Anna Chennault

Later life In 1970, Chennault received appointments from President Nixon to his advisory committee for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and to the U.S. National Committee for UNESCO. She was president of Chinese Refugee Relief from 1962 to 1970 and served as president of the General Claire Chennault Foundation after 1960. She served as a Republican national committeewoman representing the District of Columbia and led the National Republican Asian Assembly. She encouraged many Chinese Americans to become active in politics, and in 1973, she helped found the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA).

In October 1971, Chennault helped lead an unsuccessful effort to stop the United Nations General Assembly from expelling the Republic of China (Taiwan) and seating the People's Republic of China. In a speech, Chennault said "Let's hope the United Nations doesn't end up like the League of Nations...Its effectiveness is in grave doubt...Fortunately, the big events cannot be settled in the UN anyway."

After President Nixon visited China in 1972, there was a real possibility that the United States might finally recognize the People's Republic of China as the legitimate Chinese government, and in 1974 the U.S. opened an office in Beijing that acted as a de facto embassy. On April 21, 1975, as South Vietnam crumbled, President Thiệu resigned and fled to Taiwan. Shortly after Thiệu arrived there, Chennault visited him to tell him that President Gerald Ford was willing to grant asylum to his family, but not to him, as he was too controversial to be allowed to live in the U.S. However, Carter officially recognized the People's Republic of China in 1979. Believing that the U.S. had betrayed South Vietnam by withdrawing in 1973 and allowing North Vietnam to conquer the South in 1975, Chennault lobbied Congress to admit Vietnamese refugees fleeing the communist regime.

In January 1981, Chennault visited Beijing to meet Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, ostensibly as a private citizen, but in fact as an unofficial diplomat representing incoming Republican president Ronald Reagan, who was due to be sworn in as president on January 20. Reagan had been strongly critical of China, but as president, he wanted to focus on the struggle against the Soviet Union, which he had dubbed the "evil empire", and wanted China as a de facto American ally against Moscow. Chennault conveyed this message to Deng and told him that Reagan's denunciations of the evils of communism applied only to Soviet communism, not to Chinese communism. Chiang was displeased, fearing that Reagan might not break relations with the People's Republic and once again recognize the Republic of China as the legitimate government of China, but he told her that he was pleased that it was she who had made that trip, as he knew that she was a friend of the Kuomintang. Though the majority of the Taiwanese are ethnic Chinese, a sense of Taiwanese nationalism had emerged by the 1980s, and many Taiwanese had no desire to be reunited with China under any conditions, which meant that economic integration did not lead to political integration as was hoped.

After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, when the People's Liberation Army shot down protesting university students demanding democracy, the U.S. publicly pulled away from China. At the request of the American government, Chennault passed a message to Deng saying that Washington still wanted a good relationship with Beijing, that the sanctions imposed on China were only to appease American public opinion and that the sanctions would be ended in the near future. Despite the controversy, in December 1989 and again in March 1990, Chennault led delegations of Taiwanese businessmen to China to "study the investment climate on the mainland." She stated that people must be "humble enough to learn, courageous enough to change their positions."

Chennault died on March 30, 2018, in Washington, D.C. at the age of 94. Some news stories gave her age at death as 92, based on June 23, 1925, as her generally reported date of birth, but she was actually She is buried next to her husband at Arlington National Cemetery.