Shanghai Communiqué

[1][2][3] National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger was sent to China for secret diplomatic missions in 1971, which included early deliberations over the communiqué and planning for Richard Nixon to visit the country.

[5]: 160–161 Further negotiations over the communiqué took place with White House Chief of Staff General Alexander Haig representing the United States while preparing in China a month prior to Nixon's visit.

[5]: 173–175 During the February 1972 visit, the narrative of shared Sino-American interests in counteracting the Soviet Union were repeated numerous times by Nixon and Kissinger.

Then Secretary of State William Rogers and diplomat Marshall Green rejected Nixon and Kissinger's intentional lack of mention of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty signed with Taiwan in 1955, claiming that the absence was a betrayal of a close ally.

The communique exposed the fact that not all Communist nations adopted Moscow's policies, undermining the legitimacy of Soviet doctrine and its capacity to keep its allies united.

Nixon's visit significantly changed the global power dynamics by opening the door to new trade opportunities with China and may have brought an end to the Cold War in East Asia.

The Shanghai Communiqué represented the United States' first direct public diplomatic negotiations with People's Republic of China since its 1949 founding.

In a March 1972 visit to Taipei, US diplomat Marshall Green argued to Taiwanese Foreign Minister Chow Shu-Kai that the acceptance of the communiqué represented a change in PRC priorities.

[citation needed] In a February 2017 opinion piece for The Diplomat, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations president Stephen Orlins praised the Shanghai Communiqué for the cross-strait stability it offered for Taiwan.

Orlins said the communiqué helps ensure confidence with Western investment in Taiwan because of the wide-ranging impacts of the opening of China and continued high-level cross-strait dialogue.

He wrote an extensive attack in National Review of March 1972, calling the Communiqué a "staggering capitulation" that represented the loss of "any remaining sense of moral mission in the world.