Henry Kissinger, giant of US foreign policy, died on Wednesday last week. He managed to round out a full century, during which he played an outsized role in shaping the geopolitics of the 20th century, for better or worse — depending on who you ask. There is much to unpack about his legacy, and certainly no lack of debate. Yet even among his more trenchant critics, many would concede that Kissinger may count “opening” China among his greatest and most positive achievements. The view from Taiwan, however, is a little different.
Reacting to the news, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on X, formerly known as Twitter, did not make much effort to hide its feelings on the man, saying only that it “notes” Kissinger’s passing and “recognize[s] Kissinger’s efforts to bring about peace and prosperity in the Indo Pacific.” For the KMT, the 50-year-old wounds Kissinger inflicted are as fresh as ever.
In their determination to normalize relations with Beijing to counter the Soviet Union, Kissinger as then-US national security adviser and then-US president Richard Nixon arranged a secret meeting with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership, which a year later led to the historic 1972 meeting between Nixon and Mao Zedong (毛澤東). Wanting to avoid that pesky democratic process, Kissinger and Nixon did their utmost to conceal their machinations and therefore any debate about their methods until it was too late.
The CCP undoubtedly saw a kindred spirit in Kissinger, and believed him when he insinuated that the White House was willing to abandon Taiwan. He proceeded to make concessions that shocked many of his American colleagues, including withdrawing the US military from Taiwan, disavowing Taiwanese independence and failing to condemn the use of force.
The Watergate scandal and Nixon’s eventual ousting would scupper the pair’s plans before they were fully realized. As a consequence, both sides were left to deal with the duplicitous framework that Kissinger helped lay. Each side felt betrayed, and has been attempting to build atop the precarious language in the Shanghai Communique ever since.
It is arguable that Kissinger’s approach was not necessary at all. His backroom wheeling and dealing is often credited as the only way the US could have normalized relations with China. However, both sides were already looking for an in with each other to counter the Soviet Union. Even Mao’s biggest rival at the time, Lin Biao (林彪), who vehemently advocated for relations with Moscow over Washington, ended up dead amid suspicious circumstances.
It is reasonable to argue that an agreement could have been reached without selling Taiwan down the river, but thanks to Kissinger and Nixon shutting everyone else out of the room, that alternative timeline is lost to history.
Nixon and Kissinger did not seem to mind sacrificing the little guy — a recurring theme of Kissinger’s career. The growing Taiwanese independence movement barely registered as a blip on their radar — private tape recordings of their conversations from the period reveal their bafflement at the movement’s existence and ultimate agreement that “if they want to secede, that’s their business.” They had trouble seeing beyond the views of Mao and his enemy Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who agreed on the “one China” formulation. They failed to foresee the power of public sentiment and the impact that, over time, the Taiwanese democratic movement would bring.
For better or worse, China, the US and Taiwan are stuck with the frameworks concocted in back rooms by Kissinger and his contemporaries. The debate will continue about whether the good has outweighed the bad, but it is undeniable the world has changed as a result of that 1971 meeting. Kissinger’s passing marks a transition into a new era, which is an era not served by the rules of a game played decades past.
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