China
In 1977, Woodcock retired from the union and was named by President Jimmy Carter as head of the United States Liaison Office in Beijing which, in the absence of full diplomatic relations, served as the de facto U.S. embassy in the People's Republic of China. During this same period, Woodcock was charged with leading a special delegation to Laos and Vietnam in search of POW and MIA American soldiers.
After leading negotiations to establish full diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China in 1979, Woodcock was appointed the first United States ambassador to the PRC, and the first ambassador to mainland China since 1949, when Leighton Stuart served as ambassador to the Republic of China.
Though some questioned appointing a labor leader to head such a delicate a diplomatic mission, Carter insisted that he needed a negotiator. A Doonsbury cartoon at the time read, "If he can take on the Big Three, he can handle the Gang of Four".
In a 2000 speech at the White House to celebrate 20 years of Most Favored Nation status, former President Carter said of the time:
''One of the choices I had to make was whom to send to China to begin the secret negotiations with Deng Xiaoping; he was the unquestioned ruler of the nation. And I chose a man who was the senior statesman of the American labor movement, Leonard Woodcock -- respected by, I guess, every working man and woman who was a member of a union or not in this country, and he was also respected by all those who had dealt with him from the management side. And he was my personal representative in Beijing.
Leonard Woodcock, working directly with me from the White House, negotiated successfully the terms for normalization of diplomatic relations. And on the first day of January, 1979, we formed those relationships. That year, Leonard Woodcock, still highly conversant with, and whose heart was attuned to, the labor movement of America, negotiated the first trade agreement, Most Favored Nations agreement, with China, in 1979. And now for 20 years, each year the Congress has confirmed his decision, and mine.''
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Famous quotes containing the word china:
“It all ended with the circuslike whump of a monstrous box on the ear with which I knocked down the traitress who rolled up in a ball where she had collapsed, her eyes glistening at me through her spread fingers—all in all quite flattered, I think. Automatically, I searched for something to throw at her, saw the china sugar bowl I had given her for Easter, took the thing under my arm and went out, slamming the door.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.”
—Barbara Tuchman (1912–1989)
“Whether the nymph shall break Diana’s law,
Or some frail china jarreceive a flaw,
Or stain her honour, or her new brocade,”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)