When the now 88-year-old Henry Kissinger sat down with Chairman Mao to discuss opening up China back in the 1970s, America was at the peak of its power. It surely never entered Mr. Kissinger’s mind at the time that less than half a century later, as the Communist Party of China confidently celebrates its 90th anniversary, he would be back in Beijing passing the baton of global leadership on to his hosts.
Opening a conference of China’s most important think tank on globalization last Saturday, the great statesman compared China today to the US in 1947.
After the Napoleonic Wars, Kissinger observed, Britain emerged as the top world power and stayed that way for over a century. But by 1947, Ernest Bevin, foreign secretary in the waning days of the empire, felt compelled to tell his American counterpart that, “as the largest creditor, the US must now take the lead in shaping the new order.” Hence the Marshall Plan launched by the Americans to rebuild after the war, the dominant role of the dollar, and America’s ascendant path for the rest of the 20th century.
Nathan Gardels is contributor of The Christian Science Monitor
