HONG KONG – Chinese President Xi Jinping met veteran US diplomat Henry Kissinger in Beijing on Thursday, calling him an «old friend», Chinese state media reported.
Xi said the visit by Kissinger, who has been to China more than 100 times and recently turned 100, had special significance because of the two «hundreds.»
Kissinger, who at the time was national security adviser to President Richard Nixon, made a secret trip to China in 1971 that set the stage for a historic trip by Nixon the following year and the formalization of US-China relations in 1979. .
“Not only did it change the two countries, but it also changed the world,” Xi said, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
Xi said the Chinese people value their country’s friendship with Kissinger and the US.
«We will never forget our old friend and his historic contribution to promoting the development of Sino-US relations and enhancing the friendship between the Chinese and American peoples,» he said.
Kissinger said it was a «great honour» to visit China again, noting that his meeting with Xi at the Diaoyutai State Guest House, where many important diplomatic events are held, was the same place where he met Zhou Enlai in 1971. , the Chinese premier. At the time.
«The relationship between the two countries is related to world peace and the progress of human society,» Kissinger said, according to CCTV.
The United States and China, now the world’s two largest economies, have recently experienced some of their worst relations since diplomatic ties were established amid disputes over trade, human rights and the status of Taiwan, an autonomous island that Beijing claims as his territory.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said this week that the Biden administration was aware of Kissinger’s visit to China, but was acting «of his own free will, not acting on behalf of the United States government.»
Kissinger’s visit to Beijing coincided with that of John Kerry, the US climate envoy, who met senior Chinese officials but not Xi. Kerry, whose trip marked the first formal high-level climate diplomacy between the world’s two biggest carbon polluters since talks broke down last year, ended his trip on Wednesday without the two countries issuing a joint statement on climate cooperation.
Xi also did not meet Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen when she was in Beijing this month.
He met Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month during Blinken’s long-awaited visit to China, which was postponed from February due to the Chinese spy balloon incident.
Kissinger also met this week with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi and Defense Minister Li Shangfu, who is under US sanctions and turned down a Pentagon request to meet Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in May, on the sidelines of a security forum in Singapore.
«America’s China policy requires Kissinger-style diplomatic wisdom and Nixon-style political courage,» Wang told Kissinger during their meeting on Wednesday, according to the official website of China’s Foreign Ministry.