Kishore Mahbubani: China - The World's Next Premiere Superpower?

hello everyone hello everyone from California I'm Phillip yan I'm the CEO of world affairs based here in San Francisco and I would like to welcome everyone to our dial-in zoom program here in San Francisco we're into our eighth week of sheltering in my kids are over there I'm here in the back room fortunately it's very sunny here in California though a little chilly as it usually is and I hope above all that your loved ones are all safe and staying very healthy as you've sort of surmised more lafours we do usually do a lot of live programs at our building but we made a pivot and so now we're going from live and in-person to live in remote and so my understanding is we've had almost 300 RSVPs to this program so we're very excited we understand that there are people not only in California and here in the Bay Area but all over the world actually and so we're so pleased to host for you a conversation that I'm going to have with Kishore Babu Bonnie and he is in Singapore hello Kishore hello how are you good good good so thank you so much for taking the time to join us I know that you're quite busy we see that your book has China one is in the background that's wonderful and let me just take a couple minutes to introduce you Kishore ma Bhavani is a former senior Singaporean diplomat and he's currently a distinguished fellow at the National University of Singapore Asia Research Institute he was a member of the Foreign Service to Singapore Foreign Service for 33 years he was Singapore's Poorna secretary at the foreign ministry he was a two-time ambassador to the UN for Singapore and from I think it was January 2001 - mm may 2002 you weren't president right of the UN secretary Council right the Security Council well that's it and so and you've written it quite a bit prolifically people have said on the rise of Asia of geopolitics and and global governance and you're the author of has China won the chinese challenge to american primacy just for all of you i met kishore almost 25 years ago i was a relatively young senior relatively young state department official at that time and at that point he was known for being very outspoken incredibly articulate and and very direct and at that time when i was believe it was the ASEAN Regional Forum we were at I saw all of those in very good measure so it's against really really pleased to have you here thank you thank you my pleasure so for some preliminaries I think what we're gonna do is a conversation we're gonna start out with definitely me and and and Kishore for about 25 minutes and then we will start integrating questions from the audience if you feel that you have some questions please go ahead and put them down I guess it's in chat mode as I'm looking at our screen here and then I'll go to audience questions I may integrate them as they come in depending on rule we are on the conversation and if you have a question what was it you have a question at any time during this conversation please use the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen and we'll try to answer them live so right now we will be going for about I believe 50 minutes or so and we'll start off shall we shall we go happy dude great so I think what you know the book is fascinating and it covers incredible amount of ground and very provocative and but I thought I would not start with the book what I thought I would do really is talk about sort of our circumstances now we're in covent 19 we're all in lockdown the world is sort of you know trying to deal with this new reality and from your vantage point as someone who is you know a friend of the United States who who has who knows the United States but also is in Singapore a crossroads for so many cultures I'm just curious when you talk with people from all over the world what is what are they saying about what are the government's and the people of various countries perhaps in Asia what are they saying and thinking about the United States in terms of our response to cope in nineteen well I hope you don't mind if I'm a bit Frank I would say there's a genuine sense of bewilderment and the bewilderment comes from the fact that the United States has been 400 years or more the most successful country on planet earth and and possibly by the way I've even argued that in my previous books the United States has been the most successful country since human history began and that's why you know as you know it's not a secret this widespread global admiration for the United States so to see the most successful country and cost the most competent country in the world be here so incompetently in this response to Corbett nineteen is a major shock to the world and to aggravate matters at a time when all 75 billion people the world facing a common common thread covet 19's you know they're still in the middle of the battle we haven't won it yet yes yes we should all be coming together the whole world as one intelligent human species to deal with a common enemy and instead at this point in time the United States instead of putting the pause button on his geopolitical conflict with China has decided to up the ante and increase its confrontation with China in the middle of this outbreak and I guess everybody the honest question everybody's asking a hunch into also facing a common danger of public 19 can't you stop bickering now can't you focus on first getting rid of our common enemy and that's what that's what I always say why strategic thinkers would have done I mean in in in the World War two FDR cooperated with Stalin a genocide Aluna against Hitler one because you have a common enemy so you own your enemy of your enemy is traditionally your friend so we any your comba 19 is China so China and America logically rationally should be working together to fight Courbet 19 rather than fighting against each other in the middle of the biggest threat the world has faced in god i don't know when hundred years ago so is it distressing to you that you know again let's talk about this we're secretary Pompeo has there's a lot of publicity I was given to his testimony where he actually said there was a lot of evidence that China though the corona virus came from a lab in Wuhan China despite what many experts say is a very very small circumstance I mean what's your reaction to that well I think you know the best thing we can do you know you're dealing here with a very tricky a very dangerous virus that layman but me cannot understand really this is beyond our field of expertise but why do we listen to the scientists and if you have if you or your readers have time try to download and find the one the Richard bottom that it's at the Lancer lancets one of the most respectable medical journals in the world by the way mutate and he says the reason why I've been very critical UK government the US administration and many European countries is because the man said published five papers in the last week of January let me repeat that last week of January 20 not this is a very dangerous new virus killing people number of deaths were rising patient admitted to ICU required ventilation there was person-to-person transmission is it all the warnings were given in the late January and yet us you know did nothing in February did nothing in March and then of course you had this incredible explosion explosive impact and so I mean I can understand why the Trump administration is trying to deflect blame but you also have to where the end of the day is very important your nose evening as you know that this sub theme of my book is that you're dealing with a much more intelligent world a world that has been educated by America and I bet you if you go to most governments in the world and you walk into a cabinet meeting you'll be surprised to find how many of the leaders in the world have been educated in the best American universities yes and all the critical thinking that you have taught people overseas people are now applying to what you're saying they say this is not credible but this is what America taught them all how to critically examine statements use evidence use analysis to arrive at the truth so why don't we do that why don't we use American critical thinking to find out what the truth is so you allude to the book so let's go there which I again I found fascinating and really interesting and very insightful when you started off the book you talked about ten strategic questions that we were that that we one needed to consider when thinking about how to deal how the United States should deal with China and I found those strategic questions very interesting and you posed it in a way of to think the unthinkable as a starting point so I don't want you to talk about all ten questions I mean that would cover the whole hour that we've got but maybe give for our audience who have not read the book maybe a couple examples of those questions and tell us why you think it's so important for us to be asking those questions as we look at the front as we look at trying to decide how we deal strategically with how you how the United States deals with China strategically well you know Philip as you know I'm a friend of America and I'm trying to be helpful to America and of course we all know that America decided whatever reason to launch a drill political contest against China but of course you know the key point I emphasize the beginning of the book is it's okay even if you decide to launch a geopolitical contest the first requirement is that you first work out a comprehensive long-term strategy on how to deal with China it's actually quite shocking and this is an insight that Andrey Kissinger gave me that a one-on-one lunch I had with in the New York two years ago it doesn't work out a strategy is it Henry Kissinger is that what you're saying yeah yes yeah I had a one-on-one lunch with Henry Kissinger in March 2018 in New York and this actually sad the United States hasn't worked out a strategy and so there are some fundamental questions that have to be asked and I just mentioned - the first one is no now that you launched your political contests against China what is your number one strategic priority is it the well-being of the American people or is it primacy now these are two very different goals and as you know one key point I emphasize in my book so America is the only major developed country where the average income of the bottom fifty p50 percent has gone down over a 30-year period and this has to Princeton University economist case and Deaton have documented have created a sea of despair so at a time when young people the bottom 50% are struggling should that be the priority or should we really be to take on China and I would say frankly the well-being of the American people is more important then the issue of primacy what's the point of being number one if your people are suffering so that's a question the second point I make is that you know when whenever Americans think about China or speak about China they talk about the Communist Party of China and of course once you put it as a dispute within a democracy and a communist party then by definition a democracy is virtuous and the Communist Party's evil makes it very easy makes it black and white choice and currently they are no longer living in a world where everything is black and white actually what America has decided to do is to launch a job political contests against the world's oldest civilization at all four thousand years to launch a duopoly contest against the world's most resilient civilization the Chinese civilization is the only civilizations been knocked down four times and stood up four times and you decide to launch a new political chess against a civilization that has four times the population of United States and Unitas is only 250 years old China is four thousand years old and you just have to launch a jawbreaker contest against China at a time when the Chinese people have never been better off the the current Chinese government has done more to improve the standard of the living thing of the Chinese people over the past 40 years then any previous Chinese government has over the past four thousand years and just day before yesterday I participated in the launch of something called the Edelman Trust Barometer which message measures trust in government and the country which has got the highest level of trust in government is China with ninety percent nine zero percent of the population trusting the government's our time honor when a civilization list so they're experiencing a major resurgence you decide to take it on without a strategy so I said find America I say maybe you should pause and think again and that's what my book tries to do tries to America by saying think about the big picture so I I wanted them to talk more specifically about the us-china relationship and I think you'd do a brilliant job describing how we got to the point we are today you you you talk about things that both sides could have done better you talk about the lack of strategic trust you cite that China filled many Chinese now feel that the United States and Americans want to hold China back you talk about how Americans feel that China is a threat strategically which interestingly as as little as five years ago you had this sort of asymmetry where 27 percent of the elites in China looked at the United States as the enemy but only two percent of American counterparts thought that was the case now that's changed drastically one of our observers here saying that there was a poll that says 66 percent of America's a very negative view on China now so I I'd like you to talk what you think about our you know you could go again a long time about this but what were the big strategic errors on the part of China over the last you know 10 15 years and then what were the strategic errors for the United States in dealing with China well well in the case of China and I must emphasize and that China is not a perfect country China's a normal country China has made mistakes and I assume no idea bought a whole chapter to China's biggest strategic mistake and I think China's biggest strategic mistake was to alienate the American business community because you know for decades whenever Washington DC wanted the pressure China wanted to raise human rights on China the American business community would immediately stand up with a stop China is our biggest market and for Boeing China's the biggest market for jet General Motors and making more money from China than it is from United States so clearly the American business community was China's best friend for many years but sadly the the Chinese I think at me because of America struggles in the 2008-2009 financial crisis Chinese became a bit arrogant complacent and began to treat American businessmen with disdain made life difficult for them allegations of theft of intellectual property and so on and so forth so the thing that the most surprising when President Trump decided to launch is trade more against China in 2017 or 2018 normally the business community would have said stop stop the Sun they kept absolutely quiet and this was a reflection of the studio mistake that the Chinese had made but I would say in the case of the United States the strategic mistake it made in Subway's was a bigger one because it was the it was America that decided to launch this geopolitical contest against China China actually is trying to avoid these geopolitical context or reasons we can discuss later but America launched this Japanese contest without working out a long-term strategy and you know since Chinese show do you think city why yes yeah know thyself know thine enemy fighter thousand battles win a thousand battles and if you want me to summarize my book in a couple of sentences I would say America hasn't tried to know itself America doesn't know its he knows his strengths by doesn't know his weaknesses and terms annoying than enemy he knows China's weaknesses where doesn't know China strengths so what my book tries to do is complement by pointing out the United States please look at your weaknesses and look at China strengths and then when you look at the big picture then you decide what is the wisest strategy to adopt to manage a rising child okay one of the questions that we've gotten and I'm going to integrate this and again what I plan to do for the audience is sort of skip through a lot of different points in your book and then hopefully that will spur questions as we move forward one question has to do with specifically about the Chinese intentions about the South China Sea and this is really a larger question that you address that you've addressed in many different ways about Chinese expansionism and one of the key messages of your book was that you wanted to address what you see is an irrational fear of China by the United States and so tell us why you are not as concerned about China I mean Singapore is much closer to China than the United States so why don't we go there oh let me emphasize that we are concerned about yeah you know they put it very simply you're in a small room and you begin by looking in your condo you see a small cat down there you are very happy the cat's happy and you're paying attention to the conversation with Philip and then you turn around the cats because I'm a tiger and then you should look I got a tiger in the room now so that's what Tainan as you know has grown faster than any other major power s you know in 1980s GNP was 10 ppb 10 with 10% United States by 2014 he became bigger in 34 years it emerges the number one so - China is a much very rapidly and everybody is making everybody has to adjust to this new reality Singapore - adjusted his new ability - but in the case of the South China Sea it is not a simple black-and-white issue of China trying to be aggressive and everybody else in the world being you know innocent but as you know I begin that chapter on his China expansionist by talking about the belief in the anglo-saxon media and that President Xi Jinping offered to demilitarize the South China Sea Islands and then subsequently went on to militarize it and and the whole and Cossacks and media has been saying Xi Jinping is a liar Xi Jinping is a liar but I also two years ago when I was doing research for this book and met former American ambassador Stapleton boy who told me that when President Xi made that offer the President Obama the United States should have seized that offer and said ok let's look to us demilitarization of the South China Sea he said to me this is his wasabi the United States and said decide to send his Navy into the South China Sea and the Chinese said ok if you want to play a little trick in real clever trick it so you know these are very complicated parts of the stories but what I like to emphasize is two points one is the dispute is not between China and United States over the South China Sea because the United States main concern is freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and and so China has absolutely no objections to freedom of navigation in the in the South China Sea and by the way the United States wants to protect freedom of navigation the wisest thing that United States to do which all these previous secretaries of state advise you not to do to ratify the law of the sea convention a new analysis hasn't done that so that that's that's a that's a contradiction down there you're saying we concern about freedom of navigation but then you don't ratify the Lord secret venture the second point I'm going to make is that the distance is at the end of the day I disputed in China and the four other claimants which are Vietnam Philippines Malaysia Brunei and I would say these five countries at the end of the day have to work it out and we let us let us let us be helpful in getting them to work it out let us protect our interests in freedom of navigation and at the end of the day tried to find a peaceful negotiated solution rather than to try and find a military solution to that issue because if you went for a military solution sadly and one of the puts you know one of the slightly propagated points I make in the book is that you know China to be is an estranged stage of development where America was at the end of 1919 said she when Teddy who's very much and you know went any who's well became secretary or maybe he started a war with Spain these territories and and if China behaved like Teddy lose well China immediately seized all the islands in South China Sea and he can do so in 24 hours but it hasn't answered so that that these are these are the realities we must also recognize when we come to South China Sea okay so there are questions about human rights here about China one just came through you heard that ding there are others that are talking about the nature of the Chinese government as autocratic totalitarian so here's the question that you again touch on in terms of the internal evolution of China and it's a very provocative statement I think many Americans and perhaps other Westerners you you say something to the effect that it's virtually impossible to give any Western reader that in the current national and global contact straight and the continuation of Chinese communist rule under G Jinping that the continuation of the party ruling China good for China and good for the world over a period of time and yet you're kind of advancing that argument or you're positing it and I'm kind of wondering for you to explain what your reasoning is behind this well I think at the end of the day I don't think anyone in America anyone in Singapore or anyone in the rest of the world should feel that they are better qualified to answer what is good for China the Chinese people are and you know and I want to make a very simple point that the China is about 1.4 billion people the Chinese government is very powerful has got tremendous controls but in the one point four billion people decide they had enough or the Chinese Communist Party I think the Chinese Communist Party will become will be gone you cannot put down 1.4 billion people but that then instead what you have is the opposite which is that the Chinese Communist Party now as I said in the hill and Trust Barometer enjoys the support of 90% of its population so the question is what's wrong with the Chinese people why it is supporting the Chinese Communist Party rule and the simple answer is that the Chinese response of the Chinese people is in some ways a rational response because in the last 40 years as I mentioned earlier the Chinese people have experienced a great improvement in their standard of living then any Chinese people have experienced ever in Chinese history and I say this with some personal conviction because the first time I went to China actually was exactly 40 years ago in 1980 and when I went to China at the Beijing in 1980 the people in China couldn't choose what to wear that were Maori suits they couldn't choose where to live where to work they couldn't choose what to study and you know by the way there was there were not one Chinese tourists traveling overseas in you assume that if any Chinese tiny tourists left tunnel 1980 he would have defected and run away right that was Mao is ash Mao is China but today you go to China the Chinese people can choose what to wear where to live where to work what to study and a few hundred thousand study in American universities so the Chinese and and and the most shocking statistic is this each year 130 million Chinese walk with their feet and become go as tourists overseas each year I driven 30 million Chinese go home to China really now as you know if you live in da oppressive totalitarian state and by the way I want to emphasize 1976 I also visited the Soviet Union and I experienced that was what da totalitarian state was like I saw it my own eyes you go to China today Shanghai fashion is almost as good as Paris fashion people can the entrepreneurship I mean seriously you know totalitarian state you have incredible entrepreneurs but the chemistry and theft in East life has changed so dramatically there people are not aware of it and so it is it is important not to give a sort of black and white portrayal of China and to understand that you're dealing with a very different China than the one that is portrayed in the anglo-saxon media so a lot of those lines are coming back there was a question about someone wanted to ask about your perspective about here in the United States I mean it's hard you know sort of your view about welcoming the influx of Chinese students coming to the two US universities you know what it says anecdotally though most of the Chinese students are being exposed educated by Western values have not adopted West values necessarily freedom and liberties the Chinese seem to prefer a society that is less valuing of those freedoms what do you think would be the negative consequences of the US does not admit these Chinese I think it'd be very sad if the United States stopped at meeting Chinese students into American universities because at the end of the day these students will become the main bridges of understanding between US and China it also mean that you will have a very big community of people in China who after this day in America go back and also go back with very positive views of America but what is important for Americans to understand that there is it is a very strange American belief which is which visually very much like America which is less than 250 years old with 1/4 the population believes that it knows better what is good for the Chinese people in terms of their choice of government then 1.4 billion people with 4,000 years of history and the Chinese people who have to manage China on the basis of their own culture their own traditions their own history and it is a fact that the number one fear that the Chinese people have is of humiliation of sort of chaos of chaos and cuz they know when there's chaos China gets humiliated and China suffer essentially of humiliation from 1842 to 1945 so when China had weak government the Western powers were trampling all over it but now that China is a strong government Western governments are saying why don't you make your government weaker and the Chinese come Chinese people of course naturally quite suspicious or that clear but at the end of the day what I am what I want to say is that the the Chinese government that will evolve in China will depend on the decisions of the Chinese people and we have to bet make the decisions we outside we cannot determine what is good for China okay so one of the things that you have discussed a great deal about in various forms is the notion of American exceptionalism and you devote a chapter as you talk about it the assumption of virtue held by Americans and clearly you are very skeptical of this and so I wanted you to explain how you view this and and and and explain sort of your argumentation about why this is the case and then you know what is the repercussions for that and how you know how can we change in that way in your view now I wonder sighs that I still think that America is virtuous Society American people are virtuous but the Americans also assume that they are far more virtuous than any other Society in the world and I think that to be honest is somewhat arrogant and condescending towards the rest of the world I think being wiser to acknowledge that other society and as you know Obama once said that every society in the world is exceptional and my god I have no idea what beaten up so bad for saying something which I thought was just your common sense so and and at the same time it is true that I mean it's actually true that American the performance of American society at many stages was really remarkably exceptional but I think what Americans need to understand is that their performance in the last twenty thirty years has not been exceptional at all and America has made some serious strategic mistakes both domestically and internationally so domestically as I mentioned earlier America is the only major developed ID where the average income of the bottom 50% has gone down over a 30-year period as a sea of despair and by the way if you look at these statistics on the pathologies of societies opiates and crime and everything American social conditions are much worse than many societies in the world in America I give you a plus in concrete example spends four times as much as percentage of GNP on health care then say Singapore does and the outcomes of us so there are things that Americans should consider learning from data that's on the domestic side and on the external side Americans and trillions of dollars fighting unnecessary Wars burning away money and for example the estimates of the Iraq war some people say is five trillion dollars why why spend five trillion dollars invading a country that is of no consequence at all to the United States why not take that five trillion dollars and divide it by the bottom 50% and the each member on the bottom 50% of American society would get it checked for I don't know twelve thousand dollars or something like that so why not give the money to your own people might burn it in unnecessary wars and and and also because these wars have that as you know other killings of many innocent people and you know even even in President Barack Obama's time when he was a genuinely a very peaceful man a very peaceful president in the last year of his presidency the United States dropped 26 thousand bombs on seven countries so why so I am a simple one one my very simplest suggestions and make is stop bombing Islamic countries just for words and I think there will be a much and there could be a much better place and so it's very important for Americans and invited Lee it is it is possible for America to go back being the exceptional country it was in the nineteen sixties seventies by the American middle process or the incredible improvement the standard of living let's let's go back to that America not this kind of aggressive America that has forgotten how to take care of his own people so let me pour Merrick verify that a gasps for clarification because you know personally I believe in the notion internationally of American leadership that American leadership is is definitely needed right now in the world arguably you have a Donald Trump who whether he realizes he's arguing or not you know there's an argument and says he doesn't believe in American exceptionalism because he looks at everything so transactionally right that there is something that we are going to get from everyone else and we are just as good as we deserve everything that everyone else does and there's no price for leadership or sacrifice for leadership how can I mean can you come distinguish those US for us in a certain way in terms of what you see I mean going back to the Americas had high was an example but can you give us something a little more concrete in a different way in terms of what we can be doing right now well I mean I think the world would be happy to see American leadership but you know leadership means that you the first requirement of leadership is that and you go to understand the people who are leading and you cannot just say I'm the leader follow me but I see any a great leader must look at his people and say do I understand the people beating and here I want to say that you know one of the key one America's biggest tragic thinkers with George Kennan and when he launched when he gives strategic advice to America and often managed a unit he gave four pieces of advice is I thought were very useful the first piece of advice was that at the end of the day the outcome of the contest with the Soviet Union will depend on the domestic spiritual vitality of American society we must have the NLD be a better society then so even though any other Society and as I pointed out America today doesn't have that domestic spiritual vitality the second thing he said is cultivated friends and allies he said America cannot do this alone and as you know in the last step in the last three years of the Trump administration America has not been cultivating friends and allies but to be fair it also when the United States decide to go to war in Iraq France and Germany strongly oppose the war but America didn't listen to it and then thirdly he said be humble right and let's not try to pretend that we're superior and like strangely enough as you know when when America was doing very well it was humbled it was not doing so well he's become less humble the paradox there and the last point he made which I thought was interesting he said even though the Soviet Union will be a mighty adversary at the other day we still have to deal with the Soviet that's not insulting and so one thing that troubles me is that many Americans today don't hesitate to insult China I think that's very unwise you give you at the end of the day if you have to live with 1.4 billion Chinese people don't insult them okay you may not agree with what they're doing you can have disagreements but no or diplomacy is in their day about learning authenticity respectfully and trying to find solutions so I think we have to get rid of some of the sort of very negative public criticisms that you see of China that is becoming ambition American body politic and I think is unwise another topic for for people to think about you talk about because America the in the United States and China are looking at each other as adversaries and possibly even more so we know that many of people in the world look at the world is zero-sum fashion and it seems that as a result of that there are a number of countries that are sort of sort of looking in the wind as to who is going to prevail and you were have a discussion about countries forcing to choose sides it's a very interesting conversation and to be clear because there are a number of people here to be really direct Kishore who are saying that you're being somewhat apologetic for which I know that is not necessarily a case because you talked about the possibility that China may be technically able to outperform the United States but it hasn't made itself a model for other nations in a way that perhaps the United States aspires to okay and that we've done her for so long so can you talk a little bit about that dynamic that's going on in the region right now and what that made me yes and I can understand why American audience when they hear us listen to what I say they hear me apologizing for China because you know in the American media is flooded with so much negativity on China that you come across as a calm rational voice saying these are the strong points these are the weak points of China you come across as an apologist for China's overdue for every one of the Americans listening to me who thinks I'm an apologist for China I have a very simple humble request you know I think it was one of your America's great founding fathers and who said we must show a decent respect for the opinions of humanity or something like that I forget the exact phrase that he used and I would encourage Americans to travel around the world and listen they are why do we 193 countries in the world one is America the other is China 191 other countries and I would strongly encourage Americans to go and listen to what these countries are saying and saying how do you manage and deal with a rising China and if the majority of the countries in the world share the American antipathy towards China they'll be walking away from China and saying I don't want to deal with this country it is dictatorial its totalitarian and it treats his people terribly I want to do more trade with America I want to do more business in America and do best business and trade with China here's the data 127 countries out of 100 and 91 countries do more trade with China and when China launches belt and rule initiative which by the way America opposed in America said this is going to be a debt trap and countries of the world beware stay away from the belt and other initiative guess what over 100 countries may be stupidly maybe unwisely decided to join the doulton of initiative so I would encourage Americans who have open minds to look at data and and try to what I that's why I devote an entire chapter to the six billion people in the world and I must emphasize the soul that there are many other countries who share America's concerns about China Japan certainly shares America's concerns about a strong China India certainly shares America's strong feelings about China certainly a country like Vietnam which by the way has been a neighbor of China for two thousand years was occupied by China for 1,000 years of course Vietnam is very concerned about China but will Vietnam you think join and anti-china coalition know so it is important to understand you're dealing with a very complex very very subtle luhan's world that all the black and white perspectives that Americans bring to the dialogue on China are a major obstacle to understanding and I want to leave one critical phase phrase with all your American business that I want to emphasize that we are now moving towards a multi civilizational world with many successful civilizations and to use only the lenses of Western civilization to understand the world leaves you at a strategic disadvantage try to step into the shoes of other civilizations and look and see how they view the world today so let me pull on that so give me a you know we have China on one hand you had the United States Western can you give me very quickly sort of some other societies or models that are emerging because I mean one of the things that you were talking about in the 1990s very directly and prominently was an Asian way which is not necessarily a Chinese way are you still how do you how's that thinking evolved for you well I think you are seeing quite naturally the return of Asia and this is driven again it's important to remember that let's look and human this year let's say since price for the past two thousand years and over the past thousand years from the we owe one to the Year 1824 1800 or the last 2,000 years the two largest economies the world were all whistles of China and India but only in the last 200 years that Europe took off and North America took off so the past 200 years of Western domination of all history have therefore been a major historical aberration all aberrations come to a natural end and so we seen the end of the era the Western domination of all this we see naturally the return of Asia and just go back to your very first point about Kovac 19 one of the most shocking things about the results of coordinating there not been part of the Wilson but it is quite striking that if you look at the number of deaths per million but from Kovach 19th in Spain is 500 Italy about 500 you UK 300 400 now us is 218 and a hundreds we don't know but he says sure the number of deaths are less than 10 five for Japan five for China before four for China five for South Korea to for Singapore zero of Vietnam so something the East Asian governments seem to be managing things a bit better why it isn't me I really don't know yet but has been how do you see a leveling of competence over the whole world so the assumptions that that many Americans bring to the table that we are naturally better and superior I would say just just be a bit more humble and try to see whether you can learn from other societies and it's good to learn from other societies I thought it'd be interesting because you do talk I want it's important for me I think I it's important I think for the audience to know sort of your motivations related to writing this book I mean we were kind of I was joking aside but in some ways I was quite serious that it's very clear that this book is directed towards the United States and it's very directed towards Americans okay I don't want to read too much into this but I was thinking huh would you write a book that was geared towards the Chinese to tell them what to do and is there an expectations that the Chinese would listen I'm just wondering on the opposite side is there something there that you think that what you're saying is going to be more that the American audience is going to be more receptive to what you're saying and does that give you a bias in certain ways for you in terms of I think about about American society well I I hope that I'm trying to be you're right I mean the book is primarily oriented it in American audience because it was at the end of the day it was the United States that decided to launch a true political contest against China and the Chinese actually are not ready yet for this particular contest and for this reason they want to delay it but I think the one big mistake that the United States is making is that the United States says hey we have won every struggle we in World War one we want all or to be one whole war we won in the Japanese challenge can we want so Americans a resume that come what may we will always been is by the way it is very very conceivable and highly possible that Mary yes can win the struggle against China but I would say the you know that when you whenever you go into a conscience the biggest mistake you can make is to overestimate your capabilities and underestimate the capabilities of your adversely and China and this I recommend that those who doubt what I say about China should eat Henry Kissinger spoke on China and and one simple point I make is that the Chinese leaders do think carefully strategically and think long term and patiently accumulating advantages year by year by year your value so this is not this is not your own Soviet Union that you're dealing with so I'm actually trying to be helpful to the United States by as you know I also begin the book by publishing a hypothetical letter from one of teaching things politics to prostitution saying we have taken on the United States of course we will win but China must never never underestimate the United States it has been the most successful society then I proceeded to describe how the United States is sort of an amazing society and he can mistake for China so I'm actually advising both America and China to be very wise and careful before stepping this job over purpose because at the end of the day I believe that the American people and the Chinese people will actually be better off if they toss this job of a contest step back and then do a recalculation where their interests lie and today as you know when we face so many common challenges like Kobe 19 like global warming I'm shocked to learn that I understand Boston is going to have a snowstorm in me yeah but gosh something is happening thing in the area of climate change maybe why don't we focus on really the big issues that are really fundamentally important why why worry about this petty Jabez game so I am trying BCP on I'm encouraging you to think hard and long before you plunge into this job political contest so I think we've got time for two more questions one and I tried to integrate you know we've had almost almost 40 questions so I've been integrating them here there so here's one that I think people would find interesting this is something that was top of mind clearly before kovat 19 head passage with Hong Kong so someone who knows China someone who knows Hong Kong someone who knows the United States the question is more or less about how do you assess the performance of the Chinese government regarding Hong Kong and how should the United States handle it well you know the it's important when you handle an issue we're dealing with China to understand the history and the question is how did on Kong get separated from China and as you know we got separated in the 1842 opium war and that's when the Chinese experience explains the beginning of the century of humiliation the British wanted to offer them opium in return for Chinese tea the Chinese said no no no no and the sunk of british boat and the chinese every shot was responded by seizing hong kong and saying now all you have to accept opium and that began the downward slide of China so Hong Kong is a very powerful symbol of one of the most humiliating moments in in Chinese history and if you don't understand that then you don't understand why are they getting so angry about the Hong Kong issue and at the same time is also clear that the people of Hong Kong want to enjoy greater autonomy from from China and I think that's there's some reason why they should get it but I think if you if you want the people of Hong Kong to get autonomy the five million people in hong kong or seven million people are hong kong i'm not going to get it if they go headlong into a contest against 1.5 billion people then then sadly unwisely they'll be crushed and you know the places like Hong Kong have got to be very politically astute in their way that they manage their relations with China and me from the outside if you want to be helpful let us not get involved and then try to work it out in their own way Allah says you know in my book I point out that there are structural reasons why the people who are uncle are happy and sadly you know even though the bottom 50 percent in China have had their best 40 years in the last 40 years the bottom 50 percent in Hong Kong have seen their standard of living go down and they live in incredibly crammed housing and as I explained the story the real estate tycoons unfortunately didn't allow public housing to be good which is a major strategic mistake so there are other things that are also fueling these problems and there are solutions to the Hong Kong problem that we can try to fight ok so I think we have time for one last question which is something that a lot of people talked about you know how do we improve us-china relations and you know the question about the answer who has won or who is winning and you know I would recommend people read the book because you've got a whole host of recommendations sort of peppered throughout but with the last you know two minutes that we've got what would be the thing that you would want our listeners to take with them after you know we've basically taught for 15 minutes very quickly what are the two things that you want to leave us with I think the two things I want to leave your audience with is that at the end of the day the American people should focus on the well-being of the 350 million American people and 1.4 billion Chinese focus on the well-being and 1.4 billion people there's no fundamental contradiction if they focus on about being in fact they can and should be able to work together to improve the well-being of their people so for example thank the America needs better infrastructure China can help America build infrastructure is a simple concrete example the second point I'm gonna make is that the other global challenges they are facing especially global warming and now especially covet 19 meme that frankly all the countries of the world including US and China should come together to deal with this common global challenges first which are more pressing and let us set aside all these two political disputes that I'd put a pause button on them and that has tried to be if we can do we should demonstrate via via the most intelligent species on planet earth and I the last paragraph of my book I say in the United States and China keep fighting each other while global warming is happening future historians will see them as two tribes of caves fighting each other while the forest around them are burning let us focus on the burning force okay so with that and with the expression of hope let us close here Kishore mother Bonnie thank you so much for taking a time thank you for joining us in Singapore for this conversation for those of you who are listening thank you for joining us some of you it's probably odd hours of the night and we greatly appreciate it and let me just say a couple of things in closing notes world affairs councils across the country are going to gather virtually for a special inclusive ideas summit under a new brand it's going to be CXC amplified that's e XE amplified so I hope you'll join them then all of us at that point please join us here at world affairs and we're in San Francisco for virtual events conversations debates and more we will have there'll be programs running F is at the at the idea summit the in the afternoon tomorrow until 8 p.m. so please visit our website at world affairs comm slash events for more information I'm sorry we couldn't get to all of your questions but again I hope that this spurred a lot more questions for us to answer and thank you all for joining us so at this point we will go ahead and sign off Julie if you could just keep make sure that Kishore and I stay on for a little bit longer that we can chat that would be great and everyone thank you please be safe and be healthy

Channel: World Affairs

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Keywords: World, Affairs

Id: k2ujLjxJxOM

Length: 58min 17sec (3497 seconds)

Published: Mon May 11 2020