“On China,” the book written by Henry Kissinger in 2011, is neither a biography of the Asian dragon nor a conventional diplomatic manual. Rather, it is the geopolitical testament of an unapologetic realist, an architect of global power who viewed the East through the same lenses he used to design the Cold War: dark lenses, without illusions, without romanticism, and with a clear obsession with hegemonic stability.
In more than 500 pages, Kissinger offers an intimate and pragmatic account of his relationship with Chinese leaders, from Mao Zedong to Deng Xiaoping, recounting in detail the secret negotiations that paved the way for the rapprochement between Washington and Beijing in the 1970s. But more than a memoir, the book is a thesis: China, says Kissinger, has never stopped thinking in terms of “wei qi,” the ancient strategy game in which one doesn’t eliminate one’s adversary but rather encircles, constrains, and deters it. Translated into the language of international politics: subtle containment, imperial patience, and narrative control.
Unlike the West, which tends to think of foreign policy in terms of direct confrontation (the classic chess game of military logic), China—according to Kissinger—is willing to wait decades to advance a strategic position. This interpretation takes on new meaning in a world where Beijing no longer merely reacts, but proposes: the Silk Road, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, leadership in artificial intelligence, yuan diplomacy.
Kissinger acknowledges this transformation, but insists on a fundamental nuance: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) does not seek to export a model, but rather to ensure that no one imposes its own. In other words, more than ideological expansion, what drives China is a combination of historical survival (post-Opium War, post-“century of humiliation”) and the restoration of the “mandate of heaven” lost during Western colonization and the civil war.
One of the most frequent criticisms of the book is that it is guilty of complacency. Some accuse him of legitimizing a sinister vision of Chinese authoritarianism under the guise of stability. And they are not wrong. Kissinger carefully avoids moral judgments about the CCP regime, even when describing episodes such as the Tiananmen crackdown. Realpolitik or diplomatic cynicism? For Kissinger, the two are functionally synonymous.
What he does make clear is that the United States’ greatest mistake would be to treat China as it did the USSR: with an all-out, open Cold War. The price, he warns, would be the collapse of the international order.
Although written in 2011, the text resonates with chilling relevance. Kissinger anticipates—without directly mentioning them—current dilemmas: the conflict over Taiwan, the militarization of the South China Sea, technological competition with Silicon Valley, and China’s growing isolation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. He filters all of this through an obsessive idea: not to underestimate China’s historical memory.
“The empire of the center,” Kissinger reminds us, “was never completely colonized.” And that’s not just a note of national pride: it’s a source of legitimacy for the party and a warning to its adversaries. In the author’s own words: “The Chinese don’t think in terms of definitive solutions, but rather in terms of lasting balances.”
“On China” is an essential book for understanding the 21st century, not because it offers answers, but because it redefines the questions. Can an authoritarian power be part of the liberal order without destroying it? Should the United States adapt to a multipolar world or resist until it collapses? Is strategic coexistence possible with a civilization that doesn’t share our values, but does share our ambitions?
The reader leaves the book uncertain, but with a clear intuition: if there is anything more dangerous than a belligerent China, it is a misunderstood China. And Kissinger, with his ups and downs, remains one of the few who managed to sit at the wei qi table without losing his composure or his composure.
Kissinger’s “On China”: The Art of Surrounding the Enemy Without It Noticing
Henry Kissinger didn’t write On China as a tribute. He wrote it as a warning. Neither praise nor condemnation: a surgical diagnosis. A kind of black-and-white X-ray of a patient who is always in motion. China is not, and never was, a conventional nation. It is a civilization that believes itself eternal. And Kissinger knew it, because he visited it before any American Secretary of State. And because he understood it before any Western strategist.
This book is not for quick reading. Nor for naive reading. What is presented here is not “the history of China,” but the way an empire thinks, hopes, and acts. An empire that, unlike the West, does not seek to destroy its adversary: it prefers to bleed it dry in silence.
The thrust of the book is simple: how to live with a power that doesn’t share your values, but does share your ambition. The former Secretary of State doesn’t propose an alliance, but rather an agreement for mutual survival. Because—and this is the crux of the matter—if the 20th century was a century of hot and cold wars, the 21st century will be a century of unstable equilibrium.
And therein lies the central thesis: while the West plays chess (direct elimination of the rival), China plays wei qi (the art of encircling, limiting, and inducing error). To the uninformed reader, this may sound poetic. But Kissinger is no poet: he is pragmatism incarnate. And his analysis is not a praise of Taoism, but a strategic warning: “If we don’t understand how China thinks, we will wake up one day surrounded by its pieces without having noticed that the board has changed.”
Maoism Wasn’t an Ideology, It Was a Staged Play
Kissinger debunks another useful myth: Maoism was not a communist project in the Soviet sense, but a form of imperial reconstruction based on trauma. The Cultural Revolution was the purifying fire of a millennia-old state humiliated for centuries. Sound brutal? Because it was. Sounds functional? Yes.
In his meetings with Mao and Zhou Enlai, Kissinger discerns something that neither Kennedy nor Reagan could have tolerated: ideological coldness and strategic clarity. “They didn’t want to be our friends, they wanted to be our equals,” he notes in his clinical style. And that, for Washington, was more dangerous than Soviet communism.
Deng Xiaoping: The Architect of Seduction
The second half of the book is a fascinating study of how China chooses to modernize without Westernizing. Under Deng, the country embraces the market, but not democracy. It opens the economy, but shuts down dissent. And it does so without asking permission. For Kissinger, this movement was “the most astonishing synthesis between political Leninism and savage capitalism.”
Westerners believed that economic openness would bring political liberalization. They were wrong. Kissinger saw it coming. And he said it. But he didn’t shout it. Because his goal was never to moralize, but to maintain peace among powers. That is to say: preventing someone from launching the first missile because they don’t understand how the other thinks.
Now then: the book shines in strategy, but it’s uncomfortable in ethics. Tiananmen is barely mentioned. Systematic repression, re-education camps, digital control over a billion citizens: silenced or disguised. Kissinger simply observes without judgment. And that makes him complicit for some, lucid for others. The question is: can lucidity survive without ethics?
Kissinger believes it is possible. Or at least necessary. “It’s not about who is right, but how to avoid the abyss,” he seems to repeat between the lines. But one can’t help but wonder if this moral renunciation isn’t precisely what has allowed China to come so far, without paying any costs.
Xi Jinping: The Final Phase of the Wei Qi Game
Although the book was written before Xi’s full consolidation, its logic was already foreseen. China, Kissinger maintains, isn’t seeking war, but it won’t budge an inch if it believes its historic project is at stake. Hong Kong, Taiwan, the South China Sea, artificial intelligence, microchips. They’re all part of the same game.
The final question the text leaves behind isn’t whether China will dominate the world. It’s whether the world will resist the temptation to confront it as if it were a conventional power. Because it isn’t. And it never was.
Required reading? Only if you’re interested in surviving the 21st century.
On China is not a “neutral” book. It is an intellectual endeavor. A survival manual for a declining superpower seeking to maintain its balance in the face of a patient civilization. It is also a warning for those who still believe that the global liberal order can be imposed with sanctions, tweets, or aircraft carriers.
Kissinger said it, but Sun Tzu could have signed it: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” China understood this centuries ago. The West has yet to digest it.
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