This is the Prince Vista Debating Society. I'm John Bats for visiting with Professor H.J.

Mackender, international relations, returned from his ventures overseas and now helping us understand

or at least see through a little of the fog of war descending on two parts of Eurasia. One,

Europe, and the war in Ukraine, turning into a conflict and a confrontation between the NATO

forces and the Russian Federation and its allies. One of its allies, Vladimir Putin,

is on the way to sit with Xi Jinping. So the war in Europe, the war in the Middle East,

and the point of view of Beijing, just a few minutes, Professor, because it's very difficult

to see Beijing. How do you measure Beijing is at this point thinking about its next steps? Xi Jinping

was due to welcome Vladimir Putin. Xi Jinping is due or expected to visit San Francisco in the APEC

meeting. So what next for Beijing? Just a few minutes. Yes, indeed. China is probably the country

about which other countries are most unrealistic. Ever since Mr. Nixon went to 1972 to meet Mao

who was widely presented by scholars, everybody else, as a great sage, full of insight on the

world, on the international world, and deeply concerned with issues of society, great powers,

freedom and all the rest. Mr. Nixon, who was a very good and conscientious lawyer, had drawn up

a set of questions, which were like a good lawyer, a good cross-examination by a good lawyer.

Nixon was very smart and competent in certain ways, and he listed all these things to Mao. You

can still read them. It's the most insightful set of questions, the most potentially yielding

of fascinating range of answers. Mao just said all those boring questions. Let's talk about

something else. What that indicated was that people had no idea of what Mao was really like,

and it was only when his doctor, Leecher Sway, published his memoir, The Secret Life of Chairman

Mao that we had an idea of how totally erratic and he wasn't stupid Mao was very smart, but he

was very unimportant. My point is that the Europeans and above all the United States have allusions

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