In the following interview Giancarlo Elia Valori focuses on China’s role in World Wars I and II, the brutality of the Japanese invasion, China’s human costs, and its significant contribution to the Allied victory against Nazifascism in World War II. He also addresses the crisis of the post-WWII order, emerging alternatives, and call for multilateralism and reform. In addition, Valori highlights the 55th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Europe, the role of BRICS, and the significance of China’s concept of a community with a shared future for humanity.
Giancarlo Elia Valori is Honorable de l’Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France, and Honorary Professor at the Peking University.
Q1: Your extraordinary mother’s heroic deeds and contributions to peace and humanitarianism are well known and deserve the utmost gratitude. We would greatly appreciate it if you could mention the Eastern Front and China’s contribution to the Allied victory in World War II.
G.E. Valori – Thank you for remembering my dear mother. First of all, I would like to recall that on August 14, 1917, the Chinese Republic entered World War I, declaring war on Germany, and immediately occupied Qingdao, the largest German naval base abroad, located on the Shandong Peninsula.
When the Versailles Conference (January 18, 1919-January 21, 1920) assigned the former German bases in Shandong to the Japanese Empire, with the approval of the resigning government of Prime Minister Qian Nengxun (October 10, 1918-June 13, 1919) and the President of China, Xu Shichang (October 10, 1918-June 2, 1922), on May 4, 1919, intellectual, literary, and political currents organized a series of protests throughout the country, which were also joined by small and medium-sized entrepreneurs and workers.
The organizers were inspired by the New Culture Movement, which began in 1915 and developed at Peking University, where the importance of science and democracy was extolled and traditional Chinese culture was rejected. According to Chinese historiography, the May 4th Movement marked the beginning of contemporary history.
As for World War II, August 15, 2025, will mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat. The Japanese invasion, aggression, and occupation of many parts of China resulted in countless war crimes (human experimentation, use of chemical weapons, mass murder, forced labor, sexual slavery, arbitrary arrests, indiscriminate torture, killing of innocents, cannibalism, etc.).
Wherever Japanese soldiers went, homes and factories were destroyed, resources and wealth were plundered, women were raped, and the population was massacred. Most of the evidence of this brutality was destroyed and hidden by the Japanese government before Tokyo formally signed the surrender on September 2, 1945.
Many historians, myself included, believe that the real start of World War II was in China in 1936 and not in Poland in 1939, as is commonly believed. But let’s proceed in order.
On September 19, 1931, Japan attacked Manchuria. On November 7 of the same year, the Chinese Communist Party (founded ten years earlier) established the Chinese Soviet Republic in Jiangxi, with Mao Zedong (1893-1976) as its first prime minister. The civil war had already begun in December 1930.
The five campaigns of extermination against the communists ordered by Jiang Jieshi ended in October 1933, bringing the communists to their knees. From October 1934 to the same month of the following year, they undertook the legendary Long March of Ten Thousand Li (Changzheng) to move from Jiangxi, now indefensible, to Shaanxi. The Red Army (founded in 1927; later the People’s Liberation Army) covered 12,000 kilometers of rough terrain. 130,000 men set out against 400,000, and only 20,000 reached their destination.
In 1936, Jiang Jieshi reached the height of his power, controlling 11 of China’s 18 provinces. However, on July 7, the Japanese attacked China. It was on this date that World War II effectively began, in which China, not yet a People’s Republic, contributed 35 million deaths, more than the 26 million deaths suffered by the Soviet Union in the world war against fascism. China’s contribution to victory was therefore the highest of all the countries at war.
Q2: What is your opinion on the international order that emerged after World War II, the key role of the United Nations, and the current value of multilateralism?
G.E. Valori – The world order that emerged after World War II entered into crisis for the first time on August 15, 1971, with the end of the fixed parity established by the Bretton Woods Agreement (July 22, 1944), which the United States of America used to make Europeans pay for their hyperinflation caused by the Vietnam War.
At the same time, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, based on the industrial, financial, and military power of the United States of America and Europe, took control of oil production, capital, commercial markets, dollar payments, and global shipping lanes, establishing the entire petrodollar world order and differentiating the People’s Republic of China, Asia, and Africa and dividing the world according to the following well-known considerations: either you choose the dollar or you choose war.
Just as in ancient times nomadic tribes blocked the Silk Road and monopolized trade between East and West, today the United States of America and Europe are hindering cooperation and development throughout Asia and in developing countries. Centuries ago, it was the cavalry of the prairies, with bows, arrows, and scimitars; today, it is the navy and the dollar-based financial system.
Therefore, the People’s Republic of China and the oil-producing and developing countries are currently looking for ways to bypass the middlemen and make a difference. If there is another powerful force capable of providing military security guarantees while offering sufficient funds and industrial products, then all oil can be freed from the dollar’s grip and traded directly to meet demand, and even introduce new modern industrial systems.
Keeping oil away from the US dollar and wars and using it for cooperation, mutual assistance, and common development is the inner voice of the entire Middle East and developing countries: a force that, when united, cannot be ignored in the world.
We therefore call for actions that express opposition to tariff and trade wars, in favor of multilateralism and against unilateralism and trade protectionism. On this basis, a senior official of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development emphasized that, over the past two decades, the People’s Republic of China has firmly supported the rules-based multilateral trading system, practiced genuine multilateralism, participated fully in the negotiations of the World Trade Organization
World Trade Organization negotiations, conducted negotiations in areas such as investment facilitation and e-commerce, and worked to adapt WTO rules to changing times. Competition must be fair and based on rules and laws. This is the fundamental norm of international relations, in accordance with the United Nations Charter as a reference point.
Indeed, a further step toward a shared future is the improvement of human well-being. We also need: cultural exchanges to promote mutual understanding and learning; innovative economic development for shared prosperity; ensuring international security and promoting orderly development; building a global governance system based on “jus gentium”, which has been in crisis since the early 2000s; and strengthening the authority of the United Nations, whose documents are too often nothing more than waste paper for some of the UN’s own founders.
It is therefore necessary to promote equity and justice in order to provide a practical approach and a path to peace that leads to authentic multilateralism.
Q3: This year marks the 55th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Italy and the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and the European Union. In this context, we invite you to explain the Chinese concept of a community with a shared future for humanity, focusing on the importance of the three global initiatives: development, security, and civilization.
G.E. Valori – In the third millennium, the three global initiatives: for development, for security, and for civilization (which I will discuss in more detail later), are being carried forward by the BRICS countries, which pursue the concept of open and inclusive cooperation and are attracting more and more countries to participate. This once again proves that China’s great initiative to build a community with a shared future for humanity is correct and timely.
Today, the BRICS countries represent a strategic platform for cooperation among emerging and developing countries; they provide an institutional channel for promoting international initiatives; they represent the voice of the countries of the Global South in reforming and improving the global order; and they offer an alternative to Western-dominated mechanisms.
Furthermore, the BRICS+ model expands the network of global partnerships and strengthens solidarity and cooperation between BRICS countries and other markets. The BRICS cooperation mechanism is in line with the trend towards multi polarization and economic globalization, and these countries are therefore called upon to make a new and greater contribution to promoting the creation of a new international political and economic order that is more just, equitable, democratic, and inclusive.
This is because the BRICS cooperation mechanism is an important platform for cooperation. The more the BRICS cooperation mechanism develops, the more it can strengthen the power of world peace and development and the more it will be able to play a broader role in safeguarding the interests of all countries, including those inside and outside the group, and of developing countries.
President Xi Jinping states that the commitment to improving global international relations supports respect for the diversity of world civilizations, the promotion of common values of all mankind, the importance of the heritage of the past and contemporary and future innovations, the strengthening of international exchanges and cooperation among peoples, and the promotion of inclusive coexistence, exchanges, and mutual learning among different ethnic groups and peoples.
The initiatives promoted by President Xi Jinping have taken root and are guiding the international community in the right direction of common development, peace, and long-term stability. Looking ahead, the People’s Republic of China, especially on the eve of the anniversaries we are commemorating in this interview, will continue to work with all parties to actively implement the Chinese proposals for a world community with a shared future.
The guiding principle of current Chinese thinking on major global contradictions and their resolution is reflected in Beijing’s foreign policy today. The community of shared future for mankind (Rénlèi mìngyùn gòngtóngtǐ) is the core concept of contemporary Chinese diplomatic theory. It is based on the idea that all countries in the world share common interests and destinies in an era of global interdependence. This guiding principle proposes:
i) a world of lasting peace;
ii) collective security;
iii) shared prosperity;
iv) cultural inclusiveness;
v) ecological and sustainable development.
This is a long-term strategic vision that aims to overcome unilateralism and hegemony, proposing instead a more equitable and multilateral global governance. This guiding principle is linked to the following three global initiatives, whose operational tools put into practice the vision of a community with a shared future:
1. Global Development Initiative: aims to revitalize the United Nations 2030 Agenda and promote South-South cooperation for sustainable development;
2. Global Security Initiative: promotes common, integrated, cooperative, and sustainable security, opposing the logic of the Cold War and unilateral sanctions not approved by the United Nations;
3. Global Civilization Initiative: emphasizes respect for cultural diversity and the need for intercultural dialogue, countering narratives of a “clash of civilizations.”
These are the main paths for concretely implementing the concept of a community with a shared future. In Chinese discourse, the Global South is not seen as an ally against the West, but as a natural partner in promoting a process of improvement to overcome the current economic subordination.
Developing countries and oil-producing states become the priority and privileged recipients of the three global initiatives mentioned above. The Global South is the strategic core of the expansion and effectiveness of the BRICS.
The People’s Republic of China therefore proposes itself as a member and supporting leader of these subjects of international law, promoting South-South solidarity to correct the asymmetry of the current world order, which emerged after the Second World War and is based on masters and servants.
Giancarlo Elia Valori – Honorable de l’Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France, Honorary Professor at the Peking University.