The eminent historian and strategist reflects on how China's past illuminates its twenty-first-century trajectory, drawing on forty years of intimate acquaintance with the country and its leaders. In Untitled on China, Henry Kissinger turns for the first time at book length to the country he has known intimately for decades and whose modern relations with the West he helped shape. Drawing on historical records as well as on his conversations with Chinese leaders over the past forty years, Kissinger examines how China has approached diplomacy, strategy, and negotiation throughout its history and reflects on the consequences for the twenty-first-century world. As Kissinger underscores, the unique conditions under which China developed continue to shape its policies and attitudes toward the outside world. For centuries, China rarely encountered other societies of comparable size and sophistication. China was the "Middle Kingdom," treating the peoples on its periphery as vassal states. At the same time, Chinese statesmen-facing threats of invasion from without and the contests of competing factions within-developed a canon of strategic thought that prized the virtues of subtlety, patience, and indirection over feats of martial prowess. Untitled on Chinaexamines key episodes in Chinese foreign policy, from the earliest days through the twentieth century, with a particular emphasis on the modern era. Kissinger illuminates the inner workings of Chinese diplomacy during such events as the initial encounters between China and modern European powers, the formation and breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance, the Korean War, the opening of relations with the United States, the Tiananmen Square crackdown, and China's accession to the World Trade Organization. The book traces the evolution of Sino-American relations in the past sixty years, following their course from estrangement to strategic partnership and toward an uncertain future. Kissinger analyzes the two towering figures of the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, and their divergent visions of China's modern destiny. With a final chapter on China's twenty-first-century world role, Untitled on Chinaprovides a sweeping historical perspective on Chinese foreign policy from one of the premier statesmen of the twentieth century.

Henry Kissinger served as national security advisor and then secretary of state under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and has advised many other American presidents on foreign policy. He received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Medal of Liberty, among other awards. He is the author of numerous books and articles on foreign policy and diplomacy and is currently the chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm.