The setting was a study in yin and yang, the Chinese philosophy of interconnected opposites. The largest investment house in the largest socialist country held its 15th anniversary gala in the chandeliered Louis XVI suite of New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel, a palace of Art Deco grandeur built on the fortune of John Jacob Astor, America’s first multimillionaire and a smuggler of Chinese opium.
Attending the soiree: Henry Kissinger, once Nixon’s chief China basher, later associated with the opening of its markets; and Robert Rubin, former Treasury secretary, who once railed against China’s trade imbalances. Both men joined in for an evening of champagne and kung pao in a show of respect (the Mandarin term: kowtow) to the China International Capital Corporation (CICC), an investment behemoth that has financed more than $193 billion in global M&A activity. “China is likely to be successful moving ahead,” Rubin said, with masterful understatement.
“When I first came to Asia,” Kissinger recalled, “China’s trade was less than that of Honduras.” And much of the trade was verbal. “We just called each other a lot of names,” he said, “and the Chinese repertoire was not bad.” Kissinger, a sonorous 87, asked to be invited to the bank’s next big party, in 15 years.
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