Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

I was living in Shanghai early in 2013 when I received an invitation to attend a conference in the city attended by, among others, a large delegation of Princeton University’s leadership. Most of the Princeton contingent were academics-turned-administrators, and few had spent any amount of time in China. As I chatted with them during breaks and meals during the two-day conference, I quickly realized that several members of the group had prepared for the trip by reading On China, Henry Kissinger’s doorstop of memoir/analysis published in 2011. One after another, as the Princeton administrators learned that I was a graduate student in Chinese history, they spoke about On China with me as if I had read it.

I had not read On China. I had no intention of ever reading On China. I was not, in fact, particularly interested in what Henry Kissinger had to say on China.

Rather than state this outright, to declare that in my opinion there were much better ways to learn about China than slog through a 600-page tome written by America’s most notorious professor-turned-government official-turned business consultant, I laughed off the question. I had a dissertation to write, I explained, and needed to focus on that. I knew of Kissinger’s book, of course, and had seen some reviews, but it was long! I had so much to read and analyze for my own work that I just didn’t have the time to pick it up at the moment. Maybe in the future, I said, mentally crossing my fingers. The Princeton people, satisfied by my explanation, reiterated their praise for the book and recommended that I dig into it when I had the time.

I did, actually, purchase a used copy of On China after that, thinking that perhaps I needed to at least skim through it in order to be taken seriously by the kind of people who read books like On China. I think I read 30 or 40 pages, making notes in the margins like “???” and “whatever.” And then I decided that I did not in fact need to read On China to build a career working on China.

After Kissinger’s death at the age of 100 last week, there were innumerable obituaries and think pieces and essays—some authors attempting studied neutrality on his so-called “mixed legacy” as National Security Advisor/Secretary of State, others celebrating what they considered his successes as an architect of Cold War international relations, many more arguing that whatever Kissinger’s accomplishments, his ruthless—and criminal—actions deserve far more scrutiny and condemnation.

I’m firmly in the third camp, appalled by the idea that anything could outweigh Kissinger’s directives to bomb Cambodia, his willful enabling of Pakistan’s military dictatorship and genocide in Bangladesh, his decision to take down Salvador Allende in Chile and facilitate Augusto Pinochet’s rise to power, and so much more. The fact that Kissinger played a key role in Richard Nixon’s “opening of China”—a condescending formulation, as if the PRC were a passive entity requiring American initiative to establish relations—isn’t enough to convince me that he then earned 50 years of accolades and access.

That, however, is what a secret flight to Beijing in July 1971 earned Kissinger: five decades of meetings with Chinese Communist Party leaders, an ultra-lucrative consulting career, plaudits for On China. Long after he left government service, Kissinger continued to meet with government officials on both sides, reinforcing his reputation as a bridge between the countries who could facilitate bilateral relations in spite of ambient tensions. Following his death, Xi Jinping sent a personal condolence note to President Biden in which he referred to Kissinger as “a world-renowned strategist, and a good old friend of the Chinese people.”

Being an “old friend of the Chinese people” is much more about being an old friend of the Chinese Party-state. Kissinger helped that Party-state achieve an international foothold in the 1970s, then helped it attract multinational companies to the PRC and grow the country’s economy (as well as his own bank account) in the following decades. He promoted engagement and exchange, yes, but Kissinger’s version of those terms feels very different from how I and my counterparts on both sides of the Pacific understand them today—acquiring the kind of person-to-person, ground-level knowledge that can only be achieved through prolonged immersion.

His depiction of China, and U.S.-China engagement, came from decades of high-level access. Kissinger’s China was staying at state guesthouses, toasts with Zhou Enlai and sit-downs with Xi Jinping, dispensing geostrategic advice to global corporations at an hourly rate. My China is the Shanghai subway at rush hour, endless days in libraries and archives, talking with classmates and colleagues to learn where our life experiences overlapped or diverged.

The China on which Kissinger was considered a leading expert is not a China that I have known, although that makes it no less real. For that reason, I wouldn’t outright tell anyone not to read On China. But I find it difficult to imagine recommending that as the book to read about China in 2023 (or at any point since 2011).

The world needs to abandon the imagined era of sage elder statesmen making geopolitical moves; as Kissinger’s track record shows, those moves were purely about securing power at the top, with little regard for the lives affected below. We need to relegate that approach, and the kind of realpolitik espoused by Kissinger in On China and his other publications, to the past—never to be forgotten, but also never to be glossed over as resulting in a “mixed legacy.”

Further Reading

James T. Areddy and Charles Hutzler, “In China, Henry Kissinger Was the Ultimate Door-Opener”

Kissinger’s apologists today tend to breeze past such coarse stereotypes about foreign nations, extolling his pursuit of U.S. national interests while overlooking the toll on real human beings. Decades after the South Asia crisis, the bland version of Kissinger that now prevails bears scant relation to the historical record. The uncomfortable question is why much of American polite society was so willing to dote on him, rather than honestly confronting what he did.

Gary J. Bass, “The People Who Didn’t Matter to Henry Kissinger”

Keith Bradsher, Siyi Zhao and Amy Chang Chien, “To Many Chinese, Kissinger’s Death Ends an Era in U.S.-China Relations”
James Carter, “Kissinger’s secret trip in 1971 that paved the way for U.S.-China relations”
Michiko Kakutani, “An Insider Views China, Past and Future”
Ryan Ho Kilpatrick, “Old Friends of the Chinese People”
Evan Osnos, “Henry Kissinger’s Hard Compromises”
Wang Qingyun, “Xi mourns passing of old and good friend”
Jonathan D. Spence, “Kissinger and China”
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, “Diplomatic Immunity?”
Pei-Lin Wu and Vic Chiang, “China pays tribute to Kissinger, ‘old friend of the Chinese people’”

Feature Photo: Henry Kissinger meets with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai standing in the background. Image in the public domain, via Wikimedia.