Bridging differences: CCG’s dialogue with Prof. Kerry Brown from King’s College London to discuss China and the World in the post-pandemic times
March 02 , 2021
[Video]
On March 2, Dr. Wang Huiyao, President of the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) hosted a dialogue with Prof. Kerry Brown, Director of the Lau Institute, King’s College London to explore topics related to China’s development and international relations in the post-pandemic world and share insights on his research and opinions as a Sinologist.
This dialogue series is part of the “China and the World” webinar series that CCG launched in March 2020 in an effort to engage experts from academia, government and industry from China and around the world to continue exchanges online while travel across borders is disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. The following article is based on the dialogue, edited for length and clarity.
Dr. Wang Huiyao: The question we want to cover today is that we are actually at a very turning point, a crossroad. You may say so that for example, in the last 10 days, we had president Xi has announced that China has actually reached the target of alleviating extreme property, which basically lifted almost 800 million people out of poverty. Also, China is going to have the “two sessions”, which are the National People’s Congress and also CPPCC, the Chinese political consultative conference. The “two sessions” are going to be held in the next 2 days, in which China is going to launch its 14th Five-Year Plan.
But of course internationally we see a lot of changes as well. We have a new (American) president, Biden, who pursues a somewhat quite different policy than president Trump. For example, on multilateralism, president Biden is very positive on the climate change and also on other issues such as pandemic fighting and WHO support. We saw him speak at the Munich Security Conference just about 10 days ago that he talked about China as a competitor, but also there are areas that can be collaborated with China as well. We’re at this a point where we’re starting a new Chinese year. We would like to really ask you and discuss with you on some of the new thought and some of the new thinking that you’ve been really contemplating for a number of years.
I’m quite impressed with your dialogue that really hit a lot of hard issues. For example, China is really a hybrid. From what I can know, China’s economy is really doing well. We had an event with the World Bank just about a month ago on the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects, where World Bank’s vice president told me that China was the only major economy managed to have a over 2 % growth last year. So we can see that internationally, everybody is talking about China, but China’s image and what China has done has not been properly understood outside China or there’s even some misunderstanding about China.
You’re a very deep thinker and scholar and you have published almost 20 books on Chinese modern history, politics and Chinese world views. I know that your more recent book seems to switch from looking at the world’s view on china, concentrated on the standings between the West and China, to how Europeans perceived China in the past 800 years. Probably you can tell us about your new book that is coming up.
Referring back to great Enlightenment thinkers on how they perceive China as a Sinologist in today’s world
Prof. Kerry Brown: It’s an interesting time because normally any year, I would go to China several times, like you said, in 2019, I was at the Schwartzman College, in October and November and then, and to see you and saw other partners and I’d go to Shanghai and other places.
For last year, there’s been none of that kind of physical kind of traveling to and from China. So it means that we have to make an extra effort to maintain dialogue, particularly because politics never stops changing. Politics doesn’t have to get on the plane and fly anywhere. Politics just happens wherever people are. And then of course, the political context between China and the world has become much more complicated. Because of that, I started to think about what’s the case – has it always been that Europe and China kind of had sort of a very, I would say, a balanced relationship, but a difficult one.
So I went back further, I kept on seeing quotes and works by great European thinkers like Leibniz, Montesquieu, Voltaire and of course, Marx, Hegel and Max Weber, and Bertrand Russell, who actually went to China and was lecturing at Peking University in the early 1920s. And even further back to Matteo Ricci. I kind of wondered whether there was almost like a kind of a dual view of China – sometimes really admiring China sometimes really criticizing China. In that kind, having an European speaker is really the foundation of this book.
I pulled together the main works referring to China by the figures I just mentioned. I suppose what I was struck by is during the Enlightenment in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly the 18th century, these great figures like Rousseau, one of the most important philosophers Europe produced, a real polyglot, a man of incredible abilities across a whole range of disciplines. Montesquieu, whose work, the Spirit of the Laws was so influential to the foundation of American democracy, and the American Constitution, and Voltaire, an ultimate skeptical liberal thinker who still is quoted and read today. These figures did write about China and they wrote about China in some detail. Although they hadn’t been to China – of course it wouldn’t have been possible to get to China very easily, they did have a very distinctive view.
Voltaire was very admiring, really compared things. I suppose it would be comparing the Qing court, then the Qing emperor to the kind of systems that existed in Europe and felt the secular kind of world of China without the state religion was preferable. Leibniz was very much led by looking at the evidence that came from the world of China by the Jesuits. He was very close to many of the Jesuit scholars and read their works a lot. He was really interested in what he called, sort of a Confucian system of governance. I really tried to look what china presented to him. He wrote a line about how his position wasn’t to make some value judgments, but just to try to understand and put that first of all. And then Montesquieu who really regarded China as a sort of despotic, autocratic in a kind of highly imperial system that was not at all attractive. So you’ve got, in a sense, the three positions, I suppose that we still see today. It’s extraordinary that we have come off 350 years and these very entrenched positions are still there. The position of the admirer such as Leibniz, and I wouldn’t call it skeptical – the dissenters which I think European debate today, talking about the American debate, can refer to that. But European debate is divided between those who have a very critical view of China and regard to China a as a threat and those who are very admiring of China and what it’s done with its economy and its political system, the kind that is not really that critical. And then the ones in the middle, that middle space is declining and shrinking, who feel that we have to understand before we really make some big judgments and we have a lot to understand before we can get there. I suppose that’s really what universities are trying to do. The politicization of universities, has certainly increased and made it more difficult. I guess finally, I would say today, that’s why I did this book, because I wanted to know the historic roots of today.
But today, I think it’s more difficult than ever to have a reasonable debate about China or with Chinese colleagues that is not misinterpreted. That is not kind of framed as something that has some political meaning either pro or anti China. If I study science, does it make any sense to say that i’m pro or anti science. I’m just studying science, right? My job is a sinologist, I guess, is to study China. There’s many aspects of China, its culture, history, politics, geography. I don’t know what it means to say that i’m pro or anti China. I’m just interested in the fact that I see about China. I think that spirit is something we have to get back.
“China is a hybrid.”
Dr. Wang Huiyao: Thank you Kerry, a fascinating book. I see that you’re writing and combining all those historical figures and their interpretations on China. As you said, there’s a public different views. But it’s good to go back to those historical views on China and we can see how far that has been evolved and changed. And this is really going to be very stimulating, very forthcoming for both people in China and around world to look at China from a historical perspective, but also realistically on the modern China.
China, as you said, it’s a hybrid. I totally agree with that because for example, the Chinese economy, which is doing extremely well and the private sector is about 60-70% of that and then they have SOEs about another 10-20% and another 10-20% of multi-national for investment in China. So that actually seems to work well in China. As I read your paper, you also said that China has a quite a lot of elements, as they have the Marxists, they have the capitalists, socialists and Confucius. It’s a hybrid. But also China doesn’t have a strong religion in the past. So you can see that China always has been centralized historically due to the floods and irrigation of vast territory or invaders from North. China has to be very centralized to combat all the challenges, which is a culture and history over 5,000 years and uninterrupted and still maintains to be the genes of China.
So I think that it’s really fascinating that you’re actually going to dig that and look at the how that’s going to change and how we can really make more studies. Let’s not take a stand, but take a study. What I would like to pursue and is that you see there’s a gap between China and the world’s view on China, between different countries. So what do you think has contributed to this cognitive gap? What can be improved or what can be done? Both internally and externally for for China and other countries, based on your observations?
Prof. Kerry Brown: I suppose the three big things that are typical for those outside of China, particularly if we talk about Europe and America, which still is the most significant economic block in the world next to China. So Europe, America, and China constitute a half of global GDP so if you put those three together, you can understand that for Europeans and Americans, there are three things that are kind of very new and very difficult to understand.
The first is in modern history, I don’t think there’s ever been an appreciation of China as a strong and powerful country. Historically, since the 19th century, the era of colonization and the beginning of humiliation of China, the kind of way in which I think Western mindsets have looked towards China as a place which is marginal. China’s alliance in the second world war was never really appreciated. It sort of just side attended the important conferences after the war, even though it has been one of the main allies for the American and British kind of alliance against fascism. So, this kind of marginality is in European and American mindset.
Of course, now they’re looking at the China, which is economically, militarily and politically much much stronger. It’s not marginal at all and it’s being restored to a place of historic importance. I think that this is proving very difficult as the attitude towards China that has been dominant for most of the post-war period is that it’s a place which is separate and not really part of the developed world. Well now China is entering that world with 1/5 of global and a significant middle class. So this is a big change. And I think people’s mindsets are really not used to sort of thinking of China as a major equal power. That’s the first problem.
The second is that we’ve never really thought of China’s a kind of global power. We thought of it as maybe a land power, understood the consolidation of China’s land borders historically and after the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, which meant that China could be described as a land power. We’ve never thought of China’s naval power and now we see that China has naval assets. I think it’s got more vessels than the United States while of course technologically there are big differences. So China has a power that actually gets way beyond its borders and has a naval capacity and also a cyber capacity. This is something new, too. I don’t think really, we have got used to this idea. It’s really since the 1980s, it was General Liu Huaqing who started that process.
And then the third thing, which I think is the most difficult is that we, the Western world has no idea of what it means to run a world or part of the world on Chinese values. The value clash is the most difficult, because there are two problems. One is the kind of certainty that we think we know about our own values, as Europeans and Americans. But I think in the last few years, there’s been confusion. What are our values? Our political values are divided and when we talk about key terms like democracy, we often get divided. Like the presidency of Trump – does that represent true democracy, or is it actually the opposite of that? There’s some kind of denial that people are very committed to their beliefs. But their beliefs are often significantly different.
I think the second problem is that there is a lack of understanding of what to make Chinese values. And they either decided to say that these values are not important or to not want to know about them. I think that the West has often invested a lot into not wanting to understand China. You commit to a kind of view, almost like confirmation bias, you feel like you understand something, and no matter what evidence comes to you, you don’t want to change your mind. We all do this about certain things. I think for China, Chinese values is this assumption that there is this set of values that are very problematic and are in conflict with the West, a threat to the West. I have argued, as have a lot of other people, including Elizabeth Perry and other distinguished scholars who argue that Chinese values are hybrid. It’s a kind of culture and history which has different kinds of ethical, philosophical and religious views from Confucianism to Daoism, and then the contemporary belief systems. This is a very flexible world view. It’s something that is hard to be immediately described. I think that’s really one of the problems that in the current political environment in Europe and America, there is a desire to have a simple term, a simple label, that you can then embrace or attack. I think China isn’t some place that you can give a simple label to. There are some aspects of China, such as that China’s working on climate change has been essential and important parts of a very good dialogue with the rest of the world.
There are other issues which of course have been much more problematic. So it’s not that there’s a complete agreement or disagreement, there’s a very, very broad range of complex issues that we have to take a different position on. I think that this is a difficult thing for many people who have never really thought about China a lot and have never really understood what needed to understand about China but now they have to acquire this knowledge. I think for many of them, maybe there’s not a desire to acquire the knowledge, they just want to have the opinion. Then of course, their opinion is what guides them. I suppose, finally, my job and the job of my colleagues is to sort of just try to convey that China has this very complex world view that is different. Belief systems may be on different attitudes, and that we have to basically understand them before we can then see what the problem is. Some of those attitudes and beliefs are probably pretty unproblematic. Some of them maybe more difficult and take a lot of dialogue. But we’re not gonna get very far. We don’t have that dialogue. I think that’s really what is lacking at the moment – proper dialogue on what we do agree and what we don’t agree, and the most important thing is what we do about that disagreement.
Dr. Wang Huiyao: I think that you really raised a very profound question is that how we can read about China, how we can understand china, particularly in the 21st century, and particularly in the post pandemic future. You talk about 3 points, I think it was very valid and actually could make us all think deeply on equal power, whether because of the history of the past of China, which in the last 200 years, was very weak. And now it quickly surged as a global power, land and marine power. But also you rightly hinted on the most important thing about the Chinese value and then probably what some Western friends would say, ‘okay, let’s have a converge’ rather than accepting a different China.
But as you know, Deng Xiaoping famously said, “it doesn’t matter if it’s a white cat or black cat as long as it catches mice“. I totally agree that it’s a hybrid. We have market forces. We have capitalized some of the methodology, but also we are socialist, in general, with Chinese characteristics. For example, President Xi recently announced in the conference in the Great Hall of the People that China has lifted so much out of property and China actually now has about 1.3 billion people that have some kind of medical care coverage, and also over 1 billion people who have some kind of social security, which is probably the largest welfare system in the world. So China has done right with the second largest GDP and also people are estimating that during the pandemic fighting, China’s maintained positive growth will accelerate China’s economic growth in a number of years to come. We have really, as scholars, both in China and particularly outside China as well, in many other countries, we probably need to interpret what this phenomena means to the future of the world and you have done some excellent works on that.
The key to understand China is “logical complexity”
Dr. Wang Huiyao: To put forward deep thinking questions that are not black and white or clear-cut – it’s really complex. But based on what China has been doing, based on China contributing over 1/3 of global GDP growth, based on China becoming the largest trading nation with 130 countries, based on China becoming a global value chain center, can we really peacefully co-existent? Because otherwise we’re going to face a devastating conflict, as my friend Graham Allison said many times that the Thucydides Trap is what we may end up with. So i’m really really encouraged by your spirit of deep thinking and also digging to this question.You once said Chinese challenges is on to logical complexity, so what do you mean by that?
Prof. Kerry Brown: I think what is common in thinking and talking about China is this complexity. And I think that is one of the problems that when you’re with an alliance, there’s a sort of similarity that you can go from that, common language or common religion, or kind of some common belief systems that they get you to more complicated areas, but you have something to step on. And obviously, for much of their histories, Europe and China, or the previous dynasties from Han to Ming and Qing – they have very limited relationships with Europe and Europe itself was not unified and of course isn’t unified. I think for politicians, of course, pressures on them are very great and they’ve got to really come out with things which seem to be straightforward and simple. They’ve got all these different messages that could convey something. Trump and his “make America great again” were four words, basically four words. This sort of gets lots of people very excited, even though you can argue and people do argue a lot about what that actually means, and whether it’s possible, it’s very hard to capture the China story in just a few words. When i’m asked in events outside of China, how do I explain? China makes rise in the world? It’s kind of something that will take quite a lot of explanation, because it’s not a capitalist country, but it uses elements of capitalism. It’s a communist country, but with a very specific form of communism and the development of the communist party in China, really from the 1930s onwards was very distinctive led by Mao Zedong.
So there’s all sorts of reasons why this is not an easy thing to convey in just a few words. You need an audience that has quite a lot of knowledge. And of course, many audiences don’t have that knowledge because they haven’t had to have it until now. They may know some things about America. They may know some things about Europe, but they’ve never really have to think about China that much, because it’s always been a remote problem in the UK. I think this is particularly true apart from Hong Kong – the UK’s historic links with China in the last century was kind of very indirect. There’s one specific thing, and then not really a great deal of interaction and not really a great deal of knowledge. And in the 1960s, when the society’s Chinese understanding was set up, Joseph Needham, a great scientific scholar, wrote science and civilization in China – I knew him very briefly at the end of the 1980s when I was a student at King’s College, Cambridge, where he was one of the fellows. These sort of figures were exceptional, they weren’t part of the mainstream at all. In many ways, people do not have much knowledge about China at all. When I was growing up, China was not part of my world, I remember in september 1976, the day when I saw this elderly Chinese man on TV and the announcement was that the leader of China Mao Zedong had died. That was the first time I’ve seen news about China on TV and I think it’s been a big and dramatic change that now we have something like 150,000 Chinese students in universities in Britain. China is much more present. It’s the largest trading partner of Australia. It’s obviously a huge economic player. These are all very new things and they’re kind of happening very, very quickly.
I think it was always going to be difficult to have a new player come along, who appeared so quickly. That was always going to be difficult, on top of which, analytically and culturally, this new player is very different to the ones that have been dominant in the last 150 years. This the sort of most problematic thing that there are three big differences. The new emergence of China as an important player. That’s a big difference. The second is Chinese political difference to the Americans and Europeans. And the third is cultural difference. We need to have 3 kinds of knowledge. This is very, very difficult. I think if you look at the situation in Australia, so many people say that Australia has worked out a strategy towards China. But I think it’s not true. Australia has had extremely important economic strings in China. There are 1.5 million Australians of Chinese heritage. And until recently, Australian universities have many many Chinese students and over the last 18 months, the relationship between Australia and China has obviously really deteriorated. I’m not gonna talk about whose fault that is, but I do think that in Australia, there is obviously some issues about it, the way in which Australia has sort of kind of very sensitive worry about its own identity. Is it an Asian country? And is it just a European colony in Asia? That was historically the the sort of idea and the identity. I think those are really domestic issues and not about China so much. They’re about you know the identity of Australians – who they think they are and where they think they belong. They are always there. When Japan was a dominant economy in the 1980s, when I lived in Australia in the early 1990s, it was Japan that was regarded as the problem, and Indonesia, because of being so close to Australia.
So it seems to me that China has become the third of these sort of worrying neighbours that Australia thinks is a threat, not just because of economic and political issues but because of identity issues. I think that’s where the dialogue about China becomes the most difficult. Because, of course, in terms of economic structure, in terms of politics, yes we can certainly identify areas where we should be concerned, we should have kind of very tough dialogue with the partners in China. Sure, trade negotiations were never easy, but we need to have them and we’re trying to get to. But I think what’s worried me in the last year, and it’s the thing that most disturbed me is that underneath a lot of these value concerns, which we should talk about and will talk about, there is something which is much more about identity, this idea of China being a threat, because it’s not like us. When you ask, what does it mean to be not like us? It kind of creeps into areas about China being ethnically and culturally different. It’s just not possible for the world to have a non-European or a non-American country that is going to be very dominant and very prominent. The reason for that is not clearly economic and not clearly political. It’s about something else. I think the vast majority of people are not thinking this way. But I do think that it is an area that we have to be very concerned about. It’s always been a problem in thinking about China and Asia generally in Australia, Britain and America. There’s the valid concerns but they get mixed up with these more racial issues, such as under the Trump presidency. And there are expressions of opinions, which I find sometimes to be purely based on this idea of race, which I find repungnant. It’s something that we have to condemn. But it’s something that is still having space. That is a very, very huge worry.
Consensus: “a golden age of dialogue”
Dr. Wang Huiyao: I think you really outlined a very profound challenge that China is facing. A peaceful rise, but the world, particularly the Western world has understanding on China, as you said, as a different culture, different history and a different system. So how that can reconcile with the rest of the the values or traditional views on China, now that things are changing too fast and China is doing too well, in terms of the economy? Economically, China is the largest trading partner for 130 countries including neighbouring countries and ASEAN becoming the largest trading partner. China also becomes the largest trading nation to the EU as well. I think that it’s really for the scholars and think tank community, policy makers to really think deeply – how can we have a new narrative read to interpret China or explain China? I think firstly in China we have a lot of work to do to have a new narrative. But also for the Western world, we need more exchange, as you said dialogue. We just had Australian Minister Counsellor who visited us just 2 days ago. We had a lot of dialogue that really helped. And also now China is developing so fast, but maybe we should not use the traditional lens to look at China, for example, China right now has 1-billion smartphone users. You can probably think China has a digital, some kind of democracy online – where to go, what to buy, people making self-making decisions every day. And then collectively they form a market democracy. On top of that, China now, with all the modern communication technology is not the old days. Now, everybody and also the leadership is well informed. And China has its own consultative democracy. And on the 14th five-year plan, China has many layers of discussions and roundtables and actually seeked up to 1 million suggestions, comments and revisions for the upcoming “two sessions” in which there’s annual debate on Chinese policy. So there is quite a lot of consolidated democracy as well with digital democracy, technology and with the movement of the people. China has 700,000 students who study abroad every year which we track annually on our blue book on Chinese student who study abroad and China has over 100 million people traveling around the world before the pandemic.
So I think it’s really a tough challenge to match the value of the rest of the world. If we can contribute to the growth of human being, if we can contribute to the prosperity and development of the mankind, why not be a bit more tolerant to a different system? Like Fukuyama said, it’s not the end of the history now. So how scholars in China and around the world can have more discussion and dialogue on that is absolutely crucial. I noticed that from 1998 to 2005, you worked at the British Foreign and Commonwealth office, as a diplomat. You were the first secretary at the British Embassy in Beijing, and you have a lot of experience on foreign affairs in Indonesia, the Philippines and Istanbul. Also from 1994 to 1996, you lived in the inner Mongolian region of China. So you’re truly a “China hand”. So how is being a diplomat, a scholar, a think tanker, how do you reconcile that the challenge we have now? You’ve been someone who really knows China. So what do you see this gap of understanding, particularly in the foreign policy area, between the academics in China and in the West? And how can we altogether overcome the differences?
Prof. Kerry Brown: I guess there are two ways of requiring knowledge. One is deliberately and the other is by accident. And I made a lot of my knowledge about China, if I got knowledge about China, it’s been probably more by accident than design. I didn’t do Chinese as a student at Cambridge. I did literature. Afterwards, I developed interests in China actually while living in Japan in 1991. I visited China – I went to Beijing for a weekend and I really felt, “wow, I want to know more about this place”. And after that I really concentrated on understanding Chinese language and history – more modern history than imperial history.
Since then, I have, of course, read as much as I could about the kind of long narrative Chinese histories. I guess an easy thing to say about improving the situation that we are in now is to say education. We need to have more education in, certainly British schools, on Chinese civilization and Chinese history. We need to have more people studying Chinese. We need to make China familiar. But that probably will be very difficult to assess outcomes, just because you know more about something, think of somewhere, doesn’t mean you’re going to have an easier attitude towards it. After all, the British views towards Europe are kind of very complicated. And we know more about Europe than we do about China. Sure, people study French, German, Italian in schools. But it doesn’t necessarily mean they can have a very friendly view. They may end up having a less friendly view. So I don’t think that we can just assume that education is gonna be the gold kind of medicine. I think it’s going to mean along period of adjustment. I don’t believe in the Thucydides Trap – I don’t really think that’s the issue. Because I think this is a unique problem now. It’s never happened before. In fact, you’ve got two nuclear powers, American and China, two nuclear powers, who will not use the ultimate weapon against each other, because it will be mutual destruction. This really restrains what they can do with each other.
The second problem is that unlike the Soviet Union, obviously China is, in some ways, a capitalist actor. Its economy has strong elements that seem very similar to capitalism, and it’s integrated into the global finance and supply chain system. We’re all to talk about decoupling, which is not very likely to happen, because of the attractiveness of the Chinese domestic market. It’s also going to be a very, very big incentive for companies, wherever they are from, to engage with China. We saw this with the drafting of an investment agreement between Europe and China last year at the same time, obviously, as Europe is increasingly arguing with China about human rights and other issues, it’s also agreeing the framework for an investment agreement. So you’ve got an immediate conflict between what Europeans want, they want one thing, but not the other, but they can’t pick them apart. Even though they try to sort of say that doing one means you do the other. In fact, it’s increasingly difficult.
So I think you when you look at the complexity of the problems. The most you can say is that I don’t think the worst outcome is gonna happen, thankfully. I think that it’s likely that issues like climate change are going to get more serious, meaning that the pressure for China, Europeans and Americans to work together gets greater for self interest. That gives a pathway to find out ways in which we can work together for a common good. But I also think that we are going to have to construct this language of disagreement. We just have to say, okay, any argument? No one walks away completely winning, no one walks away not often completely losing. An argument where someone is just completely defeated is probably not good, because they’ll be very resentful. What you want is an exchange. There are ways in which partners can talk to each other, all the time. We do this all the time, as people, as communities and institutions, we have dialogue, we agree, we disagree and we reach some kind of big point. With China, that’s going to be a multi-layered discussion. We are obviously a long way into it but we’ve got a long way to go. What we’re looking for, I think, is a framework where we can agree to disagree. I think that’s really important thing. Because the strange thing is, I think we are clear about where we can agree, we can agree on climate change. We’re gonna agree on how to do with global health issues. We are going to agree on sustainability. I think there’s a consensus. So with China, we’re dealing with a partner on those issues. Those are the big issues but we are going to need to have a way of thinking without disagreements. Because while those are significant, they are not to be important enough to jeopardize the future of humanity. What could be more important than that?
This is the stage we’re in. I think it’s going to be a very long stage. I don’t think it’s it’s going to be sorted out very easily. What it means, Henry, is that you and I are in a growing area. We’re in a growing sector because there’s gonna be no source of bankruptcies where we’re working, because I think this is gonna be a golden age. Obviously, a golden age of dialogue. That’s good. But it doesn’t mean that the dialogue will be easy. I think we have to just accept that. So, this is a long place for it. We shouldn’t try and accelerate things too much. We just haven’t deal with our disagreements step by step.
The new world order in the post-pandemic times
Dr. Wang Huiyao: You absolutely hit on some of the challenge that we are facing. I agree that we really have to have more dialogue, but also how we can really understand each other is a daunting task for scholars like us, of course.
The international community watches such a rapidly developing China, rising China, how we can really shape this new understanding narrative is that we really, as you said, agree to disagree. Let’s not fight, let’s talk, let’s discuss and let’s really seek the the common ground, but also keep the differences.
As Chinese saying Qiu Tong Cun Yi（求同存异）, that’s absolutely necessary. So talk about the more geopolitical international relations you mentioned about the US, we have a new US president now, president Biden has been in power for over a month. But I noticed his first speech, the internationally live broadcast at the Munich Security Conference where leaders of the Atlantic nations joined the approximate 3-hour conference. CCG’s Secretary General was actually invited to raise a question there. What I see from President Biden’s first speech is that China will be a strategic competitor. He didn’t use the word rivalry, he talked that there’s a lot of challenge that we are going to face with China, but also there’s areas like climate change, things like a pandemic fighting, that we can really work together. I’m very glad to see that President Biden pledged on the same day at the G7 summit, funding $2 billion to support the developing countries in fighting pandemic.
Actually, President Xi pledged 6 months or 8 months earlier. The two leaders really had a long dialogue on the eve of the Chinese new year for 2 hours on the telephone call. President Biden give wishes of the lunar new year to the all the Chinese Americans. He also had the phone call with president Xi and made wishes to Chinese people. So I think there’s some positive elements. So what do you see from now on the the Sino-US relations? I mean whether the trade will still be a hard issue or maybe the US is now seeking more Western alliance? I saw on the Munich conference, Angela Merkel and president Macron didn’t echo with President Biden completely. Merkel said that we have to deal with China, but China is also a country to collaborate, whereas president Macron says EU now strategically, will probably be more independent, because the US has Indo-Pacific now. What do you think about the Biden administration, the next 4 years that he’s in the office? And also, I noticed recently that the China General Chamber of Commerce – USA has issued a report that the trade war could cost the US 1% of GDP and several hundred thousand jobs. What do you think the new US government would do? To economically continue Trump’s policy or maybe more politically or geopolitical alliance building? Even alliance building, like ASEAN leaders, would not take a side. As Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong said, “we don’t want to side with any side on containing China or for that matter”. So how can that relation be continue more constructively, or maybe we can repair somehow the Sino-US relations?
Prof. Kerry Brown: I think the tone of the new American president, compared to the previous one, is different and that will help. Because often the very provocative and aggressive language of Trump created its own problems. I guess that’s often not really kind of thought about. The second thing is that Trump didn’t really delegate properly. He didn’t build a team around and it was very unstable. It was really all about him and him deciding everything. And the fact is that Biden has a very competent team around him, obviously, like Blinken, the Secretary of State that you got kind of other people who are very experienced and capable. It seems that there’s much more of a team.
So I think that’s probably gonna be helpful. I guess the third thing is that, although Europe and America are not going to be completely aligned. I think they’re speaking more with each other now about China. It’s just sort of trying to work out the common points. And that will probably be helpful because I think it’s good for America to realize that it cannot really promote China policy on its own. It’s gonna have allies. And I think that means that there will be more multiculturalism. Probably some of the more extreme ideas in the Trump era will disappear. There will be more moderation than that and more kind of nuance. Fundamentally though, the issue for America is the most serious because it’s currently the world’s biggest economy and China is competing with that.
I think this is psychologically a huge moment – there will be a day, some time in the next 5-10 years, probably sooner rather than later, where we will wake up one morning and China will be the world’s biggest economy. This will be an historic moment – the first time in modern history that Asian country has been number one, the first time in modern history when China has been economically number one, the first time in history when a communist country has been number one. This is a huge moment and symbolically, it’s going to be incredibly difficult for America to know that they’re going to be number two, economically.
Of course, in many other areas, they won’t be number two, militarily, in terms of their alliance, they are still number one. But I think it’s going to really have an impact on how they view themselves, their state is in the world. This is gonna be a problem. I think America has a sense of self esteem and pride. Just because they will no longer economically be in the number one position, I think this is going to then feed a lot of other doubts. For many years, we’ve had a wonder whether America is a declining power and have often said many times. No, it’s still dominant in many areas across economics. Technology – the world’s biggest companies are mostly American. The world military if you add it up – the top five will still not equal to America’s expenditure. It’s still the most powerful country and is likely to be so for a long time. this one kind of indicator, America’s economic status, is gonna be symbolic for much of a shift. It’s gonna be a very tangible, very powerful moment. I think this is the kind of thing that is really feeding a lot of the anxiety in America. Actually, it’s not just about economic change. It means a whole bunch of other changes, because in effect, America will no longer be the richest country in the world. Sure the per capita is totally different. China is still a middle-income country, basically a moderately prosperous country, per capita. But in total, China will be the richest country in the world. So this will mean many many things, so enormously important geopolitical moments, one of the key moments of modern history and probably more significant than the collapse of the Soviet Union, probably more significant than any event since the Second World War. This is going to be an enormous, important event. And it’s already starting to have an impact already. You can see when China’s economic growth being greater in that of America are coming out the pandemic. Everyday it’s getting closer to that target. I think when that target is even closer, there will be more political turmoil. Because I think America is very uneasy about this moment.
When I was looking at Japan – I think Japan was about sort of 2/3 the size of American economy in the late 1980s. It was already this anxiety about how do we deal with Japan and that kind of problem. I think there’s a fear in America that the same will have with China. There will be some issue of China’s growth for all but at the moment we don’t see that. And the pandemic has some impact. IMF shows, at least this year, China’s likely to grow well. It’s likely to continue to grow well. So unless there is a total disaster, then I think that China’s on this path to being the dominant economy, the political implications of that are very, very profound.
A trilateral dialogue? – the EU, US and China
Dr. Wang Huiyao: I think you have really made a very right and accurate analysis of the situation that we’re going to see in the next 5 to 10 years. China is rising rapidly, economically and politically so that how can really the world, particularly the US, accept that? As you said, they’ve been in a number one position for a hundred years now, but now we have this new China and publicly overtaking the US as the largest economy in the world. Psychologically, it’ll take a while probably to adjust. But also I think that now we’re in a very challenging world, for example, we’re facing this pandemic. It really needs China and the US, the EU and all the other countries together to fight the common enemy of the mankind. We have this climate change where President Biden holds very dearly to his position to fight that. And they need China to collaborate. So hopefully we could have a more common interest while the world evolves, develops the new challenges, the new risk, and the new catastrophe. As human race we unite. And let’s set aside ideological differences and also some of the bias on each other, let’s work on how we can face a common enemy and the common threats. So I’m thinking that, for example, the Second World War where the US led a new international order, we had a Bretton Woods moment and system.
Now we couldn’t say where the third world war, but we really had a pandemic world war, but maybe after that, should we have a new Bretton Woods moment where we can enhance and increase some of the global public good in the global governance system, for example, how we can fight future pandemic crisis? And also can we have a climate organization of some kind? The infrastructure is lacking in many other countries now, even the US is also crumbling to some extent sometimes. Can we really, for example, upgrade the Asia Infrastructure Investment bank to a “World Infrastructure Investment Bank”, where China and the US can work together, work up with the World Bank and all the different banks? And let’s probably make BRI to China’s and the US working together, a infrastructure revolution to modernize the whole world that we have some common things to work along, rather than we fight each other.
I think you pose a lot of deep thinking questions for us to digest, which is, I think, very, very necessary. But also, again, on the Europe – Europe is really in a unique position. How do you see EU now which have signed this comprehensive agreement on investment with China on the last day of last year. It is still going to be ratified by many EU countries, but with this kind of business, the ties – now China becoming the EU’s largest trading partner, can EU also, as you said, a very important public ally of the US, play some kind of mediation role? Or maybe, let’s have a trilateral summit between the EU, the US and China. Let’s really work together and EU is not to be directly confronted with China, but can have a lot of common interest as they shared a long history. But also EU has a good relation with the US. How do you see the new investment treaty and then the future role of EU with China and with the US?
Prof. Kerry Brown: One of the strangest things is that in recent years, really Europe, China, and America, haven’t had a formal trilateral dialogue at all. They never really sit down with each other and talk about common issues. They may do it as part of the G20 or other forums. But they don’t, as three separate entities sit down and talk together.
And I mean part of that is because I think that the Chinese and the Americans are very jealous of their relationship. They don’t want others to come in, the two great powers. So they are quite protective. I think the second reason is really because the European Union is now 27 member states, and it’s different to America and China. It’s not a single sovereign entity and it is a kind of consortium. With the British leaving the European Union, which was a very unfortunate thing, but with that happening, we now see that the Europe is consolidating again. And for a while, it looked like Europe was really threatened by this project. It goes through ups and downs. Europe is perpetually in crisis in the way. In a sense, your kind of always have to acknowledge that this, consortium is more helpful than to just not deal with some issues. The investment protocol is probably one of those issues. It’s a good way of negotiation with people because of the size of the European investment and trade market.
So the kind of ways in which Europe and China, and Europe and America can talk to each other would be a very important global gathering. At the moment, it’s true that Europe and China have their high level dialogue. I think it held annually. I think at the end of last year, there was the kind of the annual meeting online and the high representative foreign affairs and the president of the EU, Ursula Von Der Leyen, and then the high representative of Foreign affairs met Xi Jinping, and they had their discussion.
Obviously, China and the US have the high level economic and strategic dialogue or exchange. So there hves been meetings. And also the Europeans and the Americans have a dialogue on China. So the one thing that’s missing is that they all get together. Now, is that possible? I think, on climate change and then it makes a lot of sense. Whether they’ll be able to find common cause is another matter, I think for America it feels still that it should be in charge of the relationship with China. So it doesn’t mind Europe agree with it, and it doesn’t like it so much when Europe disagrees with it.
For China, I think, it is aware that in a sense, it’s gonna go into a meeting where there’s always gonna be two against it. China will be facing America and Europe probably like on very tough things. They’ll vote to disagree with it. So I don’t think that we’re quite at the moment where these three will be actually as three sitting down. I think on climate change that almost certainly they are commonly aligned. Biden has brought America back into the Paris convention. Europe is committing to decarbonizing in economies and in environment.
Combating climate change: an huge area of mutual collaboration
Prof. Kerry Brown: China’s committed to complete decarbonization, not producing any carbon at 2060. I think his targets will become more ambitious. This is an area of big mutual collaboration. I think these three basically, if you say that America, Europe, and China agree on something in this area and, then it will have a huge impact, especially if you can bring India into it, then you already have a vast part of the world in terms of population. It’s geography. Of course, it’s also economy. Once you have those in place and others will maybe follow the leadership role of the 3, which is absolutely huge. So I’m hopeful that’s gonna be really where you see how proper kind of dialogue and collaboration with China can happen, where it could lead to very beneficial outcomes for everyone.
Dr. Wang Huiyao: I think that the idea actually comes out of the Center of China and Globalization. We every year went to Munich Security Conference, we actually propose on MSC that we can have a trilateral dialogue. Because particularly in the last 2 years, when China and the US have a fierce trade war, and also on the aircraft, on the Taiwan strait and South China sea, everywhere is very tense with sanctions on the daily basis when former President Trump and Secretary Pompeo – basically that you had that kind of tense moment. If two big guys quarrel, then you need a third party to really intervene or mediate, at least let them calm down.
But I see, actually, after we mentioned that at the Munich Security Conference, the EU and the US now set up a dialogue on China without China participating when Pompeo was still there. So what I’m saying is that maybe we hope you’re absolutely right with all those global issues. We really need the US, China and the EU to work together, like climate change. Pandemic fighting is another good example on WHO corporation. Another suggestion we made is that maybe on top of G7, we could add China, India, and Russia for a climate summit, whereas over half of the world population and over 60-70 % of the six biggest emitters of the carbon among those ten.
So somehow we have to really re-engineer or reinvigorate a post pandemic, new Breton wood moment, we need to find a new mechanism. G20 is great, the United Nations, too. Everything is great, but I think we need a little bit more focus on the specialty. So that’s where we sent new proposals on from think tanks. But since you are now in the UK and you live in London, I want to bring you to another question about Brexit, in which we see globalization and de-globalization going on.
The UK-China relations: pragmatism and the middle road
Dr. Wang Huiyao: And then finally, now you separate from the EU but now I notice that the UK is applying for joining CPTPP. The UK still has a lot of influence, a lot of soft power, too. I think that either you can join the CPTPP and maybe work closely with china, like Theresa May said that the global Britain if you look beyond the EU, the far east is China. What do you think about China-relations, particularly now we have a lot of disputs on issues like Hong Kong. How can we really reconcile that? And then can we really get back to the golden age if possible? And then because as you said, UK is the second largest destination for Chinese student – over 150-200,000 students were there and also tourism and many other collaboration. So what can be done? What do you think about UK’s new role now, with collaboration with China and also in the future?
Prof. Kerry Brown: I think it’s been a difficult year because of Covid-19 and because of a kind of increasing political fight. Part of the reason for that is, I think historically the conservative party when they’ve been in power have been maybe more confrontational with China. It seems to be my memory. And they now they are the dominant party, there is a significant group within the conservative party that created this organization called the “China research group”. They clearly see China as a very particular kind of problem. And they are keen to make that the way that we understand China. In the UK, on the whole, as I’ve said historically, the Chinese image in the UK has not been a high profile one. It’s been more marginal. Britain has not kind of paid a huge amount of attention to China. It’s made interests in Europe and in America. There’s a sort of lack of understanding properly, what China is, what China should mean. And now we have a lot of people who do talk about China, but they’re talking about it almost all kind of framework of Covid-19. But all of the political issues – where did that come from? How did it happen? Who is to blame? This kind of discussion on China in the UK is really a little bit distorted. The longer- term issues have been lost sight of. A lot of people talking about China now never had much of an opinion about it before, because it suits their particular political interests.
The populist politician Nigel Farage has suddenly started taking note of China. He’s obviously a nationalistic kind of figure he was. And maybe one of the main influences behind the Britain leaving the European Union. I think that’s really unfortunate once someone with his kind of track record, just creating problems, creating divisions, of creating resentment, manipulating. They kind of become interested in an issue. It usually makes the public debate more difficult. Despite that, I think that British people are pragmatic, I think that they’re gonna be lots of opportunities to find spaces to work. I think that we are more moderate in our approach. We have many people, I think, trying to influence us now.
We have kind of these strange, slightly worrying figures like Clive Hamilton, this Australian academic who’s been kind of making some big claims about how China influences politics in the world. These are things that only he seems to be able to see. But no one else can really kind of see it. That’s clear is him. I think this kind of language in the UK does have a bit of influence. I’m also sure that there are much more moderate voices here going more thoughtful. When I talk to politicians, I’m struck by the fact that maybe in public, they say one thing, but in private, they are aware of the complexity of what they’re looking at, and they’re trying to find a kind of road in which we can look after our interest, despite the disagreements.
I think that’s what we’re all about. We’re all trying to find that kind of middle road. We’re all trying to look after our interest, also trying to acknowledge that we need to cooperate in certain key areas. And there are other areas where we’re not gonna be able to see. I think politicians have not gone to the extremes maybe in Australia or some in America. There’s no very prominent public figure who has so far signed up to this idea of a huge China threat. I think we not at that level. But it’s still being kind of developed. And I think it’s something that we shouldn’t be lazy about. For my work, I’m not kind of here to convert anyone. I just want to have the best possible debate about issues around china.
The best for us is to understand what we think about China, what China means to the UK. I’m optimistic because in most surveys, it seems that moderates and those who are more pragmatic out number the more extremes, I’m not saying that there are things that we should be concerned about and we should really focus on. But I do think that we need to be pragmatic. That’s something we can learn from the Chinese because I think in this few decades Chinese also have been pragmatic, it seems to have worked in some areas for China. So we pragmatism to work for us.
China’s achievement in poverty reduction, alleviation and elimination
Dr. Wang Huiyao: Great. Thank you, Kerry. My final question for you would be now we have a lot of, as for the last an hour and a half discussion, a lot of discussion centered on the gap between China and outside world, how we can minimize that gap?
One of the things I realized, for example, in the US, populism is strong, where President Trump got elected. But also we notice that the the richest people in the Wall Street, like 1 %, is equal to almost half of the general mass population of the US so the gap is wide between the rich and poor. China have that issues too, but Chinese government is really mobilized. It can eliminate extreme poverty, well they just announced that last week that they have achieved elevating nearly 100 million people out of poverty in the last 8 years.
So what do you think? Because domestically, they all have this kind of issue. I notice that president Biden wants to raise the minimum wage from $7.8 to $15, probably wanting to address that, extreme poverty in the US. But very often, for some issues, China becomes a scapegoat because for example, all the manufacture was made in China, but doesn’t mean China take all the profit, whereas Chinese export multinationally accounts 40 even 50% of that. Apple phone that sells at $1,000 in the US and maybe China makes $50 of that.
But on account of the CIF, FOB , the export value that China may be gets half of that is not necessarily true. So what do you think how we can really address this? Global governance is falling behind global practice, whereas multational compaiesn probably made a huge gain in the last number of years, for at last two or three decades. Whereas they’re probably not benefiting the host country enough and not home country enough. So that we need the international coordination to have a new kind of government system to really benefit all the countries, so that we can really not be having such strong populism uprising throughout the world.
Prof. Kerry Brown: I think the achievements that China has in poverty reduction and alleviation and elimination should be better appreciated in the outside world. Even I looked on the BBC website the announcement was made about the poverty elimination – it happened. And I think there was a recognition that yes, in the last 40 years, how do you define it? A huge number of people have been lifted out of poverty in China. Whatever the reasons for that, it’s an achievement. I think we need to recognize that this is why China is not a straightforward story, for all the things that people are very critical about. And you should be critical about some things but this is a huge achievements which should also be celebrated. Yet it’s not easy to. I say that sometimes because you don’t really get much coverage of those things which break up much more positive. I think that what struck me is that the achievement that China has made is something that we can all learn from.
I suppose you know a simple answer to what you just say is we need to have a forum for learning, that is a two-way process. I think one of the final mindset is, it’s always been, so America, Europe were going to China to teach to show how you do things. I think that we need to kind of have some recognition that there are many things where China can come to the rest of the world and teach and show how you can do. Building high speed railways has been one very very huge achievement. Poverty alleviation is another. And China’s doing these innovations, in other areas of technology. Yes, there are some areas where this is not going to be possible, but there are other areas where I think we got to learn from each other.
So I think the era of the great learning should start. And it shouldn’t be really just about learning being one way. It should definitely be learning from people who have something to teach and at the moment includes China, which has a lot to teach now, the kind of the things I just outlined. And we’ll continue to have a lot to teach.
Dr. Wang Huiyao: Thank you for your kind of word on that. I think always China has benefited also greatly from globalization and China eliminating poverty also attributes to China joining the globalization, for example, since China had joined WTO, China’s GDP has gone up 11, 12 times. And multinational work in China has also employs hundreds of thousands of migrants in coastal cities.
“Two Sessions” and the new 5-year plan
Dr. Wang Huiyao: We have actually collected some questions from the media. I just want to maybe give a summary of that, and maybe you can give some final answer. For example, we have a question from China.org, China Internet Information Center, China Daily. And also we have China Radio International . So I see there are a number of questions, but basically concentrated on the “two sessions” that are coming up.
So do you think this annual ritual o, 10-15 days of the Nnational People’s Congress and then the Chinese Political Consultative Conference. It’s really an national exercise for half a month, basically, before and after the “two sessions” , there are debate and discussion. Particular this year, China is gonna summarize what has been achieved in the 13th 5-year plan. People are expecting Premier Li’s working report and also of course China is going to propose a new 14th 5-years plan. So what do you think about this 5-years plan and the “two sessions” in the Chinese political life? We have a different system that really also has been quite effective in terms of coming up one 5 year plan after another 5 year plan. This kind of exercise shows some kind of collected effectiveness.
So basically these are questions which are centered around the 14th Five-year plan. What do you think about the “two sessions”? And also, actually you have also published a book about China in 2020 and talking about the 70th anniversary of the establishment of People’s Republic of China.
Prof. Kerry Brown: Last year, in the delayed National People’s Congress in May, the main emphasis was on what is China gonna do about the kind of alleviating the impact of Covid-19. I think this is gonna be the same interest this year. I think the world will be very interested to know what China’s plans are for, really developing its economy after the enormous hit of Covid-19.
I think that there’s always interests for the China’s plans that environmental protection. Employment, I think last year there was an announcement about, improving urban unemployment. There’s gonna be kind of a lot of focus this year. Is there gonna be any moves to sort of continue to address issues of unemployment? And maybe there are innovations the Chinese government is gonna make in dealing with the impact of Covid-19 and increased health spending. It’s gonna be not only an attempt to have a green budget, but also a health budget. A lot of money in Western countries is going into mental health. Is China going to make similar commitments about mental health? These are things where I think we see in alignment, the common problem of the impact of the pandemic. The policy issues China is facing are similar to those of the rest of the world.
Maybe there’ll be some kind of clues to how maybe the rest of the world might deal with their problems from looking at what China does. China looks like it’s going to take a positive approach. That is gonna be a great achievement, particularly in the current circumstances. I think the concentration will be on what measures China’s going to make to try to restore and then, make its economy as dynamic as it was before the pandemic. That is, I think, what can really interest people.
