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 international locations. 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 mentioned, Beijing rejected the thought 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 international locations and promote the wholesome and steady growth of relations between the 2 international locations and their militaries,” Xinhua mentioned.
Li has been underneath U.S. sanctions since 2018 over China’s buy of fight plane and gear from Russia’s fundamental arms exporter.
Kissinger responded that each the USA and China ought to get rid of 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 geared toward kick-starting cooperation between the world’s two largest 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 international locations cast official diplomatic relations in 1979.
Kissinger stays revered in China for these efforts.
“Kissinger has made nice contributions to China-US relations, which might be seen as one in every of his profession highlights, underneath the precept of placing apart ideological variations and dealing with China relations primarily based 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.
