Below is a complete transcript of the Sinica Podcast with Kishore Mahbubani.
Kaiser Kuo: Welcome to the Sinica Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, produced in partnership with The China Project. Subscribe to Access from The China Project to get access. Access to, not only our great daily newsletter, but to all of the original writing on our website at thechinaproject.com. We’ve got reported stories, essays and editorials, great explainers and trackers, regular columns, and of course, a growing library of podcasts. We cover everything from China’s fraught foreign relations to its ingenious entrepreneurs, from the ongoing repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim peoples in China’s Xinjiang region, to Beijing’s ambitious plans to shift the Chinese economy onto a post-carbon footing. It’s a feast of business, political, and cultural news about a nation that is reshaping the world. We cover China with neither fear nor favor.
I’m Kaiser Kuo, coming to you from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
If I’m not mistaken, and yeah, I could be mistaken, but if I’m not mistaken, there has been a palpable shift in the conversation we’re having about U.S.-China competition of late. A growing number of voices seem to be pointing out — well, what many of us have long known — that middle countries and countries with the global south just don’t see things the same way that Americans do when it comes to China necessarily. More and more voices, it’s my sense, are challenging the way that Washington has framed the relationship. Just yesterday, just for example, I read two pieces. One of them was in Foreign Affairs and one in Foreign Policy that tackle different facets of that framing. Bilahari Kausikan, the former Permanent Secretary of Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, wrote a very ambitious essay in that magazine called Navigating the New Age of Great Power Competition, in which, among other things, he rejects the all to common Cold War comparisons.
Suggests that from the perspective of the global South, the West’s abiding concern over Russia’s war against Ukraine may have much to do with the color of the combatants. And argues that the U.S. will never actually compel even its staunchest allies to truly cut themselves off from China. And they are joined at the hip, they should be part of one system, they are part of one system, and that neither Beijing nor Washington can really decouple one from the other, or nor should they really try to. The other is a piece by Howard French. Howard is a former New York Times journalist who now teaches at Columbia. He’s one of those journalists who is just a real scholar at heart, and he always has a grasp of the big picture of major intellectual currents. His column in Foreign Policy took on this whole democracy versus authoritarianism branding that the Biden administration has been pushing, talking about how our great power competition with China has actually made us numb to the threats to democracy that we’re seeing in India, for example, under Modi, in PJP, and indeed here in the U.S. itself.
These are just two examples of critiques of the U.S. push to corral allies and so-called like-minded countries in this contest with China. It is part of what I think is a growing recognition, again, that countries of the global south, many middle powers, and indeed certain European countries are not always willing to toe the line, the American line, when it comes to China and may desire indeed more strategic autonomy. Well, today I am pleased to welcome back one person who has been saying this, just this very thing for a very long time now, Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani. Kishore is a distinguished fellow at the Asia Research Institute, the ARI at the National University of Singapore. He’s served twice for a total of several years as UN ambassador from Singapore. He’s a noted scholar and author of many books, including Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy, which Jeremy and I interviewed him about something like three years ago.
A little over a month ago, he published an excellent piece in Foreign Affairs, titled, Asia’s Third Way: How ASEAN Survives and Thrives Amid Great Power Competition. He’s also recently published a collection of essays called The Asian 21st Century, which is actually free to download, and we’ll be sure to put a link to that on the podcast page. So, Kishore joins us today from Boston where he just delivered a lecture. Kishore Mahbubani, welcome back to Sinica. Great to see you.
Kishore Mahbubani: My pleasure. Thank you for having me back.
Kaiser: Well, you’re very welcome. Kishore, maybe as a way of getting into this discussion, let me first ask you about French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent visit to China. As you are doubtless aware, President Macron gave an interview aboard a flight on his way out between Beijing and Guangzhou during this three-day visit to China. he made the case for European strategic autonomy and said, “The worst thing would be to think that we, Europeans, must be followers and adapt ourselves to the American rhythm and a Chinese overreaction.” And went on to say, “We don’t want to get into a bloc versus bloc logic.” And added, “Europe should not be caught up in a disordering of the world and crises that aren’t ours.” So, were you surprised either by what he said or by the American reaction to it?
Kishore: Well, I read the interview too, in Politico, I believe. And what I noticed the most was the note at the very bottom that had said that actually what Macron said on Taiwan was much stronger than what they were allowed to report. I presume that he must have distanced himself even further from the American position on Taiwan, but decided, maybe out of a sense of being diplomatic, to take it out. But there’s no doubt whatsoever that it doesn’t serve Europe’s interests to join what they see as an American crusade against China because they have their own interests and concerns also. And China, at the end of the day, will remain a major market for many European products. And the Europeans also believe, especially the French, more than anyone else, that we are entering a multipolar world.
China is a reality that we have to deal with. And the French, as you know, from the days of de Gaulle, have been great realists about international politics. They don’t believe in moralizing. They accept the realities of great power politics, and they maneuver within that setting. So, what Macron said was clearly very much within the French tradition of trying to steer an independent course. But of course, the big question is whether he can bring along the rest of the European Union with him. And as you know, he brought along with him a [Ursula] von der Leyen, and she sang a very different tune.
Kaiser: Right. Very, very different.
Kishore: But she, I mean, I met her once or twice, she’s not, unfortunately, a great strategic thinker. And she tends to see things in black and white, and that may be one reason why she couldn’t catch the nuanced message that Macron was making.
Kaiser: And was the American reaction to all of this, which is pretty indignant, was that pretty predictable to you?
Kishore: Yes. It was predictable, although I noticed that the White House did say that Joe Biden and President Macron have a good relationship with each other, which is true. And I think it’s very important for the United States today to have friends —- friends that they trust strongly to convey messages that they need to hear, but they’re unable to hear. And I know this, the fundamental problem with the way Washington, D.C. sees the world is that it tries to portray everything as black and white. The Ukraine war, Russia is all wrong. Ukraine is all right, the West is all right. And as you know, the rest of the world doesn’t share that black-and-white view. And then similarly, vis-à-vis China, especially when you use the framing democracy versus autocracy, again, that’s not how the world sees it.
They see that U.S. and China have different political systems, each is delivering in its own way, and they don’t believe that one system is necessarily superior to the other system. So, the whole perspective that the United States brings to the U.S.-China issue is one that is not widely shared in most of the world.
Kaiser: The Ukraine War, one might think would have maybe sharpened the U.S. message of this ideological divide and maybe clarified in the minds of other states the need to pick sides. That was certainly the American expectation. And I think that’s the expectation of a lot of people. But it’s actually, ironically, it’s the Ukraine war and the unwillingness of so many countries of the global south to offer a full-throated condemnation of Russian aggression — which I should add, I am happy to do; I do condemn it. This is one of those issues where I see not a lot of gray, but this Ukraine war has really put into stark relief the divide between the United States and the global South. What do you think is going wrong with American messaging or what are Americans failing to understand about why this conflict, in particular, might not seem to, so much of the rest of the world, to be quite as Manichean, as good and evil as we think it is in the United States?
Kishore:Like you, I also condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As someone who’s been a former ambassador to the UN, I know the principles of the UN Charter very well, and clearly, Russia’s invasion is a violation of international law. And it’s fair to say that most countries in the world, over 143 countries voted in favor of the resolution condemning the invasion. But at the same time, it’s also true that countries that represent 85% of the world’s population, I want to emphasize the figure, 85% of the world’s population have not imposed sanctions on Russia. I think the United States and the West should step back and reflect on why that is the case. And clearly, they’re sending a signal that, once again, this is not a simple black-and-white issue, that Russia may have had legitimate security concerns from the expansion of NATO.
And just as the United States found it unacceptable that Soviet nuclear missiles could be stationed in Cuba, a territory so close to the American heartland, the Russians also had concerns about hostile missiles being stationed in the territory so close to their heartland. So, many of us believe that there could have been a compromise along the lines suggested by Henry Kissinger in his 2014 Washington Post article by Ukraine preserves his independence, Ukraine joins a European Union, but Ukraine doesn’t join NATO. And I actually believe that if Henry Kissinger’s advice had been heeded, there would’ve been no war in Ukraine.
Kaiser: Let’s talk about your foreign affairs essay, which I really wanted to focus on with this conversation. You argue that ASEAN is finding a third way. That the 10 countries of ASEAN are finding a way to navigate this age of great power competition quite well. And you chalk this up to pragmatism. The words pragmatic or pragmatism actually come up 14 times in your article, 15 if you include the use of pragmatism in a subheading. Clearly, you think that China already kind of speaks the language of pragmatism in its dealings with the countries of the Global South. And your piece argues that the United States really ought to learn to speak that way as well, that this would prove ultimately more attractive than the lectures and the moralizing, which many countries see as sanctimonious at best and outright hypocritical at worst.
But I think many Americans, and doubtless, many non-Americans as well, will hear that, will hear your championing of pragmatism, and say that what you call pragmatism is just amorality, it’s just kind of an abandonment of values. Values that they argue are actually the source of American attractiveness and leadership. So, I mean, you, yourself have talked about how much you admire those qualities that you would… you’re an Americaphile, you’ve said so many times. So, what would you say to that line of argument? How do you distinguish between the abandonment of values, on the one hand, and a practical, pragmatic approach on the other?
Kishore: Well, as someone who studied Western philosophy, both at my undergraduate and master’s level, I understand very well the antipathy that some Western intellectuals have to the notion of pragmatism and, as you said, is considered to be amoral. And we are setting aside our moral values to do whatever may be the practical or useful thing to do. But actually, if one of your biggest values is the avoidance of war, and at the end of the day, we must… If there’s one lesson we can learn from the Ukraine War, is that when war start, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people are dying. And that I see the largest moral imperative in international relations, especially between rival states, is to prevent wars. And if you can prevent wars by being pragmatic, then you are achieving a higher moral good by being pragmatic.
And Southeast Asia, as you know, is by far the most diverse corner of planet Earth. Out of 615 million people, you have 215 million Muslims, 115 million Christians, close to 200 million Buddhist, Mahayana Buddhist, Hinayana Buddhist, Taoist, Confucianists, and we have a lot of communists. Now, this region was supposed to be the Balkans of Asia. This is where you should have seen all kinds of conflicts. And it also, as you know, was a major arena of great power conflict in the first Cold War. And some of the biggest wars like the Vietnam War were fought in Southeast Asia. So, if you take a region like this, and you can keep peace in such a region that is both internally divided and under a lot of external pressure, then you have achieved a high modern good, because you have saved thousands of lives.
Kaiser: So, Kishore, I mean, you hold up ASEAN as a potential model for how America could be more pragmatic in the conduct of its diplomacy. But it occurs to me that ASEAN might also be a model for how a notion of multipolar world order might operate. I mean, after all, you talked about the religious diversity, but also there’s a lot of diversity of regime types in ASEAN. There’s democratic countries, there are countries ruled by communist parties, technocratic, authoritarian states, military juntas. We’ve got in an absolute monarchy even, right? In Brunei. What conditions though need to exist? What written or unwritten rules before a kind of multi-state configuration encompassing so many different regime types so many divergent ideas of political order can endure and endure peacefully?
Kishore: Well, I think the important thing to understand, Kaiser, is that we are entering a new era of world history, and long-dormant societies and civilizations are now springing back forcefully. So, the world in which the West could dominate the world is gone. And I can tell you that most of the world is preparing for the Asian century. You mentioned my book, the Asian 21st Century has actually been downloaded 2.73 million times in 160 countries. And that, to me, is an indication that most of the world psychologically is preparing for the Asian century. But as you know, the West is not preparing for it, and the West still believes that it can dominate the world. What the West needs to understand, at the most fundamental level, that we are moving from a unipolar, uni-civilizational world that you had at the end of the Cold War to a multipolar, multi-civilizational world, where you will have to learn to deal with societies that are very different from you.
And if you keep on expecting the other side to become like you, to use the same language and to use the same concepts, then you’ll get into trouble. I see this as the biggest handicap of the Western mind as we walk into the Asian 21st century. Because you got to understand how different Asian societies will react. And see, even within Asia, there are great differences. I mean, how India sees the world is very different with how China sees. And these are two strong, deep civilizations. And certainly in the case of the Chinese, believing that at some point or another that the whole Chinese Communist party will collapse and there’ll be a sudden color revolution in China, and that there’ll be a new liberal democratic society in China, which as you know, was once suggested in the essay by Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner, which said that many American policy-makers actually believe that American engagement in China will lead to a democracy emerging in China.
But that, as you know, is a hugely arrogant assumption. Because at the end of the day, China’s future will be determined by what flows out of 4,000 years of Chinese history, and not from what comes from a young 250-year-old republic across the Pacific Ocean. So, we, in Asia, we are realists. We believe that there is actually… Actually, there’s going to be a very exciting world that’s coming. Very exciting, must be a very different world, but we have to understand each country, each culture, each civilization on its own terms if you’re going to succeed in dealing with it. And that’s the biggest blind sport in American policies towards China, because they keep blaming China for not becoming like us.
Kaiser: I’m always tempted to try to look the sort of philosophical underpinnings of this. You, as you said, you were a student of philosophy. And it strikes me that if you were to rewind to 50 years ago and look at American intellectuals, if you were to ask them whether the proposition that a country with a radically different set of religious traditions with different sociological structures, with a different demography, with different endowments of natural resources, with a whole different pantheon of heroes and villains and whatnot, that it might have developed a separate and still valid set of moral precepts of its own, that it might express themselves in different political institutions. Most American intellectuals, I think 50 years ago, probably would’ve said, yeah. And that’s fine. And they wouldn’t have maybe come right out and said it, but they were essentially embracing a form of cultural relativism. Somewhere along the way, the center of gravity shifted. And American intellectuals now are moral absolutists.
If you had to diagnose this, standing apart from American society and watching this unfold, when did that happen and why? What were the forces that saw Americans converge on this idea of universal values as being valid universally for all peoples at all times? When did this happen, and why? A big question…
Kishore: I know. But I think you can actually point to one moment in history when there was a huge burst of Western triumphalism, which, of course, was captured in the very famous essay by Fukuyama, “The End of History.” That, if I remember, he used words like, mankind has reached the end of its political evolution, and we are now agreed that there’s only one future for us, and we will all become, in one way or another, liberal democratic societies. But what’s interesting is that even the very phrase, the end of history is a remarkably arrogant phrase that suggests that the West, which represents just 12% of the world’s population, has found the Nirvana. And all of us, the 88% who live outside the West, must now confirm and march along the drumbeat of the Western Nirvana.
But of course, the reason why… I’ve said in a very cruel fashion, actually in a TED talk I gave, that Francis Fukuyama did a lot of brain damage to many people in the West, because it put the West to sleep in a sea of complacency at precisely the moment where instead of seeing the end of history, you were seeing the return of history and the return of Asian civilizations that have been dormant for so long. It’s amazing that that essay came out in the 1990s, and that was a decade when both China and India, which, by the way, had the two largest economies of the world from the year one to the year 1820. They had gone to sleep almost 200 years, and they woke up. And at the time when they woke up, the West decided to go to sleep. I mean, future historians will marvel at this coincidence. So, it’s very, very clear that China and India, and certainly the 10 Southeast Asian countries will evolve according to their own cultures and their own traditions.
For example, I noticed that a lot of American policymakers point out the fact China is run by the Chinese Communist Party, but then when they pick Vietnam as an ally, they never say, “Oh, Vietnam is run by a Vietnamese Communist Party.” It’s so striking. It’s quite amazing. And everyone looks at this and say, “Hey, how come one is an ally and one is a rival?” And this is geopolitics. This is a cruelty of geopolitics. But going back to your central question, I think it’s very important for the West to accept one major point that the past 200 years of Western domination of world history was a historical aberration. How could 100,000 Englishmen run a country of then 300 million people in India? Amazing. Right? That’s amazing, but it will never happen again. And now India’s GNP is much bigger than the British. So, you can see how the world has transformed itself. So, all the mindsets, the mental maps that the West had put into its brains for the past 200 years, you got to start taking them out. And that’s a very painful process.
Kaiser: So, you mentioned just now how the United States has allied itself, if informally, with Vietnam, and China, of course, has its own countries that are closer within ASEAN to it. There’s a range of attitudes, though, across ASEAN toward China and toward the United States. But give me a sense of how ASEAN as a body deals with situations in which U.S.-China great power competition actually provokes very different reactions among those ASEAN members. I mean, I think the South China Sea dispute is such an important one, but give our listeners a sense of situations like that and how ASEAN deals with sort of conflicting loyalties within that organization, within that association toward the two dominant great powers right now.
Kishore: Well, you are absolutely right that there is a diversity of views among the 10 ASEAN countries. And if Vietnam is closer to the United States, Cambodia is closer to China — all this is well known. But at the same time, I want to emphasize that there are huge reservoirs of goodwill towards America in Southeast Asia.
Kaiser: Absolutely.
Kishore: And one fact that every American should know is that the United States has invested more in the 10 countries than it has invested in China, Japan, South Korea and India combined. I think most Americans don’t know this fact. And that’s a reflection of the fact that when Americans come to Southeast Asia, they’re welcomed. We love Americans in Southeast Asia. And so it is the one part of the world where, you can contrast that, I mean, if you could travel in the Middle East, you don’t get the same kind of warm welcome as you do in Southeast Asia. Not just among the leaders, among the peoples also of Southeast Asia. And so, therefore, when this U.S.-China contest breaks out, the one thing that all 10 ASEAN countries agreed on is that they want to have good ties with the U.S., but they also want to have good ties with China. And in some ways, what the Southeast Asian countries are doing is to build on a piece of wisdom that is part of Vietnam, the Vietnamese political tradition. The Vietnamese, as you know, have dealt with China probably longer than any other country for the past 2000 years. And Vietnam was occupied by China for only 1000 years,
Kaiser: Only 1000 years.
Kishore: So, the Vietnamese know China very well. And they say, to become a leader of Vietnam, you must be able to stand up to China, but you must also be able to get along with China. And if you cannot do both, you cannot be a leader of Vietnam. So, in the same way, the Southeast Asian countries are standing up to China when they need to, and as you know, some ASEAN states have differences with China over the South China Sea, but at the same time, we also know how to get along with China, and we want to be friends with both U.S. and China. So, the biggest mistake, as I say in my essay, is for the United States to try and force countries to choose, because they won’t choose. And that’s one reality that Southeast Asians have to live with, is that United States will probably be around in a big way in Southeast Asia for the next 100 years, but China will be around a big way for the next 1000 years. You must understand the deeper, longer histories are coming back into play.
And when I go to Thailand, for example, they’ll tell me stories about relations within ancient Thai kingdoms and the Beijing Royal Court, right? They have traditions going back hundreds of years. And you are asking these countries, which have had their long complicated histories with China to say, “Hey, are you on my side or their side?”
Kaiser: Right. And you lay out three simple rules to follow when dealing with ASEAN for the United States. And the first of those is don’t ask them to choose. I want to come right back to that, but first, you mentioned the level of investment in ASEAN from the United States, and how that exceeds the amount of FDI in China, India, and…
Kishore: Japan.
Kaiser: And Japan together, or something like that. And I think maybe a lot of people aren’t aware of that level. A lot of, I think, people have talked about how the United States has showed up in Southeast Asia with lots of guns and no butter. And you make criticisms along those lines as well. I mean, the U.S., look, it’s not part of CPTPP, it’s not part of RCEP, and this, yeah, IDEF, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which seven ASEAN states are members of. It doesn’t include any market access agreements. So yeah, there’s a lot of investment. But if you look at the trade dimension of it, China is, not only in RCEP, but also it has a free trade agreement, an FTA that goes back now to what? 21 years now. It was like in 2002 that it was signed with ASEAN. First, give us a sense for how China and the U.S. are doing relative to one another in terms of trade, and then maybe also talk about Chinese investment in ASEAN, and give us a sense of what the graph of relative trade volumes with ASEAN across the last 20 years, what that tells us about guns and butter in Southeast Asia
Kishore: You are absolutely right to focus on trade, Kaiser, because the big game in Southeast Asia is trade. And not just in Southeast Asia, but also vis-à-vis the rest of the world. And when the United States stopped signing free-trade agreements, and as you know, the United States walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Obama had signed, I think that was a major mistake made by the United States. And just to illustrate how important trade is, in the year 2000, United States trade with ASEAN was $135 billion, which was more than three times China’s trade with ASEAN, which only was $40 billion. So, in the year 2000, it’s not that long ago, U.S. trade with ASEAN was more than three times China’s trade with ASEAN. But by, I would say by 2022 last year, U.S. trade must have grown to about $380 billion, okay? Maybe about three times, from 135 to about 380 billion.
But China’s trade with ASEAN had grown from $40 billion to $975 billion. Almost trillion dollars.
Kaiser: Wow. Yeah.
Kishore: And that, I suspect, is now the world’s largest trading relationship between any two economic entities. And by the way, United States and European Union are much bigger in economic size and have had a much longer trading relationship, but their total trade last year was $900 billion less than China-ASEAN. So, you must see the magnitude of this changes that are happening are phenomenal. But this, again, is a result of a natural linking back of countries that used to be linked in the past. I mean, there was thriving trade through Southeast Asia a thousand years ago. Okay? And so this what’s happening again in the region. And so, it’s very important for the United States to also play the trade game.
I’m very happy that U.S. investment is so high, but U.S. investment alone is not enough. You’ve got to come and also get involved in trading relationship. And the sad part of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, IPEF, is that it grants no market access. That’s a tragedy. And I actually believe that the United States can benefit from signing a free-trade agreement with the Southeast Asian countries because the size of the ASEAN economy is also growing. In the year 2000, Japan’s economy was eight times the size of ASEAN’s combined GNP, eight times bigger in the year 2000. But by 2022, it’s only 1.5 times bigger. And by 2030, ASEAN GNP will be bigger than Japan.
Kaiser: That says as much about slow Japanese growth as it-
Kishore: I want to emphasize that we are actually seeing fundamental transformations in the relative pecking order of countries around the world — fundamental transformations. And at a time of great change, the United States must be prepared to consider new approaches rather than stick to the old approaches in dealing with his new world.
Kaiser: Evan Feigenbaum has this really memorable phrase that he uses when he talks about how the U.S., which is already at a geographic disadvantage when it comes to the region, at least vis-à-vis China. It’s becoming less and less relevant as the countries of the region tie themselves ever more closely to one another, but also to China. That $975 billion 2022 trade figure comes to mind again. The U.S. is just basically relegating itself to providing security, which, his phrase is the U.S. is going to end up being the Hessians of Asia, referring to the German mercenaries who fought on the British side during the American War of Independence. What do you think are the major impediments right now to the U.S. when it comes to restoring or deepening our economic involvement in Southeast Asia?
I mean, we’ve seen efforts to do that. If you talk to the architects of the Pivot, the Rebalancing, they tell you that it wasn’t intended to be security first. It was intended to be primarily economic. It’s just that the security dimensions of it manifested themselves maybe more clearly and maybe earlier than the economic ones. There at least used to be an intention by the United States to really deepen its trade ties with South Southeast Asia. But what is keeping us from it now?
Kishore: I think what is holding back the United States in the most fundamental way is that United States seems incapable of doing long-term thinking and long-term planning. What an American policymaker should do is to do what the Chinese policymakers do, and they ask themselves, where do they want China to be vis-à-vis Southeast Asia, vis-à-vis the rest of the world in 2050, and how will we get there? And as you know, the Belt and Road Initiative is a several-decade initiative, and the Chinese want to have a world, which 20 to 30 years from now, there are so many countries that have developed deep links with China in one way or another. And in the same way, the United States should to also sit back and ask itself, where does it want the world to be in 2050? And how does it ensure that American influence, which today is still very high in Southeast Asia, remains high in Southeast Asia in the year 2050.
And you must have a long-term perspective. And then can you come to realize that if you want to preserve a long-term presence, it’s not through the number of aircraft carriers or submarines that you sent to the region, it’s through your presence on the trade and economic front? The main game is on the trade in economic front. Because at the end of the day, the priority of most countries, especially in the Global South, is economic development.
Kaiser: That’s right.
Kishore: And they want to see concrete proposals brought to them. And that, frankly, sadly, is a huge competitive advantage that the Chinese have, because, as you know, even some African leaders said that when a Chinese leader comes to Africa, they offer us a bridge, they offer us a railway, they offer us a port, but when an American leader comes to Africa, they offer us a lecture. So, it’s important to understand, therefore, that you must not underestimate the intelligence of the 6 billion people in the world who live outside the United States and China. And if you are going to engage in a competition to win the hearts and minds of the 6 billion people outside the U.S. and China, and I devoted a whole chapter of my book, Has China Won? To the 6 billion people, you have to understand, number one, how do they view the world? What historical lenses do they bring to look at China?
And number two, what are the real needs and wants? What are the main preoccupations? And I think the United States can still win the game as it did in the first Cold War. But the United States, I’ll tell you, because I worked very closely with American officials. As you know, Singapore was very, very close to United States in the Cold War. We worked hard together to reverse the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. We worked hard together to reverse the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. But American diplomats and leaders were good listeners at that time, and they could actually see the nuances. And actually, when they came to Southeast Asia, they said, “Let ASEAN take the lead and we will follow.” That was very wise. Very wise. But now you get a tendency from Washington, D.C., unfortunately, the attitude seems to be ‘You’re with us that or you’re against us,’ which is the wrong attitude to adopt towards, especially Southeast Asia.
Kaiser: You mentioned the Belt and Road Initiative which is 10 years old this year. As you noted in your essay, 140 out of the world’s 193 countries are now official BRI countries. But the U.S. attitude toward the Belt and Road Initiative has been, I think you would agree, consistently negative. I once described it as sneering, jeering, and when it stumbles cheering. With the caveat, I think, that naturally the Global South doesn’t speak with one voice. How would you characterize the developing world’s views toward this American reaction to the BRI?
Kishore: Well, as you know, not all countries, even in the Global South, have signed on to the BRI. For example, India will never sign on to the BRI because it has a very complicated relationship with China now.
Kaiser: It takes a lot of AIIB loans, but not…
Kishore: Yeah. But you’re right. Australia hasn’t joined. Japan hasn’t joined. But you’re right, at the end of the day, 140 countries have joined. And you know, part of the problem here, the reason why many in the West, and certainly United States, have difficulty understanding how powerful BRI is, because the Anglo-Saxon media, in violation of American Social Science principles, doesn’t report the facts on BRI. And I can tell you, I would encourage your listeners to Google and look for an American professor called Deborah Bräutigam.
Kaiser: Yes, of course.
Kishore: B-R-A-U-T-I-G-A-M. And she provides an incredible amount of factual evidence to show that the term debt trap diplomacy is a falsehood. That the countries of the global south are not that stupid. That they would voluntarily surrender to becoming sort of victims of China’s debt trap diplomacy, I mean, that’s such an insult, you know, to the billions of people in the global south, such an insult. But then, you see, that also, unfortunately, when they sneer and jeer at China’s debt trap diplomacy, they are, in some ways, also being condescending towards the Global South.
Kaiser: Yeah, infantilizing. Yeah, exactly.
Kishore: And I wouldn’t do that, frankly. When countries like Indonesia decides to buy a train from China, a fast train to link Jakarta and Bandung, they’re making an informed rational decision, right?
Kaiser: That’s right.
Kishore: And then working out payment terms that they can live with. So, I think it’s important not to underestimate the intelligence of the Global south. So, I would encourage the Anglo-Saxon media to stop being so condescending when it talks about the Global South.
Kaiser: I should hasten to add that it’s not just Deborah Bräutigam who’s been putting out research that really debunks this claim of debt trap diplomacy. There are several other research organizations that have done reports on it and have looked into it. And I’m not aware of any of them that have concluded that China does engage in anything that could fairly can call debt trap diplomacy. Very good. I want to go back to something we talked about earlier to three ideas that you had, sort of the three steps, three easy rules that the U.S. should follow when dealing with ASEAN, and really dealing with any countries of the global south. Let me just quickly say what those were. First you say, don’t make them choose between the U.S. and China. Second, don’t pass judgment on the political systems of countries. And the third is work with any country on issues of global concern, like global warming, irrespective of their regime type.
These strike me as, at once, completely sensible and also nearly impossible for America today. I mean, impossible, not just in the current political climate, but because they kind of go against an entrenched set of attitudes that have almost become like America’s defining characteristics, right? It’s really frustrating to me, but I have to sort of admit that as an American, these ideas seem so entrenched. So, what happens, first of all, what happens if America can’t do it, if it can’t follow these three rules? If Washington in the next administration, in January, 2025, if it persists in this kind of good and evil democracy versus authoritarianism framing, if it continues to insist that basically anyone who isn’t with us is against us, if it continues to expect China to cooperate on issues of global concern, even as it just dams China at every turn and tries to turn all of the rest of the world against China, right?
I keep coming back to the title of your recent book, which I spoke to you about not that long ago — Has China Won? I mean, it feels like if the United States persists in this, then it’s kind of handing it to China.
Kishore: Well, Kaiser, speak as a friend of the United States. I’ve lived many years of my life here and I’ve close friends and relatives in United States. And I’m aware that United States is a very strong and vibrant society. And so, even though right now it seems to be gripped by some degree of I call it a temporary madness…
Kaiser: Let’s hope it’s temporary.
Kishore: I think it can overcome it. Because if you look back, I mean, as recently as the 1980s, during the Cold War, when we dealt with someone like George Shultz, who was then the Secretary of State, he would say, “Hey, my job as Secretary of State is to cultivate the garden.” Right? And so he would spend three weeks traveling all over Asia. And he said, “Okay, let me listen to what the Asians are saying.” If as recently as the 1980s, someone like George Shultz could spend three weeks, and I can tell you, I dealt with him a few times, he doesn’t lecture you. He listens to you and he say, “Oh, I understand now. What are you trying to say?” and as you know, the United States in the Cold War worked with a whole variety of regimes, including some very authoritarian regimes.
And the great paradox is that the United States fell in love with China when it was run by Mao Zedong in 1971. That point in time, I don’t recall anybody saying, “Hey, China is not a democracy, right? In 1971. The point is that if the Americans go back to their own history and study how America became a great power, in the path towards becoming a great power, United States was very pragmatic, very careful. Unfortunately, after winning the Cold War, it just forgot what it had done to become as successful as it had. And also, by the way, it stopped being disciplined even about its own domestic management. I remember a time when people were saying, “You cannot have these massive fiscal deficits. America must be disciplined, balances budget, and so on, so forth.”
Now it’s shocking how much debt you’ve accumulated. And the accumulation of the debt also is somewhat unpragmatic, by the way. It’s very dangerous. You’re creating a long-term liability for yourself, which is going to come down on you at some point in time. That’s the opposite of pragmaticism. I actually believe that if the United States, in a sense, goes back to its own history and tries to figure out at which points it did well and how it did Well, then it can once again reengage the world in a new spirit of pragmatism. And pragmatism, by the way, I’m not a master of that school, but there used to be an American school of philosophy called Pragmatism.
Kaiser: Sure.
Kishore: And I think one of the leading lights, I understand, John Dewey…
Kaiser: John Dewey.
Kishore: John Dewey, if I remember correctly, actually went to China and spent some time there. And one of the most amazing stories I’ve heard, which I have not been able to confirm, is that at one of his sessions, the note-taker was Mao Zedong.
Kaiser: Yeah. No, it’s entirely believable. I mean, because he was there. I know that Hu Shih, who was one of the great intellectuals of the May Fourth Movement was a student of John Dewey. And during the May Fourth Movement, Mao was assistant librarian at Peking University. And so, yeah, it’s entirely possible. I haven’t heard that story, but yeah, I can look into it.
Kishore: So, there’s therefore a tradition of pragmatism also within the American body politic, and it requires a skillful American politician to mind that tradition and to bring it out again.
Kaiser: Absolutely. Kishore, the last month we, we’ve seen something that we haven’t seen much coming out of China, not since the, I guess the 6xth Party talks over the nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. We are seeing Chinese diplomatic initiatives much, much further afield than what we’ve traditionally seen, this Chinese brokered normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran from early March. And of course, this Chinese framework, I mean, I think they call it a proposal would be wrong, this framework that China has proposed on the Russian War on Ukraine. What do you see at work here? And what do you make of American and European responses to these diplomatic initiatives by China? Because they’ve been very different responses.
Kishore: Well, I think I must confess to you that I was actually personally surprised when China produced the Saudi-Iran deal.
Kaiser: We all were surprised. Yeah.
Kishore: I was genuinely surprised, because the Chinese, as you know, I’ve dealt with Chinese diplomats for 50 years now, tend to be very cautious. They don’t like taking initiatives. They respond to them, and they’re very happy to let the initiatives. So, for them to deliver the Saudi-Iran deal, I think, is a very big deal that the world should pay attention to. And at the same time, going back to my earlier point that peace is the ultimate moral imperative. Actually, I run something called the Asian Peace Program in Singapore, it’s very important for us to understand that if any country delivers peace, the whole world should cheer. There should not be this better-than-ever approach vis-à-vis China on when they do this. Now, I know there’s a lot of skepticism about the Chinese peace proposal initiative, whatever you call it on Ukraine. But at the end of the day, I think it’s cruel to see so many people dying in the Ukraine war. And if you can even stop it for a while and save lives, that is actually very, very critical too.
And for the Chinese, of course, I think on Ukraine, they’ll be much more cautious — much, much more cautious. They know how important it is for the United States. They know how important it is for Russia, and there isn’t much space that they can walk in between. But if they want to try, I would say let them try.
Kaiser: Yeah. I couldn’t agree with you more. Let them try. So, my last question to you is this, I mean, you’re here in the United States right now, and you’re in constant contact with American foreign policy personalities. How has your message landed with people in the American strategic class who you’ve been talking to? How are they receiving what you have to say?
Kishore: Well, I think I alluded to it earlier, Kaiser, that in the 1980s, American diplomats American officials and even American Secretary of State like George Shultz were very good listeners, right? And for some strange reason, the current members of the American establishment have lost the art of listening or even going out to listen to alternative voices. For example, you have a summit of democracies of 140 countries. I’m not sure whether they understood all the messages that were coming through at them from that conference that they held
Kaiser: Right.
Kishore: And again, to try and create a black-and-white world of democracies versus non-democracies, that’s not a good way of understanding the world that is happening; understand the real diversity. My three principles, as you said, are very simple and very sensible. At some point in time, the United States will come to realize that it has to play a much more sophisticated and nuanced game in Asia, much, much more sophisticated in the large scheme. And the black-and-white characterizations will get them nowhere. After I mentioned the trade between, 975 billion trade between ASEAN and China, to ask the countries to choose between U.S. and China, if they give up $975 billion, they’re going to stop growing, right? I mean, you got to understand the realities of the world that we are dealing with.
And certainly the reason in my article I also talk about Africa, I talk about Latin America, and how Brazil’s trade with China has grown. In the year 2000, it took Brazil one year to export $1 billion to China. Now it takes Brazil 72 hours to export $1 billion to China. So, how do you expect Brazil to give up its ties with China? You have to learn to step into the shoes of countries you’re dealing with and then come out with much more sophisticated and nuanced approach than this, either are you with us or against us on this issue.
Kaiser: That’s right. Fantastic. Kishore, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. I want to move on to our recommendation section. But first, a very quick reminder that if you like the work that we do with the Sinica Podcast and with other podcasts in our network, the very best thing that you can do to support our work is to subscribe to access. Now, we allow you a secret RSS feed that gets you access to the show on Monday. And these days I’m putting out some different stuff. I’m giving some sort of bonus episodes only to subscribers. So, if you are a subscriber, you can have access to that, as well as listening to the regular show, which drops on Thursdays, early. So, please do help us out and subscribe to Access. All right, let’s move to recommendations. Kishore, what do you have for us? Do you have a good book or a movie or a TV show that you want to recommend?
Kishore: Well, as I mentioned earlier, I was a student of philosophy. In my book, Has China Won, I say that one big mistake that United States has made is to say that this is a choice between democracy and a communist party system. Because if you put it that way, it seems that as though the United States is definitely going to win. But the reality is that it’s not a contest between a democracy and a communist party system. It’s a contest between a plutocracy in the United States of America and a meritocracy in China. And so, to understand what that means, I would recommend that Americans go back to one of the all-time classics of American philosophy. This is the book called A Theory of Justice by John Rawls.
Kaiser: Rawls, yeah.
Kishore: I read the whole book. I can tell you it was very difficult. It’s a very heavy book, but it contains so much wisdom, and it points out that at the end of the day, the most just society is the one where you ensure that not really wealthy are better off, but the bottom 10% are better off too. And Americans have forgotten about the bottom 10%. This is why they got to rediscover John Rawls.
Kaiser: Fantastic recommendation, John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. Okay. So, I’ve got a book to recommend as well. I’m really late to this, I recognize, but I just finished Peter Frankopan’s excellent, The Silk Roads, which was terrific. It’s just sweeping history of the world really. I found it to be not only refreshing and very smart, but also immensely pleasurable to read. I immediately bought another copy and gave this to one of my best friends who I saw last week up in Madison, Wisconsin. I’ve started his follow-up to that one. The first one was published in 2015, and as we were all too aware, a lot has happened between then and now. So, I’m tucking into his second, I mean, his latest update to that, which is already off to a rip-roaring good start.
Anyway, Kishore, what a pleasure to have you on the program again. And I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you in person on this trip.
Kishore: Thank you. And by the way, I’m also a subscriber.
Kaiser: Yeah! Well, wonderful. I’m really glad that you are. And thanks for all the support.
Kishore: And I enjoy listening to your podcast.
Kaiser: Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. And I look forward to having you back on again before too long.
Kishore: Thank you.
Kaiser: The Sinica Podcast is powered by The China Project and is a proud part of the Sinica Network. Our show is produced and edited by me, Kaiser Kuo. We would be delighted if you would drop us an email at sinica@thechinaproject.com or just give us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts as this really does help people discover the show. Meanwhile, follow us on Twitter or on Facebook at @thechinaproj, and be sure to check out all the shows in the Sinica Network. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week. Take care.
