This week's summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing underscores how far US-China relations have shifted since Richard Nixon’s landmark 1972 meeting with Mao Zedong, when Cold War pragmatism drew two rivals together against a common Soviet threat – a stark contrast to today’s climate of mistrust.
The 1972 meeting between Nixon and Mao marked a turning point, when China, then in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, courted its arch-enemy Washington out of fear of the Soviet Union.
