“Today, this ‘old friend of the Chinese people,’ who had a sharp vision and a thorough understanding of world affairs, has completed his legendary life,” China News said in an obituary published soon after the announcement that Kissinger had died at home in Connecticut on Wednesday night.
China Central Television, the state broadcaster, called Kissinger a “legendary diplomat” and a “living fossil” who had witnessed the development of China-U. S. relationship.
The news quickly became a trending topic on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, with the hashtag of “Kissinger just came to China this year” racking up 56 million views within an hour of the announcement.
Kissinger had visited China more than 100 times, most recently in July, as Beijing was seeking to reset relations with Washington — and when Communist Party leaders were nostalgic for the days when the elder statesman was at his most influential.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping — who declined to meet climate change envoy John F. Kerry, who was in Beijing at the same time — told Kissinger that “old friends” like him would never be forgotten.
“The Chinese people never forget their old friends, and Sino-U. S. relations will always be linked with the name of Henry Kissinger,” Xi told Kissinger, both sitting in easy armchairs at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse. Noting that Kissinger has just celebrated his 100th birthday and has visited China more than 100 times, Xi said the July visit was of “special significance,” state media reported at the time.
This came after Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, harked back to the 1970s. “U.S. policy toward China requires the diplomatic wisdom of Kissinger and the political courage of Nixon,” Wang reportedly said.
Kissinger, who served as secretary of state and national security adviser in the Nixon and Ford administrations, was central to the effort to normalize relations between Washington and Beijing in the 1970s.
This began in 1971 when, on a trip to Pakistan, he pretended to be sick so he could shake off the press corps and secretly fly to Beijing, where he met with Premier Zhou Enlai.
The main issue — then and now — was the status of Taiwan, as the United States recognized the nationalist Kuomintang, which had fled to the island after losing the civil war to the Communist Party in 1949, as the sole government of China.
This trip, which Chinese still refer to as the “handshake across the Pacific,” laid the groundwork for President Richard M. Nixon’s historic trip the following year, the first time an American president had visited China since the establishment of the People’s Republic.
It resulted in the “Shanghai Communique,” in which both China and the United States agreed to work toward the full normalization of relations. The United States also acknowledged that “Taiwan is a part of China” and that once this principle was established, neither would do anything to change Taiwan’s quasi-independent status.
It took another seven years — and two more presidents — but the two countries officially recognized each other in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was president.
Since those early days, Kissinger has met with five successive Chinese leaders: Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Xi, earning him the moniker “old friend of the Chinese people.”
