It's my great pleasure to be invited to make a few remarks to this year's thinkers’ forum. I have the fondest memories of the thinkers. I think this is the third one I've attended, and I've hugely enjoyed all of them. It's a great idea. But at last, I only appear in the form of a video, much to my regret because I won't be able to listen to the other speakers and the discussion. The west decline has continued. Indeed, over the last 5 years, it has accelerated the trump presidency, seriously damaged America's reputation worldwide, and brought a commitment to its post-1945 global role into question.

America is now more deeply divided and polarized at any stage during the last century. Before the last presidential election, they were growing doubts among its political elites and more widely about the future of American democracy, the country's unity, and the end of the western alliance. It was an extraordinary situation that hardly anyone would have predicted. In the early two thousand and sixteen, its handling of the pandemic has been disastrous, with over 3/4 of a million people dead and its economy suffering badly. America finds itself in a growing existential crisis, weakened, divided, were isolated, less respected. Many look forward to the next presidential election with a sense of foreboding. Could trump or someone of his elk elect? No one question unites Americans that China is the enemy and a threat to America's position. Europe is now more detached from the united states as the global hegemony. Then at any time since 1945, this has been a long term trend since the cold war. Still, it significantly accelerated, joining the trump presidency, which did massive damage to how Europeans perceived us for its part. Europe's economic decline has been even more dramatic than America's and Europe.

Twin pillars of the West have thrust, have thus grown, economically weaker, and increasingly estranged from each other. There is one thing. However, they largely agree upon the belief that China represents a threat to the West, a stance that could be strengthened in the EU context by the departure of Merkel and the arrival of a new German government. It is inconceivable the West can maintain its global ascendancy. The US economy is no longer strong enough to support it. Its trading footprint has contracted considerably in relative terms. Its indebtedness means that it is less and less able to finance its desired objectives, such as funding a rival to belt and road.

For now, the dollar retains its position as the world's reserve currency, but only because there is no alternative. Will that still be true in 2035? When the Chinese economy is likely to be roughly double the size of US economy and with digital currencies widespread, when the dollar is no longer the world's reserve currency, the ability of the us to impose its will on other countries by threatening their exclusion from the global financial system will be sharply reduced. This moment will mark the symbolic end of pax-Americana.

Meanwhile, the wilting of the western order is evident around the world in east Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and elsewhere. This is not only about China. It is also about the rise of regional powers, such as turkey, Russia, and India, which are also filling the vacuum created by America's decline. Are we already living in a post-western world? We are certainly transitioning to one. It is a complex and multifaceted process. In some respects, we are already more or less there. In others, not yet. When it comes to global institutions, like the IMF and the world bank, the answer is not yet. But as far as the global trading system is concerned, western hegemony is in rapid retreat. That is why trump sought to undermine and sideline the WTO. The trading packs that America sought to create - the TPP and the TTIP between the us and the UK and the EU - proved abortive. The US is outside the three main trading agreements in east Asia, namely the RCEP, the CPTPP, and the belt and road.

The once near-universal western system is fragmenting and being supplemented or replaced by regional systems, often without the united states. The passing of the western era will not herald the arrival of Pax-Sinica, not least because the notion of Pax Sinica suggest that it will be in the same vein as pax Americana. In fact, it will be very different. It will, for example, be rooted in a close and special relationship with the developing world. It will not require political obedience and homogeneity in the manner of US hegemony. And it will not ring the world with military basis or place anything like the same emphasis on military power. The structural context will also be very different. This is, after all, the era, not just of China's rise, but that of the developing world, which is home to 85 % of the world's population, and which China seeks to enfranchise in a new model of global governance. The latter will be very different for many things we have seen previously, the Pax-Americana or Pax-Britannica. I expect the demise of the western era to be followed by a prolonged period of transition with many new actors from the developing world, playing an increasingly central role in what will be a complex and very new kind of global governance.

But this is to get ahead of ourselves. We are nowhere near this. We cannot even touch it. We can barely imagine it. So let us return to the here and now. The West may be in decline. But it is far from dead and buried. Indeed, as I've already alluded to, the West has gained a certain new lease of life since trump's assault on China from 2017 onwards. Indeed, I have been struck by the ability of what started off as an American crusade against China to mobilize wider generalized support in the West and well beyond - India is a case in point. The perception of China in my own country, the UK, has changed fundamentally. The period between 2000 and 2016, roughly speaking, saw a new and widespread curiosity about China, based on the latter’s extraordinary growth and poverty reduction, together with the belief that China could offer new opportunities for western countries. That mood has given way to dominant negativity towards China.

China is now seen as a threat to the West and its way of life as autocratic, undemocratic, untrustworthy, expansionist, secretive, closed. This negativity is not nearly as strong in Europe as it is in the united states, but nor should it be underestimated. Let me give you one example of this shift in attitudes. Between 2000 and 2016, perhaps longer than that, there was a growing interest in Chinese history and Chinese civilization in trying to understand China. Now China is seen almost solely in terms of its history since 1949. Two thousand years of Chinese history have disappeared. China is reduced to the Chinese communist party, which is seen, in turn, as synonymous with the soviet communist party. Many of the gains since 2000 have been lost. Worse, we have even gone backwards. It feels at times a bit like the cold war.

So why the shift? The shift in America was inevitable. Once The US came to realize that its hopes of China becoming like the West were an illusion, then as China continued to rise and spread its wings, the US came to see China as a deadly threat to its global hegemony. We should not underplay what this means in America. Being number one is part of its DNA; that is why the new anti-China crusade is bipartisan and consensual. China is now considered a mortal threat to America's very being. Europe is different. It does not see China as a threat to its hegemony, because it abandoned its hegemonic aspirations after 1945.

Nevertheless, Europe remains heavily influenced by America. They fought the cold war together. They share in very degrees bit,  most of all much history and culture. Europeans colonized America, and their ancestors created the united states. So despite the growing distance between Europe and us since the cold war, they still have much in common, certainly compared with China, which, as we know, has a profoundly different culture and history.

And a further complicated fact is that China has been largely invisible to westerners until really, very recently that last several decades, as it were a new kid on the block. During the downturn in US-China relations, China has strengthened its position in many respects, its economic growth, technological innovation, its brilliant handling of the pandemic, and the consolidation of its relationship with many of its partners.

But certainly, in its relations with the West, there have been serious setbacks. How can these be reversed? The most important and by far the most difficult problem is the fundamental ignorance in the West about why and how China is so different. Here there are no shortcuts, only the long game to find ways explaining and educating the Western public about China. True. There is a certain force in my European play. As China rises, westerners are obliged to learn more about China. But as we have seen, this process is not always smooth. It can provoke a backlash because people harbour doubts, fears, and prejudices about China. One of these is the sheer size and scale of China. There is nothing that China can do about this, except always be aware and conscious of this concern, a nervousness. In my view, Deng Xiaoping’s advice about keeping a low profile is relevant to this problem. Although keeping a low profile was conceived for a very different era, it contains a kernel of truth for all times. The fact that China is so big will always be a source of anxiety for other countries.

The second point I would make is how China communicates with the world. Many of China's attempts to deal with the western assault on China over the last 5 years have been ineffectual. And sometimes, I'm afraid, even counterproductive. Who is the audience? It often appears to be western political leaders and the media. Sometimes it feels as if it might even be aimed at a Chinese rather than an international audience. This is misconceived. The audience should not be the western governing elites. That is for diplomacy. But crucially, the audience must be the broad western public. This requires a different tone and style, engaging consensus, conversational, informal, streetwise, self-critical, seeking common ground, not wooden or belligerent. Perhaps we can learn something here from the runaway success of Tik Tok in the West. Not literally. I wouldn't suggest that. But metaphorically. And in terms of imagination, China needs a different tone to appeal to western audiences. This is where China should draw on a younger generation of influences and methods, rather than officialdom, which is too remote from western audiences. China can do this. It just needs to recognize the importance, urgency even of a different approach.

One final point, if I may, China needs to be more open. This is the era of reform and opening up. Opening up cannot just be about economics. It is also cultural. To western perceptions, China is too closed, insufficiently open, too secretive. Now I understand absolutely the historical roots of this. But secrecy can easily engender suspicion. It is justified on the grounds that issuing question is an internal matter for China. But, as China becomes a great power, people around the world will reasonably expect China to be more open about itself and its problems and difficulties. Accountability and openness are necessary prices of power and influence. Thank you very much. And I wish the forum great success.

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