One of China's most important PE investors on why China is not an expansionist power

"A state, no matter how large, will perish if it is warlike; the world, no matter how peaceful, will be in danger if it forgets the threat of war."

Seasoned subscribers of this newsletter must have already known that the issue of “War & Peace” is a core subject I frequently touch on. To date, I have already explained why I think China is not an “insecure-expansionist” power, why China doesn’t have a warlike culture, why China is not interested in territorial expansion, and why China has a much lower probability of war than the West. I also frequently mentioned why history greatly impacts China’s contemporary culture and political decisions more than most other countries.

That’s why when I read this essay written by Mr. Shan Weijian, the legendary chairman of PAG, one of China’s most consequential private equity funds, what Mr. Shan said resonated so much with me.

Below is a translation of the article. The translation was made by DeepSeek and edited by myself. The emphasis and commentaries are my own.

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Seeking the shadow of the future from history

从历史中寻找未来的影子

By Shan Weijian

In recent years, the number of people visiting museums has been increasing, creating a "museum fever."

Several years ago, I visited the Shanghai Museum located in People's Square, and what impressed me the most was its automatic temperature control and sensor lighting system. As is well known, cultural relics such as silk, fabrics, and calligraphy are fragile, and temperature, humidity, and light can cause gradual cumulative damage. However, the calligraphy and painting display cabinets in the Shanghai Museum are equipped with constant temperature and humidity systems, and the lighting is moderate and sufficient but not intense. Interestingly, the lighting in the display cabinets is sensor-designed: when visitors approach, the lights automatically turn on; when visitors leave, the lights automatically turn off, minimizing the "exposure" time of the cultural relics. At that time, there were very few visitors, so I was able to observe the sensor design that turned on and off.

When I revisited the Shanghai Museum in 2023, I found that this sensor lighting system was almost ineffective. Why? Because there were so many visitors that almost every display cabinet was crowded at all times, and the lights had no chance to dim. This made me truly feel that the public's enthusiasm for museums has changed dramatically.

By 2024, it was even more remarkable. At the beginning of 2024, part of the new Shanghai Museum East Hall was opened, exhibiting cultural relics mainly composed of bronze ware. I tried to book tickets a few days in advance, only to find that they were already sold out. Due to my tight schedule, I couldn't wait, and finally, a colleague and I each spent 300 yuan to buy scalped tickets to get a glimpse.

The new hall is three times the size of the old one. Its director said on the website that the number of daily visitors will be controlled at 20,000 when all the exhibition halls are open. So, if it opens for 300 days a year, it can accommodate 6 million visitors annually. The British Museum in London, which is said to be the world's first museum, officially opened to the public in 1759, and its visitor count in 2023 was 5.8 million. It seems that the Shanghai Museum East Hall's visitor count in 2025 is expected to surpass that of the British Museum, which has a history of more than 260 years.

The richness of the Shanghai Museum's collection is probably second only to the National Museum in Beijing. Surprisingly, the Shanghai Museum's visitor count in 2023 did not even rank in the top 20 in China.

According to the "2023 Global Theme Park and Museum Report," the growth of museum visitor traffic in China is strong, with seven museums ranking in the global top 20, namely the National Museum, China Science and Technology Museum, Nanjing Museum, Suzhou Museum, Hunan Museum, Hubei Provincial Museum, and Guangdong Museum. The National Museum ranks third globally, with an annual visitor count of over 6.75 million, second only to the Louvre in Paris (8.8 million) and the Vatican Museums in Rome (6.76 million). The visitor counts of the other six Chinese museums in 2023 all exceeded 4 million. However, the National Museum's visitor count is not the highest in the country. The Palace Museum's number of visitors had already exceeded 19 million in 2019, and the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum Museum's visitor count in 2023 was 11 million, far exceeding that of the National Museum.

How popular are museums in China?

According to statistics, by the end of 2018, the annual visitor count of museums nationwide had exceeded 1 billion. Data from the National Cultural Heritage Administration shows that in 2023, museums in China received 1.29 billion visitors, a record high; the number of registered museums nationwide reached 6,833, with 268 new additions. During the Spring Festival in 2024 alone, museums nationwide received over 73.58 million visitors, a year-on-year increase of 98.6%. By summer, museum bookings had increased by more than 90% compared to the previous year, showing that they are becoming increasingly popular.

Not only in domestic museums, but Chinese visitors can also be seen everywhere in major famous museums around the world. I am a trustee of the British Museum, and a senior executive there told me that Chinese people have now become the main force among foreign visitors to the British Museum, and they are also the group that spends the most in the souvenir shops.

How did this museum fever arise?

I think there are two main reasons: first, people's living standards have improved, and cultural tourism, including museums, has become an important part of people's leisure life; second, Chinese people generally have an interest in history, and as carriers and evidence of history, the cultural relics exhibited in museums provide history enthusiasts with a valuable opportunity to face the past directly, feel the glory of history, and the wisdom of the ancients.

Imagine, after seeing the sword used by King Goujian of Yue in the Hubei Provincial Museum, will you immediately think of the story of "sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall" and the era of the Spring and Autumn Period when Wu and Yue competed for dominance? Standing in front of the Terracotta Warriors of the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum, will you be shocked by the majestic momentum of the Qin army's iron horses and golden spears, with bright armor, sweeping across the six states? After witnessing the authentic "Cold Food Observance" by Su Dongpo in the Taipei Palace Museum, will you sigh that "the writing reflects the person"...

The Sword of Goujian

When I saw the “Lai Pan逨盘” unearthed in 2003 in the Baoji Bronze Ware Museum, I was deeply shocked. The bottom of the pan is inscribed with 21 lines of 372 characters, recording the history of the Shan family's eight generations assisting the 12 emperors of the Western Zhou Dynasty. It not only confirms the records of the Zhou Dynasty's genealogy in historical books but also lets me know that the ancestors of the Shan surname had a significant background.

How much interest do Chinese people have in history? The sales of history books can give a glimpse.

Abroad, the regulars on the bestseller lists are mostly novels, and history books are almost never seen. In China, history-related books and audio content have repeatedly achieved excellent sales and playback results. In the past few years, a long-running audiobook I often listened to was "游学中华Studying China," hosted by the anchor, who gave a detailed reading of Lü Simian's "General History of China." The anchor cited extensively and meticulously, starting from prehistory. As of November 2024, he has updated more than 760 episodes, only reaching the Han Dynasty, and the playback count has already exceeded 36 million. Another audiobook, "Intensive Reading of Chinese History," has a playback count of over 200 million. These materials fully demonstrate the popularity of history books and related content in China, which is unimaginable in other countries.

Reading history, besides evoking nostalgia for the past, does it have practical significance? Absolutely. Emperor Taizong of Tang, Li Shimin, has a famous saying: "Using history as a mirror, one can know the rise and fall." To predict the future world structure, one can also find shadows from history.

Graham Allison, the founding dean of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, published "Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?" in 2017. This book made him famous. In the book, based on the records of the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, Allison discusses the history of war between the rising Athens and the hegemonic city-state Sparta due to competition for dominance, combined with other historical cases of rise and fall, and draws a warning conclusion: when a rising power meets an existing great power, it is difficult for the two to avoid conflict due to power competition. This is what Allison calls the Thucydides Trap. He points out that in the process of China's rise, it may be difficult to avoid conflict with the current world hegemon, the United States.

Many in the West believe that the Thucydides Trap is a historical inevitability because the experience of Western history is like this. For example, Alexander the Great of ancient Greece and Julius Caesar of ancient Rome both conquered their known world, and Napoleon in modern times almost swallowed the entire European continent. The Western powers during the imperialist period extended the tentacles of colonial expansion to the world, placing most or even all of Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania under their rule. The small island of Great Britain even once became the "empire on which the sun never sets," and its influence lasted until the end of World War II.

The United States, as a latecomer, although founded on democracy and freedom, its impulse to conquer and expand is in the same vein as the European powers. In 1776, the United States declared independence; in 1812, it invaded Canada and was defeated; in 1846, it invaded Mexico and annexed a large area of land, including what is now California, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona; in 1898, by launching the Spanish-American War, the United States took Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain; taking Hawaii was even easier, almost effortless, almost as easy as picking up something.

Since its founding, the United States has repeatedly interfered in the internal affairs of other countries and even overthrown their regimes to protect its own interests. The book "Overthrow, America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq" published in 2006 details this history. Another book published in 2019, "How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States," not only records the history of American expansion and colonization but also focuses on describing the American self-deception: unlike the old imperialist countries, the United States never calls the land it seizes colonies but coyly calls them "territories." The Philippines before independence, today's Puerto Rico, and Guam are all "territories" of the United States, in an awkward position of being neither part of its 50 states nor sovereign.

Judging others by oneself, it is no wonder that the United States is wary of any rising great power, fearing that it will follow its own practices and challenge its status as the world hegemon. [Robert: a lot of US fears about China is precisely because of projecting their own image unto China]

What is imperialism? The essence of imperialism is the conquest and subjugation of other peoples.

Starting from ancient Greece and Rome, Europe has a long history of imperialism. However, imperialism is not unique to Europe. In ancient times, there was the Islamic Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the vast Mongol Empire established by Genghis Khan that covered Eurasia. In modern times, there were the once mighty but short-lived German Empire and the "Great Japanese Empire." When strong, expand, conquer all directions, and enslave foreign peoples, this seems to be the inevitable fate of powerful countries. Of course, these empires have all vanished, and the only superpower today is the United States. Looking around the world, the only one that may challenge its hegemonic status is the rising China. This makes the United States uneasy.

So, is China's rise bound to lead to conflict with the United States?

China is the only superpower in world history that has never attempted to conquer and dominate the world. For more than 2,000 years, the Chinese nation has mostly been in a strong position but has not posed a major threat to its neighboring countries. The distance is not the reason, after all, Genghis Khan's army once swept across Eurasia, conquering vast lands including today's Russia and India; Zheng He's fleet also went to the Western Seas several times, reaching as far as Africa, but the purpose was not conquest or colonization.

Since Qin Shi Huang unified China in 221 BC, the major unified dynasties ruled by the Han people have not made external expansion a primary national policy. The Central Plains dynasties had the most frequent conflicts with the northern nomadic peoples, first the Xiongnu, then the Khitan, and were repeatedly attacked or even conquered by these grassland peoples—the Liao, Jin, and Yuan successively defeated the Song, and the Qing conquered the Ming. Therefore, the strategic focus of the Central Plains dynasties has always been defense, starting with Qin Shi Huang building the Great Wall, stretching for thousands of miles, which is a testament to this.

Historically, China's territory was the largest during two dynasties, the Yuan Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty, far exceeding the scope of the Qin, Han, Tang, and Song dynasties. Why is this? Because the Mongols of the Yuan Dynasty and the Manchus of the Qing Dynasty incorporated the vast territories they conquered into China's territory. [Robert: more about it here]

The advantage of Han culture lies in its ability to assimilate. No foreign people entered the Central Plains without being assimilated by Han culture, and the so-called “expansion” of China's territory was gradually formed in the process of being invaded by the “foreigners” of the time and being to their possessions. This historical phenomenon is full of contrasts and contradictions. Of course, these once foreign peoples are now members of the big family of the Chinese nation, making China a multi-ethnic country.

In September 2024, on the 50th anniversary of the excavation of the Terracotta Warriors of the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum, I made a special trip to visit the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum Museum, the Shaanxi History Museum, and the Baoji Bronze Ware Museum, and also visited some excavated tombs. I was invited by Professor Chris Gosden of the Oxford University Institute of Archaeology. He and I are both trustees of the British Museum. In a casual conversation, he asked me: "Why does China have no history of colonialism?" The fact that he could ask this question shows his knowledge of Chinese history and the uniqueness of Chinese history.

The differences between Chinese and Western history can be seen in the collections of museums.

Whether it's the British Museum, the Louvre, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States, the vast majority of the artifacts housed in these Western museums come from ancient and splendid civilizations around the world—Ancient Egypt, the Middle East's Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and Ancient China—encompassing almost the essence of human civilization. It is undeniable that without a history of invasion, how could there be so many treasures?

In contrast, the collections in Chinese museums are exclusively historical relics of the Chinese nation. What China possesses are the treasures passed down by our ancestors.

The rise of China is an inevitability of history. In terms of purchasing power parity, China's economy surpassed that of the United States in 2017; even in nominal U.S. dollar terms, although there is still a gap between China and the U.S., China's population is four times that of the U.S., and its per capita GDP is currently only one-fifth of America's. Closing this gap is merely a matter of time.

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States in 1979, the two countries have experienced a honeymoon period. When China's economic strength was not yet a threat to America's dominance, the U.S. was more than willing to develop mutually beneficial economic relations with China. However, today, as China's economic scale is on the verge of catching up with but not yet surpassing the U.S., America has become highly anxious.

To maintain its global hegemony, the United States has frequently adopted containment policies, manifesting in trade wars, technology wars, and other sanctions. China's best strategic choice should be to focus on economic development at full speed to surpass the U.S. as quickly as possible. Once China's economic scale exceeds that of the U.S., containment will lose its meaning, and Sino-American relations may usher in a period of relaxation and improvement.

The United States, having been founded for less than 250 years, has almost never been far from war. Statistics show that there have been only 16 years in U.S. history when it was not involved in a conflict. The U.S. has over 800 military bases worldwide.

A study by Brown University reveals that since the "War on Terror" began in 2001, the U.S. has caused nearly one million deaths in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya. In recent years, U.S. foreign policy has led to and exacerbated the Russia-Ukraine conflict and instability in the Middle East. Many people worry: To maintain its global dominance, and as China seeks to rise, is a war between the two inevitable?

In my view, not necessarily. History has shown that the U.S. is quite restrained when it comes to wars it believes it cannot win.

During the Cold War with the Soviet Union, both sides possessed nuclear weapons capable of destroying each other, which prevented direct military conflict. Even today, while the U.S. is pouring resources into supplying Ukraine with advanced weapons, willing to fight until the last Ukrainian, it has no intention of sending its own troops, avoiding direct conflict with Russia. This is partly due to the deterrent power of Russia's nuclear arsenal.

Direct military confrontation between China and the U.S. has only occurred during the Korean War. In 1950, before China sent troops, Premier Zhou Enlai conveyed a message through the Indian ambassador to China, warning that if American forces crossed the "38th Parallel," China would not stand idly by. The U.S. ignored this warning and even pushed the war to the Yalu River, only to be driven back to the 38th Parallel by Chinese forces. During the Vietnam War, Premier Zhou Enlai again warned the U.S. not to cross the 17th Parallel, or China would intervene. As a result, the U.S. never crossed that line. Thus, while the U.S. believes in military power, it exercises restraint in the face of formidable opponents.

Over 2,000 years ago, Chinese sages warned: "A state, no matter how large, will perish if it is warlike; the world, no matter how peaceful, will be in danger if it forgets the threat of war.国虽大，好战必亡；天下虽安，忘战必危。" Studying Chinese history teaches us that China's rise is not a threat to world peace. However, Western history reminds us that during China's rise, forgetting the threat of war is perilous. The greatest guarantee of China's and the world's security is China's relentless focus on economic development and rapid strengthening of its own capabilities. Only when China's economic scale surpasses that of the U.S. can the world truly welcome peace and stability.