G2<\/a>\u2019 one, offering a nod to their eastern counterpart\u2019s ascending power.<\/p>\n\u201cWhen the U.S. imposed tariffs on over 100 countries, only one country in the world could effectively retaliate against them, and that was China,\u201d Mahbubani said, noting that the latter\u2019s control over rare earths gives it a strategic counterweight to the power of the U.S. dollar.<\/p>\n
Yet a key mistake that the Western mind still makes about China, he added, is that it sees the world in black and white terms, as a competition between the white democracies and black autocracy\u2014but reality is never that simple.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no question that Western societies are on the right side of Western history in pushing for democracy and liberalization, but there\u2019s also no question that China is on the right side of Chinese history,\u201d Mahbubani said.<\/p>\n
China, after all, is the world\u2019s oldest continuous civilization, and for them, maintaining stability and harmony is much more important, he argued, adding that theWest, however, has been slow to realize this, and has preferred to cling to a worldview where freedom fuels innovation and control kills it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis idea that the Chinese mind cannot be innovative is absolutely crazy, but it shows you that the Western mind has trapped itself in a bubble that doesn\u2019t understand the rest of the world,\u201d Mahbubani said.<\/p>\n
As the world watches on, America\u2019s thrust to stop China will continue for at least ten or twenty more years, Mahbubani predicts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States has been number one for 130 years, and no great power gives up its number one position (easily),\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
China, too, should stay on its toes, as \u201cthere\u2019s something powerful and dynamic in the American economic and social system that explains its high performance\u201d, the diplomat said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo whenever I meet my Chinese friends, I always tell them to never, never underestimate the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While many geo-political watchers claim Donald Trump has weakened the United States domestically and on the world stage,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,144,155615,18064,3,2830,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-298637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-china","tag-fortune-innovation-forum","tag-geopolitics","tag-news","tag-u-s","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}