Why America Plays Chess, But China Plays Wei Qi (The 100-Year Strategy) Episode 1

We are currently living through the most significant geopolitical contest in human history. It is the friction

human history. It is the friction between the world's oldest continuous civilization, China, and the world's most successful young republic, the

United States of America. If you open the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal today, you will read stories about trade tariffs, about semiconductor

bans, about spy balloons and naval patrols. You will read about who is

patrols. You will read about who is winning this week and who is losing. But

if you only follow the headlines, you are missing the story. You are watching the moves, but you do not understand the game. I want to share with you a

game. I want to share with you a specific insight, one that became very clear to me during

a private lunch I had with uh Dr. Henry Kissinger in Manhattan in March 2018.

Kissinger is perhaps the only American strategist who truly engaged with the Chinese mind. And the insight is this.

Chinese mind. And the insight is this.

The fundamental danger in this rivalry is not just conflicting interests. It is

that Washington and Beijing are playing entirely different games. The United

States, inheriting the strategic traditions of the West, plays chess.

Chess is a game of total victory. It is

linear. It is decisive. You deploy your assets, your knights, your rooks, your queen to the center of the board. You

seek a direct confrontation.

And the ultimate objective is singular.

You must capture the king. You must

achieve checkmate. In geopolitical

terms, this translates to a strategy of containment or regime change. The goal

is to knock the opponent out of the game. But the Chinese do not play chess.

game. But the Chinese do not play chess.

They play way known in the west as go.

In wayi there is no king to kill. There

is no checkmate. If you try to play Wii by chasing individual stones to destroy them, you will lose. The goal of Wii is not destruction. It is encirclement. The

not destruction. It is encirclement. The

objective is to slowly, patiently, and methodically place stones on the board to occupy empty space. You build

territory. You build leverage. You build

assets. And you do this until your opponent looks up from their aggressive battles in the center of the board and realizes that they have been surrounded

not by soldiers but by a new reality.

This is the 100year strategy. America is

playing for the knockout blow. China is

playing for the board. Today I want to walk you through exactly how this dynamic is playing out economically, diplomatically, and militarily, and why

America's failure to understand the rules of Chi may lead to the greatest strategic disaster of the 21st century.

To understand why America plays chess, we must look at its last great victory, the Cold War. When the United States faced the Soviet Union, it engaged in a

strategy called containment, formulated by the great strategist George Kennan.

It was a brilliant strategy. It worked.

America built a wall of alliances, NATO, and isolated the Soviets until their system collapsed. Because this strategy

system collapsed. Because this strategy worked once, Washington assumes it will work again. This is a classic error in

work again. This is a classic error in strategic thinking. fighting the last

strategic thinking. fighting the last war. The American establishment believes

war. The American establishment believes that China is just another Soviet Union, a rigid ideological communist dictatorship that will eventually

crumble under pressure. But this view is factually incorrect. And if your

factually incorrect. And if your diagnosis is wrong, your prescription will be fatal. Let us look at the cold

hard data. When the Cold War ended in

hard data. When the Cold War ended in 1990, a moment of American triumph, the United States economy accounted for

20.6% of the global GDP. China's share

was a mere 3.86%.

China was economically irrelevant.

Today, the picture has reversed. In

purchasing power parity terms which measure what money can actually buy in a country, China's economy is already larger than America's. But the

difference is not just size. It is

integration. The Soviet Union was a military giant but an economic dwarf. It

was utarchic. It did not trade with the world. You could contain the Soviet

world. You could contain the Soviet Union because nobody lost money by stopping trade with Moscow. China is the opposite. China is the world's largest

opposite. China is the world's largest trading nation. It trades more with the

trading nation. It trades more with the rest of the world than America does. So

when American leaders fly to capitals in Europe or Asia or Latin America and ask their allies to decouple from China or

to join a containment coalition, they are asking these countries to commit economic suicide. I have traveled to 191

economic suicide. I have traveled to 191 countries in my career. I can tell you the mood in the room. Most countries

welcome American security presence. They

like having the United States Navy keeping the sea lanes open, but they love trading with China. If America

forces the world to choose between its security partner Washington and his economic partner Beijing, America will be surprised by the answer. Most

countries will not choose or they will choose their own prosperity. This is the first move on the way board. While

America moves its aircraft carriers, the chess pieces to the South China Sea, China acts like a giant suction cup pulling the economies of the world into

its orbit. You cannot checkmate a nation

its orbit. You cannot checkmate a nation that is the banker and the factory for your own allies. Let me give you a concrete example of how this difference in strategy plays out in real time. In

the game of Wii, the most brilliant move is one that occupies a vast amount of empty space on the board without firing a shot. A few years ago, the Obama

a shot. A few years ago, the Obama administration negotiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the TPP. This

was a massive trade agreement involving 12 nations. It was designed specifically

12 nations. It was designed specifically to exclude China. It was a brilliant move. It would have anchored the

move. It would have anchored the American economy at the center of the dynamic Asian region. It would have set the rules of trade for the next century.

In wayi terms, this was a powerful encirclement move by the United States.

But then what happened? In 2017, Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the TPP. Why? Because in the American

the TPP. Why? Because in the American domestic political game, which operates on a 4-year election cycle, the TPP was

seen as a bad deal for workers. In the

game of chess, withdrawing was a pawn sacrifice to please the domestic crowd.

But in the game of Wayi, it was a geopolitical gift of monumental proportions to China. When America

walked away, it left the board open.

China did not have to fight to gain influence. America simply vacated the

influence. America simply vacated the space. Now, China is advancing its own

space. Now, China is advancing its own agreements like the regional comprehensive economic partnership, the RC, and applying to

join the very agreements America abandon. We see this pattern repeat with

abandon. We see this pattern repeat with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the AIB.

In 2014, China proposed a new bank to help build infrastructure in Asia. The

need was obvious. Asia needs trillions of dollars for roads, bridges, and power plants. The United States dominated

plants. The United States dominated World Bank, was not providing enough capital. How did Washington respond?

capital. How did Washington respond?

They played chess. They saw the AIB as a rival king. They viewed it as a zero sum

rival king. They viewed it as a zero sum game. If China leads, America loses. So

game. If China leads, America loses. So

the Obama administration launched a diplomatic campaign. They pressured

diplomatic campaign. They pressured their allies, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, South Korea, not to join the bank. They tried to block it.

It was a humiliating failure. One by

one, America's closest allies defected.

The United Kingdom joined, then Germany, then France, then Australia. Today the

AIB has over 100 members. It is a respected multilateral institution. Why

did America fail? Because they tried to force a binary choice on a complex world. China playing way simply placed a

world. China playing way simply placed a stone on the board that was useful to everyone. They did not force anyone to

everyone. They did not force anyone to join. They simply created an asset, a

join. They simply created an asset, a bank that was in everyone's self-interest to use. They built

leverage through utility, not coercion.

This brings us to the belt and road initiative, the Barri. If you read the Western press, you will hear that the Barri is a sinister plot, a debt trap

designed to colonize the developing world. I suggest we look at the data.

world. I suggest we look at the data.

Africa and Asia are desperate for infrastructure. When an African leader

infrastructure. When an African leader wants a bridge or a railway, the West often sends a consultant to lecture them on governance, human rights or

environmental standards. China sends an

environmental standards. China sends an engineer to build the bridge. Is the

Barri perfect? No. There is waste, there is corruption, there are bad debts, but strategically it is a masterpiece of

way. By physically connecting the

way. By physically connecting the economies of Eurasia, Africa and Southeast Asia to China through rail,

road, digital cables and ports, China is rendering the concept of containment physically impossible. How do you

physically impossible. How do you contain a nation that is a central node of the global supply chain? You cannot.

While the US Navy conducts freedom of navigation operations, a necessary but symbolic chess move, China is cementing the trade routes that will define the

next century. The stones are being

next century. The stones are being placed on the board day by day while the aircraft carriers sail by. To understand

why China is able to play this long game, we must look inside the black box.

We must look at the Chinese Communist Party. There is a lazy assumption in the

Party. There is a lazy assumption in the west that because China is an authoritarian one party state, it must be rigid, brittle, and incompetent. The

Soviet Union collapsed. Therefore, the

Chinese Communist Party must also collapse. This is a dangerous delusion.

collapse. This is a dangerous delusion.

It underestimates the resilience of Chinese civilization. We must remember

Chinese civilization. We must remember that the CCP is not just a party in the western political sense. It is a meritocratic machine that has fused Marxism with traditional confusion

mandarin culture. I call the secret of

mandarin culture. I call the secret of China's governance the MH formula meritocracy, pragmatism, and honesty.

First, meritocracy. The West often assumes that CCP officials are chosen by nepotism or ideology. In reality, the

organization department of the CCP runs perhaps the world's most rigorous HR system. To get to the top in Beijing,

system. To get to the top in Beijing, you must first manage a village, then a city, then a province, you are tested on economic growth, social stability, and

disaster management. By the time someone

disaster management. By the time someone reaches the polit bureau standing committee, they have managed economies larger than most European nations.

Compare this to the American system where a candidate can become president with no administrative experience provided they can raise enough money and

give a good speech. The Chinese system selects for competence. The American

system selects for popularity.

Second, pragmatism. In the Cold War, the Soviets were rigid. They would rather starve than embrace the market. The

Chinese are different. As Deng Xiaoing famously said, "It does not matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice." When China saw that the

catches mice." When China saw that the Soviet model failed, they abandoned it.

They adopted markets. When they saw that the environment was degrading, they became the world's largest investor in green energy. They make mistakes, big

green energy. They make mistakes, big ones, but they correct them ruthlessly.

And third, honesty. This may surprise you given the corruption in China, but I mean honesty in a specific sense, honesty about results. The Chinese

government knows that its legitimacy does not come from votes. It comes from performance. It comes from delivering a

performance. It comes from delivering a better life to 1.4 billion people. In

1980, China was one of the poorest nations on earth. Today, they have lifted 800 million people out of poverty, the greatest improvement in

human welfare in history. They have

built 40,000 km of high-speed rail. The

United States has built zero. The

Chinese people support their government not because they are brainwashed, but because their lives have improved. A

Harvard Kennedy School study found that 93% of Chinese citizens are satisfied with their central government. In the

United States, public trust in government is near historic lows. If

America builds its strategy on the hope that the Chinese people will overthrow the CCP, it is betting against the data.

It is betting on a chess move. Checkmate

the regime that is not available on the board. So does this mean China has won?

board. So does this mean China has won?

Is the game over? No, far from it. While

China plays a masterful game of way, America possesses advantages that China can never replicate. America has the world's best universities. It has a

culture of innovation and critical thinking that is unmatched. It has an ecosystem of freedom that allows for self-correction.

Most importantly, America is an immigrant society. It attracts the best

immigrant society. It attracts the best and brightest from around the world. I

have often said that the United States can draw talent from 7 billion people.

China can only draw from 1.4 billion. In

a battle for talent, America should win.

The tragedy is that America is wasting these enormous strengths on a geopolitical contest it has not properly defined. It is spending trillions on a

defined. It is spending trillions on a bloated military budget to fight wars in the Middle East or to prepare for a kinetic war in the Pacific that would destroy both nations. It is neglecting

its own infrastructure. It is neglecting its own social contract. It is becoming a rigid polarized society.

traits that we used to associate with the Soviet Union. If America continues to play chess, seeking to militarize the Pacific, forcing countries to choose

sides, and hoping for the collapse of China, it will likely fail. The world is too integrated, and China is too big to be checked. But if America decides to

be checked. But if America decides to learn the game of Wii, if it decides to compete by building better infrastructure, by re-engaging in trade

deals, by fixing its own domestic divisions and improving the well-being of its own people, then it can coexist with China. We must understand the

with China. We must understand the nature of the Chinese challenge. The

100year strategy of China is not to conquer the world. China does not want to occupy Washington DC. It does not want to send missionaries to convert

Americans to communism. China's goal is rejuvenation. It wants to restore itself

rejuvenation. It wants to restore itself to what it sees as its natural historical position, a great respected civilizational power. They want respect,

civilizational power. They want respect, not dominance. They want to ensure that

not dominance. They want to ensure that no foreign power can ever humiliate them again. The question is not whether

again. The question is not whether America can stop China. It cannot. The

1.4 billion people of China have stood up and they are not sitting back down.

The question is whether America can adapt to a new world order. Can America

accept a world where it is no longer the undisputed king on the chess board but a major player on a shared wayi board? If

America can make that psychological adjustment, if it can accept competition without seeking destruction, then the 21st century can be an era of peace and

prosperity. But if Washington insists on

prosperity. But if Washington insists on playing chess in a way world, we are heading toward a tragedy that no one

wants and no one will win. The game has changed. The only question remaining is

changed. The only question remaining is when will Washington learn the new rules.