you know what I find intriguing is that you spent 26 years you know writing these books and you started by asking the question in your first book can Asians think and right through your your thesis has always been is going to be an Asian Century a Pacific century um and that suggests therefore that um that that China or perhaps China and India could at some point overtake many Western countries you know if I were a Western Country and book after book If I Were USA in particular book after book is critical of me is suggesting that my days are numbered why should I not declare you persona non grata were you what what was the what was the reaction you got from the USA and many parts of Europe in your thesis which was dogged and consistent for 26 years well I think you know the the answer to your question is actually provided on the back cover of every book that I produce even canans think yeah uh got an Endor bman from Henry kinger you know so by the way that's my favorite book yeah the interesting question to ask is why have my books uh been endorsed by some of the leading thinkers in the west and this this is the great Paradox about the West you see and and I think people in the west who read my books uh understand that I'm not trying to demolish the West West they they understand that I'm a friend of the West in telling the West you lost your way right you're making some huge mistakes and the mistake they're making is a very simple fundamental mistake which the more thoughtful observers agree with me that the past 200 years uh of Western domination of world history has been a major historical ever Liberation you know from the year 1 to the year 1820 the two largest economies of the world were always those of China and India so the past 200 years where initially Europe took off North America took off had been an aberration and the reason why I'm so glad to be alive today is that I feel glad I'm alive to see on the one one hand the end of Western domination of world history and the return of Asia and this is in a remarkably exciting time so what's driving the writing of my books is an awareness that I'm living at an amazing historical moment of history and at the same time the my friends in the west are trying to understand Isa believe that the one person who can explain the right of Asia to them is me and if you look at the the blur that Larry Summers gave me for the new Asian hemisphere he said Larry Su Larry Summers who the former usas former US Secretary former president of Howard former Chief Economist World bank right uh said in the blur that you know 300 years from now the big story that the world will be talking about will be about how Asia return at this time and if there's one person who can explain it to us is Kisha movani but Kisha how would you respond to your your detractors or your critics that you've lost your objectivity in the process uh you were perhaps you have become too close and perhaps even fallen in love with your thesis uh that you are not able to even with the best effort to see objectively um that China also has its with its strength it it has its flaws you know have you been able to have you lost that neutrality somewhat you think I mean this is a it's a fair question what resp I I I I can you name me one nation without flaws no no I mean every every nation has got his flaws but some Nations have more than the fair sh the the more thoughtful mean why why would very thoughtful people uh endorse a book like uh H China One right and uh and by the way um you know one of the probably the greatest strategic thinker that America has produced in the last 50 60 years was Henry kinger right and uh in my book uh has China won I make it very clear that the whole book rests on a central premise given and insight given to me by Henry Kissinger which is that in this contest that's developing between us and China the United States doesn't have a comprehensive long-term strategy for managing the US China contest but China does have a comprehensive long-term strategy and and and people who think that this is I I say that is from Kissinger and all you have to do is read Kissinger's book on China and in the first chapter he explains a greater length what I say in my book as China One I mean so you you would you wouldn't characterize Henry Kissinger as Pro China for saying that actually both Henry kinger and I are telling our American friends hey wake up you don't have a strategy the other side has a strategy and you and the biggest mistake that United States is making is not overestimating China they're underestimating China and what China is doing now obviously if if I if I'm pro-china if I think China is going to win I should keep quiet but I'm telling my American friends where come you're the challenge you're taking on is much bigger than you think to be this is not a contest between the United States and the Communist Party of China this is a contest between the United States and a 4,000 year old civilization that has been been here much longer and by the way you know I can tell you this when I was invited by the Harvard Kennedy School to deliver uh the annual lecture but the first two people to give an annual lecture was President George HW Bush Mr gatov so I was in that uh group who delivered that lecture and and when I gave uh the lecture on the subject what happens when China becomes number one that lecture at Harvard University has now had 4 million views on YouTube 4 million so why and many of this from the west by the way why why would the West listen to me if I was just a propagandist for China the West listens to me because I try to explain the real China to them and of course the real china goes against the traditional Anglo-Saxon narrative and the anglosaxon narrative sadly and and by the way the more thoughtful people in in the angos sax World agree with me has become propagandistic uh and and they undermining themselves because at the end of the day the advice of sun was valid know thyself know th Enemy Fight a thousand battles win a thousand battles and if you don't understand your enemy you don't understand how China is succeeding and thriving then you're going to end up being uh in a difficult position and by the way I must emphasize to you that the more thoughtful people in the Anglo-Saxon World read my books and endorse my books because they realize I'm trying to help the West so is there something here that we can learn from the West like the USA they have not dismissed you some have they've not dismissed you they're still inviting you back your book launch one of the venues is Harvard University and as well as New York from what I understand now what is it that makes them even though they disagree with you even though you're critical of them to continue to invite you and at the end of the day uh when people from the West speak to me they feel that they are speaking to a member of their tribe because as you know my undergraduate training was in Western philosophy so when I argue with people in the west they can immediately recognize what I'm saying saying because I'm using the concepts and how you're and ideas and structures and metaphors that come from the Western uh universe so they feel that they can talk to me uh uh directly so you know so if you look at my book my Memoirs as I said it's it's a tribute to my mother it's a tribute to the three founding fathers of Singapore who taught me so much and it's also a tribute to the West philosophy uh that I learned and I describe how amazingly excited I was when I was studying Western philosophy uh at the national uh University of Singapore and as you know if you read my Memoirs you'll see that I wasn't supposed to go to university i instead of being in University reading about uh wienstein or uh RM hair I should have been a Cindy textile salesman uh selling textiles so that's another reason for my Memoirs I want to say a thank you note uh to Singapore uh for having given me this uh incredible opportunities to grow and Thrive because if I hadn't had the president scholarship in 1967 I wouldn't be here talking to you some people have said that you are it's all about self-promotion your books your articulation of your thoughts the manner in which you articulate them all of them is about promoting yourself how would you respond to that well I would encourage everybody to promote themselves in fact when I was Dean at the lianu school of public policy I used to tell the young academics okay and I say you're writing all these things they're wonderful but if nobody reads them what's the point the whole point of writing is to make sure that people read them and at the end of the day the the if you carry out self promotion and if you promote a whiskey and it tastes terrible nobody will buy it even if you promoted it a thousand times so the question therefore is there is an Open Marketplace of ideas globally anybody can compete in it anybody can compete with why do some people keep getting invited back to the leading universities through the leading Forum why is it that some people their books sell and travel around the world and get cited and quoted so it's not self-promotion you're promoting ideas that resonate with the world at the end of the day I'm not I'm not promoting my personality at the end of the day I say read what I've written and that's what I hope your viewers will do because at the end of the day whatever I'll be judged by will be what I've written and I can tell you by the way that the big lesson I have learned in life is that you can write articles articles disappear overnight but books are these enormous arrows that you shoot into the future they can be cited 10 20 maybe even 100 years from now so I would encourage all my fellow singap parans to engage in Shameless self promotion by writing books kishani thank you thank you thank you and all the best thank you [Music] foree for [Music] [Music] C [Music]