Hello, welcome to visit Shanghai Forum
Today I just want to take twentyminutes or so to speak a little bit about the background of the subject that Iput before you hear: how the past, present, and future are coming together toshape. I hope it is a more a stable shape for Asia and for the wider region andworld. And in doing so, I want to speak in particular about the importance ofthe interpretation of history in shaping the region. Now I think that there isa very clear link with what Professor Duara had said. Because he has spokenvery eloquently about the importance of power, cultural power, economic power,even military power in shaping ideas of how nations and regions thinking aboutthemselves. And I want to want add some specific elements to that, which aretwo historical narratives, two ideas of history. They are relevant to China,but not just about China. One to do with the Silk Road, which of course is onall of our minds, with the emergence of the Yi Dai Yi Lu, one belt one road,belt and road initiative, but also the shared history of the recent more modernhistory, of the second world war, of the war against Japan in China, and theEuropean, an Asian theatre of World War II for the United States and for theBritish empire amongst others.
And in doing so, I can show a fewexamples. The first and most obvious one is to talk a little bit about the newSilk Road and about the new maritime structures that underpin the One Belt OneRoad policy. It's evident that this creates new diplomatic and tradingopportunities not just for China, but for the countries which are entwined andcombined in this new proposed network. But what I think needs to be noted isthat in some ways, it throws back the historical centre of gravity, the centreof attention much more onto the Eurasian continent. For a long time theattention has been on the pacific. There are very good reasons for thatconcentration on the pacific, but at the same time, I think it is important tounderstand that the proposal to place much more on the centre of economicgravity and trade in the countries of central Asia, and even of south Asian.Again what the Professor Duara mentioned throws us back in a sense almost tothe Tang dynasty when the Silk Road was very active. China's own culture wasreshaped in a way that was highly outward-looking and also very much shaped bythe societies around it. It was a time of course that Chang An which laterbecame Xi An, the great Chinese capital, was marked by aristocrat wearingheadgear and costumes and clothing taken from the central Asian region in asign of that sort of cosmopolitan fashion which symbolized a much wider senseof Chinese identity.
And I think that's worth rememberingbecause Chinese culture sometimes is easily defined as an inward-lookingculture. Of course, it's well known that the traditions of Confucius of Daoismand the Rujia. All of these have been very important in shaping the world thatwe think of as Chinese. The scholar Joshua Fogel has written about what hecalls the Sino sphere. The world that was shaped not just in China, but inJapan, Korea, Southeast
Asia including Vietnam. But I thinkwhat's important to remember is that the Sino sphere, that world of Chineseculture, which existed all the way up to the nineteenth century, has alwaysbeen hybrid in many ways. A combination of cultures, in which the Confuciantraditions of central China, the Buddhist traditions that came from India, andof course the ethnically very varied influences of the Mongo dynasty of theYuan, the Manchu dynasty of the Qing, came together in a whole variety ofdifferent combinations. Chinese culture, Chinese understandings have alwaysbeen plural nouns. They have never been clearly defined in one way. Andsometimes when you hear a very worthwhile, very positive idea that China needsto tell the China story, I always like to remind people there is no one Chinastory. There are many China stories, some of which argue and disagree with eachother, but all of which create a lively cosmopolitanism. The worst thing youcan do to tell the China story is to tell only one story.
The twentieth century, I think, alsocreated a new stage in the development of the way, in which China's identitymerged into the wider changes in the non- European world. Again, ProfessorDuara, I promise you we didn't consult on our talks beforehand but actuallythey fit together very well. He has talked about the importance of imperialismin shaping the mind sets of so many non-European people in an unequal powersituation in the twentieth century. We should add one product of that and thisagain related to the issues of soft power, is the question of hybridity, inother words the combination of cultures coming together. And I see a smile onProfessor Duara face. He recognized a classic work of Indian modernism, inwhich the artist takes a combination of traditional Indian folk, art along withthe tactics and techniques that came from the new flat faced, forward facingideas that came from modernist views of how art should be conceived. I remindedthe modernist movement. Something that can be defined as part of twentiethcentury western maternity, has always been shaped and influenced by a wholevariety of influences that come from the wider non-European world. I use anIndian example there, partly points out that China story is not just aboutChina. I want to give one of my favourite examples from China. All of you I’msure will know the great Chinese poet Guo Moruo, who was one of the mostexciting romantic voices in poetry in the early twentieth century. Almosteveryone knows his classic poem Tiangou, heavenly hound heavenly dog, whichhave contained such lines. And again I’ll give you in English although youprobably know the original Chinese version. The lines: I am the son, I am themoon, I am the light of the stars, I am X-ray, I am the energy of the entireuniverse. Anyone who knows the history of modernism will speak of at least twoauthors. One is the influence of Walt Whitman, one of the most importantmodernist voices in America in the late nineteenth century. They also show theineluctable influence of Rabindranath Tagore, perhaps the single most importantintellectual in terms of twentieth century cosmopolitan from any country atall. The first non-European to win the Nobel prize for literature, but also acultural figure of huge importance throughout the world in the early twentiethcentury including in Japan and in China. And Gitanjali is one of the powerfulinfluences that also emerges in Guo Moruo’s writing, so that American, Chinese,Indian conversation in culture has been going on for a very long time andreminds us that at its most flowering Chinese culture, pre-modern or modern hasalways thrived on cosmopolitanism, hybridity and generosity of interaction.
Of course, not all times in Chinahistory have been outward looking or entirely happy and we cannot avoid thehorrific events of the mid twentieth century which are known in this country asChina's war of resistance to Japan, part of the global second world war. InChina it lasted eight years from 1937 to 1945. And on the one hand, there wasan immense destruction during this period. You have a picture here of thetemporary Chinese capital, the Peidu, in Chongqing, being bombed after bombingin one of the many hundreds of air raids that hit the city during the period ofthe war against the Japanese particularly between 1938 and 1941. Something thatdid a great deal to destroy large parts of the infrastructure of nationalistChina during the war. But at the same time, the wartime period also transformedChina's status in the world. The journey has taken to the present day as aworld power. For the first time, China was treated as a key sovereign ally. Itis no coincidence, no coincidence at all. In 1943, just over one hundred yearsafter the Nanjing treaty of 1842, China finally signed the Xinytiaoyue, the newtreaties that put forward the reality that China was a fully sovereign state inthe community or nation, which has developed ever since in that sense. It wasalso a time when China began to form alliances that would help to create a newworld ,which eventually as we know today would lead to the United States andChina perhaps becoming the two most important single nation state actors in theworld. That past was not simple or linear. We know of course that the UnitedStates through its representatives visited Mao Zedong, Zhu De and other keyfigures of the Chinese communist party in 1944 during the war at the communistheadquarters in Yan An. The beginning of a process of recognition by the westand the United States that new forces and new powers were at play in China andin Asia more broadly in particular anti-imperialist nationalist movements thatof course eventually become the mainstay of the cold war. But there were muchmore engagements with then government of China under Jiang Jieshi ChiangKai-shek with his wife Song Meilin and interpreters. A powerful politicalfigure in her own right is General Joseph Stilwell, the US commander chief inChina during the Second World War. It's a slight odd picture because they'resmiling even though Jiang Jieshi and Joseph Stilwell hated each other andnormally would not have been smiling in private with each other. But nonetheless,this relationship showed the plus and the minus side of the changing states ofChina in the World War II period. On the one hand, the formal alliance afterpearl harbour in 1941, in which the British Empire, the United States and Chinawere formerly allied in the war against Japan. The first time, the first timethat a non-European power had formed that sort of alliance in terms of anactual combat. Historians know Japanese-British agreement in 1902. But in termsof actual combat effectiveness, this was not a major factor in the diplomacy ofthe time. In this case Chinese, British and Americans actually fightingtogether at a time when India was still a colony and was forced into the warwithout the consent of the Indian nationalist congress movement. The minus sideis that this period also proved very damaging to the direct relationshipbetween the US and China. General Joseph Stilwell and by extension PresidentRoosevelt came very much to a division with Chiang Kai-shek. The increasingbelief on the American side that they were not getting proper cooperation fromChina. The increasing belief on the Chinese side that the Americans were notgiving them enough assistance. And yet they were still important events. The1943 Cairo Conference still matters very much on the minds of policy makers inChina today. The future of Asia was discussed, not fully decided, but discussedin a way that for the first time again brought a non-European leader literallyto the forefront. And again the symbolism of this photo with PresidentRoosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek and SongMeiling altogether sitting an equal status should not be underestimated. Itshows the changing relationship in Asia and the postcolonial world that wouldeventually lead to a very different sort of arrangement in the post-war period.
I would speak very briefly about thepost war period but it's worth noting that several decades marked a wholevariety of opportunities for China and the world, but also of missed chances.On the one hand I think an opportunity which was taken up was the chance forChina and Asia to forge a new relationship between countries that havepreviously been colonized or partly colonized. The Bandung conference of 1955is a good example and here in the picture you see, Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indianprime minister and Zhou Enlai, Chinese prime minister and foreign minister, atthe time that was rather friendly so presumably before 1962 when the twocountries went to war with each other. And the feeling that India and Chinacould be major players in shaping post-war Asian order was I think an importantdevelopment, which is even now, still to bear its full fruit of success. But onthe other hand, it was also a time of failure in missing chances. The UnitedStates and China became isolated from each other and being very neutral andobjective. I have to put the blame on both sides. The United States should havegiven diplomatic recognition to China in the early 1950s when the communistwon, but China also should not have worked with Stalin and Kim Ill-sung toinvade South Korea, so I think both sides have to take some of theirresponsibility on that one. And it meant of course that we had more than aquarter of a century of isolation until the Nixon-Kissinger visited to Mao in1972 that eventually started to move into a new order.
Finally of course in the late coldwater, the fall of the Soviet Union open the way for China to take a strongereconomic and geopolitical role and in the last decade or so as we know thatprocess has continued to grow. The Beijing Olympics of course marking a newconfidence nearly ten years ago with the idea of China as a country that couldparticipate in that language of international sport and cultural power. Theemergence of the internet is one of the single most important factors inchanging Chinese society. I cannot not count the number of people in the threedays I’ve been here who tell me how foolish I am not to be on WeChat and that'sgoing to change quite soon. China can never be isolated in
the true sense again as long as theinternet connections exist. Chinese netizens are more than the entire USpopulation. New challenges will go well beyond national boundaries.Environmental issues is the most obvious and this very week, we know thePresident Trump may decide to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate changeagreement. As I think, Professor Duara was indicating, this maybe the bestchance that China has to take a leadership role in the global community beyondthe boundaries of the nation state. I think it will be a testing time forAmerica, but actually also for China as well to take this opportunity.
At the end, I want bring some of theseideas together. In the past, I thought new ideas about the Silk Road would nothave been heard, especially in the time of Chairman Mao because they're abouttrade, commerce and corporation rather than revolution and Ziligengsheng,self-sufficiency. So I think although it is a very old historical example, it'sbeing used to make some quite pointed ideas about the world today. But I alsofind that the new interest in the last ten fifteen years and in the secondworld war in China, communicated in the a military parade in 2015 in Tiananmenon the seventeenth anniversary of the end of World War II. It is also a veryimportant part of shared understanding and I would argue for more globalizationin this particular history. On the left hand side we have here, the TV showshown in Chongqing slightly more than ten years, showing the history of Chongqingas the Peidu the contemporary capital and you can see the box. Comparing itwith Washington DC, Moscow and London, you can find that it is an explicitcombination. But on the left on the right hand side we have a classic newsphoto of London after it was bombed in the blitz in World War II by the Germansand I think the awareness of the left hand picture of Chongqing in the westernworld such as Britain and the US, is very limited at the moment. China, Britainand the United States work together is a language, is a narrative, is a story,which should be told more and understood in more detail. I think it isparticularly relevant to Britain at a time Brexit is coming along from Europeto remind ourselves as well as the rest of the world that we are capable ofcooperation. And I think it's also good for China to remind itself thatinternational cooperation has always been a part of the way in which thecountry operates, particularly at a time of great danger.
So let's finish with perhaps one of theiconic issues of pictures of our time. I am thinking of the classic picture ofRichard Nixon and Chairman Mao nearly fifty years ago, and we have anotherChinese leader and another American leader. Of course, some people havesuggested some connections between Nixon and Trump. I couldn't comment onthose. But I think that the point is that they are at the next stage ofinheritance of the world at the end of World War II, the post 1945 world andboth the United States and China as they come out of that Mar-a-Lago summitinto the next phase of development. Need to remember, the role they hold ishistorically informed. I think one of the indictments of President Trump is hedoesn't seem to either read or know understand the historical role that theUnited States has played in this every other region. I would say that bothChina and the United States because of that contributions and sacrifices aslong ago was world war two more than seventy years ago, earned the right tohave a significant say and presence in the post-1945 world in Asia. That isstill true today. I think it is hard to imagine Asia pacific that can be stableand peaceful without the cooperative relationship between China and the UnitedStates. But the point is that both of those powers are needed for balance.China should welcome the continued presence of the United States in the EastAsian region and the United States should seek to bring China more firmly intothe cooperative community that shapes this area. With that type of cooperationwith that type of engagement, the wider project of the new silk road, I think,has a much greater chance of success and those of us watching from Europe whereI live, will be I think, highly pleased to see these two important figurescoming together to forge a more stable, a more peaceful Asia from which Europeand the rest of the world can only benefit. Thank you very much.
(This article is edited based on therecording and has not been reviewed by the speaker.)
