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(Monday, February 21, 1972, 11:30 a.m. China Standard Time; during the 1972 visit by Richard Nixon to China and the Cold War) — President Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat, arrived in Beijing this morning to mark the end of a generation of hostility between the United States and China and to begin a new but still undefined relationship between the most powerful (the U.S.) and the most populous (China) of nations on Earth..
The President received a studiously correct but minimal official welcome as he began his eight-day visit to China — the tribute due to a chief of state but without any acclaim for a government that still does not officially recognize the People’s Republic of China.
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Besides foreign correspondents and their interpreters and a few dozen Chinese officials, the Americans were greeted by a 500-man military honor guard.
Two flags, one Chinese, one American, were raised a few minutes before Nixon’s arrival, but there were no special decorations visible in this city, nor were any crowds of citizens, farmers or school children assembled for the welcome, as there usually are for visiting foreign dignitaries who are on good terms with the Chinese.
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Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit the People’s Republic of China a few hours earlier when he flew in from the Pacific across the muddy mouth of the Yangtze River and touched down at Shanghai’s Hung Chiao Airport just before 9:00 a.m. CST.
The President’s plane had taken off three hours and 44 minutes earlier from Guam, where Nixon made a last overnight stopover on the long journey from Washington, which began Feb. 17, 1972.
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After having tea and soup with officials and eating a tangerine at the terminal in Shanghai during a one-hour stay, the President and his party flew on, with a Chinese navigator aboard the plane, across the wintry North China plain and landed in Beijing just before 11:30 a.m. CST.
Premier Chou En-lai led the reception committee at the airport. His handshake symbolized the end of American ostracism of his communist government.
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Nixon grasped the hand that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles spurned at the Geneva Conference in 1954, when the memories of conflict between China and the United States in Korea were still raw and their contest over Indochina had just been joined.
All around the airport were large but relatively restrained slogans calling upon the “oppressed” peoples and nations of the world to unite and pay tribute to Marxism-Leninism and the Chinese Communist party.
After the official but informal greetings, the People’s Liberation Army band played the anthems of the two nations—”The Star-Spangled Banner” and “The March of the Volunteers.” Nixon and his official party reviewed the honor guard.
But there were no welcoming speeches for the small airport assemblage or for the worldwide television audience that could watch the arrival over a specially imported satellite communications system.
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The arrival ceremonies were completed within a few minutes and the President and Premier Chou then drove swiftly off through a long avenue of poplars toward the capital on a crisp but clear and sunny winter day.
Premier Chou escorted the President to a black Hung Chi, or Red Flag, limousine, then walked around the car to Nixon’s left and joined him behind drawn silk curtains for the drive into town.
The people they passed along the 40-minute drive were best described as groups of onlookers. Many were cyclists and others held up on the side streets along the route. But many Beijing citizens obviously know of the special guest and a total of several thousand stood in random groups on the village lanes and on some of the city streets.
