Extract from Xinhua: “For 74-year-old Winston Lord, former U.S. assistant secretary of state, his trip to China with former U.S.
President Richard Nixon 40 years ago was “the single most dramatic and most important event” in his decades-long career. …
Years of hostility between China and the United States dispersed after Nixon’s world-stunning visit to China on Feb. 21, 1972, allowing the most powerful country and most populous one in the world to join hands in carving out a new future.
Lord, then a top aide to U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and the first U.S. official to visit China after 22 years of mutual hostility and isolation, was proud of first secret trip to China in 1971.
“We were flying secretively from Pakistan to Beijing on a Pakistani plane, and as the plane got close to the Chinese air space, border, I was in the front of the plane, and Dr. Kissinger was in the back of the plane, so as we went into Chinese territory, I was the first. I always told everyone, and Kissinger agrees, that I was the first American official to visit China in 22 years,” said a beaming Lord.”
Just over 40 years ago, President Nixon visited China, started ‘ping pong’ diplomacy and giant panda diplomacy. The rest, dear friends, as they say, is history. Nixon may have been dishonoured for the Watergate affair. But history, hopefully, will remember him well for inviting China to rejoin the modern world.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 