Kissinger highlights an important aspect of shi by warning that China characterizes its relationship with the United States as one of combative coexistence: “Americans to this day often treat the opening to China as ushering in a static condition of friendship. But the Chinese leaders were brought up on the concept of shi—the art of understanding matters in flux.… In Chinese writings, the hallowed words of the American vocabulary of a legal international order are rarely to be found. What was sought, rather, was a world in which China could find security and progress through a kind of
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