On Oct 10, 2006, Henry Kissinger receives an honorary doctorate at Peking University. WANG TIANTIAN/FOR CHINA DAILY

Yet the diplomat, who was assistant secretary of defense between 1993 and 1994 after having been US ambassador to Saudi Arabia between 1989 and 1992, considered empathy essential in 1972.

"I find it noteworthy that the most belligerently anti-Chinese members of the current US Senate are also its youngest" who "have no experience of its (the Cold War's) anxieties" and "appear to take its sudden end as predestined", said the diplomat, who believes that to compare the current Sino-US confrontation to the Cold War of 1947-1991 is "profoundly misleading and delusional".

"The US-China contention is far broader than that of the Cold War, in part because China ... is part of the same global society as the United States. China is now fully integrated into the global economic system and cannot be walled off from it."

Looking back to what Nixon called "the week that changed the world", Freeman said that being part of it has given him a long-term commitment to China and enabled him to take part in the shaping of Sino-US relations in their most "malleable and creative" years.

"To recall this (the Nixon trip) is to remember the narrowness and precariousness of the strategic reasons that brought the US and the People's Republic of China together. We were starting from complete estrangement and reaching for a common understanding," Freeman said.

zhaoxu@chinadailyusa.com