YAN Xuetong & John Mearsheimer Conversation: Who Shapes Global Order, and Who Will Win the Competition?

The third round of debate between top realist scholars from China and U.S.

On the afternoon of October 11, 2024, John Mearsheimer, renowned American realist and professor of political science at the University of Chicago, engaged in a discussion with Yan Xuetong, dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University, on the topic of "Global Order and China-U.S. Relations." This marked their third debate, following previous talks in 2013 and 2019.

Professor Mearsheimer took the lead in clarifying the core of the "offensive realism" theory: in an international system without supreme authority, a country cannot predict the intentions of other countries. In order to survive, it must maximize its power and become a regional hegemon.

"There is a fierce security competition between China and the United States, and there is no sign of disappearing. Future competition will focus on cutting-edge technology." Mearsheimer suggested that China should seriously consider seeking dominance in Asia, though he expressed hope that the China-U.S. rivalry could avoid escalating into a hot war.

Professor Yan Xuetong mentioned that the new trend of the global order is anti-globalization, because populist leaders represented by Donald Trump blame globalization for potential domestic socioeconomic problems. "The competition between China and the United States is not about who can survive, but about who can shape the global order more effectively." Yan Xuetong said.

Clarence Gu, a Southern Weekly journalist watched the entire conversation and we're honored to have her sharing on-the-ground transcript in the special edition of ChinAffairs+ for this week.

Below is a transcript of the speech:

YAN Xuetong and John Mearsheimer held their third converstaion at Tsinghua University. Photo/Clarence Gu

John Mearsheimer: “China-U.S. competition will intensify in the future”

My basic views of international politics is that it's all about competition of power and its rule. Great powers care enormously about the balance of power. The reason they care greatly about the balance of power is that it's the best way to survive in the international system.

The survival has to be the principal goal of any state. Because if you don't survive, you can't pursue any other goals. Why is survival such tricky matter in international policy? Very simple. It's because number one, there is no higher authority in the international system. There's no night watchman. There is no ultimate orbiter.

In the international system, you have all these states, some of those states are really powerful.

In powerful state, and you can never be diserned of the intentions of those states. The reason you can't desern the intention of those states, its intentions or something you can't see, capabilities you can measure. During the Cold War, I was in the air force, I was in the air force intelligence, and we look at the soviet threat. You can always determine what Soviet capabilities look like, but intentions were very hard to desern. It couldn’t be inside and see what was happening with inside the brain of leader. The Soviet Union intention is very hard to disern.

You don't think that's true, and you think it is relatively easy to figure out the state’s intentions now. My trump card is to say, you certainly cannot figure out future. You do not tell me what the intentions of the United States will be 10 years, 15 years for what the intentions of China will be in 10 years and 15 years.

And again, if you get into trouble, if a powerful state has a line or evil intentions towards you and comes up to you, and you look to a higher authority to rescue you, nobody there, you lost. It's why we say in realist world of international politics. It is a self-help world. As my mother used to say, when I was a little boy, God helps those who help themselves. This is very important understanding.

How do you survive international system? The system is where no higher authority. The answer is very simple. You want to be very powerful. You want to maximize your power, you cannot be certain of the intentions of those other states. It pays to be really powerful, to pay to hegemon.

If you think more specific, that is my argument is that you can only be a regional hegemon, number one. Number two, you want to make sure that no other state is a regional hegemon. The ideal situation is to be the only regional hegemony in the international system. The United States, unsurprisingly, this is exactly what my theory predicts, United States is not tolerated peer regional hegemon in the 20th century that attempted to establish regional hegemony, four countries like imperial Germany, imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, and United States put a key role in preventing all force those countries from achieving regional hegemony.

Moreover, you want to understand that the United States went to great ways to establish region. This is an agurement the United States started out with 13 weak colonies, sprung out along the Atlantic Ocean. And over the course of the 19th century, we marched across north America and create a really powerful state. And then we told the European great powers, we're not powerful enough throwing out of the hemisphere now, but we will eventually be powerful enough. And when do we do? Reach that point where to throw you out, and you're not welcome back. Distinguished powers are not allowed in the western hemisphere. Again, United States did. The United States work hard for mitigating to establish regional hegemony to make sure these dominated the Western hemisphere. That was in the 19th century. And then, as I told you, in the 20th century, we went to great length to make sure we did not have a peer regional hegemon. That's my basic theory.

How does this apply to the world today? Most of you were born in unipolar moment, unipolar moment basically there in 1991 to 2017 in unipolar moment, there's only one great power on them. It was the United States, it was a regional hegemon somewhere use global hegemon. It was incredibly powerful. China was, weak during the whole moment and there was no chance, you were going to drive a region hegemon. What would happen is China became economically power. Good for China, not good for the United States. The China becomes an economic power, and it begins to translate that economic mind in the military mind.

If you get to think about dominating nation, I want to make clear if I were National Security Adviser to Xi, I will tell him we want to dominate the East Asia. You want to drive the Americans beyond the first island chain, you want to drive the Americans on beyond the second island chain, and we want to make sure we dominate.

We say we want to be the most powerful country in East Asia, we do not want to suffer another century of national humiliation, you all understand that this is what happens in the international politics when you are weak. Russia is weak in the 1990s and it was weak in the first decade of 2000. What did the United States do? Shove NATO expansion down your throat in 1999 and shove NATO expansion down the throat in 2004. And then there's 2008 we private shove expansion down throat again, regarding Ukraine and regarding Georgia. That's how the United States operates. It was powerful, and Russia was weak.

That's what happens when we leave. And the Chinese surely understand that, so you wanna be powerful again. You wanna be the regional hegemon. You can see China in that direction. Most Chinese will deny this, of course which is the smart thing to do, but American very suspicious.

So what happening here in the world today? I'd say basically two things are happening. Number one, China is on its way to developing enough economic military capability to think seriously about dominating Asia. It should want to imitate the United States. By the way, the Chinese also developing power projection capability, it is developing the blue water navy, just like in the United States, like playing the Chinese not one day. But what the Americans think about it, I told you the American don't tolerate your competitive. Do you understand this is basically zero sum game. The more powerful China gets, the weaker the United States gets. We rejected it.

So you're involved in this kind of security competition. You all know, the security competition underline network security is not simply a military competition. It's an economic competition as well, and that economic competition revolves around cutting egde technologies that would explain what's going on in terms of US- China economic relations. The United States want to remain the number one country in the world in terms of developing cutting egde technologies. China wants to replace us again, we don’t want to blame the Chinese one day that the Americans are going to break it, prevent it happening.

All of this is to say we are involved today, in intense security competition. It shows no signs going away. And if anything will get worse with the passage of time. This is a tragic situation. It has nothing to do with Chinese culture or American culture. And many people in China blame the United States for this trouble.

And then people in the United States blame China for this trouble. What's driving the strength. You all remember that between 1991 and 2017, the Chinese and the Americans got along very well. Something changed. What do you think the Change? Was that ideology, domestic politics? No, the change was the balance of power. You became really powerful. And when the country becomes really powerful, the international system, you can assure that Uncle Sam could put his gun sights on that country. That's exactly what's happening here. It's hardly surprising. So my argument is, it's the system that has caused this intense security competition.

And let's hope moving forward when we have crisis, and we will have crisis that we can avoid a shooting war. Let's hope that this one plays self out same way to the Cold War, although the United States and Soviet Union engaged in intense security competition, that’s security competition never turned into a hot war. Let's hope that's the case this time around. It is going to be intense. It is going to be dangerous. And I believe the competition between the United States and Soviet Union will define the 20th century. It will be the defining feature of the 21st century.

In international order for me, is basically the bundle of institutions that dominate how states would dictate, how states interact with each other institutions with basic rules and the order is a group of institutions.

During the Cold War, when I was young, American led western order, and there was a soviet led communist order. In that context, American led western order. What was the bundle of institutions? WTO, IMF, World Bank, NATO and Europe union. That was the western border. Then on the other side, Soviet and their own order. So there were the bundle of institutions that comprise these two black hole down the orders, not really the international order. And they were with enormous importance, then what happens is the Cold War ends, the Soviet Union goes away, and its order goes away. What the United States does, unsurprisingly, is take its order to its institution and try to spread them all over the planet, and they incorporated China into those institutions into that order.

China actually goes along with it because its pockets are weak, which helps China grow economically and incredibly fast pace. Think about the government too well, come into the WTO in 2001. What happened is you became very powerful. China became very powerful. If you want to obey the order. It makes perfect sense, orders is the rules. What is the institution of the rule? And the question is who writes the rule in the existing international order?

If you were integrated into the 1990s to 2000s, Uncle Sam write the rules, when you became powerful, you want to write rules. For your own institution, AIIB, Belt and Road, I can go on and on. Chinese institutions will become part of the Chinese order and it will be an American order. Very similar to the Cold War. The old international order, if you were born into is either gone away or going away.

What is happening now is the Chinese-led order is beginning to form, and western led order is beginning to form, and these two orders will play a key role in the security competition between the United States and China, just as the existing orders, just as the existing bubble of institutions on each side, play the key role in the waging of the security competition between the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Yan Xuetong: The competition between China and the United States is about who can shape the global order

John heavily emphasize the balance of power, emphasize the importance of global power, and world power. But then I want to emphasize the global leadership, how important maintaining the world order or destroyed world order, John heavily emphasized of the needs or the interests of the survival of for great power.

I certainly agree with that. That's pre-condition for all major powers, but then I will emphasize more on what on the competition. And after your security was guaranteed, after your survival was guaranteed. You still compete for something else. For what? For leadership, Just like students, will you guarantee to attend the college, then you compete for what? Compete for go to Tsinghua. Then I think these are two basic differences between me and John. My theory of moral realism strongly emphasize the role of the leadership.

Global order is already different from what we familiar 10 years. That power is labeled as a liberal order. What does liberal order means? Globalization. The more international cooperation in all field, and later on even have the developed government. But that is a failed. The global governance can go nowhere and the globalization stopped. What replace the globalization is a Counter-Globalization. So here we must understand why the globalization after the Cold War. By the time that comes the trend of counter-globalization, my theory would say that the counter-globalization because the leader type has changed.

After Cold War, you find most of the liberal leaders hold the whole power in many countries, especially in many major power countries. Now we find the populism leaders have become more prevailed.

Thirdly, people often use a Trump as a case, actually and many many trump leaders today. During the Cold War, liberal order not only the norms, it’s because the leading powers established liberal norms. The leading powers prefer to obey this norm, behaviors according this norms. Today, they said no, we don't like this norms. US is a typical case, and US takes the leading role to undermine the liberal orders, to take the leading role to violate the globalization. They said we don't like the globalization. The Biden administration clearly abandoned the use of the word Globalization. They use internationalization instead of the globalization. Because it's now the organizer, “Small Yard and High Fence”. They organized a small class with three countries work together, they say this is internationalization. It's not globalization, globalization is open to the rest of the world. This kind of policy actually company with populism.

Populism doesn't like the idea raised by the liberalism. They think, look at all these problems, social problems, and economic problems in the democracy, in western countries caused by Globalization. Globalization has already isolated social polarization in western countries. So most of the middle class, poor people do not like the globalization.

But the anti-globalization movement has started in very eariler period of the Post-Cold War in 1990s. Then it went nowhere because they don't have sovereignty, they cannot resist the globalization who has the capability to, twist the globalization to counter-globalization, government, this national government, they have the power of sovereignty. They use of power adopted the de-globalization policy to make steer the globalization U-turn by to the de-globalization. Like the another concept, de-risking, de-coupling, economic security, all these concepts are derived from what idea of the populism.

So now you see the populist leaders, they take advantage of the populism, because there are many more people in the middle class in their own country. That's not my fault. It's not my policy and possible the social economic problems at home, is because of globalization, all of the domestic problems caused by foreign enemy, foreign factors. It's not my fault. So how can we solve the problem? They say the better way is to adopt protectionism.

Protectionism means that block our market, protect the market, and hide customers, and reduce the economic into interdependence with others, politically adopt isolationism policy. Because if we stop the globalization, then working with them. We can prevent the foreign influence on our domestic affairs.

Now we're safe, we are pure, so we can identify ourselves as ourselves and we don't like the foreigners, immigrants influence in the economy, in culture, in the politics. That's the idea that's why today we find the global order change.

The new trend of global order is Counter-Globalization. Then certainly today, I think because today’s title is Global Order and US-China relationship, we have to talk about how the relationship between China and US impact the current global order, my understanding is that the China-US relationship just like John agrued that it will be intensified in terms of conflicts.You cannot expect China and US suddenly find a way to set down those disputes become the partners. If that happens, it means our theories are wrong. And actually, why the China-US conflicts are increasing and intensify. It's because now we're in a bipolar configuration. The power structure is not multipolar. The current power structure is bipolar. And in the IR community, we all agree the situation after the World War one is multipolar, and during the World War Two is the bipolar. After Cold War is unipolar.

Why people agree on this? No one challenge this judgement. Because they have a common reference to judge the configuration, bipolar by power, by capability. By the ratio of capability. Not absolutely capability. After World War I, they judged the configuration by Naval power, roughly 3 to 2 to 1, UK, US, Japan, and France, and Italy.

During of WWII, then they by comprehensive national power, the ratio between US and Soviet Union is a 3:2. After Cold War, Japan national comprehensive capability account for about 1/3 of the United States. Japan's economy may larger than 1/3 of US, but if you take into consideration a comprehensive power, which including cultural and military, and political influence is definitely lesser than 1/3.

What I mean is that the historic experience tell us, today we still have to understand what is international configuration is. It is not multipolar, not unipolar, is bipolar, because except China nor any other major powers have capability or national power account for 1/3 of the United States. None of them, except China. I don't know how much exactly we can do the measurement, but at least China’s capability is larger than 1/3 of the United States, possibly I would say 2/3 of US.

That's why it's a bipolar system, just because this bipolar configuration. US no doubt will regard China as a main threat. It's not a threat to American’s survival. Nobody can compose a real threat United State’s survival. But then they consider China as the systematic challenge to America's global dominance,the global hegemon.

In that way, for my study, the competition between China and US is not about the survival whether China and US who can survive, I think this country will survive the next 100 years. But the question is that who will have more power to shape the global order? You see after the Cold War, United States advance the idea for globalization is the economical market position and the political democratization.

Yan Xuetong and Mearsheimer. Photo/Clarence Gu

The shape of liberal order for what they concern, the liberal order is a favor to the United States. But now US gives it up. They don't think the liberal order is in favor of the United States, Trump said that the globalization in favor of China more than to the United States. But China said wait a minute, these orders were created by you, we want to continue.

China strongly advanced among the economic globalization, China said we want to maintain the order. US said we want to set a new order and not. So that's what China said. Now we don't want you to change this order. We want to maintain it, but not exactly what it was before. but then we will modify orders. So China certainly want to shape the new orders. So now the problem between China and US is the heavily focused on how to shape the global order, according to whose plans, whose ideas, according to whose agenda.

John has several times suggested for US government should unite Russia and compete with China, and then why the White House frequently rejected this idea, not Biden administration, from Obama period, many scholars suggest that US should be nice to Russia, so don't push Russia into Chinese camp. And why from Jr. Bush, Obama, Trump and then the Biden, none of the accept this suggestion.

My understanding , because this is bipolar configuration. During the bipolar configuration, they need support from whom is traditional alliances, European states. They need European states to support American containment policy against China. So at that time, they need Russia to play the role as a common threat for both European Union and United States. This common threat can make US easily monopoly and win the support from the European. Americans need to convince the Europeans that your security, your survival rely on my protection, in what way, made Russia as theart as possible to these guys.

Finally my understanding. Now, everyone, I think John, there will be an question about who will win the election. Here, I will give you my answer like that. No matter who wins the election, China-US economic relationship will continuously deteriorate. The reason is that no matter Republicans or Democrats, xenophobia is already dominating their mentality. They fear China to catch up, especially in fields of the economy. So for that case, no matter Republicans or Democrats. Anyone who controls the White House, they will adopt the protectionism policy against China. What difference will be for the result of the election. Right?

If Harris wins the election, I think China and US will have more political conflicts than Trump wins the election, because Harris is more reluctant than Trump to accept the fact China is going to catch up. US no longer has that kind of capability to dominate the world, like in 1990, Clinton’s period. So Harris is more eager to maintain America's global hegemony, maintain America’s dominance, than Trump. Trump concerns more domestic interest, rather than the international domination. So in that way, If Harris wins the election, China-US political conflicts will increase.

Finally, I will say, when we talk about order, actually all the global order, and already guaranteed by nuclear deterrence between major power. That is the nuclear facility for nuclear weapons has already guaranteed.

So we are safe from the Third World War. That doesn't mean that and there's no military conflicts. military confrontation between major powers. These things may happen but there won’t be a war, especially China and US know that now is digital age, in digital age proxy war cannot help you become stronger. Proxy war cannot make you leading power in technology invention.

So my understanding, the competition between China and US will heavily focus on technology invention, rather than the competition between Soviet Union and the United States on the ideological expansion. It means that less possible for China and US fall into a proxy war like what happened between US and Russia now.

You see, during the Cold War, we cannot imagine there is no proxy war between US and Russia for 15 years. But if you look at last 15 years, since Obama adopted a pivotal strategy and started the competition with China, there is no proxy war between China and US. So this situation from my study will continue. I don't know how long, but then since 10 years is quite possible, so then what would happen. It doesn't mean that there is no proxy war between China and US that we are safe, and there's less competition.

NO, the competition will be intensfied, but in different way. So the competition in China and US would different from US and Soviet Union . Finally, because the competition between China and US, I think I agree with John will increase, or create more conflicts.

It will have an impact on the global order in return. Then it will strengthen the bipolar configuration, because this competition will impose more pressure on the third party to choose between the two sizes. And meanwhile because US unilaterally distance economic politic relationship with China, and reduce the economic cooperation, and then the globalization will become less possible, and counter-globalization will become worse.

A group photo of professors and students attending the conference with Professor Mearsheimer and Professor Yan. Photo/Tsinghua University