Class News

Chas Freeman ’64 interviewed about Nixon in China

February 11, 2022

Chas Freeman was interview by Christopher Lydon on Public Radio’s “Open Source” about Richard Nixon’s visit to China 50 years ago. Lydon is a former New York Times journalist and original host of “The Connection.”

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Nixon in China

It was the meeting, just 50 years ago this month, that changed more lives at more levels than any other political handshake in our lifetimes. The Trickster and the Monster, as the principals had been nicknamed, with some justice: Richard Nixon, the American president who would leave office two years later in Watergate disgrace, and Mao Zedong, the Communist chairman whose fanatical Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution had already taken 50 million Chinese lives, maybe more.  Strange to tell, their breakthrough in Beijing — February 1972 — was not about changing China or the US. It was about fending off pressure they both were feeling from Soviet Russia. But it’s the unintended consequences we notice now, the loveless connection that made China the world’s workshop.

Click the "Play" button below to hear the 50-minute interview.

Chas will be one of the co-hosts for our Y64 Webinar on April 28, 2022, “China: Confrontation or Collaboration.” Watch the Events Page on our Class website for details and registration.

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Charles "Chas" W. Freeman, Jr. served in the United States Foreign Service and the State and Defense Departments in many different capacities over the course of thirty years. Most notably, he worked as the main interpreter for Richard Nixon during his 1972 China visit and served as the U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1989 to 1992, where he dealt with the Persian Gulf War.

He is a past president of the Middle East Policy Council, co-chair of the U.S. China Policy Foundation, and a Lifetime Director of the Atlantic Council.