Henry Kissinger’s Shock Go to to China Contains Assembly with Protection Minister

Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, the 100-year-old who was on the coronary heart of the USA’ rapprochement with China half a century in the past, has made a shock go to to Beijing.

Kissinger, whose go to was not beforehand introduced, met Chinese language Protection Minister Li Shangfu in Beijing on Tuesday, in response to a report by the official Xinhua Information Company that was additionally posted on the ministry’s web site.

The go to is exceptional not simply due to Kissinger’s age and historical past with China, but in addition as a result of it comes at a time of heightened tensions between the 2 nations. Army communications particularly are so fraught that Li refused to fulfill U.S. Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin at a regional safety discussion board in Singapore final month.

Throughout a go to to Beijing final month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken tried to get an settlement to renew direct military-to-military communications between the USA and China. However, Blinken stated, Beijing rejected the concept regardless of harmful latest close to misses.

But in Beijing on Tuesday, Li instructed Kissinger that he hoped the USA will “work with China to implement the consensus reached by the leaders of the 2 nations and promote the wholesome and steady improvement of relations between the 2 nations and their militaries,” Xinhua stated.

Li has been below U.S. sanctions since 2018 over China’s buy of fight plane and tools from Russia’s essential arms exporter.

Kissinger responded that each the USA and China ought to eradicate misunderstandings, coexist peacefully and keep away from confrontation, Xinhua reported.

Kissinger’s go to coincides with that by one other former American secretary of state: John F. Kerry, now the Biden administration’s local weather envoy, is in Beijing for talks aimed toward kick-starting cooperation between the world’s two greatest polluters.

Kissinger has had shut ties with Chinese language officers since he secretly visited Beijing in 1971 to put the groundwork for President Richard M. Nixon’s historic journey the next yr, which led to rapprochement with China. The 2 nations solid official diplomatic relations in 1979.

Kissinger stays revered in China for these efforts.

“Kissinger has made nice contributions to China-US relations, which may be seen as one in every of his profession highlights, below the precept of placing apart ideological variations and dealing with China relations based mostly on actuality and respect with an emphasis on equality,” Li Haidong, a professor on the China International Affairs College, instructed the state-affiliated World Occasions newspaper on the event of Kissinger’s one hundredth birthday.