Quotes from Kishore Mahbubani

In terms of per capita income, the bottom half in America is better off. However, in terms of social progress, the average income of the bottom half of the Chinese people is rising much faster, albeit from a lower starting point.

So repression is not the sole reason why the Chinese middle classes are basically calm. Most of them accept an implicit social contract between the Chinese people and the Chinese government. As long as the Chinese government continues to deliver economic growth (with improvements in living conditions, including better environmental living conditions) and social and political stability, the Chinese people will accept the rule of the CCP.

Unfortunately, as Chinese policymakers saw America as a fallen giant, they displayed arrogance when dealing with America in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis.

The long two-thousand-year record of Chinese history clearly shows that China is fundamentally unlike America as it is reluctant to use the military option first. It is also fundamentally different from America in another regard. It does not believe that it has a "universal" mission to promote Chinese civilization and encourage everyone else in humanity to emulate it.

Having been burnt in Iraq and Afghanistan, the logical response of America, if it were supple, flexible, and rational, would be to walk away from getting involved in unnecessary conflicts in the Islamic world. The inability to make this U-turn demonstrates that, like the old Soviet Union, America has become rigid, inflexible, and doctrinaire.

There were at least three major contributing factors to this alienation: the relative political autonomy of provincial and city chiefs, the hubris China experienced after the 2008–2009 global financial crisis, and the relatively weak central leadership in the 2000s.

In his book Oligarchy, American political scientist Jeffrey Winters provides a stunning illustration of just how dire US inequality has become: the average wealth of the richest one hundred American households relative to that of the bottom 90 percent approximates the wealth disparity between a Roman senator and a slave at the height of the Roman Empire.

Should America's primary goal be to improve the livelihood of its 330 million citizens or to preserve its primacy in the international system? If there are contradictions between the goals of preserving primacy and improving well-being, which should take priority?

While China projects an image of being a stable and predictable member of the global multilateral order, America, under Trump, is increasingly perceived as a chaotic and unpredictable actor.

In the Western mind, any undemocratic political system that deprives citizens the ability to choose or remove a leader is by definition evil.

while Chinese leaders want to rejuvenate Chinese civilization, they have no missionary impulse to take over the world and make everyone Chinese. China's role and influence in the world will certainly grow along with the size of its economy. Yet, it will not use its influence to change the ideologies or political practices of other societies.

When then President Barack Obama visited Laos in September 2016, he reminded us that America had dropped more than two million tons of bombs here in Laos—more than we dropped on Germany and Japan combined during all of World War II. It made Laos, per person, the most heavily bombed country in history.

Now imagine a world where Donald Trump (a Christian), Xi Jinping (a Confucian Communist), Vladimir Putin (an Orthodox Christian), Ayatollah Khamenei (a Muslim) and Narendra Modi (a Hindu) came together to sign a declaration for peaceful collaboration.

how the extraordinary diversity of Southeast Asia came about. In all the many interpretations of the region's history, there is one undeniable fact: Southeast Asia has served as the crossroads of the world for over 2,000 years. The remarkable cultural diversity of Southeast Asia is also a result of this. At least four major cultural waves have swept through Southeast Asia: the Indian, Chinese, Muslim and Western waves.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who alerted me to a significant difference between the democratic Indian society and communist Chinese society. He shrewdly observed that India was an open society with a closed mind, whereas China was a closed society with an open mind. The same observation may well apply to American society.

2012 Phnom Penh meeting indicated that the South China Sea issue was beginning to affect the ASEAN-China relationship.

ASEAN's role in providing a neutral geopolitical platform for great-power engagement is particularly valuable in the current context of major great-power shifts. The reason only ASEAN can do this is that it is the only party trusted by all the powers in the region.

Clearly, ASEAN needs to strengthen its secretariat. In contrast to the budget of the EU Secretariat, which is US$154 billion, the annual budget of the ASEAN Secretariat is US$19 million.

Southeast Asia has been intimately associated and involved with four of the great universalist cultures and civilizations of the world: India, China, Islam and the West.

Some have accepted the Faustian bargain of maximizing today's earnings per share while operating under restrictions that jeopardize their future competitiveness. But that doesn't mean they're happy about it.

Since the world needs a new champion of globalization, China can step in and fill the void, and in many ways, China has begun doing so.

The more than 600 million people living in the region have seen remarkable progress in the 50 years since the formation of the association. ASEAN has brought peace and prosperity to a troubled region, generated inter-civilizational harmony in the most diverse corner of the earth

Within ASEAN, a culture of peace has evolved as a result of imbibing the Indonesian custom of musyawarah and mufakat (consultation and consensus). Now ASEAN has begun to share this culture of peace with the larger Asia-Pacific region.

The reason ASEAN has emerged as the indispensable platform for great-power engagement in the Asia-Pacific region is that it is too weak to be a threat to anyone. So all the great powers instinctively trust it.