By IANS,
Washington : Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger has said that a cooperative US-China relationship can avoid a “collision” of the two giants in Asia, Xinhua reported Wednesday.
Nobel laureate Kissinger was the 56th secretary of state of the US from 1973 to 1977.
“If we have a cooperative relationship, then the nations of Asia do not have to choose between China and the United States, and China and the United States can develop relations with other countries in Asia,” Kissinger said.
Kissinger, during his keynote speech at the one-day “Global China Summit” symposium organised by Washington Post Live, said: “The American concern is not to permit one country to dominate all of Asia,” he said.
“So if we have an adversarial relationship”, the two nations “will collide with each other”, Kissinger said.
The former diplomat also rejected the notion that China is a “rising country,” arguing that in 18 out of the last 20 centuries, China was the most powerful country in the world.
“The Chinese are reclaiming the place that has historically been China’s, and they are returning to this place,” he said.
Forty years ago, Kissinger had made a secret trip to China, paving the way for the normalisation of diplomatic ties between China and the US, the report added.