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The veteran US diplomat Henry Kissinger met China’s defense minister Li Shangfu in a surprise visit to Beijing, reported The Guardian. According to a readout on Tuesday from the Chinese defense ministry, Li Shangfu said “friendly communication” between China and the US had been “destroyed” because “some people in the United States did not meet China halfway”. The readout quoted Kissinger as saying that he was a “friend of China”.
“Neither the United States nor China can afford to treat the other as an adversary. If the two countries go to war, it will not lead to any meaningful results for the two peoples,” the Chinese statement reported Kissinger as saying, the Guardian mentioned.
The surprise visit of the 100-year-old former US secretary of state comes as John Kerry, the US climate envoy, is in Beijing to meet Chinese officials. Kerry’s agenda is to discuss how the two countries can cooperate on confronting the climate crisis.
Notably, Kerry is the latest in a string of senior US officials who have traveled to China this summer after the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, completed a long-awaited trip in June, the report added.
The two superpowers have been witnessing declining relations for quite some time after which top officials have begun the dialogue to build a healthy consensus on various issues.
The Guardian mentioned that Kissinger’s visit, which had not been publicised, is outside the official roster of meetings. Interestingly, the visit comes almost exactly 52 years since his secret visit to Beijing in July 1971, which paved the way for Richard Nixon, the US president at the time, to normalize relations between the US and China.
Now after over half a century on, Kissinger is still seen by many in Beijing as a “friend of China”. In May, the state tabloid The Global Times praised Kissinger’s “razor-sharp” mind, as quoted by The Guardian.
Kissinger has repeatedly warned of “catastrophic” consequences of a conflict between the US and China.
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