The Chinese Ministry of Defense announced that former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger visited Beijing to meet with Chinese Defense Minister Li Changfu. The significance of the visit of Henry Kissinger, the former National Security Adviser, comes from his role in bringing the Chinese-American views closer during the seventies when he traveled secretly to Beijing in July 1971, to prepare for the establishment of Sino-American relations, and to pave the way for the historic visit of former US President Nixon to the Chinese capital in 1972. At the end of April 2023, the former US Secretary of State, Kissinger, warned at the Davos Forum that tensions with China are “the biggest problem for America, and the biggest problem for the world”, as there is a possibility of a “kind of cold war” between the two important countries. Therefore, political leaders in Washington should grasp the trends of the times, follow the extraordinary courage of their predecessors, carry on their political wisdom and foresight to work with their Chinese counterparts, and navigate the two countries’ relations through the current turbulent waters. This is something that China welcomes across its political circles.
Knowing that, the Chinese government rejected all US efforts to engage in high-level military contacts with China, as well as the Chinese Ministry of Defense’s refusal of a meeting between its Defense Minister Li Changfu and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Shangri-La Security Dialogue in Singapore this year.
Of course, Kissinger returned to the huge strategic shift he made when he opened the door to positive relations between Washington and Beijing since the early 1970s, after attempts at rapprochement between them failed miserably, which Kissinger attributed to each party’s adherence to objectives rejected by the other. According to his words, “The American people needed a vision of peace in the relationship with Beijing”, analyzing that the pressure exerted by Russia to prevent rapprochement between Beijing and Washington is one of the reasons for the tension. Kissinger also recorded a word for history for the Chinese, by asserting that: “during half a century, Taiwan developed economically and politically, under peace with China, without the United States adopting the existence of an independent state in Taiwan”, which is a statement welcomed by China.
Source : Modern Diplomacy