Breaching the Great Wall

During his Meet the Press interview following his trip to China last month, Zbigniew Brzezinski stated that he had had 14 hours of confidential discussion with Chairman Hua Kuofeng, Senior Deputy Prime Minister Teng Hsiao-ping, and Foreign Minister Huang Hua. The Chinese are masters of symbolic politics. Even if absolute silence had been preserved throughout those meetings, the publicized fact of their duration would have carried a decipherable significance.

The rulers of the Middle Kingdom do not spend 14 hours with a barbarian to exchange ceremonial platitudes. Last month’s encounter in Peking was a notification by both the Chinese and American governments that the time is at hand for a major turn in their relationship—not a new turn, strictly, but a further swing in the course initiated by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.

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James Burnham

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During his Meet the Press interview following his trip to China last month, Zbigniew Brzezinski stated that he had had 14 hours of confidential discussion with Chairman Hua Kuofeng, Senior Deputy Prime Minister Teng Hsiao-ping, and Foreign Minister Huang Hua. The Chinese are masters of symbolic politics. Even if absolute silence had been preserved throughout those meetings, the publicized fact of their duration would have carried a decipherable significance.

The rulers of the Middle Kingdom do not spend 14 hours with a barbarian to exchange ceremonial platitudes. Last month’s encounter in Peking was a notification by both the Chinese and American governments that the time is at hand for a major turn in their relationship—not a new turn, strictly, but a further swing in the course initiated by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.