Elon Musk - Things Most People Don't Know About China

You spoke honestly about the possibility of a long-term war between us and China if a diplomatic solution is not found, for example, on the Taiwan question and the one-China policy. How can we avoid the trajectory in which these two superpowers collide? Well, it's worth reading. that book about the fur trap, difficult to pronounce. I believe it's called. I love war history. I like it from the inside out and the other way around. There's hardly a battle I haven't read about and trying to figure out what the cause really was. of victory in any particular case, as opposed to what one side or the other claimed, the reason for both the Victory and what caused the war and yes, yes, the whole thing, yes, so Athens and Sparta is a case classic, the thing about the Greeks is that they really wrote they loved to write a lot of

things

, you

know

, there are a lot of interesting

things

that happened in many parts of the world, but

people

didn't write them down, so we don't

know

what happened or they didn't write in detail .

They just said we went, we had a battle and we won and what can you add a little more? The Greeks really wrote a lot, they were very eloquent, they love to write, so we have a lot of that. writing that survives, so we know what led to the Pipian War between um the Spotons and the Athenian Alliance um and uh, we know that they, by the way, saw it coming. I mean, the Spartans weren't right, they weren't very by nature either, but they did the right thing, but they weren't very, they weren't, but the Athenians and the other Greeks wrote a line and said, um, and Spot was really like the leader of Greece. um, but Athens grew stronger and stronger with each passing year and um, and everyone said, well, it's inevitable that there will be a clash between Athens and Sparta, uh, well, how can we avoid that?

And they couldn't, actually they couldn't. They saw it coming and they still couldn't help it, so at some point you're going to know if there's a group of a civilization or country or whatever that surpasses another kind of if you know America has been the biggest kid in the world. Blockade since, I think, around 1890 from an economic point of view, so the United States has been the

most

powerful economic engine in the world for longer than anyone else and the basis of war is the economy, so now we have a situation in the case of China. where, um, the economy is probably two or three times bigger than the US, so imagine you're the biggest kid on the block for as long as anyone can remember and suddenly a kid comes along who It's twice your size, so let's see.

It comes, yes, how is it possible to stop? There are some? Let me throw something out there just intermingling cultures understanding that there seems to be a giant cultural gap in mutual understanding and you are an interesting case study because you are obviously American. You've done a lot of amazing things here in the United States, but you also work with China. I have spent a lot of time in China and met with the leaders many times. Maybe a good question is what are some things? China,

people

don't understand the positive only in the culture, some interesting things you have learned about the Chinese, well, the large number of really smart and hard-working people in China is incredible, there really are, you say, how many smart ones.

There are working people in China, there are many more there than here. I think in my opinion, um, uh, and they have a lot of energy, so I mean the architecture in China in recent years is much more impressive. that the US, I mean the train stations, the buildings, the high speed trains, everything is really much more impressive than what we have in the US. I mean, I recommend someone to go to Shanghai and Beijing, look at the buildings and take the train. from Beijing to Xian, where you have the Terracotta Warriors. China has an incredible history, a very long history and, you know, I think you could say that in terms of language use from a written point of view, kind of one of the oldest.

Maybe Maybe the oldest written language and then the people of China wrote things, so now China historically has always been, with rare exceptions, internally focused. They have not been curious. They fought each other. There have been many civil wars. In the War of the Three Kingdoms, I think they lost about 70% of the population, so they had brutal internal wars, like civil wars, which makes the US Civil War look small in comparison, so I think that it is important to appreciate that China is not monolithic, we think of China as some kind of single entity with a single mind and this is definitely not the case, from what I have seen, and I think

most

people who understand China would be I agree that people in China think about China. times more than they think about anything outside of China, so it's like 90% of their consideration is internal, well isn't that a really positive thing when talking about collaboration and future peace between superpowers?

We're looking inward, which is like focusing on improving yourself versus focusing on yourself, quote, improving others through military power. The good news is that China's history suggests that China is not curious, which means they're not going to go out and invade a bunch. of countries, um, they feel it very strongly now, you know, that's good, I mean, because a lot of very powerful countries have been curious, um, the US is one of the rare cases that hasn't been curious, like later of the World Cup. In War II America could have basically taken over the world and any country like us has nuclear weapons, no one else has nuclear weapons, we don't even have to lose soldiers, what country do you want?

Mhm and the United States could have taken over everything, at will. and it wasn't like that, um, the United States actually helped rebuild countries, so it helped rebuild Europe, it helped rebuild Japan, um, this is very unusual, almost unprecedented behavior, um, you know, the United States did acts of notorious goodness like the one in Berlin, you know, um and me. I think you know it's always like the United States has done bad things, well of course the United States has done bad things, but you have to look at the whole history and generally you know one kind of test would be how you treat your prisoners.

War uhh or let's say um, you don't know how to offend the Russians, but let's say you're in Germany, it's 1945, you have the Russian army coming from one side, you have the French, British and American armies coming from the other side, who do you think? would like to be? surrendering to a country as if it were not a country is morally perfect, but I recommend that you be a PW with the Americans, that would be my very strong choice on the entire P menu, and in fact, Von Brown, yes, he took, already you know, a smart guy, huh, it was like we had to be captured by the Americans And and in fact the SS had orders to execute B Brown and all the German rocket engineers and they narrowly escaped their SSI said they were going to get out to walk They left the forest in the middle of the winter without shelters and they ran without food, without coast, without water, and they just ran like hell and ran west, and by Sher, I think his brother found a bicycle or something and um and then he just biked west as fast as he could and found a US patrol um so anyway that's one way to know morality is who where you wanna go V PW it's not fun nowhere, but some places are. much worse than others so anyway I think America has been far from perfect overall a benevolent Force and we should always be self critical and try to be better but anyone with half a reason knows that.

So I think there's this way China and the United States are similar NE neither country has been curious in any significant way, so that's like a shared principle. I guess China has very strong feelings about Taiwan now. They've been very clear about it for a long time, you know, from their point of view, it would be like one of the states, you don't know like Hawaii or something, but it's more significant than Hawaii, you know? um and Hawaii is pretty important to us, so they look at it like there's actually a core part of China, the island of Formosa, not Taiwan, which is not part of China, but it should be, and the only reason why it's not it is.

This is because the US Pacific Fleet is growing and its economic power is growing and its military power is growing. What they are clearly saying is their interest, will you clearly know that it will materialize? Yes, China has been very clear that they will incorporate Taiwan. peacefully or militarily, but that they incorporate it from their point of view is 100% probable. You know something you said about conspicuous acts of kindness as geopolitical policy. It almost seems naive, but I would venture to say that this is probably the way to go. You avoid most wars just like you say, it sounds naive, but it's a brilliant thing if you believe in the goodness underlying most of human nature, it just seems that conspicuous acts of kindness can ripple through the population of the countries involved, yes, yes, well. and absolutely de-escalate, so after World War I they made a big mistake, you know, they basically try to put all the blame on Germany, um and um, and you know, they set up Germany with impossible reparations, um, and you know, really there was a lot of BL, there was enough guilt to um go around the world one um but they tried to, you know, put it all in Germany um and uh that was what laid the seeds for World War II uh so that's a lot of The people, well, not just Hitler, many people felt wronged and wanted revenge and they got it.

People don't forget, yes, you kill someone's father, mother, son, daughter, they won't forget, they will want revenge, so afterward. In World War II, they say the Treaty of Verai was a big mistake in World War I and this time, instead of, you know, crushing the losers, we're actually going to help them with the Marshall Plan and we're going to help reu Germany U let's help reild you know Austria and the other you know Italy and all that