Henry Kissinger：China won't be next 'superpower'

Though rapidly gaining influence on the world stage, China will be far too preoccupied with domestic issues in the coming years to become a so-called global "superpower", former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger said in his first public debate.

"I believe the next decade will see China wrestling with the problem of how to bring its political institutions in line with its economic development," he said in a sold-out debate in Toronto, Canada.

"I doubt that a country that will be so preoccupied with this fundamental change will also have time to concentrate on dominating the world."

China's economic, political and geopolitical power was at the heart of the two-hour debate. Kissinger, who helped orchestrate the forging of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China in the 1970s, said the real challenge will be for the U.S and China to adjust to a new world order in which neither fully has the upper hand.

"We have to understand that China will get stronger," and must stop interpreting its every move as an act of aggression, he said.

"But China has to learn some self-limitation in the way it vindicates its interests around the world" or risk alienating other governments, Kissinger said.

Japan was once predicted to become the next global superpower, but never lived up to the expectations, said Time Magazine's editor-at-large Fareed Zakaria who was also the host of the Toronto debate, adding China would likely follow the same pattern, according to a report by The Canadian Press.

By People's Daily Online

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