The secret trip that thawed out frozen relations

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The secret trip that thawed out frozen relations

Rupert Cornwell: Europe and America need each other. Shame that they can't see it

The visit was called "the Journey for Peace", made exactly 30 years ago by another American president at the height of his power, and in terms of shock power, only the Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat's 1977 visit to Jerusalem comes close to matching it in the recent annals of global diplomacy.

Richard Nixon's arrival in China on 21 February, 1972 was a 10 on the diplomatic Richter scale, a single colossal tremor that forced a recalculation of the global balance of power.

The Sino-American rapprochement was born of a shared desire to thwart the Soviet Union. Washington wanted to outflank its superpower rival, while China needed to end its international isolation.

Mr Nixon's week-long visit concluded with the so-called "Shanghai Communiqué", which began with a long section setting out the two countries' differing views. Winston Lord, an aide to Henry Kissinger then and later a US ambassador to Beijing, said: "The Chinese wanted this, because they thought it would make the rest of the joint statement more credible."

To this day, the communiqué is the bedrock document of relations between Washington and Asia's great emerging power. If the sight of Richard Nixon conferring with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai and walking along the Great Wall was astonishing, even more remarkable were the preparations for the visit. In those days the countries had no diplomatic relations.

The first contact came at a fashion show in Warsaw in 1969. Then came "ping-pong diplomacy", when Beijing invited the US table tennis team to visit China.

But most importantwas Mr Kissinger's secret flight from a Pakistan airfield in July 1971 to prepare for the summit seven months later. Mr Lord, who was with him, remembers going to the front of the aircraft as it approached China"so that I could claim to be the first US official back since 1949".

Three decades on, Taiwan remains a subject of contention. And there is no shortage of other disagreements between the US and China, including human rights, arms, nuclear sales and the American spy-plane incident in March last year.

But the ties that bind are almost as great: China's desire for American technology, its $80bn (£56bn) trade surplus with the US and the need for a modus vivendi in a region where both countries have vital interests.