As part of the TED 2015 Truth and Dare conference in Vancouver, Mr Rudd called for a better understanding of China in order to avoid “inevitable” predictions of war.
He said his appeal was based on historian perspectives and his own cultural understanding of the Asian giant.
“Chinese have this feeling in their heart of hearts that those of us in the collective West are too damn arrogant,” he said.
Mr Rudd likened the US-China relationship to Australia’s treatment of its Indigenous peoples, claiming he had “a little experience…of how you try to bring together two peoples.”
“That’s when I apologised to Australia’s Indigenous peoples,” he said.
“A day of reckoning…. It was high time we white folks said we were sorry.”
Mr Rudd pointed to the apology as an example of how a nation’s psyche can shift.
“Something had happened in the hearts of these people of Australia (the day after the apology),” he said.
The talk ends with Mr Rudd challenging the world to think in terms of “a dream for human-kind,” rather than dreams for individual nations.
Watch the talk here:
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