With ‘Kissinger moment’ over, US and China urged to foster new ‘bridge builders’

Beijing and Washington have been urged to foster a new generation of talent to bridge gaps between the countries and strengthen people-to-people exchanges amid growing frictions and concerns about a lack of China expertise in the US.Academics and experts from the two countries gathered in Shanghai on Friday at the China-US Intergenerational Dialogue 2026. They were seeking a new crop of “bridge builders” like Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state who helped to engineer the historic rapprochement between Washington and Beijing during the Cold War.Kissinger – then US national security adviser – made a secret visit to China in 1971 that paved the way for president Richard Nixon’s landmark trip the following year.