COGGS Content Team
[ The Thinker: Victor Gao is a notable Chinese legal scholar, businessman, and geopolitical commentator known for his extensive work on China’s rise and global strategic affairs. He is the Vice President of Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing based think tank. He has authored, co-authored, and edited over 25 books in English and Chinese, advocating that China’s modernization and global engagement represent a restoration of historical balance rather than domination, with a focus on sovereignty, mutual development, and non-Western narratives of democracy and human rights.
His ideas emphasize China’s firm stance on national unity concerning Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang, criticize Western liberal universalism, and position China as a pragmatic force in a multipolar world fostering cooperation in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Gao was a English interpreter for the Chinese premier Deng Xiaoping.]
China, according to Professor Gao views the United States through a lens of economic engagement, policy critique, and strategic caution, particularly regarding Washington’s approach to global trade and re-industrialisation efforts.
The fundamental Chinese view is that the United States is currently pursuing economic policies, specifically tariffs whichare misleading the citizen of America. In a podcast with Indonesian podcaster Gita Wirjawan, Professor Gao opines that US presidents lack the “courage and the decency and the honesty to tell the American people that the tariffs they are talking about are fundamentally going to be paid by the American people”. He argues that these tariffs “are an additional tax against the American people”. Furthermore, he critiques the idea of “fair trade” without “free trade,” stating plainly: “there will be no fair trade without free trade”.
On re-industrialisation, China presents itself as the definitive expert, highlighting its success since 1978. If the US is “really serious about bringing back manufacturing jobs,” President Trump “needs to talk to China”. China is the world’s “most important industrialized country,” capable of producing over 200 different items recognised by the UN system, with production normally constituting “more than 50% of the global production”. However, for the US to achieve re-industrialisation, Professor Gao advises necessary preconditions, including ensuring US power generation is “minimally doubled if not increased by three times,” and that American container ports become “very very efficient”. The implication is that the US has not done its “solid homework” necessary for success.
China firmly rejects the concept of ‘decoupling.’ Attempting to decouple the economies is likened to “talking about decoupling the earth from the moon”. Should such an attempt succeed, “mankind will be hit with a greater disaster and peace may disappear and war may be initiated”. Decoupling risks plunging mankind into a crisis, forcing countries into “opposing blocks meant for war rather than peace”. Furthermore, decoupling may severely impact the US’s own ‘national defense strategy,’ especially regarding access to ‘the rare earth that China is providing,’ which is necessary for advanced military technology.
Geopolitically, the US is seen as susceptible to ‘overreach,’ a concept drawn from the historical analysis of great empires. China observes that the US, after attaining primacy post-Cold War, has ‘fought one war after another’, spending trillions in conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan. When the US overreaches, it risks its “own demise”. China sees the US’s complete support for Israel amid the Gaza crisis as a contemporary example of overreaching ‘to do the wrong thing’, denying the ‘basic rights of the Palestinian people in their own homeland’. Professor Gao urges the US to use its ‘tremendous amount of might’ to be a “noble leader” that champions “philosophy use morality use rule of law to do the right thing”.
China on Southeast Asia / ASEAN and Regional Development Strategy
From the Chinese perspective, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its 11 member states are “very very important” partners and neighbours with historical ties spanning thousands of years.
China views its relationship with ASEAN highly, noting that the “Azan China trade is the largest trade volume as far as China’s concerned”. Despite the success of ASEAN as a regional organisation, China perceives it as “one of the most highly fragmented regional grouping in the world”. This fragmentation is attributed to differing historical colonial imprints (British, French, Dutch, Spanish, US), diverse languages, religious beliefs, and natural endowments.
China’s primary recommendation for ASEAN’s improved development, especially in light of China’s superior GDP per capita growth over the last 30 years – is to improve integration and connectivity. Professor Gao emphasises that “internal integration improvement of connectivity” is crucial. Quoting a Chinese saying, he stresses: “if you really want to make riches build a road”. He highlights the need for improved highways, railways, and other connectivity links throughout the region, including extending infrastructure from the Chinese border southward and linking archipelagic nations like Indonesia and the Philippines internally.
Regional Stability
China places a “premium on peace and stability” in Southeast Asia. The existence of frictions and conflicts (such as those involving Myanmar, Bangladesh, Thailand, and Cambodia) is considered “very traumatic from the Chinese perspective”.
Regarding bilateral tensions, such as territorial disputes with the Philippines, China insists on using “diplomacy and negotiation”. China strongly advises against the Philippines becoming “a proxy of another major power which may actually destroy our part of the vote”. While China does not wish to “impose our views or our values” on ASEAN, it offers its post-1978 transformation as a “textbook” example for ASEAN member states seeking to accelerate development. China believes it possesses a “better recipe” for rapid economic growth, evidenced by the fact that China’s economic size is now about five times as big as India’s, though they were “more or less comparable with each other” in 1978. China also maintains a willingness to learn from smaller nations, citing Singapore’s effective governance and anti-corruption measures as a specific example.
Economics, Development, and Statecraft: The China Model
China’s current approach to economics, development, and statecraft is fundamentally rooted in the legacy and vision of Deng Xiaoping, whom Professor Gao served as an interpreter.
The Vision of Deng Xiaoping
Premier Deng Xiaoping is described as the “transformer of China” who ‘not only changed the China he also changed the world’. Deng’s vision was based on strategic foresight, projecting China’s path decades into the future, up to the middle of the 21st century. His core principle was integrating China with the rest of the world ‘on equal terms,’ believing China could achieve what developed countries did through “peace through peaceful coexistence” rather than ‘wars and conquests and colonizations’.
The Priority of Development For China, “development should always be the hard truth”. The path to modernization requires that China “constantly improve yourself constantly innovate and recreate yourself”. China’s vast industrial capabilities—including its industrial output being ‘more than the combined amount of the United States Japan Germany and quite a few other leading manufacturing countries’—were achieved by ‘following the principle of free trade’ and ‘working very hard in very disciplined way’. This success was attained without “firing any single shot at any country in the world,” or “engaging in slavery or exploitation”.
Core Principles of Statecraft China commits to three major principles in its statecraft: global integration, non-hegemony, and mutual respect.
Globalization is an ‘irreversibility’ and the ‘mega trend’. China views the world as a ‘highly interconnected world and very much integrated into one small global village’. Policies promoting ‘reverse globalization’ or trying to ‘create walls’ are against the fundamental interests of the world.
China seeks a ‘multipolar world a multilateral world’ where all civilizations have ‘an equal chance to perform and no one should be allowed to dominate the world’. China pledges to “always view other countries now we have about 200 countries in the world big or small as an equal”.
China seeks to be a force for good, promoting stability and ensuring that the global community defends “free trade”. China also uses its position in the world to advocate for human rights and justice, such as its continued leadership in calling for the “two-state solution” and defending the “legitimate interests of the Palestinian people” in the UN Security Council. This stance is presented as adhering to the principle of respecting the dignity and rights of all people, viewing them “as much human beings as you and me and rest of mankind”.