Kissinger Vs. Nixon

Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger each tend to bristle whenever the other receives greater credit for the 1972 U.S. breakthrough to China. Now China seems to have them at odds again.

The new tiff began with a minuet over which man would pay the first high- profile private visit to China since the massacre outside Tiananmen Square. Kissinger had planned to address a Beijing conference on foreign investment in October. But he called off the trip in September after the Wall Street Journal published an account of his business deals, which include a $75 million partnership called China Ventures. Three weeks later, Nixon began his excursion to Beijing. After he arrived, an aide released a background paper pointing out that Nixon had no Chinese business interests. Though the document named no names, some people got the impression that Nixon was contrasting himself to Kissinger, who showed up in Beijing the following week with a group of U.S. businessmen.

Both Nixon and Kissinger support Brent Scowcroft's fence-mending expedition to China. But Kissinger said last week that sending Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger was a mistake. Dispatching not one, but two former executives of his consulting firm to implement a policy he supports, Kissinger told the Washington Post, gives critics an opening "to blacken my reputation."