The Point: Why does the West fail to understand China?

but what are the underlying currents and attitudes that steer how the West in general and the u.s. specifically are now interacting with modern-day China as an emerging political and economic force on the international stage is the West are driven by an irrational fear of China or lack of confidence in its own ability to compete head-to-head with the world's most populous nation or on a deeper level is the West plagued by a fundamental misunderstanding of Chinese culture and civilization itself which leads to a misreading of China's actions and motivations today and looking to the future what kind of a great power will China become welcome to a special edition of the point with me Lu Xin coming to you from Beijing I'm joined today with great pleasure from London by Professor Martin Jakes a senior fellow at Cambridge University and author of the best-selling book when China rules the word professor Jakes thank you so much for joining us today now at a recent conference in London this February you gave a speech under the theme what China will be like as a great power of course this is a huge question but why do you ask this question now what are the factors that make this question an important one at least to you well I would say it's really come on to the agenda probably as we recently as the lights last five years I mean it's not a question that you probably would have asked at least with the same pertinence ten years ago and the reason for it I think is twofold first of all thus the continued growth of China which is which is making it a larger and larger economy and secondly linked to that of course as the growth has been the growing elaboration by China of how it sees itself how it sees the world what what it would like to be and so on so that's one factor the other factor is the decline of the United States and I think one of the problems even in China actually for a period ten years ago when my book came out is that there was an underestimation of the decline of the United States which has been going on for actually quite a long time but of course that the key moment in this process was the Western financial crisis in 2007 and 2008 then we could all see very clearly that the United States was more vulnerable rather than what were the weaker even possessing a certain fragility than previously had been thought so I think these two factors together have put on the agenda not just for China but for the world well okay China's clearly going to be a shaper of the future what gonna be like yeah well III don't really think there is a there is any disagreement on the first point but concerning the second point we talked about the decline of the West especially the decline of the United States there might be people who disagree saying show us some key evidence okay there was this financial crisis but the United States seemed to have walked out of it the the economy of the United States seems to be doing fine actually better than a long period of time to come and and the ability to innovate still seems to be very very strong so how can you substantiate your claim that the West is in decline versus China's rise let me take this take three examples yes the American economy has grown at roughly two percent a year since the financial crisis but the Chinese economy continues to grow much faster even though it is less than it was previously probably China's growing at roughly three times the annual rate of the United States over the decade since the financial crisis secondly if you look at the American economy is proportion of global GDP I mean you know it's been declining over a very long historical period and so now it's down to probably around about by the primary person parity about 16 percent this is a much smaller than it was even ten this is even ten years ago twenty thirty years ago so we're talking about a long term process and thirdly one can see that the United States no longer has the degree of hegemony in the world that it had previously you know certainly after the collapse of the Soviet Union the so-called you know unipolar moment then the United States was regarded at the time as very dominant now you look at the take the Middle East which has been a problem the reason in the world where the United States had invested more political energy military resources than any other and the United States is no longer able to boss the Middle East like it was previously the classic example of that of this a--probably is what happened what had happened in Syria where actually Russia became in some ways a more significant or as significant a player as the United States and if you go around the world even in its backyard Latin America the United States is nothing like as influential as it once was take Africa the United States really is not that significant a player in Africa now of course what has been replacing American influence up to a point has been Chinese influence so I think if you if you take if you look at this in a broad way you can see and it's very important to see it's very important to see the big picture and the historical trend okay yeah well let me ask you this question then so what kind of great power will China be you try to answer that question and you outlined your answers from four perspectives I understand in their speech you gave earlier this year you talked about China's economic power you talked about China's relations with the developing countries you talked about the belt and road initiative a major connectivity infrastructure connectivity initiative that China has proposed and you talked about sino-us relations why did you choose these four different elements to describe the kind of great power picture that China is going to to to to demonstrate to be involved embodied in for the world well actually there's a more important point I made really in a way because my argument is that China is going to be a very different kind of power to the United States and before that the UK and this gets much more deeply into the question of the history and culture of China in comparison with that of the West and my argument essentially is that if you look at the Western past the United States now a certain in my own country before that Britain then there were two classic modes of expansion one was military I mean clearly that's been extremely important for the United States it's regarded if anything in the United States as the primary fourth form of American power and in the British case of course colonialism an empire covering a fifth of the world was not possible without very substantial military and especially naval power and the second thing I think is that the second feature of western expansion was the role of politics a political intervention of classically in the case of colonialism literally taking over and ruling lots of ways of countries around the world but even today you can see that the Western pattern has and remains if it can to politically intervene in lots of countries now of course there's a common factor as well and that is you can't become a great power unless you've got economic strength but it there is the United States did have quite a lot Britain actually for its time didn't have because it was much smaller and so now this brings me to China yeah China doesn't actually in my view share either of these two key points it does not I don't think China has ever historically really laid a primary emphasis on military power China has not has never been in that Western sense and expansionist power geographically even in during the period of the tribute system and so on China was not did not express itself by military expansion this was it was quite different China if you like was much more what should we say you know a stay at home country it was this was bad Afghans here it was the notion of China you know what a growth the Middle Kingdom and so on this is entirely different from the Western experience let me interrupt you there again you talked about China is more or less as stay at home let me just play the devil's advocate here and actually a lot of people have voiced the scepticism that with the belt and road initiative when masses of Chinese companies are going out that initiative for some people are saying is exactly a demonstration of China's ambition to go out to reach out to expand how would you counter that kind of argument this of course I was going to just say that the two modes of Chinese expansion are very different from the Western one economic and secondly cultural which people don't talk enough but I think that's extremely important and clearly we can see that China's power is going to be expressed and he's being expressed at the moment primarily in an economic form China is going to be a I think relative to the world China's economic power is going to be greater than was for example or has been the case with the United States and so you can see this in certainly in the belt and road example that you you give this wouldn't be possible without China's growing strength but the economic power is not being expressed in any avert military or political forum certainly not military not political I mean I don't think the Chinese are interested in telling other countries what government to have or running other governments but that was a classic feature of the United States and Britain in their pomp do you think well I understand being a Chinese I of course fully understand what you mean it is not in our genes to go out and conquer basically if we would have wanted to do that or if that would have been in our gene we would have probably conquered a lot of countries in southeastern Asia for instance instead of adopting the tribute system where we stay where we are and countries come to us to to keep a good relationship or to learn from us or we go and learn from them and someone so forth but how can you assure the world that this gene will stay the way it is in the future maybe in not maybe you know for the for the near-term future years but in the long term as Chinese economic interests span around the world could it be one day that the Chinese will have to exert a certain political even military Pro s to go with that kind of economic influence well III think that you know it's impossible beyond the point to say look you know in 30 years time 40 years time China will never do this because if people don't believe you they're not going to believe you so the key question is that people have an understanding of what China is this is the fundamental thing and this is the great problem in the West the West does not understand China that is the great difficulty because the West has a belief that it is the universal model that all modernity should be like Western modernity and it tries to interpret China through a Western prism in western terms and it can't understand you can't understand China that way which is why the West has a deep misunderstanding of China and as is why for a long time really the West has got China wrong I mean we've come now as you mentioned earlier right at the beginning of the program to the question of the trade war and of our way and so on and the difficulty is that the reason for the shift in the American position in my view towards the trade war the more regret much more aggressive stance towards China and breaking forty years of history in the relationship between the two countries is twofold first of oh well they made two assumptions the America America not just Trump but more widely within American establishment made two assumptions about China the first assumption was that China was much weaker economically than the United States and could not get close to the United States and would not get close to the United States and of course they'd been proved fundamentally wrong in this respect and secondly they believed that ultimately China would become like a western-style society it would become as it were the Americans would say become like us and you know this this this this belief was is again completely pimply proof completely wrong so the underlying political and intellectual assumptions that underpin the American attitude towards China were flawed and now of course in the act and and and now they can see this situation and they think oh look China's very strong it's very powerful what are we going to do about it we can't allow this to carry on we've got to find ways of maybe reversing it or at least constraining it or slowing it down and this is I think the America mentality and it stems directly from its failure to read China properly well you talked about it absolutely as the Achilles heel of the West is that Western countries don't read China correctly or they don't understand China and by now there's still seemed not to be enough effort or the right kind of approach to understand China there are many profound differences and you listed four different major differences may I list them here for instance you talked about China being a civilization state you talked about the balance between China's central government and the local governments and then you talked about the relationship between the state and the society and the difference in universalism you mentioned a little bit just now between the West and in China again why these elements are they unique in cha for China well they're extremely distinctive for China but they're completely unique or whether they're shared in some degree by other countries not Western countries it is another matter but they are certainly extremely distinctive features of China and they you know they have a very very long history I mean we're talking about yes certainly 2,000 years maybe you'd want to go back further than that and the great difficulty you see is now you know there were two problems first of all the West developed an essentially triumphalist expansionist ideology based on its own universalism and secondly this period of course coincided with the great weakness the first day of decline and the great weakness of China and so they didn't really need to make sense of China they didn't really need to understand China China in a way was an object you know which they sought to in one way or another well partially colonize and impose unequal treaties and so on they didn't really they didn't have to think of China as even as an equal as anniversary rather an equal adversary they thought of China or something they could well bend to their will and so there's a huge amount of ignorance about China and I think that that the discussion about civilization then is very important that the difficulty is that we know the West doesn't even really think of itself as a civilization it thinks of itself primarily in terms of nation-states of course it does think of it so it it has it sometimes says Western civilization but it doesn't have anything like the same meaning to talk about Chinese civilization or you know Indian civilization or other civilizations around there are there are many many elements that civilizations around world thank goodness because it's make what the make the world beautiful and and fascinating and so I you know we're right at the beginning I mean in my own country you know people the first thing if you talk about China they're almost the first thing they'll say to you not every there has been a shift of opinion I don't want to say that Alan because there has been a shift of opinion in a more positive direction there is an acknowledgement of China's economic achievements there is a great acknowledgement of China's were you know the tremendous reduction in poverty and so on there has been that ship in vineyard yeah but the first thing they'll say to you probably is human rights as it and that and with that as soon as they raise that they sorted it's a in the tone of condemnation of China now you can't understand China by starting with the Western notion of human rights you just can't do it so there are we going this is going to be a very long historical process we think of the difficulty from the late 18th century that the Chinese had of understanding this rampant new force called Europe so it took the Chinese a very long time to understand it and I'm afraid it's gonna take the West a long time to understand yeah well you talk about China being not only a nation state but a civilizations state and this is rather an academic term for the for the ordinary men and women on the street is probably a little bit difficult to understand so in in simple terms what would people have to change in their mind when you think about China not as simply a nation-state with a 70 year history or a bit longer let's say but rather of a civilization that has been there for thousands of years and with many different ethnic groups 56 all together with many different languages and with many different dialects very diverse cultures and very different geographical features so what would people have to change in order to really approach China in the right right direction right okay the first thing I think people need to do is if they can't is to go to China because you can't a westerner can't go to China and carry on thinking the same thing that they thought before they may not understand China properly but they're there generally I find their responses Wow and they come away with that impression which is you know they never ask the that moment they never see the world in the same way again this is extremely important because basically Westerners have an extremely western-centric why is that everything emanates from the because the West has run the world for the last 200 years I mean it's no secret about it I mean but you know we've been dominant was the capital world then New York becomes the capital of world English becomes the language it used to be it used to be the gold standard the Sterling now the dollars the dominant currency currency in the world what are the major international institutions they're all the product of the American international order after the Second World War do you know change we've run it yeah I understand that I understand that I travel extensively to Europe most mostly to Europe but I also get a lot of information from the United States because we have the internet we have TV we have movies we have books we have magazines so if you want you can and basically look there is a hundred and fifty million Chinese people who ventured out last year to see the world or 150 foreign trips made by Chinese citizens to be more exact so if you want you can do it yeah well try you know people aren't used to going to China in the West they I mean they the flows of tourists as you know from the West to China have increased duty but it's still a relatively small number of people and and it's English because it's let's say the other it's slightly you know and it's a long way away and it's expensive relatively speaking and it's slightly forbidding actually in various ways so so far you know the a lot of a lot a lot of people have gone but a lot more have never gone you know an ordinary people you know they're more likely you know they're more likely to go to countries they're familiar with mm-hmm I mean like Chinese initially you know first place at port of call was Hong Kong and so they tend to stay in the region for good financial reasons not least and and where they feel comfortable now I think that what the point I wanted yes that you asked the question you know I've just given reply to you in terms of you just need to see China to see you've got to rethink now that's the first that's the starting point you've got to have an open mind the closed mind you had before doesn't answer the questions or doesn't even pose the right questions the second thing is that you got to people have got to be very open minded about thinking about China cuz we have--we're steeled in certain traditions about governance and democracy and multi-party systems and universal suffrage and so on and if China's not like that we dismiss it but they've got people have got to think in a very different way look this is a country that clearly works this is a country that's delivered the most extraordinary economic transformation in human history look how dynamic the Chinese are look how creative they are look how innovative they becoming and and I think then there and then then then people you know it'll be a slow process well well I heard a moment of conversion professor Jiggs I hope it's a slow process at this moment actually I'm a little bit hesitant to say that because on the one hand we are doing what we can to build our economy to to create things to innovate on the other hand we have the United States especially some leading officials in the United States drumming you know around the world going to its allies and talking about how dangerous China is for instance the US has started you know after this trade war with China started to accuse China of a series of misbehavior such as IP theft as if the Chinese is not capable of innovation at all and then during his trip to London earlier this May the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a speech saying China is dividing the West through the use of technology and he caught on the UK to resist Huawei to protect intelligence to protect and its security so in your perspective what prompts some US official to resort to such behavior to to try to contain China does the u.s. rachana right no the u.s. meets China profoundly wrongly dirty wet sense in which they read it right is they foot finally come round to the realization that China is a serious challenge to the United States you know I mean it's becoming a very modern and and dynamic country and with growing influence around the world they write about that but they're wrong but that the demonization of China is another matter all-together and this is a you know I mean you know we can see the beginnings can't we hear of a new Cold War it will not be the same as the last Cold War there are fundamental differences China in a month of Sundays is not the Soviet Union the United States is no longer rising power as it was then but it's a declining power so it's not going to be a rerun of the last one but the idea but in the American psyche when it comes to an adversary that challenges what it regards as it's not natural right which is to be the economic power in the world then China then they start thinking in the old Cold War terms so they're trying to demonize China they're trying to to to tar it with you know with with with with a bad brush now you know so I mean a classic shift in them that merit the way the Americans have argued I think is taking the Huawei example is that essentially I think that what they don't like about Hawara why is it so successful that it's become you know the key the leading global player in telecommunications it who would have thought that ten years ago in the West we were still saying okay the Chinese have done very well they've grown very quickly they're greater copying they're great at imitating but they can't in they can't innovate oh that story you don't hear that now in the same way they might still say oh well they're trying to they're nicking it from us like the pencil II finally yeah my finals my going to say is the look hawawa threat they pose as security I don't believe this I don't what what that what they've cared about is hawawa as an extremely competitive company so it's for anti-competitive reasons rather than security reasons well again again one is UK counterparts of the threat of huawei's 5g technology he said this is what China wants to divide Western alliances through bits and bytes not bullets and bombs so given that there has been no evidence so far to pop up the talk of security risk is this the strategy that China might pursue in order to be strong and powerful again yeah I mean the West is more divided now actually than it's been probably since since the formation of NATO and the end of the second world war and the reason is because I mean we're talking fundamentally here about Europe and the United States Australia and New Zealand and Canada are bit players in relationship to this question the really big question is how Europe will move okay I know I think that Europe Europe is your Europe is very but Europe does not like Trump I mean the far-right like Trump in Europe but the far right is not thank us yet representative of Europe so I and the main mainstream Europe is very doesn't like Trump is skeptical about Trump thinks Trump is in effect a kind of rogue a rogue figure and the danger is that the United States is becoming a rogue nation so there are very big divisions just under the surface mainly between Europe and the United even I I think yeah we have to leave it there a lot a lot to be said but unfortunately time has run out thank you so much professor Martin Jake's joining us from London a senior fellow at Cambridge University and author of the best-selling book when China rules the world and with that we come to the end of this special edition of the point with me Lucien as always you can follow me on facebook and twitter using the handle the point with alex thanks for watching you [Music]

Channel: CGTN

Views: 284,991

Keywords: CCTV, CGTN, CCTVNews, News, ChinaNews, WorldNews, Politics

Id: oiGm2E8BaC4

Length: 28min 51sec (1731 seconds)

Published: Fri May 24 2019