In Beijing on Wednesday, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called on China and the United States to “dispel misunderstandings and live peacefully together” during a meeting with Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu.

According to a statement from China’s defense ministry, Kissinger said that in today’s world, challenges and opportunities coexist, and that Beijing and Washington should “avoid confrontation.”

The veteran American politician said he hoped the two powers would do their best to achieve positive results in the development of the bilateral relationship to ensure world peace and stability.

“History and facts have repeatedly shown that the US and China cannot afford to treat each other as adversaries,” he stressed.

According to the same note, Li Shangfu said people around the world expect China and the US to “take responsibility” as great countries and “together defend global prosperity and stability.”

The minister, the target of US sanctions since 2018 over the purchase of military equipment from Russia, urged the US to work with China to “implement the consensus of the leaders of both countries and establish a healthy and stable development of relations between the two”. countries and their respective armies”.

“Impossible to surround or contain” China

In response, China’s top diplomat Wang Yi deemed China “impossible to surround or contain”.

“China’s development has strong intrinsic dynamics and an inescapable historical logic. It is impossible to try to transform China, and it is even more impossible to encircle and restrain it,” said the director of the Bureau of China. the Foreign Relations Committee of the Communist Party. from China.

Wang welcomed the “friendship with old friends in China” and thanked Kissinger for his “historic contributions to the thawing of relations between China and the United States”.

“China’s policy towards the United States has maintained and follows President Xi Jinping’s fundamental guidelines: mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and mutually beneficial cooperation,” he said.

“These three guidelines are fundamental and long-term, and are the right way for China and the United States, two great countries, to interact,” the Chinese diplomat said.

Wang Yi added that “US policy towards China needs Kissinger-style diplomatic wisdom and Richard Nixon-style political courage,” referring to the former US president, who established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic.

Kissinger, national security adviser and secretary of state to Richard Nixon (1969-1974) and Gerald Ford (1974-1977), is considered the architect of the normalization of relations with China.

The former American politician continued to visit China in recent decades, where he met Xi Jinping on several occasions.

Washington’s openness to China, then isolated, sparked the beginning of the economic transformation of the Asian country, today the second largest economy in the world behind only the United States.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Kissinger made his fortune advising companies investing in China and warned of tougher US policy on Beijing.

Kissinger’s unannounced visit coincides with the presence in China of US special envoy for climate affairs John Kerry, who also served as secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 during part of Barack Obama’s presidential term.

Current US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen also recently visited Beijing, aiming to strengthen the bilateral relationship, which is going through its worst moment since entering into the bilateral relations in 1979. , in the face of a protracted trade war and disputes over South China Sea sovereignty, the status of Taiwan or human rights issues.