Seattle Philosophy Club

Home To Stay by Ray Bradbury, Al Feldstein, Joe Orlando, George Evans, Graham Ingels, Jack Davis, William M. Gaines, Jack Kamen, Carl Wessler, Wallace Wood, Reed Crandall, John Severin, Will Elder, Frank Frazetta, Roy Krenkel

Picture: Gate to the Forbidden City from Tiananmen Square (Left: "Long live the People's Republic of China"; Center: portrait of Mao Zedong; Right: "Long live the great unity of the people of the world")

Symptom-free people with the capacity to listen considerately to diverse viewpoints are invited to attend after successfully RSVPing.

We begin the discussion at 7:30 pm sharp in the mezzanine lobby of the Graduate Seattle hotel. Feel free to come up to 30 minutes early and hang out with us beforehand. When you enter the hotel from the front door go between the elevators on your left and the main lobby bookshelves on your right until you find the stairwell to your left. Go up one flight of stairs and open the first door you come upon to the mezzanine lobby.

John Mearsheimer vs. Yan Xuetong: Can China rise peacefully? (2025)
13-minute YouTube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xokkGnBOgiU

Mearsheimer vs. Yan SUMMARY:

Mearsheimer

1. Leadership doesn't matter very much
2. What matters is “the balance of power”
3. Trump didn't start any wars like his predecessors because the US now operates in a multipolar not a unipolar world.

Yan

1. The overall tension between China and the US exists regardless of leadership.
2. Trump prefers to compete economically whereas others want to compete militarily
3. Trump prefers trade war to proxy war. Whereas the US strategy in the Cold War was proxy war.

Mearsheimer

1. There is no such thing as a benign hegemony as professor Yan indicates China will become.
2. China as a unipolar hegemon would not behave as a "Crusader state" like the US did because China is not a highly ideological state.

Yan

1. Neither Trump nor Chinese leadership prefer to solve differences by war
2. China doesn’t want to repeat the Soviet strategy of ideological confrontation.

Mark's Analysis:
The US conservative elite has a stronger confidence in superiority of private capital over state-owned capital than the US liberal elite and therefore thinks the US can out compete China economically without direct military confrontation or significant state invtervention in the economy, whereas the liberal elite have lost confidence in the efficiency of private capital alone and feel that the state needs to help it either with some industrial policy or military coercion against China or both.

OPTIONAL AUDIO RECORDING (OAR):
This meeting will be audio recorded for conversational dynamics analysis and testing purposes. This recording will not be made publically available. We will pause the audio recording for any person that requests it while they are speaking.

AMAZON FORMAT (AZF):
We will begin the meeting taking turns reading aloud the "Mearsheimer vs Yan SUMMARY" text above .

2-Minute OPENING ROUNDTABLE FORMAT (ORT2m):

1. A countdown alarm will be set for 2 minutes.
2. The topic presenter begins the discussion by spending up to 1 minute explaining why they are interested in the topic and some introductory thoughts on it.
3. Each participant in turn going clockwise from the presenter has up to 1 minute to describe their general thoughts on the topic.
4. If one is not ready to speak they can just say “pass” and the next person speaks.
5. After we've gone around once anyone who passed will get a second chance to comment.
6. Once everyone has given opening remarks or passed twice, Opening Roundtable is completed and the meeting shifts into its main format.

TIMED DIRECTION FORMAT (TDRF>5):
If there are more than 5 people present we will use the format below.

1. We will divide up the timed direction discussion time by the number of participants plus one (for a buffer). A timer will be set for this amount of time.
2. Each participant in turn will become a Discussion Director and lead the group discussion.
3. If one is not ready to direct they dimply say “pass” and the next person becomes the Discussion Director.
4. Anyone who arrives after step 1 (above), may participate but will not get a turn as Discussion Director.
5. The Discussion Director can make statements or ask questions, or interrupt or redirect the discussion at their discretion.
6. The discussion participants can state their own opinions only when asked by the Discussion Director, not Interrupt others and accede to the Discussion Director’s interrumptions or redirections.
7. When the timer goes off the person speaking finishes their thought and then the next participant clockwise becomes the next Discussion Director.
8. After we've gone around once anyone who passed will get a second chance to direct.

At the end of the meeting, participants will have an opportunity to vote on the topic and format for the following meeting.