Henry Huiyao Wang: Why Does the West Fear China? Secrets of Soft Power and the Rising Dragon

CCG President discusses China-U.S. relations, governance, the Middle East, Taiwan, and the changing global order.

Henry Huiyao Wang, Founder and President of the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), recently appeared on Nawafed, an influential Arabic-language podcast platform affiliated with Arabi21. Nawafed’s YouTube channel had more than 750,000 subscribers at the time of publication.

In a wide-ranging conversation with host Mahmoud Ghazi, Wang discussed China’s rise and its evolving role in the international order. The host spoke in Arabic, while Wang responded in English. As we were unable to translate the Arabic-language portions of the interview, the transcript below includes only Wang’s remarks. His responses have been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

The full interview, published on June 26, 2026, is available on Nawafed’s YouTube channel.

Henry Huiyao Wang, Founder & President, CCG

Thank you, Mahmoud. Thank you for hosting me. We just saw President Trump’s recent visit to China, and you’re right. President Xi actually said we should escape from Thucydides’ trap. Thucydides’ trap is not our destiny. The trap reflected ancient Greek historical cases where many fights occurred when there was a new rising power replacing an existing power.

So basically, President Xi said that’s not our destiny. We are living in the 21st century. China and the U.S. are the two largest economies, and we can really find a way to work together. What was very interesting to see is that they had both President Xi and President Trump agree that China-U.S. relations have now entered a new phase called constructive strategic stability.

This new position, this new norm of China-U.S. relations is constructive strategic stability. This is a sharp contrast to Trump’s first term, where he basically defined China as a strategic rival. Going from strategic rivalry to strategic partnership, and ultimately to strategic stability, is really important.

I also like what you said at the beginning, that China is of course a 5,000-year civilization now and that people are starting to learn more about the history, the culture, the essence of Chinese history, which is seeking peace and never really about expansionism because China is an agricultural country. Chinese people cultivated along the Yangtze River and the Yellow River.

And Confucianism teaches you to respect your parents, your family, and you don’t really travel long distances. I think that culture is still there: peace-loving, hardworking, and getting along with your neighbors. I think it is important that President Trump’s visit this time and witnessing the rise of China again but also, as President Trump puts it, it’s not a G2 status between China and the U.S. I think the two countries have to work together now to address the challenges, disorder, and the disaster we are seeing in Europe, in the Middle East, and everywhere. China and the U.S. should work together. I think this visit was very successful.

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I think there are quite a few successes from this visit. Number one is that China, in the last decade, since Trump’s first visit nine years ago, China’s GDP almost doubled. And China has risen, and as President Trump rightly said, it’s a G2 now. It’s near-peer status. China has achieved parity almost in many fronts with the U.S. now.

But then the two countries’ relations were really deteriorating for the last 10 years: there is a trade war, sanctions, and a lot of ideological attacks. I remember during the Biden era, when there were talks about democracy versus autocracy. And they defined China as an autocracy, giving China no credit for doing things well, such as lifting 800 million people out of poverty, which represents 70% of global poverty reduction during that period of time.

I think the two countries are also at odds on many fronts. And there were 1,000 to 2,000 Chinese companies on the American Entity List or sanctions list, so you can see the relations were really tense. But this time President Trump came. They started a new recognition of China. They really created a new norm, and President Trump brought nearly 20 gigantic corporate CEOs to Beijing: Tim Cook of Apple, Elon Musk of Tesla, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, and all those big business representatives; the largest companies in the world came to Beijing. I think they rebooted the bilateral relationship in a more normal way.

I think that’s the biggest because of the handshake between President Xi and President Trump. They also toured around the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, and they had tea together next to the Forbidden City in Zhongnanhai, which really depicts a great friendly picture to the world; so people around the world feel okay: the two largest superpowers are not destined for war; they’re probably going to escape Thucydides’ trap, like my friend Graham Allison said that.

I wrote a book about how to escape Thucydides’ Trap with Graham Allison. You can see that the biggest achievement is a shift in the narrative, a change in strategic positioning, and a growing mutual admiration among the leaders. And I think give some assurance to the world, but of course there’s more benefit of that. Second, they all discussed trade issues. President Trump said China would buy 200 Boeing aircraft, potentially.

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It could be 1,000 Boeings if it goes well.

And then there are other agricultural products like beef and beans and things like that. And of course, there is a lot of trade stabilization. There’s no talk of a trade war. Third, I think they also reiterated the importance of peace: they hope that Hormuz is going to be reopened; they don’t like the war in Iran and in Ukraine.

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I think there’s many reasons attributable to that. I need to mention that in Trump’s second term, China has achieved mutual strategic deterrence. In Trump’s first term, when Trump did all those sanctions and started the trade war, China was just on the receiving end; they could not really fight back. But in Trump’s second term, China’s power, strength, and its soft power has all gone up.

China is now the only country not involved in any war. Russians are involved in a war they cannot finish; the U.S. is involved in a war it cannot finish. China is the cleanest. They are not really having any war with anybody, so they have the highest moral standing and highest respect from around the world for not really interfering with any other country’s internal affairs.

China’s position with the U.S. is much different than it was in the first term. Moving from mutually assured deterrence and disruption, the relationship is now shifting toward mutually assured construction because the U.S. realized that launching trade wars and hitting China with sanctions doesn’t really help the U.S.

And all the business leaders who came with President Trump demonstrated they are so intertwined with China, like 80% or 90% of Apple phones that everybody is using are made in China. There’s no security issue. They’re products made in China that have been sold around the world. Half of Tesla EV cars are made in China. You have so many U.S. companies, 70,000 of them big or small, registered in China. They have $700 billion in revenue every year.

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I think what has changed is the rising of China, the strength of China. I think President Trump was pragmatic. He’s a business leader. He has a vision, and he says, “Okay this is a country we cannot change.”

In the past, they wanted to change China. You are going to become one of us. You are going to be like us. You are going to have the same system, same style, same governance as us. But China has its own logic, has its own culture. Though China has embraced globalization, it follows its own path. The reason President Trump came is to give recognition: “Okay, we cannot change you now or make you different — but now we have to accept you.” I think what has changed is the U.S. starting to accept China. It’s not only the U.S, but leaders across the G7.

For example, this year, Starmer, Merz, Macron, and Carney of Canada came to China. Almost all the G7 leaders came. Except for Japan, everybody has visited China. Everybody has come, which shows that they all recognize China as a new force, as a new pole in this multipolar world, as a new big rising power. They have recognized China can play a huge role in the international arena but also as a Security Council member in the United Nations.

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Well, that’s a good question. The DNA of China has decided that. China has been an agricultural country for thousands of years.

For example, look at the farmers and peasants in China’s civilizations along the Yangtze River and the Yellow River. They basically had to grow three or four crops a year, so they did not have the chance to go anywhere. They’re not a nation of horsemen; they’re not Mongolians, right. They were really people cultivating the land, growing different vegetables and crops. They’re busy all year round.

That kind of culture cultivated the spirit of China: it is largely agricultural; stick with your family; stick with your parents; and respect authority because there’s no religion in China. The government is the only authority there. They have to do all those good things that big, centralized governments are equipped to do: irrigation projects, large-scale coordination, and all those things. That is the DNA of China.

Confucianism says that when your parents are alive, you don’t travel far away; don’t do to other people what you don’t want done to you. So, when you see the history of China in that sense, the main ethnic Han people in China have never invaded any other country. They never really stationed outside China.

For example, in the Ming dynasty, there’s admiral Zheng He. He did seven expeditions far away from China, as far as to Africa. He discovered Africa. He is a great voyager, even earlier than Columbus who discovered the Americas. But they never stayed anywhere; they just came back all seven times.

Even in modern history, probably since 1979 when China opened, it has never started any war. We don’t know how many times the U.S. has started a war already. We don’t know how many times other regions have had wars. China as a big country has never started any wars because of its historic culture, its DNA, and Confucianism. Even though China has gotten much stronger than before, it has never started any war. I think that’s really because of the culture, Confucianism, and a government that is focused on economic globalization. They do not colonize any country. There was no colonial history for China. For some countries, wealth was built by looting or taking away from other countries’ wealth. China never did that. China was always the side being invaded by other countries.

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It’s a very good question. There are some worries about China in the world, particularly in the Western countries. But basically, the reason for that is the system China has is something other countries probably do not have. Since the Second World War, there is a momentum of free liberalism that has really swept the world. We had a democracy; we had all those values that the West has imposed on developing countries.

So, if we all follow the same truth, it would be like the end of history. The author claimed we have only one path; there’s no other path. That’s the assumption for many years: the free liberal world is going to be the dominant final format of everybody. Whether looking at the Arab Spring, Latin America, Asia, the assumption was that everyone has to go the same route as Western countries have gone through. We have to have the street structure. We need to have all those Western imperialism.

China found a different path, and it has grown so quickly and become so big that people started asking ‘How come?’ They didn’t do as we did. It didn’t adopt our model, yet they’ve developed better and faster

For example, in 48 years since China opened up, China became the second largest economy in record time. It took other countries hundreds of years probably, but China just did it in a few decades.

Number two, China is also not only one of largest economies, it is also very stable. We have one Five-Year Plan after another Five-Year Plan. The government is also very consistent. For example, in the UK, Starmer has only been in office for two years and is facing another challenge to be removed from office. I mean in the past five, six years, the prime minister has changed five times in the UK. And most of the Western countries are facing this right-wing or left-wing or whatever. You also got economic populism. The term of government has become so short now, the changing of the leaders is so frequent. There are also immigration issues. There are many other issues of injustice and poverty, you name it. When you go to China these days, there are about 260 cities in China with a population above 1 million. There are about 20 cities in China with a population about above 20 million and you don’t see a single homeless person now. Anywhere you go in China, any street, any corner you go to.

That’s a miracle because China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty. 11 years ago, when we had a Paris climate accord, China was merely starting. Chinese people at that time said “Okay, why by the time we are developing, we’re not allowed to pollute now.”Western countries have polluted for hundreds of years. Two-thirds of the ozone layer has the accumulation of your pollutants, so ‘why by the time we develop, we have to restrict?’ That was the thinking at that time. Beijing was very badly polluted. The U.S. Embassy even put out a PM2.5 monitor on the top of their roof, announcing the pollution every day. The Beijing local government didn’t like that. They were like “Okay, since you are saying the Beijing sky is so poisonous, let’s change it.”China suddenly started to use much more renewable energy. Now more than half of the cars in Beijing are all EV. China became the largest EV producer in the world. China now has two-thirds of the global high-speed railway. You can go anywhere in China within 7-8 hours. For example, going from Beijing to Shanghai only takes four hours.

High-speed railway has completely changed China. Of the United Nations’ industrial category, China has all of them. China is leading the world in 200 of them. China is the world’s largest steel producer, largest producer of all kinds of products. China accounts for 30% of the world’s manufacturing power. China must have done something right because it has suddenly become so effective, efficient, and performing so well. I think that is the kind of thing that makes people start to fear or worry about — because “China didn’t use our system; it didn’t follow our kind of election that happens every few years.” We have a system that has one Five-Year Plan after another Five-Year Plan that is consistent and doing very well. And that’s when people are starting to feel concerned.

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I think the West also had its success when it started to liberalize and dismantle the colonial system it had that really brought a lot of productivity and industrialization, which pushed the world into the next stage of development. But now we’re in a new stage of development — the technology era, the internet era, the digital era, the AI era. So the democratic model needs to be upgraded. Because, for example, Western democracy comes from Greece, from Athens where you had public debates, a public square debate. That model originated about two thousand years ago, because the mountain was high and the king was far away, so you had to pick smart people by simple majority. That model has basically been followed until today. But then today’s environment has changed.

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Democracy needs to be improved and become more participatory — not just decided by a simple majority, or by how great a speech you can make to become a strong political candidate, or how eloquent you are.

I could give you China examples, but before I do that, you can see we’re living in the AI age. We have big data, technology, and all kinds of NGOs and think tanks. So there are many more forces now, not just a simple majority or who has the money to fund campaigns. That kind of model produces a pattern of overpromising and underdelivering. That kind of performance is near-term. I’m only thinking about the three or four years while I’m going to be in office, and I’m going to put up all the deficit, all the things just for the short term. There’s no long-term, there’s no five-year plan after another five-year plan.

China has a meritocracy, a system China has practiced for thousands of years. For example, in the old days, if you wanted to be an official, what could you do? You had to take examinations. In the old days, the emperor chose the officials in ancient times, based on who scored best.

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Yeah, they had Confucianism, theories, governing philosophies; all the Confucianism, all that ancient philosophy, ancient thinkers, great thought leaders. So they really had to familiarize themselves with all the governance methodology and then put that into an exam. That system has been passed on till today. For example, today 50 million, 60 million people take the university entrance exam; 30 million are admitted into a university. And every year the government recruits 200,000, a quarter million, civil servants. Three million college graduates take the exam to become one of that quarter million of government officials.

After being selected to become government official, you start at the village, county, municipality, province, central government level. You have to perform at every level, with five years in between. It’s really results-driven. You have to deliver, perform because you’re judged on how good a job you’ve done based on changes to GDP, health, environment, productivity. So this system is really useful in China, and it’s still being used today. And then, furthermore, China is now getting into the digital era. You have a big-data democracy. So you don’t have to make it a majority vote to find out who’s right and who’s wrong because you can use data. You can say, “Okay, this is a good thing, this is a bad thing, and we should do the good thing.” So the government’s decision-making channels are much more abundant and rich than they used to be.

And also, for example, you have a technology democracy; you have all those big think tanks and feasibility studies. The government isn’t smart or stupid; it looks at all the options, all the recommendations, all the proposals, and it can make the right decision. And then they have a consultative democracy where all the elites are either in the NPC (the National People’s Congress) or in the CPPCC (Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference) at all levels — several million of them. The central government has the NPCC and CPPCC. Provincial has the NPCC and CPPCC; municipality has that and county has that — there are four levels.

And if you add them all together, all the parliamentary members and all the CPPCC members, there are a few million of them. They’re making daily recommendations to the government. They can really question the government and do all these things. So there’s a watch, a monitoring process, a balance, all the time. And finally, China today lives in a world of democracies. So who is the opposition party? The biggest one is the United States. Second, probably, Europe. And there are many other countries. All the global media are watching China, criticizing China, all the time — CNN, BBC, you name it.

And so the leaders, whoever is governing there, can take all of that in, read the recommendations and the analysis so they don’t make wrong decisions. They don’t need a majority to tell them this is what to do, that is what to do; they have a much larger macro view.

I’ll give you an example. Ten years ago, twelve years ago, there was such a strong resistance against the idea that China stop polluting because developed countries polluted enough — but now when it’s our time to develop, we were told to stop. But then the leaders read the news everywhere: if you continue to pollute, we’re going to be done; we’re going to destroy the planet.

So, they do not, just based on some local views, think when it’s our time to develop, why should we not be able to pollute?

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I think the Western system has had its merit since its development. I think initially — for example, after the Second World War — when we had liberal democracy, we got rid of the colonial system. I think liberal democracy has great success in doing all those things: let people rise and let people control their destiny. There’s a huge role they played at that time. But as time has gone by, as technology has come, as the internet has come, the individual netizen has risen, then this old model of just one man one vote where we have to depend on a simple majority to do everything — that kind of methodology, may have some problems.

Because, for example, whoever has the money to fund a really big campaign or do a lot of door-to-door knocking to get votes can easily get elected. I mean that’s probably one thing. The other thing I think is that there is — from what I sometimes observe — too much debate, too much talking, empty talk, but there’s no performance in the current system. There’s no action. There’s a lot of promise, but there’s no action.

Even at the international arena, for example, China said, “We’re going to do a Belt and Road,” and China went and did the Belt and Road — they really implemented that. They invested over one trillion U.S. dollars, and three thousand projects finished. Whereas the EU proposed the ‘EU Global Gateway’ — we don’t really see many projects they’re doing. The U.S. said they’re going to do “Build Back Better World,” B3W, but it’s not really happening, many of those things. Domestically, same thing. You just see the deficits keep rising, right? You see all those promises not delivered. For example, there’s still Medicare — the U.S. is not really universal — whereas in China now, even though China has different degrees, there’s 1.3 billion people under some kind of Medicare, big or small, all providing coverage. And there’s 1.2 billion people under social security.

The final thing I think is that we really need public servants to have some grassroots experience. Have you governed a county before? Have you governed a municipality before? Have you governed a province or a state before, before you govern a country? Nowadays, if you’re a good professor, you can become a president, like Obama. So it’s different in China — all the leaders at the top have either been a governor, a mayor, or a minister before; you cannot jump from a county level straight to the top position. So I think that kind of a bureaucratic training, bureaucratic experience and performance that produces results, I think, is lacking in the Western system sometimes.

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No, not really. I think that China probably did strike the right balance. For example, the human rights development in China is really, first of all, we need to not have poverty.

Human rights has many fronts, not just expression: the right of not fearing poverty, the right of not fearing going out in the street in the evenings. I mean, I’ve been to many countries where you cannot go out in the evenings — in China, any city is the safest in the world; you can go out. The right of not living in the street. Nobody is becoming homeless in China these days. There’s the right to get an education, the right to get enough food, all the social security support. Human rights has many fronts, not just speaking against the government.

So China does have a bit of a different culture, because, as I said, China doesn’t have a religion. There’s really no authoritative kind of spirit in China, so people really just respect the government as the only authority.

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Freedom of expression is there. I’m not against freedom of expression. You can always express yourself. For example, I was a CPPCC member in Beijing for many years. So every year we go through something similar to a senate meeting. And like ‘Okay, Beijing streets are too polluted with cars, we need green cars. Then we write a proposal, and the Beijing Transport Bureau will respond to you.

They’ll come to your office and say “Okay, you’re right, maybe we should improve this.” For example, when we made a proposal to the Beijing government — when foreigners come to China, they couldn’t use apps: they couldn’t download or use WeChat. Then the Beijing municipal government immediately adopted our proposal and put up a stand at the airport that says “Please come and download it for your travel in China.”Many examples like that — for example, if an industry is doing something bad, you can make a proposal. So that’s number one — all I am saying is that for several million NPC and CPPCC members, their daily job is to find problems for the government. That’s number one.

Number two, there’s also the media. The media can also be used to report any wrongdoing, providing checks and balances. And social media is enormous: everybody has WeChat, everybody has Weibo, which is like Twitter or X. You can really air whatever you want to air.

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Yeah, it’s monitored, but as I said, the only thing is they have some governing authority, and maybe they don’t want to jeopardize governing authority, because the government has a very efficient, effective way of mobilizing resources and doing all the right things. But also, the most important thing — in Beijing, for example, and every city in China — there’s a mayor’s hotline, 12345. I can pick up the mayor’s hotline, and they’re going to jot down your complaint, then send it to every region you complain about, and find out what’s going on. So they have a different system of monitoring and watching, all the time. It’s not that you cannot express yourself.

So I think China is really unique. For example, in the last decade, China punished several million corrupted officials. In China, every day you see a corrupted official being punished. There’s a Central Discipline Committee for the party. There’s a central monitoring and inspection committee for the governor, and they expose corrupt officials on a daily basis. And in every organization, you have a letterbox or an email box, which you can send in, say, “I feel this guy is corrupted,” and you can complain to the Central Government Discipline Committee.

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And if the same-level government official doesn’t respond, you can go one level further, until it has been exposed. Whenever they promote an official in China these days, they first send out a notice: this guy is going to be promoted to vice mayor — please, for the next two weeks, if you have any concerns, or if he has any wrongdoings, please let us know, send us a word. So he’ll be thoroughly checked before he gets promoted. There’s a probation period of about two weeks or a month since the announcement before he gets promoted.

So this guy is openly displayed in public, in the newspaper, in social media. If I’m not happy with this guy, I can complain. And if I have substance for what he’s doing wrong, I can really expose him, and he will not get promoted, or he could even be sent through the judicial process. So there’s a very strict system in China. That’s why these days, if you go to China, you don’t really see much corruption. There was corruption some time ago. When China just opened up, there was a blurred line between business and government, and possibly a lot of corrupt cases. But now they keep cleaning that up — every day in China, almost, and I’m not joking. Every day, you see on WeChat. There’s news pushed to you. People will say “Look at this guy who got punished, that guy who got punished, that guy who got exposed.” So there’s really a great system of exposing that internally, and it’s much more effective too.

But of course, I think this is because they’re learning from all the world’s advanced systems: you have the probation period, the announcement, the solicited opinions from all the NPC members and CPPCC members, the Discipline Committee doing things; you’ve got the central government inspection committee doing things, and all the ministries are balancing and watching each other’s shoulders so the system is running pretty well.

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For example, China — I think any country is like that — you first need to increase your hard power, like your infrastructure. China has the

best infrastructure in the world now. Half of the skyscrapers in the world are in China, or newly built; China has 70% of the world’s high-speed railways; China’s 5G stations are 10 times that of Europe and the United States; and EV charging posts — China has 60 to 80 million, whereas the U.S. has 1 million. So all that hard power is enormous in China. And out of the 10 largest container ports in the world, seven of them are in China. So once they’ve done that, now they’re starting to do their soft power.

Now you are absolutely right. China’s cinema box office has, for the first time, surpassed the United States’. People are going to watch movies. The cinema box office revenue in China is now larger than in the United States.And then you also see, now all the Hollywood movies, they either have a Chinese actress or actor, or have a China element in the movie, so they can appeal to the Chinese audience.

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I mean, Hollywood — because it’s been a long time, it’s primarily an English-speaking industry and the Chinese language is pretty challenging. In terms of Chinese cinema production, it’s gone up enormously. So I think it’s going to take some time, but China does have some new phenomena — for example, Labubu, that’s from China, right? And then you have these new games like Black Myth: Wukong that swept the world. So it’s starting to become a world phenomenon, a cultural success now.

It will take some time for China to get there, but then, of course, there’s a language problem — Chinese is only used in China, about 1.4 billion people, whereas English is used worldwide. So for that aspect, I think China still has some way to go. But the same goes for South Korea, Japan, all those other Asian countries have done that. India has a different picture, because India speaks English, right, they have Bollywood, it’s doing well. But I think China’s probably much better in manufacturing, making good-quality, reasonably-cost goods. China — you talk about export culture — it’s still in a developing stage, but China is catching up.

As I already said, moviegoers — China is already the largest in the world. And in terms of box office revenue, China is already the largest in the world. And also, these days, you can go to China to see all kinds of movies? I just saw, before, I think last month, the Michael Jackson movie was aired at the same time as in the United States. There’s another new movie that’s just coming out too, so you can watch it in China at the same time as in the United States.

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No, absolutely, you can, because China is now the largest trade partner with 140 countries. So I think the way China conducts its global affairs is different from other major powers. For example, China has never had a military base anywhere. China has not invaded any other country in the last 45 years, right?

So basically, China has only engaged in economic globalization. They embraced economic globalization, and then started trading with everybody. China is trading with everybody on a mutually acceptable basis — I’m not forcing you to trade with me. It’s not like the Opium war where I’m going to use guns and boats to open your market, right? China’s not doing that. China is like, okay, if you want to trade, here’s the market conditions. If you’re willing and I’m willing, then let’s trade. It’s all like that, it’s all free trade, right?

I think there are some complaints: China, your product is so good, and you’re selling too much to us. We are having a deficit. Fine. China then started the International Import Expo in Shanghai, the largest import expo in Shanghai. So if you want to sell to China, China provides you a pavilion in Shanghai, which is the biggest in the world. All the companies come here — here’s my product, I want to sell it to China. And millions of people go to that import expo every year.

So there is one public platform where China is trying to buy more from the outside world, and it has established a mechanism for that. Second, Chinese companies want to invest, want to bring money, technology, and investment to different countries, which China is doing now. And China wants to invest in the United States, in Europe, in every Western country.

But the problem is, if the political trust is not there, if the political relations are so bad, Chinese companies wouldn’t dare to reinvest. That would be another good way to get rid of the concern: Chinese companies will come to your country, send money, send technology, employ local workers, generate local taxes, that’s good for you. So that momentum, that movement, has already started. China has already invested in Belt and Road countries, in Africa, in Latin America.

For example, BYD has a big factory in Latin America; Lula opened a factory in Brazil. 40% of China’s investment to Europe goes to Hungary, because Hungary has the best relations with China right now. Now it goes to Spain because the Spanish prime minister visited China four times in four years; and the Spanish king came in four years’ time as well. So if you have good relations with China, it will accelerate investment. China could invest more here in the UK too. But the political relations are not good — every day there’s a bad story.

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No, I think, first of all, it’s because of ideology. They are like, “Oh, China, you have a different system; you’re an autocracy; you’re not like the U.S.” That’s the colored glasses they’ve worn for a long time, and that hasn’t really changed. Number two is that, we know in the last 10 years the

U.S. started a trade war and defined China as a strategic rival in the first term. And the European Union has also defined China as a systemic rival, and the UK probably did the same. So everybody thinks China is a rival. China doesn’t view it that way — China views everybody as a partner. We have competition, but we can be partners too. China never says “we are rivals” or “adversaries.” You don’t see that in the Chinese vocabulary. China always views everybody as friendly, as a competitor, but also as a collaborator. We can cooperate.

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I think it’s not only the Iran war, but also the Russian war in Ukraine. A lot of people said, “Oh, China is collapsing; China is so bad, the real estate is collapsing; it’s going to be all downhill from now here in China; it’s finished.” No — China is doing fine. Last year, it maintained 5% GDP growth. This year China is doing it again. And green energy, China’s EV car production is now the largest in the world.

So you see all that good news out of China — China didn’t collapse. It was still doing fine, and China’s trade with the world has gone up too. So I think China wants to solve those issues. But then for the Western leaders — UK leaders and all the European leaders — they realize, okay, if we want to get business opportunities, if we want to increase economic prospects for our own people, we have to trade with China; we have to do things with China, because here you get the best cooperation possible. And if we can get China to invest, we can create local jobs.

So that mentality is starting to change because China has successfully gotten out of COVID, which changed its image; and second, China has done well in the last several years. Also, China has opened free visas for every country in Europe, UK included. They may open that to the United States too. And furthermore, you’re right, the war has changed things in a big way too, because they are used to saying, “Okay, now Russia is the bad guy. They started the Ukraine war, the Russia war,” according to the European Union. Now the U.S., Israel started the war in the Middle East, in Iran. So when you look around — where’s the good guy? China seems to be the only good guy. Economically, China is still performing well for the world.

Politically and internationally, they really uphold justice and try to mediate peace and promote peace. For example, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi in the last two months has phoned over 30 foreign ministers — all the Gulf countries, Iranians, Pakistan’s foreign minister, the Iranian foreign minister who was in Beijing for talks, the Russian foreign minister, European foreign ministers, and really everybody — to promote peace in the Middle East.

And then Pakistan, our iron brother, their foreign minister came to Beijing and proposed a five-point peace proposal for Iran. And the Iranian foreign minister was in Beijing just recently as well to discuss how we can get out of this. President Trump was in Beijing too. So China’s soft power, international mediating, and promoting peace has upgraded enormously.

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China is the largest trading nation with almost all the Middle East countries, at least all the Gulf countries. Saudi Arabia sells most of its petroleum to China. China buys 90% of Iranian oil. And for all the Gulf countries, China is their largest trading partner. 40% of petroleum imported comes through the Strait of Hormuz, so it’s absolutely in China’s interest to see this part of the world be at peace and in good condition.

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I think China has been intervening all the time. First of all, a few years ago, China intervened and brokered peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia. And then China gathered 14 factions of Palestinians, brought them to Beijing, and issued the Beijing Declaration for the different Palestinian factions and forces before the Gaza war. And then, even recently, as I said, China’s foreign minister made over 30 phone calls to 30 different foreign ministers — you never see that in the history of Chinese foreign ministers making phone calls like that in such a short time. And a Chinese envoy for the Middle East has been shuttling between all the other countries.

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I think China is a giant economic country compared to the Middle East because China does the largest trading with the Middle East. A lot of the Middle East’s bread and butter comes from China, because China buys most of their products. And the thing is, China does not use its military power, unlike the U.S. or Russia. China refrains from using military power.

So the only power China uses now is economic power and soft power. And just by standing there alone or by issuing a statement, people will think: okay, here’s my bread-and-butter purchaser; and if he’s not happy, I have to respect that. So I think China, by taking those strong stands — for example, when the Iranian foreign minister came to Beijing, China’s foreign minister said, “Okay, let’s not continue the fight; let’s have a dialogue. Let’s keep the strait open.” When President Trump came to Beijing, President Xi said, “We support all the peaceful efforts, we don’t want to see the war continue.”

Just merely stating those strong points, everybody will listen because China is the largest trading power and has leverage with all these countries. Yes, they can hang on for a few months or for half a year, but they can’t hang on forever because they need the money from purchases by China. The U.S. wants to do business with China. The U.S. wants to get out of this mess, and they need China. So everybody needs China. Just like a few years ago, when Saudi Arabia and Iran came down, they said, “Okay, I cannot give you face, you cannot give me face.” Who can I turn to give face? Oh, China is there, let me give it to China.

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The reason China intervened on this is because China sees the benefit of it. They’re both China’s largest trading partners, right? Saudi Arabia and Iran have already been fighting for years. And they’re like: okay, there’s no point continuing to fight, but I can’t give face to you, and you can’t give face to me, so we need to find a third party that we’re all comfortable with where we can all gracefully come down. They needed a ladder to come down, and China was able to provide that ladder.

China can be really powerful enough. If China says, “Okay, don’t fight, let’s sign a deal,” then they don’t fight, because they have to respect China, right? China still plays that role in the current Iran situation there. So if China says don’t fight anymore, and Iran says that China says don’t fight anymore, then they may have to talk to each other and find a solution to that. So China is probably the biggest variable in this whole peacemaking process. China doesn’t have to say, “Oh, if you don’t do this, I’m going to send my troops or my navy.” No, China doesn’t have to do that. China just, by merely sitting there, says, “Hey, guys, don’t fight,” they will try to find a way to talk.

And that’s the soft power China has now, because China has the strongest economic power. If they violate their commitment to China, China could later use its economic power. So Chinese soft power is backed by its economic power, but furthermore, also backed by its strong military power too.

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China has a very strong self-defense power now. China’s military power doesn’t have to be at the same level as the United States. For example, its nuclear capacity is far below the U.S., or even Russia, but that’s already strong enough to provide strong deterrence to the United States. Graham Allison, a Harvard professor, and I had a long discussion: we said, if we had a war break out between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, or any place, the war would go back to the Stone Age; we’d all be finished. Beijing will be gone, Washington, New York will be gone, you’ll be gone — so that kind of deterrence is there.

China and the U.S., on the economic front have achieved a mutually disruptive status. If the U.S. weaponizes chips, weaponizes other things, China could weaponize rare earths minerals to counter U.S. threats. Even though China has this strong defensive military capability, that doesn’t mean China’s going to reach out with that to other countries. China has the largest navy in the world now. China is the largest drone producer in the world. China doesn’t have to use that, but China has that capability, and it’s strong enough. And in terms of all the other deterrence, China has reached first-class AI, whatever — so China doesn’t have to use that, but China can only use its economic cooperation basically. If you’re acting well, we’ll cooperate with you.

If you’re not acting well, we cannot cooperate with you. For example, recently China announced that while the U.S. is raising tariffs for almost every country, China says, okay, all goods from 53 African nations’ that are coming to China will not have any tariffs, which a big incentive for Europeans, for Japanese, for all the other countries to start up a factory in Africa, produce

goods, and sell them to China because all African goods coming to China have zero tariff. China can use its economic power to really say, okay, let’s cooperate. For example, if Iran says, “Okay, I’m not going to open the Strait of Hormuz” — okay, you don’t open it, and then China doesn’t buy 90% of your petroleum, and you’re going to be stuck. I think that kind of influence is enormous.You don’t have to say, “Oh, I’m going to send my aircraft,” which is what the U.S. did. China has aircraft, China doesn’t…

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I think, first of all, China has strong deterrence capability, but the Iran war was really started by the U.S. and Israel; it wasn’t started by China. There’s a saying in Chinese: those who tied the knots should untie themselves, right? China has nothing to do with it, yet they’re still promoting peace. They’re doing it at the United Nations Security Council, talking to 30 foreign ministers on this issue. They invited President Trump to Beijing where one of the major issues was discussed.

They invited the Palestinian foreign minister and the Iranian foreign minister. China is backing Pakistan to be a mediator because Pakistan has the best relations with China. So China is never out of this; China is doing all these things. China only falls short of this: “If you don’t do that, I’m going to send navies.” No, that’s the imperialist approach. The Chinese approach is a more civilized, more modern approach. We are going to do diplomacy, but also we’re coupling that with economic influence and impact, because if you’re not going to solve this issue — first of all, China has a very strong voice to push for a ceasefire, to stop the fighting. China has pushed for that, and that’s been achieved now. Next is to push everybody to the negotiating table. And then, thirdly, China can be a guarantor, right? Both sides say, okay, we don’t want to fight, but who can guarantee that we won’t? China comes in and says, okay, I can be the guarantor; I can be a judge, if you will, in the future. So that kind of role, only a country like China with a strong military, economic, and political status can play.

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What I think is that the Taiwan issue is a domestic issue, and China always prefers peaceful unification, because Taiwanese are Chinese, right? They use the same language, enjoy the same culture, and they have the same habits. There are half a million cross-strait marriages between mainland China and Taiwan. And last year, four million Taiwanese came to the mainland. They made four million trips, double the trips they made a year ago. And China just recently expanded the entry ports for Taiwanese from 60 to 100. Now they don’t need a visa or anything. They can just go to the entry port and say, “I’m going to come to the mainland,” and they’ll get a certificate to enter.

And the Fujian government said, okay, all the Taiwanese people that are coming here can get free schooling, employment, social security or Medicare because we welcome you. They treat Taiwan as their own citizens, as their own people. Why would we fight them? The only condition under which they’re willing to fight is if there’s foreign interference and a separatist movement. For example, if there are some diehards in Taiwan who maybe want to separate Taiwan from China, so China reserves the right, but only in that case — if that happens — China may use means other than peaceful ones. In the general sense, they’re trying to do it peacefully.

So this time, Trump came to China seeking a larger peace. He talked with President Xi about Iran. He wants to get out of that situation; he wants to make peace there. He wants peace in the Ukraine-Russia fight too, because he’s been trying for quite a while, but there has been no progress. He did that for Gaza some time ago too. So he’s seeking a larger peace. And in his inaugural speech last year, he said he wants to be a president of peace; he wants to get a Nobel Peace Prize. So China can help with that. But also, at the same time, can the U.S. help China peacefully unite with Taiwan?

China has a very strong deterrence regarding Taiwan. I don’t think the U.S. wants to fight China on the issue of Taiwan. This question has been asked of President Trump by U.S. journalists many times; Trump never answers that question, unlike his predecessor Biden, who said, “Oh, we’re going to defend Taiwan, we’re going to fight for Taiwan.” No, President Trump is a very smart person — he sees the bigger picture. I think sooner or later, Taiwan will be part of China, because this integration, this evolution of intertwining, will eventually happen.

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On the Taiwan issue, President Xi’s statement was very strong. In front of President Trump, in front of the whole world, President Xi said Taiwan is the clash point between China and the U.S; we have to handle it properly, carefully; if we do not handle that properly, we may end up in conflict and fight. That was what was said in front of the whole world.

President Xi said that to President Trump, and President Trump said, on Air Force One, that he understood President Xi’s strong position on Taiwan — he understood that. And they never said no; they never said, “Oh, I disagree,” or whatever — no, they didn’t say that. So I think there was some understanding of each other.

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Well, the U.S. is not directly involved in the Russia-Ukraine war, or Ukraine against Russia — they’re only behind that. They support with some weapons; now they’re even selling weapons, not supporting for free. The U.S. is not sending any soldiers to fight in the Ukraine war. And the U.S. is not even sending soldiers to fight in the Iran war.

And even a country like Iran — if it takes a long time, they can’t really finish that war, let alone having a conflict with China over Taiwan; that would be very dangerous for the U.S. to do.

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That’s what I’m saying. The U.S. has attacked Iran directly, with Israel’s help, with everybody involved in that war, from its military bases. But even for such a strong American-Israeli alliance against Iran, a country that’s been sanctioned for 40 years, the U.S. can’t win very easily; they can’t claim a victory; they can’t finish their business. They’ve used every unthinkable method already — killing the supreme leaders, wiping out military commanders, you name it, they’ve done everything; big bombings and all those things — but they still can’t conquer Iran, let alone pick a fight with China. Iran is one-tenth, or one-twelfth the size of China. In terms of GDP, it may be many times smaller than China. Even in military power, many times smaller. If they can’t finish a country like Iran, I don’t think the U.S. is going to challenge China, because China is much, much stronger.

So that’s why I think President Trump is wise, and is smart, to say, “We cannot change you, so let’s coexist peacefully; let’s find a way to compare notes, find common ground, do something better for the world, provide some good leadership for the world.” So that’s, I think, the significance of this visit.

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I think the multipolar world is coming. Last year, when the Munich Security Conference opened, they issued a report — the report was named “Multipolarity” — and I was one of the key panelists discussing that with the Munich Security Conference chairman, along with two other leaders from Europe and Africa on this multipolar world.

I think a multipolar world is the reality now, yet multipolar world governance has not arrived yet. We’re in that kind of evolving process. In this evolving process of a multipolar world — the U.S., China, the EU, other Global South countries — we’re going to shape a new dynamic. So I think we’re in that kind of period now. That’s why all the G7 leaders are coming to China — Trump is coming to China, to find out what other positions are out there, ways we can collaborate. So we’re in the process of defining the new governance of the multipolar world, and China will become a big pole, the U.S. is still a big pole, and the EU too.

I think there are quite a few poles; and they’ll figure out that if they don’t work together, they’ll be wiped out by AI, for example, or wiped out by climate change. So we have to work together. So I think that kind of unipolar world is gone, and the multipolar world has arrived. But multipolar world governance is not there — we have to reform the UN; we have to increase the Global South’s rights in all the international organizations; we have to reflect the current global power structure, which was made 80 years ago and hasn’t really changed much.

The U.S. is withdrawing from 66 international organizations. China is still supporting those multilateral systems. China stands to fill some of those vacuums. For example, when the U.S. withdrew from the WHO, China donated 500 million to the WHO. The U.S. has not been paying the United Nations its 22% budget on time — delay and delay. China pays its 20% every year on time, and China is supporting the multilateral system. I think we’re in that kind of adjustment period, but sooner or later…

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I think it’s complementary. China doesn’t want to replace the U.S. China is, of course, for the multilateral system; if there’s a gap or shortage, China can make up for that as much as it can.

And of course, in some areas, China can probably provide more leadership — for example, infrastructure. China launched the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the AIIB, and China is a leader in global infrastructure. China can be a global leader in the green revolution or in globalization. For example, in the 19th century, the UK invented steam power, and the UK led 19th-century globalization. In the 20th century, Edison invented electric power, and the U.S. invented the internet and led the digital revolution, leading in the 20th century.

In the 21st century, China has 70% of global green power production now — it’s leading the green globalization. China will continue to lead the green globalization. We already see it in EVs that China is leading the world. I mean, last month, Beijing had the Beijing Auto Show, the largest ever — 1 million people attended, 2,000 companies came, 200 new models displayed — and China is already the leader in that. So you see, at different stages, China, the U.S., and Europe, they all have their competitive advantages. China is now in the driver’s seat in terms of green globalization.

So I think, in that sense, we’re not saying, “oh, who’s replacing who” — it’s just that, as it develops, whoever has the competitive advantage, whoever is making more contributions, is going to take on more responsibility and have a greater role in collaborating with everybody.

So that’s why you see, this year, so many global leaders are coming to China — the Russians came after Trump; everybody is rushing to Beijing as if Beijing has become the capital of the world now. So I think China will play a positive role, working with every country. That’s China’s commitment, China’s declaration, and that’s what China is doing. China only pursues economic globalization. The Belt and Road has been implemented for 13 years now, and China has invested over one trillion U.S. dollars in 3,000 projects — the biggest infrastructure push for the Global South. China, as I said, allowed 53 African countries to export their products to China tariff-free, and the trade between China and Africa has gone up significantly. That will continue.

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I think it’s mutually beneficial, because we had this Silk Road 2,000 years ago, through China, the Arab world, Central Asia, and Europe; that Marco Polo route is still there. But now we have this new Silk Road, this Belt and Road; and particularly with what

happened in Iran and in Hormuz, the land-mass rail transportation — China dispatches about 10,000 trains annually to Europe, through Central Asia and all the other countries. So that will continue, and that’s really beneficial because — for example, you mentioned Germany, there’s a German city that’s at the receiving end of China’s dispatches, trains, and everything; with China’s help, many very good local jobs were created. China also helped Greece — the port of Piraeus it developed has created so many jobs and helped local communities.

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No, I think any trade is mutually beneficial. For example, as I said, China didn’t force anybody to buy; it was all market conditions, and it was through agreeable negotiations.

But I do think that China is very interested in investing in Germany. I was actually proposing to all those German industries, all those German companies to come to China: Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes, and all the rest. They’ve had a very successful experience in China. Actually, 40% of the EV cars exported out of China were made by foreign companies, by European companies, by Tesla, by Japanese companies — not totally China.

So a lot of foreign companies are making their manufacturing base in China, and they benefit from that. But I’d also suggest further — why can’t those joint ventures in China, who have so much experience in China, joint-venture together back to Europe, back to other countries? And then China can do more of the tech, do more of the investment. So I think, just like the Japanese did in the ‘80s and ‘90s — there were a lot of complaints about the Japanese just exporting, not doing much, but the Japanese massively invested in all these countries, and that criticism came down. I mean, China can do the same.

So I think, with all those good transportation networks, with all the competitive advantage of each other. European companies can also provide much more service to China. China’s service sector is still way below that of European countries. China may be good at manufacturing, but not good at services in many ways. So I think there are many ways we can do this. But also, Chinese companies are now interested in massively investing in Europe and other countries — Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, everywhere. So let’s really welcome that Chinese wave of investment as a way to solve this problem, and also, they can joint-venture together into other countries too, joint-venture together into other countries.