https://foreignpolicy.com/2008/02/15/mao-offered-kissinger-10-million-chinese-women/
Mao offered Kissinger 10 million Chinese women
SAToday‘s "OnDeadline" blog finds some choice morsels from newly released transcripts of Henry Kissinger’s 1973 meeting with Mao:
You know, China is a very poor country," Mao is quoted as saying during the exchange. "We don’t have much. What we have in excess is women. So if you want them we can give a few of those to you, some tens of thousands."
The Chinese leader drew laughter when he returned to the proposition a few minutes later. "Do you want our Chinese women? We can give you 10 million." he said, adding: "We have too many women … They give birth to children and our children are too many."
It’s not clear whether Mao is at all serious — he was a pretty crazy dude, after all — but Kissinger’s response is precious:
It is such a novel proposition, we will have to study it.
EDIT: I'd also add that I was fairly sure that there was a second quote from some other diplomatic exchange in which someone, I thought Mao, offered 1 million Chinese people (not specifically women), with the phrasing something like "What is it that you want? Is it people? We can provide 1 million people", but I guess it's possible that I'm just misremembering some reference to the above.
considers
Might have been me accurately remembering Kissinger mis-remembering too, since I've read some of his material on diplomacy with China, and the source material wouldn't have been declassified at the time the books were written, so I assume that he wouldn't be able to directly use it in writing his books.