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Dear Professor Zhang, I’m a reporter from China Military Network. What are the topics you are most concerned about in this Beijing Xiangshan Forum?

Zhang Weiwei:

I am deeply interested in several themes discussed at this year’s Xiangshan Forum, particularly regarding security in the Asia-Pacific region and the current situation in Europe, especially the impacts of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. I just came from the main session where I listened to a keynote speech by our Defense Minister, General Dong Jun, as well as presentations from six foreign defense ministers and senior military leaders. It has been quite enlightening. You can see the significance of the Xiangshan Forum in today’s world, as we are experiencing widespread unrest; Europe has lost its peace, the Middle East is in turmoil, and these crises have the potential to escalate further.

Zhang Weiwei (Right), a well-known professor in China, attended the Xiangshan Forum in September.

In the past, it was hard to imagine the possibility of a third world war, but now discussions about it have become common in Europe and the Middle East. I’ve heard that NATO is considering allowing its weapons to target deep inside Russia, to which Russia has responded by saying, “We must consider the possibility of nuclear war.” These developments highlight the loss of peace for humanity, which in turn jeopardizes development, leading to a vicious cycle. That’s why we are hosting this forum, inviting representatives from over 100 countries and more than 200 scholars to engage in dialogue and exchange ideas.

In his speech, Minister Dong Jun repeatedly emphasized an important point: China’s security perspective, which includes several key elements—common security, comprehensive security, cooperative security, and sustainable security. It’s not enough for a few countries or small groups to feel secure while others are not; that understanding is flawed. True security is collective and comprehensive. Today, security extends beyond traditional military conflicts to include non-traditional issues like the development of artificial intelligence, refugee crises, and climate change, which have led smaller countries to voice concerns about being submerged or affected.

I also want to emphasize the importance of collaborative development, advocating for the principle of “harmony as a priority” to collectively address various security challenges. This approach is essential for achieving sustainable security; otherwise, it won’t last long. Minister Dong Jun repeatedly emphasized the need for both symptom and root cause solutions, which aligns well with Chinese philosophy. I personally believe that one significant reason this forum is initiated by the Chinese military is that China is now a major military power. We hold considerable influence in the world; if China states that no one is allowed to initiate conflict in this region, especially in the Asia-Pacific, it means we will not tolerate anyone stirring up war here, and we will use all necessary means to prevent it. As a result, when China speaks, it carries weight, and other countries are willing to attend this forum.

This afternoon, I’m planning to attend the parallel session on “The Direction of European Security” because I know many of the participants attending the parallel session, including Karaganov, a highly influential political scholar from Russia, as well as former Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Mr. Alexander Chaly. I believe it’s very meaningful for a forum like this to bring together influential Russian scholars and former Ukrainian officials to speak in the same session. The two have met at the same forum last year, and given the ongoing developments in the Russia-Ukraine war, as well as the participation of representatives from various sensitive Western institutions this year, I think it’s a positive step to facilitate diverse discussions and communication among all parties.

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The bullet aimed at Trump’s head missed by about a centimeter. Thankfully, within the context created by NATO’s joint statement, this tiny deviation in the bullet’s trajectory almost saved the entire world once again.

Why is this the case? Imagine if the bullet had not missed Trump, and the bullet aimed at the shooter had missed, leaving the shooter alive to reveal the mastermind behind the plot. Although the intensity of the assassination event itself might not have increased (with two dead and one injured), the subsequent dramatic developments would be unpredictable.

Many people have not yet fully realized that for what constitutes a war action, a war threat, or an escalation of war, the definitions of all of them have been quietly changed by a group of warmongering maniacs in this world.

According to these new definitions, it could even be argued that the world has been at war for many years. Any event more significant than Trump’s ear could become the fuse for escalating into a devastating full-scale war.

This is not alarmist talk; it is the inevitable conclusion after a serious analysis of the NATO summit’s joint statement in Washington D.C.

Hybrid Actions

Evan Vucci, the Associated Press photographer who captured that iconic photo, said that when he heard the gunshot, he knew it was a moment in American history that had to be recorded. This shows that, as an experienced photographer, he already understood that in today’s global media era and global spectator era, how an event happens is one thing, but how it is recorded, spread, and interpreted is another. In many cases, the latter is the truly decisive element. This is the so-called “post-truth era,” where the judgment and emotional state of the recorders, spreaders, and interpreters will participate in this “historical moment.”

This is the world today, where every major event is no longer simple or truthful but “hybrid” and “post-truth,” with the event’s creators, recipients, and onlookers all participating.

The term “hybrid actions,” frequently mentioned in the NATO summit’s joint statement, is used in this context.

The Washington Summit Declaration accuses China and Russia of taking a series of “aggressive hybrid actions” against NATO member states. According to the definition in Article 20 of the Declaration, “sabotage, acts of violence, provocations at Allied borders, instrumentalisation of irregular migration, malicious cyber activities, electronic interference, disinformation campaigns and malign political influence, as well as economic coercion,” either directly or through proxy states.

This definition of “aggressive hybrid actions” clearly has a “post-truth” nature—the actual actions of the opposing countries are one thing, but NATO’s recognition, propaganda, and reciprocal counterattacks are more decisive. What constitutes “malicious cyber activities”, “disinformation campaigns”, “malign political influence” or “economic coercion”? Each of these concepts contains a unilateral subjective judgment.

Article 4 of the Declaration says that China’s policies challenge NATO’s interests, security, and values. “The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) stated ambitions and coercive policies continue to challenge our interests, security and values. The deepening strategic partnership between Russia and the PRC and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut and reshape the rules-based international order, are a cause for profound concern. We are confronted by hybrid, cyber, space, and other threats and malicious activities from state and non-state actors.” Article 27 says that China “continues to pose systemic challenges to Euro-Atlantic security,” including “sustained malicious cyber and hybrid activities, including disinformation.” In response, NATO is “enhancing our resilience and preparedness, and protecting against the PRC’s coercive tactics and efforts to divide the Alliance.”

This is a redefinition of war actions. One may indeed not have engaged in any actions that could be called war, but if one conducts certain cyber activities, releases certain key information, creates certain political influence, or implements certain economic policies, then according to NATO’s latest definitions, if one’s cyber activities are deemed “malicious,” one’s key information is deemed “false,” one’s political influence is deemed “harmful,” and one’s economic policies are deemed “coercive,” it counts as “aggressive hybrid actions,” which can be equated to waging a war of aggression.

Hybrid War

It is well known that Russia has consistently claimed that since the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian war, the Western bloc has launched a “hybrid war” against Russia. Russia is not making baseless claims; the various sanctions and direct or indirect attacks by the West against Russia over the past two years are evident to all.

However, Article 13 of the NATO Washington Summit Declaration states: “State and non-state actors are using increasingly aggressive hybrid actions against Allies. We will continue to prepare for, deter, defend against, and counter hybrid threats and challenges. We reiterate that hybrid operations against Allies could reach the level of an armed attack and could lead the North Atlantic Council to invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty.”

This aligns with the long-standing behavior of Western strategic decision-makers: projecting their own aggressive actions and true intentions directly onto their opponents to demonize them. After achieving this goal—essentially saying that the hybrid war they have waged against Russia is actually a hybrid war waged by their opponent against them—they can achieve their greater ambition of invoking Article 5 of the Washington Treaty.

Article 5 of the Washington Treaty refers to the collective defense clause in the treaty signed by the founding members of NATO, which states that an attack on one member is considered an attack on all members, and other member states must respond immediately. This clause is generally interpreted as meaning that national forces will automatically enter the war without requiring authorization from their governments, constituting collective self-defense. This clause was first invoked during the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

Article 13 of this joint statement redefines collective self-defense—not necessarily traditional warfare actions, but once it is determined that an adversary state has taken “hybrid actions” against any NATO member state as defined unilaterally by NATO or has constituted “hybrid threats and challenges” as unilaterally defined by NATO, it will be regarded by NATO as an attack on all members, and other member states must respond immediately.

This is a re-interpretation of full-scale war, further lowering the threshold for war escalation, with the malice and madness reflected in it completely disregarding global peace and security.

Corresponding to the frequent use of “hybrid actions” and “hybrid threats” is the repeated mention in the statement of NATO’s “360-degree security approach” to respond, referring to a full-circle, no-dead-angle retaliation. One example is the near-genocide and crimes against humanity-level security measures that Israel is taking against Hamas.

Why is it said that in such a new context, the world today has actually been at war for many years? The reason is simple: the apparent peace that the world still maintains today, and the few ongoing hot wars still confined to localized areas without spreading into full-scale wars, is because most countries in the world are still trying their best to maintain world peace and stability. They have not adopted NATO’s latest definitions of war actions, war threats, and war escalation on an equal footing. They have not equated NATO’s hybrid warfare against other countries with waging actual war. In other words, most countries in the world have not fought back on an equal footing against the latest defined forms of war unilaterally waged by NATO.

It can be considered that this is one of the most significant meanings of China and global southern countries strengthening unity and cooperation, as well as the most significant meaning of China itself upholding the notion of peaceful development for the world.

Of course, this effort is also one-sided. After NATO authorizes itself to recognize its opponents’ “hybrid actions” in a “post-truth” manner, theoretically speaking, war maniacs can use any excuse to declare their opponents aggressors, thereby truly waging a war they’ve been longing for.

This is the world today. Any hotspot can be maliciously interpreted and become the fuse for launching a vicious war.

This time, the bullet missed Donald Trump by a centimeter. What about the next time? When the distance between peace and war starts to be measured in centimeters, what can the world do about it?

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In 1992, U.S. foreign-policy exceptionalism went into overdrive. The U.S. has always viewed itself as an exceptional nation destined for leadership, and the demise of the Soviet Union in December 1991 convinced a group of committed ideologues—who came to be known as neoconservatives—that the U.S. should now rule the world as the unchallenged sole superpower. Despite countless foreign policy disasters at neocon hands, the 2024 NATO Declaration continues to push the neocon agenda, driving the world closer to nuclear war.

The neoconservatives were originally led by Richard Cheney, the Defense Secretary in 1992. Every President since then—Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden—has pursued the neocon agenda of U.S. hegemony, leading theU.S. into perpetual wars of choice, including Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Ukraine, as well as relentless eastward expansion of NATO, despite a clear U.S. and German promise in 1990 to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move one inch eastward.

The core neocon idea is that the U.S. should have military, financial, economic, and political dominance over any potential rival in any part of the world. It is targeted especially at rival powers such as China and Russia, and therefore brings the U.S. into direct confrontation with them. The American hubris is stunning: most of the world does not want to be led by the U.S., much less led by a U.S. state clearly driven by militarism, elitism and greed.

The neocon plan for U.S. military dominance was spelled out in the Project for a New American Century. The plan includes relentless NATO expansion eastward, and the transformation of NATO from a defensive alliance against a now-defunct Soviet Union to an offensive alliance used to promote U.S. hegemony. The U.S. arms industry is the major financial and political backer of the neocons. The arms industry spearheaded the lobbying for NATO’s eastward enlargement starting in the 1990s. Joe Biden has been a staunch neocon from the start, first as Senator, then as Vice President, and now as President.

To achieve hegemony, the neocon plans rely on CIA regime-change operations; U.S.-led wars of choice; U.S. overseas military bases (now numbering around 750 overseas bases in at least 80 countries); the militarization of advanced technologies (biowarfare, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, etc.); and relentless use of information warfare.

The quest for U.S. hegemony has pushed the world to open warfare in Ukraine between the world’s two leading nuclear powers, Russia and the United States. The war in Ukraine was provoked by the relentless determination of the U.S. to expand NATO to Ukraine despite Russia’s fervent opposition, as well as the U.S. participation in the violent Maidan coup (February 2014) that overthrew a neutral government, and the U.S. undermining of the Minsk II agreement that called for autonomy for the ethnically Russian regions of eastern Ukraine.

The NATO Declaration calls NATO a defensive alliance, but the facts say otherwise. NATO repeatedly engages in offensive operations, including regime-change operations. NATO led the bombing of Serbia in order to break that nation in two parts, with NATO placing a major military base in the breakaway region of Kosovo. NATO has played a major role in many U.S. wars of choice. NATO bombing of Libya was used to overthrow the government of Moammar Qaddafi.

The U.S. quest for hegemony, which was arrogant and unwise in 1992, is absolutely delusional today, since the U.S. clearly faces formidable rivals that are able to compete with the U.S. on the battlefield, in nuclear arms deployments, and in the production and deployment of advanced technologies. China’s GDP is now around 30% larger than the U.S. when measured at international prices, and China is the world’s low-cost producer and supplier of many critical green technologies, including EVs, 5G, photovoltaics, wind power, modular nuclear power, and others. China’s productivity is now so great that the U.S. complains of China’s “over-capacity.”

Sadly, and alarmingly, the NATO declaration repeats the neoconservative delusions.

The Declaration falsely declares that “Russia bears sole responsibility for its war of aggression against Ukraine,” despite the U.S. provocations that led to the outbreak of the war in 2014.

The NATO Declaration reaffirms Article 10 of the NATO Washington Treaty, according to which NATO’s eastward expansion is none of Russia’s business. Yet the U.S. would never accept Russia or China establishing a military base on the US border (say in Mexico), as the U.S. first declared in the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 and has reaffirmed ever since.

The NATO Declaration reaffirms NATO’s commitment to biodefense technologies, despite growing evidence that U.S. biodefense spending by NIH financed the laboratory creation of the virus that may have caused the Covid-19 pandemic.

The NATO Declaration proclaims NATO’s intention to continue to deploy anti-ballistic Aegis missiles (as it has already done in Poland, Romania, and Turkey), despite the fact that the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and placement of Aegis missiles in Poland and Romania has profoundly destabilized the nuclear arms control architecture.

The NATO Declaration expresses no interest whatsoever in a negotiated peace for Ukraine.

The NATO Declaration doubles-down on Ukraine’s “irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.” Yet Russia will never accept Ukraine’s NATO membership, so the “irreversible” commitment is an irreversible commitment to war.

The Washington Post reports that in the lead-up to the NATO summit, Biden had serious qualms about pledging an “irreversible path” to Ukraine’s NATO membership, yet Biden’s advisors brushed aside these concerns.

The neoconservatives have created countless disasters for the U.S. and the world, including several failed wars, a massive buildup of U.S. public debt driven by trillions of dollars of wasteful war-driven military outlays, and the increasingly dangerous confrontation of the U.S. with China, Russia, Iran, and others. The neocons have brought the Doomsday Clock to just 90 seconds to midnight (nuclear war), compared with 17 minutes in 1992.

For the sake of America’s security and world peace, the U.S. should immediately abandon the neocon quest for hegemony in favor of diplomacy and peaceful co-existence.

Alas, NATO has just done the opposite.

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The bombing of the embassy is considered one of the three most humiliating events that happened to China in the 1990s. The first was the Yinhe incident. The second was the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1996. The bombing of the embassy was the first time I really felt that my country was in danger, that imperialism was unreasonable, and that individuals were powerless.

Twenty-five years is a very long time, long enough for the world to change drastically. But it is not too long. The generation that has personally experienced the brutality of imperialism is now in its prime. They are not so old as to forget the arrogance and impudence of the imperialist powers and the trampling and harm they did to the Chinese people. Therefore, we oppose the oppression of the unilateral hegemony.

Three journalists were killed in the embassy

When I think back on the 1990s, it is more of a tumultuous, depressing and disturbing memory. Externally, there was imperialism pressing on us, and internally, there was the massive layoffs caused by the reform. Compared to the distant threat of imperialism, I was more worried about whether my family would be able to survive as a laid-off worker.

Things changed as the world entered the new millennium. After joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), China rapidly emerged as the world’s factory, while the United States launched its wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which later became total failures. From then on, China’s situation became better every day, while the image of the Western developed countries collapsed every day. Both the strength of the country and our personal lives have changed radically in the past twenty-five years.

Of course, there are also things that remain unchanged. For example, the Western world, led by the United States, is still oppressing and exploiting the world. But this kind of exploitation and oppression has now become more of a sunset, and even ridiculous. The Americans are still stirring up conflicts, spreading chaos, and abusing their financial hegemony with the backing of its military. But when the Russo-Ukrainian conflict started, the whole West still found themselves hard to make enough ammunition in time.

Compared with China’s huge production capacity, the West’s industrial capability is more like a joke. As the most intense regional conflict after the Cold War, the outbreak and prolongation of the Russo-Ukraine conflict signaled the post-Cold War order, which represents the hegemony of the U.S. and the triumph of the West, is about to end.

From our Chinese perspective, after a quarter of a century, the West has lost much of its strength. The worries and fears that used to be in the back of our minds are now more like an exaggeration. Back then, we were not dare to look at the United States, Japan is already too strong for us. We thought imperialism is a monster that destroys the world, and each one of them requires us to fight with all our might. Who would have thought that nowadays, it is more like a group of ragtag families, and the so-called leader is just nothing but a paper tiger.

But we still have to realize that the hegemony of the West, although shaky, is still intact. From a material point of view, the West is still harshly exploiting the world. Currently, we are experiencing an economic downturn on a global scale. If left unchecked and not effectively ameliorated, this downturn is reminiscent of the tensions of the first half of the last century, when the world was exposed to the ever-increasing risk of large-scale geographic conflicts.

We can clearly say that the root cause of this situation is the fact that the Western countries, represented by the United States, have seized an unreasonable portion of the current division of labor. What they got have far exceeded their own level of productivity. The Western countries, whose productivity rapidly declines as a result of de-industrialization, are no longer able to pay a sufficient price for the commodities they got. In the end, they could only rely on the outdated distribution system and intensify their plunder to maintain the status of the so-called developed countries.

But what we see is the Western powers, led by the United States, could not even sustain their level of exploitation. Despite having reaped huge benefits by plundering, their internal inequality of distribution have resulted in the increasing impoverishment of the lower and middle classes. This has resulted in a relative overcapacity of global production capacity, from which the vast majority of people from the West to the East have suffered, and the whole world has been plunged into a state of distress.

We must see that this injustice and exploitation of late capitalism is not only directed against us, but also the vast majority of the people within the West itself. Late capitalism, which was born in the West, has flooded and eroded all over the world with the tentacles of globalization. It can even be said that our country, as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the global economic system in the new century, is also among its victims.

Due to the continuous decline of the West and the growing strength of the East, it can be asserted that the Western powers are gradually weakening their ability to directly carry out destruction, aggression and plunder. The threats of the West now sound more and more like a joke to us, who are united and strong enough.

But on a spiritual level, the erosion of the world by the corrupt and decadent West, represented by the United States, is nonetheless increasing. As we see today, the West is pushing for the decriminalization of drugs, and the radicalization of LGBT movement has been alienated from its original intent of affirmative action into political madness.

The injustice of the contemporary distribution of wealth will probably be corrected within our generation as the Western world declines further. But the pollution caused by late capitalism throughout the world is bound to reach its peak on the eve of its demise. On the eve of its self-destruction, the Western hegemony is breaking through the bottom line worldwide, turning right and wrong upside down, and destroying all the elements of progress and order that were once promoted by it.

It is as if someone opens the Pandora’s box, and the resulting poisonous harm and long-term hatred may well outweigh the West’s rotten war machine, and jeopardize our world for a long time, which will take several generations to be pacified.

Compared with the world 25 years ago, the contemporary West now has to face up to China’s existence. Their hostility towards China might better be called fear these days. In the last half-century, China has been arguably the most peaceful and reasonable rising power in the world, a situation unparalleled in human history.

China has been so reasonable, peaceful and friendly. Why does the West still insist on being hostile and fearful of China? I am afraid we all agree that it is not only because of the difference in civilization and rivalry.

The West’s greatest fear is not that China will take its place, but that the Chinese will do to them again what they have done to China. Even if China doesn’t retaliate against the West, like all bullies who have lost their power, the West is filled with victims both internally and externally, desperate to get justice against them. In the end, it’s not China that the West fears, it’s China in their minds, or rather themselves.

Looking back at the tragedy of twenty-five years ago, we are all faced with the question of how to deal with the world that has hurt us so deeply.

We should objectively recognize that Chinese society is not entirely without vengeance, it is actually very strong. After all, since 1840, China has endured unprecedented suffering and paid countless sacrifices.

Even today, we are still subjected to provocations, injuries and encroachment of interests from the West. Such evils must be cleared, and only through a comprehensive struggle can we clear away all the residual evils brought about by the late American hegemony, and enable both the Chinese society and the Western world to move towards a new future for mankind.

From a historical point of view, the Chinese civilization has formed a relatively stable territory for a long time, and does not have the same aggressiveness as the Western civilization. From a practical point of view, we should fully learn the lesson of the West that relying on aggression and plunder to maintain prosperity will not end well in the end.

After all, China is a vast country with a population larger than that of the entire Western world. It is impossible for a mega-country as China to take the parasitic route of the West. A decaying world drained of blood is not in our favor, and striving to maintain a peaceful, orderly, prosperous, and progressive world is what will really make China stronger and stronger.

The Chinese people have hatred for the invaders, and revenge has its own rationality and necessity. Historical experience has fully told us that after the victory, the so-called tolerance and generosity of posturing is not only an injustice to the sacrifices of our forefathers, but also to sow the seeds of trouble for the future. But what we are asking for is a reckoning with the sins of history, a correction, not a quest to become the next hegemon. We have personally experienced the strength and decline of American hegemony. This abuse of power not only caused deep suffering to the world, but also accelerated the decay of the empire itself. This is something we need to learn from, not aspire to.

After 25 years of rapid development, I think contemporary China itself illustrates that the problem of the contemporary world is not primarily a lack of productivity, but an unfair distribution of production. As mentioned earlier, China is both a victim of hegemonic bullying in international distribution and a developing country that suffered the erosion of global capital and liberalism.

As China continues to develop, some of the increasingly intense social contradictions and ideological alienation in contemporary China can no longer be viewed simply as a repetition of Western social problems. Liberalism and capitalism are infringing on the country’s tradition and the foundation of existence. It is necessary to make great efforts to eradicate them.

From the standpoint of the Chinese people, fighting the final madness at the end of hegemony and resisting the continuous erosion of late liberalism are equally important tasks in the contemporary era. After a long period of precipitation, endurance, development, and discernment, the truly mature Chinese society’s vengeance is not directed against any specific country but against the imperialist system and late capitalism that alienated our world. We have already suffered in our development process, and we should not repeat it or even contribute to it. We have to be highly alert to the fact that some corrupting forces and trends of thought can be parasitizing and even taking over us after the collapse of Western hegemony.

Time has flown. If we start from 1840, the Chinese people have gone through two hundred years of resistance and struggle. As the children of this era, the greatest successor of the new century, we Chinese should not be caught up in a mere cycle of hegemony and hatred.

We should summarize the lessons of history in a timely manner and strive to explore and seek a fairer and more reasonable world. As a generation that has grown up from suffering, we should be even more vigilant in fighting for a new world that is fairer, more just and more conducive to the well-being of all humankind.

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