<Zhang Weiwei>
This morning we received a group of American students, 25, to China Institute for a dialogue which, as you said, we promote the young people's to young people dialogue, and I try to describe the difference between Chinese and the American mentality with regard to foreign policy and security policy. There are clear differences. For the United States, it's friend or foe, very clear, good or bad, black and white. For Chinese, it's a more long-term view; it's a friend or potential friend, you know.
Behind it, there are philosophical differences. As a civilizational state, you have a much longer vision. Even with the troubled relation between China and the Philippines, we know the Philippine politics. It goes ups and downs; this government is prodded against China. So we have patience despite whatever disputes or even so-called clash—maximum clash is a kind of firing water cannons, not real shots. Both sides show respect for the declaration on the South China Sea. Now, so here is my question.
Concerning the rise of China, it's a different type of new type of, you may say, economic, political, and military superpower. And, I remember during the time of Enlightenment, the Dutch philosopher Spinoza said something like this. He said peace is not just simply an absence of war. It's a virtue. Because he's strongly influenced by Chinese culture, and Chinese culture really adores peace, and peace is above all. Even in this famous book by Sun Tzu, *Art of War*, the number one sentence is prudence on waging a war.
Yet at the same time, you remind me of British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who came to China, Beijing, and Shanghai, in the year 1920 after the First World War. And China, because of the long experience with European powers, China lost a war again and again with different European powers. So the Chinese intellectuals were very much disappointed with Chinese culture and civilization. Yet Bertrand Russell counseled these, his counterparts in China. He said, actually, you have a wonderful civilization, especially virtue and passion for peace, and then he made a forecast which is very accurate. He said one day China will have its powerful self-defense capability. So by that time, Chinese passion and virtue of peace will be a tremendous asset for the world.
So it reminds me, in the United States, the top secret is you cannot say the US will become number two; you must, must be number one. In China, the Chinese government said we are, no, we are the second largest, not the largest, although we look at the official figures from the World Bank, IMF, already by the year 2014, 2015, China was the largest economy by purchasing power parity, yeah. So this is interesting.
Yet not long ago, US Defense Secretary Hegseth said openly in several interviews, he said we must be very cautious with China because China's hypersonic missile system can sink all US aircraft carriers within 20 minutes. You know, where China has built up a formidable, powerful defense capability. At the same time, we said openly we will not be the first to use nuclear weapons, will not fire the first shot on whatever occasions. So with this kind of power, like China now arising, will that change the power structure in terms of the embrace of a new world order? Make the third world war less likely?
<Sachs> Of course, in the American political science, the question in international relations is exactly, is there one principle? Do we have it right? Is realism, which is the dominant school in American international relations, a summary for China and for every other place in the world? And I happen to subscribe to your view, which is that the international relations viewpoint that the US has is very particular and it's very much both a European experience and an Anglo-Saxon British experience. It is not a world theory, and we need to understand and construct a different world theory actually that can be understood by all different parts of the world.
So, as you know, in realist theory, each nation is a sovereign actor; there is no authority above the individual nation-state, and it's a dangerous world. And in the British mentality, it is a Hobbesian world, a world of all against all, and in John Mearsheimer's idea, every country must fight for its survival. And therefore, in a dangerous world, conflict is inevitable. And as John Mearsheimer titled his book, *The Tragedy of Great Power Politics*, there's an inevitability of tragedy because countries can't solve their problems any other way.
And when I say to him, "But John, you make war a self-fulfilling prophecy," he says, "Yes."
I said, "But there's no reason for this war."
Yes, but it will happen anyway.
And what I think is true, I give him credit for it. He probably depicts the US mentality. It's not a good theory globally, in my opinion, but he depicts the US mentality. In that book, he has a chapter about China where he dismisses the idea that China has a different viewpoint. I think he's wrong, basically. Uh, and I think he's historically wrong and conceptually wrong on this.
To my mind the difference between China and the Western experience is that China really has been a unified, continental-scale nation for more than 2,000 years, maybe you could say 2,246 years since 221 BC. And there have been periodic breakdowns between dynasties, but basically, China's been unified. Europe was nearly unified under the Roman Empire. Not fully because east of the Rhine and north of the Danube, Rome never controlled that part of Europe.
But the Roman Empire was very impressive, and it was very large-scale, and it was very stable for many centuries, actually. So it was almost five centuries of essentially stability. But then it broke down in 476 in the western part of the Roman Empire. And never again was Europe unified despite many attempts by Charlemagne, by the Holy Roman Empire, by Napoleon, by Hitler. Europe never unified again. There's a big question why. By the way, I think it's a good, deep historical question, though we don't get to run experiments to test it.
I think there are two parts to this, and the book by E.L. Jones about about Europe is quite good on this. First, the physical geography made unification of China more successful because China is like a box, and in the north is drylands, in the west is the Himalayas, in the south is the rainforest, and in the east is the ocean. And so that box is not so easy to invade except from the north. But you can't invade over the Himalayas. It's very hard to invade from the Pacific side, and the rainforest between China and Southeast Asia is really also a difficult disease barrier and logistical barrier. So, China had a geographic unity.
Europe is very difficult. There are so many places where you can take power where you can invade, and so on. So, this is one difference. Second, I think, I guess, that the linguistic unity of China played a big role because China did the impossible, which was to have one written language and dozens of spoken languages. Truly, as an outsider, I don't understand it until today, even though people have tried to explain it to me many times. But still, that unity of language served to unify the political sphere already 2,000 years ago. And language is the biggest divider in world culture, for sure. If you speak the other language, you're much less likely to go to war. If you speak a different language, war sometimes seems inevitable because you don't know what they're talking about. And as primitive as that sounds, I think it's a very big deal in Europe.
Europe, till today, is not a unified idea. It is still 27 different countries, each with their own prerogatives in a semi-unity. And that's why Europe is not a great power because it's too internally weak and divided, actually, to play the role of a great power. So when it comes to geopolitics, to my mind, this changed a lot. First, internally, China did not have the experience of war other than from the north, other than the wars coming from the steppe regions, and it had hundreds and hundreds of years of peace. So peace is not an idea foreign to China, but in Europe, it was war all the time for 2,000 years, almost, or for 1,500 years, almost no peace. Britain and France fought each other almost every year. And then the other thing is, I believe, but I stand to be corrected, but I think that the Confucian, and common culture of East Asia made a big difference.
So empirically, we know from 1368, from the beginning of the Ming until 1839, the arrival of the British, China never fought a war with its eastern neighbors, never launched a war with its eastern neighbors. 500 years, never invaded Korea, never invaded Japan one day, not even once, and had 17 years of war with Vietnam, with the northern part of Vietnam, from 1410 to 1427. And other than that, no wars. So how can you make a theory if you were a realist theorist for 500 years? You would have no job, no war, complete failure, nothing to describe. So how can we assume it's the same idea, the same mindset?
I don't think it is. I think there really is a different mindset, and I think it's true—never in its entire history did China go out for an overseas conquest. Never. Whereas Europe did for the last 500 years, and before that, if it could manage, it did that within the Mediterranean region and in the Middle East for 2,000 years. So I think the history is really different, and the mindset is really different, and we need a theory of international relations that also respects those differences and helps people to understand them.
When I say this in the United States, they say, "Oh, that's ridiculous." They can't imagine peace. How could China and Japan never go to war for a thousand years? Whereas Britain and France were at war, as I said, almost every year. And when the invasions came, it was all from Japan's side to invade China rather than from the Chinese side to invade Japan, other than the two attempts by the Mongol emperors, in 1274 and 1281 to invade Japan. But that, I don't count as a Chinese invasion. I count that as a Mongol invasion. Other than that, China never attacked Japan. So also, I say to my Japanese friends, get over it. You attacked them. They didn't attack you. So stop regarding China as an enemy and stop relying on the US for your defense because you don't need defense from China. China's not going to invade Japan. It never did. It never will. That's my view.
<Zhang Weiwei>
Thank you. And I just make a very brief comment, and then we open the floor. You mentioned this Chinese tradition of preserving peace and stability. It reminds me of the fact today, you know, the Munich Security Conference issued a report, the year before; it's called a lose-lose, actually, it's a lose-lose for Europe. If you look at Asia, take China as an example, it's a win-win, five decades without war, focus on development and prosperity, so a sharp contrast. The key difference: China plays a peaceful role; the United States plays a warlike role. That's the key difference. Yet at the same time, as a modern state, China is very firm. We don't understand why Russia tolerated NATO expansion—five expansions. China said, even not once, NATO can expand to Asia. Forbidden. So this is very important.
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