Kissinger warns against US-China conflict

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said Tuesday that China's growing economic and political prominence was irreversible and could lead to war unless Beijing and Washington can cooperate. "When the center of gravity moves from one region to another, and another country becomes suddenly very powerful, what history teaches you is that conflict is inevitable," Kissinger said in a lecture to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, Reuters reported. Stressing that there is nothing the US could or should do to prevent the rise of China, he explained that he saw Sino-US relations as a "challenge to build a new international system based on human insight, on cooperative action, to avoid catastrophe." Kissinger first came to China in 1971 on a secret mission to rebuild relations between Washington and Beijing after more than 20 years of diplomatic silence.