Professor Nye is a University Distinguished Service Professor and former Dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and coiner of the concept of “soft power”.

The ongoing great power competition between the United States and China, the world’s two largest economies, is predominantly viewed through the lens of balance of power. In this session, Professor Nye explored topics including the role and influence of soft power in foreign policy, the rise of nationalism in both countries, economic and social co-existence and interdependence, as well as cooperation on important global issues such as climate and trade.

This virtual program is part of the CCG “China and the World” webinar series seeking to engage global thought leaders on topics concerning the current situation and dilemmas of globalization and China’s role in it.

Wang Huiyao: Hello, good evening, good afternoon and good morning – it depends on where you are and thank you for tuning in. We are very honoured and very pleased to have Professor Joseph Nye with us today for the China and the World Dialogue Series. CCG is a leading think tank in China that has been ranked 64 globally by the University of Pennsylvania and we are also the only think tank in China that has the United Nation special consultant status. We have been conducting this China and World Series since last year during the pandemic, where we featured a number of well-known international opinion leaders and scholars like Thomas Friedman and Professor Graham Allison. We’re going to have a number of more coming up as well. Last year, we also held webinars with Wolfgang Ischinger, John Thornton and some other well-known international scholars. And, tonight, we are with Joseph Nye. Professor Nye is a University Distinguished Service Professor and also a former Dean of Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and won the Rhodes Scholar scholarship of the Oxford University and attained his Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University. He has worked in three city government agencies, having a very impressive career. From 1977 to 1979, Joseph served as a deputy to the Undersecretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology and chaired the National Security Council Group on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. For recognition of his service, he received the highest of the Department of State accommodation, the Distinguished Honour Award, and in 1993 and 1994, he was the chair of the National Intelligence Council, which coordinates intelligence estimation for the president. He was awarded to the Intelligence Community Distinguished Service Medal. In 1994 and 1995, he served as the assistant secretary of defence for International Security Affairs, where he won the Distinguished Service Medal.

Joseph is very famous for his academic career. I remember when I was at Harvard Kennedy School about 11 or 12 years ago, you were so kind to accept our interview and you wrote a preface for a book of ours, which I really appreciate. And Joseph is a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Science of the American Academy of Diplomacy and of the British Academy. In a recent survey of the International Relations Scholars, Professor Nye has ranked as the most influential scholar on American foreign policy and also in 2011, Foreign Policy named him one of the top 100 global thinkers. Professor Joseph, today, we are really pleased to have you and perhaps you can say a few words to our online audience in China and elsewhere.

Joseph Nye: Well, it’s a pleasure to be with you and to visit the Centre for China and Globalization, even if it’s only virtually. I look forward to the day when we can once again greet each other personally. But I think the topic of how power is changing in the world and how that’s going to affect the relations between the United States and China is one of the absolute central topics of our century. In the recent book that I published, Do Morals Matter?  last chapter, I say that there are two great power shifts going on in this century. One is a power shift from west to east, which means from basically Europe and the Atlantic to the Pacific and Asia. If you think about the world in, let’s say in 1800, Asia was half of the world’s population and half of the world’s economy. By 1900, Asia is still half the world’s population, but only 20 percent of the world’s economy and then it was because of the industrial revolution in Europe and North America. What we’re seeing in this century is a return to normality – normal proportions. And it’s a long process, but I think it’s an extraordinarily important power shift. Many people see this as the rise of China and certainly China has been central to it. But also, it starts really with the rise of Japan after the Meiji Restoration, continued also with the rise of India. So, China’s big part of Asia, but Asia obviously is a broader concept. So how do we manage that power transition from the West to East in a way which is beneficial for all countries and which doesn’t break down into great power rivalries, which are destructive. That is one of the great power shifts.

The other great power shift is what I would call vertical rather than horizontal. And that’s the power shifts from governments to non-governmental and transnational actors. And this is driven by technology and by changes in not economic, but in ecological globalization, things like pandemics and climate change, which don’t respect boundaries and which no government can control working alone, but has to, in fact, controlled by working with other governments. And that’s why in my book, I talk about the fact that the first type of power shift, the one that I would call horizontal, is one that can lead to power over competitive power, in which we think in traditional terms – power over other countries. But when you look at this other power shift, the vertical one from governments to transnational requires a different form of power, called “power with” rather than “power over”, because no country can solve those problems alone. So, if you take climate change, for example, China cannot solve climate change by itself. The United States can’t solve it by itself. Europe can’t solve it. It’s going to have to be cooperative. And yet it’s tremendously important for each of us. If the Himalayan glaciers melt, that’s going to destroy agriculture in China. If the sea levels rise, that’s going to put much of Florida underwater. But neither of us can deal with that acting alone. We have to work with each other. And that’s the importance of “power with”. So, what I argue in the book is that these two power shifts lead to emphasis on two different types of power, power over others and power with others. If we’re going to have to learn to live in a world where we manage both simultaneously, that’s not easy. People always like things to be simple. It’s either one or the other. In fact, it’s going to be both.