Has China Won?: The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy | Kishore Mahbubani

[Music] well we seem to have reached critical mass mass and we will reward those who um who are joining on time but it's um good morning to professor mabubani and good evening to those in the united states good afternoon to those of you in the west coast i've been looking forward to doing this program since this summer when i had one of the truly wonderful bee trees which is kishore's book from that came out this april called has china one it's basically a view of u.s china relations and what each country needs to do in a way that americans are not talking about it and chinese are not talking about it in a lot of ways kishore for me it reminded me of kind of discussions i had over my career with your prime minister lee guangyu who had an ability to look at things frankly and even when he was when it appeared he was being abrasive he was just being truthful so your book really i think is on the on the scale of being truthful is at absolutely the highest level i think it raises issues some americans don't want to hear it raises issues some chinese don't want to hear but it provides a clear-eyed view of where the united states and china are and what the risks are if we continue down this rate so it is absolutely a fabulous book i mean it's as i think about it it's now on my must-read list that you know when people come to me and they say what what books should i read uh to understand u.s china relations now it's going to be has china one going alongside of of henry kissinger's book uh on china maybe richard mcgregor's book on the party it really educates so much and is so valuable um i wanted to talk for a quick thanks to steve oaken who played a role in in making sure we will we were able to do this um but i can't thank you enough for joining us i can't thank you enough for the role you play in public education and i can't thank you enough for reading for writing a book which i really hope uh the biden administration reads before they come up with their policies on china so let's start at the very beginning and i will just ask you why this book why now and what were you seeking to accomplish uh thank you thank you very much steve for that very very generous uh introduction as you said the book came out in uh uh april and of course kovit 19 shut down the bookstores you can still buy it now so you can uh say but let me explain why i wrote the book uh and i consider myself both a friend of america and a friend of china and and i'm trying to be helpful to both uh and it's very clear to me that a major tragedy is in the offering sadly because you you're getting a huge geopolitical contest that is gaining momentum uh between the us uh and and china so let me just quickly make three points in response to your question the first is that this this tragedy uh this u.s china contest is both inevitable and avoidable the second point is that mistakes have been made by both sides and the third point i will explain why actually we can still prevent uh this contest and i'll do that very quickly the first point of course is that the reason why this contest is inevitable is because it's driven by three structural forces the first one is what graham allison has spoken about when an emerging power truck was about to overtake the world's number one power the world's number one power as grand madison documented always pushes down the emerging power so what the united states trying to do in trying to push down china is logical behavior but the second part that no one talks about is that this contest has got very huge emotional overtones that are driven by a fear of the yellow peril in the western psyche and i surface that because i think it's important for us to address the emotional dimensions in this u.s china contest and of course the third factor of course is that in the united states there's a bipartisan consensus against china because there was a kind of a great uh expectation that has china opened up economically china would also open up politically and china would become like america and that of course didn't happen and as kurt campbell said in his foreign affairs article there was disappointment in the united states my book when future historians look at this expectation it'll be very puzzled that the u.s expected that as a country with one quarter the population of china with 250 years history would transform a 4 000 year civilization that's an example of an unrealistic expectation so the structural forces are driving this but at the same time mistakes have been made by both sides uh and the chinese mistake was to alienate the us business community and it was completely unnecessary and especially after 2008-2009 there was a certain degree of arrogance crept into china into the some officials in china and that that's that's in some place fueling this conflict by the same time on the united states side and this is why i caught both henry kissinger and george cannon in my book the mistake the united states is making is that it hasn't worked out a long-term strategy to deal with china and i hope in that sense my book is helpful saying maybe before you embark on this contest why don't you ask some fundamental questions of what you are trying to achieve and you you're right to mention lee kuan yew because the three founding leaders of singapore were lee kuan yew gokengsri and raja radnam and from them i learned how to formulate strategies and as you know in chapter one i asked ten strategic questions that uh the u.s should address so for example one simple strategic question you guys should address is what's really important to the american people the primacy of america or the condition of its people and i actually believe the united states should pay attention to the condition of its people it's more important than this primacy because the united states is the only major developed country where the average income of the bottom 50 has gone down sadly over the last 30 years so therefore i complete the book and i'll stop in a minute that the united states and china and this is a key point of trying to make can avoid this conflict they really really care about this conflict because there's no fundamental clash of interests here because if the primary goal of united states is to improve the well-being of its people and the primary goal of china is to improve the well-being of the chinese people there is no contradiction in two countries trying to improve the well-being of their people and at the same time i think this is the most critical point that we should all be aware of is that we now live in a small interdependent world where the real challenges are global and i thought this is the big message that kobit 19 is trying to send to us that we are all on the same boat we have to come together to kill kobe 19. similarly global warming is proving that uh uh it's a common challenge we have to deal with so as you know in the last line in my book i say if the us and china keep on fighting while global warming is going on uh future historians will see them by two tribes of apes fighting each other while the forest around them is burning and you assume that human species are more intelligent than apes we should actually stop this fighting and focus on turning off the fires of global warming turning out the fire of profit 19. so i hope at the end of the day my book will be helpful to both u.s and china i i think it is i think it is now the book obviously got published about almost six months ago uh was written in 2019 um it was written before kovid before the tick tock wechat controversy before secretary pompeo's clean network initiative before the deaths on the uh sino-indian border would you have written some stuff differently no actually uh in some ways all the events well it's either fortunately or unfortunately i have reinforced the thesis of my book and you know i i kept emphasizing that this u.s china geopolitical contest will gain momentum and it has it has gained momentum but you know the the when you mention secretary pompeo you know i want to emphasize a key point here you know he said in the speech and i'm quoting now his speech he said you might go if you don't act now ultimately the chinese communist party will erode our freedoms and suffer the rule space order that our free societies before work so hard to build but actually the chinese communist party is very very different from the soviet communist party the soviet communist party believed that he had a competing ideology he could deliver a better society than capitalism and ironically today even though china is run by the chinese communist party china is actually in some ways more capitalist is producing so many billionaires in fact far more billionaires than any other countries in terms of new bill in so it is there is no clash of ideologies within china and united states and you know when americans say that the chinese communist party is a threat to american democracy i say that the two largest democracies outside united states are india and indonesia india and russia are very troubled by china's rights but they don't worry that the democracy will be subverted by china because china doesn't believe in exporting its system so in that sense it's fundamentally different from the soviet union and the second thing i would say is that when secretary of state pompeo says that china wants to subvert the rule space order actually that's not true because the chinese actually are now the biggest beneficiaries of this rule space order they're the world's biggest trading power they need freedom of navigation more than united states does because they're more chinese products on on international seaways and american products so if there's a breakdown the rules based order china suffers more than united states and the chinese as you know are very conservative they don't like change they prefer status quo so they like the rules-based order so i guess in that sense i would say nothing fundamentally has changed since the book came out only it just reinforced what i'm trying to say what about the sino-indian the deaths on the sino-indian border you you make you know i think you you state that it's a big deal that china has not fired a shot in anger uh yeah the other members of the e5 all of whom have have fired weapons uh however this was pretty pretty close and was pretty ugly yeah yes yeah absolutely right and and and you're right i mean i do emphasize that is actually the chinese have exercised quite remarkable strategic discipline in not fighting a war in 40 years and actually not fighting a bullet in 30 years since the u.s vietnamese naval skirmish in 1989 but you're right what happened at the china-india border was truly truly sad it was unnecessary but it was an accident about to happen because what happened is that and this is where technology is the problem the reason why china and india basically did not go to war for most or 2000 years is because the himalayas were so formidable it separated china and india but nowadays in modern technology the chinese are building better and better roads up the himalayas the indians are building better and better roads up the himalayas so the physical proximity of chinese indian soldiers have become closer and closer and the tragedy is that it only happened because an indian colony went to check whether or not the chinese had dismantled the tent as they agreed to and they discovered had not been dismantled and you know it's a really is a sad story because the indians got angry they burnt the tent and of course when you burn a tent in the himalayas the smoke was up and the chinese soldiers all around could see because the chinese soldiers came down and then you're a confrontation and both sides stuck to the agreement never brought their guns up but you can kill people with with fists and and with uh sticks yeah and so as a result of that many soldiers died indian side and chinese side and some just died because they fell down the cliffs and valleys what do you think it means for the the the sino-india i'm you're of indian descent yeah well i think what does it mean for this i know and what is what does it mean for the sino-indian relations and we've seen the indians take actually harsh economic action against chinese well i i have absolutely no doubt that the uh sentiment in india has turned very anti-china and just for your information i appeared on an indian tv show which is a big mistake i tried to give a balanced view and i got slept left right and center so so i know the sentiment in india is very anti-china but at the same time the indian foreign minister is a friend of mine jai shankar and he sent me his book i have it somewhere here the india way and if you even if you read the first opening pages of his book it makes it very clear that india is not going to choose sites that india is going to on the one hand is going to join the quad the quad as you know includes united states japan australia and india on the other hand in the same sentence we are also members of the shanghai corporation organization with china and russia and so the indians i think will try to balance it and the indians have the opportunity to in a sense to have the same kind of strategic leverage that china had in the cold wars you know in the cold war china had leveraged because he moved to united states or he moved to soviet union he could exercise leverage over the two by being in the middle so i think that the position where india will strive to be somewhere in the middle but of course it's going to be difficult as the contest becomes bigger and bigger but i don't see the indians formally joining an alliance with the united states against china it's unlikely because it's not in their interest to do that one of the stunning statements in the book saying that russia would become an ally of the united states can you and and that of course i thought about that in terms of the quad that if you had india australia japan and then russia that would be quite stunning yeah i know but just explain how that would happen i mean it's really quite it's certainly not where the united states body politic is today yeah but you know i'll tell you a true story steve in in 1985 and i i want to emphasize that the cold war was still on singapore and vietnam were at loggerheads over vietnam's occupation of cambodia united states i gave a speech in columbia university and you know actually had the council on on foreign relations sorry and and i said this is like what i said 1985. i said today united states and vietnam are at loggerheads but i predict that within 10 20 years the u.s naval base will move from cameron bay frost right from subic bay to kamran bay so at the height of tension between vietnam and united states i predicted that vietnam will get close to united states and that's pure you know there's a certain logic in geopolitics so sure enough as soon as the cold war and vietnam realizes number one challenger is not united states but china so to balance china vietnam is going to move to united states and that's what's happened as you know sin and some prediction which was made uh 35 years ago has come true now so in the same way if you are a russian strategic planner and remember in the cold war soviet union's gnp was much much bigger than china you know much bigger today china's gmt is 10 times almost the size of uh russia right so you can imagine if i was a russian strategic planner i don't i don't worry about american troops invading russia i worry about being close to the incredible giant so it is quite natural the russians will gravitate in one way or another towards getting closer to the west to europe and and to united states but as you know sadly as also as i also explained the book the the russians became alienated only because the u.s expanded nato up to very close to the uh uh russia and i think that was and tom friedman and enriquez suggested that it's a mistake so if united states could show some sensitivity to russian geopolitical interests it's quite natural that russia will gravitate uh towards the west uh and i think i'm sure the chinese can see this coming although as of now clearly there is a dual political reason why china and russia are working together because both are under enormous pressure both from the united states but ultimately you see a split between china and russia as has occurred in history and then seeing russia moving closer to the eu and the united states that that's where the geopolitical interests will drive them you know you said that we the the biggest strategic mistake the chinese have made has been alienated the u.s business community because that undercut support for u.s china relations in the united states what about their actions china's actions in the south china sea what about china's actions in xinjiang what about a hong kong national security law that's far overly broad um these are alien and what about an ngo management law which china enacted which caused the ngo community in the united states to become less pro-constructive u.s china relations that there are all these other actions by the chinese which have undermined other constituencies in the united states which formerly used to be pro-constructive engagement uh great very good questions and you're absolutely right you put your finger on the issues that have alienated the uh many people in america towards china and uh i i want to number one emphasize that the expectation as cut campbell said in his essay in the united states was that as china grew and developed economically china would become like the us politically and of course it may happen but you know as a geopolitical realist the one lesson you learn is that you've got to deal with realities and i i think if you are if you keep wishing hoping and praying that china will become a liberal democracy you i think you will die a disappointed person because it will not happen china will follow its own internal logic china will not behave or become like the united states but to balance that as you know i quote a stanford university psychology gene fund who says that the chinese people are actually quite happy with the government that they have and recently a harvard kennedy school study that just came out pointed out that support for the chinese communist party is growing and the chinese communist party knows that if it doesn't enjoy the support of his people he will lose power so it has forged his own social contract now i guess that's a broader general point now on each of the specific issues you me you mentioned south china sea hong kong xinjiang each one has got its own logic and on south china sea i completely agree with you that china has been unnecessarily assertive but i emphasize it's a big difficult behave like how the united states many americans wish that china would behave like america grand males and says be careful what you wish for if the chinese behave by united states in the end of the 19th century they will behave like teddy roosevelt and they would have seized all the islands in the south china sea that's what teddy roosevelt would have done but they haven't done that as you know and in the case of south china sea as you know steve in in my book i caught a lunch discussion i had with state ambassador stapleton roy where he said that president xi jinping actually made an offer to demilitarize the islands in south china sea and as ambassador stapleton roy says that offer unfortunately was not taken up so an opportunity was lost so both sides in a sense have made mistakes uh in the uh south china sea now on the question of hong kong uh i i think the the um the other the other incident which i quote in my book bin instead in 1961 john f kennedy and harold macmillan the prime minister united kingdom sent a joint letter to prime minister nehru saying please don't take that goa you know let the portuguese run it and as you know nehru responded within a few weeks by seizing goa and and trust me if china today had a democratic government instead of a communist party government it would have shut down the one country two systems immediately and taken back hong kong uh and and to that extent the chinese actually have in that sense been restrained but the what what triggered these problems in hong kong was as you know the the demonstrations and the riots and like by the way i saw that in my own eyes i was there and the mistake that the protesters made was to use violence you know and that's always a mistake the state must have monopoly of violence so when things got out of control that's how the the chinese reacted by the end of the day the big question is will hong kong collapse as a result of the new measures put in by china the national security law and it can it can collapse but i would say it is unlikely to it's unlikely to hong kong will carry on and hong kong will have to live a very difficult existence in a really difficult zone of trying to be in a sense doing things that will be acceptable to china which they're part of they're part of chinese sovereign territory and also remaining open to the rest of the world so hong kong is going to go through a very difficult time but those who are friends of hong kong uh like me hope that hong kong will carry on with the one country two systems they won't break down completely the final point on xinjiang of xinjiang is of course a tragedy and it's a bit sad that you have so many people being detained in xinjiang but when i was doing research for my book and i went when i was in shanghai several people in china told me that just that just as america had his 9 11 moment when america got uh attacked uh in 9 11 and i was in new york and america was attacked in the same way the chinese claimed that they had their own 9 11 movement and they were attacked also by separatists in different cities and so that that's how they justify and explain what they did and and i hope that uh that at the end of the day they will find a better solution than what they have done so far actually you know it's interesting ken lieberthal has raised you know former senior director for asia um at the national security council has raised the question which i was going to raise which is i don't think it's accurate to say that any u.s administration since nixon's visit to china expected china to become a liberal democracy have you over the years had serious discussions with u.s officials in office that indicate otherwise certainly ken is speaking from his time in the clinton administration i can speak to my time in the carter administration we weren't there weren't confidential papers which said because we're establishing diplomatic relations because we're going to build this constructive relationship because we're going to allow china into the wto we think it's going to be a liberal democracy we hoped we certainly hoped for more market reform but we didn't expect china to be like us so did you talk to american officials that suggested otherwise i hope you don't mind i'm just going to read a few sentences from page one three five uh cut campbell as you know court co-authored an article with eli what they say which we don't necessarily agree with yeah ever since the porchman began under nixon the assumption that deepening commercial diplomatic and cultural ties would transform china's internal development and external behavior has been a bedrock of u.s strategy even those in u.s policy circles were skeptical of china's intentions to share the underlying belief that u.s power and hegemony could readily mold china to the united states liking i mean this is verbatim what they have said so i think uh uh we will be very it's very important to emphasize this is a very high level source uh that is saying this and and and i think if you read the us media the the u.s media is actually very uh categorical in saying that and you know i also quote in the same chapter what the economists and others have said in the uh when teaching being removed his term limits and and the economist said categorically you know this is he's going against what we expected from china we expected china to open up and become more democratic you know and so there are a whole series of quotations and and and i and i think that if if indeed uh this is not an expectation of the united states it's exactly very positive because china will have to evolve on its own internal logic and you know from the chinese point of view i mean both you and can be better understand chinese history better than i do by the way as you know the chinese biggest fear and this is the fear of the chinese people also is chaos and so for them strong central rule in china means that people are better off weak central rule in china means that people suffer and and uh and and and just uh yesterday i was reading in the new york uh review of books an article about two chinese poets in the tang dynasty and how much they suffered from the chaos you know in the middle of the tongue dynasty the chaos that happened and so you can see that in the chinese mind the number one concern is chaos and and if they if they go for strong central rule there's a reason for that and and but if the united states expects china to become like united states then that becomes yeah i distinguish in other words i never i lived i've lived most you know good part of my adult life in china so i'm dealing with chinese officials throughout my entire 43-year career i never expected china to be like the united states but i did expect improvements in rule of law i watched because i am a lawyer by training i watched hundreds of thousands of lawyers get trained i watch as judge get judges get trained i didn't expect however that they would initiate policies like they have in xinjiang i didn't expect what they've done in hong kong they're so overly assertive i guess you would say assertive as opposed to aggressive i think you know south china sea i didn't expect that they would operate in violation of international law i i actually i agree with you china is has benefited and knows it's benefited from the international system and i didn't expect them to be changing that doesn't the united states i would argue in fact over the last three and a half years the united states has participated less in the international order than than china has and is leading to the destruction of the international order but still the thing the overly assertive overly aggressive policies that they're taking um is to me very surprising yeah you're absolutely right they have become more assertive and the question therefore practical question becomes is how how do you transform china as you know in my book in my previous books i have quoted from a speech that pressed former president bill clinton gave in the year in 2003 where president bill clinton said if united is going to be number one forever then fine u.s can keep on doing whatever he's doing yes he said we've got the jews to do it but as you know bill clinton added a but in that speech is it but if you can conceive of a world where we're no longer one number one then it is in united states long-term national interest to strengthen multilateral rules multilateral processes multilateral institutions multilateral norms you know so in a sense i would say if if our common goal is to make china a more rules-based great power then the best way to transform china is not to lecture china but to lead by example and so to just to make a very painful point to you if the united states believes that china is violating the u.n convention on the law of the sea then the best thing united can do is to ratify the u.n convention on the law of the sea because my fear this is a german fear i have if the united states can walk away from the u.n convention laws here and i think it is the only country that's out of the u.n convention because if i'm not the second then it opens the door for united to china to do so also so you've got to even transform israel and even human behavior like in a parent-child relationship the child doesn't listen to the words of the parents the child watches what the parent does and learns from it so in the same way united states got to show its behavior that he wants to strengthen the rules based order but as you said in the last three and a half years sadly the trump administration has been creating so many loopholes in international law and i say and i keep repeating over and over again every loophole the united states creates an international law today it's a loophole that china will walk through tomorrow so don't create loopholes yeah and that's why i go back to bill clinton's speech you know and you're right but we do want to have a more rules-based uh china yes yep yep and the question is how do we get there i i mean you have no ambiguity about whether america is going to remain uh the the large the the biggest power as i think on page 250 you say as america slides towards becoming inevitably the number two power in the world do you believe that america will be the number two that it won't be some sharing with china that will act that america will actually be number two well i think in terms of the size of gnp uh america will become inevitably uh number two by the way and you know the you know i want to emphasize as you know in the very beginning of the book i say the united states has been the most successful country ever in human history and as you know i have a fictional memo in my uh opening chapter too from kordiko she's being the business teaching being saying oh the great contest has begun again within china in china and the u.s we're going to have a long-term challenge from the united states but one but the memo says whatever we do we must never underestimate the united states and so actually from the point of view of many in asia we want to see a strong united states we don't want to see a weak united states but you see but to see a strong united states united strategic thinkers like kissinger and canon especially canon and canon emphasize at the end of the day the outcome of the contest within u.s and china will depend on the internal spiritual vitality of american society and as you know uh several americans economists like case and literally describe the sea of despair among the white working classes so but what i can say even if america's gnp is number two america can still be number one as a model you know but to be number one as a model it will not depend on your external behavior as much as on your internal strength of your society but today united states is so divided and and the people are so unhappy you know that all the studies show this so as you know it will be very difficult for you to stand up and say we in america are now a shining city on the hill because i mean the rest of the world is become thanks to united states i want to emphasize this very very important point the quality of minds outside the united states because they've been educated in the best american universities it is your harvard graduates your yale graduates your stanford graduates your princeton graduates living in asia who are looking at the united states and say wow what's going wrong there so i would say if you if you want to win the contest don't focus on having a bigger military don't focus on having more nuclear weapons focus as george cannon said on strengthening the internal spiritual vitality american society and that would make all of us very happy yeah i i think one of the candidates running for president is is quite aware of that if you look at his china policy it's about you know competing by rebuilding america um i think you the parts of the book which talk about social mobility in china versus social mobility in america were truly fascinating and how this was part of what has led to the disaffection of such huge numbers of people your your your data on prison populations you know america imprisons .65 of a percent of people and china uh 0.11 so america they're more americans in jail despite having a population of between a quarter and a fifth of china then there are chinese it's simply remarkable and what and social mobility for chinese is in many ways more possible than it is for americans and your data on what's happened to the bottom 50 of america over the last 40 years is true it's just it's something america needs to focus on part of why i think this book is so important um just as a quick point i would say i i want to mention this in one line if there's one book that you know that americans should go back and read they should read the book by one of america's greatest recent political philosophers john ross the theory of justice yeah but i studied abroad i did my master's degree on john ross and john drost emphasizes that at the end of the day if you want to judge what's happening in a society don't look at the top 10 percent look at the bottom 10 percent right and here this the tragedy is at the bottom 10 percent united states has actually been suffering a lot and we should take care of them the um well i have so many more questions but i i see i've got over a dozen questions asked kova you you talk about you think that china is a meritocracy that that the the communist party officials are really very able uh kovid their dealing with covet initially was a governance failure it was a fair they had in place systems which were not followed because the party interfered how does that make you think about china's future yeah yeah you're absolutely right uh china made mistakes and the first few weeks of covet 19 and but at the same time i've spoken to a lot of doctors uh and they say that when a new virus emerges it's actually very very difficult to tell exactly what's going on so for those who want to read what happened in the first few weeks in wuhan i would say read two articles the first is by professor stephen roche of yale university he co-authored an article in project syndicate with sean beijin who's the author of the best-selling book out of the gobi and they document what really happened and they described the mistakes and but that's at the same time they also did some right things and the other person to read is richard horton the editor the landsat magazine which is one of the most prestigious medical journals and he points out that by early jan by by 23rd january lancer had published everything you needed to know about how dangerous this disease was on 23rd january i want to emphasize that plan said come up so the the the notion that the united states and the west wasn't won it's actually not true uh that that the warnings were actually given so but i hope that all this will come up but at the end of the day and this is a very sad okay uh commentary the what really demonstrates how much china has become a meritocracy in terms of handling corporate 19 is that if the united states had the same number of debts per capita from kovite 19 as china uh united states instead of having 210 000 deaths would have less than 1 000. that's right yeah i mean i think the the america's failure to handle coped will go down in history as one of the most incredible government failures ever maybe ever in the united states but that does not excuse the the mishandling of the beginning of the virus in china so so we need to you know the trump administration has tried to confuse the two saying just blame china it wasn't our fault well so what about singapore what about vietnam what about thailand what about taiwan what about all these places that basically you don't have any coven cases canada has no new covid cases anymore so it's it's it's uh there's yeah there's one there's one statistic that i think every person should know that the number of deaths per million from kovite 19 in both europe and united states by the way it's in the hundreds 500 600 700 800 right in east asia it doesn't matter whether they're communist or non-communist south korea japan taiwan hong kong singapore and all that it's less than 10 yeah yeah it's it's actually quite shocking so it's not just about china by the way yeah it's about easy yes no that's right and and and and and this goes to a critical point which i actually wrote in an economist's article in economies.com article that it's about the emphasis on good governance and in the united states when after ronald reagan said government is not the solution government is the problem unfortunately key governmental institutions in the united states have been weaker so i say all this is a friend of the united states i think united states should start rebuilding his institutions of governance it's an american interest to do so and we want to see a strong america with strong governmental institutions that's good for the world okay i'm gonna try and run through a lot of questions so we'll try to keep our answers brief because we we gotta i'll combine one of my questions which i now will just combine with with the question from anu anwar who's at harvard these days one is the house this is the democrats now kishore the the democrat the house intelligence committee wrote a report on china last thursday which i had the pleasure of reading um and it says mili i'm just four lines from it militarily china has embarked on a massive modernization drive creating a blue water navy investing heavily in hypersonic weapons developing its own fifth generation fighter militarizing a series of atolls in the south china sea and building its first overseas base in djibouti so the question that i would ask is why and how you know what are the chinese doing there and anu asks in terms of the quad how do you see the potential of a quad to be a formal nato nato-like alliance to check china and if that happens how do you think china's ability to tackle such collective what do you think of china's ability to tackle such collective external challenges okay i'll keep my answers very short uh and i say that if if the chinese spend more and more on defense let them do so they'll be wasting money and as you know in my book i say the more that america spends on defense the more the chinese are happy because it means that money is not being spent on by revitalizing your society and the chinese i would say as a percentage of their gnp they have not increased their defense budget but but they have to as you know build these hypersonic weapons to counter balance the american aircraft carriers down there but the second point of the quad and here i'm going to stick my neck out okay and if you ask me to make a prediction just as i predicted that vietnam would move closer to the united states in 1985 just as i predicted russia would move closer to united states i think the quad will become weaker and weaker because australia i'll give you an example is defense ties uh with the united states but the economy is tight and and i think if i'm not mistaken uh martin wolf may have written about this somewhere functionally the australian economy is like a province of china in terms of its biggest market is china so it'd be will be a very difficult for australia to keep up its current policies vis-a-vis china and and and i think even japan and if you read uh what uh uh ezra vogel's book the japanese have learned over 2000 years certain ways and means of managing china which means that they remain independent of china but they also try not to confront china you know it's a very subtle balance you know it's a different game that is being played so i would say the quad is not based on the same strong foundations uh as the ones that on which nato was paid for space so it's be and i would say it's a mistake to come to compare the quad to nato the quad will not become like nato the books thinks australia doesn't want to take sides in a u.s china dispute but since the book's been written we've seen australia ban huawei equipment side with secretary pompeo and very few other countries i'm glad you mentioned huawei let me tell you a story very quickly in january this year i was in davos and i i was on a panel with a very influential british person and i asked this influential british person what is the uk going to do on huawei and he said to me we have planted our gchq people into huawei we have scrapped the software huawei is no threat to the uk but i said to him i say of course but the united states is going to put pressure on the united kingdom and he replied to me very confidently he said kishore the us needs the uk as much as the uk needs the u.s this is in january 2020 by july 2020 uk had capitulated and i tell the story because was the british decision on huawei a decision that they made from their own calculations or did they make it under pressure you see unlike the cold war where the united kingdom was 100 percent 110 with the united states against the soviet union the british today have to do their own calculations so you will not get the same degree of enthusiasm in confronting china as you did in the cold war against the soviet union that's the key point of making i think what happened on the uk decision not to purchase huawei equipment was that the knock-on effects of the ban on the sale of chips to huawei caused the uk to question whether huawei was going to be able to actually fulfill the contract so the u.s threw this kind of um restriction on chips to huawei was able to accomplish its purpose in the uk which was uh interesting and and probably uh not in the long term in the interest of the people of uk because they're going to get a equipment which is more expensive which is slower so i think in the book you make the point the first role of government is to provide for its people that's right give them good lives and by going down this path we're not doing a great job of providing for the people um satoru marasi uh who's a partner at mayor brown and an old friend asks what concerns you the most or keeps you up at night three u.s china relations uh i i fear uh a further plunge in u.s china relations and and and frankly is not necessary it's absolutely not necessary they're another plunge in u.s china relations and uh i would be what would really make me very happy uh is if the united states were to number one focus on rebuilding in society its economy so the united states remains very strong over the long term and then the united states uses diplomacy rather than defense as its primary weapon to balance counterbalance china and i emphasize in my book that if you look at the southeast asian region where there are 650 million people there are huge reservoirs of goodwill towards the united states of america and southeast asia huge reservoirs but these reservoirs of goodwill can be tapped if you use diplomacy rather than telling these countries you are either with us or against us because even even even if you ask them to say you're with us against us even vietnam will say they will not say they're against you well with you because vietnam has lived with china for 2000 years vietnam has been occupied by china 1 000 years the vietnamese no they cannot go into a hit long confrontation with china and so that everybody here is playing a very subtle game in terms of managing china and and it'd be good for united states to go back and ask itself why was american diplomacy so successful in the cold war and you know singapore and the united states worked very closely in the u.n when i was ambassador to the u.n general vernon walters and i worked very closely together against the soviet union on afghanistan against the soviet union and cambodia we were really working closely together and you know what genuine water said to me it's better for us if you take the lead we will go back which is very smart very smart so the diplomacy is amazing so i want american diplomacy to come back i think pretty much all the listeners on this call although all the viewers of this this discussion want american diplomacy to to come back um mort holbrook who used to be a foreign service officer says please er elaborate more on china's alienating the u.s business community we don't see massive u.s dis investment we still see active u.s businesses as represented by amcham beijing shanghai and elsewhere where is the alienation uh the alienation is in one form which is that in the past uh when the u.s government would take a strong public stance against china and as you know in my book i give examples uh in my book where the u.s business community would call a state department would call the commerce department or other or they'll call the white house and say stop stop stop you're interfering with our big market whereas this time around in the last three and a half years they and you know when the trade war was launched by trump uh frankly what surprised me was that no major american business voice said hey let's think twice about this trade war and as you know the record will show the trade war actually has hurt the united states as much as it has hurt china but your question is also right that u.s investment in china continues but it also continues because it is in china's national interest to attract american investment and recently as you know uh america the united china has opened its doors more to american financial institutions if i'm not mistaken uh j.p morgan chase has gone into china now together yes and i and i think i think that's what the chinese will try to do and i think in private the chinese by the way in private the chinese have agreed with me that they made a mistake with the american business community so they don't dispute it they don't dispute that point yeah i mean steve oaken says china lost support from the u.s business community due to many of china's actions cyber theft not respecting ipr etc do you think the current tensions in u.s china relations will change china's conduct in this regard well uh uh i would say that i'm not an expert on on cyber theft but on intellectual property uh as you know if you look at even in american history and this is a fact uh when the united states was rising as a power it stole a lot of intellectual property from the united kingdom but as soon as the united states began producing enough intellectual property united states became the number one defender of intellectual property so in the same way china has also risen by stealing intellectual property that's a fact you can't deny it but at the same time now that chinese are producing enough intellectual property china is going to switch from uh stealing intellectual property to defending intellectual property and on on on on cyber theft i would say that my my answer is what bill clinton said use international rules and norms to constrain china and so create a global convention on cyber uh use of cyber warfare and i think that's the best way of constraining china there's an interesting question about singapore from arthur sierra who's at john hopkins do you think singapore still plays a role in china's economic and financial reforms as well as being a balance between the united states and china and southeast asia well i think uh as you know the the singapore prime minister gave a great speech at the shangri-la dialogue last year in june and also published an article in the magazine foreign affairs so if your listeners haven't read the article in front of us i would strongly commend it and as you know singapore wants to be friends with america and has to be friends with china too and is trying very hard not to get involved and just like every just every other southeast asian state so i think in the united states you know you know the first rule of diplomacy is you must have the capacity to listen listening if you don't listen you cannot be a good diplomat so i would say that americans should come to southeast asia and frankly go on many parts of the world and ask what would you like us to do vis-a-vis china and they will say yes peace be firm please be strong please insist that china obeys the rules but at the same time don't ask countries to choose right that would be the answer yeah the um we haven't touched on taiwan and eric duart from assumption university uh professor there says could the u.s and china get in a military conflict over taiwan or even the south china sea uh the answer of course theoretically is a yes but if you ask me for likelihood i would say likelihood it will be a no because at the end of the day your countries go to war if your vital national interests are involved and neither taiwan nor south china sea is a vital national interest of the united states and as you know from kissinger's time there was a series of understandings that the united states has worked out with china on on taiwan and those understandings have worked very well so i would say that it will be in the interests of the united states to go back to the various understandings that have been worked out because the these understandings have stood the test of time they've lasted 50 years almost so don't don't if you don't change the understandings that were reached then there will be no there be no danger of all the book focuses i think very frankly and and and quite appropriately on the role of racism in our potential asia and china policies can you just in like one minute summarize what that is and how we can kind of get through it get over it well i think the the yellow pedal as you know has got deep roots in the western psyche going back to the time when the hmong goes over to europe and it emerged in the united states when at the end of 19th century when the united states passed the chinese racial exclusion act so it's it is very much part in the subconscious as a student of freud and the best way the best way to get rid of something in your subconscious is to surface it and discuss it and then you kill it that's the best way to do it and i would say if you look at covet 19 for example when when the trump administration calls it the kang flu the wuan virus the china virus that also reflects the yellow parallel uh dimension and i think just on covet 19 very quickly you know if if winston churchill were alive today as you know in world war ii winston churchill said if my number one enemy is hitler i will partner stalin to fight against hitler you you're the enemy of your enemy is your friend so if there's one lesson the copic 19 is teaching the united states is that if covert 19 is an enemy of the united states copenhagen is an enemy of china the united states and china should come together to fight covet 19. it's logical geopolitical behavior but what's preventing this is the yellow parallel emotional dimension that's what preventing rational cooperation against covet 19. the um you started out the program talking about you know the strategy and that america doesn't have a strategy what should the strategy be and that will be we we've reached our time moment that'll be the final question uh i would say the key strategy is decide what is the primary national interest of the united states and i believe the primary national interest of the united states is to create a strong american society as josh cannon said a spiritually vibrant society and the world wants to see a strong american society so i would say in the case of this uh contest with china the best way to win this contest against china is not to project more of your seventh fleet into the pacific it is to bring cut down your defense expenditure and spend more on rebuilding your country so if you were instead of spending 5.5 trillion dollars on post 9 11 wars if the five trillion dollars had been given to uh each citizen in the bottom fifty percent in america each citizen important fifty percent will receive a check for thirty thousand dollars at a time when sixty percent of america's population doesn't have five hundred dollars in emergency cash so i would say the strategy should be let's focus on the well-being of the american people because the stronger america is as a society the better it is for the world that is a perfect note to end on it really this has given you a flavor of what is in the book i urge and i see no one has disconnected from this call in the course of this hour so obviously you mesmerized everyone kishore um it's a it's simply a must read and it's a must read not only for policy experts those who believe we need to be tougher those who believe we need to have a different policy but for folks if we do have a new administration it's really important that they look at this and they think about it because it's written from a perspective of somebody who's willing to be frank with the united states willing to be frank with china and has an incredibly uh deep understanding of both countries and i would say comes through in the book a love of of both countries and is a uh if the prime minister were still around he would be proud of you for saying what you say and would be proud of you for writing this book but kisha i can't thank you enough for doing this i can't thank you enough for speaking out publicly and i can't thank you enough for writing such a wonderful book thank you thank you all for joining us on this on this evening and morning in asia bye now

Channel: National Committee on U.S.-China Relations

Views: 135,597

Rating: 4.6040955 out of 5

Keywords: kishor, mabubani

Id: v1Nrgw37If0

Length: 61min 47sec (3707 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/DaBIGmeow888]

US will never go to war with China over Korea, Vietnam, Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, or even Taiwan.

[u/bengyap]

I think saying that "both China and US is going to clash" is not quite right.

All the tension and confrontation is initiated by the US, not China. China is perfectly happy with the trajectory of the world order and need not to be confrontational. On the other hand, the US has everything to lose and is trying to bring down a competitor with unfair means.