Will China or the West lead the world into the future?

Comments · 240

• JA

  @japhethweeks · 8 days ago

  I lived in China from 2005 to 2007 and it's already changed so much over the past two decades. It's presumptuous to think that the West does development better.

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• JU

  @juhantoon6524 · 7 days ago

  That lady professor is still adamant in accusing Russia of invading Ukraine. The other participants should have ask her would US invade Cuba if Russia or China built a military base in Cuba?  And also why the West never accuse the US of illegal wars where some European countries also participated against Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq and now Iran? Why the double standard. May be she just doesn't understand the complexity of geopolitics or just be recalcitrant.

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• IT

  @Itthew · 7 days ago

  To Isabel Hilton : 1) First dynasty is Shang not Qin . 2) China has never been just about Han Chinese . The fact China has a Muslim Eunich , as appointed and trusted by the emperor , leading a Navy sailing around the world just shows the tolerance and multiculturalism China endured . Can any western country show me a Muslim Navy General in the last 200 years ?

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• KY

  @kylinwarrior · 8 days ago

  the prof from the kings university seems to interpret China&apos;s great wall, as a symbol of invasion and expansion<br>this is the kind of education the west has been touting for decades, and we get to see what human beings they really are today

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• EM

  @EmmaTravelTheWorld · 6 days ago (edited)

  Excuse me~ Isabel&apos;s critique reveals Such a Narrow Western definition of both statehood and colonialism.<br><br>Equating Nation-State centralization with China&apos;s civilizational history misses what makes China unique. <br>When people talk about China’s historical depth, they aren&apos;t referring to a static political state—they are talking about an unbroken linguistic, cultural, and institutional continuity. We have Oracle Bone script from the Shang Dynasty over 3,500 years ago that is directly readable as ancestral modern Chinese, and archaeological sites like Liangzhu pushing organized urban administration back over 4,000 years. Qin Shi Huang didn&apos;t create Chinese civilization out of thin air in 221 BCE; he standardized a script, philosophy, and cultural realm that had already been evolving for thousands of years. To reduce China to just its post-Qin administrative boundary is like claiming Greek or Western civilization only started when Rome established its empire<br><br>​Calling the Qing Dynasty ‘colonizers’ projects modern Western colonial lens onto traditional Asian dynasties. <br>When European powers colonized, they governed remotely, extracted wealth back to their home capitals, and kept colonies separate. When the Manchus established the Qing Dynasty, they didn&apos;t treat China as an overseas farm; <br>they moved their entire seat of government to Beijing, adopted the Confucian civil service, governed through traditional Chinese imperial institutions, and co-ruled alongside the Han elite. <br>In classical Chinese historiography, legitimacy came from the Mandate of Heaven and adherence to governance norms—not Han bloodlines. <br>The Manchus didn&apos;t destroy China; they integrated into it, expanded its borders, and established the multi-ethnic framework that defines modern China today.<br><br>Moreover, Manchus are an Tungusic ethnic group originating from Northeast Asia (historically Manchuria). <br>They are highly distinct from Han Chinese, possessing their own language family, traditional culture, and ancestral military structures.<br><br>Isabel&apos;s comments on China reflect a classic Western bias that tries to measure China using Western ruler sticks. <br>Dismissing thousands of years of continuous linguistic and cultural continuity just because the administrative borders changed is an attempt to rewrite Chinese history through a Western lens.<br><br>China is not the United States — it is a civilizational state, not a missionary empire.<br> It has no desire to play the global &apos;superman&apos; or dictate how other nations govern themselves. The inability of Western commentators to accept a power that prioritizes sovereignty over ideological crusade says far more about Western imperial habits than it does about China.<br>&amp; Then she even has the audacity to insist that Western liberal democracy is the only &apos;sensible&apos; approach for every nation on Earth is an exercise in cultural hubris.<br><br>​The historical record of the last thirty years is clear: <br>attempting to impose Western political models onto complex, non-Western societies has repeatedly produced failed states, civil war, and human suffering—from Iraq to Libya. <br><br>True respect for international diversity means recognizing that different civilizations have the right to develop governance systems suited to their own history, culture, and material conditions. <br><br>China’s non-interference model isn&apos;t about denying people good governance; it&apos;s about respecting national sovereignty and allowing societies to build their own stability from within, rather than having a foreign template forced upon them.

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• RY

  @ryanhoviolin · 8 days ago (edited)

  Am I seeing what I’m seeing?<br>A British academic “lecturing” in front of a Chinese guest about what China is and isn’t, what Chinese history should be?<br>Is this a joke?<br>I’m no historian or academic, but I lived in England for 16 years of my life as a British born Chinese. &nbsp;Does this make me a candidate to lecture about British history and culture? &nbsp;I certainly have a lot to say about Britain’s bloody colonial past. But then again, I went back to England for a visit recently and saw the state of the country and the county where I called home and left wondering if Britain is finished. What went wrong? Enough said.

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• DU

  @DucaTech · 8 days ago (edited)

  Both WWI &amp; WWII were mainly European wars who dragged their colonies into it, with the exception of Japan in WWII. &nbsp;Imperial Japan is an Imperial Power wannabe trying to mimic the Western colonial powers. &nbsp;In the Iraq War, UK volunteered to be the US lackey in the invasion.

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• DU

  @DucaTech · 8 days ago

  Dear Isabel, when will UK give back the Falkland Islands to Argentina ? &nbsp;Did UK not subscribe to UNCLOS? &nbsp;Your country is an Atlantic Ocean away from the Falkland Islands which is closest to Argentina.

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• AL

  @alexandershing · 7 days ago

  What a shame for kings college london.

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• TH

  @thatimos7783 · 6 days ago

  This British lady was just there to trip up China through out the conversation. Did Britain apologize for their inhumane industry of slavery or for their looting and plundering of the resources of the global majority?? What about Britain making the whole nation of China addicts with opium during the opium wars? She should&apos;ve also talked about the starvation of India when they colonized it. Did Britain apologize for any of these atrocities?🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️🤦🏾‍♂️🤦🏾‍♂️

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• GL

  @globalVillageVC · 8 days ago

  What often gets lost: the UN Charter is the actual rulebook everyone signed. The rules based order is a much looser idea, and thats part of the problem

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• TI

  @Time4Peace · 7 days ago

  What a &nbsp;joke this Prof Isobel is! &nbsp;She kept talking about following international laws but completely ignored how America engineered the 2014 Maidan coup (even by American Victoria Nukand&apos;s own proud admission, after the coup, of spending $1.5b to achieve that objective. And thereafter, after the coup, building up the Ukrainian army to launch a civil war ahainst the Russian speaking Donbas region. UN&apos;s international laws forbid interference. America&apos;s CIA and NED conduct covert operations around the world for regime change and if that fails, invasion. <br><br>For a Prof to be so dishonest and completely lacking in ovjectivity, it&apos;s such a shame to her University! All she talks about is Russia invaded Ukraine as though nothing else happened earlier. The Minsks agreements were signed under the auspices of the UN precisely to avoid the war but America and the West refused to abide by it. Later, Germany (Markel Angela) admitted that the Minsks were signed to give time to build up Ukraine militarily. Prior to the invasion too, &nbsp; Russia kept asking for dialogue but were roundly ignored by America and EU. <br><br>What a disgrace this so call hyoocritical Prof (Isobel) is!

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