Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Never before in human history, ever we had two powers
Speaker 2: of the size, the scale and reach of United States
Speaker 2: and China confronting each other in the way that they
Speaker 2: are today. China has become a tiger.
Speaker 1: Kishur Mahpubani, diplomat academic who has seen the rise of
Speaker 1: China from his native Singapore. You said, what's happening now
Speaker 1: is like the Cold War, only America now is behaving
Speaker 1: as the Soviet Union was. It's a very unflattering comparison.
Speaker 2: The goal on my writings is not to say that
Speaker 2: China should win or United States should win. Is to
Speaker 2: say that China and US should step back and reflect
Speaker 2: whether it is in their interests to engage in such
Speaker 2: a zero sum contest.
Speaker 1: From Bloomberg Weekend, this is the Michelle Hussein Show. I'm
Speaker 1: Michelle Hussein. By now you've probably seen a fair amount
Speaker 1: of news emerge out of Beijing, the pictures of that
Speaker 1: summit between Donald Trump and China's Shi Jinping. It's important
Speaker 1: because face to face, one to one meetings like that
Speaker 1: don't happen very often, and yet there's a much bigger
Speaker 1: story to tell than that of these two men or
Speaker 1: any two leaders of these two countries. Actually, the real
Speaker 1: story is an epic tale, one that has been unfolding
Speaker 1: for about thirty years, and it's about supremacy, a battle
Speaker 1: to be the world's number one power, which is why
Speaker 1: we wanted to dive into the US and China for
Speaker 1: this weekend. The story beyond the handshake, the read out
Speaker 1: the truths, and we thought we should discover it through
Speaker 1: the perspective of someone who's neither American nor Chinese, someone
Speaker 1: who has witnessed the rise of China and its relationship
Speaker 1: with the United States from a country that is tiny
Speaker 1: in comparison, Singapore. It's Kishore Mahbubani, who was for three
Speaker 1: decades a Singaporean diplomat, rising to become its ambassador at
Speaker 1: the United Nations. He's from Singapore's minority Indian community, and
Speaker 1: although I've known him for years, I never realized the
Speaker 1: circumstances in which he grew up in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties, how hard life was in Singapore at that time.
Speaker 1: He's written many books, but his most recent is called
Speaker 1: Living the Asian Century. It's also his most personal. As
Speaker 1: you listen, you might well want more on the people,
Speaker 1: the places, the most moments in time we talk about.
Speaker 1: And for that context, have a look at Bloomberg dot
Speaker 1: Com Forward slash Michelle, because that's where you'll find this
Speaker 1: episode in written form, with my reflections and the pictures
Speaker 1: that add to the story. So here's Keshoor Malbubani in
Speaker 1: his own words, talking first about why the US and
Speaker 1: China matters so much right now.
Speaker 2: It is by far the most important contests of our time.
Speaker 2: And I think what most people don't realize is that
Speaker 2: never before in human history have we had two powers
Speaker 2: of the size, the scale and reach of United States
Speaker 2: and China confronting each other in the way that they
Speaker 2: are today. Because the United States is a remarkably powerful country,
Speaker 2: much more powerful than any other great power has been
Speaker 2: in human history. And of course, when the Soviet Union collapsed,
Speaker 2: the United States was left alone as the sole superpower
Speaker 2: in the world, and few expected China to come up
Speaker 2: so quickly. But now China has clearly achieved near parity
Speaker 2: with the United States in the scope and scale of
Speaker 2: its power too. And therefore you notice when President Trump
Speaker 2: launched his tariff wars on all the countries in the world,
Speaker 2: only one country stood up to the United States, and
Speaker 2: that was China.
Speaker 1: In this contest. Then do you see it as bigger
Speaker 1: than the economics of it, the desire on the part
Speaker 1: of the United States to maintain its position as the
Speaker 1: world's biggest economy. Are you talking about powers something broader
Speaker 1: than that, a quest to become the world's only superpower.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, Joe politics has been around for about
Speaker 2: two thousand years or so, and so so there are
Speaker 2: certain habits of behavior that all great powers share in common.
Speaker 2: And the number one power of the time always wants
Speaker 2: to preserve his number one position and not give it
Speaker 2: up gracefully and say, Okay, my turn is up, why
Speaker 2: don't you take over. It's not like in the world
Speaker 2: of business, where IBM will give way to another company,
Speaker 2: for example. But in Joe politics is a zero sum game, sadly,
Speaker 2: and so even though Washington, DC today is a very
Speaker 2: badly divided capital politically, but when it comes to China,
Speaker 2: there's a near universal consensus that it is in the
Speaker 2: interests of the United States to stop the rise of China.
Speaker 2: And that's why the actions against China remain consistent whether
Speaker 2: or not you have President Trump or President Joe Biden
Speaker 2: makes no difference. It's not about personalities, it's about the
Speaker 2: logic of geopolitics.
Speaker 1: And would you say that that is a foolish desire
Speaker 1: to stop the rise of China, because this is the
Speaker 1: way the world is going, that China is on a
Speaker 1: path to become the dominant economic power and the demography
Speaker 1: is on its side.
Speaker 2: Well, no, I would say it's not wise policy of
Speaker 2: the United States to stop the rise of China, because
Speaker 2: China can no longer be stopped. And the only way
Speaker 2: to stop China is to ask the Chinese government to
Speaker 2: stop improving the livelihood of his own people. Right, That's
Speaker 2: the only way that China will stop growing. But China
Speaker 2: still has a long way to go. It's per capita
Speaker 2: income is way behind that of the United States. There's
Speaker 2: a long way to go. So clearly the Chinese people
Speaker 2: want to improve their lives, and the Chinese economy will
Speaker 2: keep growing. Of course, there'll be ups and downs like
Speaker 2: in any other economy, but equally importantly, and this is
Speaker 2: the key point. We live now today in a small, interdependent,
Speaker 2: fragile planet Earth, and our overall priority as humanity should
Speaker 2: be to try and preserve planet Earth before we lose
Speaker 2: it to climate change and other forces. So there is
Speaker 2: afore a larger imperative need for the US and China
Speaker 2: to collaborate to deal with many common challenges in the world,
Speaker 2: rather than to engage in a zero sum game with
Speaker 2: each other. I've used a different analogy in a former
Speaker 2: book of mine, The Great Convergence, saying that the world
Speaker 2: has shrunk, the one hundred and ninety three countries are
Speaker 2: no longer one hundred and ninety three separate boats. The
Speaker 2: one hundred ninety three countries and hundre ninety three separate
Speaker 2: cabins on the same vote. If your cabin on the
Speaker 2: same board, there's no point protecting your cabin if the
Speaker 2: boat is sinking. So therefore there's a common interest for
Speaker 2: us in China to come together and take care of
Speaker 2: the planet Earth, because that's far more important than whatever
Speaker 2: you gained to make in this Joe political game or
Speaker 2: one up mentioned.
Speaker 1: Take me back to nineteen ninety three and a moment
Speaker 1: between the two countries that you saw for yourself as
Speaker 1: a Singaporean diplomat at the Apex Summit of that year.
Speaker 1: What did you see and why did it matter?
Speaker 2: Well, this was the first meeting. Ever, within the new
Speaker 2: President of the United States, then Bill Clinton, and the
Speaker 2: leader of China, Changsa Men. And you may recall that
Speaker 2: in the nineteen ninety two election, Bill Clinton famously stood
Speaker 2: out from H. W. Bush by saying, unlike President Bush,
Speaker 2: I will not coddle the butchers of Beijing. So there
Speaker 2: was a lot of tension in the air wondering whether
Speaker 2: or not Bill Clinton would launch an attack on President Chunkstermin.
Speaker 2: And indeed, President Chunksirmin himself was a bit nervous because
Speaker 2: when he read out his own speech, he read it
Speaker 2: so fast that the Taiwanese delegates said to him, slow down,
Speaker 2: the interpreters cannot follow you. So there was a lot
Speaker 2: of nervousness in the air. And amidst all this nervousness,
Speaker 2: when we had a short break for coffee, the first
Speaker 2: person President Bill Clinton approach was President Chunksirmin. And I
Speaker 2: saw with my own eyes Bill Clinton coddling Chunkstermin in
Speaker 2: a way that he said that he would never do.
Speaker 2: Because that so it was quite a remarkable and everyone
Speaker 2: in the room noticed it was watching incredible sort of
Speaker 2: relief and happiness that what could have been a painful
Speaker 2: confrontational meeting turned out to be a really remarkable breakthrough
Speaker 2: in US China relations.
Speaker 1: And the Butcher of Beijing reference was one to Tianeman
Speaker 1: Square a few years before.
Speaker 2: Exactly. He was referring to what happened in Tienanmen Square
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: And what did that moment which you witnessed then lead to?
Speaker 1: What did it unlock in the years ahead?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it enabled the renormalization of US China relations, because,
Speaker 2: as you know, Tienanmun set the China relationship back quite badly.
Speaker 2: And as you know before then, of course, during the
Speaker 2: Cold War, because the United States needed China as a
Speaker 2: counterweight against the Soviet Union, the United States would always
Speaker 2: be and over backwards to accommodate China. And I can
Speaker 2: tell you an even more horrifying story. In nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 2: there was something called the International Conference on Cambodia, where
Speaker 2: there was a disagreement between China and the Asian countries
Speaker 2: about whether or not the government of Paul Pot should
Speaker 2: be allowed to go back to Nompen after the Vietnamese
Speaker 2: troops left Cambodia, and China took the correct position under
Speaker 2: international law, which is that when a foreign invader leaves,
Speaker 2: Pallpot comes back. But Asian countries said, no, this cannot
Speaker 2: happen because no country will accept the return of Paulpot.
Speaker 2: And fortunately the United States intervene. So we thought the
Speaker 2: United States would of course cite the Asian countries who
Speaker 2: were calling for free elections. Instead, to our absolute horror,
Speaker 2: the United States said, don't stand up with China. We
Speaker 2: need China for our sending up the Soviet Union. So
Speaker 2: that was one of the most amazing things I saw
Speaker 2: in my life. But that showed you how far we
Speaker 2: had come between nineteen eighty one, where China is being
Speaker 2: accommodated all the time, to the end of the Cold War,
Speaker 2: and then China was suddenly an irrelevant partner then.
Speaker 1: But while saying that neither country should be treating it
Speaker 1: as the contest that they are, I think overall you're
Speaker 1: much more critical of US policy towards China than the
Speaker 1: other way around, aren't you. I read that you said
Speaker 1: that what's happening now is like the Cold War, only
Speaker 1: America now is behaving as the Soviet Union was during
Speaker 1: the Cold War. That when the Soviet Union behaved unilaterally
Speaker 1: ignored international opinion, and that was the time when America
Speaker 1: acted multilaterally and marshall global opinion to its side. It's
Speaker 1: a very unflattering comparison.
Speaker 2: Well, that has been made by other scholars to that
Speaker 2: in the contests between the United States and Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: American society was flourishing, but Soviet society wasn't flourishing. But today,
Speaker 2: in the contest between the United States and China, the
Speaker 2: bottom fifty percent of the American population, they haven't seen
Speaker 2: this standard of living improve in several decades. And indeed,
Speaker 2: as you know, the indicators of people at the bottom
Speaker 2: are very bad in the United States. And therefore the
Speaker 2: logical thing for United States to do is to first
Speaker 2: focus on uplifting its people rather than to try to
Speaker 2: engage in a zero sum jeopolitical contests with China. But
Speaker 2: I can tell you in Joe politics, unfortunately common sense
Speaker 2: doesn't work because this desire to be number one is
Speaker 2: so somehow the deeply ingrain into the human brain. That's
Speaker 2: very hard to persuade the policymakers. Hey step back and think,
Speaker 2: what is a better approach to take the goal of
Speaker 2: my writings is not to say that China should win
Speaker 2: or United States should win. The goal of my writings
Speaker 2: is to say that China and US should step back
Speaker 2: and reflect whether it is in their larger long term
Speaker 2: interests to engage in such a zero sum contests.
Speaker 1: And the standard of living of the Chinese population has
Speaker 1: risen immeasurably in recent decades. There are, of course, though,
Speaker 1: rights that they do not enjoy compared to Americans' freedom
Speaker 1: of expression, the right to choose their own leaders.
Speaker 2: Well, you're right, I mean, China has rescued eight hundred
Speaker 2: million people are of poverty. That's two and a half
Speaker 2: to three times the population of United States, and that's
Speaker 2: an amazing achievement. The Chinese don't enjoy many of the
Speaker 2: rights that Americans enjoy, But Chinese society has got its
Speaker 2: own political DNA, which has been embedded in the Chinese
Speaker 2: society only for three thousand years, and over three thousand years,
Speaker 2: the big lesson that the Chinese people have learned is
Speaker 2: that when there's chaos in the center, in the capital,
Speaker 2: the people suffer. But when there's political stability and control
Speaker 2: in the center, the people prosper and flourish. And when
Speaker 2: people say that the Chinese people are not free, I
Speaker 2: ask a very simple question. The Chinese people are not free?
Speaker 2: Why is it? Over one hundred and thirty million Chinese
Speaker 2: people leave China each year and then, amazingly, using their
Speaker 2: own two feet, returned to China every year. Now, if
Speaker 2: China was this harsh, dark communist gula that is portrayed
Speaker 2: in the Anglo Saxon media, the Chinese people are irrational.
Speaker 2: They shouldn't be restarted in China. But the Chinese who
Speaker 2: are returning to China are the ones who have experienced
Speaker 2: life overseas. So China, to put it simply, is a
Speaker 2: different civilization from Western civilization. So the kinds of society
Speaker 2: that the Chinese people want at the end of the
Speaker 2: day will be different from Western society. And that's something
Speaker 2: that we got to learn to live with in the
Speaker 2: new multi civilizational world.
Speaker 1: I hear what you're saying, and I'm also at the
Speaker 1: same time thinking of the evidence that emerged a few
Speaker 1: years ago about those re education camps in western China
Speaker 1: in Sinjiang Province, where Chinese Muslims were detained, some as
Speaker 1: young as in their teens right up to people in
Speaker 1: their seventies because the state felt they needed re educating
Speaker 1: about their beliefs.
Speaker 2: Well, there's no question that China's internal arrangements are not
Speaker 2: the same as those of Western society. But you know,
Speaker 2: when the West raises concerns about the Muslims in China,
Speaker 2: the one comment that the rest of the world makes
Speaker 2: is that in general, the West doesn't like Muslims. In general,
Speaker 2: the West doesn't like Chinese, but for some strange reason,
Speaker 2: they love Chinese Muslims, and it's because it's a political
Speaker 2: tool to be used to embarrass China. Unfortunately, that political
Speaker 2: tool no longer works because they're all world is saying.
Speaker 2: If you in the West are so concerned about the
Speaker 2: conditions of Muslims who are oppress, what have you said
Speaker 2: about Gaza? What have you done about Gaza.
Speaker 1: You have seen international relations through your work as a
Speaker 1: Singaporean diplomat over many years, But I want to ask
Speaker 1: you about your life story too, because I think you
Speaker 1: have lived history in a really interesting way in that
Speaker 1: you came of age in Singapore just at the moment
Speaker 1: as it was getting its independence from Malaysia after British
Speaker 1: colonial rule had come to an end. And when I
Speaker 1: read your book Living the Asian Century, I was really
Speaker 1: struck by the hardship that your family experienced, and that
Speaker 1: you experienced that when you started school in nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: you were seriously underweight and you had to be put
Speaker 1: on a special feeding program in school.
Speaker 2: Well, looking back now, this is a strange thing to say.
Speaker 2: I feel that it was almost a privilege to have
Speaker 2: grown up in a poor Third world society. And you're right.
Speaker 2: I was put in a special feeding program at the
Speaker 2: age of six because I was technically under nourish, and
Speaker 2: I lived in a house with no flush toilet until
Speaker 2: I was thirteen years old. One of the biggest changes
Speaker 2: in my life was when the flush toilet appeared, because
Speaker 2: I felt that my sense of dignity improved dramatically. And
Speaker 2: also my family was very poor. My father went to jail,
Speaker 2: the debt collectors came to our house to try and
Speaker 2: auction off the furniture in our house. So I went
Speaker 2: through a very rough Third World childhood. My mother was
Speaker 2: the one who took the brunt of all the pain
Speaker 2: and difficulties, and not one did she crack. And every
Speaker 2: time in my life I go through a difficult patch
Speaker 2: and when I feel depressed, I just think of my
Speaker 2: mother and I say, my mother never cracked under much
Speaker 2: greater pressure, how can I ever crack? So that resilience
Speaker 2: that my mother gave me was an amazing gift in
Speaker 2: my life.
Speaker 1: She had had a narrow escape from communal violence in
Speaker 1: what is now Pakistan at the independence of India nineteen
Speaker 1: forty seven. Your father had obviously had a very difficult
Speaker 1: early life, sent from what was then British India to
Speaker 1: Singapore and starting to work manual labor at the age
Speaker 1: of thirteen.
Speaker 2: Yes, both my parents, none of them ever went to
Speaker 2: university or not even to high school or even secondary
Speaker 2: school by the way, And my father, unfortunately it was
Speaker 2: often at a very young age, and at the age
Speaker 2: of thirteen, was sent to the British colony in Singapore
Speaker 2: and ended up quite naturally without adult supervision, engaged in
Speaker 2: several bad habits like smoking and drinking and gambling. And
Speaker 2: so my mother, who had an arranged marriage, had no
Speaker 2: idea that she was marrying an alcoholic gambler, and that,
Speaker 2: of course was the root of our problems. And my
Speaker 2: mother too, as you said, had a close shave because
Speaker 2: she was in a train leaving Pakistan in the middle
Speaker 2: of the night in the desert when her last compartment
Speaker 2: got decoupled and if a mob had come along, she
Speaker 2: would have been killed, but she survived. So I guess
Speaker 2: our family has had lots of close shaves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But as you say, in Singapore too, when you
Speaker 1: were growing up, it was a poor neighborhood. Few of
Speaker 1: your peers even finished school, let alone went to university.
Speaker 1: And that description in your book of living without a toilet,
Speaker 1: it's so striking compared to what Singapore is today that
Speaker 1: each morning the night soil men went around the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: They opened a small door in the wall of every house,
Speaker 1: pulled out a metal can filled with twenty four hours
Speaker 1: worth of feces and urine from the occupants of the house.
Speaker 2: The sights and smells of that experience never go away.
Speaker 2: But what's amazing is that Singapores per capita income and
Speaker 2: independence was around five hundred dollars, the same as Ghanai
Speaker 2: in West Africa. But today Singapore per capita income is
Speaker 2: ninety four thousand dollars, among the highest in the world,
Speaker 2: and no country in the world has gone from five
Speaker 2: hundred dollars per capita the ninety four thousand per capita
Speaker 2: in sixty years, or less than one human lifetime. Now
Speaker 2: that's one of the most remarkable stories of human history.
Speaker 2: And again that's been one of my great privileges to
Speaker 2: travel this remarkable journey upwards with my fellow Singaporeans.
Speaker 1: It didn't feel that way in nineteen sixty five, did it.
Speaker 1: I think you were seventeen, still in school. Singapore left
Speaker 1: the federation it was in with Malaysia, and there's a
Speaker 1: sense of despondency everywhere about how it can possibly survive
Speaker 1: on its own.
Speaker 2: Well, I remember the day vividly, August nine, nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 2: when Singapore was expelled from the Malaysian Federation, and no
Speaker 2: one in Singapore celebrated our independence because we thought Singapore
Speaker 2: was doomed. And there was a simple reason why Singapore
Speaker 2: was doomed, because Singapore was a city. And when a
Speaker 2: city is cut off from his hinterland, which Malaysia was
Speaker 2: the hinterland for Singapore, he can die like taking a
Speaker 2: heart out of a body and expecting the heart to
Speaker 2: survive without the supply of blood and other materials to
Speaker 2: the heart. So we was a very difficult time and
Speaker 2: no one expected Singapore to succeed in the way he did.
Speaker 2: But of course their success was due to three remarkable
Speaker 2: jeoepolitical geniuses Lei Kwan Yu, Gokeng Swi and Raja Utnam.
Speaker 2: One of the greatest privileges in my life is that
Speaker 2: I got to work with all three of them, and
Speaker 2: they were probably the three best tutors I ever had
Speaker 2: in my life.
Speaker 1: Not just in diplomacy, broader than that.
Speaker 2: Much much broader. They were big, deep thinkers, and all
Speaker 2: three of them took a long range view of history.
Speaker 2: So the reason why Singapore was economically successful, of course,
Speaker 2: mister le Kwan, you played a very important role, but
Speaker 2: the economic architect of Singapore's miracle was doctor Goking Sui.
Speaker 2: And when I sat with him, he would tell me
Speaker 2: about how the Japanese succeeded, what happened in the Meiji Reformation,
Speaker 2: the lessons that Japanese learned from the rest of the world,
Speaker 2: and how Singapore must try to emulate Japan and therefore succeed. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, his understanding of history was amazing.
Speaker 1: You know. I interviewed Li Kwan new once I was
Speaker 1: really early in my career. I was in Singapore and
Speaker 1: the BBC sent me to interview him, and he was
Speaker 1: perfectly civil but I think he probably felt quite insulted
Speaker 1: that someone so junior had been sent to talk to him,
Speaker 1: the senior minister and founding father of Singapore.
Speaker 2: But mister Le Kwan Yu was acutely aware that you
Speaker 2: were with BBC, and he knew that by talking to
Speaker 2: you that he would get his views and opinions to
Speaker 2: a very large section of the human population, and so
Speaker 2: he would have been happy to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Tell me, then, in this picture that you've painted of
Speaker 1: rising China a rise that can't be stopped. It is
Speaker 1: a country that, in its own way, has these moments
Speaker 1: where it destabilizes neighbors, for example, closing airspace around South
Speaker 1: Korea's borders, as has been the case recently, doing things
Speaker 1: that upset or worry the Philippines or Taiwan, of course
Speaker 1: Japan at times. How do these states in the region,
Speaker 1: including Singapore, fair in that Asian order.
Speaker 2: Well, I think we have to understand that China's rice
Speaker 2: has been remarkable and dramatic. And to explain how dramatic
Speaker 2: it is, just imagine when you and I began this
Speaker 2: conversation a few minutes ago, there was a cat sitting
Speaker 2: next to me, and suddenly, after fifteen minutes or twenty minutes,
Speaker 2: I turned around. I noticed a cat has become a tiger.
Speaker 2: Now I was very comfortable living sitting next to a cat.
Speaker 2: I'm very uncomfortable sitting next to a tiger. Now China
Speaker 2: has become a tiger. You have to accept that it
Speaker 2: is now the second most powerful country in the world
Speaker 2: and still rising strongly, and so we have to learn
Speaker 2: to live with a much stronger power in our neighborhood.
Speaker 2: And the idea that any power can be benevolent, the
Speaker 2: term benevolent great power is an oxymoron. All great powers
Speaker 2: will protect their interests. The neighbors of China therefore have
Speaker 2: to adjust to Chinese power. But this doesn't mean you
Speaker 2: cow tao to Chinese power, but you learn to manage it.
Speaker 2: I can tell you that the neighbors of China also
Speaker 2: have long histories. And to give you an example, the
Speaker 2: last country with whom China had a major war was Vietnam,
Speaker 2: and in nineteen seventy nine, about a million soldiers were
Speaker 2: fighting each other in that war, and the Vietnamese were
Speaker 2: occupied by China for one thousand years. Right, but the
Speaker 2: Vietnamese have an expression, a very important expression. They say
Speaker 2: that become a leader of Vietnam, you must be able
Speaker 2: to stand up to China and you must be able
Speaker 2: to get along with China. And if you cannot do both,
Speaker 2: you cannot be a leader of Vietnam. So countries in
Speaker 2: this region therefore are pragmatically adjusting to the emergence of China.
Speaker 2: But I can tell you in our private conversations, we
Speaker 2: do tell the Chinese, quite frankly, what our concerns are,
Speaker 2: and they do listen to the concerns. But the important
Speaker 2: thing is that remember that we are in Asia. In Asia,
Speaker 2: you must always save the face of the person you're
Speaker 2: talking to. Please don't insult China publicly in the way
Speaker 2: that European leaders do, in the way that American leaders do,
Speaker 2: because that's not how you get to work with China.
Speaker 1: Well, in many countries, many leaders are learning that that's
Speaker 1: also the way you work with President Trump.
Speaker 2: Well, President Trump is definitely different from his predecessors. But
Speaker 2: I also have to emphasize that all American presidents put
Speaker 2: American interests first over the interests of other countries. That's
Speaker 2: just a fact of life. And for example, when I
Speaker 2: was in the UN in two thousand and three, so
Speaker 2: many countries Advice President George W. Bush not to go
Speaker 2: to war in Iraq. So many countries, including some of
Speaker 2: the best friends of the United States, including France, including Germany,
Speaker 2: including Egypt, including Saudi Arabia, And you know, United States
Speaker 2: didn't listen. So it is not the case that you
Speaker 2: had American presidents in the past who would sacrifice American interests. No,
Speaker 2: they won't. And this is a reality when dealing with
Speaker 2: great powers.
Speaker 1: So what do you think are the implications of these
Speaker 1: weeks of war with Iran? What do you think is
Speaker 1: the effect of this on China? Is there a reshaping
Speaker 1: that is taking place whereas now going to take place
Speaker 1: because of the war with Iran.
Speaker 2: Well, I've said this to my American friends several times,
Speaker 2: and it's also the theme of my book. As China won.
Speaker 2: Every war that the United States fights, especially in the
Speaker 2: Middle East, is a gift to China. So in the
Speaker 2: ten years when the United States was bogged in Iraq
Speaker 2: after the illegal invasion of Iraq by President GEORSH. W. Bush,
Speaker 2: China had its fastest growing years. It was left to
Speaker 2: grow peacefully from twenty three to twenty thirteen. So in
Speaker 2: the same way, if the United States gets bogged down
Speaker 2: and another war in Iran. Again, it buys time for China.
Speaker 2: And this is the difference between Chinese leaders and American leaders,
Speaker 2: is that Chinese leaders, as Henry Kissinger told me, always
Speaker 2: work out a comprehensive long term strategy before embarking on
Speaker 2: a venture. And the Chinese do have a comprehensive long
Speaker 2: term strategy for managing the challenge that the United States
Speaker 2: is posing to China. By contrast, the leaders of the
Speaker 2: United States, and if I don't mean Republicans only, by
Speaker 2: the way, it's both Democrats and Republicans have not work
Speaker 2: out an equally comprehensive long term strategy for managing the
Speaker 2: return of China as a great power. And I try
Speaker 2: to be helpful to both sides by saying, why don't
Speaker 2: you stay a step back and understand the other side, Because,
Speaker 2: as Sunsu said, the Chinese strategists, no thine cell, no
Speaker 2: thine enemy, fight a thousand battles, win a thousand battles.
Speaker 1: But Chinese leaders can act that way because they don't
Speaker 1: have to ever deal with an election.
Speaker 2: That's true, but in the Cold War, a democratic United
Speaker 2: States that had elections every four years defeated the authoritarian
Speaker 2: Soviet Union, so the constant elections in America were in
Speaker 2: no way a handicap. In fact, as the architect of
Speaker 2: the success of the United States in the Cold War
Speaker 2: was a man called George Cannon, whom I met once.
Speaker 2: And George Cannon said way back in nineteen forty nine
Speaker 2: that the outcome of the Coal War would be determined
Speaker 2: not by the number of bullets or warships, or aircraft
Speaker 2: carriers or jet fighters you have. You'll depend at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, which society creates a spiritual vitality
Speaker 2: that leads to his people flourishing and growing. So if
Speaker 2: George Kennon were alive today, he would advise the United States,
Speaker 2: don't try to get more aircraft carriers. Try to focus
Speaker 2: on improving the livelihood or the bottom fifty percent of
Speaker 2: American people. And if you succeed in doing that, that's
Speaker 2: how you win the long term contests against China.
Speaker 1: Professor Kishour and Mabubarani, thank you so much, pleasure, thank
Speaker 1: you for having me. And that's where we left the conversation.
Speaker 1: By the way, this time the notes in my written
Speaker 1: version go from polpot and Cambodia to Singapore on that
Speaker 1: Independence Day that Kishaw remembers so well. Plus there's fact
Speaker 1: checking on the statistics that came up. You'll find it
Speaker 1: all at Bloomberg dot Com, Forward slash, michell and so to.
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