Transcription
If you understand strategy and you understand yourself and the enemy, then you can maneuver it such that you achieve your objective with the minimal use of force.
Understanding the Greeks gives one an important window into the evolution of Western society. The understanding of East Asian society requires a different window, and it is a window into the rise and fall of China. China is unique because it is unusually homogeneous. For a population of 1.4 billion, it is 92-93% Han. For a population over twice that of Europe, the Chinese have one literature, one written language, one set of heroes. Here in Europe, every few hundred kilometers, a different history, a different territory, different heroes, a different sense of itself.
Thanks so much for your time today in the studio. Um, and you spoke about the inevitability of Chinese hegemony and China's descendants in general. Um, but I think what's something that's perhaps weighing um, in the region in ASEAN at the moment is the potential issues that this may cause. Things like the Belt and Road Initiative, when you have Chinese warships pulling up in ASEAN waters. Um, things like the South China Sea, uh, things like debt and trapping. Um, so while things like cultural sensitivities within the region are definitely important, um, I think I'd like to other things like democratic practices and respect of human rights transcend cultural lines. So I think my questions are, you know, what do you think are areas that should be wary of um within this new geopolitical reality?
Where are you from? I'm Singaporean.
For DNA. Fore because Southeast Asia as a geographical area is growing in importance. It's a complex region. 650 million people, 10 countries. You can't find a comparable region in diversity anywhere else in the world. And the reason for this diversity is not, it's not accidental. It's because of geography and history between the Himalayan massif and Australia. They're all these plates pressing to each other, and they cause a corrugation of the earth's surface from the Himalayas all the way to Australia. So you find high mountains, deep valleys, the great rivers, the Mekong, the Salween, the Yangtze. In the upper reaches, they are no more than maybe 50 kilometers apart. But then as they collect water and gather force, they move in great torrents to different oceans. Then when they enter the ocean, the highlands appear as strange-shaped islands, archipelagos. And you find an extreme expression of this in the islands of Sulawesi and Halmahera in New Guinea. So human habitation, uplands, low valleys, islands. And as waves of migration press down from the north, and the largest being Han migration, those from the lowlands get pushed up, others moved in, and it is an ongoing historical process. We are where the two oceans meet, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. And the winds blow one way half the year and the other way the other half. Now, genetic material, culture, ideas from South Asia, now from East Asia. And in more recent centuries, the arrival of the Western powers.
So I like to use a metaphor once popularized by Professor Wang Gungwu, that Singapore is where the mandalas of China and India overlap. I would say that the mandalas of India, China, and the West overlap to varying degrees in all 10 countries of Southeast Asia, and to varying degrees between people living in the lowlands, in the deep valleys, and people in the uplands, people in mainland Southeast Asia, and people in archipelagic Southeast Asia. The result is a bewildering mixture of ethnicities and cultures and religions and political systems. It's a complicated area, and no one can claim to understand all of Southeast Asia. No Southeast Asian can claim to understand all of Southeast Asia. Just understanding the tribes in Myanmar and how they are fighting one another in an uneasy dynamic equilibrium is itself worthy of many PhDs. Then there's Laos, there's Cambodia, there's Thailand and Vietnam and Indonesia, which is complex in itself, the Philippines, and so on. No great empire has ever arisen out of this region. It's always been dominated in alternating cycles from East Asia and from South Asia. Chinese dynasties, as they wax and wane, their influence radiates and withdraws from this region. So this current rise of China in Southeast Asia, that is like a replay of past cycles. People know that beyond the mountains, across the seas, is a great power. Don't fool around with it, because if it concentrates its attention on you, it can be very troublesome. So be friendly, but at the same time, keep it at a distance.
Then from the other side, there's India, which not since an invasion a thousand years ago by the Cholas of South India had influence in Southeast Asia, not through conquest, but through trade, through religious infusion, through people movements. But the last was of course the British Raj when it occupied India. Then it arrived in Southeast Asia with force and carved out in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, an empire of itself in Southeast Asia. But the French went into Indochina, and the Dutch were in the East Indies. It's a complex region, but of growing importance because the great powers are now in contention. US-China relations will go through a long period of testing. The Americans once supported the induction of China into the global system. I was there when China joined the WTO in Doha in November 2001. But since then, till the beginning of COVID, China's economy grew seven times in real terms, nine times in RMB, 11 times in US dollar terms. And there's a certain biased remorse in the US that they should not have helped China, because China has now become too big and threatens US dominance in the world. This, plus growing US and, to some extent, Western insecurity about the evolution of its own society, is an important reason why between the US and China, there's going to be a fairly long period of tension, oscillating between sometimes a cold peace to a cold war. Proxy conflicts could be in Southeast Asia, could be in Myanmar, could be elsewhere. But America worrying that China will one day displace it as global hegemon. If China were like the old Soviet Union, then such a fear is warranted. Then the lessons of the Peloponnesian War, the Thucydides Trap, becomes relevant.
But China is, in fact, of a different nature. And while understanding the Greeks gives one an important window into the evolution of Western society, the understanding of East Asian society requires a different window, and it is a window into the rise and fall of China. China is unique because it is unusually homogeneous. For a population of 1.4 billion, it is 92-93% Han. For a population over twice that of Europe, the Chinese have one literature, one written language, one set of heroes. Here in Europe, every few hundred kilometers, a different history, a different territory, different heroes, a different sense of itself. In China, yes, the original differences. Yes, the spoken language is often not mutually intelligible. But the high language, which is written, and the histories, which are well written, the heroes are all common. So it's an unusually homogeneous society. And this homogeneity is not happenstance. It's not the result of the whim of a leader or a set of policies. It's in the DNA of the culture and civilization. In reality, the Chinese prefer living in a society which is mostly Chinese. And every time there's a crisis, they will impose controls. Like during COVID, the Chinese may complain, but they will comply. But the non-Chinese would not be able to take it, and they leave. And to some extent, China welcomes them leaving. Then it can be the hatch, hatch, hatch, pull up the drawbridges, shut the gates and preserve itself. You know, dynasty after dynasty rebuilt the Great Wall. The Great Wall that we see, which is on Instagram, that's only a fossil, because that Great Wall was always a living system, not just bricks, but a whole system of control which went beyond the Great Wall, outside and inside. If you are in a watchtower and you are asleep and did not want people further down the wall or inside the wall, you'll be executed, because it was something life and death. When times are calm, when there's no threat, then the doors, the gates are flung open, and people move in and out freely. But if there's danger, then the controls are put in place. The surveillance network is activated far beyond and deep within, including the deployment of reserve forces. We saw this during COVID. They locked up the population in compartments, into cells, and then one by one resolved the problem. Within the intern, the Western media would have us believe that China did badly during COVID. China, in fact, did extremely well during COVID. As any epidemiologist knows, in an epidemic, be the last to open up. Don't be the first. So, China had the fewest deaths per million. And because within the country, they had closed-loop production. Well, the rest of us were at home avoiding one another, working or pretending to work on our terminals, still collecting our salaries. And every day, waiting for the delivery man to bring in parcels, and sometimes wondering who ordered what within the family, who made the stuff inside the parcels. They all came from China. All the ships went to China to collect manufacturers. They left full. They returned empty.
Now, I was in logistics for a number of years. Freight rates across the Pacific are usually between $1,000 to $2,000. It kept on going up. When we reached $5,000, the instruction to the ships was, don't wait for the containers to be unloaded. Leave the containers there. Ship comes back, because each container cost only about $2,000. And that cost was then described as a supply chain crisis. During those few years, China's merchandise trade surplus broke all records. In 2020, China's merchandise trade surplus was $530 billion US. In 2021, it reached $670 billion US. In 2022, when all we read about was the pain felt by Shanghai as a result of the sudden lockdown, the trade surplus went up to $850 billion. And last year, it was about the same. When they finally opened up and they had a car show in Shanghai, Western and Japanese car manufacturers were shocked because while they were marking time at home, China pressed on. And today, their EVs dominate the world market. They are by far the biggest maker of cars in the world, and I think has become the biggest exporter of cars in the world, certainly of electric vehicles. My point is, Chinese homogeneity in certain situations is a great strength. But when that highly centralized, internally synchronized system breaks down, when that huge machine gets stuck, its discomfort goes on for a very long time. And this is the reason for the long cycles of Chinese history. A key reason for this, in my view, which I talk about in my book, is paper. The Chinese had a monopoly of paper for many centuries. Paper allows more data storage and allows more data processing than parchment or papyrus or palm frond or whatever. The Chinese had paper in vast amounts for centuries, kept it a secret. When you can capture and process so much data, you can organize more human beings. The more processing capability in data, the more human beings you can organize. And because of this technology and monopoly, Chinese society created a centralized system which no other ethnic group in the world was able to. And that gives China its particular character. When the Chinese say, "We have no imperial desires," because this is not in our nature, it is true, because if you conquer, say, like the British did India or other parts of the world, you now have to organize people not like yourself, and whom and whose cultures you're not always able to digest. But in the case of the Chinese, if they stick among Chinese people, it's much easier. Which is why the Americans are mistaken if they think that when the Chinese economy grows, that its behavior will be like that of a Western imperial power like itself. This cannot be established mathematically. So it has to be established by practice. It may take some time, maybe 20-30 years, before the Americans are finally convinced that this is the nature of China. This is not Russia. This is not Britain. This is not France. This is not Germany.
During this period of tension, as moves are made against one another, business people feel very uncomfortable because they're subject to tariffs, uh, surveillance, all kinds of controls. So many are moving to Southeast Asia, European companies, American companies, Japanese companies, and Chinese companies. And often they indigenize themselves. They become Singaporean or Malaysian or Indonesian by changing their passports. And even in Italy, outside Florence, in Prato, WTO people, they become Italian. Many are Catholics. And when we buy the necktie, the handbag, it says "Made in Italy," but it's actually made by WTO people in Italy. It's a different pattern. In Africa, there's intermarriage going on. And the Chinese are not like the old colonial powers, living on high hills and being served by retinues. They are there riding bicycles, setting up small shops, peddling their wares. Of course, they're also the big businessmen. So this rise of China is a new phenomenon. I sometimes describe it as another sun entering the solar system, causing the gravitational field in which all of us find our orbit being distorted. And this new sun will be bigger than the existing sun. I mean, think about it. China has four times the population of the US. As Elon Musk said, it's arithmetic. By the time China's per capita GDP reaches half that of the US, its economy will be twice that of the US. And the average Chinese is not, is not half as productive as the average American. They're pretty hardworking. And if they achieve a per capita GDP more than half, then China's economy may well be the size of the US, EU, and Japan combined. So this is a huge phenomenon. Every heavenly body's orbit will be affected. Make a mistake, you may crash into something bigger. Understanding the forces, you will achieve new orbital freedom which you could never have dreamt of before. Therefore, understanding the phenomena of China, and it's a huge phenomenon, and it's a complex phenomenon, is extremely important. And in Southeast Asia, because we have seen China in its previous incarnations, there is almost an instinct as to how to deal with that China. And if we in ASEAN, which is the association of the 10 countries of Southeast Asia, if we play our cards right, we play the role of a stabilizing force between the US and China, China and India, where everybody feels comfortable, and we ourselves benefiting from both the cooperation and the contention. All the countries except Myanmar are growing. I was just in Laos two weeks ago, and I took the train from Vientiane to Luang Prabang, from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng to Vang Vieng. A fast train. Well, slow by Chinese standards. It's only 160 km an hour, but I think quite fast by British standards. It's changing history. I was with my youngest son in Luang Prabang. I booked a hotel, a boutique hotel by the Mekong River, just to feel its flow, and the hotel provided a boat for us to see the sunset. This was romantic. Then the serenity was suddenly broken by the sound of karaoke, because the Chinese tour groups, as they come down the river or go up the river, they belt out with complete disregard for for the tranquility of the environment. I told my son, "It'll be a noisy river in the coming years," because with the train will come many more tourists, and many will want to be in Luang Prabang. Many will be taking the boat, and there will be a certain cultural clash. But we have to live with this. Every time you have an emerging power, you have an economic transformation, there are things that we've got to get used to. Time will heal. But the important thing is peace. You know, in Laos alone, more bombs fell during the Vietnam War than on all of Europe during the Second World War. More bombs fell just on Laos alone. Today, with peace, so many things are possible. So many things are possible. And in Southeast Asia, if we can continue this, this peace, if we can help maintain this peace for another generation, the transformation will be dramatic. I tell my American friends, my European friends, come to Southeast Asia. You'll always be welcome in Southeast Asia. China is always a little foreign. It has got a strong culture. It has high expectations of itself and of foreigners. But Southeast Asia is soft. The climate is balmy. The winds are almost operatic. The food is always yummy. And in every country of Southeast Asia, you can be white, brown, blue, green, you'll be welcome. That's Southeast Asia. And despite the diversity, ASEAN as a regional construct is coming along, and it's very different from from Europe. In Europe, decisions are taken by voting, and very often bringsmanship up to the wee hours of the morning before decisions are taken. In ASEAN, we never vote. Our friends in Europe, America say, "If you don't vote, then how do you make decisions?" And they say, "We're ineffective. We're elliptical." Indeed, we are. But sometimes it's better to play long, to erode an obstacle gradually, to go around it, than by forcing an issue, which in our culture, you force too much, face is lost. People want it back. When the shoe is on the other foot, they do the same to you. So in Southeast Asia, the pattern of interaction is very different from that of the West. And if you're in Southeast Asia, you have to understand this, because if you insist on Western ways in Southeast Asia, you will come to grief. In the same way, if we operate in Europe and we insist that Europeans operate as Southeast Asians, we will also come to grief. So wherever we are, we have to adapt to local conditions. So in my musings, which were written during COVID, when I had a block of time, undisturbed time, it began as a small project, but it grew and grew. I reflected on many of these subjects. What is Southeast Asia? What is China? The tensions between China and the West and India, the causes, the possibilities. And in Southeast Asia, we try not to be troublemakers. We try to be peacemakers. We try, when there's a conflict, to mediate, to compromise, rather than to seek a decisive outcome. Because no decisive outcome is final. No one has the last move. You look at the Middle East. The hatred. The Israelis think that force can resolve problems. Finally, force cannot. It only poisons the soil. Between Ukraine and Russia, it has become a proxy contest between big powers. People die. But not only that, the possibilities for the future are blighted by this infection. The putrid mess of hatred, of venom, of seeking revenge, will spread over generations. We had our wars before in Southeast Asia, but we have had decades of peace. And I hope, if we have an understanding of others and ourselves, and we help others understand one another, then we can do a little bit in our region to contribute to a wider peace. So I, I end here and happy to have a conversation and take your questions. Thank you.
Thanks so much for your time today in the studio. Um, and you spoke about the inevitability of Chinese hegemony and China's descendants in general. Um, but I think what's something that's perhaps weighing um, in the region in ASEAN at the moment is the potential issues that this may cause. Things like the Belt and Road Initiative, when you have Chinese warships pulling up in ASEAN waters. Um, things like the South China Sea, uh, things like debt and trapping. Um, so while things like cultural sensitivities within the region are definitely important, um, I think I'd like to other things like democratic practices and respect of human rights transcend cultural lines. So I think my questions are, you know, what do you think are areas that should be wary of um within this new geopolitical reality?
Where are you from? I'm Singaporean.
Uh, I, I, I did not use the word Chinese hegemony. Uh, I would use that word for the old Great Britain. I would use the word for the US today, but I would not use the word for for China. Um, China has a huge domestic market, and historically, that market was sought by the kingdoms and principalities in Southeast Asia. In fact, they often fought each other to gain a preference of access into China. And the Chinese have adapted their statecraft to the fact that when they organize, they have a huge domestic market, and therefore a very strong negotiating leverage over its neighbors. You might call it economic coercion, but I won't call it that. Let's say you're selling durian to China, and today the durian market is is growing by leaps. So far, they only like Thai durian, and Singaporeans are hoping that they'll stick to Thai durian, because if they start eating the durian that we like, then we have a problem in Singapore. And they know that they are a big market. So you have Vietnam, and you're nice to me. They say, "Okay, we'll buy more durian for you," and you feel, "Wow, great, many people will will will benefit." But conversely, if you do something which harms them, they may say, "Oh, Filipino mangoes, there's a phytosanitary problem with them, you know, there's this bug or this fungus, and we've got to check more carefully," by which time the mangoes in the ships have all gone rotten. They play this kind of game. They don't feel it, because if I don't buy Filipino mangoes or Vietnamese durian, I can get them from somewhere else, but you will feel it. That is why they've always preferred to use the domestic market as leverage over their neighbors rather than use military force. And for them, if you read Sun Tzu, The Art of War, if you have to use military force, you're really low class, because you don't understand strategy. If you understand strategy and you understand yourself and the enemy, then you can maneuver it such that you achieve your objective with the minimal use of force. So this is the way they've approached it.
You raise the issue of Belt and Road. The Belt and Road is a natural outcome of a market which all China's neighbors are seeking to enter. So what do you need? You need railroads, like from Laos, and in a dry port in Vientiane, which I visited, and which once I had an interest in when I was in logistics, I could smell durian, because they were all being transported to China in refrigerated container boxes. You will need to coordinate national infrastructural plans so that bridges are built in the right places, so that the urbanization takes place along the right corridors. This debt threat acquisition against China, to me, is propaganda. No Chinese company wants to lose money. They all want to make money. No company is going to give you a project, cause it to go bankrupt, and take it over and lose money. In any case, you cannot cut away a port or power station. And they're more careful now. They were a little too quick to land and to have these new projects in the past, but they're more careful now. The classic case was, of course, of Hambantota in Sri Lanka. I went there once because Shangri-La had a had a hotel there. No Sri Lankan leader thinks he was in a debt trap. They make mistakes. They're happy for China to have a 99-year lease, because then Chinese ships will have to stop there and bring in more business. But it is a term used by China's adversaries to kind of blacken China's name. I take a contrary view. Every country on the Belt and Road which sees its economic account with China grow will worry, "Am I becoming too dependent on China? What if China would use this against me?" So they will want diversification. If you have Kazakhstan, you have Vietnam, you have Korea, Thailand, Laos, instinctively you want the Americans, the British, everybody else to be in. So instead of saying the Belt and Road is bad for you, which no one will believe, they say, "Look, good for you, but we are here," and they'll be welcome without having to put in a cent. The Americans, the Europeans, and Japanese can all be free riders on the Belt and Road. And in a small way, Singapore has understood this and is playing that. Because we find that in many countries, we're welcome because we bring in foreign investment, and countries like Kazakhstan, like Vietnam, like Cambodia, they all want diversification. Yeah.
Right. Um, next question. Um, perhaps we have the one over there. Afternoon, Mr. Yo. Hi. Thank you very much for coming here to speak to us today. So, I have a few questions for you. Um, in 1995, you said that censorship can no longer be 100% effective. But even if it is only 20% effective, we should not stop censoring. Given the changes in the internet over the years and the many purposes that it serves today, to what extent would you think this is still true? How can such a, how can such an approach avoid conflicts with the productive political and social discussion necessary to our development as a society? And given that you acknowledge that censorship is easy to overcome then, and is doubtlessly much easier to overcome now, uh, where does the value remain in pursuing it as a goal? Thank you very much, once again, for speaking to us.
I don't think censorship can ever be effective in a hermetic sense that you can prevent all information from flowing. But censorship can affect mainstream public opinion, because most families will watch television, read the same newspapers, and if the same position is taken again and again, their minds will be affected. And today, all media outlets distort the information transmission. Every prism, every lens, concentrates certain views and attenuates other views. I'm a regular reader of RT, Russian Today. I find it offers an alternative point of view. It used to be on Singapore cable television. Then it was removed. There used to be an app available. It's no longer available. So I've got to go to the website and put it on my homepage. I've been trying to access it in England. It's very difficult. There's much more friction on it in the UK than in Singapore. When I go to Saudi Arabia, I can't get Al Jazeera. They block Al Jazeera, preferring Arabia, which is a UAE. I'm not sure it's either UAE or Saudi Arabia outfit. Every outlet distorts. We know when Elon Musk took over Twitter that the old Twitter used to receive instructions from the FBI. So too does Meta. And now Elon Musk has opened up Twitter. It's called X. And he's quite frank. He says, "If Trump loses and and Kamala Harris wins, is is in for, say, he may even go to jail, and a new pattern of censorship will appear on X." X itself is not free of censorship. So for someone in Singapore, which needs access to information from all over the world, what do I do? Well, I have all the, I access all the optical pathways. I have CGTN, I have South China Morning Post, RT, BBC, CNN, Fox, Twitter, the lot. And then you ask yourself, "Cui bono?" This point of view, who benefits? Who's distorting? Then you make your own judgment. But for most people, they can't do that. So they will just follow the mainstream, and they get manipulated. But this has been since the beginning of time. So this idea that you can have free access to information that is neutral, that out of this cacophony, a melody will suddenly emerge, I don't buy that. Every government, every big player will seek to influence for their own benefit. And the media companies are owned by powerful people, either by governments or by powerful people with their own agendas. Take that as a starting point. They may pretend to talk about freedom of information and so on. Don't buy all of it, because it's mostly untrue.
Right. Can we have the gentleman there in the second row? I'm in the middle of a second. Yeah. Thank you very much, um, again for your, for sharing your thoughts with us, Mr. Yo. Um, so my question is, um, now, given how Southeast Asian countries have had such different responses to regional issues like, uh, the Myanmar, the war in Myanmar, and the rise of China in a growing multipolar world. Um, what do you think the role of ASEAN is nowadays? Is it the final guardrail to ensure that there is some kind of lowest common denominator diplomacy still going on in the region, or does it even still have the tiny chance of being a launchpad for greater regional integration? And following on from that, what ways might you see Southeast Asians showing solidarity and communicating with each other diplomatically beyond ASEAN, if at all? Thank you very much.
ASEAN has the strength of its weakness. What appears as a weakness, which is its inability to assert an independent position, is in fact a strength. It's in between other pieces which are shifting their positions dynamically. If ASEAN's position were rigid, it will come under impossible pressures. But ASEAN is flexible. It's got variable geometry. It's, I describe it as glutinous rice cake. You know, this glutenized cake that you get in Southeast Asia. You can never get it off your finger. But and it squishes to whatever shape that you put it. ASEAN should be like that. And in so doing, it, it buffers the hard edges of superpower contention. And it attracts everybody to say, "Look, you play that role, and we benefit from it." So we have succeeded so far in all the major powers agreeing that the integrity of ASEAN is good for them and for the region. It's quite an achievement. I mean, we don't get, I mean, we don't get our praises sung, but in fact, if we were not there, if we make decisions by voting, if we were Cartesian in the way we do things, I think the region will quickly be in trouble, because instead of Southeast Asia, we will have the Balkans in Southeast Asia.
Um, thank you very much for your talk. Um, I thought it was an interesting point, uh, how you put it historically, the continuity of cycles of China waxing and waning. Do you think the particular circumstances of, uh, China's rise in this century make it a rupture from past, uh, continuities of waxing and waning? And also, as a sort of tangential second point, comparing Southeast Asia and Central Asia. Do you think Central Asia, are there any sort of similarities or any interesting questions that could be learned from governments in Central Asia, um, into which China is currently expanding?
My sense is China is the most conservative major power on earth, and they can't do anything without reference to their own past. In any conversation with Chinese people about anything, invariably they go back to what was done in this dynasty and that dynasty. Mao Zedong, towards the end of his life, said, you know, "Apart from changing a few things in my neighborhood, I've achieved very little." Well, this was at a time when, as a romantic, he was disappointed by what he was unable to achieve. So I don't think China can escape its own past, and in this regard, more than any other country, it cannot escape its own past. So when people say that China is unpredictable, I say far from it. I say China's reactions are completely predictable if you know its history. Central Asia is interesting because Central Asia was always where their mortal threats came from. So in every dynasty, in every period, the sharpest strategic thinkers, their minds turned to to Inner Asia, either north or Central Asia, because from there the threats came. When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was every possibility that all of Inner Asia will go through a prolonged period of strife, of revolt, of revolution, of civil war. Luckily, in Kazakhstan, you had Nazarbayev, who knew how to keep both Russia and China in close embrace, and China immediately established the SCO and made Russia a co-convener of the SCO, and that kept the peace in Asia, which to me has been a remarkable diplomatic achievement. So yes, there were outbursts of Islamic radicalism in And in the Fergana Valley, but by and large, the entire region has been kept safe. And India, whose position in in Inner Asia was upturned by the sudden US withdrawal from Afghanistan, India is getting back in, which is why despite US pressure, India will never give up its relations with Iran and with Russia. So if the big powers all agree that in Inner Asia, there should not be a new storm, then that region, which is, which has plenty of agricultural land, energy resources, minerals, can benefit everybody living around it. So I'm not unhopeful, even though there are always problems emerging from unexpected quarters. But remember, just after or just before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, there was an attempted push in Kazakhstan, and it was immediately squashed by Russia and supported by China. Fore! Foreign! Foreign! Fore! Speech. Fore! Foreign! Foreign!