I if I were China would not be terribly
worried about us sanctions I mean really
seriously uh China's four times larger
than the US uh it's perfectly capable of
doing without at this stage uh
practically anything the US might have
be supplying to
China I will say the reason why or a
major reason why China uh has developed
uh into the largest economy in the world
and the strongest industrial economy in
the world by by a very substantial
margin um is that it did not follow the
neoliberal prescriptions that the the
although there's a strong inroad of
neoliberalism in Chinese academic
thinking the reality of Chinese policy
so far has been largely pragmatic and
has been largely oriented toward
specific problems as they arose and
confronted the state in one way or
another and then that's one one step at
a time and generally speaking quite
cautious and that has been proved to be
to serve China very well and my sense is
that what has happened in the US as a
result of
neoliberalism has been the effective
destruction of the ability of the
government in the United States uh to
monitor supervise uh provide guidance
provide leadership for major
technological initiatives uh that you
really have to have an independent
capacity the one that is is not
completely under the control of private
companies uh not and that is able to set
a directions what we had with the
Manhattan Project uh the the space
program and and a number of things in
the middle of the 20th century uh were
in fact you know considered to be in
fact in earlier too that even in the
19th century these were things that
government did and did quite capably but
all of that was wiped out u in the last
40 years uh so it's very hard for me to
see that the us is going to actually use
these tools or be able to make these
tools pay uh in an effective way know
countries which have maintained that
that sort of autonomous capacity to
think about new technologies are in much
stronger position I if I were China
would not be terribly worried about us
sanctions I mean really seriously uh
China's four times larger than the US uh
it's perfectly capable of doing without
at this stage uh practically anything
the US might have be supplying to China
and I don't know what there is that's of
any great significance they um in the
case of Russia the idea that was
promoted in the west two years ago was
that the sanctions in Russia was so
dependent on Western technology Western
Finance that sanctions would simply both
the Russian economy and turn the
Russian people and also the so-called
oligarchs against the Russian State
first of all a very silly idea that Russ
somehow needs Western money what for
okay I mean for everything that's that's
related to the military and most things
that are related to civilian life Russia
issues its own money second point was
Russia really need Western components
they need Western Technologies uh for
what uh the answer was well yeah they
were using a lot of Western components
aircraft Automobiles and appliances and
all kinds of things and they were buying
a lot of of food cheese wine poultry so
on and so forth well with a case of
things like cheese and wine well these
are easily not they can be substituted
for uh quite readily in the case of the
of durable things machinery and so forth
uh they discovered that they they could
and they have been discovering for a
decade that they could substitute things
they can produce themselves they didn't
really need to buy things from Germany
and Japan let alone from the United
States and so they continued to do this
and at the same time time cutting off
the flow of natural gas to Europe or
cutting it back meant that the energy
prices inside Russia were stable so that
there would be good raw materials for
Russian business and Russian markets for
Russian business expanded because
Western competition and so an economy
which had been deeply colonized by the
West was largely decolonized and the
Russian economy after a period of short
period of adjustment has taken off uh so
the effect of sanctions on Russia was in
many ways I've said the the equivalent
of a gift really there steps that the
Russian government would not have taken
on its own they would not have kicked
out Western firms they would not have
imposed Capital controls uh they there
were lots of things that the oligarchs
didn't want to have to choose between
Russia and the west and the sanctions
forced them to choose um and all all
these things have work to strengthen the
Russian economy and weaken the European
economy so there is behind this idea of
saying a certain amount of
condescension about the capacity of
Russia China I think that there are some
Industries these days which cannot be
deg globalized if you really had a full
decoupling I think the most likely thing
is that some of these major industries
would simply not be viable they'd
collapse which would have very serious
consequences uh you know this is this
you can see if you want to see a smaller
scale uh of the same phenomenon think
about what happened in Yugoslavia which
had a automobile industry when the
country broke up the automobile industry
collapsed because they and and that was
also true when the Soviet Union broke up
and you had suddenly International
borders and and certain kinds of
activity simply fell apart because they
couldn't be sustained uh they were
sustainable as a as a single unit but
they couldn't be sustainable across
these kinds of Frontiers so the
decoupling of the United States from
China is going to have some consequences
of that kind um so and I hope it doesn't
happen I hope it can be uh forestalled
that sensible policies will will prevail
there's absolutely no reason for a
conflict between the US and
China what interpret US policy toward
China really going back to
1949 in a different way that it's
substantially oriented to trying to
destabilize China internally and think
about I'll tell you that my father was
posted to India as Ambassador in the
early
1960s uh and at that time the US the CIA
were dropping Guerilla units into Tibet
to try and upset Chinese control over
Tibet that didn't succeed and you think
about shinjang or Hong Kong or Taiwan
these are all part and parcel at some
point people need to grow up and realize
that this is not you're not going to
destabilize China uh anymore I think it
that that a you know sensibly sensible
person to realize that there there's no
problem that can't be resolved
peacefully between the US and China so
it strikes me that you know part of
what's going on here is inside the US is
a political matter that uh uh there's a
there's always been a need to have an
adversary which can support the military
budget that you can see that shifting
all the time from know um and it's it's
largely a question of internal politics
and propaganda