Professor krie Brown Professor krie
Brown is a professor of Chinese studies
and the director of the Lao China
Institute at Kings College London um
from 1998 to 2005 he has worked at the
British foreign and Commonwealth office
including as the first secretary at the
British Embassy in Beijing he has
written extensively on modern Chinese
politics Professor Brown you have the
ears of the house
Professor Kerry Brown
thank, you great thanks very much congratulations to the ex president and congrat ulations and good luck for your Team uh and this is the fourth time
that I've spoken at the union it's beensome time so it's a great honor to be
back um and I guess I'm going to say four things first of all um I am a reformed hypocrite I come here uh I guess um when uh I you know kind of was was working and living in China in the 1990s and 2000s I did passionately believe I really did passionately believe that the whole trajectory in China would have to embrace some kind of political participation in decision-making and I did think that China would have to go through a political transition I remember I lived
in in Mongolia in the mid 1990s and I remember having a massive argument on a
train trip from Beijing to guango that year uh with a student from Beijing University about how uh you know China in taking back Hong Kong uh had to
observe all of the treaty obligations and we kind of had this massive round
she just said um let's just about something else um so I do remember you
know kind of those debates I remember in the 2000s when China underwent one of the great kind of explosions of GDP growth of all time it quadrupled its
economy in four year for in a decade I mean incredible and I remember doing a
project for the world movement for democracy where I went around around
about the time of the Beijing Olympics uh and looked at different places in San
household committees I looked at uh democracy um supporting projects the
European Union was running I think in yunan I remember looking near Beijing at
some of the projects there for Village democracy and 3,000 um 3 million officials had been appointed through these uh open elections only one party could stand or nonp party members but I kind of thought with the rising middle class with per capita GDP Rising you would have to have uh reforms that would bring about systems like in the west so I had that experience and I remember uh dealing with democracy activists and seeing as the person said
earlier how they suffered I remember
looking at some of the activists in in
Mongolia who'd been banged up very badly
one of my friends hadada who ran a
Bookshop there kind of promoting
pluralism and openness uh was put in
jail for 15 years I mean you know I know
how people have suffered so I'm not at
all denigrating and belittling their
incredible courage and the people that
still struggle for this in China I have
nothing but admiration for them however
this is not about that it's about us as
the previous speakers have said it's
about how did we do and actually there
are four things that I think would have
made any Chinese official or otherwise
really skeptical of anything Weston has
said over the last 30 years the first is
that they would have been really aware
of the absolutely awful outcomes of what
the West told Russia when the USSR
collapsed in 1991 uh we went with bad faith we went
with bad faith and foed on them uh
economic and a political model which has
resulted with the things we see today uh
developmental levels in Russia fell male
mortality fell it was a Calamity for the
economy it had a huge impact in China
the greatest reason why communism is
still a live issue in China is because
of what they saw happened in the USSR
and learning that what's the worst thing
uh what is a worst thing than communism
what comes after it they saw that the
second is the 2001 terrorist attacks I
was in Beijing serving at the embassy at
the time and I remember from one minute
we went from telling China about how it
had to observe the WTO obligations and
it had to you know kind of George Bush
the younger was going on all the time
about how um you know China would our
human rights it was massive massive
issues of values but the moment America
was attacked it suddenly became our Ally
and we put I think a couple of uh UA
groups xinjang groups etim and others on
the terrorist list I mean we changed
almost overnight the third was the great
economic crisis in 2008 about the time
that I was working for the world
movement democracy in China going around
and looking at potential models and I
remember how the profound impact of not
only were we purveyors in the west of
really terrible uh political reform
ideas which have been C would have been
a catastrophe if China had listened to
us but we were also lousy capitalists I
mean if China had adopted some of the
capitalist measures that led to 2008
that American others had it would have
probably Fallen by the wayside the
actual result was that it became deeply
skeptical I don't think we would have
siing ping and he St of politics if we
hadn't had the 2008 great economic
crisis but the final thing is the
absolute calvacade of kind of strange
and weird events over the last 10 years
in America and Europe and elsewhere that
have shown that our political systems do
not have things that China can really
learn from and know would be functional
I don't think it is that China doesn't
want to reform I'm sure it does want to
reform but we don't have particularly
good models I don't believe that we have
any good models anymore that's why I'm a
reformed hypocrite so I think that there
are two things that I would say really
relevant to the deeper reason why we're
in this situation the first is and
someone alluded to it to it earlier
particularly about Britain what do we
want I've just uh written a history of
Britain's relations with China since
1600 to the present day great reversal
out in all good book y University press
advert over that has uh you know kind of
a section on when Britain was most
powerful when was Britain most powerful
in China it was in the late 19th century
when the Imperial Maritime custom ran
under Robert Hart a olster a third of the Chinese fiscal
system under the chin government at that
time Britain had absolute Supremacy we
had the world's largest consal system in
China we were building Railways we were
building mines we had something like 70%
of all foreign investment in China we
had literally saved the Ching in the
typing Rebellion uh by fighting on the
side of the Imperial troops we had
absolute privacy we did not however ever
talk about values we did not at the peak
of our power want China to be a power
like us what we wanted our policy was
very very simple we wanted China not to
be so strong that it would be a threat
to us and we didn't want it to be so
week that it would fall apart we were
driven by self-interest that has been the historic
basis of our relationship what we don't
what we want what we our policy towards
China is often what we don't want China
to be it's not what we do want China to
be when we come to the 21st century we
have a kind of really really obvious
strategic choice and the reason why I
think that we are hypocrites is because
we me to be very honest about why we have
an issue with China being the way it is
and functioning the way it is we acted
in bad faith because we engaged from the
1990s onwards and through the World
Trade Organization entry all those
things hedging on a bet that we would
end up with a China that looked a bit
like us but was um not a problem by
being too strong and wouldn't Lord
forbid Fall Apart but the problem is what we didn't
ever expect is a China that would
succeed under a very different model and
that's what's happened we have today
this incredible anomaly of a China which
is a problem to us not because it isn't
a capitalist the problem is that it is a
capitalist that's better than us it's a
capitalist that practices what Darren B
very good scholar in America on shinjan
cus Terror capitalism a capitalism
without any labor rights a capitalism
without any restraints it is a better
capitalist than us our problem with
China is that it is doing the things
that we thought we were good at better
than us that is why I think that we are
hypocrites and very finally all of us
here wherever we're from just because
we're at this University in this
environment we are children of the
Enlightenment the great Enlightenment
values if you look at the enlightenment
Europeans values the kind of ideas about
China were really well captured by three
great figures liit monu and um um voler
and they capture very very well 300
years ago why today we are still so
conflicted as Enlightenment Europeans or
people in the enlightenment culture
wherever we are in the political West up
towards China they captured on the one
hand the great idealism towards China
volter wrote in the encyclopedia about
how China was a better system than
Britain you know than Europeans it was a
kind of ideal Confucian meritocratic
system uh monu wrote about how it was
despotic an evil system that couldn't
really you know kind of deliver anything
except terrible outcomes and liit was
the abstainer like the kind of system
tonight and so this kind of I think
captures who we are when we look at
China today we kind of see an entity
which antagonizes US fundamentally not
because of all of these terrible human
rights issues yeah I completely
recognize those for our political Elite
it is because China is doing the one
thing that we never thought it would do
and we didn't want it to do and we can't
stomach it doing and that is succeeding
under the system it has today thank you
very much I put them up
[Applause]
