Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Limited wars, incremental annexation of foreign territory, wild claims, empty threats, cartography, hectoring, sermons—these have all been the tools in China’s “diplomacy” for a long time.
Amid the escalating US-China tensions on a variety of issues now, lest others forget it, Beijing’s top diplomat has claimed that it is “impossible to try to transform, contain or encircle” his country.
Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi told his eminent US counterpart Henry Kissinger on Wednesday that it is “impossible to contain or encircle” China, hailing the former US Secretary of State’s role in opening up relations between Washington and Beijing, the media reported.
“China’s development has a strong endogenous momentum and inevitable historical logic, and it is impossible to try to transform China, and it is even more impossible to encircle and contain China,” Wang told the 100-year-old Kissinger in a meeting in Beijing, according to a foreign ministry statement, in what is seen a clear warning to Washington.
At the same time, he applauded China’s “friendship established with old friends,” and Wang praised Kissinger’s “historic contributions to the ice-breaking development of China-US relations.”
In an attempt to create a counterweight and contain the Russia-led USSR, Kissinger, then US National Security Advisor, secretly flew to Beijing in July 1971 on a mission to establish relations with Communist China. This paved the way for then-US President Richard Nixon to visit in February 1972.
“China’s policy towards the United States maintains a high degree of continuity, and follows the fundamental guidelines proposed by President Xi Jinping, which are mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation,” Wang added.
“These three guidelines are fundamental and long-term, and they are also the right way for China and the United States, two big countries, to get along with each other,” China’s top diplomat said.
“The US policy toward China needs Kissinger-style diplomatic wisdom and Nixon-style political courage,” he added, referring to the former US president who established diplomatic ties with Communist-run China.
That trip set the stage for a landmark official visit by Nixon who sought both the countries to shake up the Cold War and enlist help ending the Vietnam War.
Washington’s opening to then-isolated Beijing contributed to China’s rise to become a manufacturing powerhouse and the world’s largest economy after the United States.
Since leaving office, Kissinger has grown wealthy advising businesses on China — and has warned against the hawkish turn in US policy.