International Cooperation in a Changing World

 

 

Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

Good morning. At the outset, I wish to extend a warm welcome to those of you who have traveled, from far and wide, to actively participate in our discussion here in Hong Kong.

 

 

We live in an increasingly interconnected and turbulent world. Looking back, 2013 has proven to be an unusual, unsettling year, with the fall of governments and terrorist attacks to revelations of ear dropping on politicians and spying on ordinary citizens, and continued bloodshed in the Middle East.

 

But we also see some positive signs in some serious disputes. The Syrian issue, which has caught much attention, was pulled back from the brink of war to the track of political settlement. The Iranian nuclear issue, after 10 years of hard negotiations, finally saw its first agreement reached, which was the first step toward a peaceful solution.

 

However, lately the troubles seem to have shifted to the other side of the globe. Increasing tensions in the Korean Peninsula constitute the single likeliest source of instability and military conflict in the region. A resolution of the maritime disputes in the East China Sea is still far from reached.  While the US considers the most destabilizing factor lies in the Korean Peninsula, both China and Japan consider each other to be the greatest threat to stability in the region.

 

The year 2013 has also been an extraordinary year in China's development. In the 12th National People's Congress, China's new central leadership has put forward the Chinese dream of realizing the great renewal of the Chinese nation. The Third Plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee sounded the clarion call for comprehensive deepening of reform in China.

 

What development path will China take in the future? What domestic and foreign policies will it pursue? Can China rise peacefully? Is mutual trust a term of convenience or does it really comes into the equation of international relationship? I understand these questions are of great interest to the audience of today’s colloquium. As the host of this conference and the initiator of the “Sino-US Colloquium”, I would like to begin by addressing some key concepts and origins of the colloquiums.

 

 

As China has enjoyed fast development over the years, various versions of China threat have surfaced that China may repeat the beaten track that a country will inevitably become arrogant and seek hegemony when it grows in strength. Perhaps those perceptions are deeply rooted in the Cold-War mentality and the hypothesis made by offensive realists.

 

John Mearsheimer of Chicago presupposes that it is impossible for states to be sure about each other’s intentions, especially future intentions. In an anarchic system, where there is no ultimate arbiter, states that want to survive have little choice but to assume the worst about the intentions of other states and to compete for power with them. This is the tragedy of great power politics. ^[1] Graham Allison of Harvard also warns the United States and China not to fall into the "Thucydides Trap.” Allison is referring to Thucydides' famous statement that it was the rise of Athenian power and the fear it inspired in Sparta that constituted the true cause of the Peloponnesian War.[2]

 

Given anarchy and mistrust, security seeking states will pursue aggressive policies up to and including war. This conflict will sometimes be tragic, because, in some cases, both sides will be motivated by an urgent sense of self-insecurity, a defensive consideration, not aggression, and anxious anticipation of the worst scenario befalling on them.

 

In fact, the popular belief that a rising China will severely threaten U.S. security could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, when China is encouraged or provoked to engage in adventurous policies or the United States to overreact out of fear.

 

Should Washington fail to understand that China's growing military capabilities do not threaten vital U.S. interests, it may adopt overly competitive military and foreign policies, and which may in turn signal China that the United States has malign motives. Should China then feel threatened and less secure, it will be more likely to adopt competitive policies that the United States will see as more threatening. A vicious cycle is thus started with a negative spiral driven not by the international situation the states actually faced, but by the exaggerated fear of insecurities they each anticipated. This is the "security dilemma" we have to address today.

 

 

As Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi addressed at the General Debate of the UN last year, “culture of a country determines its values, and its history points the way to its future”. The Chinese nation loves peace and the Chinese culture values harmony. In history, what the Chinese pursued was international exchanges and trade, not foreign aggression and expansion, and what guided them was patriotism to defend the nation, not colonialism to occupy new territories.[3]

 

Whereas Julius Caesar said “I came, I saw, I conquered”, the Chinese said “I came, I saw, I made friends, and I went home”.  Not one foreign battle was fought, not one colony seized, and nobody was enslaved.

 

Looking back over the past 30 year since China has adopted its reform and opening-up policy; there have been no civil wars and no invasion or aggression outside its borders. There has been no refugee problem, no conflicts or financial crisis triggered by China. As many scholars observed, although China's relative power has grown significantly in recent decades, the main tasks of Chinese foreign policy have been defensive and have not changed much since the Cold War era: to blunt destabilizing influences from abroad, to avoid territorial losses, to reduce its neighbors’ suspicions, and to sustain economic growth.[4] China has and will continue to honor its promise and be a staunch force for upholding world peace and restraining from meddling in other countries internal affairs.

 

 

Territorial disputes are often mentioned as having the potential to trigger conflicts between China and its neighbors. Indeed, some observers often argued that China is no longer maintaining its decades long “Tao Guang Yang Hui” (韬光养晦) approach (meaning “not to show off one’s capability but to keep a low profile”), and it has adopted a more assertive foreign policy, supported by its behaviors in the recent territorial disputes.

 

So is China likely to resort to force over territory as many have argued? But according to Taylor Fravel of MIT, the short answer is that Beijing has always exhibited a preference for peacefully resolving territorial disputes through negotiations. In fact, since 1949 China negotiated compromises in 17 of 23 territorial disputes, often agreeing to accept less than half of the territory being disputed. In 15 disputes, the compromise created conditions for a final territorial settlement through bilateral agreement.[5] Fears that China's rise will lead to territorial conflicts are unsupported by its historical record.

 

The concept of today’s nation state comes from the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 following the Thirty Years' War in Europe. However, China, with 5000 years of history and going through more than 15 different dynasties each with a differing size of governing territory, can best be regarded as a civilization state.

 

Our cultural value and concept of time and history are different. And this affects our policy with regard to the disputes with some countries over territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests. Those disputes that cannot be resolved now should best be shelved for wiser future resolution. We can wait for another 10 years, 20 years or 50 years, when 50 years is just a blink of an eye in the long history of China. Chinese have eyes for a generation or two while politicians in other countries can only focus on fewer than the next four years, the term of their appointments.

 

With regards to the Sino-Japanese relations, Premier Zhou Enlai once said China and Japan are friends for 2,000 years and have only 50 years of misfortune. When we examine our relations, we should cast our eyes on the history over the past 2,000 years and also learn from the lessons of the last 50 years. We should take history as a mirror and walk hand in hand with each other into the future.  Cooperation benefits us both, while confrontation hurts both.

 

 

In general, cooperative behavior tends to reassure. Indeed, reassurance can be defined as the process of building trust. Dialogues can reduce misperceptions, enhance communication, and provide venues for personal relationships among government officials, military officers, and scholars. Through an earnest exchange of views and feelings, we might discover that we all have more in common that we have differences. We were all subject to the devastation of natural disasters, such as the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake in Japan. We are all in need of energy for development and are all victims of the exorbitant price of natural gas sold to this area. Indeed, perhaps the best entry point for international cooperation, especially among the great powers, is energy. And it is one of the reasons that we discuss energy cooperation in the same breath as we do geopolitics today.

 

In my previous capacity as the Secretary for Home Affairs of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, I have come to learn that mutual trust and respect are the prerequisites to any conflict resolution. Mutual trust and respect come from a better understanding of each other’s history, culture and social norms, which is why CEFC, apart from addressing energy issues, takes an intense interest in promoting Chinese culture, and values.

 

Our undertaking to organizing this Fifth Sino-US Colloquium, and this time, an International Colloquium, speaks volumes of our desire to facilitate the building of a new type of relationship between governments, peoples, and nations. We hope that such effort would provide lofty inspirations that acknowledge the importance of diversity, cultivate inclusive societies and thereby spark a new kind of pluralism that engenders peace and fosters harmony.

 

After all, from great states relationship to a peaceful world order, the common denominator is respect:  respect of man’s own spiritual needs, respect of nature's needs, and respect of our fellowmen’s needs, as well as respect of our future generations' needs.

 

 

 

My friends, we are truly living in historic times, and the opportunity for building new confidence and trust is one of the greatest challenges in the region. I am confident that our peoples will have the wisdom and courage to truly grasp this moment and begin to build a better world in the years ahead.

 

This Colloquium will not solve all the problems in one day, but by adopting realistic and incremental approaches, I believe it will at least give us a new sense of hope from the fresh ideas and inspiring views that have arisen from your participation.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, I am all ears!

 

 

Thank you.

 

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