The Fate of M. Kissinger: The Births of a New Era of Engagement for the United States and the Ends of the Cold War

It is ironic that this brand of realism reached its apex at the height of the Cold War, a conflict that was ostensibly about ideology. From the side of the free world, Mr. Kissinger backed genocidal campaigns — by Pakistan against Bengalis and by Indonesia against the East Timorese. In Chile he has been accused of helping to lay the groundwork for a military coup that led to the death of Salvador Allende, the elected leftist president, while ushering in a terrible period of autocratic rule. The generous defense is that Mr. Kissinger represented an ethos that saw the ends (the defeat of the Soviet Union and revolutionary Communism) as justifying the means. But for huge swaths of the world, this mind-set carried a brutal message that America has often conveyed to its own marginalized populations: We care about democracy for us, not them. The issues are too important for the voters of Chile to be left to decide on their own.

Beijing sees the Biden Administration as attempting to compete with and contain China, and wants to highlight the era of engagement that Mr. Kissinger represented. In July, China welcomed Mr. Kissinger with an audience with the top leader.

President Trump imposed broad tariffs on Chinese goods, greater scrutiny of visa applications from China, stricter limits on high-tech exports to China and tighter monitoring of Chinese investment and intelligence-gathering activities in the United States. Mr. Biden has kept Mr. Trump’s tariffs and further tightened export controls. He also strengthened military agreements with the Philippines and Australia to counter China.

Mr. Kissinger’s death had a lot of people searching on Chinese social media. People shared comments on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, mourning the death of Mr. Kissinger and that on Tuesday of Charles T. Munger, a prominent American investor who was also well known in China.

Many people think that he wasn’t a good friend of Taiwan, but I think there’s some truth to that, according to Lu Yeh-chung, professor of diplomacy at National Chengchi University.

The dean of the Institute of International Studies said Mr. Kissinger was a living legacy from the good old days.

In July, Mr. Kissinger also met with China’s defense minister at the time, Li Shangfu, who had rebuffed multiple requests for meetings with his American counterpart. (This prompted John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, to express frustration that a private citizen had more access to the Chinese leadership than the government did.)

State media outlets hailed him as “China’s old friend.” His death is being called the end of an era on Chinese social media. They recalled his last visit to the country, in July, at age 100.