Let me conclude this discussion by facing up to this Cold War that's emerging.
The Cold War in which the United States's media and its politicians talk endlessly
about whatever they can find negative about the People's Republic of China:
Hong Kong, Uyghur minority, military maneuvers in the South China Sea... you can fill in the blank.
Very dangerous, as Cold Wars always are, as the one with the Soviet Union was.
We don't seem to have learned that, and I want to close with a historical analogy.
Many years ago, a small colony of the great world empire at the time, the British empire,
a small colony here in North America made a revolution, fought a war. We celebrated it in
the first weekend of this month of July 2021. It became an independent United States of America.
A very small, ragtag, poor part of the British empire had the daring
nerve to go to war against the most developed military naval power the world had ever seen:
the British empire of the 18th century. And it won, and it became independent
,and the British Empire scoffed. A few years later in 1812, we had another war
with Britain again, trying to undo the revolution, failed. The United States survived
well over the next 200 years, roughly. The old colony became the master, and the old master
became the poodle. Now Britain, when told what to do by the United States, asks for directions on
how best to do it. Role reversal historically. Not very pleasant for Britain, difficult.
Many in Britain still pretend that it hasn't quite happened.
Does the United States want to be the Britain relative to China? Do we want that future?
Well it has to do with coming to terms. To the credit of the British,
they didn't make any more wars against the United States. They tried to work out a live and let
live relationship. [It] has its rocky moments, but it's an understanding that war isn't the
way to go- neither hot nor cold. The United States has many problems. So do the Chinese.
Maybe, we can help one another solve them. In a way, the last 40 years have been that. The United
States maintained its capitalist economic system in part out of cooperation with the Chinese.
Let me drive that point home, many of you are wearing clothes made in China,
using appliances made in China, you know that. You know that when you went to the discount stores,
the Walmarts, the Targets- all of them. You were buying from China
because those stores became big and successful because they became the outlet for what the
Chinese could produce better and cheaper than could be produced anywhere else.
Walmart owes its success to China, just as China owes part of its success
to being able to get into the American market ,which Walmart helped it to do.
We helped each other, and that was good for the United States and good for China. It is my hope
that we do not let petty political calculations of scapegoat artists,
like Mr. Trump, and like Mr. Biden sometimes threatens to become,
undo a cooperative mechanism. That's what we can hope for,
and that's one of the reasons it was important to present this discussion of the People's
Republic of China and the challenge that it represents and presents to the world today.