Kishore Mahbubani

It was an Indian political scientist, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who alerted me to a significant difference between the democratic Indian society and communist Chinese society. He shrewdly observed that India was an open society with a closed mind, whereas China was a closed society with an open mind.

If exposure to Japanese democracy could persuade thoughtful Chinese to consider the virtues of democracy, exposure to Indian democracy would have exactly the opposite effect. Whereas Japanese democracy is reassuringly calm and stable (reflecting the Japanese emphasis on harmony in interpersonal relations and its Confucian heritage), Indian democracy is loud and rambunctious, reflecting the spirit of the argumentative Indian. I know this spirit well as I was born an argumentative Indian.

And these people—most of them have no access to education,” he said. “So how can you imagine that these people are in a position to talk about democracy when they are simply illiterate?”

Defense spending is not decided as a result of a comprehensive rational national strategy to evaluate which weapon systems America would need in its current geopolitical environment. Instead, weapons systems are purchased as a result of a complex lobbying system by defense contractors who have wisely allocated defense manufacturing plants to all the key congressional districts in America

The days when a public servant such as George Marshall would decline opportunities to profit from public service are long gone. Today, a successful career in Washington—and sometimes even a badly tarnished one—can pave the way to a lucrative career in the private sector, provided one does not stray outside the “respectable” consensus.

The inability to make this U-turn demonstrates that, like the old Soviet Union, America has become rigid, inflexible, and doctrinaire.

First, America will inevitably win the geostrategic competition against China, just as it eventually won against Germany and Japan in World War II and against the Soviet Union in the Cold War. In short, the idea of America losing a struggle is inconceivable. Second, China’s political and economic system is unsustainable and will collapse because all communist governments eventually fail while all democracies eventually succeed. Third, America has abundant resources and need not make any fundamental strategic adjustments or sacrifices in the competition with China. Fourth, America has a fundamentally just and well-ordered society, resting on the wise American Constitution and the rule of law, and hence, no fundamental restructuring of American society is needed in the coming contest with China. Fifth, given a choice between partnering with the beacon of freedom, the shining city on the hill (which is America), or with a Communist Party dictatorship, the majority of humanity will naturally gravitate toward partnering with America

As this book has documented in several areas, the primary goal of China’s rulers is to preserve peace and harmony among 1.4 billion people in China, not try to influence the lives of the 6 billion people who live outside China.

Future historians, with a long view, will marvel at how much the CCP dynasty has accomplished.

However, the Chinese people don’t compare their condition with that of other societies. Instead, they compare their lot with what they experienced in the past.