Henry Kissinger: how Biden should handle China

Henry Kissinger outlines a precarious escalation in US-China tensions, warning that mutually exclusive narratives on hegemony and interference require a foundational agreement to exclude high-tech warfare and enforce mutual restraint. He evaluates the Biden administration's diplomatic tone as an improvement over the previous era, yet notes that its approach remains a strategic balancing act between domestic political pressures and the urgent international necessity of coexistence. Kissinger concludes that the unique challenge of sustaining a relationship between a democratic United States and a "Confucian Marxist" China demands the explicit definition of specific issues rather than reliance on a rules-based order that is not currently applied to Beijing.