“I believe that the ultimate joining of Taiwan and China, the ultimate creation of one China, is the objective of Chinese policy,” Kissinger told Zakaria, “as it has been since the creation of the current regime and that it probably would be in any Chinese government since Taiwan has been considered a historic part of China that was taken away by Japan, by force. That was exactly the situation Nixon and I faced when we first began contact with China.“
Kissinger said Biden was hamstrung entering the virtual summit by domestic political constraints — “Everyone wants to be a China hawk” — but said he saw evidence that Biden was attempting to steer the U.S.-China relationship in a more productive direction.
“I think Biden began to move in a direction of a different tone. That does not mean it is yielding to China; it is to try to find a level in which we can talk about those things that are known to be common,” said Kissinger, who, at age 98, is the co-author of a new book, “The Age of AI: And Our Human Future.”
Nixon surprised the world by visiting China in early 1972, the first American president to do so since Mao Zedong had established a Communist government there in 1949. Nixon’s visit was preceded by secret visits by Kissinger, then-Nixon’s national security adviser, in 1971. "We have come to the People's Republic of China with an open mind and an open heart," Kissinger told Zhou Enlai, China's prime minister, in their meeting July 9, 1971.