Rapprochement with the United States } 293
is highly sensitive about American efforts to improve relations with the
other. We intend, nevertheless, to pursue a long-term course of pro-
gressively developing better relations with both. We are not going to let
Communist Chinese invective deter us from seeking agreements with
the Soviet Union where those are in our interest. Conversely, we are not
going to let Soviet apprehension prevent us from attempting to bring
Communist China out of its angry alienated shell. [Emphasis added.]^12
US “deep concern” over a “massive breach of international peace” was
diplomatic lingo for US opposition to a Soviet attack on China. Richardson’s
speech arrived in Beijing as the country was buttoning down for all-out war
with the Soviet Union. From mid-1969 through the end of 1970, the Nixon
Administration conveyed through various channels its desire for a high-level
dialogue with China’s leaders. In May 1969, for example, Secretary of State
William Rogers asked Pakistani president Yahya Khan to ask Beijing about
possible expanded talks on Sino-US relations. The long-standing ambassa-
dorial talks in Warsaw offered one possible mechanism for revived Sino-US
contact. Nixon and Kissinger felt strongly that that low-level venue would
not succeed in achieving the breakthrough they sought. Still, lacking an ap-
parently better channel of communication, Nixon had the State Department
order the US ambassador in Warsaw, Walter Stoessel, to find an opportunity
to convey to the chargé d’affaires of the PRC embassy, Lei Yang, the US de-
sire to revive and expand talks. After several months in which no convenient
opportunity presented itself, on December 3, 1969, Stoessel spied a group of
PRC diplomats at a Yugoslav fashion show at Warsaw’s Palace of Culture.
When Stoessel approached the Chinese diplomats, they, without instructions
about how to respond to an American probe and probably fearful of being
criticized back in Beijing, had walked away, leaving the American represen-
tative to run to catch up and blurt out his message, in broken Polish and in a
most undiplomatic fashion. The US message was nonetheless delivered and
duly reported back to Zhou Enlai. Two weeks later Stoessel was invited in by
Lei Yang for a chat at the Chinese embassy. This Warsaw episode later proved
useful to Mao and Zhou in justifying the opening to the United States; it was
the United States, not China, that was requesting a new relation, Mao and
Zhou repeatedly pointed out to their skeptical comrades. Stoessel had had to
run after and virtually beg Lei Yang to hear him out. Obviously this was be-
cause US weakness and decline made it convenient to alter its long-standing
anti-China policies, Mao and Zhou explained.^13 Following the Stoessel-Lei
meeting, Zhou reported to Mao that “the opportunity is coming; we now
have a brick in our hands to knock at the door.”^14 As a good-will gesture,
Mao authorized the release of two US citizens detained since February 1969,
when their yacht had gone off course and entered China’s territorial waters
near Hong Kong.