As US-China ties hit new lows, are diplomatic backchannels still effective?

Backchannel diplomacy, such as Henry Kissinger’s trip to China after the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, has played key role in stabilising relations

However, analysts say without an alignment of interests against a shared rival, unofficial dialogues are losing their shine

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Published: 6:00am, 13 Jun 2023Updated: 10:15am, 13 Jun 2023

Talks between senior Chinese and US officials in recent weeks have given hope that tension between the world’s two great powers could be easing. In the third of a three-part series on China-US relations, Shi Jiangtao looks at whether backchannel diplomacy can still help bring the ties back on track as it did five decades ago.

When former US president Richard Nixon and his former national security adviser Henry Kissinger visited Beijing at the invitation of the Chinese government in late 1989, the realist duo were tasked with salvaging bilateral ties that were nearly in tatters.

The purported “fact-finding” trips, separate but within the space of two weeks, took place just months after the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown but were made with the blessing of US President George H.W. Bush.

Despite a formal Bush administration policy banning such high-level visits, hopes were high in both Beijing and Washington that Nixon and Kissinger could recreate their success of the early 1970s, when the pair jointly engineered a historic rapprochement with China.

Nixon, who was believed to carry a personal message from Bush, told China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping that the two countries should “rise above the acrimony of the moment” despite “huge and unbridgeable” differences.

“We must build from here. If we could do it in ’72, we can do it now,” the former president told reporters after his meeting with Deng, according to The New York Times.

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US-China reengagement

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