You've spoken honestly about the possibility of war between US and China in the long
term if no diplomatic solution is found, for example, on the question of
Taiwan and one China policy. How do we avoid the trajectory where these two
superpowers clash. Well, it's worth reading that book on the difficult to pronounce
the Acidides trap. I believe it's called I love war history and say out
and backwards, there's hardly a battle I haven't read read about, and trying
to figure out what really was the cause of victory in any particular case,
as opposed to one side or another claim for the reason both the victory and
what sparked the war. And yeah, yeah, the whole thing. Yeah,
so that Athens and Sparta is classic case. The thing about the Greek
is that really wrote down a lot of stuff. They loved writing. You
know, there are lots of interesting things that happened in many parts of the
world, but they just people didn't write down, so we don't know what
happen, and or they didn't really write with in detail. They just would
say like we went, we had a battle, and we won, and
like what can you add a bit more? The Greeks, they really wrote
a lot. They're very articulate on they just love writing, so and we
have a bunch of that writing that's preserved. So we know what led up
to the Peloponnesian War between the Spartan and Athenian alliance, and we know that
they for quite they saw it coming. I mean, the Spartans didn't write.
They also weren't very for both by their nature, but they did right,
but they weren't very for they were ters. But the Athenians and the
other Greeks wrote a line and they were like and Spartan was really kind of
like the leader of Greece. But but Athens grew stronger and stronger with each
passing year, and everyone's like, well that's inevitable that there's going to be
a clash between Athens and Sparta. Well how do we avoid that? And
they couldn't. They couldn't. They actually they saw it coming and they still
could not avoid it. So you know, at some point, if there's
if one group, one civilization or country or whatever exceeds another sort of like
if you know, the United States has been the biggest ki kill in the
block since I think Ground eighteen ninety From an economic standpoint, so the United
States has been the economic most powerful economic engine in the world longer than anyone's
been alive. And the foundation of war is economics. So now we have
a situation in case of China where the the economy is likely to be two,
perhaps three times larger than that of the US. So imagine your the
biggest kid in the block for as long as anyone can remember, and suddenly
a kid comes along, here's twice your size. So we see it coming.
How is it possible to stop? Is there some let me throw something
out there, just intermixing of cultures, understanding there does seem to be a
giant cultural gap and understanding of each other. And you're an interesting case study
because you are an American. Obviously you've done a lot incredible manufacture here in
the United States, but you also work with China. I've spent a lot
of time in China. I met with the leadership many times. Maybig A
good question to ask is what are some things about China that people don't understand?
Positive just in the culture. What's some interesting things that you've learned about
the Chinese? Well, your number of really smart, hard working people in
China is incredible there are I belief if you say, like how many smart,
hard working people are there in China, there's far more of them there
than they are here. I think, in my opinion, the UH and
they've got a lot of energy. So I mean, the architecture in China
that's in recent years is far more impressive than the US. I mean that
the train stations, the buildings, the high speed rail, everything, it's
really far more impressive than what we have in the US. I mean,
I recommend somebody just go to Shanghai and Beijing, look at the buildings and
go to you know, take the train from Beijing to Chian where you have
the Terracotta warriors. China's got incredible history, very long history, and you
know, I think arguably the in terms of the use of language from from
a written standpoint, sort of one of one of the oldest, perhaps perhaps
the oldest written language. And then China people did write things down. So
now, China historically has always been, with rare exception, been internally focused.
They have not been acquisitive. They've they've fought each other. There have
been many, many civil wars in the Three Kingdoms. War I believe they
lost about seventy percent of their population. So and then so they've had brutal
internal wars like civil wars that make the US of a war look small by
comparison. So I think it's important to appreciate that China is not monolithic.
We sort of think of like China's the sort of one entity of one and
this is definitely not the case from what I've seen. And I think most
people who understand China would agree that people in China think about China ten times
more than they think about anything outside of China. So it's like ninety percent
of their consideration is you know, are is in tonal? Well, isn't
that a really positive thing? When you're talking about the collaboration and a future
piece between superpowers, when you're inward facing, which is like focusing on improving
yourself versus focusing on yeah, quote unquote, improving others through military might.
The good news the history of China suggests that China is not inquisitive, meaning
they're not going to go out and invade a whole bunch of countries. Now,
they do feel very strongly, you know, So that's that's good.
I mean, because a lot of a lot of very powerful countries have been
inquisitive. The US is one of the also one of the rare cases that
has not been inquisitive. After World War Two, the US could have basically
taken over the world in any country, like we got nukes, nobody else
got nukes. We don't even have to lose soldiers. Which country do you
want? And the United States could have taken over everything? Oh wait,
ad will and it didn't. And the United States actually helped revolt countries.
So it helped rebuilt Europe, you know, helped rebuilt Japan. This is
very unusual behavior, almost unprecedented. You know. The US did conspicuous acts
of kindness like the Berlin Airlift, you know, and I think, you
know, it's always like, well, America has done bad things. Well,
of course America has done bad things. But one needs to look at
the whole track record and just generally, you know, one one sort of
test would be how do you treat your prisoners of war? Or let's say,
you know, no offense to the Russians, but let's say you're in
Germany, it's nineteen forty five, you got the Russian army coming one side,
and you got the French, British and American armies coming the other side.
Who would you like to be surrendered to? Like, no country is
like morally perfect, but I recommend being a POW with the Americans. That
would be my choice, very strongly in the very much so. And in
fact, one of them, Brown took, you know, a small guy,
was like, we've got to be captured by the Americans. And in
fact the ss was under orders to execute bon Brown and all of the German
rockin issues and they narrowly escaped their SSI. They said they were going out
for a walk in the woods. They left in the middle of winter with
no coats, and it ran like no food, no coast, no water,
and just ran like hell and ran west and by share like they I
think his brother found like a bicycle or something and and then just cycled,
where as fasts he couldn't found found a U. S patrol. So anyway,
that's that's one that's one way you can tell moralities. Who where do
you want to be a p W. It's not fun anywhere, but some
places are much worse than others. So anyway, so like America has been,
while far from perfect, generally a benevolent force, and we should always
be self critical and we try to be better. But anyone with half of
r knows that. So so I think there are in this way, China
and the United States are similar. Neither country has been acquisitive in a significant
way. So that's like a you know, a shared principle. I guess
now. Now China does feel very strongly about Taiwan. They've been very clear
about that for a long time. You know, from this downpoint, it's
it's it would be like one of the states is you know, not there,
like like Hawaii or something like that, but but more significant than Hawaii,
you know, and Hawaii is pretty significant for US, so that they
viewed as as as really the that there's a fundamental part of China, the
island of Formosa now Taiwan that is not part of China but should be.
And the only reason it hasn't been is because the US specific fleet and is
there economic power grows and is their military power grows. The thing that they
are clearly saying is their interests will you know, clearly be materialized. Yes,
China has been very clear that they will incorporate Taiwan peacefully or militarily,
but that they will incorporate it from this standpoint is likely. You know,
something you said about conspicuous acts of kindness as a geopolitical policy. It almost
seems naive, but I'd venture to say that this is probably the path forward
how you avoid most wars. Just as you say, it sounds naive,
but it's kind of brilliant if you believe in the goodness of underlying most of
human nature. It just seems like conspicuous acts of kindness can reverberate through the
populace of the country is involved. Yeah, well, and de escalate absolutely.
So after World War One, the they made a big mistake. You
know, they basically try to all the blame on Germany and and and you
know, settled Germany with uh impossible reparations, and you know, really there
was a lot of blame. There's a fair quite a bit of blame to
go around for World War One, but they try to put it all in
Germany, and uh, that was that that laid the seeds for World War
Two. So that's a lot of people were not just Hitler. A lot
of people felt wrong and they wanted vengeance and they got it. People don't
forget Yeah, you can you kill somebody's father, mother, son, daughter,
They're not gonna forget it. They will want vengeance. So after World
War two they're like, well, the treat of us I was a huge
mistake in World War One, and so this time instead of uh, you
know, crushing the losers, we're actually gonna help them with the Marshall Plan,
and we're gonna help revolt Germany. We're gonna help rebold or you know,
Austria and the other you know, Italy and whatnot. So and that
was the right move. There's a does feel like there's a profound truth to
uh conspicuous acts of kind as being an antidote to this. Something missed up
the cycle of versus go violence. Something must stop it or it will,
you know you it'll, it'll, it'll never stop. Just eye for an
eye, tooth for a tooth, limb for a limb, life for a
life, forever and ever,