Critical Issues featuring Joseph Nye - US-China Strategy and the Lessons of History

welcome back to the fairbanks center series on

critical

issues

for contemporary

china

michael zoni the director of the center sends you his regards i am bill overholt a senior fellow at the kennedy school at harvard it is a pleasure and a challenge to introduce

joseph

knight to you What else can be said about someone whose colleagues in international relations rank him as the number one most important academic in the field and who has served as chairman of the national intelligence council and in some of the most important positions in the defense department, as well as run harvard kennedy school, let me highlight a couple of things, one is the way his dual careers in government and academia have benefited both the country and scholarship.

Many international relations scholars have interesting and well-researched ideas, but trying to implement them and then live with the consequences is the harshest peer review ever. The ideas designed by Professor Nye endure because they are disciplined by a reality harsher than regressions. By contrast, most government officials live each day overwhelmed by multiple crises, by a mountain of fires, paperwork, personnel problems and demands to say politically expedient things, but Joe and I entered each position having thought deeply about the historical context and the long-term consequences of decisions he made long ago and are still remarkably respected because he brought a long-term vision to a government driven primarily by today's inbox.

I will highlight just one other thing, professional applause in the carter. The Joe administration was sent to Japan to persuade them to abandon a nuclear reprocessing facility. The Japanese government really wanted to preserve that facility. It turns out that at the time he was consulting on nuclear

strategy

and nuclear proliferation and was also working closely with the Japanese government, so he had a front-row seat when the Japanese government launched a personal smear campaign against Jonah. It was really cruel. I thought this guy was going to hate Japan for the rest of his life, but I never saw any personal reaction, just total professionalism.

He positioned himself then and ever since as a friend of Japan and a supporter of the Japanese-American alliance. Years later, the Emperor of Japan awarded him Japan's highest honor, the Order of the Rising Sun. It provides a model of dignity and professionalism that most of us ordinary people can only very rarely aspire to get Joe to visit you. Well, thank you very much Bill for that generous introduction. It's also fun to remember that situation in the Carter administration. You're right. I was pretty unpopular for a while, but today. I'm going to talk about China, not about Japan or indirectly about Japan and I'm also going to try to divide the time we have together in half, the dangers that teachers can talk about forever.

And I want to make sure there's plenty of time for questions. and answer what is, I think, the most interesting part of sessions like this, so as I mentioned before, if I go past the halfway point, shut up, but because I want the question, but anyway, speaking of EE. U.S. and China, and then we'll talk a little bit about the

lessons

of

history

involved, but if you look at the period we're going through now, it's probably the worst relations we've seen between the United States and China in 50 years, it's kind of interesting if you think In retrospect, historically, US-China relations have gone in cycles of about two decades, right after the communists took power in 1949, we had two decades where we even went to war with each other and then after of Nixon's visit to Mao, we had two. decades of being basically aligned against the soviet union and then two decades later we had the compromise period that ended with the united states sponsoring

china

's entry into the world trade organization and then over the last, I would say, five more years or less, I've seen a recession now, a lot of people say it's because of Trump, but actually it's more than just because of Trump, it's a bipartisan thing if you look at public opinion polls in the United States, they have changed. quite dramatically, you know, one third with a negative view on China today is and they are in the past, increasing to two thirds today and that's a significant change, some people say it's all because of Trump, but um .

I would say the Chinese are largely responsible for this. I use the analogy that Trump is like a child who comes and sees a fire burning and pours gasoline on it, but you have to ask who lit the fire. First, I think the fire was basically lit after 2008, when Chinese elites, beginning with Hoojintao but greatly accentuated later by Xi Jinping, concluded, as a result of the 2008 financial crisis, that the United States is in decline and they can put pressure. tougher and they can basically abandon the cautious policies of Dung Xiaoping and can essentially push for a bigger venue and I think this is aided and abetted by Chinese nationalism.

I think the fact that the legitimacy of the communist party has been a legitimacy based on high rates. of economic growth and as economic growth rates slow, I think that has been replaced by nationalism as a legitimizing force, but whatever these ultimate causes are, I think the problems in the US-China relationship that we are seeing today and I don't know if it will be another 20-year cycle like the ones I mentioned before, shorter or longer, but the problems have a lot to do with China and the United States, and I try to make one point clear. to say that to my Chinese friends who often say oh well, it's because of Trump, it's much more important than that.

The interesting thing is that if you look at Xi Jinping's period since 2013, you could almost imagine him wearing a little red hat claiming to make China great again and make his Chinese dream, which is basically displacing the United States, be the leading country for the centenary of the Communist Party government in 2049, who knows if it will or will and that is where I want to focus my talk, how can we? How can we think ahead to see if that is a plausible outcome a and b? How should we respond? No one knows what the future will be when I ran the national intelligence council that makes intelligence estimates for the president that I always used to do.

Tell the analysts that there is no single future, there are an infinite number of possible futures, some of which are more likely than others and some of which we can affect with our actions, others we probably can't and therefore, when they think about the bad decision. you have to be understanding about how he or she can make sense of this and I think what you see is that decision makers in Washington often turn to what they think of others, are

lessons

from

history

, uh, to guide decisions. policies and, uh, yes I know you should always be careful with the lessons of history because Mark Twain perhaps apocryphally said that history never repeats itself, at best it sometimes rhymes, but our former colleague Ernesto may He did this very well where he said whenever you're using. a historical analogy to guide policy, take out a three by five card, draw a line down the middle and on one side of the line put things that are similar, on the other side put things that are different and then ask what you can learn on policy uh, how these differences, the similarities, uh, add up right now in Washington, there are probably three important historical analogies that are shaping policy or that are popular not only among policymakers but among drafters as well. editorials, etc., and one.

One of them is what is called the Thucydides trap, as my colleague Graham Allison has called it, another is the Second Cold War, which is actually a little more popular, and a third is 1914 and sleepwalking into the world war, so Let me talk about each of them. briefly and then we can draw some conclusions and ask what has or has not changed as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and then open it up to see if Thucydides' Trap is based on the idea that when a rising power challenges an established power It is a recipe for war.

This is named after Thucydides because he, after studying the Peloponnesian War in which the Greek city-state system was torn apart, said that it was not this little cause or that little cause that was the real cause of the war. the rise of the power of Athens and the fear it created in Sparta and the analogy of course would be that if we have a conflict or a war with China, it will be caused by the rise of the power of China and the fear it creates in the United States , particularly in Washington DC, Graham Allison has tried to quantify this.

He examined historical cases since 1500 in which he has had a rising power 10a and challenged an established power and concludes that three quarters of them work out. in the war, 12 of the 16 cases of him, uh, Graham is a good friend, but I told him I don't think his numbers add up, I don't think he has 16 cases, or it's a lot more or a lot less, it's not like that. It is clear what is the case or not, for example in the 19th century Britain was generally accepted as the established power in the mid 19th century and Prussia clearly became a rising power and there were three wars in the period of 1860 to 1870. which uh bismarck used to increase the strength of russia and germany and the british sat on the side, did nothing about it and therefore if they were in the establishment looking at a rising power they had the opportunity to stop it, but they didn't now some people say oh but it's all one case uh all because eventually in 1914 the British and the Germans went to war but that's too simple to put so much history together and call it one case, it's not In my opinion is compelling, but whatever point we don't get bogged down in the details, the important point is that this idea that there is a 75 chance that a rising power establishing a power relationship will turn into a war, I think which is not correct, graham put the title of his book or maybe his publisher put the title of his book intended for war um, I think there should at least be a question mark over that, but in any case that analogy is taken with certain bases and even xi jinping is I mean the city trap and there are several people that I have run into, several senators and other people who say "well, as this proves, and it doesn't prove it, even if you go back to Thucydides' original historical analogy. uh donald kagan the former dean of yale the famous classicist of the greek period uh argues that it's not that Thucydides didn't even understand the original situation well yes there was an increase in the power of athens but that may have caused the first peloponnesians but that had come to its end in a truce and um, it was the second Peloponnesian War which is so disastrous and which was not caused by the continued rise of Athens but by a bunch of silly political mistakes that the Athenians made along those lines.

I think we want to be careful not to have this feeling of inevitability about conflicts between the United States and China based on historical analogies. What Thucydides' historical analogy warns us about and is useful for is to be careful that rising powers create fear in established powers and, um be. We are aware of that, but if we go back to Thucydides' original proposal that the war was created by the rise and power of Athens and the fear created in Sparta, it is not clear that we can do much about the growing power of China, but We can do something to not allow excessive fear to develop in Washington, and that means that in evaluating the relationship between the United States and China, we must be careful to make a clear net assessment in which we carefully look at our strengths and their weaknesses. and not not believe that the Chinese are 10 feet tall and succumb to fear that is not the way to develop a good

strategy

the other analogy which is a historical analogy that is now prevalent or very popular in washington is called the second cold war or the new cold war and the The argument here is that China is a challenge for us similar to the challenge presented by the Soviet Union from the 1940s to 1989 and that we can basically learn from that experience how to deal with China.

We were able to contain the Soviet Union that we should aspire to. To contain China, the problem with using that analogy is that the situations are very different. There are two types of interdependence that have characterized the current period and that did not characterize the Cold War. One was economic interdependence. The United States had almost no trade with the United States. Soviet Union and many of our allies, the net effect of that was that, when we wanted to contain the Soviets by restricting trade with them, it was not that difficult, in contrast, today, the United States has half a trillion dollars in trade with China and Furthermore, China represents the main trading partner of more countries than the United States, so the argument that it can simply transfercontainment of the Cold War of the past to a policy to deal with China ignores that, in addition, there is Another type of interdependence that has grown since the Cold War and that is ecological interdependence.

No one was worried about climate change and global warming during the Cold War, and yet today, as the ICC IPCC reported last week, there is a real threat to all countries. global warming and it is going to be extremely costly not only for the United States, the Chesapeake Bay and Florida submerge but also for China if the Himalayan glaciers melt and the rivers dry up and agriculture in central China suffers droughts, etc., So this is a very new dimension of the relationship that is ecological interdependence and one of the interesting things here is that no one can solve this alone.

China is now the largest greenhouse gas emitter displacing the united states and we can't solve it alone and they can't solve love um in the book that I recently published called does morality matter? uh presidents and foreign policy from fdr to trump I distinguish between power over others and power with others Power over others is the traditional form of power Power with others means you have a problem you can't solve unless you work with others and that is another dimension of the relationship between the United States and China, which it is not. trapped by the cold war analogy.

In fact, I use a metaphor in an op-ed I wrote for the New York Times last fall saying that we are engaged in a three-dimensional chess game with China. A chess board, of course, is the traditional military chess board and that is analogous to the cold war but the economic chess board there is no analogy on the ground and the ecological chess board there is no analogy and the problem is that if We call this new cold war we are oversimplifying the challenge we face or Another way to put it is that if you are involved in a 3D chess game and you play normal chess, you are going to lose, so I think the danger I see is that the analogy of the new cold war makes us believe. that this is a problem that we could solve in the same way that we solved the problem of the cold war through a containment doctrine and it is a different game and we are going to need a much more sophisticated strategy.

The third historical analogy sometimes used in Washington was heard. Henry Kissinger uses this and I think it's useful, it's what you might call the 1914 sleepwalkers analogy, and that really goes back to how we understand the origins of World War I, not the outcome of World War II, and What about there? What you saw on the eve of the First World War was a considerable increase in nationalism in Europe in all countries and, in that sense, it is somewhat analogous to what we are seeing today, which is a increase in nationalism in China, as well as a populist politics. nationalism in the united states and what happened with the rise of nationalism in the early 20th century in Europe was that countries were pressed more by their advantage, there had not been a war for some time and people became accustomed to war control and when a situation arose in the wake of the serb nationalist assassination of the archduke of austria-hungary, the feeling is that okay, we will let the war come, let it go, this will clarify the balance of power and there was a widespread opinion that the troops will be in home for Christmas, this will, in fact, be the third Balkan war, a brief shark war that will clarify the balance of power and then we will return to normal, of course, that is not what happened, what happened. was that there were four years of war that led to the end of four empires and the loss of four thrones.

I have often said that if they could have given these leaders a crystal ball in August 1914 and let them look inside and say what it looked like in 1918 and they saw that their empires had been dismembered and they had lost their thrones, perhaps they would not have been so willing to take the risks that led to the start of the war, so in that sense I think you could argue that in the current circumstances the rise of nationalism in both countries plus the uh plus the possibility of a triggering event something that sometimes the people say that some efforts for Taiwan independence or China's conquest of Taiwan are more likely to emerge from Taiwan uh, you can imagine the kind of uh The argument that, well, it will be a short, sharp war that will clear up the things, but it may not stop there, and the only difference, of course, is that, to some extent, today's nuclear weapons provide leaders with a crystal ball from which to see some devastation at the end of the process. nuclear war, but it is not in itself sufficient to guarantee that we will not sleepwalk into a war, so those are Thucydides' three historical analogies, the post-World War II Cold War and the First World War, sleepwalking, and each of them has its virtue, none of them is empty, but all three have some drawbacks: they oversimplify and violate Ernie May's proposal to draw the line that says similarities and differences, so where does that leave us in terms of a strategy for dealing with china um, I think I tend to agree with kevin rudd um, who has a new book on US-China relations that basically questions whether we are destined for war and kevin rudd talks about having a competitive coexistence, in other words, that the goal should be It will not be a regime change that is beyond our capabilities and, on the other hand, we have to realize that we are going to have to coexist.

I sometimes call it a cooperative rivalry. We're definitely going to be intense rivals for some time, but they. There will also be areas where we will have to cooperate at the same time that they were rivals, but in any case it is a different proposition about the end state that we saw in the Cold War where, when, George Kennan. proposed the containment doctrine, it was basically a long-term doctrine of regime change. I don't know if regime change would be found in China or not, perhaps, but I don't think it's in our capabilities to produce it that way.

In a sense, I think that, you know, having a competitive coexistence that, in the words of Biden administration officials, maintains a balance favorable to our interests and values, which is a usable or sensible goal for developing a strategy for the relationship between United States and China. It will work? I'm not sure, but I tend to think that Americans actually have more high cards in this game than the Chinese. Everyone sees the Chinese as 10 feet tall and getting stronger, I think if you look at the problems that Xi Jinping has. It faces a demographic decline, the labor force peaking in 2015, and total factor productivity that is below the OECD average and the fact that China doesn't have many allies, perhaps Russia and perhaps Korea. from the North, although not me.

I don't know what sign you put on that positive or negative. You know, if I were an agent from Mars looking at this poker hand, these two players had the Americans and the Chinese, I would rather play the American ham than the Chinese, but that's not the conventional wisdom today, the wisdom The conventional wisdom is that the Chinese are about to eat our lunch and no one knows the answer to that, but I think exaggerating your opponent's strengths or weaknesses is a good way to produce the wrong strategy. I'm just saying a couple of words about the recent events in Ukraine, but I'll try to be brief, we can elaborate from the question, if you want, if you look at the, I mean, I could have given you the talk.

I gave it to you on February 23rd and uh, and you might say it's okay, but now it's after February 20th and 24th, when the Russians invaded Ukraine. How should that conversation change? And I think what we've seen as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a major shift in the global political agenda is obviously seeing a big focus on Europe and Ukraine, which has the effect of reducing the so-called pivot to Asia. and I think in that sense it has made people focus on the Russians and on the Europeans and in a way that has not happened before and that has caused some surprising changes, I mean the idea that Germany would cancel the North Stream pipeline Two, something the Americans had been pushing to do and have steadfastly resisted. for years and suddenly they do that, that's a big change or the fact that Germany would move towards a goal of two percent of GDP to spend on the military, that was a big change and the fact that NATO has held together as consistently as they have since the Russian invasion, these are changes, if you will, in the central agenda of world politics focused primarily on Europe, um, and what has been the effect of that, well, a effect has been to reduce Russian power. um, the formidable Russian military machine that was supposed to be able to take over Ukraine in a matter of days now has a gaping hole below the waterline.

The Russian economy, which was already limping before the events of February 24, is now going to stagnate. suffering due to these sanctions and Russian soft power, the ability to get what one wants through attraction rather than coercion or payment is in tatters, so Russia's power has definitely diminished, how Does that affect China to the extent that Xi Jinping has tied its destiny to? russia um, it means that china has a loss of power and it is also an ally, it is an important ally, it is weakened and that weakens china, in addition, china has to face the danger that if it helps russia too much, it could suffer secondary sanctions and these could have strong effects on the Chinese economy, particularly because China is finding that dealing with uh covent with a code zero policy is more difficult than it initially seemed, so the net effect of that at an immediate point is that The prospects of China invading Taiwan don't look as high as they might have if Russia can't cross a land border with 190,000 troops more effectively than it did.

The idea that China might launch an amphibious invasion of Taiwan doesn't seem very good. so i think whoever was whispering in xi jinping's ear that now was the time in taiwan i think she would have the good sense not to listen to it um she might find herself in an interesting position i wrote a column for project syndicate and said if there really was a creative Chinese diplomacy she should resort to what I call a teddy roosevelt strategy in 1904, uh, teddy roosevelt, uh, 1905, actually, she basically mediated the Russo-Japanese War, put hard pressure on the parties to come to an agreement. commitment, earned herself a Nobel Peace Prize, and greatly increased American influence if she did.

Something like this could get China out of a bind where it has undermined its own soft power with Europe as a major trading partner and could restore China's position as a balancer between Russia and the United States, a bit like Kissinger's trip in the 70s. made the United States a balancer between the USSR and China, so it could be a very smart strategy for it. I don't think he's capable of doing it. I think he sees the American threat as so important that he's not going to put any space between himself and Russia, but that means that as Russia sinks or its destiny sinks, that affects China in the negative direction and ultimately in The narrative of world politics was talked about long before February 24 about the East wind prevailing over the West wind, the axis of Authoritarians were taking over the future.

I always considered it excessive rhetoric. If you add Russia and China, their total GDP is approximately 20th of the world total. If you add the United States, Europe and Japan, you are talking about 50 of the total. world product, so the idea that Russia and China acting as authoritarians were equal to Western democracies was exaggerated long before the events of February 24, but it is also said that the myth of the axis of authoritarians taking the east wind prevails The west wind that she used to refer to in that narrative is not looking very good anymore, so in that sense I think the effect of this has been, the invasion of Ukraine has been to strengthen the American hand a little in the relationship between United States and China, but the relationship between the United States and China is going to last longer than the war in Ukraine and that still means that we need a strategy that asks what the world will be like in 2049 and there I have tried to indicate that I think we have a reasonable hand to play if we learn to play it well, so let me stop there.

I think it's about halfway there, but in any case, it will lead us to something that is more fun. Thank you very much Joe, I plow some of this same ground and find myself taking copious notes with all the new ideas. Let me go back to the beginning of your talk and the fact that things change, we don't know the future, there tends to be a 20-year cycle, but Washington locks itself into it. to a mindset that seems to be strongly ingrained right now, that could exclude opportunities in the future for a different type of relationship, is there anythingWhat can we, as academics, do to encourage people in Washington to think about staying open to different alternatives? in the future and is there anything Washington could be doing to ensure that we're not simply blocking any foreclosures or potential improvements that might come, say, after Xi Jinping is gone?

Well, I think that's why I oppose this code by analogy if it locks us into positions that will last long beyond the current period. I think if you like it, this is why I like Kevin Rudd's competitive coexistence approach. It allows you more flexibility for change. I'm serious. Imagine a situation in which China begins to suffer droughts that boost agriculture, that threaten growth, that threaten the control of the Communist Party. China could decide that it is probably in its best interest to be much more cooperative on some

issues

, both climate and trade, and if so, then we should be prepared to come to a middle ground if it suits our interests, but if we demonize them, if we see this like a cold war where the only answer is regime change, then it means that we are not going to do it.

Be flexible enough, we're not going to have a strategy that's flexible enough to accommodate that, so I think that's why I prefer the Kevin Rudd-type competitive coexistence approach to the new cold war analogies, thank you. um, we have quite a few questions, one comes from bill ciao of the harvard school of public health, he says, thank you for your insightful analysis, uh, using historical lessons, but China faces many problems in its economic growth and environment, Can you explain to us what you think? Well, I think if you look at the Chinese economy, I think it faces problems that start with demographics, in other words, China under Deng Xiaoping had a history wonderful to raise hundreds of dollars. of millions of people out of poverty taking surplus labor out of the countryside taking it to the cities becoming manufacturing centers based on cheap labor and exporting it to the world as a global manufacturer if you like, that is coming to an end. end partly due to demographics.

As I mentioned, the labor force peaked in 2015, but now there are also lower cost sources of labor, such as Vietnam and Bangladesh, so the answer is that there is still a large source of rural labor that could take to the cities. uh, but it doesn't have the educational level necessary to have the kind of productivity that you need, so in that sense, um, finding a way for China to find a way to raise education standards in rural areas is something that I think it's good. for China, but it can also be good for us, good for the world.

Similarly, if China were, China's healthcare system is very limited and most of my friends who study China carefully say that Chinese healthcare system is not very good, I mean. It's fine in Shanghai or Beijing, but nationally it's not, and in that sense, improving the Chinese healthcare system is good for them, I know, I mean, that seems to be good for us too, so there and if China too has better control over public health. uh how do pandemics like the Tsars originate, uh that's good for them, good for us, so there are many areas, I mean there are some areas, for example, if you look at artificial intelligence where you could say that AI can be used for weapons systems, yes, but it can also be used for medical approaches and cancer cures, so there are areas where you can still cooperate with China or work with China and there are areas where You don't want Huawei to be a big example that you don't want.

China controls its fifth generation telecommunications for very clear security reasons, but this is what I mean by a sensible strategy that distinguishes between those areas where there is a security threat that needs to be decoupled from and those areas where it does. It can help, but it doesn't. It hurts us so much and uncoupling would be the wrong response, thank you. An anonymous attendee asks whether it is valid for China to claim that its ambitions in the Asia Pacific region are not very different from the United States' ambitions in the Americas under the Monroe Doctrine. Well, that's how it is.

It's valid that China aspires to that in the sense that great powers often act as hegemons, but you also have to ask how the neighbors feel. The interesting thing about Asia is that it has its own balance of power bill. Emmett, the former editor. of the economist wrote a book about a decade ago called the rivals and we were simply saying look at japan india vietnam these are countries that do not want to be dominated by china so china could say we are going to have our own monroe doctrine but the vietnamese and the japanese and others They can say we don't like that idea and that's why America is often welcome.

These are countries that want to trade with China but don't want to be dominated by China and that's why they welcome the American security presence at the same time they don't want to have a containment policy that cuts off their trade, so yeah China You can aspire to your own drug doctrine, but you can only do it effectively if you do it with the consent of your neighbors, thanks to mark dallas, a guest asks about your comments on economic independence, you say, aren't there key differences between economic interdependence and technological interdependence? Don't we have to think about three types of technological, economic and ecological interdependence?

Yes, I would. I think that's correct. To a first approximation, I would tend to subsume technological interdependence under a form of economic interdependence, but going back to the example I gave about Huawei, some economic interdependence is good for us and some is bad for us. us, and that often depends on the technology the Chinese have seen this themselves. I mean, you know, when the Chinese complain that we exclude Huawei or Zte from our telecom process. I always remind them that they excluded Google in 2010 and Facebook and so on, and the reason is that they wanted an Internet that they could control and that was not a threat to the party, and so for a long time they have made these distinctions between the dimensions of the economic interdependence, which are the ones that represent a net benefit for them, and the dimensions where there is a net threat and we have to do the same, so if you want to say well, let's separate a technological independence into another category, then even within the technological interdependence you must distinguish some that are threatened and others that are not, I will give you that example that I just cited about artificial intelligence, it can be developed or it can be used for weapons systems, autonomous weapons systems and also used to read mammograms.

We have two questions about Taiwan, one from Irving Bladkin asking what we should do. what to do if China acts militarily in Taiwan another question from Bao Choy, a Hong Kong journalist and Harvard colleague Neiman wants to know your opinion on the analogy between the sleepwalkers of 1914 and what could happen on the other side of the Taiwan Strait, he says, Do you think the Indo- Pacific containment effort is a good strategy to prevent war. What could be done better in Taiwan? The American position for years has been what is sometimes called strategic ambiguity, that is, we did not declare that under all circumstances we would defend Taiwan because we do not want Taiwan to think that we declared independence, which would likely provoke military action by China, we're behind this, so our position has been roughly since '72, so it's been, um, no unilateral declaration of independence, no use of force and then the two sides negotiate their relations through of the Taiwan Strait and that position has been maintained with variations practically all the time.

It was interesting when President Biden said last year that we would defend Taiwan, kind of an offhand statement there was. A quick correction from the White House saying this was not a policy change to voters that the standard policy is still in place probably didn't hurt Biden to remind the Chinese that we could, in fact, defend Taiwan, but of course other side, you I don't want this to stand out, there is a way that encourages the DPP or others in Taiwan, let's say, let's push more towards independence, so I think we should, we should strengthen Taiwan's self-defense capability, we should help it become in a porcupine or a poisonous shrimp and in that sense reduce the risk of a Chinese invasion, but personally I do not think it is prudent to give an absolute and clear guarantee to come to their defense in the same way that we have in our security treaty. with japan in the south china sea um, when you get to the senkaku daiyu islands, president obama said that we considered them covered by the united states and japan security treaty and that it was a way to deter china, but remember that nobody lives on those islands and So the argument that someone was going to suddenly do something provocative like declare independence was not part of the problem, which is why the situation in Taiwan has been complicated.

We could think of it as a double deterrent. We want to deter the Chinese invasion and deter. unilateral declaration of independence of Taiwan and that is still the policy, uh, the bill of the other piece, remind me of the second question about Taiwan, you had two, they answered only the first one, um, was whether what he calls containment The US Indo-Pacific effort is a good strategy to prevent war in the region. What could be done better? Well, I'm not sure the administration called it a containment policy. I think it has been a set of alliances and those alliances have been built on the foundation. what I earlier called the existing balance of power in Asia, the administration has resisted calling it containment per se, another way to think about it is to shape the environment in which China exercises its power, he says maybe you can say well, which is the difference between that?

Containment means that there may be some difference in the sense that we are not trying to stop countries from trading with China or we are not trying to economically isolate China like we did with containment in the Cold War, but we want to make sure that the environment It is one in which states that want to preserve their independence feel that Americans are there to help them. You could say it's a small difference. I think it actually makes a difference. Now we have a question from Mabel Chan, a research associate at the Fairbanks Center. Says you mentioned President Xi Jinping's Chinese Dream rhetoric, do you agree or disagree that it was a more direct appeal aimed at a domestic audience and perhaps even overseas Chinese, rather than a challenge to China's status?

America's superpower? She says the American dream has been a compelling idea that sent hundreds of thousands of Chinese to the United States in search of opportunities they couldn't find at home. Many settled and assimilated and never returned as China rose. One could argue that China's dream slogan is to galvanize Chinese-American nationalism and support for their homeland. And to diminish the appeal of the American dream, what are your thoughts? Well, I greatly sympathize with that comet. I think the Chinese dream is less of a foreign policy than a policy of domestic political support and, um, but I think what Xi Jinping has done.

I haven't been attentive enough to what I call the two-audience problem: when a political leader says something, there are two audiences, one internal and one external, and sometimes you can say, oh, this is for internal consumption, but you you forget, wait a minute, someone outside. is also listening, so if you look at something like "you know the China dream" or something like Xi Jinping's statement that China will be number one in artificial intelligence by 2030, well, that's cool at home when you're trying to prove that. how well the party is doing and the promotion of Chinese nationalism and the homeland, etc., but you know, there are people listening to that in Washington who say wait a minute, you'll be number one in artificial intelligence in 2030, we don't like it. . that means we are number two and that means our willingness to cooperate with you on artificial intelligence is going to be diminished, so in that sense she uses rhetoric, which may be due to the reasons you said, but he is not attentive enough to the fact. that the external audience may hear it differently, I mean, it's not unique to China.

Donald Trump spoke of America first. Well, that's understandable. Political leaders defend their own country's interests first, but it doesn't work as well in the rest of the world. which means you are in second place, so I accept the point of the description, but I think a more internationally savvy leader would have softened that kind of statement. Thank you. We have two questions on nuclear issues that are worded inalmost identical way. A guest asks as America worms away at China's impressive nuclear expansion why is the Biden administration scrapping the nuclear cruise missile program? Do you support that decision?

Well, I do, I don't know, I don't know the details of that, um, it could just be profitability, I don't know. I don't think it's necessarily driven by competition between the United States and China. You know there are many weapons you can develop and not develop and if the nuclear cruise missile was worth what it would cost. I think the decision was based on that rather than not being irritating. the Chinese but I don't know the answer to that researcher barrick uh I'm going to have to apologize if I mispronounced the name dub and bayev uh at the center for china and central asia studies in kazakhstan says thank you for your in-depth analysis of relations between the United States and China.

My question is what is China's strategy regarding Afghanistan. How is Beijing trying to balance other countries' interests in Afghanistan? Well, China has always taken the position that it wants to be influential in Central Asia and on the other hand, it did not want to import radical Islamism to Xinjiang and other places and that is why it has had a close and long-standing relationship with Pakistan which is based on China's rivalry with India, so I think the effort in Afghanistan is to make sure that it doesn't spread to uh between the Chinese Muslims a and b that it will follow more or less the same political lines that Pakistan is adopting towards Afghanistan, which has been again for to avoid the worst excesses of the Taliban but not to completely alienate, so I think China is trying to walk a tightrope on that.

Katherine Wilhelm's question begins by saying that if we only count China's formal alliances, we may underestimate China's influence, for example, in the global south. For many countries in the global south, China is both inspiring and also appears to be offering more practical development assistance. The United States does not seem to pay much attention to discourse in the development of a country's capitals. How could this be taken into account? Maybe I can take advantage of my position to expand it to a fundamental question. on the concept that you are most famous for soft power, we tend to think that our democracy and freedom are the ultimate in soft power, maybe that has been damaged a little by what we have done in the Middle East and elsewhere , China lifting up the people.

Getting out of poverty tends to be dismissed in this country as an inspiration of soft power, our national discourse on this need needs some revision, well China has soft power which is the ability to get what you want through attraction instead of coercion or payment and one source of the power of Chinese salt is traditional Chinese culture and you know the glories of traditional culture, but another source in more modern terms is the economic success of China, I mean. China has been extremely impressive in what it has achieved and I think that makes it attractive to many others, on the other hand, those are the assets, if you want the liabilities of China in terms of soft power.

Are there two in particular? One is that it has territorial disputes with its neighbors. It is very difficult to establish a Confucius Institute in New Delhi to make people admire Chinese culture if at the same time Chinese soldiers are killing Indian soldiers on the Himalayan border and China has 14 neighbors. as borders with 14 countries and probably at least half a dozen with whom there are territorial disputes, so those disputes can be downplayed. It doesn't always do so in an era of nationalism and wolf warrior diplomacy. The extent to which those disputes are played out. Upwards rather than downwards, as the case of India illustrates, that costs China in terms of its soft power.

China's other responsibility for soft power is its insistence on strict party control over society. civil society a lot of the country's soft power doesn't come from its government media or whatever comes from civil society, which in the case of the united states means everything from universities to hollywood to the bill and melinda gates foundation, etc., if china insists on strict party control, it undermines many of those civil society institutions and that then reduces the extent to which China can benefit from soft power, so if the only way to test this, oh , should also add the Belt and Road initiative to another China, providing funds and loans for infrastructure projects around the world, it is a favor. it means it is trying to make itself more attractive and in some places it works and in others it doesn't in hambun toto which is the port of sri lanka which was not economical and yet had commercial scale loans or interest rates on loans um.

It probably caused more resentment than an attraction, I mean in the initial stages, it created attraction, but over time it led to resentment, so China's influence in the world's poorest parts of the world varies from place to place, but on Belton Road. It is an effort to try to increase it, but one way to verify it is to look at accredited public opinion surveys conducted by organizations like Pew or Gallup, etc., and the interesting thing if you look at the different continents is Chinese soft power. much less than American soft power in Europe, in Australia, South America and Asia, the only area where the United States and China are considered roughly equally attractive is Africa and that varies a little, of course, between different African countries, so that yes, China has soft power, but it also has limits on its soft power and when we look at the results measured by refutable polling organizations that ask questions about attractiveness China does not have a very good return on its investment thank you, I think we have time for a ask more uh uh jesse jung asks, do you have any more comments on how the Ukraine crisis will reshape US-China relations and the global political landscape?

Well, a lot depends on what happens on the battlefield and also what Poop decides to do, but I think the most likely scenario at this stage. is that Putin has abandoned plan A, which was a great success for Eve, and has moved on to plan B, which is to try to subdue the east and the south and then take the areas of Donbass and perhaps a quarter of it. along the south. uh, literal and maybe after some point declare victory and and um and just maintain that um I think the extent to which that will be widely accepted is minimal, there will be a continued Ukrainian insurgency against that and I think it will continue to poison relations between Russia and The United States and Russia and Europe, etc., the extent to which China partners with Russia to what I think hurts China.

Also, if China were to go further and actively support Russia, it would expose itself to secondary sanctions and that would be expensive for the Chinese economy, so that's my kind of core estimate of what could happen, but there are many scenarios ranging from more optimistic than what I described to more difficult than what I described and, frankly, at this stage we don't know which of them is Most likely thank you very much for all these ideas. Generally almost all the questions in one of these sessions relate directly to the core of the speech. In your case, you have been treated like the guru of practically everything in the world and you have validated that so again uh thank you very much because it has been a pleasure for me and uh thank you for inviting me bye