Sunday Times 2
Sri Lankan-born American author speaks to a global audience from China
View(s):BEIJING: The most prestigious universities and academies in Beijing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Nanjing, and Shanghai have invited Prof. Patrick Mendis, the author of new book, “Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and the American Destiny Create a Pacific New World Order” as part of his two-month book promotion tour in China.
In the book, Prof. Mendis argues that China and America engaged in a “peaceful war” between the unfolding forces of President Xi Jinping’s Chinese dream and American destiny led by President Barack Obama’s Asia pivot strategy and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
After a series of lectures at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the China Foreign Affairs University, the Peking University, and the Tsinghua University, the premier Up Close programme of the Central China Television (CCTV) in Beijing interviewed the American author for its global audience in over 100 countries. Prof. Mendis also spoke at the Hong Kong University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Beijing Foreign Studies University, the Sun-Yat Sen University, the Fudan University, the Nanjing University, and other academies and alumni groups.
Prof. Mendis is a distinguished senior fellow and affiliate professor of public and international affairs at George Mason University in the United States and a distinguished visiting professor of international relations at the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in
Author Patrick Mendis and his book, "Peaceful War"
Guangzhou.
The Sri Lankan born American author looks back on Sino-American relations and the golden era of trade-for-peace (until the First Opium War of 1840s) to glimpse into the future of the two economic superpowers. Long before the creation of the American republic in 1776, Prof. Mendis explains, the founding generation was inspired by the Chinese civilisation and engaged China in international trade for mutual prosperity. He also focuses on Sri Lanka as the island nation historically linked to both China and America through global trade.
With President Xi’s revival of new Silk Road plan in the Pacific and Indian Oceans and President Obama’s Asia pivot strategy, there will evolve new dynamics in the Indo-Pacific region. Prof. Mendis further describes these tensions would eventually create a range of “Pacific dreams”-a combination of the Chinese dream and the American Dream-for all stakeholder countries.
The innovative analysis is highly praised by both American and Chinese scholars and leaders. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, writes: “A dazzling analysis, full of history, philosophy, ironic similarities and unusual distinctions, fears and hopes, but mostly dreams – the kind of dreams Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela dreamed. For that reason and more, Peaceful War is worth reading.” Professor Shen Dingli at Fudan University in Shanghai calls the book “another landmark work comparing Chinese and American national discourses and the future of their relations.”
The Harvard International Review describes: “Meticulously researched, this unprecedented study of the evolving Sino-American relations is timely, levelheaded, and fair above all else.” Former acting director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John Mclaughlin writes, “Anyone seeking a holistic understanding of the Sino-US relationship – and where it might be heading – should read this book.”
Professor Mendis currently serves as an American commissioner to the US National Commission for UNESCO.