Chinese leader Xi Jinping welcomed Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, to Beijing’s Diaoyutai State Guesthouse this week, recalling the 100-year-old diplomat’s historic meeting with then-Premier Zhou Enlai half a century ago.
Xi lavished gratitude to Kissinger for his part in normalising diplomatic relations between the US and China in the 1970s, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The two met in the same building where, in July 1971, Kissinger first met China’s then-Premier Zhou Enlai for secret talks to discuss re-establishing diplomatic ties.
With sentimental piano music playing in the background, Xi praised the ‘splendid strategic vision’ of that past diplomatic effort’, adding: ‘We’ll never forget our old friend’.
Kissinger’s reception in Beijing, which included a meeting with China’s defence minister – who had earlier snubbed his current American counterpart earlier – was markedly different from that of the White House’s climate envoy John Kerry, who was seeking to revive cooperation on climate change.
Kerry, a former secretary of state under Barack Obama, was also described by senior Chinese officials as ‘an old friend’. But, unlike Kissinger, he didn’t get a meeting with Xi.
Instead, the Chinese leader attended a separate forum on climate change, where he said that China would pursue its own climate goals ‘free from outside interference’.
The contrasting approaches highlight the two-pronged position that Beijing is taking to repair a badly fractured relationship, according to the Wall Street Journal.
While accepting Washington’s entreaties to re-engage, it is pushing to do so on its own terms, as it regards the Americans as untrustworthy.
During Thursday’s meeting with Kissinger, Xi said: ‘I hope you and other insightful Americans will continue to play a constructive role in bringing US-China relations back on the right track.’
[Image: Kissinger, with Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong]