Peter Schweizer: How Henry Kissinger Became an ‘Old Friend’ of China Who ‘Rendered Great Help’ to the CCP
The following was excerpted from Peter Schweizer’s #1 New York Times bestselling book Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win.
Henry Kissinger, the dean of American diplomats, once confided in a colleague his concerns about the challenge that Beijing would present to the United States. “When [the Chinese] don’t need us,” he reportedly said, “they are going to be very difficult to deal with.”
Apparently, until that time comes, there is no reason not to cash in.
Kissinger pioneered the idea of cashing in by using the relationships he had forged serving as America’s chief diplomat. Kissinger was the national security advisor to President Richard Nixon, and later secretary of state under Nixon and later President Gerald Ford. Most important, he had impeccable ties in the country that he had helped open in 1972: China. It was Kissinger, after all, who had conducted the secret diplomacy with Chinese officials beginning in 1971 that led to the restoration of diplomatic ties between the two countries in 1972. As a result, he is revered in Chinese government circles. Kissinger, in return, was awed by Chinese leaders. “No other world leaders have the sweep and imagination of Mao and Chou [Zhou] nor the capacity and will to pursue a long-range policy,” he marveled to Nixon after one meeting in Beijing. Chairman Mao was apparently less impressed. He reportedly told British prime minister Edward Heath that Kissinger was “just a funny little man. He is shuddering all over with nerves every time he comes to see me.”
When he left government service in 1977, Kissinger had spent his entire career in academe and government. Now it was time to make some money. “Making money is actually boring, even if it is necessary,” he reportedly told Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko in their last meeting.
In July 1982, he launched Kissinger Associates as an active business. Kissinger had no legal training and no background in finance, so the prospect of joining a high-powered law firm or investment bank was not an option. But he had something more important than both of those qualities: he had unparalleled relationships overseas—especially important were impeccable ties in Beijing.
Kissinger was clearly a regime favorite. As a private citizen, he repeatedly visited Beijing at the invitation of the Chinese government, often meeting with Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese leaders.
China in the early 1980s was still off the beaten path for many Western corporations. There can be little doubt, though, that many corporate leaders saw the massive potential in a market of one billion people. The work of Kissinger Associates included opening doors for foreign clients, but his most important and lucrative role was cutting through government regulations in Beijing. To do business in China, for example, you needed government endorsement and approval. As one Indian scholar allows, for Kissinger, this “often involved making a few well-placed phone calls to friends in top government positions.”
At the same time, Kissinger was a widely cited spokesman and commentator on foreign affairs, appearing on network television, in America’s leading newspapers, and of course in America’s bookstores. Kissinger seemed to ride these two horses at once until the tragic events of June 1989 put him in an awkward position. That was when the People’s Liberation Army marched into Tiananmen Square. The conflict resulted in the deaths of thousands of peaceful protestors. As events unfolded, Kissinger went on ABC News, where anchor Peter Jennings asked him: “What should America do?” Kissinger was calm and noted that we needed to maintain close relations and “I wouldn’t do any sanctions.” ABC News was paying him $100,000 a year at the time to provide insight and commentary on world events. In his newspaper columns, Kissinger took the same line, explaining that while he was “shocked by the brutality” of what had happened, we needed to view it as “an internal matter.”
Kissinger defended the Chinese government’s actions, strangely arguing, “No government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks,” and that “a crackdown was therefore inevitable.” How the United States responded was key, he argued, rejecting economic sanctions and suggesting that we could not do much. Doing little was “a test of our political maturity.” Above all, he maintained, it was “too important for American national security to risk the relationship on the emotions of the moment.”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/11/30/peter-schweizer-how-henry-kissinger-became-an-old-friend-of-china-who-rendered-great-help-to-the-ccp/