In a new TV documentary series, “Playing the China Card,” Brian Lapping and Norma Percy, who made the award-winning films “The Death of Yugoslavia,” re-create Nixon’s diplomatic coup using rare footage. (The first film of the series will be broadcast Sept. 25 on Britain’s Channel 4, and on America’s PBS in January.) Billed as the story of how Nixon deceived “everyone,” including fellow conservatives, to reach out to China, the series includes deliciously hilarious Nixonian detail.
After the Yugoslav gambit fails, Nixon makes contact through Pakistan and asks Kissinger to blaze a trail to Beijing. Kissinger arranges to vanish on a visit to Pakistan by feigning “Delhi belly,” then jets to Beijing instead of heading to a hill station to “recuperate.” As the 2:30 a.m. departure nears, Kissinger’s host loses his car keys, and Kissinger loses his shirts in the confusion. On the jet, he finds four Chinese hosts in Mao suits, whom Kissinger’s spooked bodyguard mistakes for kidnappers. Kissinger finally meets Prime Minister Zhou Enlai in a borrowed shirt four sizes too large. During Nixon’s visit in February 1972, the U.S. delegation is split. Left off the team by Kissinger, Secretary of State Bill Rogers threatens to break ranks over plans to abandon Taiwan. Breaking protocol, Zhou Enlai pays a private visit to Rogers’s room. Zhou’s ego stroking works wonderfully–as does this film.
