News Snapshot:
It was “the week that changed the world”. On February 21 1972, Chinese leader Mao Zedong and US president Richard Nixon met in Beijing to reset their countries’ relations, which had been frozen for the previous two decades. China needed protection from the USSR. Washington was keen to gain a new heavyweight partner to counter Moscow. But the US’s long-term objective was to bring the most populous country into a rising global economic order. Strategic interests of the two great powers were as aligned at the time as they clash nowadays. The Nixon-Mao meeting was just the beginning of a...
