Kishore Mahbubani: The U.S. Must Approach China With Humility

China has been around for 5,000 years. The United States has been around for 250 years. And it's not surprising that a juvenile like the United States would have difficulty dealing with a wiser, older civilization. So the troubles that the United States is having in dealing with China are perfectly understandable. What the United States doesn't understand is the longer arc of human history.

There's a British historian called Angus Maddison who pointed out that if you look at the history of the world over the past 2,000 years, the two largest economies of the world have always been those of China and India. It's only in the last 200 years that the West took off, Europe in the 19th century and North America in the 20th century. The past 200 years of world history have been a major historical aberration and all aberrations come to a natural end.

It's perfectly natural to see the West retreat to its normal share of global power. And there are some things in the longer arc of human history that cannot be stopped. So the return of China, and subsequently India, are perfectly natural developments.

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