Actually most of McCarthy's time was during the Truman Adm. The final hearings occurred in Ike's 1st term. But the 1st time McCarthy mentioned a list of known communists in the State Dept was 1950 . Do you know the Kennedy family was staunch anti-communists too ;and the Robert F Kennedy served some time as Joe McCarthy's council for the investigative committee ,until he and Roy Cohn had a disagreement ?
Nixon's visit to China was cold realpolitik calculation. He tried to peel China away from the Soviet Union to pave the way for an 'honorable peace'... or was that 'peace with honor' in Vietnam.