Answer:
President Nixon's visit to China in 1972 increased Cold War tensions by aggravating the Sino-Soviet split by improving U.S. relations with China.
Step-by-step explanation:
During the 1960s, China had to acknowledge the failure of the attempt to undermine Soviet authority within the socialist movement and the Cultural Revolution had dealt a severe blow to the international credibility of the Beijing government by enacting dangerous isolation. From the Chinese point of view, moreover, the United States had ceased to be the threat of the past following the trend of the Vietnam War and the dollar crisis. Consequently, the Chinese leadership thought it appropriate to get closer to the Americans to solve their problems.
For their part, the United States was willing to rebuild relations between the two countries, which ended in 1949, especially in terms of anti-Soviet containment. China also represented an excellent market outlet. The rapprochement between the two countries took place gradually. First, in the summer of 1969, the Washington government decided to lift some trade restrictions. Subsequently, in 1971, the American table tennis team was invited to participate in a tournament in China, initiating the so-called ping pong diplomacy.
Nixon's journey took place between February 21 and February 28, 1972, visiting the cities of Beijing, Hangzhou and Shanghai. As soon as he arrived, Nixon immediately met Mao Zedong. Nixon also held many meetings with Zhou Enlai, a great diplomat and head of the Chinese government, and at the end of the trip he co-signed the Shanghai communique, a foreign policy document that laid the foundations for Sino-American bilateral relations. In fact it represented a warning to the Soviet Union, through which it was made clear that his two maximum rivals were aligned with each other. This situation intensified the rivalry between China and the Soviet Union, which was in a process of rapprochement with America through the detente.