You are correct. Nixon’s opening to China may have been good cold war politics, but it did nothing for the freedoms of the Chinese people, which, limited as they still are, came about much later and for other reasons.
“Nixon’s opening to China may have been good cold war politics...”
And that’s probably not even the case as far as history.
Nixon did this in large part to gain a two state solution for Vietnam. He and Kissinger considered it a trade of Taiwan for S. Vietnam.
Well, Taiwan got derecognized by the US and international community, which is what the Chinese wanted, but S. Vietnam did not survive, which is what we were supposed to get.