Extraordinarily insightful talk by John Thornton on China and its relations with the US. Truly a must-watch! Here he explains the "fundamental disconnect" between public statements that China-US is the most consequential relationship in the world and the utter lack of action to actually cultivate the relationship. For instance... he says that if you asked US cabinet members the names of their Chinese counterparts, 90% of them wouldn't know the answer. Thornton is probably the single American who best knows the Chinese system. He is a personal friend of most of the Chinese leadership, including Xi Jinping. In 2003 he became the first non-Chinese full professor at Tsinghua University since the establishment of the PRC. He is also one of America's foremost business leaders, having been co-president of Goldman Sachs and seating on the boards of companies such as Ford, Intel, ICBC, China Unicom, IMG, BSkyB, DirectTV, or News Corp.show more

He says, rightly, that the only way one can ever hope to have an impact on China is by building trust (with an interesting personal anecdote of a diner he had with Xi Jinping). China will obviously never listen to someone it is convinced is trying to contain or destroy them.

He also says that Chinese leaders lament that US leadership never actually read or hear what they say, only seeing China through the writings of "China watchers" - like Kevin Rudd - who get China completely wrong.

He attributes part of this to China "failing miserably" to communicate to the world media.

One thing he says the West misunderstands about China is its aspirations, which isn't to have "a Chinese century" but a "century of diverse civilizations, a new era in which there will no longer be a single civilizational hegemon".

He says the West also dramatically misunderstands the BRI. He reveals - which I think is an exclusive (never heard it before) - that they first proposed to John Kerry to do it jointly with the US, which the US didn't even want to consider.

Later in the video Thornton revealed that Kerry told him that not taking up China's offer to jointly do the BRI was "the single biggest missed opportunity of my life".

To a typical braindead question that the Chinese are brainwashed and, if only they knew about the world, they'd be "on our side" 🙄, Thornton has a masterful reply: "I've been teaching at Tsinghua now for 20 years so I know a lot of young Chinese... I don't know a single one of them who doesn't know what's going on in the outside world."

He then gives a bit more insights about the Chinese system and Xi Jinping personally. Here he describes Xi's incredibly challenging upbringing and how it shaped his convictions: "If you're Xi Jinping, when he says 'our single biggest priority is to improve the lives of the ordinary people', this is a deeply felt, personal, emotional comment. This is not a conceptual comment. Any of the US leaders in my lifetime, none of them lived that life. When they talk about improving the lives of ordinary Americans, this is an intellectual concept."

He says that "when the Chinese government says they're going to do something, chances are very high they're going to do it"; painting an interesting comparison between the very aspirational but highly unrealistic US "State of the Union address" and the equivalent in China, the "work report", "which tells you exactly what they actually did, for real, and what they're going to do, for real" 🤣

Lastly, he describes how the Communist Party of China works and the meritocratic nature of it.

If you want to watch the full video (which I highly recommend), here it is 🔽