Kissinger: US Should 'Remove Urgency' on South China Sea

The U.S. should model its attempts to defusing China’s territorial disputes in the South China Sea on the patient methods typified by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, said Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s secretary of state.

China and the U.S. should “remove the urgency of the debate” as they embark on a dialogue, Kissinger told reporters Saturday in Singapore. Kissinger, 91, was the architect of Nixon’s historic 1972 trip to China that led to the opening of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

“Deng Xiaoping dealt with some of his problems by saying not every problem needs to be solved in the existing generation,” he said. “Let’s perhaps wait for another generation but let’s not make it worse.”

The U.S. has assured allies in the region it will back them against China’s claims to about four-fifths of the sea. China has ratcheted up pressure on some Association of Southeast Asian Nations members, and accelerated reclamation work on reefs in waters criss-crossed by territorial claims from Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei, the Philippines and Malaysia.

Fresh dialogue could take place in the U.S. as early as September, when U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet. The world’s two largest economies seek to boost cooperation and smooth tensions, including territorial disputes between China and its neighbors.

China attaches “great importance” to relations with the U.S. and wants to see enhanced cooperation to better manage “differences,” Xi told Kissinger when they met in Beijing last week.

Kissinger was in Singapore for the funeral of the city’s first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, who died March 23 at 91. The U.S. diplomat joined hundreds of thousands of Singaporeans visiting Lee’s body as it lay in state in Parliament House.

“The world is a better place for Lee Kuan Yew,” Kissinger said. “He taught us about the way Asians think about problems and he explained to us what development meant in a practical sense.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Sharon Chen in Singapore at schen462@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stephanie Phang at sphang@bloomberg.net Linus Chua, Ros Krasny