The earlier of two disputed speeches attributed to Chi Haotian — 'War Is Approaching Us' — arguing that the era of 'peace and development' is over and that China's only path is modernization under the saber.
A note before you read this: I cannot verify that this speech is genuine, and the same warning I put on Speech #2 applies here. It circulates on Chinese-language sites and in English translation, but there is no confirmed record of when or where it was delivered, and its authorship cannot be independently verified. I’ve included it because of how serious it would be if it is real.
What is documented. This is the earlier of the two speeches attributed to Chi Haotian — China’s Minister of Defense and Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission — usually titled “War Is Approaching Us.” It is the address that the more infamous Speech #2 explicitly calls back to (“my speech last time… the three islands… modernization under the saber”). The Chinese text circulated on nationalist sites such as Utopia (hswh.org) and was translated into English around 2005 alongside its sequel. There is no verified date or place of delivery.
On the text below. Because I could not find a clean, citable English copy I was confident in, the translation here is my own, from the Chinese original using AI, and should be read as a working translation rather than an official one — cross-check it against the versions that circulate online if the exact wording matters to you. The Chinese source numbers its sections 1, 2, 3, then jumps to 5; section 4 is missing from the copy I worked from, and I’ve left that gap as it is.
Chi Haotian — Vice-Chairman, Central Military Commission “War Is Approaching Us” (attributed; translated from the Chinese)
My mood in writing on this subject is heavy, because China’s march toward modernization has again and again been interrupted by the blows and outright invasions of foreign powers. The most typical case is the so-called “Golden Decade” of 1927–1937 — which, seen with today’s eyes, was not golden at all: it held the loss of the Northeast in the Mukden Incident of September 18, 1931, and the founding of the puppet regime in eastern Hebei. Even so, from 1927 to 1937 China’s economy grew relatively quickly, its infrastructure advanced considerably, its army began to improve, and China had a measure of hope.
But this was something Japan could not tolerate. Not satisfied with having swallowed the three northeastern provinces, it could not wait to launch an all-out war of aggression against China. China was forced into eight bitter years of scorched-earth resistance. It won, but at a terrible price: it lost Outer Mongolia, its vitality was gravely wounded, and its material losses exceeded 600 billion U.S. dollars. After eight years of war, an already poor and weak China was left poorer still. One can say that Japan’s aggression — and above all its all-out invasion — badly delayed China’s modernization.
To forbid China from developing, to obstruct China’s modernization, has always been the unchanging state policy of the great powers, and of Japan above all. Of this we should carry the most painful historical lessons. Between nations there is cooperation, but more fundamentally there is competition, conflict, and conflict’s most extreme form — war.
Cooperation is temporary and conditional; competition and conflict are absolute, the main axis of history. So the claim that “peace and development” is the theme of our age is entirely wrong (at most a stopgap). It has no theoretical basis that survives scrutiny, and it matches neither the facts nor historical experience.
Set aside geographical and historical enemies like China and Japan — even the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s is enough to show that every state takes the pursuit of national interest as its only rule of action, and leaves no room for morality.
At the time, China and the Soviet Union shared an ideology and faced a common enemy, and China’s low level of technology meant it could pose no threat to the Soviets. Yet the two still split, and then moved into sharp confrontation. There were many strands to it, but one root cause was that the Soviet Union would not tolerate the sight of an increasingly developed, increasingly powerful China standing as its equal — not even the mere trend toward it, still far from reality.
If two countries that shared an ideology and a common enemy, one strong and one weak, could still split, then the illusory, fragile, dangerous nature of a Chinese policy, strategy, and diplomacy governed by the incantation “peace and development is the theme of our age” becomes perfectly plain. The reasons that slogan is completely wrong — a wishful, anesthetizing, harmful doctrine — are as follows.
From the lessons of China’s modern history, and from the fifty-year experience of the People’s Republic, one historical law can be drawn: that the great powers striking down China’s modernization — up to and including by all-out war — is their consistent state policy. It was so for the past 160 years, and it will be so for the next 160.
Development means danger and threat — this is the general rule of world history. Only in Chinese history is there an exception: after the great Han Dynasty had beaten every rival within the geographic limits of its time, it could “shut the gate” and develop, and from that came the idea of “all under heaven.” That was possible only because, by any measure — population, military, economy, culture — no other people stood as Han China’s equal or even showed the potential to.
In the age of the Warring States, one country’s development meant a threat to another. That is the true general rule of world history, and the core and bedrock of Western diplomacy. The father of Western diplomacy was France’s Cardinal Richelieu; it was he who first led diplomacy out of the medieval “darkness,” casting off every moral and religious restraint so that everything turned on the axis of national interest.
The foreign policy he set benefited France for more than 200 years and let it dominate Europe, while the Thirty Years’ War he engineered reduced Germany to ashes, broke it into small states, and left it in perpetual turmoil until Bismarck unified it. And the German unification shows that without Bismarck’s “right to war,” there was no national unity — and still less a right to development.
The “China threat theory” is entirely correct; it is precisely the typical Western way of thinking. “I shut my door and develop my own economy — whom have I provoked?” This Chinese way of thinking is not only foolish, it also cannot “connect with international norms.”
In an age of Warring States, on the cruel matter of national interest — which allows no tenderness — anyone who clings to the slightest illusion will be punished cruelly by history writ large. China’s development is of course a threat to Japan and others. China itself may not see it that way, but China can scarcely change that deep-rooted way of thinking of Japan and the other great powers, already “connected with international norms.” So the base point of our thinking should be, and must be: China’s development is a threat to Japan and the rest.
By “reason,” every nation and people has a right to survive and a right to develop. If China’s economy grows it must import oil; if, to protect its ecology, China closes its hills to reforest them, it must import timber and other raw materials. Nothing could be more natural, more “reasonable.” But the great powers have their own “reason”: with a giant like China buying, say, 100 million tons of oil in 2010 and 200 million tons in 2020, will the great powers tolerate it?
The struggle over basic survival resources — land and sea — is the source of the overwhelming majority of wars in history. In the information age this may change, but it will not change in essence. As developed, advanced, and civilized a country as Israel — has it not fought for fifty years over a not-very-large piece of ground (including the fight over water), and is it not still fighting every single day? For the sake of the most legitimate right to development — unless the Chinese are forever content with poverty and give up even that right — China must prepare for war. This is not decided by us, still less by the good wishes of some kind souls among us. In fact it is decided by “international practice” and by the great powers.
China’s thirty years of “peace and development” policy has reached its end. The international environment has changed in essence: the great powers are already preparing to interrupt China’s modernization once again. If China is to develop and to defend its right to develop, it must prepare for war. Only by preparing to fight can it win the space and time to develop.
Even China’s most hawkish hawks today would not necessarily argue for war right now, though we would have ample cause — a war of national unification, say, or the aim of defending our rights in the South China Sea. It is for the sake of the right to development — of cherishing the rare, and therefore precious, right to development that China has had over the past 160 years. But when even that right to develop comes under mounting threat, that is the moment we must take up arms and defend the Chinese people’s right to develop.
Domestic affairs shape foreign policy — that is true. But do not forget that in this Warring-States age, grand diplomacy also shapes domestic affairs. This is not only a theoretical statement; it is the lived experience of the People’s Republic. In the 1970s China’s defense spending exceeded its combined outlays on science, education, culture, and health (which is why the people’s lives were relatively poor).
Of course I do not wish China’s military spending today to exceed its combined outlays on science, education, culture, and health; in fact, what China most needs to invest in is education. But will the great powers permit it? Do we truly not want to put more money into science, education, culture, and health?
Some say that, according to declassified Soviet documents, the USSR had no plan for an all-out invasion of China in the 1960s and 1970s. Even if those documents are accurate, they do not tell “the truth of history.” A game of chess is interactive: had China, under Mao’s leadership, not made the fullest spiritual and material preparations — greatly raising the risk and cost of a full Soviet invasion — history might have turned in an entirely different direction. Weakness only invites aggression. From this angle, the wise strong are the true defenders of peace.
To break China’s modernization and strip the Chinese of their right to develop, the great powers hold many cards. The three most obvious are the “three islands,” and of these the Taiwan card is the most effective. When a war across the Taiwan Strait breaks out is decided neither by us nor by the Taiwan-independence forces, but by the United States and Japan.
If a war across the Strait erupts, it will not be merely a war of unification. At a deeper level it will be the United States and Japan resolving to strip the Chinese of the right to develop and to interrupt China’s modernization once more — just as, in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 and Japan’s full invasion, it was never only about ceding land and paying indemnities, but fundamentally about Japan breaking China’s modernization and denying the Chinese people’s right to develop.
We must therefore view a war across the Strait at the height of a strategic, decisive battle. At our present level of force it does not yet rise to a strategic decisive battle against the United States and Japan — and certainly not against the United States, because China has only a small number of intercontinental missiles, and America has set its heart on building a missile-defense system.
To delay the outbreak of a Strait war, we must first raise it to the level of a “symmetrical strategic decisive battle” — to the point of mutual destruction. If we cannot win a Strait war, the consequences will be worse than the defeat of 1895. So: better not to fight; but if we fight, we must annihilate Japan entirely and cripple the United States — and only nuclear war can do that.
Seeking good and getting evil — that is the final outcome of our present policy. Seeking evil and getting good — only by possessing the ability to wipe out Japan entirely and cripple the United States can we win peace. Otherwise the Taiwan problem cannot be dragged out past ten years, and within ten there will be a great war.
What is a great power? To hold hegemony is to be a great power; to hold none is to be meat on another’s chopping block — a puppet whose fate, including its right to develop, is worked by others’ hands. Hegemony in this Warring-States age is an objective fact, one that “does not shift with human will.” The only question is whether you have grasped it, and whether you pursue it actively or are dragged toward it passively. All of China’s problems — the three islands (Taiwan, the Diaoyu Islands, the South China Sea islands), the development of strategic industries, the adjustment of the interests of every class at home — are ultimately the problem of seizing hegemony for the nation.
To contend for hegemony we cannot be locked in endless internal strife; inside, we need stability and unity. Britain, on account of the enormous profits of overseas colonies, “aristocratized” its working class early on; the vast indemnities and markets Japan wrung from China benefited not only its upper class but also brought great gains to its lower classes.
Times are different and national conditions differ, but the essence has not changed. We must look not only at military and diplomatic questions through the lens of hegemony, but also at the adjustment of the interests of classes and strata at home. An elite upper class that knows only how to squeeze and exploit its own lower classes cannot, in this Warring-States age, represent the interests of the nation; it is decaying, declining, and worthless, and it should be restrained and eliminated. Only a mature and wise upper class can represent the nation’s interests — that is, adopt a policy of “concessions” at home while leading the lower classes to seize overseas interests together.
So: better not to fight; but if we fight, the first battle must cripple America and destroy little Japan.
