“There is special news this afternoon—you are lost.”
That was how Zhou En-Lai greeted Henry Kissinger at their now-famous meeting in Beijing on July 9, 1971. The trip was a closely guarded secret. No one knew where Kissinger was—he had feigned an illness and decamped from a Pakistani airfield in the dead of night for face-to-face talks with the Chinese. He didn’t even pack a clean shirt for his 48-hour mission. But, that first meeting between President Nixon’s National Security Advisor and Chairman Mao’s Prime Minister led directly to the first visit by a U.S. President to China and the opening of relations between our nations—a trip that was dubbed, “the week that changed the world.” Over the past four decades, we’ve seen how prescient that assessment was.
I recently returned from my own visit to China—my third since becoming National Security Advisor. None of mine had to be secret. I always brought clean clothes. On each visit, I met with President Xi and China’s top leadership, conveying President Obama’s personal commitment to advancing the relationship between our countries, while candidly addressing our differences. On my last trip in late August, I spent more than eight hours in intensive discussions with my Chinese counterpart and many more with other senior officials discussing our nations’ priorities, our expectations of one another, and our visions for the future—where they overlap and how we will handle disagreements.
President Obama will continue our frank and comprehensive discussions when he welcomes President Xi to the White House later this week for a State Visit. Over the past two years, President Xi and President Obama have spent many hours meeting in formal and informal settings, as well as communicating through phone calls and letters, because many global challenges today can only be met with China and the United States working in concert.
It is against this backdrop—as President Obama has often said—that the United States welcomes a rising China that is peaceful, stable, prosperous, and a responsible player in global affairs. It’s natural that China take on greater leadership to match its economic development and growing capabilities.
https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/national-security-advisor-susan-e-rices-prepared-remarks-u-s-china-relationship-george-washington-university/