g'day, my name's kevin. i'm from australia. i'm here to help. (laughter) tonight, i want to talk abouta tale of two cities. one of those cities is called washington,and the other is called beijing. because how these two capitalsshape their future and the future of the united statesand the future of china doesn't just affect those two countries, it affects all of us
in ways, perhaps, we've never thought of: the air we breathe, the water we drink, the fish we eat,the quality of our oceans, the languages we speak in the future, the jobs we have,the political systems we choose, and, of course, the great questionsof war and peace. you see that bloke? he's french. his name is napoleon. a couple of hundred years ago,
he made this extraordinary projection: "china is a sleeping lion,and when she awakes, the world will shake." napoleon got a few things wrong; he got this one absolutely right. because china is todaynot just woken up, china has stood upand china is on the march, and the question for us all is where will china go
and how do we engagethis giant of the 21st century? you start looking at the numbers,they start to confront you in a big way. it's projected that china will become, by whichever measure --ppp, market exchange rates -- the largest economy in the world over the course of the decade ahead. they're alreadythe largest trading nation, already the largest exporting nation, already the largest manufacturing nation,
and they're also the biggestemitters of carbon in the world. america comes second. so if china does becomethe world's largest economy, think about this: it'll be the first time since this guy was onthe throne of england -- george iii, not a good friendof napoleon's -- that in the world we will haveas the largest economy a non-english speaking country,
a non-western country, a non-liberal democratic country. and if you don't thinkthat's going to affect the way in which the worldhappens in the future, then personally, i thinkyou've been smoking something, and it doesn't mean you're from colorado. so in short, the questionwe have tonight is, how do we understand this mega-change, which i believe to be the biggest changefor the first half of the 21st century?
it'll affect so many things. it will go to the absolute core. it's happening quietly.it's happening persistently. it's happening in some sensesunder the radar, as we are all preoccupied with what's going in ukraine,what's going on in the middle east, what's going on with isis,what's going on with isil, what's happening withthe future of our economies. this is a slow and quiet revolution.
and with a mega-changecomes also a mega-challenge, and the mega-challenge is this: can these two great countries, china and the united states -- china, the middle kingdom, and the united states, mä›iguã³ -- which in chinese, by the way,means "the beautiful country."
think about that -- that's the namethat china has given this country for more than a hundred years. whether these two great civilizations,these two great countries, can in fact carve out a common future for themselves and for the world? in short, can we carve out a future which is peaceful and mutually prosperous, or are we looking at a great challenge of war or peace?
and i have 15 minutesto work through war or peace, which is a little less time than they gave this guy to write a bookcalled "war and peace." people ask me, why is it that a kidgrowing up in rural australia got interested in learning chinese? well, there are two reasons for that. here's the first of them. that's betsy the cow. now, betsy the cow was oneof a herd of dairy cattle
that i grew up with on a farmin rural australia. see those hands there?these are not built for farming. so very early on, i discoveredthat in fact, working in a farm was not designed for me,and china was a very safe remove from any career in australian farm life. here's the second reason. that's my mom. anyone here ever listento what their mom told them to do? everyone ever do whattheir mom told them to do?
i rarely did, but what my mom said to me was, one day, she handed me a newspaper, a headline which said,here we have a huge change. and that change is chinaentering the united nations. 1971, i had just turned 14 years of age, and she handed me this headline. and she said, "understand this,learn this, because it's going to affect your future."
so being a very good student of history, i decided that the best thingfor me to do was, in fact, to go off and learn chinese. the great thing about learning chinese is that your chinese teachergives you a new name. and so they gave me this name: kã¨, which means to overcome or to conquer, and wã©n, and that's the characterfor literature or the arts. k㨠wã©n, conqueror of the classics.
any of you guys called "kevin"? it's a major lift from being called kevinto be called conqueror of the classics. i've been called kevin all my life. have you been called kevin all your life? would you prefer to be calledconqueror of the classics? and so i went off after thatand joined the australian foreign service, but here is where pride -- before pride,there always comes a fall. so there i am in the embassy in beijing, off to the great hall of the people
with our ambassador, who had asked meto interpret for his first meeting in the great hall of the people. and so there was i. if you've been to a chinese meeting,it's a giant horseshoe. at the head of the horsehoeare the really serious pooh-bahs, and down the end of the horseshoeare the not-so-serious pooh-bahs, the junior woodchucks like me. and so the ambassadorbegan with this inelegant phrase. he said, "china and australiaare currently enjoying a relationship
of unprecedented closeness." and i thought to myself, "that sounds clumsy. that sounds odd. i will improve it." note to file: never do that. it needed to be a little more elegant,a little more classical, so i rendered it as follows. [in chinese] there was a big pauseon the other side of the room.
you could see the giant pooh-bahsat the head of the horseshoe, the blood visibly drainingfrom their faces, and the junior woodchucksat the other end of the horseshoe engaged in peals ofunrestrained laughter. because when i rendered his sentence, "australia and china areenjoying a relationship of unprecedented closeness," in fact, what i said was thataustralia and china were now experiencing fantastic orgasm.
that was the last timei was asked to interpret. but in that little story,there's a wisdom, which is, as soon as you think you know somethingabout this extraordinary civilization of 5,000 years of continuing history, there's always something new to learn. history is against us when it comes to the u.s. and china forging a common future together. this guy up here?
he's not chinese and he's not american. he's greek. his name's thucydides. he wrote the historyof the peloponnesian wars. and he made this extraordinary observation about athens and sparta. "it was the rise of athensand the fear that this inspired in sparta that made war inevitable." and hence, a whole literature aboutsomething called the thucydides trap. this guy here? he's not americanand he's not greek. he's chinese.
his name is sun tzu.he wrote "the art of war," and if you see his statement underneath,it's along these lines: "attack him where he is unprepared,appear where you are not expected." not looking good so farfor china and the united states. this guy is an american.his name's graham allison. in fact, he's a teacherat the kennedy school over there in boston. he's working on a single projectat the moment, which is, does the thucydides trapabout the inevitably of war
between rising powersand established great powers apply to the futureof china-u.s. relations? it's a core question. and what graham has doneis explore 15 cases in history since the 1500s to establish what the precedents are. and in 11 out of 15 of them, let me tell you, they've ended in catastrophic war.
you may say, "but kevin -- or conqueror of the classics -- that was the past. we live now in a worldof interdependence and globalization. it could never happen again." guess what? the economic historianstell us that in fact, the time which we reachedthe greatest point of economic integration and globalization
was in 1914, just before that happened, world war i, a sobering reflection from history. so if we are engagedin this great question of how china thinks, feels, and positions itselftowards the united states, and the reverse, how do we get to the baseline of how these two countriesand civilizations
can possibly work together? let me first go to, in fact, china's views of the u.s.and the rest of the west. number one: china feelsas if it's been humiliated at the hands of the westthrough a hundred years of history, beginning with the opium wars. when after that, the western powerscarved china up into little pieces, so that by the timeit got to the '20s and '30s, signs like this one appearedon the streets of shanghai.
["no dogs and chinese allowed"] how would you feel if you were chinese, in your own country,if you saw that sign appear? china also believes and feels as if, in the events of 1919,at the peace conference in paris, when germany's colonies were given back to all sorts of countriesaround in the world, what about german colonies in china? they were, in fact, given to japan.
when japan then invaded china in the 1930s the world looked away and was indifferentto what would happen to china. and then, on top of that,the chinese to this day believe that the united states and the west do not accept the legitimacyof their political system because it's so radically differentfrom those of us who come from liberal democracies, and believe that the united statesto this day is seeking to undermine their political system.
china also believesthat it is being contained by u.s. allies and by thosewith strategic partnerships with the u.s. right around its periphery. and beyond all that,the chinese have this feeling in their heart of heartsand in their gut of guts that those of us in the collective west are just too damned arrogant. that is, we don't recognizethe problems in our own system, in our politics and our economics,
and are very quickto point the finger elsewhere, and believe that, in fact,we in the collective west are guilty of a great bunch of hypocrisy. of course, in international relations, it's not just the soundof one hand clapping. there's another country too,and that's called the u.s. so how does the u.s.respond to all of the above? the u.s. has a response to each of those. on the question ofis the u.s. containing china,
they say, "no, look at the history ofthe soviet union. that was containment." instead, what we have donein the u.s. and the west is welcome chinainto the global economy, and on top of that, welcome theminto the world trade organization. the u.s. and the west say china cheats on the questionof intellectual property rights, and through cyberattackson u.s. and global firms. furthermore, the united statessays that the chinese political system is fundamentally wrong
because it's at such fundamental variance to the human rights, democracy,and rule of law that we enjoy in the u.s. and the collective west. and on top of all the above,what does the united states say? that they fear that china will,when it has sufficient power, establish a sphere of influencein southeast asia and wider east asia, boot the united states out, and in time, when it's powerful enough, unilaterally seek to changethe rules of the global order.
so apart from all of that,it's just fine and dandy, the u.s.-china relationship. no real problems there. the challenge, though,is given those deep-rooted feelings, those deep-rooted emotionsand thought patterns, what the chinese call "sä«wã©i,"ways of thinking, how can we craft a basisfor a common future between these two? i argue simply this: we can do it on the basis on a framework
of constructive realismfor a common purpose. what do i mean by that? be realistic about the thingsthat we disagree on, and a management approachthat doesn't enable any one of those differencesto break into war or conflict until we've acquiredthe diplomatic skills to solve them. be constructive in areas of thebilateral, regional and global engagement between the two, which will make a differencefor all of humankind.
build a regional institutioncapable of cooperation in asia, an asia-pacific community. and worldwide, act further, like you've begun to doat the end of last year by striking out against climate change with hands joined togetherrather than fists apart. of course, all that happensif you've got a common mechanism and political will to achieve the above. these things are deliverable.
but the question is,are they deliverable alone? this is what our headtells us we need to do, but what about our heart? i have a little experiencein the question back home of how you try to bringtogether two peoples who, frankly, haven't hada whole lot in common in the past. and that's when i apologizedto australia's indigenous peoples. this was a day of reckoningin the australian government, the australian parliament,and for the australian people.
after 200 years of unbridled abusetowards the first australians, it was high time that we white folkssaid we were sorry. the important thing -- (applause) the important thing that i rememberis staring in the faces of all those from aboriginal australia as they came to listen to this apology. it was extraordinary to see, for example, old women telling me the storiesof when they were five years old
and literally ripped awayfrom their parents, like this lady here. it was extraordinary for meto then be able to embrace and to kiss aboriginal eldersas they came into the parliament building, and one woman said to me, it's the first time a white fellahad ever kissed her in her life, and she was over 70. that's a terrible story. and then i rememberthis family saying to me,
"you know, we drove all the wayfrom the far north down to canberra to come to this thing, drove our way through redneck country. on the way back, stopped at a cafeafter the apology for a milkshake." and they walked into this cafequietly, tentatively, gingerly, a little anxious. i think you know what i'm talking about. but the day after the apology,what happened? everyone in that cafe,every one of the white folks,
stood up and applauded. something had happened in the heartsof these people in australia. the white folks, our aboriginalbrothers and sisters, and we haven't solvedall these problems together, but let me tell you,there was a new beginning because we had gone not just to the head, we'd gone also to the heart. so where does that concludein terms of the great question that we've been askedto address this evening,
which is the futureof u.s.-china relations? the head says there's a way forward. the head says there is a policy framework,there's a common narrative, there's a mechanismthrough regular summitry to do these thingsand to make them better. but the heart must also find a wayto reimagine the possibilities of the america-china relationship, and the possibilities of china'sfuture engagement in the world. sometimes, folks, we just needto take a leap of faith
not quite knowing where we might land. in china, they now talk aboutthe chinese dream. in america, we're all familiarwith the term "the american dream." i think it's time, across the world, that we're able to think alsoof something we might also call a dream for all humankind. because if we do that, we might just change the way that we think about each other.
that's my challenge to america.that's my challenge to china. that's my challenge to all of us, but i think where there's a willand where there is imagination we can turn this into a future driven by peace and prosperity and not once again repeat the tragedies of war. i thank you. chris anderson: thanks so much for that.thanks so much for that.
it feels like you yourselfhave a role to play in this bridging. you, in a way, are uniquely placedto speak to both sides. kevin rudd: well, what we australiansdo best is organize the drinks, so you get them together in one room,and we suggest this and suggest that, then we go and get the drinks. but no, look, for all of uswho are friends of these two great countries,america and china, you can do something. you can make a practical contribution,
and for all you good folks here, next time you meet someone from china, sit down and have a conversation. see what you can find out aboutwhere they come from and what they think, and my challenge for allthe chinese folks who are going to watchthis ted talk at some time is do the same. two of us seeking to change the worldcan actually make a huge difference. those of us up the middle,we can make a small contribution.
ca: kevin, all power to you,my friend. thank you. kr: thank you. thank you, folks.
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