, moved up the hierarchy to become secretary-general of the party, was then fired by Mao and demoted to become, for eight years, a simple factory worker. Then, only five years ago, resurrected as Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, then in 1976 purged again – and 'purging' meant seeing his colleagues tortured or murdered and his daughter permanently crippled. Then it was the purger's turn and Deng was back with his men and became the big chief and a chief advocate of the drive to modernise, to industrialise and, now, to restore the businesses of the hated, so-called 'capitalist' traitors. 

Mr Nixon's history needs, at this late date, no elaboration. Thirty years ago a leading congressman, then a senator, then vice president, then whipped once for all as governor of California, then oblivion. And then back! As president, no less. And president again. And then the first president in history to be warned of his certain coming impeachment on charges of high crimes and misdemeanours. And the first to resign in disgrace. 

I should love to have been a fly on the wall at the White House state dinner and to see Mr Deng and Mr Nixon off in a corner. Perhaps they talked about modernisation and tractors, perhaps they talked about artistry and pessimism, perhaps they talked about the weather. I like to think that if they had a moment to themselves they congratulated each other on possessing the supreme gift of the politician – the gift of survival.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

Letter from America audio recordings of broadcasts ©BBC

Letter from America scripts © Cooke Americas, RLLP. All rights reserved.