May 27 2008
The first rock star in PR China
Long before Mick Jagger and the Dream Threter, there was Henry Kissinger, the very first rock star in the People’s Republic of China, not just American rock star, he was the most talked about rocker, period. Famous and larger than his boss Nixon.
Auntie Spalding’s 4×4 meter home (a single room) in Building 16 was the little salon for the literatis. They were all Mom’s collegues, the employees of Institute of Zoology at CAS in Zhongguancun. They loved to debate about current events and politics, however poorly informed and cut off from the rest of the world. It made Kissinger more than the beacon of hope, he was every thing bright and grand.
I’ve been wondering why there is so little mentioning of the pair Nixon/Kissinger who bridged China to the world. A book Nixonland by Rick Perlstein just came out.
Under the current climate, Dr. Kissinger sees ‘China is a country with a record of continuous self-government going back 4,000 years, the only society that has achieved this. One must start with the assumption that they must have learnt something about the requirements for survival, and it is not always to be assumed that we know it better than they do.
“Secondly, because they are likely to be a permanent factor in the world, the dominant or most influential actor in their region of the world that has become so important economically and geopolitically, it becomes the most serious challenge for us, as relations with the United States are for them.
“Some here in the United States believe that if we democratise China, they will become more tractable. This assumes that we know what democratise means. Is it indeed likely that they will become more pliable?” Clearly, he doubts this.
“It is imperative to realise that we cannot do in China in the 21st century what others thought to do in the 19th, prescribe their institutions for them and seek to organise Asia. The Chinese people have undergone huge changes since 1971. The China of 2008 is totally different from the one I first visited. The Communist party is different and though we need not agree with every action taken by Chinese leaders, we cannot simply set ourselves up as their critics.”’
On foreign policy, he said, “if we give attention to our values, are candid about the nation’s capabilities, and are prepared to deny the cherished American ideal that every problem has a solution that can be realised in a specific time-frame, some major problems can be managed.”