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KISHORE MAHBUBANI:
"The one country that has studied the collapse of the Soviet Union more carefully than any other is China.
China knows that the dream of the United States is to make China the second Soviet Union that collapses.
So, how does China prevent a collapse?
First, the Soviet Union didn't collapse because of external pressures; it collapsed because of internal weaknesses.
China realizes, 'To make sure I survive, I must have a very strong, dynamic economy and a strong, dynamic society.'
By the way, there was a very famous American thinker, George Kennan, who said way back in 1949, very presciently, that at the end of the day, the outcome of the contest between the United States and the Soviet Union will depend not on our weapons and troops, but on which society has greater spiritual vibrancy inside.
The United States' society was far more dynamic than the Soviet Union's.
The United States thrived, and the Soviet Union collapsed.
The Chinese know that the first priority is to ensure a strong economy and a strong society, which is why they are massively educating their people and growing their economy so they don't become a second Soviet Union.
The second thing the Chinese learned from the collapse of the Soviet Union was that the United States succeeded because it managed to get many of the neighbors of the Soviet Union to join the containment policy everywhere: Western Europe, Japan, South Korea—both ends of the Soviet Union.
What did the Chinese do?
They launched a preemptive strike against a containment policy by making sure that their neighbors depended on the Chinese economy.
For example, Singapore is part of Southeast Asia and part of an organization called ASEAN.
ASEAN started as a pro-American organization.
In fact, when ASEAN was created on August 8, 1967, both the Soviet Union and China denounced its creation as a pro-American organization.
It's true; ASEAN was pro-American and pro-Western.
What was stunning was that even though ASEAN was pro-American and pro-Western (and we have longer dialogues with the United States, the European Union, Australia, and Japan), none of our Western friends proposed a free trade agreement to ASEAN.
The first country to propose a free trade agreement to ASEAN was China in 2000, and the impact of that China-ASEAN agreement was phenomenal.
In the year 2000, ASEAN trade with the United States was $135 billion, while trade with China was only $40 billion. U.S. trade was more than three and a half times that of China's trade with ASEAN.
However, as a result of the free trade agreement, by 2022, ASEAN trade with the United States increased to $450-500 billion (an increase of over three times), while China's trade with ASEAN skyrocketed from $40 billion to $975 billion, almost a trillion dollars—the world's largest trading relationship in 2022.
Now, there's no way ASEAN can join a containment policy against its largest trading partner. It's crazy.
That's part of the Chinese strategy.
I'll mention a third point very quickly.
Take the Belt and Road Initiative that China has launched, building infrastructure in all corners of the world. What does that mean?
Every country in the world says, 'Oh, this infrastructure is good,' 'I need Chinese fast trains,' 'I need Chinese highways,' and then, would you join a containment policy? No.
This shows that China has systematically worked out a grand strategy.
At the same time, the Chinese also have a lot of respect for the United States.
They understand that the United States is a remarkable power, and so their challenge, even with all this strategy, is that they cannot underestimate what the United States can eventually do." |
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