This public lecture given by Professor Yan Xuetong on February 1, 2019 from 2.30 PM – 5.00 PM at Auditorium 1st Floor, Rattanakunakorn Building, Rangsit University, Thailand. Organized by The Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies (IDIS), Royal Thai Embassy in Beijing, Devawongse Varopakarn Institute of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Klangpanya Institute of National Strategies.

1. The Changes in World Order
by
Professor Yan Xuetong
Organized by
The Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies (IDIS), College of Government, RSU
Devawongse Varopakarn Institute of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Royal Thai Embassy in Beijing and
Klangpanya Institute of National Strategies
February 2019

2.
Transcript
The Changes in World Order
by Professor Yan Xuetong
Organized by
The Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies (IDIS), Royal Thai Embassy in Beijing,
Devawongse Varopakarn Institute of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
Klangpanya Institute of National Strategies.
Friday of 1 February 2019 from 2.30 PM – 5.00 PM
Auditorium 1st
Floor, Rattanakunakorn Building, Rangsit University.
Advisor: Prof. Anek Laothamatas
Editor: Yuwadee Kardkarnklai
Editorial Board: Panat Thongpoung, Sopanit Angsusingha, Khobtham Neelapaichit,
Tosaporn Mungkrobglang, Nuttida Yenbumrung, and Thitirat Rusangiam.
Published: February 2019.
Address
Klangpanya Institute of National Strategies, Promphan 1 Building 4th
Floor, 637/1
Ladprao Road, Chatuchak, Bangkok 10900. Tel. 02-983-8826 Fax. 02-938-8864

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The Changes in World Order
Professor Yan Xuetong
Dean of the Institute of International Relations, Tsinghua University
They expected me to talk something about Chinese foreign policy. I will certainly do.
But I want more to talk about the international order. Because this is a new trend. A new
change. A new situation. And I think both faculties and students want to know what is
coming to us.
International Order and Global Governance
Actually in the class, I always raise questions to my students. I ask them “Can you tell
me the different between an established international new order and a global governance.” In
most cases, my students failed to response to this question. For most of them, they regarded
global governance suggesting new order for our age. The new order could have different
contents in different historical periods. But global governance is the content of the new order
of our age. And then I said to my students that this is the popular understanding about global
governance and new order. Actually, this is a misunderstanding more than the right one.
What does global governance mean? Global governance means a distribution of
international responsibility. For instance, we require every country to undertake some
responsibility to reduce the CO2, to clean the air. Actually, no individual country can keep its
own country with clear air, if its neighbor ruins the air. So that’s why we need global
governance to make the world coming together to deal with global-wide threat to our lives.
So global governance is a distribution of responsibility.
International order is different. Actually “order” in international politics means
distribution of power. Human is selfish: everyone wants power but do not want to have
responsibility. So then we will find that every country competes for power but they are
reluctant to undertake responsibility. So because the word “order” in terms of politics refers
to distribution of power, in the 1970s developing countries said that “Oh, the order is
imbalanced. We want the North and the South to share power and to have equal or balanced
power”. So during the 1970s, developing countries encourage to establish a new economic
international order. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a bipolar system was ended and
was replaced by unipolar configuration. And the US has become the only superpower. So the
US said “wait a minute, we need to change the distribution of world order during the Cold
War. And the world power should not be divided between the US and the Soviet Union. The
Soviet Union no longer had the capability to compete with the US. So the US would not share

an editor-in-chief of the Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vice chairman of both the China Association of
International Relations Studies and the China Association of American Studies, and a member of the Consultation
Committee of China’s Ministry of Commerce. This public lecture given by Professor Yan Xuetong on February 1, 2019
from 2.30 PM – 5.00 PM at Auditorium 1st Floor, Rattanakunakorn Building, Rangsit University, Thailand.

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international leading power with Russia, the inherited country of the Soviet Union. So senior
Bush suggested the term “establish a New World Order”.
So at that time, in the early 1990s the term “new world order” referred to US
monopoly of the international leading power. No longer that the power was divided between
the two superpowers. Now we come to the new age or the new situation which people are
talking again about change in international order. So everyone understands that the change in
order means redistribution of power, mainly redistribution of leading powers. So you will
find that no matter China, US, Kissinger or any politician, when they talk about the change of
world order, none of them is talking about global governance. Global governance is not a
redistribution of power but responsibility. We found that we moved into a new age. The
rising power and the status quo power are competing for international influence but no one
competes for international responsibility. Trump clearly tells the world that the US does not
want to continue the responsibility for the world. That means the US does not want to
undertake leadership. Leadership, on the one hand, means you have power, on the other hand
you have to undertake some responsibility. So for the Trump administration, they conceived
the responsibility too high and that the US should not pay for that.
The New International Order
Well, now we move into the age that people [are] talking about what kind of order
will it be? Everyone is making [his] own prediction and political scientists, technicians,
economists, journalists [are] all making up prediction about the new order. Some people
perhaps understand the new order from the perspective of technology that the new order will
be decided by AI, robots or 5G. While some economists said we moved into the age of
knowledge economy. The new order will be divided by the knowledge class and the people
without knowledge, not divided between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. So people have
different concepts about the debate of the new order.
Actually, if we want to know what the new order will be, do not only look at policies
adopted by major powers, also you have to see what components of the order are. And then
you can know what is changing. First, we have to define what is order? International order
means countries settling down conflicts or disputes peacefully according to international
norms. That means you can maintain peace and regulations within a normal behavior without
going into war or major clash.
Since the end of the Cold War, the world order has been there especially for East Asia
and we have enjoyed peaceful order for several decades. Since the end of the war in
Cambodia in 1991, this region has been so peaceful. There were a lot of tension and conflicts,
but there was no war. We have a better security environment than the Europeans. The
Europeans cannot enjoy peace like us. They have experienced wars in Kosovo, Turkey and
Georgia, for instance. The Europeans people conceive their land, their hometown, Europe,
more peaceful than us. Actually, that is not true. East Asia is much more peaceful than
Europe.
Components of the International Order
What people think the world order will be? If we are talking about the international
order, there are two things. First, we are talking about peace and war. Second, we are talking
about norm, liberalism or non-liberalism. Order is composed of three elements; norm,

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institution and ideology. We will use the post-Cold War order as an example. After the Cold
War, liberalism dominated the world, like Fukuyama said “it is the end of history.”
Democracy becomes the dominating ideology over the world and rules out that history is
over. Based on this ideology, liberalism is... Then the American took leadership [and]
established a lot of international norms. Most countries behave themselves according to these
norms to settle their disputes. And that’s maintaining the order. Meanwhile, some countries
do not. Like Iraq and some countries in the Middle East. They do not behave according to
liberalism norms. So there is violence. And the American said “we have to punish those
countries who violate international norms.” What happened was that the US took leadership,
launched wars or took sanctions against some countries violating liberalism norms.
Institutions are international organizations. International organizations were carried
out to give out the use of their resources and their capabilities to maintain the order according
to liberalism norms. Now we find that in these three components, an ideology establishes
norms and an institution maintains the world according to the norms.
Now things are changing so dramatically. First, the dominating ideology, liberalism,
is no longer that influential. Liberalism is not only losing influence in some developing
countries, but liberalism faces challenges domestically in the US and the EU. The challenging
ideology is the anti-establishmentism. Anti-establishmentism in the United States is not to
oppose nationalism, communism, or not against socialism. Anti-establishmentism in the US
targeted liberalism, they [are] against the so-called liberalist establishment. In Europe, the
challenging or the competing ideology is populism. Populism is getting a new momentum in
Europe. And it is also against liberalism. Because during the post-Cold War period,
liberalism has become the dominating ideology based on the support from leading powers in
Europe and the United States. Today these two leading powers are no longer supporting
liberalism. In these countries, liberalism is no longer an absolutely welcomed ideology. More
and more people dislike liberalism. More and more people criticize liberalism. They say
liberalism is wrong. Even Blair, who is a very typical liberalist politician still questioned why
democracy cannot effectively save Western countries from the financial crisis of 2008 better
than those non-democratic countries. Fukuyama published a book talking about the end of
history and it has become so popular. Now Fukuyama published another article to criticize
democracy. He said democracy is wrong. Democracy undermines America’s capabilities.
Recently, even John Mearsheimer published a new book saying that liberalism undermines
American hegemony and leadership. Why these well-known western scholars and politicians
suddenly become not that positive toward democracy? Why they suddenly become critical to
liberalism?
My understanding is because liberalism has gone too far. Liberalism has become
extremism. Any ideology that goes extreme will go to the opposite direction and will become
harmful to the society. For instance, in the US, liberalism emphasizes political correctness.
Political correctness means being inclusive and tolerant. How tolerant we should be? We
should be tolerant to others [who are] different from us. We should be tolerant to everyone
[who is] different from us and [who] has the same equal rights. It is very difficult. And then
we have to tolerate gay marriage. The gay said that they should enjoy the same social welfare
including delivering baby. And they also said that because the gay are physically male gender
but mentally, they are in a different gender from male and female. So these people said that
they feel uncomfortable to go to the toilet based on a physical gender. In California, third
gender toilets are established. So they have three gender toilets: the male, the female and the
neutral. Well, certainly this is very tolerated [and] politically correct. Then traditional or
conservative people said that they [could] tolerate this no longer. Because they said that if

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they take their kids to the zoo, the park, or to any public places, and there are three genders of
toilets, which one they should tell their kids to go to? They said that they do not want their
kids from the very young age to develop that kind of sexual orientation. So they said that they
do not like this.
I do not mean which ideology is good or bad. I mean any kind of ideology going too
extreme is bad. So when we talk about the Islamic fundamentalists, it does not mean that the
Islam religion has a problem. I come from China, if I’m really loyal to the ideology of
socialism, I do not think it is bad. But if socialism goes too extreme, it will cause a lot of
harm to society.
So you will find that one thing is changed: the dominating ideology. Liberalism is no
longer that influential or no longer that welcomed like during the post-Cold War period.
Because the Europeans and the Americans are no longer advocating liberalism as much as
before. The government’s behaviors will be different from before. They do no longer obey
liberal norms as much as before.
There is another academic difference: anti-globalization and counter-globalization.
While anti-globalization comes from ordinary people who suffer from globalization. [This is]
because globalization makes the society become polarized both in international level and
domestic level. Internationally, you will find that G20 countries account for 85% of the
world’s GDP. While the rest only share less than 25%. And in another 5 or 7 years, G20
countries will account for 90% of the GDP of the world. And the non-G20 countries, more
than 160 countries, will only share less than 10% of the world’s GDP. So polarization will
become worse and worse at the global level. Domestically, no matter Thailand, China, US,
Japan or Germany, in every country polarization becomes worse and worse. That is why low-
class people [or] people in the grassroots dislike globalization. They say that globalization
only benefits those people working for international corporations. But how about them? How
about the wanderers in the street? How about people that only own small restaurants? We call
this anti-globalization.
Now situation changes a little bit. We call it counter-globalization. This is not from
the people. It comes from the governments. Governments said that they do not like
globalization. The UK took leadership on this. They said they do not want to stay in the EU.
They want to withdraw from it. Then the US under the Trump administration says that
globalization is a bad concept. That it is no good. That it is not in favor of American interest.
That America must come first. So Americans say they do not want globalization. So the
American government no longer supports globalization. The US says that globalization
means America has to undertake more and more international responsibilities. All
industrialized countries; UK, Germany etc. realized that if they participate in globalization, it
means they have to undertake more responsibilities, but not more power. No one likes
responsibility, we only like power. So Americans say “let’s quit.” So America quit from the
Paris Agreement. They do not want to undertake the responsibility to reduce the CO2.
Meanwhile, someone also said that the responsibility for human rights is also a problem. It
means high price. The US says “OK. Let’s withdraw from the human rights commission of
the UN.” And about education, Americans say UNESCO is nonsense, let’s quit. So the
institution is changing.
We have talked about the three elements. First, ideology is changing. Second, the
institution is changing. The Americans, while withdrawing from the institutions, say that they
want to establish new institutions. Pompeo said very clearly to the world that American
foreign policy is to protect American sovereignty, not to protect the world order. Pompeo said

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on 22 Jan. (actually he has said like this several times before.) that nation matters. No
international body can stand up for the people as well as their own leader. That strong borders
are key to strong nation. That this is how we keep our people safe and protect our
sovereignty. Not only Pompeo, the state secretary, but also Pence, vice president, and Trump,
President of the United States. All are talking about how to protect American sovereignty at
the UN congress. So you see that Americans dislike the current international institutions.
Pompeo gave a very clear statement at the Marshall Institution in Europe. He said that “these
institutions were established by the United States. They worked well before. But now they are
no longer suitable for American interests. We need to establish new international
institutions.” Well. What is the new institutions? I do not know. Then he said that “look at
what China did. China has established the AIIB. AIIB is a new institution. This institution has
its own norms. China uses these kinds of new institutions to redistribute international
financial power. So for the Trump administration and European countries, they’re all
concerned that what kind of new institutions they need. Germany and France said that they
should establish their own financial system, getting independence from the dollar system.
And they will do their financial transactions through their own Euro system, instead of
American dollar system, to prevent American intervention and constraint. The typical case is
Iran. Americans gave sanction on Iran. American said that anyone not following American
suit, conducting business with Iran then the US will punish those countries’ companies even
when they belong to US allied countries. So European countries said they want to maintain
trade with Iran. So they will establish their own financial system so all European companies
can do business with Iran through their own financial system.
So now the first element, the ideology is changing. But it is not clear what direction it
is changing to. Liberalism is still the strongest one. And all of other competing ideologies are
not as thrived as liberalism. But they are undermining liberalism’s influence. Meanwhile,
major powers start to establish new international institution. So the second factor, institution,
is changing. The third factor is norms, international norms. Most of the norms are based on
liberalism ideology, but when European countries and the US [are] no longer advocating
liberalism, then these norms have to be changed. That means reform in the current
international norms. Certainly, there are some sections or domains that have no norm or no
popular norm like in the issue of digital economy and cyber security.
Digital Economy and Cybersecurity
The digital economy and the cybersecurity are new issues to the human society. We do not
know how to manage these things. And that’s why 70 countries are concerned about
negotiating at Davos for global norms or regulations to govern the digital economy,
technological invention, and the cybersecurity. It depends on the negotiation. I don’t know
what kind of new ideology will replace liberalism. And the United Nations is the most
dominating international institution. But now there are strong requirements for reforming the
institution. There are all kinds of ideas, all kinds of conflicting requirements and all kinds of
conflicting suggestions on how to reform the United Nations, how to reform WTO, how to
reform World Bank, how to reform the IMF. I do not know. I only know no country is a
captain of any of these institutions, whether China, the US, and Germany. They said, “if you
do not reform, I’m going to establish a new one.” And Japan also does the same. The US
withdraw from the TPP. Japan said “OK. If you withdraw, I will do it. So, Japan establishes
the new TPP. That is the general situation.

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Trends of the international order in the next five years
After describing the changing of the international order, I will talk about what will
happen to the trend of the order in the next five years. In difference sectors the change will be
different. The domains of security, military, economy, trade, and finance all the field won’t
be in the same direction. Because at this moment I can’t see any countries to provide the
unique global leadership. The US does not want to do it. China does not have capability to do
it. I can’t see any country has the capability to do it by itself. Second, I can’t see any two or
three major powers will want to take a joint effort to provide a character of leadership.
 Security
In term of security, generally speaking nuclear weapon will guarantee the world
peace. And Jack Ma said that “the new technology will bring the third world war to the
human being.” But 100% sure within five or ten years, that won’t happen. Nuclear weapon
can guarantee the global general peace for the Cold War and it will play the function to
continue to guarantee the general peace of the world. That means nuclear weapon can prevent
world war III in 9 or 10 years.
The military competition will speed up the military modernization. Not only the US,
but also China and Russia will have a huge increase in military in 2019. China has a key
power that improves its military capability for several years. So, from my understanding, the
military competition in the next of five years will be illustrated by the modernization of a
military equipment. While the weapon modernization will be enough, unfortunately this kind
of military modernization will cause some military or security tension among the major
power. Many people are talking about the South China Sea. The competition between China
and the US is continued and may become a war.
Third, no major powers want to go to war. I don’t think China and the US want a war
in the South China Sea in the next five years. Then the economy: liberalism order can survive
that means the free trade norms can survive despite the tension of trade relationship between
China and the US. Through the negotiation China promise that “I am going to protect more
from the US.” The EU and Japan reach an agreement to establish the large free trade soon.
Meanwhile, China talked with ASEAN to upgrade ASEAN+1 dialogue which means
reducing the tax. And Trump is labeled as a protectionist. He set up taxes and tariffs on
Chinese exports to the US. The result is that the US imports more from Canada and Mexico.
This is the current war based on the idea of protectionism but the result of the war will
continue the free trade principle. That means the general level of the tariff would decrease
rather than increase. So, I think that is an objective of a standard or reference to get the norm
or the trade order or the free trade
 Finance
In terms of finance the situation would be different. The countries will control the
flow of the capital. It is different from the trade. The control of the flow of capital is because
this country wants to prevent the financial crisis. The 2008 financial crisis cause problems to
everyone. That is why this time more and more country are prepared for that and also most
people believe the next financial crisis or economic crisis will come either this year or next
year.

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 Human Resources
The third thing is about the flow of the human resources and the anti-immigration
trends that gain new momentum. The government will tighten the border control. The border
can be any kind of border, electric border, trade border, or information border. I mean the
border of a human resource movement and it does not only happen in Europe. The border
control will become tightened. The reason is that that is the government’s instrument to
counter the globalization of a stranger. Actually from my understanding, no government likes
globalization because it undermines every country’s sovereignty. Before that, there were
governments so effectively controlling the country. There was no passport and no visas.
Human being can travel anyway and they do not need passport, and they do not need visa.
And today Thailand is doing better without visa requirements for many countries. But not
every country is like you. Many countries have a visa control even the European countries
and US. They become serious about the illegal immigration in domestic politics. So, that is a
trend from globalization.
 Technology
The last thing is a situation about technology. This will be very serious and the world
has moved into the age of knowledge and economy. The knowledge is a major resource to
generate wealth, to produce the country’s power and to cultivate the national capability. And
the smart people who can manage the digital technology they can cumulate wealth very fast.
The Tsinghua University produces a lot of engineers and specialists. We have a lot of young
people who can accumulate the wealth. The world changes the human being’s mentality. And
the change is not only political, but also social. Do our politicians understand that our
children are going to create the world so different you can never know what it is? So, in the
next of five years the technology will play a really important role probably to divide the
world according to technology. The world will be divided according to technology. I
remember four years ago the society would be divided, the classes would be divided no
longer by proletariats and bourgeoisies but by people possessing knowledge and people
without norms. And now possibly the country would be divided into the digital economic
countries and non-digital economic countries. Now, in China and Thailand more and more
people use a WeChat to pay. In Hong Kong, the mayor tried to produce a first non-cash city.
Most people in that city no longer use cash they pay with the WeChat or other electric
payments. That means even the farmers who never possess a credit card suddenly jump from
cash to WeChat. Well, the story like this and the key is the WeChat, because WeChat has
already been used for several years. In Shenzhen, paying with the WeChat is their life. When
the parents go to some foreign countries as tourists they will see they use people to pay for
goods. They have no concept of money or bill. This kind of change won’t make the world
move in a good direction. Very possibly combined with globalization, this trend will make
polarization even worse. Both at international level and domestic level, the polarization
becomes worse and worse because some people have knowledge of digital economy, some
people don’t. This gap will be enlarged by knowledge. So, education becomes very
important. I am not sure any government is prepared to provide education that makes every
citizen possess knowledge of the digital economy.

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Strongman Leadership
And the last one is about political changes. The political change has already
happened. You found that the “Strongman” is coming by. Trump is not alone. He’s not
unique. There’re many similar leaders that make policy without consultation and assistance.
They prefer to make these decisions by themselves. This kind of a strongman polity is
coming by. I cannot understand why. But I notice that this kind of an international
phenomenon just happened wave after wave. In the 1930s, you find that many countries’
national leaders wanted military and they would have WWII. Before that we have nationalist
leaders who were popular in most of the European countries. Then we have World War I.
And then in the 1930s we have military leaders then we have World War II. Then we have
nationalist leaders again. Then we have independence movements prevailing over Latin
America and Africa. And then in the 1990s we have a liberalist order and liberalist leaders in
many countries. Then we witnessed the war in the Middle East, Somalia and in many places.
This time we get another wave. We have a lot of strongman leaders. No one can find
any single term to label them in the aspect of ideology. Maybe they have different ideologies
but the style of their policymaking have some similarities. So people try to understand why
suddenly the society, no matter in democratic society or non-democratic society, have this
kind of national leaders. Some people contribute this to the financial crisis in 2008. Because
people said that “now you see, without a strong leadership we cannot deal with the crisis. We
need a strong government to have an efficient policy to save us from crisis.” And some
people said “no, it is because of the decline of liberalism. And liberalism has gone too far that
people dislike it. And people said “okay we prefer a traditional form.”
Not only in China, many intellectuals discussed about the pre-Qin history and the pre-
Qin philosophy. And also in the US and in Europe, they all resumed classical value. People
said we need classical values: the values to prevent the divorce because the rate of divorce
has increased too fast. In the UK, the rate of divorce increases faster than the rate of marriage.
So people said they no longer like this kind of liberalist society. We want a conservative one.
I don’t know. I cannot make any judgement about who is right or who is wrong. But one
thing is clear. People are dissatisfied with the reality. People want to have change. Obama
won the election based on one word “change.” He won the election with the word change but
Americans were dissatisfied with his politics. They said you only change the colour of the
skin, but you didn’t change anything else. So here we failed in the election. People said we no
longer trust democrats because this time you will change the gender but not in policy. They
want substantial change. Not only in the US, in many countries, people want to have
substantial change. So this is a general trend. I’ll use the one term to describe this. It is
“diversity.” The world politically diversified wide and wide. It can hardly make people find
the common consensus.
Finally, I’ll talk about the Eastern Asia. How about our region? And China’s rise
makes a lot of people feel the fear. China’s rise will make this region become more
prosperous? Or China’s rise will help bring war to us? People are uncertain about it. If China
makes this region rich and prosperous, everyone will like it. If China fared into war with the
US and coincidentally fight in not America, but fight in East Asia, that’s dangerous.

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Peace in East Asia
The peace in East Asia will be guaranteed by 2 factors.
Nuclear Peace
First, the nuclear weapon. You can find that even in North Korea that possesses
limited nuclear capability…very limited nuclear equipment, the US gave up the idea to attack
North Korea with military force. That illustrates the theory: as long as two countries possess
nuclear weapons and no matter how preemptive it is, these two countries will not fare into
large scale wars. India possesses nuclear weapon and Pakistan follows India’s suit. And
people are vulnerable about that. They said this is dangerous because they’re not
superpowers. Not unlike the US and the Soviet Union. They’re not as rational as the
superpowers. The history tells us that exact same rational as the superpowers when they
possess nuclear weapons. Since these two countries possess nuclear capability, the major
conflicts between these two countries dramatically decline. The war between these countries
becomes less and less possible. So nuclear weapons can guarantee the general security in this
region.
 The Military Balance between China and the US
The second factor is the military balance between the US and its clients. Actually the
peace for Eastern Asia since 1991 is mainly, in my view, based on bipolar configuration.
Today we’re talking about bipolarization is going to be global configuration. But for regional
configuration, it is different. The Middle East – multipolar configuration. In Africa –
multipolar configuration. But if you go to Latin America, that’s a unipolar configuration.
Brazil dominates that region. For East Asia, for long time it has been bipolar configuration
between China and the US. Just now that this has become more and more obvious.
So this bipolarity in terms of military, not in economy. In terms of economy, Japan
was the number one country in this region in the 1990s. China has surpassed Japan
economically in the 21st
century, not late 20th
century. So this bipolar configuration in East
Asia is in terms of military.
This military bipolar configuration can guarantee that neither China nor the US dare
to initiate the war in this region. That’s why we enjoy this longer peace. But in Europe, it’s
the opposite. The balance between NATO, the US and Russia totally changed. The balance
disappeared. Russia became weaker. The balance was broken and then they experienced three
wars. This region was just opposite. The military gap between China and the US is decreased
rather than increased. So I think the more balanced military between these 2 countries will
save these countries from military crisis.
Bipolar Diplomacy
How about East Asia in terms of diplomacy? In terms of diplomacy, it seems to me
bipolar diplomacy is gaining momentum. And the multilateral diplomacy is being
undermined. Not only in the US that prefer bilateral talk with China but they prefer bilateral
talks with everyone even with Japan and South Korea. The typical case is North Korea’s
nuclear issue. Since the parties talk happened there for more than a decade. And the six-party
talk cannot find any solution to settle down the nuclear peace treaty in the Korean Peninsula.
The US talked with China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan individually. This bilateral

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diplomacy leads to summit between Trump and Kim Jong-un. And now I think they’re going
to have another one and very soon. This is all through bilateral diplomacy.
So you find that not only in terms of security and trade and now people talk about
bilateral treaty in this region. The cooperation will become lesser negative part about the
country. The cooperation and also the bilateral talk are gaining momentum. First, China’s
One Belt One Road project. Most of them are bilateral projects. And you look at the student
exchange program – bilateral. You can hardly find any multilateral in the student exchange
program. I don’t know if it’s good or bad but obviously the government in this region find
that we should be realistic. And bilateral diplomacy will help us to settle down the disputes
and improve our cooperation in all fields.
The reason is very simple. There’s no whole regional architecture. We have any
international institutions for East Asia? No. We have one ASEAN for Southeast Asia only.
Even Southeast Asia the ASEAN as organization seldom has any touch on the issue of North
Korea’s nuclear issue. They do not want to be involved in the North Korea nuclear issue. So
from my understanding, before we have an East Asia regional institution. It’s difficult to
make the multilateral diplomacy as the main approach for regional cooperation or settle down
or solve the regional problems.
The East Asia’s Values and Political Culture
Finally, I’ll raise up the very academic issues. How about the East Asia value? I
discuss about the competition between this and that ideology. Does Eastern Asia can provide
any kind of ideology shared by the rest of the world? I don’t know. But in many countries
including India they said the Western ideologies have dominated the world for 200 years. Our
only inter-cultural [relations] including India, Japan, South Korea, ASEAN countries and
China. They said look at this region. We have a very different history, culture, food. People
even call us chopstick couple. We don’t use forks and knives. Actually people told me why
we prefer chopsticks rather than forks and knives. They said it’s because forks and knives are
very dangerous. At the dinner table, we may use them as weapons to kill them. Chopsticks
are the same.
No matter what, we have to admit that culturally this region, East Asia, has different
cultures. The ideology – liberalism is so popular after the Cold War. And many countries and
governments follow this liberalist ideology. But for Western countries, they still think “you
are not the same like us. You’re backward from us. Your ideology is not so modern like us.”
But now it seems to me that situation has changed. People in East Asia revalue our own
ideology. I don’t mean the communist ideology. I don’t mean the official ideology. I mean
our social culture. We call it political culture. This region has our own culture because this
culture makes our region different. Some people believe this culture makes our economy
grow faster than Europe because of the culture. It’s not because of the similarities but because
of the differences. Because we’re not exactly the same as Europeans so we can make
economics grow faster than Europe. That’s the reason. People also start to find that this
region has a longer peace than other regions. So people from Malaysia told me “look at that,
our religion is Muslim but we’re peaceful Muslims. Our Muslims are different from other
Muslims.” I said “what’s the difference?” They said “we have a different culture from them.
We have the same religion but different culture.” So you may have the same political system
like Europe but you have a different culture from Europe. This specialty, this difference
makes this region unique. Positively it makes economics grow faster, develop faster, and

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become more peaceful. Negatively, it may cause some unpleasant things. I don’t know. From
the Europeans’ eyes, our culture is not modern and not that advanced.
Finally, I’ll say East Asia will inevitably become the center of the world. No matter
you like it or not. The world’s center already started to shift from Europe towards Eastern
Asia – China, Japan and South Korea. These three countries’ GDP are already larger than
EU. It surpassed ASEAN and much larger than EU plus Russia. Right? ASEAN’s GDP is
much larger than Russia.
So military part is the same. And this region’s military part is larger than Europe. The
more money you have, the more military capability you have inevitably you have more
influence than the other regions. It’s not necessary that you have more money is a good thing.
And whenever we’re poor I never worried being robbed. I have nothing. When I was poor, I
never worried about my children being kidnapped because no one will kidnap my children
that are so poor. When we become the rich, you have problems. Security will become a big
problem. The wealth…because this region accumulates the wealth faster, all the major
powers will compete for this. They will compete for the dominant influence in this region. So
being the world’s center means 2 things. First, it means you have more influence than other
regions. Second, it means there’s more tension in this region because of the competition
among the major powers.
Okay can we open up the floor to the audience for questions. Thank you very much.
Q&A Session
Moderator: And now we have an opportunity for every one of us to ask questions because it
has covered a lot of several fields according to globalization, economics and politics. Here’s
an opportunity for anyone to ask questions. Please raise your hand and the microphone will
be transferred to you.
Question 1: Professor, first of all, thank you very much for your intriguing lecture today. I’m
happy to have you and your colleagues here. I just would like to steal this opportunity
because I believe there will be many more questions to come. So I’m from the Institute of
Diplomacy and International Studies as well. And I have a few questions for you.
First of all, you were mentioning about the era in which the US have been retreating from
taking responsibility as the world leader and in the era that the Western ideology like
liberalism and democracy is on decline. In this kind of situation, do you think China is going
to step up and take that kind of responsibility? And also talking about the ideology, what kind
of ideology that China will bring upon as it takes up its responsibility? Would that be national
interest? Or sovereignty integrity or what else I’m not sure. That’s the first question.
Question 2: And the second question. I have a question about your talking about the world of
bipolarity. And from your article in Foreign Affairs I found you mention also that the US
remain in its own hemisphere. And China also remains in its own hemisphere. That’s why
they can co-exist peacefully for the time being. But in the future I wonder how this situation

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will last for…I’m not sure how long it would last for because if you see today. We see that
the US often infringe on the ideology that or… you kind of have the ideology clash. The US
criticize China for the issue like human rights for example. So I’m not sure if this kind of
peaceful coexistence can last for that long.
Question 3: The last question. You’re talking about cultural relativism, which was mentioned
in John Mearsheimer’s book “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.” And from his
interpretation, he said it incorporates the concept of Confucianism. And based on this kind of
cultural relativism means China will be a benevolent superpower. But anyway from his
interpretation as well, Confucianism and cultural relativism doesn’t deny the use of force if
any state is considered immoral. So the question is if any state infringes on China’s national
interest or the case of South China Sea for example, will that state be considered as immoral?
And what China will deal with this kind of situation? Thank you.
Answer: Well I have three questions. First, whether China is ready to replace the US
leadership. And from my understanding, the answer is very clear. It’s very simple. It’s no.
First, it’s beyond China’s capability to undertake this leadership. Leadership requires
capability. It’s not only wealth. That’s very important. Second, the Chinese government
officials have repeated several times that China doesn’t want to challenge the US leadership.
And even we don’t want to follow American leadership and we don’t want to challenge
American leadership.
Third, from a very practical perspective, China has to understand that and the US have to
involve in lots of issues which are very costly and very dangerous and require leadership.
That means that kind of leadership undermines American national capability. The typical
case is Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan is the longest war that the US fought in history
of the last 200 years. From 2001 until now, it’s 18 years – much longer than the war in
Vietnam. The US have consulted with China about this issue. They said whether China would
want to take over these military camps to send them purely into the country, to maintain the
current government. China’s answer is very simple. The first is that “no.” This problem
kicked out by yourself. You should take responsibility for it. Because the war was launched
by the US, not by others. So this issue kicked out by yourself. You should implement that
job. So China strongly encouraged the US to stay there. Don’t gather your troops out. And
stay there as long as possible. You can understand not only this. The US also understand that
this kind of leadership is very costly and undermines the national resources.
So from these three perspectives, I don’t think China is ready to undertake…to fill the
vacuum like the US. That’s why my prediction in the next 5 years it’s very possible we’re
going to witness a war without global leadership. That’s the new situation.
The second question is about how long China and the US can keep this peaceful co-
existence? My understanding, we are talking about the peaceful co-existence and that can be
defined in two concepts. First, peaceful coexistence means there is no war. I think I can
guarantee that and it’s almost no danger for China and the US to fare into the war in the next
five years. But the second definition about the peaceful coexistence means cooperation. It
means whether China and the US can cooperate with each other, provide a joint leadership,
cooperate with each other, make the world safer, make the world economy grows faster and
bring more prosperity for the whole world. I doubt about that. Counterintuitively, and it
seems to me it’s very difficult for these two countries to develop cooperation. At least, the

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Trump administration doesn’t think cooperation is the right solution for American national
interest. And in that way, I think this is difficult. Second problem comes from Chinese side.
By now, our government denies the core of the Cominturn of the relationship of the China
and the US. It’s a competition. Our government has formed a belief that the relationship
between China and the US is cooperative. Cooperation is the core of our relationship, not
competition. So American Harvard professor asked me how can we make China and the US
to establish the mechanism or regimes to manage the competition between these two
countries and prevent the competition as creating intermingling clashes. I think that it is the
very right thinking but then I ask the team with the question. I said “if China do not admit
that there’s a competition between China and the US, how can you establish the mechanism
to manage that competition?” From China’s perspective, there is no competition – one that
you manage. So from my understanding, if we want these countries to cooperate more, these
two countries must, both sides of the metric, admit that the core of the relationship is a
competition, not cooperation. If any side believes there is no competition, I doubt they can
cooperate with each other. Only the metric…the competition is a core part of the relationship.
They were considering how to manage the cooperation, how to manage competition, how to
prevent the competition as leading to disaster. And they were considering to develop
preventative cooperation. Preventative cooperation refers to the cooperation that prevents the
disaster of military confrontation between the two countries. It’s opposite from the positive
cooperation. So it also means negative cooperation. Positive cooperation means that like
[countries] work together against the third party like the members of NATO. There is a
positive cooperation against Russia. Preventative cooperation is not against the third party but
against each other, against the partners of the cooperation. I think ASEAN countries kind of
have a very clear mind about the preventative cooperation. It seems ARI is established and
uses these confluences to build the buffer and to prevent conflicts among ASEAN countries.
So this is called the cooperative cooperation. And this moment, as long as China and the US,
as long as the US doesn’t think cooperation benefits the US and China does not admit that the
competition is very serious - that is a core part of relationship - I doubt they can develop that
kind of very substantial and widely preventative cooperation. So neither join the leadership.
The last question is about Confucianism. Confucianism is worldly influential and not
only in China, but also in Japan, South Korea and many ASEAN countries. Confucianism is a
philosophy. And for the Europeans and the Americans and even the Africans, they regard
Confucianism as a religion. Actually for Eastern Asian countries they said “No, this is no
religion. This is philosophy. This is culture.” Ok. Confucianism is a world powerful. In
China, Confucianism is still in our blood and a governor of family life. Right. We require the
kids to be filial to the parents, but Confucianism is not an official ideology. Confucianism is
not advocated by any Eastern Asian countries. In Eastern Asia, some countries, China and
North Korea, their official ideology is Communism. It is totally different from Confucianism.
Confucianism governs people’s lives but not the governor of policy. In Thailand, Philippines,
Indonesia and Singapore, Confucianism also governs family life but not governs your policy.
Your policy is literally guided by Liberalism. So Confucianism is not an official ideology,
only a social ideology shared by people. It is difficult for Confucianism to become a
dominating or globally influential ideology in the coming years. That is my understanding
and my response to this request.

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Question 4: In your lecture, you state that technology which has like AI, like robots [that]
play important role in our lives. So I think the technology you mentioned should include
applications like Facebook, Twitter and Google products. So my question is why our
government doesn’t allow our Chinese people to use products like Google products and
Facebook because in several months I will go back to China, I won’t have the chance to use
them. If I want to use the products, I have to use the VPN. So we call it essential. So please
answer my question with international politics knowledge. Thank you.
Answer: Well. First, I think of a shared worldview. If we can use Twitter and the Google
Scholar in mainland China, it is much more convenient for us to do the research right? So I
really want that there is no such control about it. The second and this has already become a
serious issue between China and the US during the negotiation of the trade war. And the US
want to have China to allow Google and Twitter - this digital economy – to come to China,
invest in China independently, not a shared, not a joint venture. The reason is very simple.
It’s because the digital economy is growing bigger, and the bigger share of the whole China
GDP is growing. So for the US, they said “Hey. You cannot cut off that big slice from
investment, only allow the Americans invest in some of periphery area. I want to be invited in
this prosperous few. So now I think that there is a negotiation.” The web block like you said
is because of the Chinese government’s political concern about whether they can allow these
companies to operate their companies, run their companies according to their will, according
to the Chinese government’s requirement. Well, if you ask me why, I will tell you my
personal understanding like your understanding. I think that there is a kind of fear. The fear
about the…this fear has been there for decades and do you remember that? Oh. You cannot
remember that because you were not born in the 1980s when we opened the door. You maybe
the post-nineties. And when Deng Xiaoping opened the country, we adopted the policy called
the “opening up and the reform” policy and many people opposed this idea. But wait a
minute. If you open this country and many buy things and buy ideas that are welcomed… so
Deng Xiaoping have to face with this situation. How can I tell to persuade people that I open
the window and some flies and mosquitoes will come in to the room. That is true. Then Deng
Xiaoping tell them “I know if we open the window, the mosquitoes and the flies will come in,
but also we’ll get fresh air. The fresh air is a main thing. It is more important and brings more
health to us and rather than the dynamic caused by the flies and mosquitoes. So for him, he
gives the analysis: open up the door can benefit China more than close the door. Today, the
opening up policy is no longer say yes to the trade, investment, finance and education. These
come through the cyber. Right. We can move into the age of knowledge and separate
economy. It becomes the most important part. How much should we open up the Internet?
That becomes the issue. So if you ask me why, I would say there is still that kind of very old
traditional fear exists. They are worried about opening without the firewall and the negative
evil measures will flee and then will cause some social unhealthy things. So from my
understanding, this already caused a debate at home. Many people argue that, including me,
we think the most effective strategy to win the war, I mean the trade war, is not to close the
door. It’s not to make the country protected by the firewall. It’s just obvious. We should open
the door because the last forty-year experience tells us. We become more prosperous than
before, we are growing faster than before especially when we’re compared with India. You
know? In the 1980s, our situation and India’s are quite similar, maybe even worse than India.
How can we develop faster than India in the last forty years? Because we are more open than
India. India is multi more democratic than China. No doubt. But India is closed society. They
do not open as much as China. So for my understanding, our own experiences tell us that we

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need to open the country as wider as possible. So my answer to you and your suggestion, I
think it’s good but I’m not so sure that your suggestion will become the policy. Thank you.
Question 5: How China can become stronger than the United States and what positive things
China can provide to Eastern Asian countries?
Answer: First, I think of, according to my very limited knowledge and in our history. I was
born in 1952 and just three years after the PRC had been established. As through my life, I
think this country improved the fast in the period of the 1980s. The 1980s is much poorer
than now. The 1980s is even less open than now but then what. In the 1980s, this whole
country, every citizen, found that we’re moving in the right direction. We want to make the
country rich. We want to make the country as advanced as these advanced countries. So this
aspiration and help by everyone, so people work very hard, and then they make all of this
progress. Today, how can we make china stronger than the US and the first, we must admit
that we are weaker than the US. What does that mean? It means that we have a lot of defects.
We have a lot of shortcomings and not as good as the US. Even the US is not that nice
country to China. We also have to learn from the US their advantages and learn their strong
points. So that is Confucianism. Confucians make the argument that you can learn from
anyone when you work with other two people. He is very safe. He is not so sure about even
you work with one person and you get to know something that you don’t know before, maybe
he’s concerned maybe you’re smart like your wife, so two people do not make sense. So he
said “with three people work together, there is definitely one of them that knows something
you don’t know.” It means China first has to admit our shortcomings, our defects, our
problems. Only we face this problem frankly and then we are looking for the master and the
process to solve the problem and to improve ourselves. So at this moment, we cannot be too
proud of ourselves. We do make progress faster than the others can. But then even that, we
have to ask the question: why we cannot make the move faster of ourselves? Why we still
cannot make this country as strong as the US? There must be something wrong. I think this is
very important. In the Chinese, we say ...Chinese speaking... means you look into yourself to
find your own shortcomings. Second, and how can we make this country stronger than the
US? My understanding, we have to continue Deng Xiaoping’ strategy, opening up and then
reform. Actually not only Chinese, every country including America they require social
reform. That is why they use the term change…change US so they ask the government to
take the initiative to change the country. That means reform. Then we have the question. We
change the equation in what direction. We change our country according to what standard.
We change the country with what kind of reference. That is a problem. So for my
understanding, that is why Deng Xiaoping put two things together, opening up. Opening up
means open the country to view the world. That, you can find some country that has
something better than us then we just learn that point. And so opening up will make us
understand what is wrong, what is right, what is progressive, what is re-progressive and what
represents the future, what represents the peace. And so opening up, only when we open the
country, we know what the direction for us to change the country is. Only when we open up
this country then we can find the standard and the reference for us to make East Asians know
how to change this country. So if you ask me how, I think every field, they have the special
protests and now they cannot continue to do it. In general, we should open up the country and
reform ourselves, continue, no stop. There is a wrong concept and the finish or implement the
reform. This is a wrong concept. Reform never be ended, can never be ended because war is

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change and the society is changing and they always face new things. You know reform can
never stop when our products just continue.
Second, what positive thing we can bring to the world, I think that we can bring to the
world two things. First, it is a lesson, which is the most important experiences. A lot of our
experiences are not suitable for other countries. These countries have different cultures,
different history, different mentalities and different customs. And I don’t think that there is
any country that can copy China’s model very successfully. And even the Chinese
government clearly stated that the precondition for the success of China’s economic
development is a Chinese communist party’s rule. Without this precondition, we don’t think
that you can copy our model and achieve the same success. And so for my understanding, our
lesson is more important for other countries to learn. That means don’t repeat the mistake we
have made. And then for instances, we suffer a lot and we suffer more than you from this
maze. The haze and the smog is very serious in Beijing and in many cities and the reason is
that we gather this further investment to China at the beginning. We’re never concerned what
kind of pollution they will bring to this country. We’re only concerned how much money
they can produce, then when along with the gross of the capability of production and then
you find that environment to be undermined, not only air and also water polluted by these
industries. So now we notice that we attract foreign investment. We must be concerned. We
said we look through the check what is the result of the pollution whether they bring the so-
called green technology or it’s a traditional technology. I think in the last forty years, we have
a lot of lessons that can be learned by other countries. This is one and there’s the other thing.
I think this is too simple. These countries say improvement or these countries prosper and
make this country have a huge consumption capability. We can purchase things. We can
consume thing. And many countries need a consuming market. They have to sell their things
to China. And this is…will be very positive.
***

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The Public forum is organized by Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies (IDIS)
College of Government, Rangsit University, Ambassador Sompong Sanguanbun Dean of
IDIS and moderated by Ajarn Nutteerata Vititwinyuchon.
Distinguished guests: Asst. Prof. Nares Pantaratorn, Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs at
Rangsit University, Ambassador Dr. Jitriya Pinthong, Vice-Rector for Foreign Affairs at
Rangsit University, Dr. Anuson Chinvanno, and Assoc. Prof. Veera Somboon etc.