No one can lay claim to so much influence on the shaping of foreign policy over the past 50 years as Henry Kissinger. In and out of office, he has been intelligently ubiquitous. Almost two decades have passed since the publication of Diplomacy, a masterly study of the subject that will long endure as a bible for all who believe that nation states remain the principal building blocks in international politics, whatever the human aspirations towards international co-operation。

Now, with On China, Kissinger has turned his mind to a subject on which he has a unique vantage point. Publishers must have drooled at the prospect of this guru from the last century writing about the rising global power of the present one, especially given his own role in helping to open it up to the world.

The heart of this book is the 1972 visit to Beijing of President Richard Nixon and Kissinger, then US national security adviser, and the secret preparations that the author made. After a quick canter through Chinese history, Kissinger analyses the characters of the leaders he encountered and recounts in some detail his meetings with them. He summarises the progress made by China in recent years, offers some general reflections on the relationship between democratic values (or just plain values) and the conduct of foreign policy, and concludes with some unexceptional aspirations for the future of co-operation with the world’s most populous country.