Xi Jinping meets with Henry Kissinger in Beijing
100-year-old US diplomat praised for ‘historic contributions’ to China-US relations.
China’s President Xi Jinping met in Beijing on Thursday with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who made a surprise visit this week to China.
Xi called Kissinger an “old friend” and recalled how Kissinger had helped set up President Richard Nixon’s historic meeting with Mao Zedong in 1972 that led to normalization of relations between China and the US.
“It not only changed the two countries, but also changed the world,” Xi said, according to the state-run broadcaster CCTV.
"China and the United States have once again come to a crossroads, which requires another decision by the two sides about where to go from here," Xi said, according to Xinhua.
Looking ahead, China and the United States can help each other succeed and prosper together, and the key is to follow the three principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, he said.
"China is ready, on this basis, to explore with the United States the right way for the two countries to get along and take their relations steadily forward, which will be good for both sides and deliver benefits to the world," said Xi.
Kissinger, who was Richard Nixon’s national security adviser in 1971, made a secret trip to China to lay the groundwork for Nixon’s historic visit in 1972.
The US and China had been through a series of confrontations since the end of World War II. The US had backed Chiang Kai-shek, Mao’s opponent in China’s civil war, and the Chinese had backed North Korea and the North Vietnamese against the US in two wars. Nixon at the time was looking for a way to end the Vietnam War, and he and Kissinger saw China as a potential counter to the Soviet Union.
Now, Kissinger has made more than 100 visits to China. He thanked his hosts for arranging the meeting in the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse where he had first met with Chinese leaders in 1971.
The relationship between our two countries is a matter of world peace and the progress of human society, Kissinger reportedly said in his meeting with Xi according to Xinhua.
Under the current circumstances, it is imperative to maintain the principles established by the Shanghai Communique, appreciate the utmost importance China attaches to the ‘One China’ principle, and move the relationship in a positive direction, Kissinger said according to Xinhua.
Kissinger’s private trip coincided with an official visit by presidential climate envoy John Kerry, who did not get a meeting with Xi, and followed recent Beijing visits by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The Shanghai Communique was a joint diplomatic statement issued by China and the US in 1972 as a result of Nixon’s talks with China Premier Chou En-lai.
“The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves,” the document said.
In the decades since, the US and China have developed competing interpretations of what the US commitment was in Shanghai. Under the Taiwan Relations Act, passed by Congress in 1979, the US has maintained unofficial ties with Taipei and provided economic and military support to the self-governing island of 23 million.
In 1982, President Ronald Reagan gave Taiwan what has come to be known as the ‘Six Assurances’, in which the US clarified it had not taken a position regarding sovereignty over Taiwan and would not end arms sales.
Burns, Kritenbrink emails hacked
China-based hackers breached the unclassified government email accounts of US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Daniel Kritenbrink, the Wall Street Journal and CNN reported citing unnamed sources.
The hacks took advantage of a flaw in Microsoft’s cloud-computing environment and were allegedly part of a targeted intelligence-gathering campaign, US officials familiar with the matter said.
Security experts and former intelligence officials told WSJ that the timing of the cyberattack occurred during tense relations between the US and China over the war in Ukraine, reports of China and Cuba negotiations to build a joint military training facility, and the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon that was found hovering above North America earlier this year, according to Yahoo News.
— William Roberts