Watch American Experience Season 12 Episode 7 Online

Charting the tortuous three-year gambit that led to Richard Nixon's historic February 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China. What it did, says narrator David Ogden Stiers, was “alter the global balance of power.” How he did it is chronicled in vintage footage and interviews with major players, including Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig, as well as Chinese and Soviet officials, and Nixon himself (in a 1977 TV interview).