This week on q a, our guest is margaret macmillan, author of nixon and mao the week that chnaged the world. Cspan margaret macmillan, but if you think a book about nixon and mao would so . Guest my father was a good subject and i love the good storiestoriesof history and thou have two extraordinary personality is with great falls and talent and it was an interesting moment that ended the period but in the United States and china and started Something Else so my next book i wanted to do something manageable has a good story. Cspan did he rely on to tell you what that moment was like . Guest that the documents. Theres a record now of all the transcripts of the first memoirs. Bob haldeman did a diary that is helpful, Henry Kissinger wrote them and thereve been lots of interviews, so i gathered whatever i could from those that have been there. Cspan did you learn anything they dont already know . Guest i learned something i didnt know. I think i learned a great deal more about Richard Nixon, which i had to do. I learned a lot more about his capacity as a statesman, which i think i never fully grasped. Therthere were a number of thins that surprised me. I was surprised how anxious the americans were for the meeting and to have that opening to china and i was surprised how far they had to go in reissuing the chinese and the sort of material the americans handed over to the, topsecret information for example. That did surprise me. Cspan meeting was february 21, 1972. Guest yes, i got the anniversary. Cspan what was the world like . Guest it was a troubled world and particularly for the United States and china. The United States was still in vietnam and that was overshadowing the nixon presidency and he was concerned. He wanted them out of vietnam and that wasnt easy because he was given with a north vietnamese said victory wasnt prepared to negotiate at all and he was under a lot of domestic pressure. The United States has been very hurt by vietnam and very badly divided, so i think that was a concern. A lot of economic trouble because inflation was running high and partly because of the expenditure on vietnam. So nixon was conscious of the position and the world had been damaged by its own internal troubles and its involvement in vietnam. He was concerned about his relationships with allies and this was also one of his main concerns about the soviet union, which was of course enjoying the americans coming to greece india non and then proving to be very difficult in dragging its feet on arms negotiations for example, so i think for the United States it is a troubled time and there is a loss of confidence because of vietnam. Nixon was very concerned about this and that is one of the reasons he thought it might help to rebuild the position in the United States. Cspan was the relationship in 1972 between the United States and china but actually to draw back a little bit before the, but i assume the uae is on start and how did it start . Guest guest there was no relationship before then. From 49 up until the end of the 60s there was virtually no contact. No trade and in fact they had an establishment in hong kong which is a purpose to make sure they were not exported to the United States. No trade, tourism, they came to the United States because even at the un and the chinese representation was held by sitting in taiwan so it was an extraordinary situation. No contact occasionally the american and chinese diplomats had to talk about prisoners of war or some Unfinished Business that they would usually talk in warsaw at the ambassadorial level. Up until the end of the 60s when contact began to be made, there was absolute gulf between china and the United States. Cspan what is your relationship at the time between china and russia and the soviet union . Guest it is an interesting question, because it was a bad relationship. The two great communist powers have had a complicated relationship anyway, but theyve fallen out of the split very visibly at the beginning of the 60s and i think like a fight within the family. Because they were in the same family, and each of the soviet union and peoples republic of china accused the other of being bad communists and they became rivals, supremacy in the third world for example. So it was very unpleasant. By the end of the 1960s it was more than unpleasant and have a potential for major conflict. Soviets started moving troops to the common border in the far east with china and they moved bombers outfit were capable of carrying Nuclear Warheads and there were armed clashes between the troops in 1969 and towards the end of 69 for the fall of 69, there were rumors and i think wellfounded rumors that it is very seriously contemplating a strike on china to knock it back a few decades. Cspan did they have power than . Guest they have nuclear weapons, they exploded their own nuclear bomb i think 1964 but they didnt have nearly the means of delivery of the soviet union had. The soviet union was very much military power. And also mao and his own folly and the cultural revolution and mind you that it has left china very badly prepared to fight off a potential invasion. The armed forces were occupied most of them trying to keep order in the cities of china was friendless and in a very dangerous position at the end of the 1960s. Cspan when we bought him as a 1971 and is made in china, it was in taiwan . What is the relationship between taiwan and china and china and hong kong, those three entities . Guest hong kong and taiwan had a relationship no relationship with china. The government of the remnants of the nationalist governments that have ruled china in the 1930s and up until 1949 and its leader sat claiming to be the real government and refusing to recognize the government actually held power in beijing into the United States for a combination of reasons have supported that position and supported taiwan, so they held the un seat was reserved for china for example and represented these other International Bodies and every so often the relationship between taiwan and the mainland chinese threatened to boil over into the more. Taiwan is about 100 miles offshore of china but very protected from a possible seaboard invasion. Taiwan had taken violence and right off thwrite off the coast. One is in the harbor. They would sit there heavily fortified, occasionally sort of lobbing shells at the chinese mainland and yelling insults over the speaker is saying horrible things of mao. The chinese would retaliate and it would be a very serious crisis in 54 then again at the end of the 50s when the Chinese Government started showing and threatening to occupy them and so the relationship between taiwan and china was dreadful and have a potential to flare up into a nasty war. Cspan you are canadian. If canada had relations with the peoples republic of china . Guest we were moving to establish relations. As canadians we have to be careful about what the United States fought. Itfought. Its ways been difficult for canada to take a part that is too divergent from that of the United States and on the whole, we tend to agree with the United States, certainly during the cold war on the major foreignpolicy issues, but i think we never felt as committed to taiwan as the United States did come and visit certainly anticommunist as many in the United States did. And also sort of a practical people, w we have a lot of weedt the end of the 1950s and china have a famine and the chinese came to the government and said we would like t to play the lead and represent the hard currency. So we started trading with the peoples republic of china brought to the pleasure of the United States. The United States wasnt pleased about this but he established a trading relationship and at the end of the 1960s, our new Prime Minister trudeau reviewed the policies anthe policy thinka conclusion, and i think he was right, that is absurd not to recognize the peoples republic of china in 1970 actually, we establish a Diplomatic Liaison Office in beijing and the chinese established one in ottawa and we move towards full recognition. Cspan bring us up to date in your own career. I see on the jacket of the book you are moving to oxford. Guest very happily ensconced at the university of toronto and head of a college. I wasnt thinking that that i d do in my term ended, which is ending in june. I got a phone call about a year and a half ago from a place at oxford saying that id be interested in being there for them which isnt quite what it sounds like. It doesnt mean running it like a prison. I did my graduate work there so i know it. Cspan how big a College Visit . Guest about 250 all graduate students and 50 fellows and Adidas International relations. So its sort of write up my street and i thought it would be too good an opportunity to miss, so im moving over there for a few years. Cspan user at oxford to get your masters or doctorate . Guest i get a twoyear degree first with politics, Political Science and then back to history. That is my field and then i get a doctorate in the british in india. Cspan oxford has how many colleges . Guest 43 i think. I should know this but i think its 43. Brian macklin is the biggest . Guest at it new college which is one of the oldest. Cspan is Saint Anthonys one of the smallest . Guest it is graduate which makes it different from the others. Brian macklin d. To start . Guest end of june. Cspan will you be able to teach and write . Guest i hope so. I hope that they will likely do a bit of teaching which i would love to do and i do want to keep writing. I like writing and i have a few projects in mind so im going to keep going. Cspan back to this book on nixon and mao. What is the first moment that you could remember this was even a book or article . Guest my progress both the publishers didnt expect it to do as well as it did. It came out in england and won a prize and the day after, my publisher said to me by the way what is the next going to be, we would really like to know. I thought quickly and i hadnt thought about it much. I said a possibility if the nixon trip to china. I thought tha that it would be a fairly contained story and it wouldnt be too big of a which made sense because i was taking on a new job. To my amazement is a great, heres an offer. I said my spur of the moment idea of the good one because i taught chinese history so i knew quite a bit of background and i also taught and still teach the history of the cold war so at least i have a feeling for the period. Cspan to bring people up to date i have the paperback version of paris 1919. Recently 21 in Great Britain, 2002 in the United States, 2003 the paperback. Want to talk more about this. How many copies did it so . Guest ive tried to round them up but i think it must be around 240,000. Going in mac how often is a history book sold . Guest i dont think that often. They are not in the same league as the da vinci code. Im very pleased about it. Cspan you thought about the idea of the book. What is the first place they went to study up on what happened . Guest i started with reading the nixon memoirs and the stephen ambrose. I dont know enough about him. I thought i knew about him because i was growing up in a nixon was president and i remember watergate but when you are a historian youve got to study more indepth than having these impressions. So i started that. I then found a wonderful archive here in washington at georgetown called the National Security archive. They had declassification of all sorts of documents including the transcripts of the conversations between nixon and mao and kissinger. I started reading all that and gradually stuff was declassified because the Foreign Relations here in the United States during the nixon years and so a whole bunch of stuff was coming out. So i began to collect whatever i coded in north america. Then i dont read chinese, so i got a couple of chinese graduate students to start going through the chinese sources and translating those for me. Cspan did that make a difference . Guest it did i think. They still havent released as much of the United States. The United States is very open generally about what it will release so there was a tremendous amount on the record. The chinese still have the habit of secrecy that come from the Old Communist Party days when they were an underground organization and they dont like to release stuff. Particularly if it is a sensitive area or recent history. Taiwan is still a sensitive area and the relationship with vietnam, the relationship with the soviet union and now russia is still sensitive, so i didnt find out all that much although there are some memoirs and biographies and if you sort of authorized histories of these relations that have some in twisting stuff. Cspan do you have evidence of between Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon or somebody else possibly thought about this idea first . Guest there is conflicting evidence because this is a good story and i think everyone involved would like to take credit for being the one who pushed it through. I think it was Richard Nixon who got the idea. Hed been talking about it before he became president , before he won the election in 68 hed written an article for the Foreign Affairs in 1967 in which he said sooner or later, china must be a part of the community of nations. He had given talks in which he said i had interesting conversation with someone who knew him the other day who said he remembered talking to nixon about this and 68 and nixon said im going to go. So i think that it was nixon who had the grand strategic vision. Henry kissinger, the record at the time is Henry Kissinger was surprised when nixon said that d decidesaid thatand said to halds the president wants to go to red china, what is going on i think hes lost his senses. Kissinger now says in his memoirs that he and kissinger are always on the one on this and i think it is true that when kissinger realizes this is an nixon thinking, he saw the possibility and advantage of opening up to china and worked hard on it, but it was nixon who was there and pushing it. Cspan you said in the back under interviews and oral histories that you interviewed kissinger in paris may 152003 and may 182003. What were the circumstances . Guest i was at a conference. Id been invited to the conference by a friend of the new kissinger was going to be there and knew Henry Kissinger and very kindly said to kissinger look, this historian would like to interview you and dont worry, she will not ask impossible questions or whatever anyway, she vouched for me. I met him at the conference at a Cocktail Party and he said people talk at the end. Then he started to tell wonderful stories. So i rushed back to my room and jotted them down and then we had lunch at the end of this particular session. We have i thought it very interesting conversation. I made all sorts of notes and heat i dont think told me anything he hasnt already said in his memoirs or other interviews, but it was just the flavor. Its wonderful to be able to say to someone what was mao really like and what was Richard Nixon really like and what did you feel when you were in china and that was fascinating. Brian macklin is the moment when they met . Guest it is a funny moment. I thought when i started writing thwritinga book about one hour y met, nixons first day in beijing the 21st of february, 35 years ago. I thought the meeting was going to be absolutely fascinating. Clearly one of those great momentous meetings. Like fdr, franklin ddelta roosevelt meeting stalin. I thought it would be an extraordinary meeting and then i read the transcript, and its not what id call it a fascinating conversation. Nixon had come very well prepared. He liked to be well prepared for these important occasions. He had all sortthey have all soe wanted to say. You see at the beginning of the meeting a little bit of chitchat, nice to see you, thank you for coming out how was your trip. Then a number of things i want to say, mr. Chairman, and goes through this and back. That. He doesnt get very far into mao says no, no, lets not talk about this stuff i dont deal with those sorts of things. Lets just chat. You see nixon trying to get to stuff like relations with the soviet union he wants to talk about and mao sort of avoiding it, so it is a rather unsubstantial inconclusive and meandering conversation. And mao isnt well mannered. And apparently kept checking his watch, the Prime Minister, and finally said i think weve had enough i think chairman and mao has had enough and he agrees so they go out. And at first, it was nixon, Henry Kissinger and winston lord who were there were rather depressed. They said this didnt really go anywhere and wasnt much of a conversation but then they began to think about it and they decided what they persuaded themselves that in fact it was a brilliant conversation. Kissinger had a wonderful passage where he says we realized that it was like all the motifs were there, mao was in direct to everything we were going to hear him discuss. My answers were a bit optimistic when they read that back into the conversa