Richard Nixon arrived in Beijing on February 21, 1972. Since February 1, when Mao finally agreed to be treated, the medical team had worked around the clock to restore the Chairman's health. His condition had improved considerably. His lung infection was under control, and his heart irregularities had subsided. His edema was better, but he was still so bloated that he had to be fitted with a new suit and shoes. His throat was still swollen, and he had difficulty talking. His muscles had atrophied from weeks of immobility, so we put him on an exercise routine a week before President Nixon's arrival. He practiced sitting down and getting up, and an attendant guided him slowly around the room to get him used to walking again.

Mao was as excited as I had ever seen him the day Nixon arrived. He woke early and immediately began asking when the president was scheduled to arrive. Zhou Fuming gave him a shave and a haircut—his first in more than five months—and rubbed scented tonic into his hair. Then Mao sat on the sofa in his study to wait as frequent phone calls came in charting Nixon's progress. When he learned that Nixon's plane had just landed, he asked Wu Xujun to tell Zhou Enlai he wanted to see the president immediately. As the official host, Zhou would be accompanying Nixon everywhere. Zhou insisted that courtesy and protocol required that Nixon be given time to rest in his Diaoyutai villa before starting his formal activities. Mao did not object but reiterated his wish to meet with the president at the earliest opportunity.

Zhou hosted a luncheon for Nixon and then escorted him to Diaoyutai. Again, Mao talked to Zhou and urged him to bring Nixon to see him.

The medical team had made extensive preparations for the meeting. The emergency medical equipment—including oxygen tanks and a respirator that Henry Kissinger had sent after his secret visit the previous July, in preparation for Nixon's visit—had to be removed from Mao's room. We dismantled Mao's hospital bed and moved the rest of the equipment into the corridor connecting Mao's study and bedroom. We had to be prepared for emergency treatment if Mao's health suddenly failed. We put the oxygen tanks in a huge lacquered trunk and hid the rest of the equipment behind big potted plants. No one could guess from a casual glance, but we were prepared to reassemble the equipment within seconds should anything go wrong. Zhou Enlai had told Nixon that Mao had been ill with bronchitis, but I do not think the president was ever fully informed of Mao's problems. Mao only explained to Nixon that he could not talk very well.

I was waiting in the entrance hall outside Mao's study when the Red Flag limousine carrying Nixon and Zhou Enlai pulled up. Nancy Tang was serving as their interpreter. President Nixon was the first member of the American entourage to enter the building, followed by Henry Kissinger. Then came Winston Lord, later to become the American ambassador to China. I was struck by how young he looked—like a twenty-year-old college student. Secretary of State Rogers was not with the delegation. Nixon wanted Kissinger to serve as his primary foreign policy spokesman, so Zhou Enlai had arranged for China's foreign affairs minister, Ji Pengfei, to meet with Rogers while Nixon and Kissinger were meeting with Mao.

As President Nixon walked in, I nodded and motioned him in the direction of Mao's study. Then I went immediately to the corridor where all the medical equipment was hidden. There was a brief flurry when a member of Nixon's security staff realized he had lost his president and radio contact with the staff in Diaoyutai. Nixon had been whisked away too quickly for them to see where he had gone. The huge indoor swimming pool had been covered over shortly after Mao's illness began, and the room had been transformed into a magnificent reception hall. But the tin roof was blocking communications. One of the Chinese interpreters assured the American Secret Service that Nixon was safe with Mao.

Sitting in the corridor just outside Mao's study, separated only by an open door, I could hear the entire conversation and was prepared to intervene if Mao suffered a relapse. The content of their talk has been reported in President Nixon's memoirs, which I later read in Chinese translation, and it would be presumptuous of me to repeat the official version of that momentous meeting, which was scheduled to take fifteen minutes and lasted sixty-five. One part of the conversation did particularly impress me, though. Mao explained to Nixon that even though relations were better, the Chinese press would still carry articles attacking the United States, and he expected the American press to keep up its criticisms of China. The peoples of both countries were so used to the criticisms that readjusting to the new friendship would take time. And the question of Taiwan was a continuing problem.

Mao was delighted with Nixon's visit. As soon as the president left, he took off his formal clothes and changed back into his customary bathrobe. I joined him immediately to take his pulse, which remained steady and strong.

Mao wondered whether I had heard the talk.

I assured him that I had been right outside the door, listening to every word. I, too, had been excited about the visit. A new era was coming, I thought. My Western education had left me with positive impressions of the United States, and until 1949 relations between China and the United States had been good. That changed with the Korean War, but the meeting between Nixon and Mao meant that the old hostility would end and friendlier relations would begin.

Mao liked Nixon. “He speaks forthrightly—no beating around the bush, not like the leftists, who say one thing and mean another.” Nixon had told Mao that the United States wanted to improve relations with China for the benefit of the United States. “That's just what he should say,” Mao thought. “He is much better than those people who talk about high moral principles while engaging in sinister intrigues. Isn't it also for the benefit of China that we want to improve relations with the United States?” Mao laughed out loud at the thought. The mutual interest that brought the two countries together was the threat of the “polar bear” to China's north.

In the picture of Mao shaking hands with Nixon that was published, both were smiling broadly, and the Chinese report described Mao as energetic and glowing with health, his face flush with color. Many noted that Mao had gained weight and took that as a sign of good health, too. The American press, knowing that Mao had been ill and was having trouble speaking, speculated that the Chairman had had a stroke. But the Chinese and the Americans were both wrong. Mao had not gained weight. He was bloated by edema. He had been suffering from congestive heart failure, not a stroke.

Mao's health improved in the afterglow of his foreign policy triumph. His edema subsided, his lung infection cleared up, and his coughing stopped. He had given up smoking during his illness, and his coughing and bronchitis did not return. His spirits stayed high. My own contact with him increased, and our relations seemed to improve. I was still living in one of the changing rooms just off the old swimming pool area and was seeing the Chairman daily. Relations between China and the United States were his main topic of conversation, and I listened often to his description of their evolution. Mao believed that America's intentions in China had always been relatively benign. While Great Britain, Japan, and Russia had imperialistic designs and became deeply involved in China's internal affairs, the United States had remained aloof. Official contact between the American government and the Chinese Communist party had not begun until the 1930s, more than a decade after the party's founding, but unofficial contacts with Americans had always been friendly. Mao liked Edgar Snow, though he was certain the journalist worked for the CIA. And he greatly respected Dr. George Hatem, the Lebanese-American who had treated the communist troops, joined the party, and stayed in China after liberation to become a Chinese citizen.

The first official contact between the Communist party and the United States was made during the Second World War, Mao said, when the American government sent a military mission to Yanan. Relations with members of this so-called Dixie Mission had been good, and many of the American officers had been impressed with the Communist party's program and its aspirations for a new China. Friendly contacts had been maintained until the end of the war, when American diplomats arranged for Mao to fly to Chongqing, in August 1945, to begin peace negotiations with Chiang Kai-shek in an effort to avert civil war. Cooperation in Chongqing had been good, too, and the American diplomats continued to express admiration for the Chinese communists. With American help, the nationalists and the communists had reached an understanding, known as the October 10 agreement, about the peaceful reconstruction of China.

Franklin Roosevelt had been behind the friendly relations, Mao thought. Just as Mao believed that his own leadership was transforming Chinese history, so he believed that Roosevelt had changed the course of the United States and world politics. He admired the American leader and believed that the history of China and of U.S.-China relations would have been different had Roosevelt lived to see the communist victory.

When Harry Truman assumed the presidency after Roosevelt's death, Mao argued, he transformed American policy toward China, supporting the Guomindang both economically and militarily and turning against the communists. Mao attributed the outbreak of China's civil war to Truman's support for the Guomindang.

Mao credited Japan with the communist victory in the civil war. If Japan had not invaded China in the 1930s, the communists and the nationalists would never have cooperated in the struggle against the Japanese aggressors, and the Communist party would have remained too weak to seize power. Japanese aggression, he asserted, was a bad thing that had been transformed into good, for which the Chinese communists should be grateful.

The world had waited nearly thirty years for the enmity between China and the United States to be resolved, and Mao believed that the new era of cooperation was of worldwide import. A chain reaction was set to go off. One by one, the nations of Europe, Africa, and Latin America would follow the American lead and establish diplomatic relations with China. China's entrance into the United Nations in October 1971 was part of that worldwide trend.

Mao believed that countries with different economic systems could still cooperate, and he looked forward to greater economic ties with capitalist countries. South Korea was an example. The capitalist South Koreans liked hot food, and socialist China produced plenty of chili peppers. Already, Mao said, China was exporting 300,000 tons of chili peppers to South Korea each year, a good arrangement.

But Mao did not predict a new era of international peace. He still saw global politics in terms of a struggle among three worlds. The “first world,” to which only the United States and the Soviet Union belonged, was economically advanced, rich, and well armed with nuclear weapons. Both countries were intent on global domination, and the buildup of their military power posed constant threat of war. The “second world,” including Japan, Europe, Canada, and Australia, was also rich and had some nuclear weapons, and could not remain aloof from the struggle. The “third world,” populous and poor, was the victim of superpower struggles. China belonged to the third world, together with the countries of Africa, Latin America, and most of Asia. Peace, Mao believed, was temporary. Every generation would experience war.

Thus, Mao never expected relations with the United States to be smooth. Reverses and setbacks were inevitable. The next generation of world leaders would have to solve the problems that this generation had started.

Mao's analysis of world trends was right in one respect. Nixon's visit did begin a chain reaction of recognition for China. Mao had another foreign policy triumph that year when Japanese prime minister Kakuei Tanaka visited Beijing in September. Unofficial contact between China and Japan had been growing for years, and bilateral trade had steadily increased. When Japanese officials were offended because they had not been informed of the U.S.-China rapprochement in advance, Liao Chengzhi, charged with “people-to-people” diplomacy, invited Tanaka to visit.

Prime Minister Tanaka was accorded the same diplomatic courtesies as Nixon, and the outcome of his visit was a joint communiqué announcing the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between China and Japan. Mao thought his talks with Tanaka had been warmer and more intimate than his meeting with Nixon. When Tanaka tried to apologize for his country's invasion of China, Mao assured him that it was the “help” of the Japanese invasion that made the communist victory and this visit between communist and Japanese leaders possible. He confessed to Tanaka that his health was not very good, and he told the Japanese prime minister that he could not live much longer, but this was another of Mao's games. Mao still believed in his longevity but often took the opportunity to test foreign reaction to his possible death.

Mao and Tanaka had much in common. Neither had gone to college, and both had reached their positions only after struggle. Mao saw Tanaka as courageous and decisive in pushing for the establishment of diplomatic relations with China against strong opposition from the ruling Liberal Democratic party.

President Nixon and Prime Minister Tanaka had something in common, too. Both were forced to resign from office. But Mao continued to welcome them both to China and regarded them always as “old friends.” The friendship with the United States never went as far as Mao would have liked. There remained the question of America's support for Taiwan, and formal diplomatic relations between China and the United States did not occur until 1979, three years after Mao's death, while Jimmy Carter was president.