Word: zhao
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Zhao comes calling on the U.S. "There is a saying," Premier Zhao Ziyang once remarked of his agricultural experiments in China's Sichuan province, " 'When you cross the river, you grope for the stones' But you must cross the river. You cannot just jump over it." This week Zhao will apply that delicate maxim to the troubled waters of Chinese-U.S. relations, which until three months ago were in their most turbulent state since Richard Nixon's opening to China in 1972. As he left Peking for his first visit to the U.S. and talks...
...Zhao's background would hardly seem to have prepared him to solve such problems. He has traveled abroad relatively little and speaks no English. Yet he is at ease with foreigners and has a reputation as a deft, and occasionally witty, diplomat. After he became a member of the Politburo in 1979, he surprised many Chinese, long bored by tight restrictions on dress, by appearing in public in a Western tie and jacket, the first high official to do so since the Cultural Revolution. Like most of China's present leaders, Zhao was brutalized by the Red Guards...
Many of the first signs of a cultural crackdown were exquisitely subtle. Premier Zhao Ziyang quietly forsook his Western suits for Mao jackets. The Peking municipal government ordered its employees to shave off their mustaches. The capital's leading hairdressing salon announced that it would no longer give men permanents. Many of the first casualties were similarly obscure: a Peking shopworker who procured two illustrated sex manuals from a Hong Kong businessman and reproduced 7,000 lucrative photos of their choicest scenes; an enterprising commune in Fujian province that used its pooled resources to acquire twelve video recorders...
...China card, cozying up to the world's most populous nation and the U.S.S.R.'s other main rival. But summit meetings are not arranged in a week. A long series of obstacles had to be overcome (see box) before Weinberger could announce that China's Zhao will come to Washington in January and Reagan will go to Peking in April...
...cordiality apparent during Weinberger's trip does not mean there will be a great leap forward in U.S.-China relations. The Chinese, as Premier Zhao Ziyang told Weinberger, are waiting to see if U.S. words will be "proved by deeds and actions." The U.S. must worry whether Peking is using it mainly as a pawn in its closer-to-home struggle with the U.S.S.R. But for an Administration that early this summer announced plans to sell Taiwan $800 million in arms, relations are perhaps better than could have been anticipated...