The world has yet to truly understand how to deal with a rapidly rising China. Even within China, some of the most learned minds are surprised at how quickly the country has taken the global lead in new economic areas, such as electric vehicles. Global warming is no longer abstract; ask around in Europe this summer and people will tell you it has been unbearably hot. Electric vehicles have a future, if they are not the future.
Prudent Chinese literati do not lightly discuss how China should act in public. Weightier reflections are reserved for private circumstances, where the tone can be measured and the words chosen with care. Foreigners, if they wish to deal with China, might consider this. The world’s approach to China, in its variety of gestures, also sets the stage for how China may shape its outward posture.
China ought to act responsibly towards smaller nations. And it often does. When Bangladesh’s new Prime Minister Tarique Rahman visited Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping again spoke of a shared future and prosperity. To discerning ears, these words carry the rhythm of older civilisations. Societies rise and fall on how the strong treat the weak, and how the large accommodate the small. The words are not a boring party slogan. They are really a reminder that beyond rhetoric, certain conditions endure. People need dignity. Nations need space to grow. Power must be tempered by care.
Zichan, the statesman of Zheng in ancient China and my favourite go-to expert, believed that small states must behave with caution towards great powers, and that great powers should show care for small states. His counsel was not abstract philosophy but practical advice, meant to prevent ruin. He argued that if small states acted rashly, they would invite destruction, and if great powers acted arrogantly, they would sow resentment and instability.
The lesson is that restraint is a condition for endurance. Western history also echoes this. Thucydides recorded the dialogue between Athens and Melos in 416 BC, in which the Athenians declared “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”. The tragedy of Melos shows what happens when power forgets restraint: a small island was destroyed because Athens could not temper its dominance.
Zichan’s wisdom and Thucydides’ warning converge on the same truth: unchecked power consumes, but tempered power sustains. The parallel is not academic; it is civilisational. Both Chinese and Western traditions understood that the survival of order depends on how the strong treat the weak.
Xi cites Thucydides trap to Trump during summit
