I've been to China many times, I love going to China, I love the Chinese people and in fact I'm more at home intellectually in China than I am in the… - John Mearsheimer

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I've been to China many times, I love going to China, I love the Chinese people and in fact I'm more at home intellectually in China than I am in the west, because the Chinese are basically realists, whereas in the west people are instinctively liberal and they instinctively don't like realism, because it's such a pessimistic way of thinking about the world in past years. [...] When I've gone to China I've often started my Talks by saying it's good to be back among my people, I don't speak a word of Chinese and I feel like I'm a fish out of water culturally, when I'm in China. But intellectually the Chinese are my kind of people, they're realists very interested in theory, I've never gone to any country where people are more interested in international relations theory and talking about the big issues.