This week on Woo Says, we examine U.S. President Donald Trump’s newly released National Security Strategy. Professor Emeritus Datuk Woo Wing Thye and Melisa Idris unpack what this worldview signals, and the implications it carries for the global order.
00:00This week on Wu says, we examine US President Donald Trump's recently released National Security Strategy.
00:07Professor Emeritus Datuk-Datuk Wu Wingtai and Melissa Idris unpacked what this worldview signals and its implications for the global order.
00:15Now, here's a segment from the conversation.
00:19The first one is that we have the right to be imperialistic over our neighbours.
00:27That is what we just talked about.
00:31The Western Hemisphere exists to support US interests.
00:39The second part of the worldview is that the United States wants to continue to be the biggest economy in the world.
00:51If you look at the US economy right now, it's 30 trillion US dollars.
00:59And China's GDP in US dollars is roughly 19.5 trillion.
01:09So the US is 30, China is 19.5, so the US is a lot larger.
01:14But that is largely because China is still a developing economy, so the prices of services is very low.
01:27Like the price of having servants in China is a lot lower than having servants in the United States.
01:34If you were to price the Chinese GDP using US prices, that means that China is the same size as the United States.
01:49In fact, larger.
01:50The China will be 40 billion.
01:52But the important thing to note is that in order for the United States to continue to be the largest economy in the world,
02:05China would always need to be seven times poorer per person than the United States.
02:13What that denies is the phenomena of catching up.
02:20What we have learned from the Japanese and Korean growth experiences is that it is possible for countries to learn the latest technology that the US is using
02:35and hence reach the same standard of living as the United States.
02:40And if China is able to do that, China would be four times larger than the United States.
02:50So in order to prevent China from becoming larger than the United States, China would somehow be unable to catch up.
03:00So there lies the strategy, a strategy of somehow the United States is able to prevent China from catching up.
03:09That is a very big assumption and a very dangerous assumption.
03:14Catch the full conversation on Awani International and across our social media platforms.
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