Transcription
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Never before in human history have we had two powers of the size, the scale and reach of United States and China confronting each other in the way that they are today. China has become a tiger. Kishor Mahubani, diplomat, academic who has seen the rise of China from his native Singapore. You said what's happening now is like the cold war only America now is behaving as the Soviet Union was. It's a very unflattering comparison.
The goal of my writings is not to say that China should win or United States should win. is to say that China and US should step back and reflect whether it is in their interest to engage in such a zero sum contest from Bloomberg weekend. This is the Michelle Hussein show. I'm Michelle Hussein. By now, you've probably seen a fair amount of news emerge out of Beijing. the pictures of that summit between Donald Trump and China's Xiinping. It's important because face-to-face one-to-one meetings like that don't happen very often. And yet, there's a much bigger story to tell than that of these two men or any two leaders of these two countries actually. The real story is an epic tale, one that has been unfolding for about 30 years. And it's about supremacy, a battle to be the world's number one power, which is why we wanted to dive into the US and China for this weekend. The story beyond the handshake, the readout, the truth social post. And we thought we should discover it through the perspective of someone who's neither American nor Chinese. Someone who has witnessed the rise of China and its relationship with the United States from a country that is tiny in comparison. Singapore, it's Kishor Mahubani who was for three decades a Singaporean diplomat rising to become its ambassador at the United Nations. He's from Singapore's minority Indian community. And although I've known him for years, I never realized the circumstances in which he grew up in the 1950s and60s. How hard life was in Singapore at that time. He's written many books, but his most recent is called Living the Asian Century. It's also his most personal. As you listen, you might well want more on the people, the places, the moments in time we talk about. And for that context, have a look at bloomberg.com/michal because that's where you'll find this episode in written form with my reflections and the pictures that add to the story. So here's Kishor Mubani in his own words talking first about why the US and China matters so much right now.
It is by far the most important contest of our time. And I think what most people don't realize is that never before in human history have we had two powers of the size, the scale and reach of United States and China confronting each other in the way that they are today. Cuz the United States is a remarkably powerful country, much more powerful than any other great power has been in human history. And of course uh when the Soviet Union collapsed the United States was left alone as the sole superpower in the world and few expected China to come up so quickly. But now China has clearly achieved near par uh with the United States in the scope and scale of its power too. And therefore you notice when President Trump launched his um tariff wars on all the countries in the world only one country stood up to United States and that was China.
In this contest then do you see it as bigger than the economics of it the desire on the part of the United States to maintain its position as the world's biggest economy? Are you talking about power as something broader than that? A quest to become the world's only superpower?
Well, you know, geopolitics has been around for about 2,000 years or so. And so, there are certain habits of behavior that all great powers share in common. And the number one power of the time always wants to preserve his number one position and not give it up gracefully and say, "Okay, my turn is up. Why don't you take over?" It's not like in the world of business where IBM will give way to another company for example, but in geopolitics is a zero sum game sadly. And so even though Washington DC today is a very badly divided capital politically, but when it comes to China, there's a near universal consensus that it is in the interest of the United States to stop the rise of China. And and that's why the actions against China remain consistent. Whether or not you have President Trump or President Joe Biden, it makes no difference. is not about personalities. It's about the logic of geopolitics.
And would you say that that is a foolish desire to stop the rise of China? Because this is the way the world is going that China is on a path to become the dominant economic power and the demography is on its side.
Well, no. I I would say it's not wise policy of the United States to stop the rise of China because China can no longer be stopped. And the only way to stop China is to ask the Chinese government to stop improving the livelihood of his own people. Right? That's the only way the China will stop growing. But China still has a long way to go. its per capita income is way behind that of the United States. There's a long way to go. So clearly the Chinese people want to improve their lives and the Chinese economy will keep growing. Of course there'll be ups and downs like in any other economy. But equally importantly and this is the key point we live now today in a small interdependent fragile planet Earth. And our overall priority as humanity should be to try and preserve planet earth before we lose it to climate change and other forces. So there is therefore a larger imperative need for the US and China to collaborate to deal with many common challenges in the world rather than to engage in a zero sum game with each other. I' I've used a different analogy in a former book of mine, The Great Convergence, saying that the world has shrunk. The 193 countries are no longer 193 separate boats. The 193 countries, 193 separate cabins on the same boat. If your cabin on the same boat, there's no point protecting your cabin if the boat is sinking. So therefore there's a common interest for us and China to come together and take care of the planet earth because that's far more important than whatever you gain you make in this geopolitical game or oneup manships.
Take me back to 1993 and a moment between the two countries that you saw for yourself as a Singaporean diplomat at the APEC summit of that year. What did you see and why did it matter?
Well, this uh was the first meeting ever between the new president of the United States then, Bill Clinton and the leader of China, Changin. And you may recall that in the 1992 election, Bill Clinton famously stood out from George HW Bush by saying, "Unlike President Bush, I will not cuddle the butchers of Beijing." So there was a lot of tension in the air wondering whether or not Bill Clinton would launch an attack on President Changamin. And indeed, President Changamin himself was a bit nervous because when he read out his own speech, he read it so fast that the Taiwanese delegate said to him, "Slow down. The interpreters cannot follow you." So there was a lot of nervousness in the air. And amidst all this nervousness, when we had a short break for coffee, the first person President Bill Clinton approached was President Changin. And I saw with my own eyes Bill Clinton coddling Chungmen in a way that he said that he would never do.
Because that. So it was quite a remarkable and everyone in the room noticed it. Was watching with incredible sort of relief and happiness that what could have been a painful confrontational meeting turned out to be a really remarkable breakthrough in USChina relationship.
And the butcher of Beijing reference was one to Tanaman Square a few years before.
Exactly. The he was referring to what happened in Tanan Square in 1989.
And what did that moment which you witnessed then lead to? What did it unlock in the years ahead?
Well, I think it it enabled the renormalization of USChina relations because as you know, Tanan set the US China relationship back quite badly. And as you know before then of course during the Cold War because the United States needed China as a counterweight against the Soviet Union. The United States would always bend over backwards to accommodate China. And I can tell you an even more horrifying story. In 1981, there was something called the International Conference on Cambodia where there was a disagreement between China and the ASEAN countries about whether or not the government of Paul Port should be allowed to go back to Nan after the Vietnamese troops left Cambodia. And uh China took the correct position under international law which is that when a foreign invader leaves Pulpot comes back but AEAN country said no this cannot happen because no country will accept the return of PPOT and fortunately the United States intervene. So we thought the United States would of course site the Assean countries who were calling for free elections. Instead to our absolute horror, the United States said don't stand up to China. We need China for uh our standing up to Soviet Union. So that was one of the most amazing things I saw in my life. But that showed you how far we had come between 1981 where China was being accommodated all the time to the end of the cold war and then China was suddenly an irrelevant partner then. But while saying that neither country should be treating it as the contest that they are, I think overall you're much more critical of US policy towards China than the other way around, aren't you? I read that you said that what's happening now is like the cold war only America now is behaving as the Soviet Union was during the Cold War. that when the Soviet Union behaved unilaterally, ignored international opinion and that was a time when America acted multilaterally and marshaled global opinion to its side. It's a very unflattering comparison.
Well, that comparison has been made by other scholars too that in the contest between United States and Soviet Union, American society was flourishing but Soviet society wasn't flourishing. But today in the contest between United States and China, the bottom 50% of the American population, they haven't seen their standard of living improve in several decades. And indeed, as you know, the indicators of people at the bottom are very bad in the United States. And therefore the logical thing for United States to do is to first focus on uplifting its people rather than to try to engage in a zero sum geopolitical contest with China. But I can tell you in geopolitics unfortunately common sense doesn't work because this desire to be number one is so somehow the deeply ingrained into the human brain that it's very hard to persuade the policy makers hey step back and think what is a better approach to take. The goal of my writings is not to say that China should win or United States should win. The goal of my writings is to say that China and US should step back and reflect whether it is in their larger long-term interest to engage in such a zero sum contest.
And the standard of living of the Chinese population has risen immeasurably in recent decades. There are of course though rights that they do not enjoy compared to Americans. Freedom of expression, the right to choose their own leaders.
Well, you're right. I mean, China has rescued 800 million people out of poverty. That's two and a half to three times the population of United States. And that's an amazing achievement. But you're right, the Chinese don't enjoy many of the rights that Americans enjoy. But Chinese society has got its own political DNA which has been embedded in the Chinese society only for 3,000 years. And over 3,000 years, the big lesson that the Chinese people have learned is that when there's chaos in the center, in the capital, the people suffer. But when there is political stability and control in the center, the people prosper and flourish. And when people say that the Chinese people are not free, I ask a very simple question. If the Chinese people are not free, why is it over 130 million Chinese people leave China each year and then amazingly using their own two feet return to China every year. Now, if they if China was this harsh, dark communist gulach that is portrayed in the Anglo-Saxon media, the Chinese people are irrational. They shouldn't be resetting China. But the Chinese who are returning to China are the ones who have experienced life overseas. So China to put it simply is a different civilization from western civilization. So the kinds of society that the Chinese people want at the end of the day will be different from western society and and that's something that we got to learn to live with in the new multi-ivilizational world.
I hear what you're saying and I'm also at the same time thinking of the evidence that emerged a few years ago about those re-education camps in western China in Shinjang province where Chinese Muslims were detained some as young as in their teens right up to people in their 70s.
Because the state felt they needed re-educating about their beliefs. Well, there's no question that China's internal arrangements are not the same as those of Western society. But you know, when the West raises concerns about the Muslims in China, the one comment that the rest of the world makes is that in general the West doesn't like Muslims. In general, the West doesn't like Chinese. But for some strange reason they love Chinese Muslims and it's because is a political tool to be used to embarrass China. Unfortunately that political tool no longer works because the whole world is saying if you in the west are so concerned about the conditions of Muslims who are oppressed what have you said about Gaza? What have you done about Gaza?
You have seen international relations through your work as a Singaporean diplomat over many years, but I I want to ask you about your life story too because I think you have lived history in a really interesting way in that you came of age in Singapore just at the moment as it was getting its independence from Malaysia after British colonial rule had come to an end. And when I read your book, Living the Asian Century, I was really struck by the hardship that your family experienced and that you experienced that when you started school in 1954, you were seriously underweight and you had to be put on a special feeding program in school.
Well, uh, looking back now, this is a strange thing to say. I feel that it was almost a privilege to have grown up in a poor third world society. And you're right, I was put in a special feeding program at the age of six because I was technically undernourished and I lived in a house with no flush toilet until I was 13 years old. One of the biggest changes in my life was when the flush toilet appeared because I felt that my sense of dignity improved dramatically. And also my family was very poor. My father went to jail. The debt collectors came to our house to try and auction off the furniture in our house. So I went through a very rough third world childhood. My mother was the one who took the brunt of all this pain and difficulties and not once did she crack. And every time in my life I go through a difficult patch and when I feel depressed I just think of my mother and I say my mother never cracked under much greater pressure. How can I ever crack? So that resilience that my mother gave me was an amazing gift in my life.
She had had a narrow escape from communal violence in what is now Pakistan at the independence of India 1947. Your father had obviously had a very difficult early life sent from what was then British India to Singapore and starting to work manual labor at the age of 13.
Yes. Both my parents, none of them ever went to university or not even to high school or even secondary school by the way. Uh and my father unfortunately was orphaned at a very young age and at the age of 13 was sent to the British colony in Singapore and ended up quite naturally without adult supervision engaged in several bad habits like smoking and drinking and gambling. And so my mother who had an arranged marriage had no idea that she was marrying an alcoholic gambler. And that of course was the root of our problems. And my mother too, as you said, had a close shave because she was in a train leaving Pakistan in the middle of the night in the desert when her last compartment got decoupled and if a mob had come along, she would have been killed.
Yeah. But she survived. So I guess our family has had lots of close shaves.
Yeah. But as you say in Singapore too when you were growing up, it was a poor neighborhood. Few of your peers even finished school, let alone went to university. And that description in your book of living without a toilet. It's so striking compared to what Singapore is today that each morning the night soil men went around the neighborhood. They opened a small door in the wall of every house, pulled out a metal can filled with 24 hours worth of feces and urine from the occupants of the house. The sights and smells of that experience never go away. And but what's amazing is that Singapore's per capita income at independence was around $500, the same as Ghana and West Africa. But today, Singapore's per capita income is $94,000, among the highest in the world.
And no country in the world has gone from $500 per capita to 94,000 per capita in 60 years or less than one human lifetime. Now, that's one of the most remarkable stories of human history. And again, that's been one of my great privileges to travel this remarkable journey upwards with my fellow Singaporeans.
It didn't feel that way in 1965, did it? I think you were 17, still in school. Singapore left the federation it was in with Malaysia. And there's a sense of despondency everywhere about how it can possibly survive on its own.
Well, I remember the day vividly, August 9, 1965. when Singapore was expelled from the Malaysian Federation and no one in Singapore celebrated our independence because we thought Singapore was doomed. And there was a simple reason why Singapore was doomed because Singapore was a city and when a city is cut off from its hinterland which Malaysia was the hinterland for Singapore it can die. It's like taking a heart out of a body and expecting the heart to survive without the supply of blood and other materials to the heart. So it was a very difficult time and no one expected Singapore to succeed in the way they that it did. But of course their success was due to three remarkable geopolitical geniuses uh Lee Kwanu Goki and Rajaratnam. One of the greatest privileges in my life is that I got to work with all three of them and they were probably the three best tutors I ever had in my life.
Not just in diplomacy broader than that.
Much much broader they were big deep thinkers and all three of them took a long range view of history. So the reason why Singapore was economically successful of course Mr. Lee Kwanu played a very important role but the economic architect of Singapore's miracle uh was Dr. Goking Sui and when I sat with him he would tell me about how the Japanese succeeded what happened in the Maji Reformation the lessons the Japanese learned from the rest of the world and how Singapore must try to emulate Japan and and therefore succeed. So I mean he he his understanding of history was amazing.
You know, I interviewed Lee Kuanu once. I was really early in my career. I was in Singapore and the BBC sent me to interview him and he was perfectly civil. But I think he probably felt quite insulted that someone so junior had been sent to talk to him, the senior minister and founding father of Singapore.
But Mr. Lee Kwanu was acutely aware that you were with BBC and he knew that by talking to you that he would get his views and opinions to a very large section of the human population and so he would have been happy to talk to you.
Tell me then in this picture that you've painted of rising China, a rise that can't be stopped. It is a country that in its own way has these moments where it destabilizes neighbors. For example, closing airspace around South Korea's borders as has been the case recently doing things that upset or worry the Philippines or Taiwan of course Japan at times. How how do these states in the region including Singapore fare in that Asian order?
Well, I think we have to understand that China's rise has been remarkable and dramatic. And to explain how dramatic it is, just imagine when you and I began this conversation few minutes ago, there was a cat sitting next to me and suddenly after 15 minutes or 20 minutes, I turned around, I noticed the cat has become a tiger. Now I was very comfortable living sitting next to a cat. I'm very uncomfortable sitting next to a tiger. Now China has become a tiger. You have to accept that it is now the second most powerful country in the world and still rising strongly. And so we have to learn to live with a much stronger power in our neighborhood. And the idea that any power can be benevolent, the term benevolent great power is an oxymoron. All great powers will protect their interests. The neighbors of China therefore have to adjust to Chinese power. But this doesn't mean you count to Chinese power, but you learn to manage it. I can tell you that the neighbors of China also have long histories. And to give you an example, the last country with whom China had a major war was Vietnam. And in 1979, about a million soldiers were fighting each other in that war. And uh the Vietnamese were occupied by China for 1,000 years, right? But the Vietnamese have an expression, a very important expression. And they say that to become a leader of Vietnam, you must be able to stand up to China and you must be able to get along with China. And if you cannot do both, you cannot be a leader of Vietnam. So countries in this region therefore are pragmatically adjusting to the emergence of China. But I can tell you in our private conversations, we do tell the Chinese quite frankly what our concerns are and they do listen to the concerns. But the important thing is that remember that we are in Asia. In Asia, you must always save the face of the person you're talking to. Please don't insult China publicly in the way that European leaders do, in the way that American leaders do, cuz that's not how you get to work with China.
Well, and many countries, many leaders are learning that that's also the way you work with President Trump.
Well, I think President Trump is definitely uh different from his uh predecessors. But I I also have to emphasize that all American presidents put American interests first over the interests of other countries. That's just a fact of life. And for example, when I was in the UN in 2003, so many countries advised President George W. Bush not to go to war in Iraq. so many countries including some of the best friends of United States including France, including Germany, including Egypt, including Saudi Arabia and you know United States didn't listen. So it is not the case that you had American presidents in the past who would sacrifice American interest. No, they won't. And this is a reality when dealing with great powers.
So what do you think are the implications of these weeks of war with Iran? What do you think is the effect of this on China? Is there a reshaping that is taking place or is now going to take place because of the war with Iran?
Well, I've said this to my American friends uh several times and it's also a theme of my book has China won. Every war that the United States fights especially in the Middle East is a gift to China. So in the 10 years when the United States was bogged in Iraq after the illegal invasion of Iraq by President George W. Bush, China had its fastest growing years. It was left to grow peacefully from 2003 to 2013. So in the same way, if the United States gets bogged down and another war in Iran, again, it buys time for China. And this the difference between Chinese leaders and American leaders is that Chinese leaders as Henry Kissinger told me always work out a comprehensive long-term strategy before embarking on a venture. And the Chinese do have a comprehensive long-term strategy for managing the challenge that United States is posing to China. By contrast, the leaders of the United States, and I I don't mean Republicans only, by the way, is both Democrats and Republicans have not worked out an equally comprehensive long-term strategy for managing the return of China as a great power.
And I try to be helpful to both sides by saying, why don't you take a step back and understand the other side? Because as Sunsu said the Chinese strategist, know thine cell, know thine enemy, fight a thousand battles, win a thousand battles.
But Chinese leaders can act that way because they don't have to ever deal with an election.
That's true. But in the cold war, a democratic United States that had elections every four years defeated the authoritarian Soviet Union. So the constant elections in America were in no way a handicap. In fact, as the the architect of the success of the United States in the Cold War was a man called George Cannon whom I met once. And George Cannon said way back in 1949 that the outcome of the cold war will be determined not by the number of bullets or warships or aircraft carriers or jet fighters you have. It'll depend at the end of the day which society creates a spiritual vitality that leads to his people flourishing and growing. So if George Kennan were alive today, he would advise the United States, don't try to get more aircraft carriers. Try to focus on improving the livelihood of the bottom 50% of American people. And if you succeed in doing that, that's how you win the long-term contest against China.
Professor Kashor Mubani, thank you so much.
Pleasure. Thank you for having me. And that's where we left the conversation. By the way, this time the notes in my written version go from Pulpot and Cambodia to Singapore on that Independence Day that Kure remembers so well. Plus, there's factchecking on the statistics that came up. You'll find it all at bloomberg.com/mishell. And so to the team, the producers are Jessica Beck and Chris Martlau with guest booking by Elan Bird. Social media by Alex Morgan and production assistants by Jennifer Seely. Our music is by Bart Wshaw. Audio mixing was by Richard Ward. And this time our video producer was Megan Olsen. The executive producer is Louisa Lewis. And at Bloomberg Weekend, Brendan Francis Nunham is director of audio and special projects. and our executive editor is Katherine Bell. Until the next time you join us, goodbye.