When Biden Went to China

On April 19, 1979, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware was in Beijing, meeting with China’s paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, when he put Washington’s nascent friendship with the Communists to the test.

That Biden was sitting there at all was remarkable. The United States and China had been implacable foes for decades. In Washington, Deng and his cadres were seen as a dangerous arm of the Red Menace, their conquest of China 30 years earlier bitterly lamented as its “loss” to godless Communism. In Beijing, the Americans were viewed as merciless imperialists, defenders of the Nationalists, the Communists’ mortal enemy ensconced on the island of Taiwan. In 1971, when National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger initially broke the ice with the Chinese Communists, he had to sneak into Beijing secretly. Biden arrived quite publicly as part of a five-member delegation from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His six-day tour included visits to a school, factories, and a commune. Still, suspicions remained on both sides: Washington had recognized the Communist regime as the government of China fewer than four months before Biden’s visit.

The people in the room could hardly have been less alike as well. Biden, then only 36, was a little-known senator at the beginning of his second term and on his first visit to China. Deng, at 74, was already a historic figure and prominent statesman who had been quite literally fighting for the Communist cause before Biden had been born.

At the time, the meeting held only moderate significance. But today, with Biden in the White House, his conference with Deng looms large. The journey influenced his thinking on China for years to come—and may echo even today. More than that, this glimpse into the past of U.S.-China relations opens a window on their future. Perhaps a closer look at why Beijing and Washington chose to forge a friendship half a century ago can help us understand what’s gone so wrong between them today.

Biden’s query to