Transcription
Good evening and welcome to the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Institute of Politics. My name is Wyth. I'm a sophomore studying history and literature and government at the college and I'm a member of the JFK Junior Forum Committee.
Before we begin, please note the exit doors which are located on both the park side and JFK street side of the forum. In event of an emergency, please walk to the exit closest to you and congregate in JFK Park. Please now also take a moment to silence your cell phones and join me in welcoming St. Lee Chair in US Asia relations at the Harvard Kennedy School, Ron Mitt.
[Applause]
Good evening. It is a pleasure to see so many of you gathered here this evening for a very special event, the St. Lee lecture. Before we get to our main event, may I just say uh a few words about this event and what's going to happen tonight.
Um, first of all, let me take a moment to uh be very grateful to St. Lee himself. Uh, the late philanthropist from Singapore was a generous donor to educational and philanthropic causes around the world. Uh, he was kind enough to uh endow the chair that I hold. So I'm very grateful to him, but also to endow the lecture uh, a series of which has been running for some years now on subjects to do with Asia broadly speaking. And tonight's lecture is part of that series. So, we're very grateful to the legacy of Mr. Lee and do note his generosity.
I'd also like to say a word about our speaker tonight and also the chair of the discussion. First of all, the speaker himself. He is one of Asia's best known public intellectuals and someone who has had experience in government as well as thinking about bigger issues around Asia. He is George Yo. George was a uh member of the Singaporean Parliament for more than 20 years. He served in a variety of distinguished positions within the Singapore uh government uh, including as uh Minister for Information and the Arts, Minister for Health, Minister for Trade and Industry, but perhaps in a global sense most significantly, Minister for Foreign Affairs. Those of you here tonight, I think, will be aware of perhaps the outsized influence in a good sense that Singapore has in Asian and global politics. And therefore, to be the foreign minister of Singapore is to draw attention and to be listened to perhaps even more so than being the foreign minister of some countries which are technically larger but perhaps don't have quite that clout. Although being a diplomat on this occasion myself, I will not name any of those other countries.
Um, Giorgio started off uh in uh Cambridge, not this one, but uh the other one across the water where he took a double first class degree as a Brit. I can tell you that is very, very hard to do and very distinguished in engineering from the University of Cambridge. He then did he then came to his senses and decided to come over to this Cambridge where he took an MBA at the Harvard uh uh the Harvard Business School where he was again uh an outstanding student who received a Baker scholarship. He served as a signal officer in the Singaporean army. Uh, then also served in the air force becoming chief of staff in fact of the air staff and also director of joint operations and planning in the ministry of defense attaining the rank of brigadier general. He has also had a whole variety of uh extraordinary interesting and slightly unusual posts during his time in public life. Uh, amongst them being a member of the board of trustees of the Bruegel Institute on Governance, very important international think tank, um, on the international advisory council of China's Eco Forum uh at Global Guanshan, the international advisory committee of the Mitsubishi Corporation. I won't read out all of the qualifications, but I will mention that he was also a member of the Pontifical Commission for Reference on the Economic and Administrative Structure of the Holy See in 2013 to 14 and the Vatican Council for the Economy from 2014 to 2020. So, if you're ever wondering who the Pope asked to add up his uh accounts and make sure that they came together, it sounds like Giorgio is the answer to that particular question.
Giorgio is also an author. Amongst the uh books that he's written is a book rather sort of um, going to I put it, poignantly titled Musings, in which he writes and thinks about a variety of issues to do with Asia and politics more broadly speaking. And in a moment, we will introduce him to give the uh St. Lee lecture on the subject of contemporary geopolitics, something on which he is eminently well-qualified to speak.
But before we uh bring him to the stage, may I also mention one other person who will be central to this evening's events. Um, after Georgio's lecture, he will sit here in the company of Professor Anthony Sich. Uh, Tony S will be uh leading the discussion before we go to Q&A. And there'll be plenty of time for Q&A with the audience here. So please do start thinking of questions and get ready to get to the the microphones which are set up for you. But I particularly wanted to draw attention to Tony's chairing tonight. Uh, Tony, for those of you who don't know, is the DEU Professor of Governance here at the Harvard Kennedy School, based based in the Ash Center, and he's also director of the Rajali Foundation Institute for Asia. But those are just his titles. What I think we should note is that for more than a quarter of a century, Tony has been absolutely central to the building up and development of the study of Asia here at the Harvard Kennedy School. Again, time doesn't permit um to listing all of the various ways in which he's contributed to that effort, but certainly countries as far apart as uh Bangladesh, China of course, on which he is an internationally acknowledged expert, and most recently Vietnam, are amongst the countries where he has brought expertise, scholarship, and actually huge amounts of interaction to HKS. Most recently, just last weekend, where he helmed a two-day uh international conference bringing together scholars and veterans from both sides of the Vietnam Wars. And the reason I mention this tonight is that um this is um perhaps amongst the last times that Tony will chair an event in his current chair because um, to our regret, at the end of this academic year, he will be stepping down from the DEU chair, but to our delight, he will be transitioning to become a research professor here at the Harvard Kennedy School. So, as I understand it, as I understand it, this means that he will still be a very constant presence amongst us, but with far less grading to do, which sounds like a good kind of compromise as far as many professors are uh concerned.
But our main event tonight is the ST Lee lecture for 2025 on the subject, fascinating, maybe even provocative, of what is the future for the United States in the Western Pacific. And to give the ST lecture, we have a very big HKS welcome for Minister Georgio.
[Applause]
It's a great pleasure and honor for me to be back at the Kennedy School and I feel a special pleasure to have behind me uh the Singapore flag together with the US flag. Some 20 years ago, I helped negotiate the free trade agreement between Singapore and the US at a time when free trade was a high ideal in the world. Uh, and got for Singapore a special allocation of H1B1 visas, which is particularly valuable currency in today's circumstances. Uh, the world has changed dramatically. When I was in Cambridge, the other Cambridge, it was the bicentennial of America and I remember Alistair Alistair Cook's series on the BBC and I bought the book and lived through it with pleasure. America, I think, inspired many generations of us in Asia. The American dream became the Asian dream.
A few months ago, I was across the river for my 40th class reunion at the business school, and two of my classmates saddled up to me to ask, "Do you think we're in decline?" I was careful in framing my response, not wanting to cause offense, but at the same time wanting to be honest. It is a question asked all over Asia today. Is the US in decline? Teddy Roosevelt once said, you know, "Speak softly, carry a big stick and you go far." Today the US is not speaking softly. So it raises a question as to the quality of that stick, because if you really have a strong stick, you can be very polite, you can be very humble, very modest, and people will be very respectful to you. But when you have to raise your voice and flail the stick, then you you begin to wonder.
Trump has been very hard on Asian countries, threatening them, dog beating them, bullying them. And you're finding in country after country a reaction. If you're a small country like Singapore, you'd rather be in the shadow, you know, and not attract too much attention. You're China. You have no choice but to stand firm. I mean, even India had to stand firm. I made some passing remarks about India standing firm when I was in Europe recently. It became news throughout India. An Indian Punjabi friend of mine messaged me to say, "You've become famous in India." It was a remark made in passing but honestly expressed that Indians should react in this way is because inside they're angry and resentful. It's not just Trump because even if there's a rebound after Trump, there is a ratcheting downward movement. A sense that a US feeling more insecure about itself will no longer waste time on nice words about the globalist agenda and will insist on its own prerogatives. And when he's able to extract more from you, he'll boast about it almost in self-justification. We don't know.
I saw Secretary Hex doing push-ups at Annapolis and it's a new world record. The the last was held by the US Air Force. I thought back 50 years ago I was with the US Army to train as a signals officer at Fort Gordon. One of the first things we were told was if your check bounces as a commissioned officer, you lose that commission, and if you are obese, you won't get promoted. So when there were complaints that HexF was criticizing fat generals, there's nothing wrong with that. How could you be a military leader if you're obese? If you can't exercise that modicum of self-discipline? And I hope even today, if your credit is no good, you should be removed from your commission, but I don't know. Things have changed in this country. So those of us who were inspired by the US, studied here, worked here, worry. What does it mean? If it continues, what does it mean? If the US recovers, how long would it take? I mean, we may, some of us at least, may laugh about some aspects of the MAGA agenda, but MAGA as a strategic ambition must be a good thing because if the US continues with its relative decline, the the consequences for the world are profound. Maybe even more so than the fall of Western Rome, which led to the dark ages, or the fall of the Ottomans, which effects we are still seeing all over the Middle East today, or the fall of the Qing dynasty, which among many other ramifications created a Chinese majority city-state called Singapore.
So when big empires go into decline, when America starts shutting down military bases, and the 800 of them maintaining peace and stability and local equilibriums in different parts of the world, then the pieces will begin to move again, and everyone will begin to make alternative arrangements, and regional hegemons will start throwing their weight around. You know, Trajan, the Roman Emperor, he went all the way to the Persian Gulf. His successor, Hadrian, he said, "No, no, we're overextending." So retreated from Armenia, from Mesopotamia, and held the land of Euphrates. Maybe Trump, sensing that the US is overextended, that the current policy cannot be financed, wants to retreat. So when he talks about wanting Canada to be the 51st state and taking over Greenland and the canal and sending ships to intimidate Venezuela, I said, "Yes, if if the US were to retreat into a North and Central American sphere, which includes Greenland and the northern part of South America, and of course then the Gulf of Mexico becomes naturally the Gulf of America." I say, "Wow, that's still a very powerful entity with enormous resources, land area, a population which is still vital and growing." Of course, he can't talk like that. But watching his moves, even if they are not consciously thought about, he's sliding down paths of lower resistance.
And in Asia, all of us accept that China will be a rising power. Those of us who visit China regularly, I've been there more than 10 times in the last one year. It is across the length and breadth of the country. In PPP terms, according to IMF data, China is 40 trillion, US is 30 trillion, Europe is 20 trillion, India is 15 trillion. That's broad ballpark figures, which is not surprising because if you have $100 and you go to China, it will get you much more than what you can get in this country. And as we study in economics, exchange rates will in the end equilibrate around PPP. And once exchange rates begin to move, then the numbers in nominal terms will reveal themselves. But without a doubt, throughout Asia, we are all feeling the rise of China. And if the US retreats, there will be a transitional period where the imbalance may become very unsettling.
I don't worry for Southeast Asia because the instinct of Southeast Asia is not to be an ally to any one region. Wang Gang Wu had this wonderful metaphor that Singapore is where the mandalas of China and India overlap. Southeast Asia is where the mandalas of China, India, and the West overlap to varying intensities in all seven countries. You take Vietnam. When Vietnam finally withdrew from Cambodia, when Van Lin visited Singapore, it was the general secretary and Liu Kuanu hosted him dinner at Istana. At the end of dinner, they shook hands, but he won't let go. He asked Liuanu to be Vietnam's advisor. Liuanu didn't know how to answer. He said, "I'll visit you." And for his first three visits at one and a half year intervals, I accompanied him. The minister in attendance was Vuan and later on he became he retired as deputy prime minister. I had left government. He had left government. I called on him just for a chitchat and asked him, "How are your relations with China?" He said, "Foreign ministry to foreign ministry, as usual, troublesome. Military to military, stable. Party to party, intimate." Now, these are communist countries, the party decides. I suspected as much because I knew a Vietnamese minister who was my counterpart for trade matters, and he had once been the private secretary to one of the party secretary generals, and we're talking about China and comparing notes. He said, "I've been to every province in China." I said, "You've been to every province in China?" I said, "How come?" He said, "I was accompanying my boss, the party domo, the the general secretary." These visits by the Vietnamese party secretary are not reported in the media, but they reflect a deeper relationship.
But is there a danger that Vietnam and China will get so close that all of us are threatened? No, there's no such danger because it's a fraught history. I was fascinated reading the background of uh Bung Cao, the new under secretary of the Navy. His Chinese name is Kawa. Same name as the the city, the port city in Taiwan, Kaohsiung. So it's Ka. He was a refugee. 1971 came over a naval seaman. His son also joined the Navy. He said, "We will he's committed to making the US defense forces more lethal." Now, you have Vietnam in the in the party. They say, "Oh, give the US half a chance, they will undermine the Vietnamese Communist Party." They know that. But without the US, how do they manage China? For sure, they're not very committed to ASEAN because without ASEAN, they can't have a normal relationship with China, but they want the US around, but not too close, because if the US starts using Cam Ranh Bay as a naval facility, China must react. And last year, they announced that they were building fast rail connection from Hanoi to Nanning to Kunming. Now, these are all connections established by the French to establish to to to take advantage of China's inner China's market. They tread the Mong but encountered the cone force between Cambodia and Laos. So they could not be used from Hanoi. They built two narrow gauge railroads to Nanning to Kunming. And now these will finally finally be replaced by high-speed rail, each billions of dollars. And they announced their plan for high-speed rail connection all the way from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. China may build that rail connection, but Vietnam will want America around. So too Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, even Myanmar. And if the US is too rapidly in retreat, it's very unsettling. So in a sense, all of us want MAGA to succeed. Not MAGA as defined by Trump, but MAGA as American revival. So that by the time you reach your third centennial, it'll be more like the second centennial than this 250th celebration.
And China itself, what is its nature? In Southeast Asia, we have seen China in all its previous incarnations. During the Tang, it created Sri Vijaya. It's a lucrative trade. So, so lucrative that the local kingdoms were vying with one another for a share of that trade.
[Applause]
Around the year 1000, Sun Dynasty, the Cholas from South India, Tanjore, they sail a fleet in between the Sunda into the Sunda Straits between Sumatra and Java. With the monsoon behind them in one monsoon period, they destroy Sri Vijaya by sailing downstream because upstream could not reinforce downstream. So on both sides of the Straits of Malacca, they knocked out three and for one or two centuries, local Fuzhou merchants were the warlords in Palembang. Ming Dynasty, we're all familiar with how after Yuan established the Ming, 1368, by 1405, that's only 37 years, by 1405, the first great fleet sailed and reached Africa. And there were seven such great fleets, and they had a network of supply and repair stations throughout the Indian Ocean. The inter-island north Java beneath a tree called the thick mountain, beneath a hill called the thick mountain, Gurati. They had a big naval shipyard. So the ships which had needed repair, they will fell thick trees, slip them down, and they repair those ships. Remnants of that era are scattered all over Southeast Asia, and though the great admiral was Muslim, everywhere he's revered as S. the great eunuch of the three treasures, and many temples named after him. They got involved in some local skirmishes like in Sri Lanka, but generally on missions of peace. Being Muslim, he did either the Umrah or the Haj in Mecca, and all carefully recorded. Then the Mongols threatened again. The the eunuchs were put in their place. Their attention went northwards. They rebuilt the Great Wall and the walls around Xi'an. It's always been defensive because it's homogeneous. And you often get the feeling in China that even if the rest of the world were to disappear, China will carry on because it's big enough. It's vertic. Oh, Jane, good to see you. It's vertically integrated enough. So when they say China, I mean Graham wrote about the Thucydides Trap, the Peloponnesian War. For us in Asia, a new dynasty rises. Well, it's like a cosmic event. It will rise on the same spot and it will behave in ways not too dissimilar from its previous incarnations.
So what do we do? First, don't have it as an enemy. Don't get too close. Be nice. You'll get a lot of advantages. If they push too hard, lean the other way and get your other friends around. Can such a China coexist with the US? If you if China were the Soviet Union with the same missionary zeal as the US thinking of the Mahan strategy of naval power, then a clash is inevitable. But I don't think China's nature is like that. You think about the Great Wall. Many of you would have been to the Great Wall. I mean, it's it's astonishing from horizon to horizon. You come to the next watchtower to the next horizon. Some parts are almost vertical and it goes on. And this is just a fossil of a living system which had command and control, very strict military discipline, intelligence, forward surveillance, defense in depth. Why would dynasty after dynasty invest such vast resources into the construction of a Great Wall? Because it is defensive in nature. Why is it defensive in nature? Because China can only be governed if it's homogeneous. And if it starts absorbing large numbers of foreigners and not able to digest them, it cannot be governed in the old way. So today you find analogies of the Great Wall for Hollywood movies, for capital markets, a biological war wall during COVID, for education, for any and everything that threatens China's homogeneity. So when you watch the September 3 parade, fair length after fair length, all looking almost alike, men and women, it's homogeneous. This homogeneity is why when the Chinese leave China and they are in Singapore, Malaysia, or elsewhere, they try to avoid politics because because they're used to behaving. We have a strong emperor. You falter, you you lose your head. So it's it's a deep Chinese instinct. My mother was from China. She left when she married my father, age of 19, from Shantou. And we learned at home that when foreign friends come, you you kind of beguile them with an excess of hospitality more than you would ever give to your own people, and then send them off because they are threatening. You see, it is best managed that way. Which is why when you visit China, well, now they're stricter, and the number of dishes you get. But the hospitality is always there. You you're made to feel special. Even if you're from Singapore or Brunei or Laos, you're a small country. They give you better treatment. We get better treatment in China than we get in Berlin or in Paris or Washington. I mean, to Western powers, we are small fry. But to the Chinese, small fries, big fries, all fries. So, but of course, you know, every other year they have this big summit with African leaders, over 50 of them, and sitting people meet all of them five minutes, but to make sure that everyone's everyone is given face. And China itself, like a big tree, cannot grow to the skies. I made a speech in Harvard once when I was here on Estra Voggo Fellowship that China is like a big California redwood. It's adding feet every year, but one day you'll stop growing, and one day the tree will fall, and the entire forest will hear it, and many things will be scattered. And after an equally long period, a new sapling will grow on the same spot and be a new cycle. The Chinese know this. So in their most important classic, the I Ching, the book of change, they know that nothing lasts forever, that if you have arrived at the pinnacle, the only way is down. So in the hexagrams, there's one you you don't want to be all six full bars. You always want to be five full bars and one still broken. You're still on your way up because the moment you are full, then the decline begins. I don't think they don't internalize this. When victorious Roman generals went back to Rome and had this ticket parade, the slave will whisper, "Memento mori. Memento mori." In the Chinese mind, there's always memento mori. It will not last. Therefore, don't hasten the decline by excessive action. Now, that's my view of China. Others, more detached, may say, "You're too optimistic." Well, history is a guide, but never completely a repetition. So we watch. There'll be a trial of strength between us and US and China for maybe two, three more decades, you know, where they'll be pushing each other and then taking a measure of each other. I think an equilibrium is possible, but for Southeast Asia, an equilibrium is desperately important for us. So I tell American friends, if you come to Southeast Asia and you ask us to choose between China and the US, we will be very loath to choose. But there are some journalists who will press me, say, "No, no, no, no, let's come down to it. You're forced to a choice. Where do you jump?" I said, "Well, if it's today for Singapore, I jump on the US side because that's where the bread is buttered. But 20 years from now, I think I'll jump on the Chinese side because it's where the bread will be buttered." And and when the crossover point will be, it depends on what's happens in the US and what happens in China. And I don't believe that the view is that different in other parts of Southeast Asia. So if the US doesn't force the choice, confronted with the prospect of a rising China, and you can see the accounts growing, of course, the US will be welcome everywhere. And in a strange way, Trump, by his actions, is bumbling into what Kissinger has long recommended strategically, that the best US strategy is to move closer to every other pole. Then in every part of the world, you are the vital balancer between Armenia and Azerbaijan, between India and Pakistan, between China and Japan. Sometimes you benefit from the quarrels, but you lean a little one way or the other. You maintain stability. It's like Tai Chi. You know, in Tai Chi, get into a balance point, then with a with a minimum of effort, you achieve a maximum result. But if you can deliver in one direction or another, that effort will in turn destabilize you. So the US, like Hadrian, will have to retreat some, but consolidate around a firmer base. It may mean that bases will have to be closed in many parts of the world, and Europe will grow more autonomous. But Europe will always be close to the US for civilizational and cultural reasons. And India, there was a time when India thought it could use the US against China. The US thought it could use India against China. Then the Ukraine war happened. There was no meeting of minds on Ukraine or on Pakistan. So it's an adult relationship. We get along for as long as we benefit each other, but we don't live together. How can it be otherwise for India? It's such a vast polity, tremendous sense of itself. It's not China. Last night I was at Matasan for dinner. This afternoon I had lunch with uh Sugata Bose, and we're talking about Bengali politics, and Rana is also Bengali, he told me, and we were talking about Trinamool and Mamata Banerjee. The Bengalis have a sense of themselves which is different from the Tamils or the Maharashtrans or the Punjabis. You don't find the same heterogeneity in China. There are differences, but far less than the differences you find in Europe or in India. So the poles are not all the same. They're different. It's going to be a messier world. But it's a world where we have to be more respectful of one another, restrain from trying to make others like us, and look after each other's interests. It will not be easy for the US to do this because it it moved from ocean to ocean and it went beyond the ocean. And when the Americans saw what the Europeans were doing in China, there was a guilty conscience. So many of the reparations went back into the construction of hospitals and academic institutions. They felt that it was wrong to exploit China like that. And China, for the 80th anniversary of the end of the war, invited families of American Flying Tiger pilots. And recall what Stilwell did at a time when China was in desperate need of American help. Is that future possible? I think it's possible. It will take time, but it's worth doing because if it breaks, if American revives itself and countries do not know their limits, it will be a much uglier world. Can you imagine an institution like Harvard that crack in the ground will split us in different ways throughout this area? So, I'm I'm here. I hope to have a discussion. Maybe you you think I'm too idealistic, but as Jane Goodall said in her posthumous remarks, never lose hope. Thank you.
[Applause]
Yeah, thank you George. You've given us a lot to think about. Hope certainly. I tend to agree with you uh in terms of uh China and its approach. I don't see it as an existential threat in that sense. I tend to agree with something that Jessica Chen Weiss once said, that what it really is is a disgruntled stakeholder that has benefited significantly from the global order, but of course, wasn't part of the decision-makers that set that up, and that's why it often had sort of rough edges.
Um, one thing I wanted to pick up on though, um, and I agree with you that, and when I travel in Asia, you get the same message. We don't want to choose between America or China. And you see that very strongly, as you said, in Vietnam. But as a number of observers have said, we have increasingly an economic Asia that has China at its core, and a security Asia that, despite uh actions by President Trump, still relies on the United States of America at the core. The one thing I wanted to ask you about though is that it seems to me technology is going to be disruptive in terms of that balance. And what I mean by that is the United States, America and China are taking very different approaches to technological development, which I think are going to have huge geopolitical consequences. The US uh tends to focus on AGI, breakthrough technologies. Um, and to combat China, it's relying primarily on tariffs and constraints, trying to stop uh technology being exported. China by contrast though, is much more focused on adaptation and building technological ecosystems, integrated systems which it then can export to other nations. So what we see, or what I see increasingly across parts of Asia, is that China is beginning to dominate supply chains in the region. Is beginning to increasingly uh dominate a lot of the technological infrastructure, whether that's 5G, deep sea cable networks, and so on. And that I think um is putting it in the place of dominating the technologies of the future. And so my question to you then, related to that, is whether that will undermine the US dominated security or in Asia? Will the 20 years you're talking about when maybe I lean towards China rather than US, will that come sooner because of that technological advance of those ecosystems of China?
Well, whether it will come soon or later depends on what happens inside the US and inside China. Like the US in an earlier period, what China does is principally for itself.
Mhm.
And only secondarily for the world outside. And it was so for American companies and MNCs. They optimize first for themselves and only secondarily outside. And when I was at Harvard Business School 40 years ago, that was a clear impression to me. This is how American companies operate because you have a huge internal market, and that mattered much more to you than anything else. China is like that today. It's highly competitive, and because it's homogeneous, they are capable of a finer division of labor than anywhere else. But now there are national security considerations. You know, the Chinese understand this fully. They pretend they don't, but understand it fully. I mean, you take say, paper technology. The Chinese kept it as a monopoly, as a secret for centuries, having an advantage in it. And paper as an IT medium for recording, storage, and processing was orders of magnitude better than parchment or stone tablets or palm fronds. So the Chinese kept it as a monopoly. They had a monopoly on silk, manufacturer, gunpowder, but eventually it leaked out. So when they complain about the US guarding its secrets, I mean, they understand this. It's just negotiations. The US must guard its secrets, and China will guard its secrets, and you try to learn from each other. You will spy on each other. Uh, to me, that's just part of the course. It's it's nothing dramatic.
Does China seek to control global supply chains? Well, the Belt and Road Initiative is very important, and they know that it's a way of regulating the growing economy and using it as part of statecraft. Their thinking is this, and it goes back to Sun Tzu, the Art of War. You have to prepare yourself militarily, and you have to deploy to deter, but be very careful about actually going to war because war yields uncertain outcomes and wars are expensive. So Sun Tzu said, "The greatest achievement is when you achieve your objective without having to fight." It doesn't mean that you don't prepare for war. You have to prepare for war. So what do they do? They have the world's biggest market. Every time they organize, and if you are my friend, you're a small country, you do me a favor, I will give you trade benefits, and you'll be so happy. China feels nothing. But you are naughty, and you do something to me which I'm not happy with, I deny you trade benefits. For you, it's stringent. For China, it's I. When I was chairman of Kerry Logistics, we had a port in Laem Chabang. Robert Hook developed it as a sugar port. We took it over, expanded it, but one year suddenly the sugar disappeared. And we scratched our heads, "How come there's no sugar coming in?" It turned out that in Myanmar, the generals were ceding power to Aung San Suu Kyi, and they knew they had to deal with. So they wanted to give the generals a farewell gift, which is the back gate for sugar from Myanmar will be open for a year without limit. You don't have to grow the sugar in Myanmar. You can import the sugar. So Thai sugar, Indonesian sugar, all went to Myanmar, went through their back gate tariff-free, and the generals issuing their permits had their golden handshake. A year later, the sugar returned to our port. Did China feel anything? No. Because if I import sugar from you, I just import less from elsewhere. If I shut the gear, just import more from elsewhere. It's okay. Even durian, you know, many of you are familiar with durian fruit. Now the market is two billion fruits a year. Xi Jinping tells all the ASEAN leaders, and what do they do? You have a good visit, you say the right things, you please me, I buy more durian from you. And ASEAN countries, which all produce durian, are scrambling for durian quotas. So for them, economic coercion is much more civilized than military coercion. Why do we need to fight? If I can use durian and bananas and pineapples and sugar to influence your behavior, that's what they do. And it's statecraft honed and perfected over centuries. You know, they say, "Oh, China is unpredictable." It's completely predictable. When they were angry with Australia, what did they do? Your lobsters, your wine, then they buy them from America to make a point to Australia. Now they don't buy soybeans from America. They buy it from Argentina. So they say, "Why are you helping Malaysia?" You know, you're helping him to buy soybeans to sell soybeans to America. That's what they do. And they're very good at this. So when you deal with China, they say, "Yeah, I know that that's the way you play the game, but okay. This is my response."
Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's important. Although I still feel that operating on a new integrated technological system is going to be very different from monopolizing silk. What you take say AI, when they meet Deep Seek, open source, whether the decision was made by Liang or whether it was made by the center, the result was is open source. And all other AI developments in China, open source. To me, this is China's biggest contribution for global public goods. American strategy is push American AI deep stack into every part of the world. Use it for economic and security advantage. The Chinese approach is, I want all my people to benefit. So I make it available. And in the process, Singaporeans benefit, Laotians benefit, Panamanians benefit. And it's a revolution because AI is not just the apps that we download to draft speeches and to do PowerPoints. It's how AI is married to automation and robotics to make lives better. I was watching videos on Chinese exoskeletons. You know, I mean, many of us when we grow older, we have problems, our knees, our hips, our back, and then we are on wheelchairs, bedridden. Family members are all inconvenience. It's a big problem. And we're growing older, therefore more and more of us are like that. But with exoskeletons, they are like your sways. You know, they learn immediately. You strap it on, it adjusts to you. Say, "Oh, I can walk now. I can even skip." It's still expensive, expensive. It's going to get cheaper.
Mhm.
And within our lifetimes, and I'm 70 years old, I think even within my lifetime, they will become commonplace. It's made possible by AI, by robotics. This is how AI should be thought about, not just in terms of drafting speeches and answering exam questions, but how is it applied to every aspect of life? So, Huawei, they had a a catchphrase, "Cloud everywhere." Then I think two years ago, they changed it to "Intelligence everywhere." So your seat, your clothing, your seats, everything you build in intelligence so that life becomes easier and better, and not just thinking about how to replace human beings, but how to make human beings more productive. Yeah.
I have so many things I could ask you, but I think in fairness, uh, we should open it up for questions from the floor. So, there's microphones here and probably up the top. So, please, if you have a question, come to the microphone. If you feel comfortable, let us know who you are, where you're uh associated with. And remember, the question in my memory ends with a question mark. There's a gentleman here if you would like to start us off.
Yes. Uh, thank you, Minister Yo, for your insightful sharing. And this is Anfield Tam, and I'm from Hong Kong. I study at Harvard Law School. So the question I have to you, minister, is MAGA, which is Make America Great Again, and the Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation. Can they coexist in the modern days? We should wish that for every country and for every human being. This is what life is to be abundant and to benefit one another. So if America becomes great again, it's a blessing to the world. If China becomes great again, it's a blessing to the world. There's too much zero-sum thinking, which in the end ends up being negative-sum. So I'm a full supporter of MAGA, but not of specific policies. I mean, you take say, talent lean. You used to tell visiting Americans, "You see, China has a talent base of 1 billion people." At that time, it was 1 billion. He said, "You have a talent base of 7 billion. So all your top institutions, research institutes, they they took the best, the brightest from everywhere. All of us aspire to be in America or wanted our children to go to America." But the mood today has flipped. How did this happen? China was like that before. China closed its doors when Lord Macartney went there in 1793. Brought gifts and so on. The Qianlong Emperor, the official said, "We have nothing to learn from you. All your gifts we already have. Thank you. Goodbye." What did Macartney do? He went all the way from Macau to Zhoushan to Beijing. When he went back, he decided on the intelligence reconnaissance. He came on the Grand Canal. At every point, he kept a diary. At every point, Chinese officials kept a diary on what he was doing. So all these archival records have come up. When you turn inwards and stop learning from others, your decline is terminal. So what is happening in America should be fought against by Americans. I had lunch with uh Jeremy Weinstein, your your dean here. He was telling me the tough times Harvard is going through. And I said this not to console him. I said this because I believe in it. I say he's in hardship. It's in crisis that you forge your character. In good times, everybody's here for the party. In bad times, people disappear. People break. But the people who remain firm, committed to the vision, they are the people who will build the institution for the future. So this period for Harvard is a challenge. Short time be called B called the challenge, evoking a response. And if the response is the right response, the institution will grow and become stronger. So when I see MAGA, I said this is a huge challenge. What is the response? Either the US becomes stronger or it becomes weaker. It will not stay the same.
Thank you. Uh, gentlemen here.
Thank you. Um, you made this argument that um China will not be expansionist because of its historic homogeneity. But of course, wars are only sometimes fought for political reasons. They're often fought for economic reasons. Throughout the history of China, the tributary system often led China to engage in military activity outside of its borders to maintain that system for its economic interests. As much of Chinese contemporary um economic interests are ch contemporary um militarism surround economic interests, say uh expansionism in the South China Sea with islands in the South China Sea. How um how can um regional nations um be confident that they won't engage in um warmongering activity when both the history and the current politics uh seem to point in the other direction?
Well, if you're Vietnam, you've had bitter experiences in the past and you learn how to manage China. In the '70s, I read Fairbanks. Uh, it was first the Great Tradition, then it became the Great Tradition and Transformation. And there's a chapter on Vietnam. A new dynasty appears, presses on Vietnam. Vietnam fights back, a new equilibrium. Vietnam follows China because of cultural similarity. So in the '90s, I saw a new cycle being repeated before my very eyes. Southeast Asia has deep memories of China. We know China likes to say China likes to be praised, to be flattered. So the flattery is in abundance when we go to China. And what do we get? We get benefits. Tributary is the wrong translation. It is to pay respect in response to which you enjoy China's larger gifts. It is not the tributary which Dubrovnik paid to the Ottoman Sultan in order to keep Venice at bay. That was protection money. So when we use the term tributary in a Western context, we think of it as protection money. It's the opposite. You give China some trinkets, you get back gold. That's how it was. That's why Southeast Asian countries competed with one another, real merchants, Japanese merchants for tokens to trade in China. It comes back to what I said earlier, that they use their market, their economics to control behavior. But of course, in the border regions, there will be skirmishes in Nepal, in in in Vietnam, in Myanmar. But it's not really to gain territory. It's it's to just to domesticate neighbors. That's what they do.
Uh, is the lady up there, do you have a question?
Uh, yes.
Hi. Thank you very much. My name is Kathy. I'm a second-year master in public policy student here at HKS. Uh, my question is regarding the four global initiatives that Xi Jinping announced, and most recently the Global Development Initiative right before the General Assembly of the UN this year. In your assessment, what is China's endgame in its expansion of global influence? Do you think China is uh trying to replace the US as the global hegemon, or is it some other um goals in in the mind?
He wants to be respected. He wants to be seen as a superior civilization. Kissinger was once asked, I'm paraphrasing him, "What if China wins?" Then China will become the teacher of the world, which is of course a calling to the rest of us. But this is how they see themselves. I have a long history. I have all this philosophy. When I'm good, I'm very good. And then you will be in awe when you come, and you will behave naturally. That's how they view themselves. Will they provoke war and bully people? They do bully, and we will we have been bullied in Singapore. But my advice to those who are being bullied is they always have a reason and they always leave a ladder. So first, know what was the reason which caused them to act in this way, and look for the ladder in that thinking. Never paint an opponent into a corner because he's loose, loose, he'll fight you back. So save face, give him a ladder to climb down, and then when relations are established, don't talk about the past again. Just talk about good things. That's the way they behave.
I think we have time for one last uh question before we have to wrap up. Please.
Evening, minister, professor. My name is Marvin. I'm from Singapore and I'm a student from uh Kennedy School's mid-career masters in public administration and Mason Fellow program. I have one question for the minister. Uh, given the current geopolitical landscape, other than being welcome to our guests, is there any other way that small countries like Singapore and those in Southeast Asia can be more proactive to try and work towards an equilibrium in the Western Pacific?
I think for small countries, this is a very dangerous period because the ground is shifting and is uh crystallizing to multipolarity, and multipolarity means instability because it's dynamic. So if you are a small country, you have to be very alert. Uh, very, it's like a small mammal, you know. You look at a squirrel, you look at a mouse, it's never at ease. His whiskers, his ears always always fidgety because you never know where from where the danger comes or when it comes. And if it comes, jump. So if you're a small country, never look at your own navel. You'll die. Be alert. And then find safety in numbers. Never be alone in a room with someone much bigger than you are. So move away from closed spaces. Move into an open space. And for us in Southeast Asia, our best insurance is ASEAN because it's 10 countries. It's got enough girth. We're friendly to everybody. We're a convenient platform. And if we are forced into a difficult position, hide behind an ASEAN position. There's safety in numbers, and expect that the world is changing. That global institutions once established by the Americans are not being undermined by the Americans, but we still need them however tattered they are. But build regional structures and build structures which can flex as the ground shakes.
Well, we could obviously carry on for much of the evening, but I'm afraid we're beyond uh the bewitching hour. So, please join me in thanking very much our speaker this evening for a wonderful presentation. Thank you.
[Music]