The main problem with your review of Henry Kissinger’s On China (London: Allen Lane, 2011) is that you take his subject rather literally (“No Go,” May 21, 2011). In fact, the book is about Kissinger himself. As you say, it is marred by several flaws, the most important of which is that the author believes that Chinese strategists think like players of wei qi or go, which means that they wish to avoid encirclement. In your rendering, he is wrong to believe that Chinese foreign policy is dominated by “cool, calculating, master strategists.” He is writing about himself, of course. He sees himself as the master strategists to be emulated first and foremost in America, where he may be venerable, but where the foreign policy is still dominated by the four-year political cycle. Chinese foreign policy is a bit more panoramic and long term, but it, too, is dominated by the political cycle of the ruling party. Returning to wei qi, it is a game of war whereas chess is a battle game. You can lose a few battles in the former while winning the war, whereas the battle is the whole war in the latter. Follow my example, Kissinger is actually pleading, and both American and Chinese politicians had better listen to his earnest entreaties. For the world is the game now, and the time may well be forever even if only a century is actually at stake.