01x02 - Global Shapers

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It was a time of
hope and revolution.

What's being discussed
here most, is the real,

almost incomprehensible
courage showed by the protesters.

In Beijing's Tiananmen
Square, 1989,

students held mass protests,
calling for democracy.

Forty years of communist
rule was being challenged.

It ended in a m*ssacre.

Five months later, another
communist regime trembled.

The Berlin Wall crumbled
and the world opened up

as brave leaders
ushered in change.

Gorbachev brought this end to the
Soviet Union without a single loss of life.

Freedom fighters
shaped the 21st century.

The Mandela stands as one of the foremost
human rights heroes of the last century,

but also one who delivers us
to some extent into this century.

Champions gave people new lives.

I think she was true to the
post-w*r ideals of Germany.

While dictators in the East
defined presidents in the West.

S*ddam basically ran
the country by fear.

Had there been weapons
of mass destruction,

we'd think about the
Iraq w*r very differently.

From the chaos of conflict,
came the promise of hope.

President Obama inspired a
generation of African Americans

to believe they could be president
of the United States one day.

As global power shifts,

leaders are turning the gaze
of their countries inward.

When you look back
over the last 30 years

and ask yourself, what's the most
important thing that happened?

The answer is the rise of China.

The world has transformed
over the past 30 years.

In the blizzard of
news and events,

it's hard to make sense
of how we arrived here.

But if we stand back, we
can see how things connect.

We can see the road to now.

Mr Gorbachev,
tear down this wall.

When the Berlin Wall
was smashed down,

a few years after US President
Ronald Reagan's famous exhortation,

much of the credit was due to
one man, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Gorbachev opened Eastern
Europe to Western democracy

and sparked embers of revolution
across much of the world.

The leader of the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics,

came to power in the mid-1980s,

keen to negotiate with Reagan,
on halting the nuclear arms race.

It's hard now, to reimagine how
dangerous the Cold w*r was,

that the risk of a misunderstanding
between the two sides,

leading to a confrontation which
would lead to a conflict, was quite high.

And the risk that any such
conflict would produce

a full-scale exchange of nuclear
weapons was far from negligible.

In a series of summits,
the Soviet and US leaders

agreed to ban intermediate-range
nuclear weapons.

For Gorbachev, it was
a huge breakthrough.

Less money for weapons, meant
more for Soviet industry and agriculture,

which were both failing.

Gorbachev reformed
the communist system,

introducing limited free
markets and private ownership,

allowing farmers to sell some
of their produce privately.

I think Gorbachev really was one
of the most remarkable figures,

of what was, anyway, a
pretty remarkable century.

His willingness
to take risks and

redefine the way the
Soviet Union saw itself

and the way it saw
its place in the world,

was an astonishing
piece of leadership.

For over 40 years, the Soviet Union had
exercised an iron grip on Eastern Europe.

Gorbachev made it clear,

that he wouldn't prevent Democratic
reform among Russia's Cold w*r allies.

Communist Hungary opened its
border with Democratic Austria,

providing an escape
route for East Germans.

I was sent into Berlin,

when it became clear
that something big was going to happen.

East Germans had started escaping through
Czechoslovakia and through Hungary.

The Communist Party had changed
leaders in the previous months.

There were huge
demonstrations in East Berlin.

The government was in chaos
and on the 9th of November,

East Berliners amassed at
checkpoints along the wall.

People were starting to come across, people
were starting to climb up on the wall.

So I got a hand up and I
became part of it, I guess.

People were chipping away at
the wall with whatever they had.

It was just amazing.

In the space of just seven weeks,
Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania

threw off communist rule just as
Hungary had done earlier in the year.

By late 1991,

Georgia and the Baltic Republics

had also declared themselves
independent of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev, I would say first
among equals, obviously,

brought this end of the Soviet Union
about without a single loss of life.

That was a
remarkable transition.

And we owe those
people an enormous debt.

The people of South Africa are
also indebted to a past visionary.

25 years ago, these children would not
have been allowed to surf at this beach.

They were banned from
whites-only beaches,

whites-only schools and
whites-only hospitals.

Their parents couldn't vote.

Their freedoms were denied
by a system of segregation

based on racial superiority:
apartheid.

Discrimination against non-whites had been
entrenched in South African law since 1948.

Battling against the system,
perpetuated by white minority rulers,

the African National Congress
aspired to unite the African people

and defend their
rights and freedoms.

The son of a Xhosa chief, Nelson Mandela,
became involved in the ANC in his youth,

holding various leadership
positions throughout the 50s.

The Africans require, want the franchise
on the basis of one man, one vote.

They want political
independence.

In a trial from 1963 to 1964, Mandela,
along with other leaders of the ANC,

was charged with acts of sabotage,
designed to overthrow apartheid.

He was condemned
to life in prison.

Mandela wrote, "I was not
born with a hunger to be free.

I was born free."

Mandela became the emblematic figure of
an international anti-apartheid struggle.

Bands and boycotts of South
African sporting teams escalated,

and an economic squeeze began.

None of it was cutting through, until
the international community in the late

80s, 88, 89, 90, really started to
apply financial sanctions in a big way.

A key demand of the international
community: Nelson Mandela must be set free.

In 1990, after 27 years, Mandela
was granted his freedom.

I grew up in the South Africa
of the 90s, a very hopeful time.

So for me, he stands as one of the foremost
human rights heroes of the last century,

but also one who delivers us
to some extent into this century.

One of Mandela's
most powerful rebukes

to the strongman
approach, was to say,

"Don't repose your trust in me,
repose your trust in the law."

As South Africa's government proposed plans
to transition to a multiracial democracy,

para-military units
assembled to suppress blacks.

But South Africa was changing.

In early 1992, white South Africans,
the only people able to vote,

participated in a
referendum to end apartheid.

President Frederick de Klerk
urged, it was the only way forward.

A yes vote, is a
vote for the only

possible long-term solution for
the problems of South Africa.

I think it's a bit unfair, to think
that about 20 million people

aren't allowed to do anything in
this country, aren't allowed to vote.

I think that should change.
- I'm voting yes, 17th of March, and

it's a commitment, and
that's what I stand for.

Almost 70 per cent voted yes, to
end the system which favoured them.

Best open the closed
and barred gates

of the apartheid prisons
and set us free.

The future is within our grasp.

Two years later in 1994, 22 million
South Africans of all races voted.

Mandela's African National
Congress was triumphant.

Now when you take a country
from vertical to horizontal,

when a country takes itself to power
sharing between equal citizens,

you need a Mandela.

Mandela became president
in a coalition of national unity

with his predecessor de Klerk.

What Mandela
stewarded into being,

in addition to a
Democratic South Africa,

was a South Africa,

where human rights are the cornerstone
of a constitutional legal system.

Another international hero who overcame
incarceration to emerge as a national leader,

was the Burmese democracy
campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi.

For decades, Suu Kyi was a
symbol of hope and universal values,

but fell from grace when she failed to
act upon reports of ethnic cleansing.

Since 1962 the people
of Burma, now Myanmar,

had endured a
brutal military regime.

Educated overseas, Suu Kyi had
status, connections and charm.

We want to bring about a situation where
the ordinary Burmese man and woman

can feel, that they're
living in a country,

where they are valued and
where the future is assured.

In 1988, Suu Kyi returned from abroad to
head the National League for Democracy,

leading them to victory
in the 1990 elections.

The military trashed the result.

For the next 21 years, she
would be periodically detained

for her defiance
against the military.

Suu Kyi could have
freed herself at any time,

had she just agreed
to go into exile.

There was just no question of my abandoning
the cause, once I'd taken that up.

I never saw it as a choice.

There was only one way,
as far as I was concerned.

Finally freed in 2010,
her political campaigning

was rewarded with the title
of State Counsellor in 2016.

But the military retained all
the key security ministries

and were guaranteed a quarter
of the seats in parliament.

I think people's expectations
of her were enormous

and it was always gonna be
very difficult for her to meet those,

especially when she was
up against a military junta.

A brutal military junta.

The military had been
particularly active

in persecuting the Muslim minority
Rohingya people in Rakhine State.

The conditions were horrific.

Kids were dying, people
were malnourished

and they were very much being kept
apart from the Rakhine community.

There was a degree
of ethnic cleansing.

After a wave of killings, an estimated
700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh.

Suu Kyi rejected accusations of
ethnic cleansing

and reporters who documented
the targeted attacks, were jailed.

Internationally Suu Kyi was shamed for
failing to denounce the Rohingya purge

and stripped of many
human rights awards.

Where the criticism of her lies, is not
necessarily in that she hasn't been able

to fix the problem, but that she
hasn't spoken out strongly enough.

Well, she is a tragic figure in
a way because her struggle

for democracy in Myanmar
was heroic and dignified.

But when she broadly succeeded,

she disappointed her followers,
her supporters, her fans,

in a way that ascent
to power often does.

While Aung San Suu Kyi's sacrifice to
help establish democracy is still revered,

perhaps her loudest
legacy, is her silence.

On December 25th, 1991,

the Soviet hammer and sickle
ceased to fly over the Kremlin.

However, many Russians
mourn the end of communism

and seek to return to former glory
under strongman Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin was an apparatchik
who grew up politically through the KGB.

So he has a secret police through
and through DNA world vision.

He also did believe, that the collapse
of the Soviet Union was, as he said it,

the greatest tragedy for
us in the 20th century.

When the Berlin Wall fell, Vladimir
Putin was an intelligence officer

at the Soviet consulate
in East Germany.

He burned secret files to stop them falling
into the hands of democracy campaigners.

Returning to Russia, Putin
quickly amassed power

and in 1998,

the ex-KGB lieutenant colonel was appointed
head of Russia's new federal security service.

Putin then campaigned for the presidency,
making classic Democratic promises.

Inaugurated in May 2000, Putin soon
ensured those guarantees were dissolved.

Over the course of his career, many political
opponents such as Boris Nemtsov were jailed.

Nemtsov was gunned down in 2015.

Whoever ordered the hit,
remains officially unidentified.

Investigative journalism is a
dangerous business in Russia.

At Novaya Gazeta the desk of the slain reporter
Anna Politkovskaya is kept as a shrine.

She had written a book
titled Putin's Russia.

We are hurtling back
into a Soviet abyss.

For the rest, if you want to
go on working as a journalist,

it's total servility to Putin.

58 journalists have been
k*lled in post Soviet Russia.

The majority of
cases, are unsolved.

Look what Putin has played on.

Russian nationalism,
orthodox Christianity,

Russian might and
power, history, identity.

That's what it is.

Vladimir Putin's
behaviour has shown,

that almost single-handedly,
he's trying to regain

a place of respect and
relevance for Russia

in the post Soviet world and in a unipolar
world where the US is the only superpower.

Putin has thrived pouncing
at opportune moments.

In 2014, he took advantage
of political chaos in Ukraine,

to annex the strategic
province of Crimea.

And in 2016, Russians hacked
the US Democratic Party

and spread disinformation that was damaging
to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

He has decided to create as much mayhem
as possible in the Western democracies

and to undermine the Western
alliance, NATO particularly.

We know that he's intervened willingly
and forcefully in the US elections,

in the British Brexit process

and they use a very, very
sophisticated program,

which is w*r by other means and
it's created by their own military.

We in the West feel threatened by
the way Russia is using its power,

feel threatened by the fact that we wanted
a successful and prosperous Russia,

coming out of the Cold w*r

and tried to create opportunities
for Russia to view that as well.

And the reason we in the West don't
have good relations with Russia,

is the behaviour of Russia.

Putin was not the only despot shaped
by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

S*ddam Hussein's rule
and eventual demise,

penned a new chapter of
turmoil in the Middle East.

It defined two generations of
a US presidential dynasty.

From extremely humble
beginnings in northern Iraq,

S*ddam was groomed as a member
of the Arab nationalist Baath Party.

Ascending the ranks, S*ddam
became Iraq's fifth president in 1979.

Iraq was a totalitarian
environment.

S*ddam ran a top-down dictatorship
with major control of information

and he basically ran
the country by fear.

People knew that if you stepped
out of line, you would pay a price,

you would disappear,
families would disappear.

We knew how brutal S*ddam was,

particularly in suppressing
any form of insurgency.

In a bid for Iraqi dominance
in the Persian Gulf,

S*ddam invaded Iran in 1980.

A decade later, S*ddam ordered his
Republican guards into oil-rich Kuwait

and began threatening
Saudi Arabia.

US President George Herbert Walker
Bush fashioned S*ddam into a Nemesis,

imposing sanctions on Iraq.

Economic sanctions, in this instance, if
fully enforced, can be very, very effective.

A rich country in
terms of oil resources,

they're a poor
country in a sense,

because he squandered much
of the resource on military might.

Raising a 39-nation coalition, Bush
senior went to w*r early in 1991.

After 40 days of bombing, many
Iraqi soldiers were keen to surrender.

S*ddam ordered retreating troops
to set Kuwaiti oil Wells ablaze.

Seven months ago, America and
the world drew a line in the sand.

We declared that the aggression
against Kuwait would not stand

and tonight, America and the
world have kept their word.

The Americans also sowed a
great sense of restraint and realism

after they had dealt with
S*ddam Hussein in Kuwait.

The Americans knew then, that to go
down the path of full-scale invasion

and trying to manage a transition,
was a recipe for disaster.

For the next decade, S*ddam
tried to rebuild his military arsenal,

by selling oil illegally, while UN
sanctions blocked vital medical supplies.

We used to have two to three deaths
per week or per 10 days in the hospital,

prior to the embargo time.

This figure is now two to three
deaths every day in the hospital.

Sanctions restricting
food and medicines,

caused tens of thousands of
deaths throughout the country.

As the people of Iraq
continued to suffer,

the Western world was
radically transformed

by the 2001 World Trade
Center attacks in New York.

Now in the White
House, George Bush Jr.,

was ready to assume
his father's mantle.

His tragedy was, that key
figures in his administration,

said to one another, almost
immediately after 9/11,

this is an opportunity
to do more.

In particular, this is an opportunity
to reckon with S*ddam Hussein

and to redraw the balance
of parliament at least.

Bush claims that Iraq had
weapons of mass destruction,

chemical, biological
and plans for nuclear.

S*ddam Hussein and his sons
must leave Iraq within 48 hours.

Their refusal to do so, will
result in military conflict,

commenced at a
time of our choosing.

Initially, the 2003
invasion was a success.

Yesterday, United States military forces
captured S*ddam Hussein alive

and now the former dictator of Iraq, will
face the justice he denied to millions.

Suddenly people
were firing in the air.

The place was going off and we
crept up onto the roof of our hotel

and looked around and suddenly
one of the people who was a...

a security guard at the front of
the hotel, come up, and said

They've got S*ddam!
They've got S*ddam!

It was pandemonium.

Not all Iraqis cheered the capture,
trial and execution of S*ddam.

For many, the ousting of his regime
meant unemployment, poverty

and unprecedented sectarian
violence on the streets.

No electricity, no
fuel, no water. Why?

It's a question for
George Bush. Why?

This is the freedom.

So S*ddam, while he
did act as a strongman,

it actually proved to
be a house of cards

because Iraqi society fell apart in
certain senses when he was removed.

In the aftermath of the w*r, a
2004 US Senate report concluded

that claims S*ddam had developed weapons
of mass destruction, were misleading.

Had there been weapons
of mass destruction,

we'd think about the
Iraq w*r very differently.

But it turned out that
S*ddam had been,

amongst other things, a consummate
bluffer and he had none at all.

None of us in the West imagined that

S*ddam Hussein would
view it in his interest

to perpetuate the myth that
he had nuclear weapons,

in order to sustain
his domestic control.

That never occurred to
us and it ought to have.

In the West, many citizens were
left with a bitter taste in their mouths.

Across America, a cry
went out for change.

We are one people.

We are one nation.

And together we will begin the next
great chapter in the American story

with three words that will ring from
coast to coast, from sea to shining sea.

Yes, we can.
Thank you.

In 2008, the presidential race promised
a new beginning for America as well.

Barack Obama was a
president like none before.

In a country that enshrined the civil rights
of black Americans barely 50 years earlier,

the colour of his skin, symbolised
a new direction for the free world.

It was impossible
not to admire Obama

and to be optimistic about what
Obama's election meant for America.

He inspired a generation
of African Americans

to believe they could be president
of the United States one day.

And he was a decent man and he reflected
the best, decent values of America.

And I think history
will treat him well.

Obama swore his oath
of office in early 2009,

as the United States was deep
in the worst recession in 80 years.

Barack Obama, I think, played well
the horrible hand that he was dealt.

The horrible hand was taking office
with the world economy falling apart

and with every week

tens of thousands of people losing their jobs
in the United States and more around the world.

Obama's administration
navigated the financial crisis,

revitalising the car industry.

He reformed health insurance,
providing subsidised care for the poor.

But Barack Obama's biggest
international challenge was Syria.

In 2011, a Syrian pro-democracy
uprising quickly descended into civil w*r.

The authoritarian Assad regime was willing
to destroy cities throughout the country

to force armed rebels out.

US efforts to train and arm the
pro-democracy rebels largely failed.

In that sending American troops to
fight in Syria, I think he was correct.

Because I don't think American
troops would accomplish anything

except k*lling some more
people and being k*lled.

The door was left wide
open for Vladimir Putin.

The Russian military supported
Assad as he suppressed the revolution.

At least 400,000 Syrians have
been k*lled in the process.

The administration of Barack Obama
stood back and let the Russians intervene

in ways that ultimately
ensured that Assad survived

after inflicting enormous harm
on the population of Syria.

In terms of human life lost, Syria
was a bigger disaster than Iraq.

Our action, our leadership, is
essential to the cause of human dignity.

So we must act and lead

with confidence in our ideals and an
abiding faith in the character of our people

who sent us all here today.

There was a weakness at the
heart of the Obama presidency,

and that is the idea embedded
in that slogan, "Yes, we can,"

that America didn't have
hard choices to make.

What I tend to think about
is the job in front of me,

what I need to do today,
tomorrow, the next day.

The government is to choose, and I
think the problem with Obama in the end

that he wasn't able to lead America
to make the really hard choices.

President Obama faced a Republican
Party, unlike any American president,

a Republican Party in which its
majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said,

"Our job is to make him fail."

And for eight years of his presidency,

he faced a party that
was out to make him fail.

While Obama was a symbol of hope,
German Chancellor Angela Merkel

was the practical
embodiment of it.

She proved her resilience during
the Greek economic meltdown

and her humanity
during the refugee crisis.

Angela Merkel is an important
and remarkable figure.

The fact that she has managed
to have such an influence

on John Partos as a triple
outsider is remarkable.

She is from East Germany
rather than West Germany,

a Protestant in an overwhelmingly
Catholic party and of course a woman

in a political system that's
still very dominated by men.

The East German research scientist
educated in the communist system

entered politics in the wake
of the 1989 revolutions.

She soon joined the centre-right
Christian Democratic Union,

becoming General
Secretary in 1998.

In 2005, she became
Chancellor of Germany.

The first female
leader of Germany,

she will soon, you know, match the
longest serving ever post-w*r Chancellor.

She's been elected a massively,
incredibly impressive four times

and she has done, I think,
remarkably brave things.

Forging a political consensus
between the 28 disparate countries

comprising the European Union,

Angela Merkel has proved
a tireless negotiator.

But even she couldn't persuade EU
nations to open their doors to refugees.

I think the person of our generation

who will go down as having made a stand
for something decent, is Angela Merkel.

As the conflict
in Syria swelled,

waves of refugees took
to the Mediterranean,

hoping for a new life in Europe.

Faced with the incredible
wave of migration

that came up out of Syria
and Afghanistan in 2015,

the movement of a
million people to Europe.

She had an option. She
could have shut the door,

like plenty of other countries on the
transit route were doing and she didn't.

As Merkel pledged to give
Syrians refuge in Germany,

the emphatic right
called for her dismissal.

We don't need the immigrants to force
us to adopt their medieval traditions.

Shame on you, Chancellor Merkel.

She single-handedly said,
"No, we're not like that.

We will allow these
foreigners to come in.

They may be Muslim, they
may be whoever they are,

but we're going to allow them to
come in, because they are fleeing w*r

and crisis and they're
fleeing for their lives."

And I think she was true to the
post-w*r ideals of Germany.

Now, that was very
politically costly to her.

Costly at the time, condemnation
within her own governing coalition,

a battering at
the next election.

But I think she knew
deep within herself,

that Germany could
not react any other way

and be seen as a dignified
member of the family of nations.

Angela Merkel undoubtedly
changed many lives,

but her critics fear, that she
initiated a dark global shift.

Many, many people believe
that she did the wrong thing,

that by Angela Merkel allowing
these refugees into Germany,

she set the stage and
created the template

for what then
became the backlash,

which then led to the populism and the
Brexit and the Trump and the Orbans

and all the other nationalist populist politicians
and the movements that came since 2015.

I humbly and gratefully accept your nomination
for the presidency of the United States.

Merkel demonstrated compassion
and generosity to the global community.

In stark contrast, Donald Trump
changed American politics

and by acting on his key policy, put
America first, he has changed the world.

And we will make
America great again.

The heir to a real estate fortune,
Trump cultivated his name into a brand

before transitioning into
a reality TV personality.

In 2016, Trump ran
against Hillary Clinton

in the United States
presidential election.

I think it's a very complicated political
dynamic

that President Trump crested the
wave of during the 2016 election

and he tapped into
people's anxieties.

We cannot afford to be so
politically correct anymore.

When Donald Trump won the election,
the people at Hillary Clinton's events,

It was as if they'd been
hit by a bolt of lightning.

They had no idea it
was gonna happen

and one man said to me,

I just don't know who
these people are.

I feel like my country's
been taken over by aliens.

We have seen that our nation is
more deeply divided than we thought,

but I still believe in
America and I always will.

Unleashing fervent nationalist rhetoric,
Trump's supporters lapped up his core message.

The idea of making America
great again, is something that has

part of the basic American
fiber that this appeals to.

The way it was presented by Donald Trump,
was the idea that the rest of the world

was constantly cheating
the United States.

When Mexico sends its people,
they're not sending their best.

They're bringing drugs, they're
bringing crime, they're rapists.

I think that Trump has been
playing to the worst parts

of the American view
of the rest of the world,

in addition to many of the worst parts
of America's own internal traditions.

Donald Trump's mantra wasn't
just to reform America internally,

but re-establish the
country on the world stage.

Just like Obama
was the anti-Bush:

"I'm not going to make the
mistakes that George Bush made,"

in a way Donald Trump is the anti-Obama
saying, "Well, I'm not going to adhere

to the deals that he made,"
because he was too soft.

Trump's presidency threatens
to disrupt global paradigms.

We're in such an odd moment of
inflection in the international order,

when the United States, as the
architect of the post-World w*r II order

and its guarantor in security
terms, in economic terms,

is actually the country
most calling it into question.

Trump's Twitter storms
and media appearances

have challenged
Democratic fundamentals.

I'm not Trump!

You have a president who speaks openly
about the press as enemies of the people,

who praises
openly the worst dictators.

The credibility of
the United States

as a voice on human rights,
is at a very, very low end.

And I think we see
the damage of that.

To take one really
obvious example,

the use of the term "fake news"

by people who wanna crack down on press
freedom around the world, is now widespread.

The messaging that's coming from the
United States, is destructive on its own.

Anything goes, baby.

Trump's foreign policy
is anything goes.

Just praise me.

And that's so different from
previous American presidents.

The astonishing thing is,
to have an American president,

who believes you can, quote,
"make America great again",

by withdrawing
it from the world.

America was great because
it was engaged with the world,

if it withdraws from engagement,
then what is great about that?

Donald Trump wants to reshape
America's identity on a global stage

that is radically changing

as power shifts
from west to east.

As China's leader, Xi Jinping, has
supreme authority over a nation

exceeding 1.4 billion people,

his arrival has tipped the
balance of global power,

as he pursues a
new vision for China.

Xi Jinping is a
fascinating character.

I think that he's the
most ambitious,

the most competent,

and likely to be the most consequential
actor on the international stage today.

Assuming office in 2012,

Xi Jinping has reaffirmed the role
of the Communist Party of China.

All the while
accumulating more power.

China walks very, very dangerous
fault lines within the country.

And part of Xi Jinping's
strategy has been

to crack down brutally
inside the country,

lock up dissidents, drive his
rivals out of the Communist Party.

Well he says, first we have to
revalidate and revalue the party.

On the 11th of March, 2018, the
National People's Congress approved

a constitutional amendment, allowing
Xi Jinping to be reelected indefinitely.

He's now arguably the most
powerful leader in the world.

The Chinese system itself
went into a political crisis.

The outcome of which was
the emperorship of Xi Jinping,

the centralisation of
power in Xi's hands,

and a reimposition
of ideological order

on what had become a
really quite free society.

Evoking historic triumphs, Xi Jinping
is shaping a new identity for China.

He's trying to
recreate the party

as a Leninist, Mandarin
leadership of a society.

He's trying to make the
Chinese proud again.

So without nationalism, that you can
be proud to stand up for being Chinese.

Xi Jinping's economic plan, is building
and controlling world trade routes,

enhancing China's economic
and political influence.

In 2007, the relationship between
China and America was so close,

so symbiotic economically, that I
came up with the term 'Chai-Merica'.

One economy, the Chinese did the
saving, the Americans did the consuming,

the Chinese did the exporting, the
Americans did the importing and so forth.

With China's economic
growth slowing,

Xi Jinping is boosting domestic consumption
while focusing on new technology.

The sudden American realisation,
prompted by, of all people, Donald J Trump,

that China was no longer just a willing
partner in a globalisation win-win program,

but was in fact a
strategic threat.

He's reorganizing the military
substantially and modernizing it,

because as he
says, very explicitly,

we want a military force
that can "fight and win".

China has the potential
to redraw the world map,

as Xi Jinping's looming shadow
falls upon its neighbours.

People who say China is not expansionist and
not interested, are just not paying attention.

It has expanded.

It ignored the ruling of The
Hague in the South China Sea.

It went ahead and it militarised and
expanded the islands in the South China Sea,

claimed them for their own and
we've done nothing about it.

As the divide between America and
China continues to grow, the post-w*r

the post-w*r global order
will continue to erode.

China certainly has
global ambitions.

I don't think it has
the values that scale.

So I think there's a limit
to how far they can go

and a lot of it is
also very mercantile.

People always felt, as long as there
was a strong American presence there,

it was OK for China to
dominate them economically,

but they'd never be able to
dominate them politically.

And I think, if you pull America out of
Asia, you weaken our role there globally.

China will be calling the shots
and setting the rules in your world.

These are the players
who have shaped our world

since the fall of the
Berlin Wall in 1989.

The freedom fighters
and the fallen.

From visionaries to
nationalist authoritarians.

These are the leaders
who paved the road to now.