Irish international legal scholar and recipient of the Chinese Government Friendship Award Anthony Carty has spent years combing through archives in the United Kingdom, France and the United States to argue, on the basis of Western documentary evidence, that the South China Sea islands belong to China. His views on the Western narrative on China, the predicament of global governance and the decay of international law are informed not only by his more than 50-year career as a legal scholar and professor of law, but also by more than a decade of living and working in China. In an interview with Beijing Review, Carty examines the West's blind spot in seeing China and argues that global governance is inconceivable today without China's participation. Edited excerpts of the interview follow: 

Beijing Review: Having lived in China for more than a decade, which aspects of China's development have you observed are most attractive for other countries?

Anthony Carty: It seems to me that the infrastructure of the country is remarkable. The airports and the railway system are quite remarkable. In the cities, as far as I can see—I only know the bigger ones: Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Chongqing—there is an amazing level of prosperity. And my own personal experience contradicts Western media portrayals of China.

My own personal experience of China is that it seems to be a kind of happy, contented society. I am living here, meeting ordinary people in supermarkets, cinemas, on the streets, in parks. I meet people who seem to me to be content with themselves and at home with themselves. It is encouraging and uplifting to be with the Chinese people—a fairly typical contrast with the Western individual, who is used to having to cope entirely on his own in European cities.

In China, you have at least 800 to 900 million well-educated people. The proportions are simply stunning. What you need to recognize is that you are reaching a high level of development over your entire population. You are changing the whole balance of the world, and especially the relationship with Europe—and even the U.S. The latter has a population of 300 million people, but maybe only 50 million really live at a very high standard. It's a very unbalanced society.

So you are basically presenting a challenge that Napoleon Bonaparte remarked on in the first decade of the 19th century, that when China wakes up, the whole world will tremble. And that's where we are now, in my opinion. China is doing everything it can. My first attempts to come to China and negotiate the digital application for a visa, especially the digital applications for appointments at the visa center, were a nightmare. Now, China gives visa-free entry to roughly 59 countries. I am quite shocked to discover that this visa-free entry is not reciprocated.

Western mainstream media may reduce China's rise to a handful of numbers—GDP growth, supercomputing rankings or kilometers of high-speed rail. What aspects of China's development do outsiders have the most trouble grasping?

In the first instance, my reflection—which I haven't expressed before—is that this Western description of China is not necessarily seen as negative. In its view of China, it is simply the way the West sees everything itself, which is entirely in terms of numbers and quantities and is materialistic. The West would not have the imagination or the interest to explore what might be underlying Chinese philosophy. Certainly the people-to-people development, the social dimension and the traditional ethical dimension of Chinese policy would be something the West would not recognize or understand. So it's a blind spot on the part of the West that you are dealing with.

I was surprised when I first came across the three-pillar concept of Chinese public affairs: the wellbeing of the nation—the primary object of the Communist Party of China is the wellbeing of the nation; then Marxism, but Marxism in the Chinese context does not mean the deterministic materialism Karl Marx described. It means more that the people control the wealth and that the wealth is spent on the people, which is a form of social democracy in the Western tradition. And then you have the appeal to ancient Chinese virtues and values, which is totally absent from the European way of thinking.

If there is any discussion about politics at the moment in Europe or the U.S., it is really always about whether pensions should be increased or decreased, whether more money should be spent on the health service, who should be managing water supply or transport, and which is the most economical. That is the only standard. And so we project that onto China, and we don't have the capacity to see the complexity of Chinese society or the ambition.

In Europe, communism means the revolt of the world proletariat. The nation is regarded as a bourgeois, middle-class, reactionary concept to be fought against. So there is no way you can compare Chinese communism with the history of communism in Europe—the nation here is not a bourgeois concept to be fought against, and that is precisely what the West cannot see.

You have once said Europe is deeply unstable and that the West has lost its moral bearings. What do you see as the most fundamental problem facing today's world, and what role should China play in addressing it?

Western international law has collapsed into decadence. It does not work. It has not helped the Palestinians in Gaza. It has not stopped the U.S. and Israel-initiated military strikes against Iran, nor America marching into Venezuela to steal its natural resources. It simply does not function.

I have written a book called The Decay of International Law, now coming out in its third edition, precisely because I believe international law needs to be totally rethought. The problem is not merely technical. It is philosophical. Western international law has lost its moral foundation. Christianity has collapsed as a support, family structures have eroded, and moral standards have become deeply confused. When you lose something that once served as a foundation, it is different from never having had it.

Global governance, as a realistic proposition, is therefore extremely difficult. As long as the major powers are not prepared to work together, asking for global governance in a world as chaotic as ours is asking for blue sky. It is not a realistic question. Without the dialogue among civilizations which is the Chinese idea I see no future for international law at the moment. It is in a shambles.

What inspired you to write The History and Sovereignty of the South China Sea Islands?

On the South China Sea, I have argued on the basis of British and French archives that the islands belong to China, and I have suggested that Chinese researchers and the Chinese Foreign Ministry hold conferences in Europe and invite European academics and politicians to engage with this evidence directly—circulating a book is not the same as confronting it in debate. And that leads to a kind of dialogue I mean.

The change, in my personal view, depends on China. I am very enthusiastic about that, though I am placing a lot of hope on one country. What gives me hope is China's capacity for long-term thinking and patience, which is not a Western quality. China is prepared to wait and prepare, to develop gradually. There are no quick solutions.

Mechanisms such as BRICS do provide some kind of direction and leadership, as do the Belt and Road Initiative and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The economic strategy that Russia and China are trying to pursue de-dollarization and the setting up and running of development banks offers a long-term path.

China is home to one quarter of the world's population. That may be enough to steer, provided it is done in the framework of dialogue among civilizations and with infinite patience. 

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson

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