US-China talks: Salvaging a relationship

FIFTY years to the month after Henry Kissinger's secret visit to China to end a generation of hostility between Washington and Beijing, another US official, Wendy Sherman, was in China; this time, in an attempt to keep the badly tattered relationship from going off the rails entirely.

Much has changed in the intervening half century. In 1971, the United States was the world's most powerful country, and China one of its poorest. Today, China is the second largest economy and a rival for world power.