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This thing called nationalism is a treasure that a country uses to try to develop and a nationality uses to try to survive. China has lost this treasure.

China is, indeed, in so many ways, not like the West. It is not even primarily a nation state but a civilisation state. Whereas the West has primarily been shaped by its experience of nation, China has been moulded by its sense of civilisation.

China is not a country, it's a continent. India is not a country, it's a continent.

China has existed within very roughly its present borders for over two millennia and for virtually the whole of that period saw itself as a 'civilisation state.' It was only when it was too weak to resist the western powers in the early 20th century that it finally acquiesced in an arrangement that was alien to it.

The Chinese culture belongs not only to the Chinese but also to the whole world.

China no longer has an ideology that makes any sense to them, but what they do have is great pride in the Chinese nation.

There's a national ambition, a collective, in a sense, political ambition, which I think is the thing we see from far away. That's the fact that China's building roads and airports and extending its reaches out into the East China Sea and the South China Sea, and in a way that's putting it into some tension with its neighbors.

We can pretend that China is not there. But China is there, and unless we put our economy on the right track, it is going to overwhelm us completely.

China is completely lacking in self-awareness and as someone who has stepped outside that society, I have a responsibility to write about it as I see it.

I believe that if you treat China as an enemy, then it is likely to become one.