#95- Professor Wang Gungwu : How China and America Emerged As Superpowers

Geography has kind of returned

to

the forefront of geopolitical discussion.

And history, for the most part, has been shaped by the maritime.

And when you look at the US and China today, these two superpowers, how did maritime shape the trajectories of these two superpowers today?

I don't know.

Put it very simply, of course, The maritime powers of the Western Europe and the North Atlantic have been dominant for 500 years.

In contrast, China has been a continental power for thousands of years.

and never paid much attention to naval matters.

They would just have some coastal shipping to deal with piracy and a bit of coastal disturbance from time to time.

But they never had a professional navy.

They never thought anybody could really attack them from the sea.

And in the 19th century, to their surprise, a few dozen ships coming into British ships based in Southeast Asia and coming across the Indian Ocean, could attack them and defeat them and extract from them concessions which rendered the whole Chinese economy subordinate to capitalist system, something that they never understood.

Nothing like that had ever happened to China before.

That Industrial Revolution itself was at the back of this naval power that the British and later the French, joined by others, were able to bring across to Southeast Asia to attack China.

And for the first time, they realized you can be attacked by sea and the sea enemies can defeat you.

And that is a lesson they learned very late, the late 19th century, before they really fully understood that when they were defeated by the Japanese, who were very quick to respond because they were island power, they saw straight away the importance of sea power.

And they straight away learned from the British.

And at the end of the 19th century, in 1894-95, to everybody's surprise, they destroyed the Chinese naval, limited naval force they have, and defeated the Chinese absolutely.

And then, from then onwards, for a whole hundred years, the Chinese had no navy to speak of.

And so it's not until the end of the 20th century that they had enough money to build the kind of ships they needed to defend a vast coastline all the way from Manchuria down to Vietnam.

To defend such a long coastline, you need a big navy.

And they could only afford to do that.

The economy was in such a mess through the 19th century.

And they were invaded by the Japanese up to 1945.

Geography has kind of returned

to

the forefront of geopolitical discussion.

And history, for the most part, has been shaped by the maritime.

And when you look at the US and China today, these two superpowers, how did maritime shape the trajectories of these two superpowers today?

I don't know.

Put it very simply, of course, The maritime powers of the Western Europe and the North Atlantic have been dominant for 500 years.

In contrast, China has been a continental power for thousands of years.

and never paid much attention to naval matters.

They would just have some coastal shipping to deal with piracy and a bit of coastal disturbance from time to time.

But they never had a professional navy.

They never thought anybody could really attack them from the sea.

And in the 19th century, to their surprise, a few dozen ships coming into British ships based in Southeast Asia and coming across the Indian Ocean, could attack them and defeat them and extract from them concessions which rendered the whole Chinese economy subordinate to capitalist system, something that they never understood.

Nothing like that had ever happened to China before.

That Industrial Revolution itself was at the back of this naval power that the British and later the French, joined by others, were able to bring across to Southeast Asia to attack China.

And for the first time, they realized you can be attacked by sea and the sea enemies can defeat you.

And that is a lesson they learned very late, the late 19th century, before they really fully understood that when they were defeated by the Japanese, who were very quick to respond because they were island power, they saw straight away the importance of sea power.

And they straight away learned from the British.

And at the end of the 19th century, in 1894-95, to everybody's surprise, they destroyed the Chinese naval, limited naval force they have, and defeated the Chinese absolutely.

And then, from then onwards, for a whole hundred years, the Chinese had no navy to speak of.

And so it's not until the end of the 20th century that they had enough money to build the kind of ships they needed to defend a vast coastline all the way from Manchuria down to Vietnam.

To defend such a long coastline, you need a big navy.

And they could only afford to do that.

The economy was in such a mess through the 19th century.

And they were invaded by the Japanese up to 1945.