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So, let me thank you
for the opportunity to talk about
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the biggest international story
of your professional lifetime,
00:00:22
which is also the most important
international challenge
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the world will face
for as far as the eye can see.
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The story, of course,
is the rise of China.
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Never before have so many people
risen so far so fast,
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on so many different dimensions.
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The challenge is the impact
of China's rise --
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the discombobulation
this will cause the Unites States
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and the international order,
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of which the US has been
the principal architect and guardian.
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The past 100 years have been what
historians now call an "American Century."
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Americans have become
accustomed to their place
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at the top of every pecking order.
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So the very idea of another country
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that could be as big and strong
as the US -- or bigger --
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strikes many Americans
as an assault on who they are.
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For perspective on what
we're now seeing in this rivalry,
00:01:22
it's useful to locate it
on the larger map of history.
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The past 500 years have seen 16 cases
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in which a rising power
threatened to displace a ruling power.
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Twelve of those ended in war.
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So just in November, we'll all pause
to mark the 100th anniversary
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of the final day of a war
that became so encompassing,
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that it required historians to create
an entirely new category: world war.
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So, on the 11th hour of the 11th day
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of the 11th month in 1918,
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the guns of World War I fell silent,
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but 20 million individuals lay dead.
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I know that this
is a sophisticated audience,
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so you know about the rise of China.
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I'm going to focus, therefore,
on the impact of China's rise,
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on the US, on the international order
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and on the prospects for war and peace.
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But having taught at Harvard
over many years,
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I've learned that from time to time,
it's useful to take a short pause,
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just to make sure we're all
on the same page.
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The way I do this is, I call a time-out,
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I give students a pop quiz --
ungraded, of course.
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So, let's try this. Time-out, pop quiz.
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Question:
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forty years ago, 1978, China sets out
on its march to the market.
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At that point, what percentage
of China's one billion citizens
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were struggling to survive
on less than two dollars a day?
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Take a guess -- 25 percent?
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Fifty?
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Seventy-five?
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Ninety.
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What do you think?
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Ninety.
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Nine out of every 10
on less than two dollars a day.
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Twenty eighteen, 40 years later.
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What about the numbers?
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What's your bet?
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Take a look.
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Fewer than one in 100 today.
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And China's president has promised
that within the next three years,
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those last tens of millions
will have been raised up
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above that threshold.
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So it's a miracle, actually,
in our lifetime.
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Hard to believe.
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But brute facts are even harder to ignore.
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A nation that didn't even appear
on any of the international league tables
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25 years ago
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has soared,
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to rival -- and in some areas,
surpass -- the United States.
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Thus, the challenge
that will shape our world:
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a seemingly unstoppable rising China
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accelerating towards an apparently
immovable ruling US,
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on course for what could be
the grandest collision in history.
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To help us get our minds
around this challenge,
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I'm going to introduce you
to a great thinker,
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I'm going to present a big idea,
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and I'm going to pose a most
consequential question.
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The great thinker is Thucydides.
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Now, I know his name is a mouthful,
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and some people
have trouble pronouncing it.
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So, let's do it, one,
two, three, together:
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Thucydides.
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One more time: Thucydides.
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So who was Thucydides?
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He was the father and founder of history.
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He wrote the first-ever history book.
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It's titled "The History
of the Peloponnesian War,"
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about the war in Greece, 2500 years ago.
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So if nothing else today,
you can tweet your friends,
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"I met a great thinker.
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And I can even pronounce
his name: Thucydides."
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So, about this war
that destroyed classical Greece,
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Thucydides wrote famously:
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"It was the rise of Athens
and the fear that this instilled in Sparta
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that made the war inevitable."
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So the rise of one
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and the reaction of the other
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create a toxic cocktail of pride,
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arrogance, paranoia,
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that drug them both to war.
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Which brings me to the big idea:
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Thucydides's Trap.
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"Thucydides's Trap" is a term
I coined several years ago,
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to make vivid Thucydides's insight.
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Thucydides's Trap is the dangerous
dynamic that occurs
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when a rising power threatens
to displace a ruling power,
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like Athens --
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or Germany 100 years ago,
or China today --
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and their impact on Sparta,
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or Great Britain 100 years ago,
or the US today.
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As Henry Kissinger has said,
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once you get this idea, this concept
of Thucydides's Trap in your head,
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it will provide a lens
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for helping you look through
the news and noise of the day
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to understand what's actually going on.
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So, to the most consequential question
about our world today:
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Are we going to follow
in the footsteps of history?
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Or can we, through a combination
of imagination and common sense
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and courage
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find a way to manage this rivalry
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without a war nobody wants,
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and everybody knows would be catastrophic?
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Give me five minutes to unpack this,
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and later this afternoon, when the next
news story pops up for you
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about China doing this,
or the US reacting like that,
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you will be able to have a better
understanding of what's going on
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and even to explain it to your friends.
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So as we saw with this flipping
the pyramid of poverty,
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China has actually soared.
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It's meteoric.
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Former Czech president, Vaclav Havel,
I think, put it best.
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He said, "All this has happened so fast,
we haven't yet had time to be astonished."
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(Laughter)
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To remind myself
how astonished I should be,
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I occasionally look out the window
in my office in Cambridge
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at this bridge, which goes
across the Charles River,
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between the Kennedy School
and Harvard Business School.
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In 2012, the State of Massachusetts said
they were going to renovate this bridge,
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and it would take two years.
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In 2014, they said it wasn't finished.
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In 2015, they said
it would take one more year.
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In 2016, they said it's not finished,
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we're not going to tell you
when it's going to be finished.
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Finally, last year, it was finished --
three times over budget.
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Now, compare this to a similar bridge
that I drove across last month in Beijing.
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It's called the Sanyuan Bridge.
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In 2015, the Chinese decided
they wanted to renovate that bridge.
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It actually has twice as many
lanes of traffic.
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How long did it take for them
to complete the project?
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Twenty fifteen, what do you bet?
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Take a guess -- OK, three --
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Take a look.
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(Laughter)
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The answer is 43 hours.
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(Audience: Wow!)
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(Laughter)
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Graham Allison: Now, of course,
that couldn't happen in New York.
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(Laughter)
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Behind this speed in execution
is a purpose-driven leader
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and a government that works.
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The most ambitious
and most competent leader
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on the international stage today
is Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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And he's made no secret
about what he wants.
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As he said when he became
president six years ago,
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his goal is to make China great again --
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(Laughter)
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a banner he raised long before
Donald Trump picked up a version of this.
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To that end, Xi Jinping has announced
specific targets for specific dates:
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2025, 2035, 2049.
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By 2025, China means to be
the dominant power
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in the major market
in 10 leading technologies,
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including driverless cars, robots,
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artificial intelligence,
quantum computing.
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By 2035, China means to be
the innovation leader
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across all the advanced technologies.
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And by 2049, which is
the 100th anniversary
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of the founding of the People's Republic,
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China means to be
unambiguously number one,
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including, [says] Xi Jinping,
an army that he calls "Fight and Win."
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So these are audacious goals,
but as you can see,
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China is already well on its way
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to these objectives.
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And we should remember
how fast our world is changing.
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Thirty years ago,
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the World Wide Web had not
yet even been invented.
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Who will feel the impact
of this rise of China most directly?
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Obviously, the current number one.
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As China gets bigger
and stronger and richer,
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technologically more advanced,
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it will inevitably bump up against
American positions and prerogatives.
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Now, for red-blooded Americans --
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and especially for red-necked Americans
like me; I'm from North Carolina --
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there's something wrong with this picture.
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The USA means number one,
that's who we are.
00:11:38
But again, to repeat:
brute facts are hard to ignore.
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Four years ago, Senator John McCain
asked me to testify about this
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to his Senate Armed Services Committee.
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And I made for them a chart
that you can see,
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that said, compare the US and China
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to kids on opposite ends
of a seesaw on a playground,
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each represented by the size
of their economy.
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As late as 2004,
China was just half our size.
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By 2014, its GDP was equal to ours.
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And on the current trajectory,
by 2024, it will be half again larger.
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The consequences of this tectonic change
will be felt everywhere.
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For example, in the current
trade conflict,
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China is already
the number one trading partner
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of all the major Asian countries.
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Which brings us back
to our Greek historian.
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Harvard's "Thucydides's Trap Case File"
has reviewed the last 500 years of history
00:12:46
and found 16 cases in which a rising power
00:12:49
threatened to displace a ruling power.
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Twelve of these ended in war.
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And the tragedy of this
is that in very few of these
00:13:03
did either of the protagonists want a war;
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few of these wars were initiated
by either the rising power
00:13:10
or the ruling power.
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So how does this work?
00:13:13
What happens is,
a third party's provocation
00:13:17
forces one or the other to react,
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and that sets in motion a spiral,
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which drags the two somewhere
they don't want to go.
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If that seems crazy, it is.
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But it's life.
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Remember World War I.
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The provocation in that case
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was the assassination
of a second-level figure,
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Archduke Franz Ferdinand,
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which then led
the Austro-Hungarian emperor
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to issue an ultimatum to Serbia,
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they dragged in the various allies,
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within two months,
all of Europe was at war.
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So imagine if Thucydides were watching
planet Earth today.
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What would he say?
00:14:01
Could he find a more appropriate
leading man for the ruling power
00:14:05
than Donald J Trump?
00:14:07
(Laughter)
00:14:08
Or a more apt lead for the rising
power than Xi Jinping?
00:14:15
And he would scratch his head
00:14:17
and certainly say he couldn't think
of more colorful provocateur
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than North Korea's Kim Jong-un.
00:14:26
Each seems determined
to play his assigned part
00:14:30
and is right on script.
00:14:33
So finally, we conclude again
with the most consequential question,
00:14:37
the question that will have
the gravest consequences
00:14:40
for the rest of our lives:
00:14:45
Are Americans and Chinese going to let
the forces of history drive us to a war
00:14:51
that would be catastrophic for both?
00:14:54
Or can we summon
the imagination and courage
00:14:57
to find a way to survive together,
00:15:00
to share the leadership
in the 21st century,
00:15:03
or, as Xi Jinping [said], to create
a new form of great power relations?
00:15:08
That's the issue I've been
pursuing passionately
00:15:10
for the last two years.
00:15:12
I've had the opportunity to talk
and, indeed, to listen
00:15:15
to leaders of all
the relevant governments --
00:15:17
Beijing, Washington, Seoul, Tokyo --
00:15:21
and to thought leaders across the spectrum
of both the arts and business.
00:15:26
I wish I had more to report.
00:15:28
The good news is that leaders
are increasingly aware
00:15:32
of this Thucydidean dynamic
00:15:34
and the dangers that it poses.
00:15:37
The bad news is that
nobody has a feasible plan
00:15:39
for escaping history as usual.
00:15:43
So it's clear to me
that we need some ideas
00:15:45
outside the box
of conventional statecraft --
00:15:49
indeed, from another page
or another space --
00:15:54
which is what brings me to TED today
00:15:56
and which brings me to a request.
00:16:01
This audience includes many
of the most creative minds on the planet,
00:16:06
who get up in the morning and think
00:16:08
not only about how to manage
the world we have,
00:16:11
but how to create worlds that should be.
00:16:14
So I'm hopeful that as this sinks in
and as you reflect on it,
00:16:19
some of you are going to have
some bold ideas, actually some wild ideas,
00:16:23
that when we find, will make
a difference in this space.
00:16:27
And just to remind you if you do,
00:16:29
this won't be the first time.
00:16:32
Let me remind you of what happened
right after World War II.
00:16:36
A remarkable group of Americans
and Europeans and others,
00:16:40
not just from government, but from
the world of culture and business,
00:16:44
engaged in a collective
surge of imagination.
00:16:48
And what they imagined
and what they created
00:16:51
was a new international order,
00:16:54
the order that's allowed you and me
to live our lives, all of our lives,
00:16:58
without great power war
00:17:01
and with more prosperity
than was ever seen before on the planet.
00:17:05
So, a remarkable story.
00:17:08
Interestingly, every pillar of this
project that produced these results,
00:17:13
when first proposed,
00:17:15
was rejected by the foreign
policy establishment
00:17:18
as naive or unrealistic.
00:17:21
My favorite is the Marshall Plan.
00:17:24
After World War II,
Americans felt exhausted.
00:17:27
They had demobilized 10 million troops,
00:17:29
they were focused on
an urgent domestic agenda.
00:17:32
But as people began to appreciate
how devastated Europe was
00:17:37
and how aggressive Soviet communism was,
00:17:39
Americans eventually decided
to tax themselves
00:17:43
a percent and a half of GDP
every year for four years
00:17:47
and send that money to Europe
to help reconstruct these countries,
00:17:51
including Germany and Italy,
00:17:54
whose troops had just
been killing Americans.
00:17:57
Amazing.
00:17:59
This also created the United Nations.
00:18:02
Amazing.
00:18:03
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
00:18:06
The World Bank.
00:18:08
NATO.
00:18:09
All of these elements of an order
for peace and prosperity.
00:18:13
So, in a word, what we need
to do is do it again.
00:18:17
And I think now we need a surge
of imagination, creativity,
00:18:23
informed by history,
00:18:26
for, as the philosopher
Santayana reminded us,
00:18:30
in the end, only those
who refuse to study history
00:18:34
are condemned to repeat it.
00:18:37
Thank you.
00:18:38
(Applause)
