Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium

Appendix XLIII

期頤佞者

 

‘Of course, these people are murderous thugs, but this should not affect our good relations.’

— Henry Kissinger

 

Saturday 27th May 2023 marks the centenary of Henry A. Kissinger.

The advanced years of this notorious diplomat, political theorist and profit-hungry geopolitical consultant puts the lie to two oft-quoted Confucian axioms:

• ‘The good live long’ 仁者壽 (The Analects 論語·雍也); and,
• ‘Those possessed of outstanding virtue will surely enjoy longevity’ 大德必得其壽 (The Mean 中庸).

Kissinger’s genetic makeup, well-cushioned lifestyle and unwavering self-belief have daresay all contributed to his earthly persistence, although those familiar with the Chinese world may have their suspicions. His recognised acumen in The Art of Thick Skin and Black Heart 厚黑學 hoù hēi xué may have contributed to a certain sempiternal resilience, just as the one hundred trips that he has made to the People’s Republic over the span of half a century as policy wrangler and opportunistic businessman may have allowed him access to the 981 Longevity Project at PLA Hospital #301 in Beijing. That project aims to extend the lives of Communist Party Leaders to 150 years. Even with the combined scientific wiles of East and West, however, we are confident that Henry A. won’t be able to score another half century.

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During the northern summer of 2022, I was invited to join a new China think tank — one that would go on to advertise itself as a ‘do-tank’. A generous donation had led to a flurry of appointments. To my mind, however, the venture seemed ill-conceived and intellectually incoherent. My express concerns went unaddressed and, when the prospective ‘team’ of ‘do-tankers’ was advised that the launch of the new initiative would be marked by a conversation between the founder of the enterprise and Henry Kissinger on 1 October 2022, I knew that it was not for me.

— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
27 May 2023

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Update:

• Henry Alfred Kissinger died on 29 November 2023. See Ben Rhodes, Henry Kissinger, the Hypocrite, The New York Times, 30 November 2023; and, for a historian’s succinct view of Kissinger’s less-than-profound understanding of China, see Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Diplomatic Immunity?, Time Magazine, 13 June 2011.

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Related Material in Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium:

• Appendix V 朝 — Nixon in China, 21-28 February 2022 (this appendix consists of eight sections: 蒞 — Nixon’s Press Corps; 迓 — ‘Welcome to China, Mr. President!’; 撼 — A Week That Changed The World; 鞭 — The President & The Chairman in Retrospect; 迥 — Dissing Dissent; 見 — A storied Handshake, an excised Interpreter & a muted Anthem; and, 有目共睹 — Fools with Initiative)

Further Reading:

• Ted Koppel on Covering—and Befriending—Henry Kissinger, The New Yorker, 3 June 2023

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When the Chairman Met Nancy

I saw the following short news report of Kissinger’s December 1975 visit to Beijing during a stint at a people’s commune in Minhang, Shanghai. We watched it on the small TV set up by a creek where the village regularly gathered for entertainment and political rallies:

After shaking hands with the 1.93-metre Nancy, Kissinger’s second wife, Mao turned to Kissinger with a leer before giving them the thumbs up.

A loud guffaw went up in our little band of viewers after one lad shouted: ‘Our Great Leader is wondering how they fuck!’

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Dr. Strangelove

My brother Scot and I saw Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a 1964 film by Stanley Kubrick, during its initial Sydney release. Although it had a lot to do with the anti-war and anti-nuke culture of the 1960s, there was no direct link to Kissinger that is, at least until 1972, when Henry’s role in Washington-Beijing diplomacy under Nixon and Mao was revealed. That was followed by the escalation of (barely covert) war in Laos and Cambodia, the 1973 coup in Chile, the massacre in East Timor, events in Iran, and so on and so forth, all of which bore the unmistakable imprimatur of Kissinger.

Henceforth, to my mind at least, Dr. Strangelove/Henry Kissinger was a palimpsest personality.

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Dr. Strangelove’s ‘astonishingly good idea’

 

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As a commentary in The Guardian observed:

…in the United States, Kissinger is untouchable. There, one of the 20th century’s most prolific butchers is beloved by the rich and powerful, regardless of their partisan affiliation. Kissinger’s bipartisan appeal is straightforward: he was a top strategist of America’s empire of capital at a critical moment in that empire’s development.

Small wonder that the political establishment has regarded Kissinger as an asset and not an aberration. He embodied what the two ruling parties share: the resolve to ensure favorable conditions for American investors in as much of the world as possible. A stranger to shame and inhibition, Kissinger was able to guide the American empire through a treacherous period in world history, when the United States’ rise to global domination sometimes seemed on the brink of collapse.

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Henry and China — decouple that!

from Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2001)

 

… [T]here is a perfect congruence between Kissinger’s foreign policy counsel and his own business connections. One might call it a harmony of interests, rather than a conflict.

Six years after he left office, Kissinger set up a private consulting firm named Kissinger Associates, which exists to smooth and facilitate contact between multinational corporations and foreign governments. The client list is secret, and contracts with “the Associates” contain a clause prohibiting any mention of the arrangement, but corporate clients include or have included American Express, Shearson Lehmann, Arco, Daewoo of South Korea, H.J. Heinz, ITT Lockheed, Anheuser-Busch, the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Coca-Cola, Fiat, Revlon, Union Carbide, and the Midland Bank.

Kissinger’s initial fellow “associates” were General Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger, both of whom had worked closely with him in the foreign policy and national security branches of government.

Numerous instances of a harmony between this firm and Kissinger’s policy pronouncements can be cited. The best-known is probably that of the People’s Republic of China. Kissinger assisted several American conglomerates, notably H.J. Heinz, to gain access to the Chinese market. As it was glowingly phrased by Anthony J.F. O’Reilly, CEO of Heinz:

Kissinger and his associates make a real contribution, and we think they are particularly helpful in countries with more centrally planned economies, where the principal players and the dynamics among the principal players are of critical importance. This is particularly true in China, where he is a popular figure and is viewed with particular respect. On China, basically, we were well on our way to establishing the baby food presence there before Henry got involved. But once we decided to move he had practical points to offer, such as on the relationship between Taiwan and Beijing. He was helpful in seeing that we did not take steps that would not have been helpful in Beijing. His relevance obviously varies from market to market, but he’s probably at his best in helping with contacts in that shadowy world where that counts.

The Chinese term for this zone of shadowy transactions is guan-xi. In less judgmental American speech it would probably translate as “access,” or influence-peddling. Selling baby food in China may seem innocuous enough, but when the Chinese regime turned its guns and tanks on its own children in Tienanmen Square in 1989, it had no more staunch defender than Henry Kissinger. Arguing very strongly against sanctions, he wrote that “China remains too important for America’s national security to risk the relationship on the emotions of the moment.” Taking the Deng Xiaoping view of the democratic turbulence, and even the view of those we now suppose to have pressed Deng from the Right, he added, “No government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks by tens of thousands of demonstrators.” Of course, some governments would have found a way to meet with the leaders of those demonstrators. … It is perhaps just as well that Kissinger’s services were not retained by the Stalinist regimes of Romania, Czechoslovakia and East Germany, which succumbed to just such public insolence later in the same year.

Nor was Kissinger’s influence-peddling confined to Heinz’s nutritious products. He assisted Atlantic Richfield/Arco to market oil deposits in China. He helped ITT (a corporation which had once helped him to overthrow the elected government of Chile) to hold a path-breaking board meeting in Beijing, and he performed similar services for David Rockefeller and the Chase Manhattan Bank, which held an international advisory committee meeting in the Chinese capital and met with Deng himself.

Six months before the massacre in Tienanmen Square, Kissinger set up a limited investment partnership named China Ventures, of which he personally was chairman, CEO and chief partner. Its brochure helpfully explained that China Ventures involved itself only with projects that “enjoy the unquestioned support of the People’s Republic of China.” The move proved premature: the climate for investment on the Chinese mainland soured after the repression that followed the Tienanmen Square massacres, and the limited sanctions approved by Congress. This no doubt contributed to Kissinger’s irritation at the criticism of Deng. But while China Ventures lasted, it drew large commitments from American Express, Coca-Cola, Heinz and a large mining and extraction conglomerate named Freeport McMoRan… .

Many of Kissinger’s most extreme acts have been undertaken, at least ostensibly, in the name of anti-Communism. So it is amusing to find him exerting himself on behalf of a regime that can guarantee safe investment by virtue of a ban on trade unions, a slave-labor prison system, and a one-party ideology.

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‘It would be a drag for Henry Kissinger to live to a hundred and Christopher to keel over next year.’

— Carol Blue, Christopher Hitchens’s wife, in 2006

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