Secretary Kissinger's Talks in China, November 1974/1st Report to the President Nov 27
MEMORANDUM
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
Secretary Kissinger sent the following message to you on his talks with the Chinese.
"I had an extremely cordial session with Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-ping this morning during which the Chinese invited you to visit here during 1975. In retrospect, I believe their invitation to Schlesinger was designed precisely to bring about your visit. I told them that a visit by Schlesinger would cause U.S. difficulties since we had repeatedly turned down a similar Soviet offer, but said that we would keep it in mind and would be prepared to send any other cabinet officer. I indicated a visit by you would be the most effective way of symbolizing the continuing strengthening of our bilateral relations. Teng, who obviously had authority from the Chairman in advance, immediately suggested that we say publicly that the visit would take place during 1975 and indicated that in practice this would mean in the latter part of the year. Significantly, at no time did he link such a visit to completion of the normalization process. They still might attempt to do this, but as of now, it looks like we can look toward your visit without any such conditions -- which is of course the optimum situation for us.
We will talk further with the Chinese on when to release the announcement of your trip. Clearly it should be part of the general communique we will be issuing as a result of this visit. My tentative thinking is to announce your trip at the White House some time Saturday morning. In this way it would not conflict with the coverage of your press conference the previous day but would make the Sunday newspapers. I could brief the travelling press on the plane and they would arrive in Washington in time to file their stories for the Sunday papers. We cannot hold this news until after I return to Washington because I would have to dodge questions from the press on the return trip and would mislead them. Also, I will have to brief the Japanese on your visit and they certainly will not keep
DECLASSIFIED
E.O. 12958 Sec. 3.6
The Mood at this morning's meeting warmed up considerably as we got onto their favorite subject -- the Soviet Union, and Teng began to express Chinese positions on various issues. The Soviet threat clearly remains their overriding preoccupation and they made clear that their recent message to Moscow on a nonaggression pact contained nothing new. In any event, Brezhnev's speech yesterday in Mongolia meant to them that no progress was possible and even principles agreed upon in 1969 were "gone with the wind." I spend considerable time stressing our military strength and the advantages of the agreement you made in Vladivostok. That meeting, by the way, has clearly gotten the Chinese attention and I believe is helping us enormously on this visit. The Chinese also emphasized the need for Europe to keep up its guard at which point I emphasized that the demoralization of Europe through the oil crisis is not in the Chinese interest. We could go it alone on economic grounds, but we were cooperating with our friends in order to shore up Western unity and defenses.
We are meeting again this afternoon and I will send you another report this evening."