Henry Kissinger meets with sanctioned Chinese defense minister in Beijing

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met in Beijing with Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu, according to the Chinese Ministry of Defense.

Kissinger met with Li, who is under US sanction, in his capacity as a private citizen, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

Kissinger played a key role in the US rapprochement with China while serving as national security adviser under the Nixon administration. His trip to the Chinese capital comes following a period of immense friction between the United States and China, and as the US government has undertaken efforts in recent months to stabilize the relationship between the world’s two biggest economies. Multiple senior administration officials have traveled to China in the past month.

The Chinese government has rebuffed US efforts to engage in high-level military to military communications. They rejected a meeting between Li and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Shangri-La Dialogue earlier this year, although the two officials did speak briefly at the summit in Singapore.

According to the Chinese readout, Kissinger said he was in Beijing “as a friend of China,” and that “the United States and China should eliminate misunderstandings, coexist peacefully, and avoid confrontation.”

“History and practice have repeatedly proved that neither the US nor China can afford to treat the other as an adversary,” the centenarian said, according to the Chinese readout.

Miller, the State Department spokesperson, indicated that Secretary of State Antony Blinken found out about the meeting from his own meetings with Chinese officials in Beijing last month.

“We were aware that Henry Kissinger was traveling to China,” Miller said at a State Department briefing. “It actually came up in the meetings that Secretary Blinken had when we were in China.”

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