When President Nixon went to China, he met with Chairman Mao. At the time, Mao was already suffering from illnesses. In four years, he would be dead and Nixon would be the only president in US history to resign while in office due to the Watergate Scandal.
After Nixon resigned as the US president, the Chinese offered him a home in China where he would be allowed to live in peace away from his political enemies.
Two months before his meeting with Mao in Beijing, Nixon had approved a bombing operation in North Vietnam.
Many called it the Christmas bombings since it took place over the holidays. It was the first continuous bombing in Vietnam since President Lyndon Johnson had halted bombing in 1968.
Over 20 thousand tons of bombs were dropped during the campaign. That’s forty million pounds of explosives.
Ironically, Nixon ran for election as the “Peace Candidate” in 1968. Can you think of other US politicians that have used similar lies to win elections?
Because of Nixon’s record of being anticommunist, no one would have thought that he would have unexpectedly gone to China to meet with Mao and the Party’s other leaders.
A recent report from AOL News revealed, “Newly released audiotapes and secret documents from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library show a president obsessed with controlling the media and his public persona during the latter stages of his doomed administration.”
I find it ironic that this comes from a former president of a country that often criticizes China’s control of its media. Is it possible that US politicians are jealous?
Return to Nixon in China – Part 1
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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