Latest / Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs / Season 3, Episode 4: Dr. David Daokui Li, China's World View: Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict

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Season 3, Episode 4: Dr. David Daokui Li, China's World View: Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict · Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Hello, I'm Jeffrey Sachs.
0:01
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Book Club, a monthly conversation with world-leading authors who have written scintillating, inspiring, and remarkably important books about history, social justices, and the challenges of building a decent world.
0:16
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: I could not be more thrilled than to have with me one of the world's leading economists and a dear friend and student of mine and others of my colleagues at Harvard University a bit more than 30 years ago.
0:33
SPEAKER_01: And that is Professor David Dao Qui Li.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: Professor Li is a professor of economics and director of the Center for China in the World Economy at Qinghua University, which of course is one of the world's greatest universities.
0:50
SPEAKER_01: And he was founding dean of a program that we'll talk about at Schwartzmann College, a very, very important and innovative education program at Qinghua University.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: He's a leading scholar and a leading economic advisor to the Chinese government and a leading expert on the world economy.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: But we're talking today because he's written a book that I want everybody to read.
1:16
SPEAKER_01: Really, I do.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: The book is China's Worldview, and the subtitle is Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: David, I don't think that there could be a more important topic and a more wonderful book.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: You're an extraordinarily rare individual in this world in knowing the US culture and of course being a leading Chinese scholar and expert.
1:44
SPEAKER_01: And that combination is extraordinarily valuable because we're in a lot of tension between the two countries, and your book is aiming to reduce the tension by helping people in the West in particular to understand China.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Jeff, thank you very much for having me here.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: And today I'm very excited to be with one of the most esteemed professors, former professors at Harvard, to talk about my book.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: I am actually a product of both the Chinese and US education, especially the US graduate education.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: So the very format and the very presence of our conversation is a proof that two countries should come together and good things should happen.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: So I'm very happy to be here and we'll discuss everything with very open mind, very frank, in a very frank style, everything about the book.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: So I want to ask you before we get to the book about you.
2:40
SPEAKER_01: You were a star student of ours in the Harvard Economics Department a little bit more than 30 years ago.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: How do you get to Harvard at a young age to be able to make this bridge that you are making between China and the United States?
2:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: Jeff, it's a very interesting question.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay, Jeff, a very simple answer is one word, exams.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: Exam, okay?
3:02
SPEAKER_00: Everybody, everybody you meet, okay, everybody you have met and you meet uh today from China actually are experts of uh uh taking exams.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: So I am no exception.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm not exception, okay?
3:15
SPEAKER_00: I was very lucky, very fortunate.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: I exiled in my career as a student in exams.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: I took exams to get into one of the best uh high schools in my hometown.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: And uh and what was your hometown, by the way?
3:28
SPEAKER_00: Uh I went to high school in the city of Chengdu, the city of Pandas.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: City of Pandas, okay?
3:34
SPEAKER_00: And then I was lucky to be able to do well in the college entrance examination and enter Qinghuai University.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: And then one year before graduation from Qinghua University, I was given exams nationwide.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: All these are nationwide, okay, nationwide exams to select students to go to North America to study business and economics.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: So I again I was very lucky to be able to do well in the exam.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: So I was chosen to apply to Harvard University.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: By the way, the top scorer, it was not me, okay?
4:07
SPEAKER_00: The top scorer was chosen to apply to the Princeton University PhD program.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: Because the organizer of the exam was a Chinese professor who was at Princeton, who believed that Princeton's economics program is better than Harvard.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: Right, okay.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: So leaving me, leaving me the second scorer, the second highest scorer, uh, to apply to Harvard University.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: That's a simple story.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: So exam.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: I think we won on that one.
4:32
SPEAKER_01: But let me ask you you were born uh in the early 1960s.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: Correct.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: You were young during the Cultural Revolution.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: By the time you were a teenager, it was essentially over.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: Did that phase touch you or your family, the Cultural Revolution period?
4:48
SPEAKER_00: Oh, extremely, extremely.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: Okay, when I was only six years old, my parents were sent to the countryside.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so together I went with my parents.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: My parents used to work in the central government, actually as diplomats.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: They used to be stationed in India.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: They were the first generation of diplomats working on the Zhou and Lai.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: So they were first diplomats from China working in India, okay, in the Indian embassy.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, the whole family was sent to the countryside.
5:18
SPEAKER_00: So my parents were raising pigs, literally raising pigs.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in a poor village.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: I had uh, you know, there's tough years, not only physically, but psychologically.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: So I had many fights uh with the schoolboys, you know, in Chinese schools, bullies, so you know, yeah.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: Because you were an outsider someone that had come to their village.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: Where was the village?
5:43
SPEAKER_00: The village is in the province of Mao Zedong, Hunan province, where spicy food is very popular.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: So I picked up some of the fighting spirits of Mao Zedong.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: Incredible.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: Was there school then?
5:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how did you get the education, early education to be to excel?
6:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh they were there was something good about the Chinese uh education system, even during the Cultural Revolution.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: When people like my parents were brought down by political campaigns, schools, primary schools, and high schools were still in operation, at least primary schools.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: So I was able to go to school, I was able to learn English in grade three, in grade three, at age nine.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: In Hunan province.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, we transferred from Hunan province to Jiangxi province.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: They are very close.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: Because Lin Biao was a chosen heir of Mao Zedong, got into trouble.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: He actually was killed in the airplane flying from Beijing to Russia.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: In Mongolia, in the Midway, he was killed in the airplane.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: And then with the death of Linpiao, which was September 13th, 1971, okay.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: Then, right after that, the whole idea of government officials being educated in the countryside was finished, okay?
6:58
SPEAKER_00: Because Linbyo was advocating that idea.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: So our parents were transferred to another location as a consolidation of the program of re-educating government officials.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: So, in principle, yes, I studied English starting from age three, again, in a poor village in the countryside.
7:16
SPEAKER_01: Extraordinary.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, turning back to exams, the theme of your book is, of course, that China has an ancient and very distinctive culture and governance style and political system, actually, that even today reflects characteristics of thousands of years, I would say.
7:38
SPEAKER_01: And one of the points you do mention, I didn't realize how much it applied personally, but you mentioned exams, exams, exams, which goes back at least a thousand years to creating the Chinese bureaucratic state even under the great dynasties, the Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty and the Qing dynasty.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: So this is an ancient tradition.
7:59
SPEAKER_01: And uh part of your theme is China is a distinctive civilization and it needs to be understood on that basis.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: True.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: There are perhaps three themes, three uh lines of message from the book.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: The first of them is that the Chinese political social system is not as simple as the Russian one.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, former Soviet Union, okay?
8:18
SPEAKER_00: It's actually very much on its own.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: It's internally coherent, it's rooted in at least one thousand years of civil servants, civil servant system, right?
8:29
SPEAKER_00: And one of the key features of this civil servant system is meritocracy.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: Meritocracy.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: That is, even though we do not have open elections, let's face it, let's be very frank.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: We don't have open elections.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: Well, of course, we do have elections, but not as your presidential one, as a primary one in the US.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: However, China has a system to choose people based on their performance.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: And one of the instruments is exam.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: Exam is not the best system, let's face it, okay?
8:59
SPEAKER_00: I I criticize this.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm lucky to be able to do well in exams.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: There are many people who are not able to take good exams, but they are equally better than myself, okay?
9:08
SPEAKER_00: I'd be let's face it.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: However, exam is a relatively fair system.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: It's not depending on recommendations.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: Objective.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: I often joke.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: I often joke if you implement the US system of college entrance based on recommendations, we have lots of corruption.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: We have lots of problems.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: Because Chinese society is a society of personal connections, okay?
9:32
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so meritocracy.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: Meritocracy is a key to understanding Chinese political system.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: Let's take Chinese leader, okay?
9:42
SPEAKER_00: Chinese top leaders, whoever they are.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: There are seven people at the very top of the Chinese hierarchy.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: All of them, whether you like them or you hate them, all of them have to excel through their work.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: They work up from, let's see, a junior, very junior official in the countryside or in a factory floor and move to municipal level and to provincial level and to ministerial level, so on and so forth.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: So for good or for bad.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: The good thing is that people have experience with government officials.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: And they've been tested at every level.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: So they don't get the promotion if they fail.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: The bad thing, of course, is that we do not have Jeff K's, we do not have Obama's.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: We do not have the late Dr.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: Kissinger's, who did not have experience in the government, but who brought new ideas to the government.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: So by implication, the Chinese political system is internally coherent.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: However, it has its own inertia.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: In other words, you normally do not have drastic changes in the system.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: It's relatively stable, it's able to handle many small problems.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: However, you do not see big problems switching from Jimmy Carter to uh Reagan.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: Of course, you don't see from Obama to Trump whether you like him or not.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
10:58
SPEAKER_01: So I've also experienced in uh my 42 years of uh coming to China very frequently the extremely high level of competence of senior officials because they've been through a lot of experience and they've really been tested.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: And you point out not only the meritocracy, but the rank.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: You don't skip levels, you go step by step by step up the ladder, as it were.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
11:26
SPEAKER_00: True.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: Again, again, they are pros and cons of this system.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: Okay, the good thing about the moving up rank by rank, step by step, is that people have experience.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: People have to prove themselves.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: The downside is that young stars, Jeff, you know, let's face it, like yourself, people don't maybe don't know this.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: You are a star professor at a very young age at Harvard, right?
11:45
SPEAKER_00: So people like you, people like you in Chinese academics or in Chinese government officials do not rise up so easily.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so there are downside and upside.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: But my key point is that don't write off the Chinese political system as uh monolithic, as irrational, as uh crazy, as uh crumpy, you know.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: Or as one person, for example, which is completely wrong.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, very good.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: Thank uh thank you, Jeff, for bringing that up that's that point.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Whatever system, okay, whatever.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: Even in the era of Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong was the god.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: Even in his era, he had to face criticisms from within the party.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so they are internal check and balances within the Chinese political system.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: This started not today, but 1000, 2000 years ago.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: 2000 years ago, Chinese emperors had a system of having a historian writing down everything that the emperor did in the court.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: And the emperor could not change the record of the historian.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: That historian is a discipliner.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: It's a discipline on the behavior of the emperor.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: This is a very fascinating point of your book that the weight of history and the sense that a leader has that their real constraint is not necessarily their colleagues or immediate politics, but the judgment of history, that they are responsible to the judgment of history.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: It almost is, at a political level, also a sense of the role of ancestors in Chinese culture, which is you want to be a good ancestor.
13:28
SPEAKER_01: In other words, uh what you do, you know, has a role throughout the future, and you have to be responsible to the future.
13:37
SPEAKER_01: It's a very particular idea.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: You're right.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: This is a very, very important idea.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: In fact, actually, I happened to listen to a piece of music by Aaron Copland.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: Aaron Copeland, you know, the American composer.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: I love his music.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: One of his not so popular music is called Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, the portrait of Lincoln.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: And in his second part of his music, he had uh Henry Fonda, you know, Henry Funda, the actor, reading a prose, a prose of Lincoln.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: And Lincoln said, we cannot escape history.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: This is Abraham Lincoln.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: So actually, I want to emphasize: even in your US political system, a good president, Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln had a very conscious sense of history.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: He said, we cannot escape history.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: Our future generations will judge us, whatever we do, whatever we decide.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: So it's amazingly similar.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: So I want to emphasize, Jeff, China is not so different from the US.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: Vice versa, US is not so different from China.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: You have to treat the two countries equally.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: If you sit down, if you stay calm, you'll find a lot of similarities.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: They are check and balances within the Chinese system, just like your democracy, just like your separations of powers in the US.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: And I think that this is an extremely important point, and it's one that you carry throughout the whole book, which is that there are different institutions, different structures, but the functions, for example, the checks and balances, the fact that it's not one person rule, or when the US thinks of one party rule, it's an idea very different from the reality of the Chinese system, which, as you keep emphasizing, is a full system filled with checks and balances and restraints and also this sense of responsibility to history.
15:32
SPEAKER_01: So be very, very careful is one of the main points that you say about Chinese officials, that they must be very careful because they know they will be judged by history.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: Now, another thing related to this is that Chinese officials, especially senior ones, have tremendous, tremendous information, sources of information.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: They read a lot.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: I don't think US presidents work this way.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: In China, every top official, especially the very top ones, spend, I would say offhand, okay.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: I don't have official statistics.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: I would say 30% of their time reading documents, written reports by scholars, by junior officials talking about the US situation, the European Ukraine, Ukraine crisis, and then they have to make remarks on the report.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: Say, this report is a matter-of-fact.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: Please, uh, my Minister of Foreign Affairs should read this carefully.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why the US, I don't think the US presidents work this way.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: So this is called written work.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: I think it's not so systematic because again, my experience with senior Chinese officials is that they are so well briefed on issues.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: You can't tell them anything they don't know that they haven't read, as you say, and have been thoroughly briefed upon.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: You can give an opinion if there is a debate between different positions.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: Usually the higher the rank, the more honest the report is.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: Jeff, you might have been you might have been to the central party school of the Communist Party.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: Have you been to the Central Party School?
17:05
SPEAKER_00: I have, absolutely.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: In the Central Party School, where senior officials are trained periodically before promotion, people have to go to the Central Party School to get training.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
17:17
SPEAKER_00: So within the Central Party School, the code of speech is very open.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: You can talk about anything, you can discuss anything.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay, in fact, Jeff, when you went to the Central Party School, when you give a seminar presentation, you must have been asked by the host to say, okay, please, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, please be open-minded.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: Please say anything you want.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: No constraints.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: This is ironical.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: And that's a real thing.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: That's not just being polite.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: That's uh actually wanting to uh gather as much information as possible.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: Especially during the period of uh the collapse of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, everyone wanted to know what's going on.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: Exactly what this means.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: They want to know what's going on.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: And most important, how can we avoid the problems of the former Soviet Union?
18:06
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: How can we avoid the problems of uh Eastern Europe?
18:09
SPEAKER_01: And this I want to come to because part of the overwhelming historical sense in China, and I would say at a core of statecraft is the unity of China.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: That if you take a 2,000-year perspective, most of the time, whether it's the Han Dynasty or the Tang Dynasty or the Song Dynasty or the Ming Dynasty or the Qing dynasty or the current People's Republic of China, China has been unified and the aim has been internal peace and security from outside invasion.
18:45
SPEAKER_01: And it seems to me that the most fundamental value of Chinese statecraft and politics is maintaining internal cohesion and internal peace, because the episodes of the warring states and the episodes of the internal civil wars and upheavals or divisions are extremely painful and to be avoided.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: And this comes to China's worldview today, because, as you emphasize right at the beginning, it's informed by what China calls this century of humiliation from the 1830s until the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.
19:28
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you could describe what that means because it's a very important concept, why it's real, and how it informs the political vision of China today.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Jeff, this is a very, very important point, okay.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad that you brought it up, okay?
19:43
SPEAKER_00: That is, if you ask any educated Chinese, okay, by educated Chinese, I mean having going through primary school.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I have a low standard, okay?
19:51
SPEAKER_00: If you have any Chinese who have gone through primary school, if you ask what is the concept of the state, what is the concept of the nation, they tell you right away, right away, that uh China is one country, China is one state.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: Okay, China should stay this way, and China should be uh a peaceful country and a prosperous country.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: So I call this in the book.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: I call every Chinese is historian, is historian because arguably the most important subject in the school is history.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: For good or for bad.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying I'm not defending anybody, I'm not promoting this idea.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm just stating as a fact that all educated Chinese have this idea that China should be a united country immune from external invasion, invasion from outside.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: So this is a super, super solid, super robust, robust belief among countries.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: And also people believe that without a national peace, without the peace of the whole nation, without national integrity, your small families will not be happy.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: Actually, this is a part of the doctrines of the Confucianism.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: That is only with national peace can we, that means each family, be prosperous, be happy.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
21:08
SPEAKER_00: So that's the key.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: And then looking from this perspective, the past century, starting from the 1830s to, as you said, to 1949, uh Chinese history was perceived to be miserable.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: To be miserable, okay?
21:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: Because China lost the wars first to the UK and then to uh the Russia, to you name it.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: All major powers have one war, had one war against China and then Japan.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: Which is the most humiliating.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: Japan used to be perceived to be a country following Chinese tradition, but only after 30 years of reform, which we call the Meiji Restoration, Japan turned around and then won a war against China over Korea.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: And then Japan invaded China before the World War II.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: So you're absolutely right.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: This period of history is still precisely.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Perceived as miserable as implications.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: Today, in China, most people, whether they like the Communist Party or not, whether they like top leader or not, they all agree that China should stay as one country and China should be united, China should be peaceful, okay?
22:15
SPEAKER_00: Also by implication.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: People are conservative in the sense that they do not want to undermine what Mao Zedong set up the rule.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: Specifically, I want to emphasize this.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: Very, very important to our Russian friends.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: I do not think any significant proportion of the Chinese population wants to take back the land taken by Russian Tsar.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: Because Mao Zedong settled the border issue.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: Mao Zedong, the founding leader of this People's Republic, settled the territory issue with Russia.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: What I call historical conservatism in my book.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: So whatever Mao Zedong set it up, let's keep it.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: Do not go over.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't expand our territory.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
23:01
SPEAKER_00: Which I also explained in the book.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: Because we also know, Chinese also know, that the Chinese political system we discussed is not able to export to other countries.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: The Chinese political system is too complicated to duplicate itself outside China.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, I argue, I argue maybe with the controversy, with it to disagree.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: I argue that the Western political system, democracy, rule of law, are relatively easy to be understood and to be exported to other countries.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: Okay, again, this I know this is controversial, but let me stop here.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think there are a couple points, you know, on this cultural difference.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: First, it's almost a matter of pride in the United States not to be bound by history.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: So China is an ancient civilization.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: It was united in 221 BC.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: So it's uh more than 2,200 years old as a unified country.
24:01
SPEAKER_01: The United States a little over 200 years.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: And one of the famous expressions in the US is from Henry Ford.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: He said, history is bunk.
24:10
SPEAKER_01: We don't need to know history.
24:11
SPEAKER_01: But in China, history is everything.
24:13
SPEAKER_01: Correct.
24:14
SPEAKER_01: Uh history is responsibility.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: History is the long history of a civilization.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: So I think that that is one difference.
24:21
SPEAKER_01: I think there's another difference about the system.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure that China feels this is our system.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: It's been our system since 221 BC, since the Qin Emperor unified China since the Han Dynasty, but it's ours.
24:37
SPEAKER_01: It's distinctively our culture.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: Whereas the US and the British view is an evangelical view, partly from evangelical Christianity, which is we are out to save the world.
24:49
SPEAKER_01: So everyone should do what we do.
24:51
SPEAKER_01: We want to convert others.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: Whereas China doesn't want to convert others, China wants a respectful system where China is intact, it is respected, it is unified, is it at peace, but it's not out to proselytize the rest of the world.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: Americans don't understand that distinction because they are proselytizers.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: They want to convince the world, be like us.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: But China's not like that.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: Jeff, you are extremely articulate in making these points, which are fully, fully, fully agree.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: Let me only add a very personal confession, okay?
25:25
SPEAKER_00: Personal, personal confession.
25:27
SPEAKER_00: My mom, 99 years old, still very healthy, okay?
25:30
SPEAKER_00: My mom, for whatever reason, during the Japanese invasion, okay, uh, went to a Christian school.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: So so from that time on, she she became a Christian, okay?
25:42
SPEAKER_00: So even today, even until today, she tries to convert me.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I I I confess, I said, I respect your belief.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: Right.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: I truly, truly respect it.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: I wish I could believe.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: I I truly admire Christianity.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: I I love Western music.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: One of the things I love, the mass, you know, the Mozart and the Mass, you know, the beautiful music, okay?
26:05
SPEAKER_00: I like Bach.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: All this beautiful music, Christian music.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: I love the culture, I love the religion.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: However, I just simply I'm too old.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: It's not mine.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: It's not I'm too old.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm too too much, I got too much education in the Confucian tradition.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: So personal confession to confirm your view, okay?
26:23
SPEAKER_00: At a few super minor, super micro level.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: I confirm your view.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: The Christians.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm not blaming Christians, okay?
26:30
SPEAKER_00: They know history is history.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: No, but it's it's part of the of the culture.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which is part of the conversion.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: And it's important for Americans to understand this difference.
26:42
SPEAKER_01: China is not out to tell the United States what to do.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't want the United States to tell China what to do, but it's not out to tell the United States what to do.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: And a super, super important implication of this is that China is not ready, is not willing, and will not expand its political system to other countries.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: It's not in the DNA.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: It's not in the DNA.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: So perhaps number one, and the most popular mistake, misunderstanding of Americans, American political leaders, many of them, about China.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: They believe when China is becoming prosperous, becoming politically influential, China will expand to other countries, expand, expand the Confucianism, expand the Communist Party system.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: No, that's totally, totally wrong.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: It cannot be more wrong than this.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: It's absolutely amazing.
27:33
SPEAKER_01: And I want to come back to this historical view that was shaped by this century that started with a war that I think is perhaps the most cynical war I know of, which is the first opium war, which was a war from 1839 to 1842, where Britain invaded China to force China to accept opium trade.
27:56
SPEAKER_01: It's like being invaded by the Tali cartel or something to say you have to open your borders to cocaine or to anything else.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: But Britain actually did that.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: And then, as you know, we briefly mentioned, it was followed by one disaster after another, a second opium war in the 1850s, and then the internal civil war called the Taiping Rebellion, and then wars with Japan, and then on and on, and the Japanese invasion and terrible things.
28:28
SPEAKER_01: But one of the things that struck me, David, I don't know if you uh happen to read Ezra Vogel's book, China and Japan Facing History.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: It was one of the last books that our great teacher, because he was a teacher for both of us, an expert in both China and Japan, wrote a book before he died saying to each other, you need to understand each other better.
28:49
SPEAKER_01: So not just China and the United States, but China and Japan, because this is also a very fraught relationship.
28:55
SPEAKER_01: But the fact of the matter is, it's Japan that has been so militaristic vis-a-vis China, not the other way around, which is strange because Japan's the smaller country, but China never tried to take over Japan, except when China was briefly ruled by the Mongols.
29:11
SPEAKER_01: Other than that, China never tried to take over Japan.
29:15
SPEAKER_01: But one of the things that's very poignant, David, in Ezra Vogel's book is that after Japan became the early industrializer in Asia, it immediately became imperialist in its outlook.
29:28
SPEAKER_01: And it invaded China in the 1890s.
29:32
SPEAKER_01: And the Chinese diplomats, who were personally friendly with the Japanese diplomats, were very crestfallen.
29:41
SPEAKER_01: They were very unhappy.
29:43
SPEAKER_01: And they said to their Japanese counterparts, but we're Asian together.
29:47
SPEAKER_01: We have a common culture.
29:49
SPEAKER_01: Why are you attacking us?
29:51
SPEAKER_01: And the Japanese said, to paraphrase, oh, now we're part of the Western club.
29:56
SPEAKER_01: Now we're imperialists.
29:58
SPEAKER_01: You have to appreciate that.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, from China's point of view, that idea is so foreign to the culture.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: And it was extremely hurtful, obviously, from a literal point of view, but also from a kind of emotional historical point of view.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Jeff, let me add two points: a relatively uh specific one and a general one.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay, specific one is that Japan, if you study the more and more, you'll realize Japan is different from China.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: Why?
30:26
SPEAKER_00: Because Japan is a country of wonderful, wonderful students.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: If Japan were a student, it's a super, super wonderful student.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: So Japan wanted.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: Japan wanted to learn from the Western cultures.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: Before that, 1000 years before the Meiji Restoration, Japan used to learn from China and they learned many things from China for wrong reasons.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: For example, Japanese language, the Japanese verbal language is not suitable to use Chinese character as a written form.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: Korean language can adopt Chinese written form.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: Fine, fine.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: But Japanese is a multiple syllabus, multiple sound language.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: It's a disaster for Japan to adopt Chinese written character.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: Okay, but Japanese did it.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: They are wonderful students.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: They are very diligent, very careful, very good students.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: So that's why Japan learned from the colonial behavior of Western civilization and want to apply to other Asian nations.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: Very good point.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: Very technical point.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: To the contrary, China is not as a good student of Japan.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: Why?
31:34
SPEAKER_00: Because China is too big.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: Too big to change, too big an inertia to learn.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is uh one technical reason.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: Now a general, a general point, a general point, I want to say this.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: The Western powers, yes, invaded China.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: The Western powers, yes, during the past uh 150 years, yes, they they forced so-called unequal treaties upon the Qing dynasty, okay?
31:59
SPEAKER_00: But as a person who has been uh to many countries, I gradually come to the view, which I believe more and more Chinese will agree, that it was a process of uh China's opening up to the West.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: Imagine if the UK had not had the Opian War, the Qing dynasty, the emperor, okay, still would be going on like continued old practice, old system without reforms.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: So the Opian War, of course, is an evil war.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, by today's standard, by today's standard, it's very bad, it's a very immoral war, okay?
32:35
SPEAKER_00: But objectively, the final outcome is that it woke up China as a nation so that China began to adopt Western industrial technology as early as 1870.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: When Germany was united in 1871, China was already trying to industrialize learning from the UK.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: It was, of course, a long process of learning because it's a large country.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: So my point is that I think we should look back at history with a little bit, little bit wider perspective.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I wouldn't say relaxed, I would say wider perspective.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: Not only bitterness, but also to see the positive side of this.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: So while I say this with the purpose of telling my American friends, today I suggest America and Americans do the reverse learning.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: Look at China.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: So China being a large country, having developed so quickly over the past 45 years, there must be something that China has done right.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: Don't write off China.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: So if China had done something right, try to understand what kind of things the US can learn from China.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: I know, Jeff, you agree with me.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't think you disagree with me, but most of your countrymen disagree.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: I agree completely.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: And David, as we reach the uh end of our wonderful discussion together, I want to emphasize for listeners, as they get your book and read it carefully, there's a fantastic chapter summarizing China's worldview, which goes through many of the things we've been talking about.
34:08
SPEAKER_01: Exam taking, focus on the domestic side, homework first, as you call it, historical conservatism, the respectful diplomacy.
34:18
SPEAKER_01: These are all extremely important ideas, wonderfully put, David.
34:23
SPEAKER_01: But your last chapter, and here's where I would like to end, is your very strong emphasis that China's success, which is an undoubted success and an impressive success, is good for the world.
34:36
SPEAKER_01: Since China's not out to export its model, China's not out to take over the world.
34:42
SPEAKER_01: What China is doing with its rise is good for the world.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: And you talk about many different dimensions of that.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: I'd like to close our discussion with your emphasis on that point because I think it's extremely important.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: Jeff, may I just add one half sentence, okay?
35:00
SPEAKER_00: Of course.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: That is to young people.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: Young people in the US, I want to tell you, okay, please, please tap the opportunity of the rise of China.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: Please come to China.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: Please learn some ABC super, super simple language of Chinese, okay?
35:16
SPEAKER_00: This is your future.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is your world.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
35:20
SPEAKER_01: The world is going to be an interconnected world.
35:24
SPEAKER_01: But uh you talk about how working together, the US and China can solve some of the big problems: climate or public goods, or also the helpful competition.
35:36
SPEAKER_01: And what do you mean by that?
35:38
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean by that is that look at the US.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: In the US, universities were deprived of federal funding for many years until Chuck Schumer, the New York senator, realized China is a threat, realized China is making big progress in technology.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: Then Chuck Schumer pioneered, what do you call it?
35:56
SPEAKER_00: I forgot the name, the fancy name, funding without limit.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: Limitless funding.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: Okay, whatever.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: Funding for US wonderful universities.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: So look, I think the US universities and the US scientific community should thank China for the competition, which reminded senators like Chuck Schumer to give funding to US universities and science technology.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: This is your future.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: You have to do it.
36:22
SPEAKER_00: Very good.
36:23
SPEAKER_01: David, you know, it's a gift that you have to be this uh enormously wise and constructive bridge between these two huge powers.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: You know them both intimately, and your message is reduce the fear, increase the cooperation, of course, compete, but compete towards good things, not out of fear and desperation for which there's no need.
36:49
SPEAKER_01: And the more one understands China, the more clear it is that China is not a threat to the world.
36:56
SPEAKER_01: China is looking for a cooperative and peaceful world.
37:01
SPEAKER_01: It's a very compelling message.
37:03
SPEAKER_01: I agree with it completely.
37:05
SPEAKER_01: You've written it, it's the most beautiful exposition of it that we have because of your very special knowledge and eloquence.
37:13
SPEAKER_01: So I want to thank you for the discussion today, but I want to really, really encourage people to read China's Worldview by Professor David Daoque Li.
37:26
SPEAKER_01: Phenomenal book and a great contribution.
37:29
SPEAKER_01: And I think the world will be vastly improved by the knowledge that you are conveying.
37:35
SPEAKER_01: So, David, thank you so much for this great contribution and for being with us on Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs.
37:41
SPEAKER_00: Jeff, thank you very much.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: It's my pleasure.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining in the conversation.
37:53
SPEAKER_01: Please subscribe, rate, and write a review on whatever platform you listen for your podcast.