Mao Offered US 10M Chinese Women

China’s Mao Zedong once jokingly offered the US 10 million women from his poor, overpopulated country to kickstart bilateral trade, the BBC reports. Other talks covered the Soviet threat, but during one chummy meeting with Henry Kissinger in Beijing in 1973, Mao said China’s female influx produced too many children, telling Nixon’s national security adviser, “Let them go to your place.”

Mao quickly warned that Chinese women would “create disasters” in the US, but Kissinger responded in kind that there were no quotas or tariffs on women. Mao, who made the jokes a recurring theme, concluded the meeting by calling his remarks “nonsense” and "begged the pardon" of Chinese women, Bloomberg says. The US released the transcripts over the objections of a Chinese official, who predicted they would inspire public anger. (More Mao Zedong stories.)