WASHINGTON (BLOOMBERG) - Former United States secretary of state Henry Kissinger said he does not foresee a Chinese military invasion of Taiwan in the next decade, though it is "perfectly possible" that China will seek to weaken the island's status.

"I don't expect an all-out attack on Taiwan in, say, a 10-year period, which is as far as I can see," Mr Kissinger said in an interview on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS to air Sunday (Nov 21).

Mr Kissinger, 98, who also served as national security adviser and helped pave the way for then President Richard Nixon's historic 1972 visit to China, offered that "everyone wants to be a China hawk" and "everyone assumes that China is determined to dominate the world and that is its primary objective".

But he said there should not be an automatic rivalry and competition with the US, and that he thinks President Joe Biden during the virtual summit this week with Chinese leader Xi Jinping "began to move in a direction of a different road".

China's claim that Taiwan as a renegade province to be reunified, by force if necessary, was a contentious part of the Biden-Xi talks.

A Chinese Communist Party resolution reflecting Mr Xi's agenda advocated pushing for union with Taiwan, though it stopped short of listing unification as a near-term goal.

"We should have a principal goal of avoiding confrontation," Mr Kissinger told CNN.

Still, he said it is "foreseeable" that China "will take measures that will weaken the Taiwanese ability to appear substantially autonomous".