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Foreign policy
Main article: Foreign policy of the Richard Nixon administration
China
Main article: 1972 visit by Richard Nixon to China
President Nixon shakes hands with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai upon arriving in Beijing, 1972Nixon and Zhou Enlai toast during Nixon's 1972 visit to China
Nixon laid the groundwork for his overture to China before he became president, writing in Foreign Affairs a year before his election: "There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation."[141] Assisting him in this venture was Henry Kissinger, Nixon's  National Security Advisor and future Secretary of State. They collaborated closely, bypassing Cabinet officials. With relations between the Soviet Union and China at a nadir—border clashes between the two took place during Nixon's first year in office—Nixon sent private word to the Chinese that he desired closer relations. A breakthrough came in early 1971, when Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chairman Mao Zedong invited a team of American table tennis players to visit China and play against top Chinese players. Nixon followed up by sending Kissinger to China for clandestine meetings with Chinese officials.