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G'day, my name's Kevin.
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I'm from Australia. I'm here to help.
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(Laughter)
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Tonight, I want to talk about
a tale of two cities.
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One of those cities is called Washington,
and the other is called Beijing.
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Because how these two capitals
shape their future
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and the future of the United States
and the future of China
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doesn't just affect those two countries,
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it affects all of us
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in ways, perhaps, we've never thought of:
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the air we breathe, the water we drink,
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the fish we eat,
the quality of our oceans,
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the languages we speak in the future,
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the jobs we have,
the political systems we choose,
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and, of course, the great questions
of war and peace.
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You see that bloke? He's French.
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His name is Napoleon.
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A couple of hundred years ago,
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he made this extraordinary projection:
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"China is a sleeping lion,
and when she awakes,
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the world will shake."
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Napoleon got a few things wrong;
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he got this one absolutely right.
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Because China is today
not just woken up,
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China has stood up
and China is on the march,
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and the question for us all
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is where will China go
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and how do we engage
this giant of the 21st century?
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You start looking at the numbers,
they start to confront you in a big way.
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It's projected that China will become,
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by whichever measure --
PPP, market exchange rates --
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the largest economy in the world
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over the course of the decade ahead.
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They're already
the largest trading nation,
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already the largest exporting nation,
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already the largest manufacturing nation,
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and they're also the biggest
emitters of carbon in the world.
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America comes second.
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So if China does become
the world's largest economy,
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think about this:
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It'll be the first time
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since this guy was on
the throne of England --
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George III, not a good friend
of Napoleon's --
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that in the world we will have
as the largest economy
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a non-English speaking country,
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a non-Western country,
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a non-liberal democratic country.
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And if you don't think
that's going to affect
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the way in which the world
happens in the future,
-
then personally, I think
you've been smoking something,
-
and it doesn't mean you're from Colorado.
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So in short, the question
we have tonight is,
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how do we understand this mega-change,
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which I believe to be the biggest change
for the first half of the 21st century?
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It'll affect so many things.
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It will go to the absolute core.
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It's happening quietly.
It's happening persistently.
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It's happening in some senses
under the radar,
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as we are all preoccupied with
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what's going in Ukraine,
what's going on in the Middle East,
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what's going on with ISIS,
what's going on with ISIL,
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what's happening with
the future of our economies.
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This is a slow and quiet revolution.
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And with a mega-change
comes also a mega-challenge,
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and the mega-challenge is this:
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Can these two great countries,
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China and the United States --
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China,
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the Middle Kingdom,
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and the United States,
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Měiguó --
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which in Chinese, by the way,
means "the beautiful country."
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Think about that -- that's the name
that China has given this country
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for more than a hundred years.
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Whether these two great civilizations,
these two great countries,
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can in fact carve out a common future
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for themselves and for the world?
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In short, can we carve out a future
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which is peaceful and mutually prosperous,
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or are we looking at a great challenge
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of war or peace?
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And I have 15 minutes
to work through war or peace,
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which is a little less time
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than they gave this guy to write a book
called "War and Peace."
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People ask me, why is it that a kid
growing up in rural Australia
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got interested in learning Chinese?
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Well, there are two reasons for that.
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Here's the first of them.
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That's Betsy the cow.
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Now, Betsy the cow was one
of a herd of dairy cattle
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that I grew up with on a farm
in rural Australia.
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See those hands there?
These are not built for farming.
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So very early on, I discovered
that in fact, working in a farm
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was not designed for me,
and China was a very safe remove
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from any career in Australian farm life.
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Here's the second reason.
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That's my mom.
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Anyone here ever listen
to what their mom told them to do?
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Everyone ever do what
their mom told them to do?
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I rarely did,
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but what my mom said to me was,
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one day, she handed me a newspaper,
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a headline which said,
here we have a huge change.
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And that change is China
entering the United Nations.
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1971, I had just turned 14 years of age,
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and she handed me this headline.
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And she said, "Understand this,
learn this,
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because it's going to affect your future."
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So being a very good student of history,
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I decided that the best thing
for me to do was, in fact,
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to go off and learn Chinese.
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The great thing about learning Chinese
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is that your Chinese teacher
gives you a new name.
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And so they gave me this name:
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Kè, which means to overcome or to conquer,
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and Wén, and that's the character
for literature or the arts.
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Kè Wén, Conqueror of the Classics.
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Any of you guys called "Kevin"?
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It's a major lift from being called Kevin
to be called Conqueror of the Classics.
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(Laughter)
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I've been called Kevin all my life.
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Have you been called Kevin all your life?
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Would you prefer to be called
Conqueror of the Classics?
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And so I went off after that
and joined the Australian Foreign Service,
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but here is where pride -- before pride,
there always comes a fall.
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So there I am in the embassy in Beijing,
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off to the Great Hall of the People
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with our ambassador, who had asked me
to interpret for his first meeting
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in the Great Hall of the People.
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And so there was I.
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If you've been to a Chinese meeting,
it's a giant horseshoe.
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At the end of the horsehoe
are the really serious poobahs,
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and down the end of the horseshoe
are the not-so-serious poobahs,
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the junior woodchucks like me.
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And so the Ambassador
began with this inelegant phrase.
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He said, "China and Australia
are currently enjoying a relationship
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of unprecedented closeness."
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And I thought to myself,
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"That sounds clumsy. That sounds odd.
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I will improve it."
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Note to file: never do that.
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It needed to be a little more elegant,
a little more classical,
-
so I rendered it as follows.
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[In Chinese]
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There was a big pause
on the other side of the room.
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You could see the giant poobahs
at the head of the horseshoe,
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the blood visibly draining
from their face,
-
and the junior woodchucks
at the other end of the horseshoe
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engaged in peals of
unrestrained laughter.
-
Because when I rendered his sentence,
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"Australia and China are
enjoying a relationship
-
of unprecedented closeness,"
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in fact, what I said was that
Australia and China
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were now experiencing fantastic orgasm.
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(Laughter)
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That was the last time
I was asked to interpret.
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But in that little story,
there's a wisdom, which is,
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as soon as you think you know something
about this extraordinary civilization
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of 5,000 years of continuing history,
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there's always something new to learn.
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History is against us
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when it comes to the U.S. and China
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forging a common future together.
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This guy up here?
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He's not Chinese and he's not American.
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He's Greek. His name's Thucydides.
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He wrote the history
of the Peloponnesian Wars.
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And he made this extraordinary observation
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about Athens and Sparta.
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"It was the rise of Athens
and the fear that this inspired in Sparta
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that made war inevitable."
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And hence, a whole literature about
something called "the Thucydides Trap."
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This guy here? He's not American
and he's not Greek. He's Chinese.
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His name is Sun Tzu.
He wrote "The Art of War,"
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and if you see his statement underneath,
it's along these lines,
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"Attack him where he is unprepared,
appear where you are not expected."
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Not looking good so far
for China and the United States.
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This guy is an American.
His name's Graham Allison.
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In fact, he's a teacher
at the Kennedy School
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over there in Boston.
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He's working on a single project
at the moment which is,
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does the Thucydides Trap
about the inevitably of war
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between rising powers
and established great powers
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apply to the future
of China-U.S. relations?
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It's a core question.
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And what Graham has done
is explore 15 cases in history
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since the 1500s
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to establish what the precedents are.
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And in 11 out of 15 of them,
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let's let me tell you,
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they've ended in catastrophic war.
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You may say, "But Kevin,
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or Conquerer of the Classics,
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that was the past.
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We live now in a world
of interdependence and globalization.
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It could never happen again."
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Guess what?
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The economic historians
tell us that in fact,
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the time which we reached
the greatest point
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of economic integration and globalization
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was in 1914,
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just before that happened, World War I,
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a sobering reflection from history.
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So if we are engaged
in this great question
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of how China thinks, feels,
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and positions itself
towards the United States,
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and the reverse,
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how do we get to the baseline
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of how these two countries
and civilizations
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can possibly work together?
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Let me first go to, in fact,
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China's views of the U.S.
and the rest of the West.
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Number one: China feels
as if it's been humiliated
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at the hands of the West
through a hundred years of history,
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beginning with the opium wars.
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When after that, the Western powers
carved China up into little pieces,
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so that by the time
it got to the 20s and 30s,
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signs like this one appeared
on the streets of Shanghai.
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[No Dogs and Chinese Allowed]
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How would you feel if you were Chinese,
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in your own country,
if you saw that sign appear?
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China also believes, and feels,
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as if, in the events of 1919,
at the Peace Conference in Paris,
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when Germany's colonies were given back
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to all sorts of countries
around in the world,
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what about German colonies in China?
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They were, in fact, given to Japan.
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When Japan then invaded China in the 1930s
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the world looked away and was indifferent
to what would happen to China.
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And then, on top of that,
the Chinese, to this day, believe
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that the United States and the West
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do not accept the legitimacy
of their political system
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because it's so radically different
from those of us who come
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from liberal democracies,
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and believe that the United States
to this day is seeking
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to undermine their political system.
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China also believes
that it is being contained
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by U.S. allies and by those
with strategic partnerships with the U.S.
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right around its periphery.
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And beyond all that,
the Chinese have this feeling
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in their heart of hearts
and in their gut of guts
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that those of us in the collective West
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are just too damned arrogant.
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That is, we don't recognize
the problems in our own system,
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in our politics and our economics,
-
and are very quick
to point the finger elsewhere,
-
and believe that, in fact,
we in the collective West,
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are guilty of a great bunch of hypocrisy.
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Of course, in international relations,
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it's not just the sound
of one hand clapping.
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There's another country too,
and that's called the U.S.
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So how does the U.S.
respond to all of the above?
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The U.S. has a response to each of those.
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On the question of
is the U.S. containing China,
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they say, "No, look at the history of
the Soviet Union. That was containment."
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Instead, what we have done
in the U.S. and the West
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is welcomed China
into the global economy,
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and on top of that, welcomed them
into the World Trade Organization.
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The U.S. and the West say China cheats
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on the question
of intellectual property rights,
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and through cyberattacks
on U.S. and global firms.
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Furthermore, the United States
says that the Chinese political system
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is fundamentally wrong,
-
because it's at such fundamental variance
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to the human rights, democracy,
and rule of law that we enjoy
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in the U.S. and the collective West.
-
And on top of all the above,
what does the United States say?
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That they fear that China will,
when it has sufficient power,
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establish a sphere of influence
in Southeast Asia and wider East Asia,
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boot the United States out,
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and in time, when it's powerful enough,
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unilaterally seek to change
the rules of the global order.
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So apart from all of that,
it's just fine and dandy,
-
the U.S.-China relationship.
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No real problems there.
-
The challenge, though,
is given those deep-rooted feelings,
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those deep-rooted emotions
and thought patterns,
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what the Chinese call "Sīwéi",
ways of thinking,
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how can we craft a basis
for a common future between these two?
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I argue simply this:
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we can do it on the basis on a framework
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of constructive realism
for a common purpose.
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What do I mean by that?
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Be realistic about the things
that we disagree on,
-
and a management approach
that doesn't enable
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any one of those differences
to break into war or conflict
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until we've acquired
the diplomatic skills to solve them.
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Be constructive in areas of the,
bilateral, regional and global engagement
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between the two,
-
which will make a difference
for all of humankind.
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Build a regional institution
capable of cooperation in Asia,
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an Asia-Pacific community.
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And worldwide, act further,
-
like you've begun to do
at the end of last year
-
by striking out against climate change
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with hands joined together
rather than fists apart.
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Of course, all that happens
if you've got a common mechanism
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and political will to achieve the above.
-
These things are deliverable.
-
But the question is,
are they deliverable alone?
-
This is what our head
tells us we need to do,
-
but what about our heart?
-
I have a little experience
in the question back home
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of how you try to bring
together two peoples
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who, frankly, haven't had
a whole lot in common in the past.
-
And that's when I apologized
to Australia's indigenous peoples.
-
This was a day of reckoning
in the Australian government,
-
the Australian parliament,
and for the Australian people.
-
After 200 years of unbridled abuse
towards the first Australians,
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it was high time that we white folks
said we were sorry.
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The important thing
-
(Applause)
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The important thing that I remember
is staring in the faces
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of all those from Aboriginal Australia
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as they came to listen to this apology.
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It was extraordinary to see, for example,
-
old women telling me the stories
of when they were 5-years-old
-
and literally ripped away
from their parents,
-
like this lady here.
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It was extraordinary for me
to then be able to embrace
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and to kiss aboriginal elders
as they came into the parliament building,
-
and one woman said to me,
-
it's the first time a white fella
had ever kissed her in her life,
-
and she was over 70.
-
That's a terrible story.
-
And then I remember
this family saying to me,
-
"You know, we drove all the way
from the far north down to Canberra
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to come to this thing,
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drove our way through redneck country.
-
On the way back, stopped in a cafe
after the apology for a milkshake."
-
And they walked into this cafe
quietly, 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,
everyone of the white folks,
-
stood up and applauded.
-
Something had happened in the hearts
of these people in Australia.
-
The white folks, our Aboriginal
brothers and sisters,
-
and we haven't solved
all 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 conclude
in terms of the great question
-
that we've been asked
to address this evening,
-
which is the future
of 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 mechanism
through regular summitry
-
to do these things
and to make them better.
-
But the heart must also find a way
to reimagine the possibilities
-
of the America-China relationship,
-
and the possibilities of China's
future engagement in the world.
-
Sometimes, folks, we just need
to take a leap of faith
-
not quite knowing where we might land.
-
In China, they now talk about
the Chinese Dream.
-
In America, we're all familiar
with the term "the American Dream."
-
I think it's time, across the world,
-
that we're able to think also
of something we might also call
-
a dream for all humankind.
-
A dream for all humankind.
-
Because if we do that,
-
we might just change the way
-
that we think
-
about
-
each other.
-
[In Chinese]
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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 will
and 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.
-
(Applause)
-
Chris Anderson: Thanks so much for that.
Thanks so much for that.
-
It feels like you yourself
have a role to play in this bridging.
-
You, in a way, are uniquely placed
to speak to both sides.
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Kevin Rudd: Well, what
the Australians do best
-
is organize the drinks,
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so you get them together in one room,
and we suggest this and suggest that,
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then we go and get the drinks.
-
But no, look, for all of us
who 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 about
where they come from and what they think,
-
and my challenge for all
those Chinese folks
-
who are going to watch
this TEDTalk at some time is,
-
do the same.
-
Two of us seeking to change the world
can actually make a huge difference.
-
Those of us at the middle,
we can make a small contribution.
-
CA: Kevin, all power to you,
my friend. Thank you.
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KR: Thank you. Thank you, folks.
-
(Applause)