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:
“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)
“Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction.... It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The roof of England fell
Great Paris tolled her bell
And China staunched her milk and wept for bread”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)