 Modern China is, by many measures, the greatest success story in the history of humanity. According to the World Bank, more than 850 million Chinese have been lifted out of extreme poverty in recent decades, with the country's poverty rate falling from 88% in 1981 to just 0.7% in 2015. Just this year, the country announced they had in fact eliminated extreme poverty, all while posting economic growth and leading the fight against Covid. Its GDP has tripled since 2008 and, already by one measure, it's larger than the United States. Meanwhile, China has constructed high-speed rail across the country, spanning some 35,000 miles in the last 15 years and is gradually seeing its economic might percolate through to cultural and political influence. In AI, synthetic biology, and renewable technology, it is starting to even take on the best of the West. Yet we're also told it is a repressive corrupt regime where workers and civil rights are non-existent and where minorities, particularly in Xinjiang and Tibet, face repression, forced labour and massive state violence. Leading companies like Huawei may be starting to compete with the biggest names in Europe and North America, but they are also, so we're told, a Trojan horse the Chinese Communist Party to extend its perfidious authoritarian reach. In short, the rise of China is bad news for Democrats and those who care about social justice. So which is it? Joining me to discuss that today is Martin Jack, also the best-selling when China rules the world, the end of the Western world and the birth of a new global order. Martin, welcome to Downstream. Thank you. The book was first published in 2009 as a hardback. 12 years later, does China now rule the world? Can we put a date on it? Was it 2020? Is it going to be 2025, 2030? I don't think we can really. I mean, I never meant the title literally. I just meant it as a sort of, you know, a sort of metaphor, if you like, drawing on a popular proposition, you know, if I rule the world and so on and all that kind of thing, to dramatise in a way just the extraordinary rise of China that's been taking place. And I think the world is now, in varying degrees, very aware of this phenomena. But actually putting a date on, let's say, when will China become, let's say, the most influential country in the world, I don't, I'd find that very difficult to, in two senses. One, there's a conceptual argument about what that means. And secondly, then placing a date on that would be equally, if not more difficult. I would put it like this, that China is already more or less on a par with the United States economically, but it depends how you measure it. But I think probably it's actually already, in terms of its size and reach, has already overtaken the United States. Certainly by primary purchasing power definition of GDP, which I think in this context is definitely the more important measure. And by 2030 China is likely to be something like probably pushing twice the size of the United States. And that's not so far off, that's only, you know, less than a decade away. We can all see as well now, whereas when my book came out, people didn't really know how to think about this, weren't even thinking in this way. But we can also see how China's influence in the world in all sorts of ways is growing. And I think that it helps to think of this in a slightly bifurcated way. In the developing world, China's influence has grown at pace. And we should always remember that the developing world accounts for 85% of the world's population. So most of the world lives in the developing world. And China rightly still regards itself as primarily a developing country, although parts of it, of course, are already of developed status. In the developing world, China has already overtaken of the United States, I think, in terms of its, certainly its economic influence, I think. But also in terms of certain aspects of political and cultural influence. I mean, China's whole rise has been predicated on the importance of development. This is their word. You don't get this word used in the West, really. But the Chinese emphasis the importance of development. And that's in a way what its offer has been to the developing world, development. And so if you look at the figures around the world in terms of Pew statistics and so on, then Africa, for example, China is ahead of the United States in terms of its influence. In East Asia, apart from Japan and South Korea, and perhaps Taiwan, basically China is, I mean, in Yassin countries, the 10 Southeast Asian countries, China is much more important in most respects than the United States. And that's home to, what is it, about 700 million people, for example. And if you look at the Belt and Road, which is their great sort of development project for Eurasia, this already has, I think, over 100 countries signed up for it. And this is the project to transform the infrastructure of a large part of humanity. So in all these senses, I think China already has surpassed the United States in terms of its influence. Now, in the developed world, I don't think that the situation is different. By the developed world here, I'm essentially referring to what we think of or is usually described as clearly China's influence there is much more limited. And there are a variety of reasons for this. I mean, first of all, China still had compared with the West has got much poorer living standards. So it's not an exemplar, because people don't think, oh, I'll go, it's not like going to America. You're going to America, you used to go to America for opportunity. But this is not really the case in relationship to China as far as the developed world is concerned. And there's another problem in Western attitudes towards China, and that is the West has dominated the world for a very long time. And especially in the recent past, say, let's say around about 2015-16, Trump's elected in 2016. The West, especially the United States has come to see the rise of China as a threat. So there's a great deal of the Sinophobia hostility towards China now in the West as a result of this. If we put it into historic context, how big is the rise of China? Because obviously, there's been a passing of the baton amongst the great powers since forever. You can think of the rise of the United States after the 1860s. You can think of the rise of Japan and Germany at the beginning of the 20th century, the ebbing of the British Empire. What's the analog here? Should we think of the rise of China like the rise of the Netherlands in the 16th century, the rise of the British in the 18th, 19th century, the rise of America? Or is it bigger than all of these potentially? Well, obviously, the characteristic it shares with these countries is that they rose to some form of prominence of power, regional or global, and China is doing exactly the same. But China's on a totally different scale. The nearest comparison is the rise of the United States in the 19th century up until maybe the middle of the 20th century. But its real dynamism in a way was the period up until, well, I could argue about this, but let's say 1939 for the sake of argument. Now, China is on a hugely different scale. Its population is four times that of the United States. So just by virtue of demographic weight, the rise of China is far more dramatic and far bigger than the American phenomenon. I would describe the rise of China as the most important and remarkable economic development in human history. Is that already the case? Or is that if by 2030 it's twice the size of the US? So do you think that's already been accomplished? This is the most important economic development ever already in 2021? It's already the case. I mean, we've never seen a country grow with the speed of China. Say from 1978 with Deng Xiaoping's when Deng Xiaoping's reform started until for 45 years, it grew at 10% a year. That is phenomenal. It means the size of the economy. And we're talking about 1.3, 1.4 billion people. It means the economy doubling in size every seven years. I mean, that is extraordinary transformation. Even in the peak of American growth in the second half of the 19th century, it never grew at about more than 4% a year on average. And that was for a much smaller population. So that's why China's rise is having and will have a huge impact on the rest of the world, a huge impact on the global economy. Because this is the rise of a people who, although historically have been very important and innovative and so on, were basically in four sorts of ways, partly as a result of poverty outside the system or marginal to the system. And suddenly they become the subject of change. They become the new subject of the global economy in a very short space of time. I mean, we're talking about 1978, it starts when the Chinese economy was about 5% of the size of the American economy. To say 2014 is when, according to the World Bank, China overtook the size of the American economy. Just to clarify for audience, I mean, there are two measures of GDP because they might look at the Wikipedia and they'll see nominal GDP and they'll say, well, China's doing very well, but it's not the United States. But there's two measures here, there's PPP and there's nominal GDP. Nominal GDP, China's probably going to overtake the US some point in the next 10 years. But we're talking here about PPP, aren't we, which is a different measure. And that's the measure you're referring to when you say it will be twice the size of the US potentially by 2030. Exactly. And that's the measure used by the IMF and the World Bank. China's certainly still smaller in terms of dollar exchange rates. But it probably will overtake the United States, you can't be sure. It depends. The difficulty with exchange rate measures is it depends on what happens to your currency. So let's say the dollar drops by 20%. Well, China's will be bigger. So it depends. But yeah, it's important that those two different measures people are familiar with. And the thing you say about 10% growth is obviously hugely impressive, but a number of countries have seen 10% growth at one point or another. But like you said, it's that compounding aspect for decades. I mean, I only realised this researching this show over the last couple of weeks that China's economy is basically tripled in size since the Beijing Olympics, more or less, which doesn't feel like that long ago. And you think, well, if that proceeds for another 13 years, we live in a very different world. And so for you, that really explains the enmity coming from the United States in particular since 2014-15. I think that there are two fundamental causes of Western hostility towards China. One is political, stroke cultural, which is that China is obviously has a very different system. And in the recent period, the focus has been on Communist Party, Chinese Communist Party, you know, the sort of implication or often stated actually, this is like the Soviet Communist Party and all that kind of thing. So that's a kind of retreat back into Cold War categories. So that's one source of hostility. But the other, I'm sure we'll come back to that, but the other source of hostility really, but it's lower key and less familiar to people, is that China's very different from the West. I mean, China's never going to be a Western star society. It comes from a completely different history. As we will talk about later, I'm sure, China's not even primarily a nation-state in my view. It's a civilisation, well, it's part civilisation state, part nation-state. So China's never going to be Western. And the West finds this impossible to believe or understand because its whole notion has been a universalistic notion that the world will become and should be like us. We are the template. We are the model. And they're finding this extraordinary difficult to understand. As a result, the level of understanding in the West about China, including not least the elites, is abysmal. If you're enjoying this interview and would like to see more like it, go to navaromedia.com forward slash support. We only exist thanks to the generosity of our supporters. You can make a one-off payment or you can become an ongoing supporter. Either is fine. And we are incredibly grateful to everybody who helps us keep going. It's only thanks to your kindness that Navarra Media even exists. Now on with the interview. So that category of nation-state and civilisation state, can you explain that a little bit? I mean, the phenomenon of the nation-state is relatively recent. I mean, it all sort of starts with the Treaty of Westphalia in the 17th century. But really, the rise of nation-states was primarily a 19th century phenomenon. It's when empires like the Austro-Hungarian Empire and so on broke up and into nation-states. And the nation-states had very clear borders. And they were, it was an essentially a system which rested on a dominant race, a dominant ethnic group. And so there was a kind of intolerance, if you like, that went with the emergence of the nation-state that people don't talk about. But it was empires. In empires, you had many different peoples with many different languages, different religions, different races living alongside each other. That came to an end with the nation-state. Now China's history has been very, China has a very, very long history. I mean, it's as a modern polity, it's certainly existed since 221 BC, when the Qin dynasty succeeded in uniting what became China, if you like, eventually modern-day China. But China's actually existed a lot longer than 2,000 years, because its civilization is so old and has had a sort of remarkable coherence given one's going back so long in history. And the Chinese think, I mean, the Chinese did eventually were required to think of themselves as a nation-state. That was at the end of the 19th century, because they were, this was the century of humiliation. China was very weak in the world, being carved up by Europe and Western and United States and so on. And it was a force in that situation to accept the kind of European template as it was of the international system. So it started having embassies around the world, trying to draw some borders and so on. But actually, if you look at what the way the Chinese think about themselves and what matters about China and what is distinct about China, the relationship between state, very distinctive relationship between state and society, the importance of Confucian values, if you look at the language, if you look at the nature of the Chinese family, all of these things date back way before the end of the 19th century. They date back, you know, over 2,000 years or more in many respects. So China, the modern China has grown out of Chinese civilization, whereas you wouldn't really say that of Western countries, any of the Western countries in the same way. And Western countries, their sense of identity is about national identity. That's not really true for China. The primary source is Chinese civilization. So to understand China, I think you've got to think of it in a very, very different way. You got to rethink history. History has always been the history of the West. Sorry, that's over. You cannot think of the world in the same way. And of course, in the West, we're so ill-equipped that hardly anyone's ever studied in China at all. So they don't know anything about its history. And they easily, you know, it's so easy to say, oh, Communist Party, you know, because we know about that Cold War. Oh, yeah, well, I remember that. So let's think of China in those terms. I'm sorry, you just can't make sense of China like that. This is just a kind of chauvinistic ignorance. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting you say that, because at the moment I'm reading a lot about as well what happened in the Western hemisphere after the late 15th century, you know, effectively a genocide of the indigenous people that some people say conscious, unconscious, whatever. It was clearly a bit of both. I mean, you don't need to talk about intentionality with the numbers involved. You're looking at maybe 100 million people died. And I didn't know this, but you know, the island of Hispaniola, you're looking at a population of between 100,000 and 8 million is the top, top number, the capital of, you know, the most powerful empire there to Nechlitan had a population of apparently five times bigger than Seville. And actually, at the same time as all that's happening, something very similar is, you know, is existing in China. So you have Zheng He, these giant ships far bigger than the ships that Christopher Columbus had discovering, discovering the Americas. And yet, like you said, it's completely absent in Western education. Let's stick with that for a second. I want to come back to the civilization state thing. Do you think that's going to have to become now necessarily a part of kind of the Western curriculum to talk about Chinese history, the history of the Western hemisphere, non European histories? Do you think that's inevitable if we want to remain relatively well informed world citizens? Or do you think that will be foreclosed by this chauvinism as you call it? Well, I think the reality, I mean, the location of power, the sheer importance of China and increasing the other developing countries like India and so on, will force in the West a requirement to know about, about in this instance, about China. I think this will be irresistible in the long run. But it's going to be very, very difficult. Because there's this kind of chauvinism, you know, I mean, we don't even want to look at our own history. If you listen to Boris Johnson, everything's frozen in time, you know, this is part of our history, as if actually history is never frozen, because history always lives in a dialectical relationship with the present. So your history is always changing. The way we study history now is different from the way we'll study in 20 years time. It's not frozen at all. It's a living organism. And I think you say about, because you're not just talking about China, you're also talking about the ASEAN countries, which is this group of countries, including, you know, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand. And I think often in the conversation about China, that group of countries is also ignored because Indonesia, Philippines, you're looking at a huge market in the 21st century. You know, you're looking at a huge GDP between them. You're looking at massive natural resources and so on. And for all of them, China is the biggest trading partner. You know, it's not the United States, it's China. In that conversation of ASEAN, do you think that there's a little bit more of an informed conversation going on, or do you think it's just as ignorant as when they talk about China? I think it's still very ignorant, because it's a long way away. And we don't have that much to do with these countries. British trade is not, and it's not very important for the UK. And we don't know if you ask people, well, what's ASEAN? They probably wouldn't really be able to tell you. The most they'll be able to say is, oh, it's 10 countries. But yeah, yeah, but what is ASEAN? What is the nature of ASEAN? You could probably tell me something about the European Union, but can you tell me how ASEAN is similar to and different from the European Union? And I think very few people will be able to give you an answer to that. I mean, there are obviously people who study it, or diplomats, or academics, and so on. But even them, if you listen to them, sometimes are quite ignorant about it. I mean, ASEAN, you're right, is a very, in my view, ASEAN is extremely important, because actually, you know, modern Chinese diplomacy post-Dong started with ASEAN, in my view. The Chinese made a crucial approach to ASEAN, which was very, in many ways, very un-Chinese, which was to say, basically, no, let's have a relationship and we'll do it on your terms. We'll use your template. And that was the beginning of ASEAN plus one. And then Japan and South Korea came on board a bit later, ASEAN plus three. And the new RCEP agreement of 18 countries is, you know, the template for that is ASEAN. ASEAN has been the driver of it more than China, although, of course, China's absolutely critical to it. So there's a very special relationship between ASEAN and China, which is very, very important. And interesting, you see, Japan and South Korea in Northeast Asia are involved with it, but not like China. Yeah, it's just a huge, you know, these are trillions of dollars worth of economic value there. And I think it's just, again, you know, we're talking about China, like you say, because of the Cold War kind of motifs, but then the rest of East Asia, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia kind of gets ignored. Can I make the civilisation state? Sorry, go on. When you say the importance of East Asia, by which we mean here, I think China and ASEAN and Japan and South Korea and Taiwan. Okay. Now, this is now the largest region in the world economically. It's bigger than Europe. It's bigger than North America. This is the driver of the economic driver of the future. And so the whole region is in motion. And, you know, so you've got to understand the rise of China in these regional terms, not just as China, but in the regional terms. And China, as you mentioned earlier, the biggest trading partner of all of these countries, including Japan and South Korea, is China, not the United States. The United States is less and less important. The United States has been in extraordinary rapid decline economically in the most important economic region in the world. That more or less tells you all you need to know about what the future is going to be like. Yeah, I mean, Vietnam, I think, is a population around 100 million. Thailand, I think 70, 80 million. We're talking about lots of people. Philippines 108 million. Yeah. Huge numbers of people. I mean, bigger than a European country. Indonesia, 260 million. So, I mean, it's a massive thing. Going back to the civilisation state aspect. I mean, I suppose the councillor argument would be Martin, civilisation state. That sounds remarkably similar to Samuel Huntington, the clash of civilisations. Are you not essentialising Chinese culture? Is that fundamentally at odds with an idea of human rights? And I suppose you said the point about empire. And actually, I do agree with you. I don't think it's talked about nearly enough. The Ottoman Empire was more progressive than what came after it, for instance. The Austro-Hapsburg Empire was very progressive in many ways in terms of multicultural toleration and so on. But then equally, I suppose people could say, well, look at the British Empire, look at the French Empire, the Dutch Empire. This was a relationship of subordination. So, why is the British Empire not a civilisation state, but China is? Well, I mean, the British Empire, you know, stretched around the world. I mean, it came to account for about a quarter of the world's population and a quarter of the world's land mass. But we're talking about a tiny island off the northwest coast of Europe. So, its relationship with these countries was based on, you know, well, and it was made possible by the nature of the times, of course, was based on one of subordination. And, I mean, you know, Britain basically, you know, conquered these territories, sometimes with a lot of force, sometimes not with not much force, and required them to be, you know, based on the British model in varying degrees, you know, not always exactly the same. But that was the notion. And the Queen, or the king, was the king and queen of Great Britain. So, that was a very different relationship to, you know, the growth of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or the German Confederation, or even the Russian, you know, the Russian, kind of, the Russian, the Tsarist Empire, and so on. So, I think that they, the problem with the British Empire, of course, the other thing that's very important to emphasise is race in the context of the British Empire. Because it was based on white supremacy, on white superiority. It was conquering lands that were not white. I mean, today Europe's population is only about 10% of the world, but in that time it was about 20%. But all the countries of the empire were originally not white. North America was not white. North America had its native population, likewise Canada, likewise Australia, and so on. So, I think one of the most, you know, one of the worst features of empire, and it wasn't just the Britain that did it, but we're talking about Britain for the moment, was the way in which the native populations of these countries were, by a combination of extermination and disease, were essentially, well, it was a supreme act of genocide, wasn't it? I mean, people are going to have that genocide now. So, let's start with the creation of the United States. Let's talk about Australia. You know, I mean, I think that the barbarism involved in Europe's expansion across the world, the British Empire, the French Empire, the Dutch Empire, and so on, you know, is something that we have, we are still to confront in the West. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, that's for another show, but yeah, some of the stories, you know, the Tasmanian genocide, you know, the first kind of documented genocide that we know of, for instance, is just, you read some of the stories about it, you know, the reduction of an entire population, effectively down to two people in the end, you know, really, really sad. And like you said, the worst thing of all is, yes, it's history, but it's not been confronted by us, as Europeans particularly. But you said the British Empire's premised on an idea of white supremacy, I think that's inarguable. But again, the counterargument would be, well, this civilisation state that you're talking about from China, that itself is based upon us a form of racial supremacy, Han supremacy, you know, the Middle Kingdom, the Chinese nation being effectively elevated above all others. Is that a fair analogue, or do you think people are kind of mischaracterising any similarities? No, I don't think it is a fair, I think it's much more complex what happens. I mean, first of all, you're talking about a continent. You're not talking about, you know, another continent. I mean, we're talking about the British Empire, you know, the India, you know, the British India, the United States, they were travelling, you know, crossing across oceans. The expansion of Europe was a global expansion. It wasn't an expansion simply within the European context, which would have been true, for example, of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. So this is fundamental difference. And I would underline this very strongly that actually China, unlike Europe, did not seek to expand across the world. It had an international system, a relationship to the tributary system, but it was neither military, it was primarily economic and to some extent cultural in terms of Confucian values and so on. But it was very different. Whereas, I mean, European university is required to conquer, you know, involve the expansion of Europe across the world and the imposition of its values, the soup, the notion of white superiority, the importance of Christianity, the convert, the missionary spirit and so on. That's very, very different from what happened in China. The second point is this about race, you see. The evolution of the Han is a very complex question, which you see as an interesting writer, Wang Hui, a Chinese writer, says, really in the Confucian way, Confucius was the most important single thinker in Chinese history, I think. The notion of Chinese values did not lay its emphasis on race, but on culture. This is very different, actually, very, very different. So it was about what sort of culture that China would have and so on. And this became, if you want to do the unifying bond of China, this is the unifying bond of China. A notion of cultural identity and coherence based on, ultimately, based on Confucian values. That's the cement that holds China together. It's not about race, not primarily about race. So what about the Han? Well, actually, the phrase Han only started to be used, as far as I recall, in the late 19th century. Partly because of Western intervention and carving up of China, and partly because during that period as China went down, the Qing dynasty started to become more and more popular. And of course, the Qing dynasty was not a Chinese dynasty in the traditional sense. It was a Manchu dynasty. It came from Manchuria. And interestingly, in this context, two of the three last dynasties in China were not Han. They were, first they were the Yuan, which was essentially Mongolian. Then you had the Ming dynasty, which people have probably heard of, which was Chinese or Han or whatever you want to call it. And then you had the Qing dynasty, which eventually fell in 1911. So you've got an extraordinary mix, complex, very different from the European or Western traditions taking place here. So today we come to today. So who are the Han? Well, actually, about 93% of Chinese call themselves Han. Now, of course, that as a racial category is meaningless. Because, you know, China comes from countless different races. But the historical process of the creation of modern China, very complicated to understand it or come to terms with it, is a process of the way in which the Chinese acquired an identity, the vast majority of them acquired an identity called Han. Now, there is a part of China, which does not regard itself as Han. And that above all are the Western regions. Now, the Western regions, we're talking here about Qinghai, and especially the Western audiences, you know, Tibet and Xinjiang province. Now, these were later additions to China. They constitute pushing half the geographical area of China, but they only account for 6% of the population. So if you draw a line down the middle of China, you know, the center and east of China is where the vast majority of Chinese live, and to the west are the Western regions. And they were conquered basically in a series of wars, not just involving China, but by the Qing dynasty in the late 17th, early 18th century. Now, in the most clearest example, I think, is Xinjiang and Tibet, which are clearly, apart from the Han populations that live there, which are, let's say, about half the population. The other half are not Han. They don't think of themselves as Han. They're not part of the Han tradition. So the Uighur, for example, are a Turkic minority. And they speak Chinese, but a fair number don't really speak Chinese. And likewise, the situation in Tibet. So this is a different part. You know, one thing you should never do is generalize from Xinjiang to try and understand the rest of China, because it doesn't work. Because historically, that's not the way that China grew and developed. And these were added later, very distinctive, extremely, I mean, extremely underpopulated area. Remember, Xinjiang accounts for one sixth of the physical size of China, but only 20 million people in a population of 1.4 billion, and only half of that 20 million are Uighur. So it's a very, very small group, really, really small group. So you're probably asking the question now, well, to what extent is racism a player in the attitudes towards the Uighur and so on? The way I would put it, and I think China has had serious problems with both Tibet and Xinjiang, is that they've been much less developed. I mean, historically, over a long historical period than the rest of China, even when China was poor. And I think that the Chinese mentality, the vast majority of the Chinese in this context, towards these areas is, well, let's modernize them. They're essentially pastoral. They need to speak Chinese because they're part of China. And if they don't speak Chinese, how can they do well? It needs to be urbanized. So I think there is a quite a strong kind of instrumentalist attitude amongst the Chinese to the modernization of Xinjiang and Tibet. To what extent do you think that would constitute colonialism? And obviously, again, we think of colonialism as something which is overseas, and this is a contiguous landmass. But like you say, it's a relatively new addition to the Chinese polity, different religions, Buddhism, Islam, different language, in the case of Xinjiang, like you say. I mean, that does sound a more powerful cultural linguistic group wanting to develop, assist, raise up the other. That does sound a lot to a European ear like colonialism. Is that an unfair characterization? I don't think I'd use the term colonial, but I certainly think that sort of sense of, you know, I think there's a patronizing attitude that you find towards these regions, because they're much less developed. I mean, it's not that these regions have been economically neglected. Xinjiang has been one of the top growing regions of China over the last 10 years, for example. So, by the way, I wouldn't include the term, I wouldn't say you've got to remember there are a lot of Muslims in China. The Uyghur constitute only quite a small minority of the Muslims in China. So, Muslim faiths have been, Muslim beliefs have been, you know, very present in China for a very long period of time. I mean, remember, Zheng He, where you mentioned earlier on, you know, his great voyages, Zheng He was a Muslim. So, there's a long, you know, there's a long tradition amongst sections of the Chinese population in the East, Central and Eastern China of the Muslim religion. No one normally talks about that. Yeah. And in terms of Xinjiang, I mean, the word genocide has been used quite frequently to counterbalance that. You've got people in the State Department saying, terrible things are happening, but we don't think that's the correct label. And then you've got the Economist saying something quite similar. Now, the Economist has got these things wrong before, so it's not necessarily a good authority on these matters. But it does seem that in Xinjiang in particular, you do have a repression of a particular religious group. Do you think that's, again, do you think that's a mischaracterization, for instance, the bulldozing of mosques or simply the changing of their outward appearance? There are claims that with forced labor camps and so on, to a significant extent, China took a lead from the U.S. and Europe with the war on terror. There was also, you know, you could argue domestic instances of a similar phenomenon going on in Western China. Do you, again, see that as an unfair analog or is that correct in so much as the racialization of Muslims in China? It's actually quite similar to something we see in Europe and North America. Obviously, it's being dealt with more viciously and aggressively. Or do you think, again, that's not quite right? Well, there's some interesting thoughts. I mean, I think that I have been to Aromchi, actually, the capital of Xinjiang. I think that it's very difficult to really, to be honest with you, to know what's happening in Xinjiang in the granular detail that one really needs to know about these things. And there's no question at all, well, there's no question at all in my mind that this has been a huge operation to dam the reputation of China coming from the top in the United States. I mean, I think that the CIA, the whole thing has been, why suddenly all this? I mean, because actually there's been problems in Xinjiang over a long historical period. It's not a new problem. It's come back a long time. We got back to the 1930s in relation to the difficulties in Xinjiang and China. I think the term genocide, to be quite frank, is precious little evidence for it. I mean, people ban this term around now and they're now cheapening. Genocide does mean something. It meant something in the 1930s. It meant something in North America with the extermination of the native population there. Likewise, what happened to the aboriginals in Australia? Likewise, what happened in Rwanda? But these were on a huge scale. Do I really think that's happening in Xinjiang? No, I don't. I don't think we're talking about genocide. Then people say, well, cultural genocide. We shouldn't use the term genocide for cultural discrimination because genocide should be granted historically a very special meaning because it is so dreadful, if you like, in its consequences and its intent. I think this is a Cold War operation started in earnest under the Trump government, but which all sorts of people have rode in on. One of the things that also alarms me is the stance of human rights groups. To be honest with you, I think that human rights watch and so on, outfits like this, they do some good work. I'm not denying that, but they become an arm of American foreign policy in these situations, I'm afraid, and I think that's what's happened in relationship to this. Now, what do I actually think? Well, I think that first of all, let's go through it. First of all, there is a problem in Xinjiang and has been over a long period because a section of the Uighur do not want to be part of China. It's a small group, but it's an active group, it's a militant group, and it has got a terrorist component to it. There's no way the Chinese are going to accept separatist movement. I mean, that is not what's happened with China. Look at the emphasis they have on the return of the lost territory. It's like Hong Kong and Taiwan. That's the first problem that is that. Second problem linked to that is there's clearly a difficulty in the relationship between part of the Han population in Xinjiang and the Uighur population. There were the pogroms when over 200 people, I think it was Han, were murdered by Uighur gangs. It was an expression of very powerful racial resentment like happened in 1969 in Malaysia, when the Malays killed a lot of ordinary Malays, killed a lot of ordinary Chinese who were a substantial minority of the population. I think that's another component of the problem. The third problem is that the question of different religion, different ethnicity, a different language, and a feeling on the part of the Uighurs that they are not properly respected. And I think there is, I've always thought there is some foundation to this problem. Indeed, Hu Yubang, who was General Secretary of the Communist Party under Deng Xiaoping, he died just before Tiananmen Square. And he said to the Tibetans it was in this case, but I think the same problem more or less is a parallel problem exists as the Xinjiang up to a point. There's no terrorist problem in oil, separatist problem in Tibet, that we have granted your culture and we have granted your religion insufficient respect and insufficient rights. I think that's probably true of Xinjiang today. When I was in Aramchi, there was so many mosques. There are many, many, many mosques in Aramchi, even more in Kashgar and so on. Can I make one of the points from my own experience? I went to Aramchi in a few years ago, I can't remember what year, but let's say about 2015, something like that. When I was walking around Aramchi, one thing that really struck me, which did indicate a significant security problem, was that you've got walk around, it's a very modern city, and glass and steel, Chinese city, modern Chinese city. But if you go around a corner and you suddenly see very few police, and then you go around a corner, I mean you never see any policemen in most of China ever, but you go around a corner and there is what we would call an armed vehicle, an armed personnel vehicle. In most countries it's the police, but it's an armed police in China. And I saw this several times walking around, you might be in a shopping area for example. And what it reminded me of was my visits to Belfast in the 1970s. In other words, that speaks to as there is a serious problem. And there is a terrorist problem, that's clearly there is a terrorist problem. There's a problem of law and order, there's a terrorist problem. Now goodbye, use the word terrorist, I don't want to deny the Uyghur, I don't want to say all Uyghur are terrorists because that's nonsense, they're not. But terrorist groups, as in Ireland, had a legitimacy. And so that was a really graphic illustration for me, that there is an underlying problem of security and order and stability in Xinjiang. Sticking with Ireland though, I suppose the counterpoint is, well in Ireland there was ultimately a political solution, and there's the Good Friday Agreement. And if one day people in Ireland want to unify the North and South, there's a process for that. And I'm the first to criticise Britain or countries in Europe and North America, big W, Western values. But the right self-determination is something that is generally observed, the exception of Catalonia. But for instance, Scotland had a referendum on independence in 2014. It does feel again, the idea of self-determination is at odds with quote-unquote Confucian values. And so it can tend towards quite an authoritarian kind of politics, identity, subjectivity. Do you see what I mean? You've got 1.4 billion people and there isn't necessarily a right to self-determination, or even there isn't a political vehicle for even just greater autonomy. I mean, isn't that quite dangerous? It depends how it's interpreted. I mean, this has been true over a very long historical period. I mean, China's, the extraordinary thing about China is that it's this huge continent of a country, and it's existed basically in more or less this shape, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller, for 2,000 years. So there are very powerful centripetal forces that hold China together, which are very, I can't think of another country in the world where you can really say this. And this has been through thick and thin. I mean, the bad times, like the 19th century, then China did, there were very powerful centrifugal forces and parts of China were chipped off. I mean, Taiwan, Hong Kong, that's when they went as a result of foreign invasion, Japanese in the instance of Taiwan, and the British in the instance of Hong Kong. But one way or another, China does exist in this very, basically given its size, extraordinary cohesive and centripetal form, despite its size. And I think that speaks to, I think that's something we in the West is very, very difficult for us to understand, because it goes against so much of our own historical grade. And it's not been achieved simply through authoritarian despotism, etc. That's not true. Let's stick with that for a second. The focus is often on dissent. I mean, we just talked about dissent in Xinjiang and Tibet, but there's also a great deal of consent, as you've just talked about there, for the Chinese state, Pew Research, you talk about this in your book, it's old data now from 2010. But it's more or less, if anything, it's actually intensified in the intervening period. Chinese are generally very happy with their government. They're generally very optimistic in terms of their economic prospects for the future. And actually, that puts them really at odds with Europe and America. Now, I suppose, on the one hand, Pew Research is very credible, but then you get other people who say, well, it's China, it's a repressive authoritarian country. What else are people going to say? Of course, they're going to say the government's doing a fabulous job. You've obviously looked at a great deal of data. You've been in the country for many years, spoken to many people. Do you think that generally on average, the average person in China is more in favour of their economic system, their government, than is the case in the United States or in Britain? Now, I don't mean support for the government, as in people support the government, they don't want to overthrow the government, but they feel like the government is doing a good job at solving the problems which affect their everyday lives. I think there's absolutely no question that that is far more true of China than it is of any Western country. Basically, it's been growing until recently, a few years ago, at 10% a year, and then now, more like 6% a year, and living standards have been growing at the same speed, which Western government wouldn't die for those kind of figures. I mean, this has been the greatest period in Chinese history for the people. Absolutely amazing transformation, so is it surprising that the Pew survey figures or the Harvard stuff say over 90% of the population is very, very happy with the government, very satisfied with the government. That doesn't mean they like everything about it, but broadly speaking, they're far more supportive and enthusiastic about their government than is the true in the United States or the UK or France or Germany and so on. We've got to come to terms with this. We think that unless these countries like China have a multi-party system and universal suffrage, then they can't be democratic and the people, therefore, can't be happy. I'm sorry, just open your eyes. I mean, they are very happy with the country. They are very pleased. That doesn't mean they don't have their gripes. It doesn't mean that there's things they don't like. Of course, that is true everywhere, but this has been an extraordinarily successful political project, an economic project, a political project, a cultural project. That's why the West doesn't understand China because it somehow thinks, and the papers on the left, like the Guardian, for example, or the Observer are just as bad as the right-wing press. I can't really put a piece of paper between them. They just think that unless they're like us, unless they're like a Western liberal system, then they can't be happy. The only reason they still have this system is because they're oppressed and they're denied their rights and so on. The other thing is, by the way, also when it comes to personal freedom and rights, the Chinese people have experienced a huge expansion of their personal freedoms and rights since Deng Xiaoping. I mean, absolutely huge. They can travel anywhere. We're not talking about the Soviet Union. They can travel everywhere, anywhere and everywhere, and do, and their educational opportunities and their work opportunities and so on have been transformed. Absolutely transformed. You've only got to go on the streets of Shanghai or Beijing, et cetera, and you can feel it and enjoy it. I mean, this is the people that is not only very pleased with what's happened, but are hugely optimistic about the future, unlike the West. But this is very true. The thing about as well, in order to be a polity which serves the interests of the public, which historically we would talk about as a republic, which in Britain sadly is misrepresented because of course, republic just means not being a monarchy, but historically, republic was about serving the public interest, either people's interest. On the one hand, yes, I think all the data you point to in the book and you just mentioned their Harvard and Pewitt's all correct. But I suppose on the other hand, what are the mechanisms by which ordinary people can stop tyrannical government? Now, that's a conversation we've had in the West preceding liberal democracy. It's there in Hobbes or in Locke or in Jean Baudin, and we've talked about these ideas, or even in antiquity, people talk about these ideas. But in terms of an authoritarian overreaching government, I wonder, at least, yes, this system we have here isn't perfect, but it can stop that. But then on the other hand, my colleague Ash Sarkham made a great point. Yes, America is a democracy, but there's never been a political party in the 20th century, 21st century to on the ballot offering universal socialized health care in the United States. Does that mean it's a democracy? There's never been a major party in Britain offering a republic. Does that mean it's a democracy? Clearly, there are costs of entry into participation and barriers to entry and so on. So I agree with you, but I'm also not quite sure. And I do feel that if we jettison a certain idea of popular government, do you not feel that could have potential downsides, like Tiananmen Square, for instance? Yes, on the one hand, the Chinese government's done an extraordinary job of increasing people's living standards, and in many ways also just civil rights since the late 1970s. But on the other hand, that can get very ugly if people for whatever reason no longer want to continue down that path. Yeah. Well, then the question is to what extent, how does political change take place if things start going wrong? I mean, this is a very... Precisely. And there was a situation like this in China, and it wasn't, I mean, Tiananmen Square was a big moment for them, but not a huge moment. The huge moment was at the end of Mao, 1976, because the Chinese economy was not real. I mean, the Chinese economy didn't do badly under Mao. It did slightly better than the Indian economy, about the same over that historical period. But it was falling behind other East Asian countries, like Japan and South Korea and Taiwan, you know, the early Asian Tigers. And beyond a point, the system wasn't really working, you know, with this heavy central planning and so on. And so Deng Xiaoping comes along, and he basically goes in a completely different, very different direction. Deng Xiaoping says, you know, look, come on, China's got to do much better than this. And so he makes two fundamental reforms. One, he redefines Chinese socialism as not just the state and the plan, but also the market. And secondly, he said, until then China being pretty autarkic, China should be part of the world, should integrate itself. And this was very different, of course, from the long Chinese tradition. So these were two absolutely fundamental shifts. And he said, you know, the future lies, you know, we've got to, you know, people have got to think for themselves. And the MARA system, it was much more, you know, group identity and top down group identity. Whereas with Deng, you know, Deng says, you know, and Deng himself was like this, you know, you've got to, you've got to, you've got to, everyone's got to think for themselves. We've got to change society. And the only way you can change society is you, each of you. No, don't take, think for yourself. Do it. And this was the beginning of the great revolution in a way in China, which is that this transformation of China has been done by the people. I mean, by a brilliant government leadership, I think I would say that perhaps it was short certainty, but the people have done it. And once you go, once you have an economy and a society changing as quickly as China's, then the people become, they are, they are empowered by it, but they are also the initiators, they are the agency of those changes. Look, if your, if your living standards are doubling every seven years, everyone is subject to extraordinary change in their lives in every aspect of their times, the way the city changes, the way where they live changes, the way they travel changes, their relationships in the family, the gap between different generations. You know, it's huge in China, where once the vast majority of people came from the countryside now, you know, it's a relatively small portion of the population. So what I'm trying to say here is that that was a huge change, a bigger change that any Western country has undertaken over the last, well, it's a bigger change than happened between Canadianism and neoliberalism at the end of, you know, around 1980 with Sacha and Reagan. So the capacity, there is an argument in the West, which I am going to deal with in my new book, which I've dealt with, I've written this bit, which is that the problem with a one-party system, I think we've got to be open-minded about these questions, okay? So because we're so used to thinking, well, about the problem with the one-party system, but we, it becomes a kind of, it becomes a mantra. The question is, the question of a one-party system is, you need another party in order to provide a choice which creates the opportunity for change. Now, is that really true? Or to what extent is that true? Maybe it's true in a liberal democracy, but is that true in a much more important sense in a global context, not just looking at the Western tradition? And I think that if you look at China over time, not just the Communist period, but a much, much longer period, including the whole of the imperial period, China's obviously been extraordinarily good at recreating and reinventing itself. I mean, you know, Britain has had one era in the sun, which was from the industrial revolution until, let's say 1945 or something like that. It's not true now. Will it ever be like that again? Will it ever have that position in the world extremely unlikely? I mean, it got lucky and used a bit of genius for a very small island at a certain historical moment when that was possible. The United States is clearly in decline. Will it survive? Will America survive? I'm not convinced that as America as we know it will survive, territorially, I mean, you know. So now look at China. Most countries then have maybe one, two periods of global eminency or even preeminence. China. China, you have the Han, part of the Han period, then you have the Tang period, then in some respects, the Song dynasty period, then you have the Ming period and a bit of the Qing. China's had at least five periods in its history where it has been the most advanced or one of the most advanced civilizations in the world. And we are seeing a sixth period now, which is happening under the Chinese Communist Party. So China as a culture is very capable of reinventing itself. Now, why? I'm not going to go into that now, but this is a very important and interesting historical question. But the westerners don't think like this. We have such a short-term mentality. We think democracy is an issue for now. We're talking about the capacity of a political leadership in a country to steer a country successfully over a long historical period. Well, the institutional framework and the culture which enables that. So China has great strength. We should probably leave on that note, because I think again, it's a very counter-intuitive point, but I think it's pretty compelling the way you said that actually, rather than China being incapable of adaptation, we're seeing it being perhaps one of the most adaptable countries in the world in recent decades, but also looking back over the broader sweep of history. Martin, we'll leave it there. You mentioned briefly a new book. When do you hope to have that published? I should think it will be probably 2023. It's a big book, because I like the last one, but probably a bit longer. Well, we'll get you one in 2023 for that. Thank you. Okay. Well, thanks for joining us, Martin. Have a good day. Thank you, Aaron. Thank you. Thanks. Bye. I've enjoyed that chat very much. Yeah, it was great fun.