Transcription
The world is in a battle of democracies versus autocracies. So Putin is pure evil in the American media. China is pure evil in the American media. But the truth is China has been a centralized administrative state for more than 2,000 years. And so Xi Jinping looks like an emperor. It's not a surprise. That is the cultural tradition.
Take a look at global uh international political landscape. You know there is a strong view that there is a rise of authoritarian you know states. So democracies globally you know may be undermined.
Take a look at this guy. He's raising a serious concern about the rise of authoritarian states like China and Russia and how that could impact democracies around the world. I wonder you know you you also discussed this crossber energy you know power grid and u when the system o of governments are so different uh would it you know make sense to depend on for example energy imports from authoritarian states and then we may suffer from energy the embargo, you know, which may incl improve, you know, increase uh your uh vulnerability. So I'm uh very curious you know how you uh kind of uh relate between those kind of uh political freedom, democracy, human rights and uh uh this promotion of uh SDGs and this is uh to a great extent related to uh how we could uh preserve and promote uh the inter you know free and open international order based on the rule of law.
Now, he's asking Professor Jeffrey Sachs whether democratic countries should even trust or work with authoritarian ones, especially in critical areas like the energy grid. His argument is pretty straightforward. Democracies value human rights and freedom of speech, while authoritarian countries like China don't. So, maybe it's too risky to cooperate with them. But then comes Professor Sax's response, and it's definitely worth hearing.
I think there are many things I can't answer that in one minute unfortunately. So I am going to take a couple of minutes because I think it's important. Um there are no pure types of government and there are no single simple ideal types of government and therefore the idea that we are good and they are bad is a very dangerous starting point. It's I thought the biggest mistake of the Biden administration. He said the world is in a battle of democracies versus autocracies. First of all, if you start with the idea that the world is in a battle, you make a self-fulfilling prophecy. You divide the world. Second, if you do it that way, you end up missing all of your own failures and obsessing about the limits of the counterpart in the Bible. My I I call it my recommendation I say is my recommendation is Jesus Christ's foreign policy. uh and uh the reason is that uh in the gospels there is a famous moment when Jesus says to the counterpart why do you point to the moat in the other person's eye when you have a beam in your own eye and the meaning of the passage in the Bible is why are you complaining about the other clean up your own act and so I think that this is actually truly from a behavioral and diplomatic and respect point of view how we should behave in the world anyway. We should say we have our failings and by saying that you help the others to say oh no no no we have our failings and you reduce the threats and you increase the mutual understanding everyone can say my god we're failing together we all have our problems but instead the approach is you're evil and we're good and this goes overtime in the propaganda of the government narrative and in the media.
So Putin is pure evil in the American media. China is pure evil in the American media. This is to my mind both dangerous and absurd. working with the Russian government, working with the Chinese government. This is completely contrary to reality. I've said if I had to choose which government has been most effective in the last 40 years, I would say China actually. Why? Because China lifted a country from poverty >> to prosperity and with increased freedom of the population, not political freedom, but increased freedom. And this is an incredible success story, one of the greatest in history. By the way, how did China do it? They followed Japan's model. This is what Japan did first in the Maji restoration and then it did it again in the 1950s and with Eicada a decade of doubling of income. China Japan taught the rest of East Asia how to make a rapid economic growth. And so this is not uh by the way not an enemy nor is it uh something unfamiliar. what what what China's accomplished is very familiar. It looks like Korea's accomplishment. It looks like Japan's accomplishment. It looks like many other countries of the region. It just did it at a vast scale which is all the more impressive that it did this. So I would characterize China as a highly successful government governance structure that is meeting the needs of its population in a quite brilliant way. Now China's government will continue to evolve. No question. They use the word democracy all the time by the way. Not as propaganda but as their understanding of this process. And moreover, on one side, China won't evolve so much because China has been a centralized administrative state for 2,26 years since 221 BC when Emperor Chini Wangdi uh first united the Qin Empire. I know that because Lisa wrote a paper about that uh when she was in seventh grade. So that's the first time I learned about that. But the truth is China has been a centralized administrative state for more than 2,000 years. And so Xi Jinping looks like an emperor. It's not a surprise. That is the cultural tradition. That's culture and that's real.
But it can be successful or not successful. It can be cruel or it can be benevolent. One of the most interesting writings on politics in western history was actually the first book on political science ever written 2,350 years ago by Aristotle. It's called the politics. He invented political science. He invented almost every field of western study actually. But he invented political science in this book. And he said there are multiple forms of government. But each form can be good or bad. You can have monarchy or you can have tyranny. That's government of the one. You can have aristocracy or oligarchy. That's government of the few. You can have uh uh republicanism or you can have mob rule. That's government of the many. So you can't just look at the form and say is that good or is that bad. The tradition in China and it's not an empty tradition is that the emperor must convey confusion ethics to rule that you rule by the ethical leadership. What an interesting nice tradition. Nothing like this in the western thought. In the western thought you have machavelli but in confusion thought you have the emperor who leads with virtues. So I don't classify governments the same way. And what I do believe is that we need to deal with each other with mutual respect and a lot of dialogue.
Professor Jeffrey Saxs makes a powerful point and he's absolutely right. The real issue isn't about whether a country is democratic or authoritarian. Just because a nation calls itself a democracy doesn't automatically make it a good country. And being an autocracy doesn't automatically make a country evil. Take China for example. Many label it negatively simply because it's an authoritarian state. But we need to ask, is that a fair assessment? On the flip side, look at the United States. It's widely seen as a symbol of democracy and freedom. But does that mean everything it does is just and moral? Let's not forget the US is the most heavily militarized nation on Earth. It has a long history of invading or interfering in other countries. Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan. The list goes on. Many of those actions were illegal under international law and resulted in devastating consequences for millions of people. And now the US is loudly warning the world that China is a threat simply because it's a communist country. But is that really the reason? Or is it more about power, influence, and maintaining dominance? It's time we move beyond black and white thinking. The world is far more complex than democracy equals good and authoritarian equals bad. What truly matters is a country's actions, not just its labels.