Investment Summit, FT China journalist stands to be MP, hacking of semiconductors
A Beijing to Britain briefing
Hello,
There is a quote, often incorrectly attributed to Napolean, which argues that “To understand a man, one has to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty.” In my view, it has proved a truism over and over again, especially when analysing the speeches and output of politicians globally. The world of a 20-year-old Henry Kissinger looked very different from the one many of his critics grew up in. The Weimar Republic was collapsing. Nazism was on the rise. The world he had grown up in was deteriorating, watched with varying levels of interest by outside interests. His passing will bring weeks of scrutiny, praise and criticism of his role as a statesman and adviser to political and corporate leaders all over the world for over four decades.
I think his influence is often overlooked in the UK-China bilateral, and is worth briefly reflecting on. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair had a close friendship with Kissinger, whom he first met as a new Labour Party Opposition Leader in 1994, and whom he described in his tribute as having the unique “ability to take all the different elements of the most complex diplomatic challenge and weave from them something astonishing in its coherence and completeness, and, most unusual of all, leading to an answer and not just an analysis.” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spoke of discussing AI - his favourite topic - with Kissinger a couple of months ago, noting “he was a titan of international diplomacy who led a remarkable life.” Or any of several politicians’ tweets this week fired off with pictures or selfies of them with Kissinger and accompanying remarks of praise.
Or take John Bew. The thirteenth chairholder of the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations, who has written extensively on realpolitik and Kissinger’s practising of it, is also the Government’s foreign affairs adviser. Bew has worked for three consecutive Prime Ministers, and helped produce both versions of the Integrated Review over the last couple of years. And this is to say nothing of the thousands of foreign policy students who will have come through the education system studying, analysing and mirroring elements of Kissinger’s craft.
- Sam Hogg, Editor
In this week’s briefing:
Global Investment Summit rundown
China in Parliament
Channel 4 documentary on Chinese interference in the U.K.
FCSS and abrdn China merge
The 6th China-UK Economic & Trade Forum