I don't consider China a communist state, no. I know that sounds paradoxical, but it's my view.

The American foreign policy trauma of the sixties and seventies was caused by applying valid principles to unsuitable conditions.

In the 1960s, I would have considered China with its CPC an ideologically more dynamic country than the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union was strategically more threatening.

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been. The public does not fully understand the world into which it is going. Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision. Those leaders who do not are ultimately judged failures, even though they may be popular at the moment.

I have been observing China for more than 30 years and am impressed how logically and wisely it tackles its problems. Obviously the international system could be unbalanced by China's rising power - if we don't prepare ourselves for the new competitive situation, that is. But it is an economic challenge, not aggression on the level of Hitler.

You're 18 points down [in the polls]... You might as well do what's right.

The position is that stability and peace in Asia depend on a cooperative relationship between China and the United States.