HONG KONG -- Historical revelations are rarely found in China's controlled presses. When they are, they have to be treated with care. Rewriting history remains part and parcel of Chinese politics. Chinese academics still get imprisoned for revealing documents that are in the public domain outside China.
So little notice was taken recently when a veteran Chinese diplomat gave a different rendition of an incident that, for many years, symbolized the 1949-1972 cold war between the United States and communist China.
Interviewed by the China Daily, diplomat Xiong Xianghui gave a different rendition of that famous moment at the 1954 Geneva conference on Indochina when Chinese Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai extended his hand to then Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and Dulles snubbed him by turning his back.