President Xi Jinping has welcomed former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Beijing for their first public sit-down in the Chinese capital in four years.
The Chinese leader is meeting with Kissinger at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse on Thursday, noting the former diplomat has visited the country more than 100 times since 1971 when he helped “break the ice” between China and the US, according to a short video and statement released by state broadcaster China Central Television.
Kissinger — long viewed as an “old friend” of Beijing, a phrase reiterated in the video — is visiting the country at the same time the Biden administration is pushing to stabilize diplomatic relations.
US climate envoy John Kerry visited Beijing this week as part of that mission, where he’s meeting top officials and restarting environmental talks between the world’s two top polluters. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was in China earlier this month to help resume dialogue.
Kissinger, who was a top US diplomat and national security adviser at the White House in the 1970s, has regularly met with senior Beijing officials since playing a key role in normalizing US-China ties under former President Richard Nixon.
Xi met with the former American envoy at the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square in 2019, where he expressed appreciation for Kissinger’s “sincere feelings” and efforts to promote the development of ties with the US. Xie Feng, China’s ambassador to the US, visited Kissinger in May and expressed his best wishes for the former US official’s 100th birthday.
Earlier this week, Kissinger met with Chinese defense minister Li Shangfu, who blamed the actions of “some people” in the US for the breakdown of friendly bilateral ties, according to a Chinese government readout.
Kissinger said that “neither the US or China can afford the price of treating each other as enemy,” the statement noted.
China froze high-level military dialogue with the US after the Biden administration refused to lift sanctions imposed on the Chinese general in 2018. Beijing maintains that the curbs prevented a sit-down between Li and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at a security forum in Singapore earlier this year.
Li told Kissinger on Tuesday that China hopes to work with the US for a healthy and stable relationship between the two nations and their militaries, according to the readout.
Still, the US admiral in charge of the Indo-Pacific Command said Tuesday that his recent attempts to contact Chinese counterparts have been disregarded or declined, including a recent invitation to attend the annual chiefs of defense conference in Fiji next month.
In June, Kissinger sounded a downbeat tone on the state of ties between Washington and Beijing, days before Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to the nation as part of a mission to reset relations.
Military conflict between China and Taiwan is likely if tensions continue on their current course, Kissinger said in an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait. “But I also think the current trajectory of relations must be altered,” he added.