Nixon And Mao The Week That Changed The World Analysis
Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World.
“President Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao Tse-tung were well aware that they were making history that day in 1972” (Macmillan, 2008)
Margaret Macmillan’s book Nixon and Mao is a wonderful moment to moment portrayal of what had happened between the United States and China in “the week that changed the world”. The book not only captures the meeting between the two world leaders who were taking a giant leap in the diplomacy between these two nations but also encapsulates within itself the complexes that aroused during and after the great handshake in Beijing. Richard Nixon was the first American President to visit China once the communists had taken over. After the World War II wherein these two …show more content…
The conversations between the two leaders and their personalities have been detailed in a very interesting with due importance given to tiny nuances. So what was it that made this visit equivalent to stepping on the moon as compared by many is explained by Macmillan with great vigor. The two nations were ideologically very different, one being an extreme right wing democracy the other being ruled by an authoritarian who had brought about the infamous Cultural Revolution.
She writes how the US had in mind certain strategic questions and how Mao decided to dodge them and talk on a more philosophical level in the first meet. However in the second meet the immediate concerns for both the countries were discussed. These were very strategic in nature were not really met with a conclusion and the issues concerning Taiwan to China and North Vietnam to the US did quite much perpetuate even after the two world leaders met. What happened was larger in scope and importance, the US had allied itself with a nation that had fortified itself from the rest of the world. The implication …show more content…
The book is indeed a dramatic and elaborate representation of what had happened in that week between the two nations. The minute details that have been captured in the book from the details of Nixon’s visit to the Great Wall of China and how Nixon praises the Chinese culture and how Mao takes pride in the same, at the same time the visit has been detailed from a different angle as to how the same was used to feed news channel back the US and the significance and success of Nixon’s visit being
“President Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao Tse-tung were well aware that they were making history that day in 1972” (Macmillan, 2008)
Margaret Macmillan’s book Nixon and Mao is a wonderful moment to moment portrayal of what had happened between the United States and China in “the week that changed the world”. The book not only captures the meeting between the two world leaders who were taking a giant leap in the diplomacy between these two nations but also encapsulates within itself the complexes that aroused during and after the great handshake in Beijing. Richard Nixon was the first American President to visit China once the communists had taken over. After the World War II wherein these two …show more content…
The conversations between the two leaders and their personalities have been detailed in a very interesting with due importance given to tiny nuances. So what was it that made this visit equivalent to stepping on the moon as compared by many is explained by Macmillan with great vigor. The two nations were ideologically very different, one being an extreme right wing democracy the other being ruled by an authoritarian who had brought about the infamous Cultural Revolution.
She writes how the US had in mind certain strategic questions and how Mao decided to dodge them and talk on a more philosophical level in the first meet. However in the second meet the immediate concerns for both the countries were discussed. These were very strategic in nature were not really met with a conclusion and the issues concerning Taiwan to China and North Vietnam to the US did quite much perpetuate even after the two world leaders met. What happened was larger in scope and importance, the US had allied itself with a nation that had fortified itself from the rest of the world. The implication …show more content…
The book is indeed a dramatic and elaborate representation of what had happened in that week between the two nations. The minute details that have been captured in the book from the details of Nixon’s visit to the Great Wall of China and how Nixon praises the Chinese culture and how Mao takes pride in the same, at the same time the visit has been detailed from a different angle as to how the same was used to feed news channel back the US and the significance and success of Nixon’s visit being