Center for China and Globalization: U.S.-China Exchange in Retrospect Bush Legacy and Beyond

you are watching ccg global dialogue 50 years of us china exchange in retrospect the bush legacy and beyond featuring mr neil bush and mr david feinstein founder and chairman president ceo of the george h w bush foundation for u.s china relations this program is presented to you by the center for china and globalization and hosted by ccg president dr wang hua yao dr thank you uh good evening uh and also good morning uh this is uh the founder and the president center for china globalization that hosts this dialogue from ccc head office in beijing and so we are really pleased to welcome all of you to tune in for this ccg china and the world uh special dialogue series and it's uh live for the from beijing thank you for joining us today actually and so this is actually the 12th episode and we are very honored and pleased to have two distinguished scats from george h.w bush foundation for u.s china relations tonight today the bush china foundation was founded in may 2017 by neil bush uh with blessing and support of president george w bush and began full operations on september 2019. so this actually a special dialogue event was actually as the background of the 50 years uh anniversary of of course dr kissinger's visit china but also started the 50 years of exchanges with china and between china and the u.s united states but this year is also the 50 years of china joining united united nations i remember george h.w bush was actually america's youth ambassador in 1971. that's when china joined the uh united nations so it's a great uh it's not a coincidence you know china has started a different you know this kind of exchange was us 50 years ago now also it's the uh uh year of uh uh china joined the united nations doctor kissinger china in july and china joined the united nations in october in 1971 actually 50 years ago half a century so we know that for both uh uh president uh george h.w bush and of course also george w bush i mean uh it's very very probably break the history uh for for for the bush family has two president of the united states it's something that uh uh we are very uh uh uh you know very uh very honored to have uh the bush foundation that actually to talking to us to our audience in china today uh also with this background i i want to mention that uh for the uh for the george h.w bush i mean he actually was the us envoy and also maybe you can call a bicycle ambassador to to to china during the u.s uh liaison office in beijing uh between 1974 1975 and uh so so that that is really historical uh uh uh for for probably the first uh uh ambassador uh status representative of the u.s to china as early as 1974 75. so neil bush i mean the founder of the bush foundation you were also uh in china at that time made a lot of a visit then so so it's very very uh uh pleased to see that we're actually talking about tonight about the bush legacy uh and also the implications for china-u.s relations and also in retrospect half a century but also looking forward for another uh in a future prospect of china-u.s relations but also i i'd like to say that george h.w bush actually being the first liaison office ambassador to china but also he was the president uh uh in 1989 and after one month in office paid a visit to china the soonest uh which took the office to visit china and his son uh george george w bush i mean also neil bush's brother uh had made the full visit to china and uh so that's really impressive including the 1908 olympic uh game that both bush president actually visit china so it's such a rememberable uh past of all the good relations we have so so i think that uh actually uh president george h.w bush actually said uh we valued a new relationship of our two countries uh and also uh we have established each other we remain firmly committed to the principles set forth in those three john communicate that form the basis of relationship and actually president george w bush even said in his china diary in 207 i love the chinese people president bush wrote one of my dream for our world is that that those two powerful giant giants we'll continue working towards full partnership and friendship that will bring peace and prosperity to the people everywhere so so we are actually celebrating this this great legacy and so this is really a great uh moment to to look at that so what i would like to uh to to introduce the two very distinguished uh guests act to join us tonight is uh uh first is uh is neil bush uh uh neil bush is the founder and the chair of the george h.w bush foundation for u.s china relations he's the third of the five children of president and mrs george h.w bush so mr bush has actually been involved with energy real estate and international business development for the four decades beginning in 1990-80 uh but for the past 25 years mr bush has engaged in various international business development activities with a focus on china he first visited china in 1975 while his father was the chief liaison officer representing the united states in beijing his business and personal interest have allowed for many return trips over the years since 1975 mr bush has traveled to china over 140 times and has visited over 40 cities in china so so it's a remarkable record i think probably only kissinger maybe has made that many trips uh probably you had made more than that uh but also i'd like to introduce another distinguished uh a guest tonight is uh david farstein he's the actually the inaugural president and ceo of the george h.w bush foundation for u.s china relations or you can call uh bush china foundation and also our founding and current member of the foundation board directors and the prior to joining the bush china foundation mr feistem was the founding executive director of the university of texas austin china public policy center and also he's a professor at the university's london b johnson school of public affairs of course before moving to university of texas mr firestem served as a senior vice president and payroll fellow of the new york city-based east west institute where he led institute diplomacy dialogue so very experienced uh uh citizen also diplomat a decorative career of u.s diplomat from 1992 to 2010 uh mr feisting's special specialized primarily in the u.s china relations so a very old friend of china also also very senior china hand and of course i remember we hosted you in 2012 uh uh when ccg hosted you there at the western return scholar association you were giving a uh analysis of the us election president election 2012. so uh it's quite quite almost a decade ago now we see tremendous changes so so i would like to start the dialogue uh tonight uh with uh with you know with bush foundation and also the the senior representative at bush foundation so president george h.w bush was the pioneer in the u.s china diplomacy he was the u.s chief diplomatic envoy in china during the 1974-75 which was before u.s and china formally established diplomatic ties so neil you you first i remember just you you said something you first visited china in 1975 and of of course continue to travel to china on a regular basis since then so giving you have made to china and travel to china 100 sometimes uh so you have weakness actually firsthand in the last you know four or five decades of the of the of the tremendous changes that china has made so so maybe you can give your first uh assessment of what you see the relationship first of all henry thank you so much for having us on your on your show as part of the dialogue you do such wonderful work uh bringing ideas out and uh helping to inform the public um i think i'll start by reflecting back on october of 1971. you mentioned that that the chinese were admitted or china was admitted to the u.n i happened to be in new york city during that during that vote my dad worked tired tirelessly promoting the two china representation concept that's that was the position of the u.s government at the time they got voted down and china was admitted taiwan was was kicked out the first thing my dad did when the chinese delegation arrived into the united states was invite them to a lunch at my grandmother's home in connecticut to show um kind of american hospitality to to welcome them with them with open arms um and and from that point on his first real contact with chinese leaders my dad has as you pointed out in the in the the letter you referred to has had an affection for the chinese people and and and has high aspirations for how our two great countries should be working together yes i was there in 1975 my three of my siblings and i visited for five weeks we were in beijing for four weeks and then traveled with my mother by train to wuxi nanjing and shanghai and it has been a remarkable thing to sit on the sidelines and to witness this incredible growth that china has experienced over the past 46 years when i was first there the china i saw in 1975 and you know i don't want to be offensive to anyone but was basically freedomless everyone was equal they were equally poor and that people were friendly up towards us we rode our bikes all over the place and we were we were treated very kindly but there's propaganda machines everywhere everywhere you go the word was being spouted out people were still being sent to the end of the cultural revolution being sent to the countryside and uh man people couldn't choose make daily choices that clearly they can make today and so looking back 46 years later it if i were back in 1975 i couldn't have predicted or imagined that china would have had hundreds of millions of people lifted out of poverty that the middle class would be growing as rapidly as it is that the economy continues to to turn out new jobs and and crank out wealth for people that people would enjoy daily freedoms that that frankly back then were clearly unimaginable you know happening in china so i i've been deeply impressed by this henry i'll i'll be honest with you and i think one of the things that separates me from other other folks is the fact that i've been there and seen it grow over the many years i've come to some deep conclusions one you know not every s there's no single system that works for every country that every country needs to develop a system that is suitable and fitting for the conditions of that country china's system has worked for china if you look at the results over the many years over the 46 years since i was there over the 40 something years since formal ties have been established the results speak for themselves and so i i i'm a believer that you know our system works for us there's your system the chinese system works for china we need to be respectful of of of that and and clearly americans i've been i've been amazed i'll i'll stop there and just say that i've been amazed to be able to witness this um this change in china and you know no one could have predicted it back 46 years ago yeah thank you thank you neil actually uh absolutely you are the witness of this great transformation that has been taken place uh in china in the last uh four or five decades i mean uh you know since china joined the u.n and and of course we re established his position at um but also uh uh uh you know since uh your father as the fourth envoy uh uh to china in 1974 75 that is really how the u.s and china gradually normalize the relations and uh and pave the way for the uh for the uh great the progress i'm glad to hear that your father actually hosted the launch for the for the incoming uh delegates to the u.n that was uh that was really early uh early on that's that's a show that you know i'm sure that uh your father was uh eight years as a vice president of uh uh ronald reagan and also served as the president of the united states i'm sure he has done a lot of uh memorable work and uh also what he was saying that uh uh the co two great giants should work together i mean absolutely uh for the further for the benefit of the mankind uh he's naturally right so so so so so what do you still remember some of the things you you've seen at the beijing uh uh you know you said you're four weeks there i i remember your father was bicycle and that's he right about his name is the photo at the time square what about you when you and your brothers just came uh we had we had the same experience we rode bikes all over the place it was really fun we rode the tiananmen square i distinctly remember pulling up to a stop sign you know where the guards were there with their hands up and stuff and the the crowd of bikes were stopped and gathered and and when when those of us that were you know from america kind of white guys long nose they'd look over and see us and they'd almost fall off their bikes and we went to the zoo henry to go see the pandas and other animals and you look behind us and there's a bigger crowd following us at the zoo than they they were looking at the animals it was we were such a you know anyway but it was a friendly um you know adventure for us um one of the things i observed and this is something dad and i talked about during that trip was that if you if you observed chinese consumers chinese individuals walking by like a like a bike shop or a shop that had like kitchen utensils or whatever you could see in their eyes that they wanted more that they wanted a better bike a better flying pigeon or whatever by um and so it's it was you know it's pretty clear that there were aspirations even then that had now led to this incredible you know growth and and uh realization of potential but yeah now i have vivid memories of it and if that now i go back to china and you know cars everywhere there's it's it's it's like totally transformed it's an amazing transformation high-speed rail and you know internet connectivity everywhere it's like a whole new world that couldn't have been imagined back in the bicycle riding days of night of the 1970s yeah yeah great thank you you'll be really seeing china uh you know develop from bicycle kingdom to ultimately the kid they're not the largest automobile market in the world that was really you see that in the four decades and it's leapfrog i mentioned high-speed rail i mean you know other countries other developed countries or even developing countries in the world can't have not been able to keep up with china and the deployment of high-speed rails and it's i've been on many train rides that have been very efficient they're quiet they're fast they're clean you know and it's um it's it's there's a there's a leapfrog capability that china is enjoying now that that really sets it apart in in many respects um anyway so yeah it's it's it's gone from bicycles to you know the car car consuming you know capital the world and and also now leapfrog to the high speed rail yes yes that's right you you see that on the develop stage so so uh so uh uh david and you also lived in china for for for many many years and uh you've been actually 20 years involved with uh with china as well as a diplomat but also now you you are still working on this so so so what's your impression on china and and probably also what now you are you are uh you know president of the bush china foundation now so so what what is your uh uh you know memories and and also how how do you think the bush uh foundation for both uh neil and you to take this forward maybe maybe you can give me more discussion on that david well henry thank you thank you so much and again it's an honor to be with you and so grateful for the opportunity to have this conversation um you know i first went to china in 1984 so nine years later than neil did and and yet i i absolutely understand um everything that neil's saying in terms of the transformation that has occurred in china and uh the the degree to which average people since the 1970s and 1980s to the present day have seen their ability to make choices for themselves in their daily lives uh that ability has grown in ways that just as neil said we're really unimaginable i think to the average chinese citizen back in the 1970s or in the 1980s when i first visited china and as a teenager but just the ability to choose whether to go to college or the or what your major might be or to choose to perhaps study abroad and do undergraduate work abroad rather than in china the ability to choose where you live and to purchase a home the ability to choose where you work uh or how long you work there in the old unit system or dunway system back in the old days you know you didn't have a say over where you worked and uh you know whether you could quit and so forth and so on and now all those choices are available to average people all across the country the ability to you know have those those kinds of uh decisions within your own grasp and within your own decision-making authority that's probably the most fundamental transformation that i have seen in china very much as neil laid out and i think if i were summarizing it in in kind of one idea or one sentence it would be that when i first visited china in the 1980s i think the average citizen didn't feel that they had a lot of control uh over their own destiny uh with respect to these myriad really important decisions in their personal lives but now and certainly i think since the 1990s and unquestionably today the average chinese citizen i think feels that they have vastly more ability to shape their future than they did in the 1970s 1980s and so on so it has been an incredible transformation and of course that's to say nothing of the physical transformation that's occurred uh in china and that you henry and neil were just discussing um at the bush china foundation or the the george h w bush foundation for u.s china relations our mission is to advance the u.s china relationship in ways that reflect the ethos spirit and values of president george h.w bush and as you mentioned at the outset when neil founded the george h.w bush foundation for u.s china relations with the blessing and support of his father george h.w bush that was very much the mindset and um i am so honored to be able to work side by side uh with neil to carry forward the george h.w bush vision for the relationship uh henry you mentioned one of president george h.w bush's most famous quotes when it comes to china and it's one that we talk about all the time at the foundation but i want to note that fundamentally the george h.w bush vision for the relationship is grounded in two beliefs core beliefs i would say number one that the u.s china relationship is the single most consequential bilateral relationship in the world and in fact i would say in the history of the world and number two that no major international problem or challenge can be enduringly resolved in the absence of effective us-china cooperation that's what president george h.w bush believed that's what neil believes that's what i believe and that's what our foundation is all about is to try to facilitate u.s china engagement and collaboration not out of altruism but because it is good for both countries it is good for the relationship and it's good for the world and i couldn't be more proud to work for and with neil and to be a part of this incredible foundation yeah thank you thank you davey actually that absolutely i mean uh you know the the bush china foundation has has done many things i noticed in the last two years actually several years you've done uh you know the conferences you've done uh you know webinars are related with many many areas so exactly we need this uh foundation to to to actually to have better understanding and promote exchanges between our two countries yeah henry i'd like to like to piggyback off of that comment um by by reminding you and and others that my dad after he retired from the presidency chose to be active in establishing dialogue much like your program henry between china the in the united states and he did so in the form of a conference a u.s china relations conference that he co-hosted with an old friend madame lee charlene on the chinese side that conference he attended he actively promoted he brought in you know representation from the from the u.s side the chinese side you know brought in equal representation and for i think he attended five or six david do you recall but he attended and and hosted five or six of those so that was basically the founding of our organization those are the roots of where our organization you know sprouted from um and his and as he got older and couldn't actually participate in these these conferences he asked me to chair from the u.s side and it just spun out out of that spun the the george h.w bush foundation for u.s china relations and he was very pleased to see that the programmatic activity starting with what he started the conference has now expanded to many other areas under david's very very capable leadership and by the way i don't know if your audience would like to hear this but david speaks like perfectly fluent chinese it's like an apparently amazing amazing chinese after 140 visits you think i'd be able to say you know you know like one more beer please but that's about uh nihao and saigen but anyway david speaks fluent chinese he's a great leader for our organization yeah no i i i absolutely agree with you i mean absolutely i i see that george h.w bush has actually started this tradition of this china u.s conference for many years i remember many friends has attended that and has speak highly of the of efforts uh of the conference in promoting the exchanges and the dialogues and the understanding of the two countries but also uh you know all those times is really very valuable giving his uh advice and his his presence i i'm glad that you succeeded him in doing this and also now coupled with with david i know david is a perfect uh china hand i mean he spoke probably one of the best foreigners speak mandarin that you could find uh he has interpreted for many many senior people too so so i remember when when we invited davey to come to speak at the ccg event in 2012 which is almost 10 years ago he he already impressed me then and also he's writing two chinese books and out of the several books right two of them both in chinese that is very rare for for any foreigners to see that so so this is actually really great great legacy and great tradition that we have and so so somehow you know i mean unfortunately i mean since both george your father george h.w bush and your brother george w bush are both republican parties and a republican president and has actually made the most visit your father stayed in china for a year or two you uh your your your your brother made the full presidential visit and you know two official visits one air pack summit and one olympic games uh you know there's a lot of a lot of good uh uh you know relationship building and uh uh uh you know the the the the dialogue uh uh exchanges but somehow unfortunately you know for the last several years i mean probably the last uh five years particularly since uh republic president trump back to the office we see china u.s relations somehow you know uh deteriorate quite quite a bit and so this kind of a deterioration i you know we we don't know what are the reasons but but definitely uh even now president biden comes up they're still saying okay china probably some were better now but but still they say china is a can be cooperated can compete but also can be a rivalry so we don't want to be a rivalry uh so but also uh uh president trump started this uh trade trade war trade sanctions china we see many uh republican actor calling for uh lifted uh uh those tariffs as i was just talking recently with uh randy cutler the the former acting ustr and uh she was saying you know maybe we should lift those tariffs it's not good for china so for us as well and recently u.s china business council have done a survey that to find this tariff actually cost u.s almost a quarter million jobs and and many many costs and but still china and u.s trade is still uh china imported as much as you know increasing steel and also the trade has increased uh so so what what do we to you know assess this uh current china u.s relations and how we can really improve that how we can really uh uh maybe get a bit uh normalcy there rather than we are uh we are we are we are now uh income such kind of uh uh deteriorated position and and of course also i've been talking with a number of u.s opinion leaders like graham alice and joseph nye and uh uh of course john sultan just recently and of course uh saint her head and and susan uh and ambassador roy i mean you know many of them they they're all saying you know we shouldn't be have a have a uh uh cold war we should not be and uh you know they they have all that kind of a consensus of course how can we those countries work better towards a better relation uh giving your foundations of you maybe your personal view as well you know i might take out take a high level stab at this and then let david dig dive deeper um first of all you you reference the the the deterioration in the in the relationship um and it it strikes me that there are a number of converging factors that have led to the u.s side um becoming fearful of china's rise and and that fear is reflected in rhetoric that has become under the trump administration quite harsh um and and and with that became kind of a an isolationist approach of stepping back and not having dialogue my dad believed at his core that you know that countries and families and friends you know need to stay in touch with one another in order to better understand one another in order to put yourself in the other guy's shoes so that when conflict arises you can address those conflicts in a mature way we got away from that for five years or so and maybe even prior to that david can give his analysis there that coupled with the us problem of kind of america first build the wall anti-immigrant you know we're the greatest country on the face of the planet and to see china's economic rise to where it's now at parity or you know just behind the u.s economy on a gross basis not per capita but on a gross basis you know that a lot of a lot of politicians you know are fearful of of losing our prominence in that way and then a third factor is politically given that there's not very good information about china floating around in this in this you know ecosystem in the u.s politically it's in china is an easy target you know we we we see politicians blasting the communist party as though it was the party that that was was kind of manifested itself in different ways very early in in the people's republic of china's history um so so they so there's a there's a lot of china bashing and it gets to you know the the sudanese trap issue that as china rises and america being the prominent power in the world you know faces this rising power how are we going to react and a lot of people in our country many politicians are reacting quite poorly to it and thinking that you know china is a existential threat to our economic and tor or national security and and by the way i'll quickly hasten to add that clearly any bilateral relationship is going to have issues between between countries we have issues with france we have issues with germany with issues with israel we have issues with our closest friends we're going to have issues with china and and we're going to address as americans we have values that we stand firmly behind we're going to express those values in a way hopefully in a way that's respectful and and um and not not finger-pointing or in a derogatory way but we'll express our values in the hopes that we can help shape outcomes and that kind of thing but the ultimate goal should be to come together as often as possible in as many different ways as possible and and to resolve um challenges you know respectfully and maturely i'm going to let david you know talk about the terracing my my my view of the tariffs is it was such a stupid idea to start with you know the idea of raising tariffs that was attached to american consumers you know hurting american business which you know david getting the statistics i mean it was it was a it was a non-starter trump's idea and i think people behind trump their idea was that if we have a trade deficit with a country we've got to re redress that by putting up tariffs and you know balancing out the trade the reality is that in global trade some countries have goods that are good quality goods that are provided at a lower cost that richer countries want to buy and poorer countries developing countries can't afford to buy the stuff from the poorer country so therefore there's going to be a trade imbalance and that's okay there's nothing wrong with that there's nothing in economics 101 that says that a trade imbalance is unnatural or inappropriate or bad and so so it was a it was a silly thesis in the first place i think it may have been deep down inside that logic might have been to be punitive towards the chinese to try to set the chinese economy back but that was that was illogical as well so it was a failed policy that needs to be reversed and um anyway david i'll let you clean up my mess go ahead thank you you raised a lot of good points thank you yeah no david please well henry thanks and neil thank you and and just to pick up on on the really good points that neil made about tariffs i mean neil and i both even before we met each other uh three years ago were both uh you know uh very much uh very critical of the u.s policy on tariffs and the trump tariffs uh on the same grounds that they're bad for america they're bad for american companies they're bad for american workers they kill jobs they blow out the deficit and they do nothing to solve any of the core problems that exist that actually do exist between the united states and china and the trade area and i agree fully with everything neil just said with respect to tariffs and we we as individuals and as a foundation have been very outspoken maybe more outspoken than almost any other entity in the country when it comes to the uh how how bad for america the tariffs are let me let me cite a couple of things and then i'll move henry to the broader question that you've asked but i think this needs to be said i mean the numbers are in the jury is in with respect to the tariffs we don't have to speculate or offer opinions about it we can actually look at the factual record under president trump we had the highest u.s trade deficit with china in american history under president trump we had the highest average annual merchandise trade deficit with china of any presidency in the history so to compare apples to apples the entire presidency the average annual average annual deficit with china was higher under trump than any other other previous presidency uh so those numbers speak for themselves it wasn't just a one-year wonder type of phenomenon it was it was four years um the u.s trade deficit with the world grew to record levels under president trump we lost manufacturing jobs tens of thousands of them under president trump we lost jobs over all 250 000 as neil just cited from the u.s china business council under these imbecile policies uh the historic u.s trade surplus with china in agriculture became a trade deficit for the first time in 25 years something that none of us thought was even possible and of course uh american uh consumers ended up paying more to the tune of about a thousand or even two thousand dollars a year uh more than they were uh before the tariffs came into play by every single metric that you could possibly uh cite the tariffs were just exactly as neil said an absolutely failed policy that was horrible for america is horrible for america and we need to get rid of it the the the trump tariffs were predicated on the idea that comparative advantage uh doesn't exist and uh that is as unrepublican and unamerican of thought as you could ever conceive comparative advantage does exist and we have to get back to the idea that the pie gets bigger when countries produce what they're best at producing and even imperfect trade is better than no trade so we've got to get back to classical american thinking and i want to say uh before i transition just briefly henry to your other question uh that the the george h.w bush foundation uh for u.s china relations true to the values and beliefs of president george h.w bush is a pro-business pro-trade pro-globalization organization unapologetically because we understand economics and we understand that trade is good for america it's good for the world and we want to move back in that direction and we advocate in that direction henry to your broader question about um the fact that originally republicans were at the cutting edge of getting the u.s china relationship in its modern form uh going going back to president nixon and of course secretary kissinger and obviously the incredible role that president george h.w bush played and other republicans along the way uh the point that i want to make is that for most of the last 50 years up until about five years ago the idea that engaging china and having a constructive and robust and healthy and functional relationship with china it was not just a republican idea it was a it was a bipartisan consensus that held uh fro through the presidencies of seven or eight presidents dating back to nixon and through the end of the term of uh president barack obama it only changed during president trump's campaign and as he came into office but there has always been a bipartisan consensus that it is good for america to engage china notwithstanding the difficulties and i would frankly say the irreconcilable differences that we have between our countries even with all of that that there is value and benefit to engaging china working together being clear-eyed about the relationship certainly but uh coming together to solve problems that neither country can solve on its own that consensus has existed up until the trump era now we have a new consensus unfortunately in official washington and that is that china is really the enemy of our nation there's a vast swath of official washington that seems to believe that and there's a significant swath of the american public that has come to believe that i think um neil and i and the bush china foundation reject that uh that idea and that that belief um but i think that belief is rooted in two erroneous assessments of china's intentions one that china seeks to displace the united states and supplant the united states as the world's only superpower and i think that is an absolutely fundamental misreading of what china actually wants to do and number two that china seeks to replicate its system all across the world and create a bunch of countries that look exactly like china uh and basically to push forward uh its system as as uh uh you know across the world so that there are you know more systems that look like china's than there are today i think those are incorrect understandings of what china actually seeks to do and when the fundamental premises of u.s policy toward china are wrong the resulting policies that's that that purport to address those uh concerns are going to veer off course and i think that's what we've seen over the last several years so you know we need to have a sharp focus on u.s interests and to get the emotions out of our policy formulation and policy execution and focus as president george h.w bush did on the long-term interests of our nation and i think if we do that we can get this relationship back on course yeah great uh thank you both senior and david excellent uh points that i i think that you're right you know what uh i i for the last five six years there seems to be more me standing between the two countries and i think we all need to really work hard to to really uh to to get a dialogue get communication and get right understanding exactly like what we're uh we're doing tonight as well and uh i i think that the trade is absolutely so obvious uh that uh you know since the second world war the trade boom has actually uh gave the prosperity to the world and actually prevented the third world war and we are still living in largely peace and prosperities because of the trade and and this is actually a competitive advantage to talk about you know that david ricardo's uh theory that uh you know the country does the best that maybe we should exchange and and the u.s has many area technology uh you know u.s financial uh power and uh dominance in in in the internet and many areas so so so china has been doing well in infrastructure and also and many other i see a lot of collaboration there uh but just unfortunately now we're actually you know we're facing the whole world is facing a huge challenge we've been uh uh you know in this pandemic this kobe 19 now we're getting involved with kobe 2012 now it's it's really still uh you know cutting us off uh at least for travel so so what do you think that we should really work together on on these because i i see this as a biggest opportunities like we i was talking talking to susan santan the foreman assistant deputy secretary of the u.s she was saying you know look i mean the kobe 19 could be the best occasion uh for the u.s and china to to let by gambia by down let's let's concentrate on this common threat enemy number one to the human tongue rather than we have actually uh now because of scovey knighting we have actually divided even more so i mean you have this orange of tracing and the blaming on china but also uh there's we see uh uh you know fingerprinting as well and uh how do you think that we can uh fight this uh uh pandemic and uh how can we revive the uh uh the the world travel how wgo can really work together you know i mean u.s now is is maybe lifting some of the lockdown but then we have you have the you have some surgery again in in some area but you know what what's the experience u.s has and and china has maybe we can really work together vaccine recognition you know travel kind of exchanges and now we see that u.s just according to the u.s embassy here in the last three months from maine june and july u.s embassy has issued almost 80 850 000 no 885 000 student visa we had a miles long queue at the cooldown international airport so you know student going back to the united states and uh but you know and and yet u.s student student can come to china so how can we really you know get this u.s channel working together on this pandemic fighting rather than we uh you know pointed finger and and shot at each other yeah that's a great question and it's a question i would ask on on a number of major topics that that affect the sustainability of life on earth for humans including climate change food insecurity everything health related the pandemic is kind of the most obvious and and most pressing matters that you brought up um but we because of climate change we have all kinds of natural disasters how how can we learn to either alter the course of this climate change so that so that the earth will be you know be able to to carry on for many more years beyond the current trajectory or so these are big issues um and clearly the two largest economies in the world as david pointed out in his opening comment you know have to work together in fact it's hard to imagine not solving these issues without the collaboration of china in the united states there's a there's a clear mandate and necessity for all of us to share our common humanity in addressing these these kinds of issues and i agree with you the frustration over the finger pointing i mean especially at the beginning of the outbreak you know we had a i don't know diet we had messaging coming out of the white house that said oh it's just gonna be here for a little while we have 13 cases it's all going to go away and blah blah blah oh yeah we're going to have a mask maybe but i'm not going to wear a mask and you know yeah everybody should get vaccinated but no there's no there's no real push and so there's a huge kind of anti-vaxx movement in the united states we we we don't have a national pride or national drive to combat this pandemic in a way that that we as a nation could but we should learn from one another you know we should be open-minded about looking at what new zealand has done and what australia has done what china has done what other countries have done we should share the best technologies that exist for vaccine development and have manufacturers all over the world convert their manufacturing to back to vaccine manufacturing of qualified vaccines so that the global population could be more readily vaccinated against this pandemic and the spread of it through the various variants um you know the drugs that that can be administered all of these kinds of things need to be there needs to be more of a of a environment of collaboration which sadly doesn't exist today and i i'm i'm not i'm convinced that that you know that things will change over time i may be the only guy out there that says this but i do believe that this administration you know is already creating more opportunities for exchange and dialogue and that kind of thing and inevitably when you sit down and you have dialogue with with counterparts good things come out of it better understanding and and and um you know an addressing of serious issues and the i the topic of collaborating on the pandemic and and health care related issues in general should be should be front and center on on the table for discussion yeah yeah great i think you you mentioned those uh very important issues and uh you know we should really work together on this on this uh you know uh pandemic fighting uh vaccine recognition and uh and and also learn from each other absolutely i mean we need a lot of cooperation in in in combating the the the kobe 19 and actually this could be a punishment of the of the nature that we are not really respecting sustainable and climate change could you know so this is a huge lesson for us so so david what's your what's your what's your uh take on this well henry thank you and um you know i i i think neil has said it really well i i would just amplify one one point with respect to coven 19. and let me make a broader point at the outset um absolutely covet 19 and pandemic's generally in public global public health even more broadly are areas where the united states and china should be collaborating because these are the very definition of the kinds of issues and they're not the only ones where no one country by definition can solve these problems these problems require a collaboration from all the major players in the world and instead of thinking of covet 19 here in the united states as a kind of wedge issue between the united states and china we ought to be thinking of it just as neil said and henry as you said as an opportunity for collaboration not because it's a warm and fuzzy or altruistic thing to do but because lives depend on our ability to collaborate and as i said in an interview a little over a year ago in may or so of of last year you know when a house is on fire uh the first thing you do is you say who's in the house and how do we get them out you don't say who started the fire and yet we saw in the united states uh this propensity to demonize china to lambast china and and assume the absolute worst about its motivations and what we really should have been talking about at that time was how do we save lives and how do we work together to bring as early an end to this pandemic as we possibly can and with respect to this particular facet of the issue i just want to say uh hear what what uh i and we as a foundation have said emphatically many times and that was that the um the the racially charged and i would say racist rhetoric that emanated from president trump and other senior members of the executive branch the then secretary of state mr pompeo and members of congress was despicable it was repugnant it was deplorable and it was wrong and it was far beneath the dignity of any office holder in this nation uh it is uh it is not how we should be communicating the notion that people were using terms such as quote china virus or quote chinese virus or even worse quote kung flu this is a disgrace this is this brings shame on our nation for any serious political figure uh elected or appointed to use that kind of reprehensible language and of course as a result and predictably it drove the numbers of of uh anti-asian racist violence through the roof and that is deplorable and absolutely uh tragic and so we as a foundation spoke out and continue to speak out about this um you know we've got to get back to a and i think we are now under this administration a much more mature and less juvenile style of communication because when you start throwing around uh these types of terms uh any possibility of collaboration goes out the door even if there really are valuable areas where we ought to be collaborating so the language matters the communication matters and boy what i wouldn't give to have um you know a way of thinking about communication and thinking about bringing people together of the type that we saw under the presidency of george h.w bush to his credit president joe biden has gotten rid of that kind of language he's banned it from the white house he said he will fire people for and he's done it for using language that is not appropriate for the white house of our nation and i think we're getting back to some of the norms that were established under many presidents but uh that is a really important part of the covid piece if we don't communicate in a mature and professional and serious and business-like way any hope of of collaboration that would benefit all of us uh becomes very remote yeah yeah thank you thank you uh uh neil and david for your very uh open frank and uh and very positive uh discussion i i agree i absolutely agree with you i think that uh you know we need to improve our communication uh dialogues and i mean the copyrighting already uh separate us we can't have a face-to-face meetings so we should really be careful of our languages and our uh uh uh you know the discussion and in exchanges i i'm glad to see uh president biden when he comes to office he actually signed an executive order banning the use of ethnic language refute refers to the to the virus so that is a good design so so we hope that things can can get but i know that now we can talk a bit more on that but you know president biden is already uh over six months in office and china and u.s we had quite a several rounds of a discussion we had alaska encounter and and with secretary lincoln and [Music] and china's senior diplomats of course recently uh we had the deputy secretary of state uh uh wendy sherman come to changing we had a second round of discussion and so it seems of course the second time i would say it's better than first time but still uh well one of the best was actually i think uh was uh uh former uh secretary of state now spencer envoy uh john kerry's visit uh to to to china first time and they usually john to communicate on the climate uh change uh uh between the collaboration and again uh john kerry's ex plan to visit china in the next several weeks i know that uh also uh john fountain the honorary chair of uh bookings actually uh currently is in china and actually he met uh the minister of uh environment and had a lot of uh constructive dialogue so we hope you know we can really now facing those huge issues facing those uh uh you know the more uh challenges that u.s and china can really uh you know work together on those uh mostly critical issues to the mankind uh to the whole world uh to the to the to the 7.5 billion people because the number two number one and number two largest economy in the world have a moral responsibility to do that so how can we really uh improve on that and and so so what do you think about uh uh where are the low-income food can we start uh climate change so we can get some positive news we can get some positive uh message across the country we can you know now we have the student back and we have a u.s student back to china or can we uh have the consulate resumed in both houston and where you both of you're based in texas and china too so things like that uh uh probably neil you you can give some uh uh first uh uh you know i'm actually i think i may pass the buck over to david i'm curious about his response on the on the student travel you've mentioned that a couple of times i mean one of the one of the the great blessings of of connectivity is having so many thousands of students come to the united states every year to to you know we're a land of immigrants and i know these students aren't immigrating but we i i just think it's wonderful how america you know has taken kind of the best of talent from all over the world they come to this part of the world they learn and go back to their countries or stay and help us build our economies and there's so so much value to those student student experiences both u.s students going to china and vice versa comes chinese students coming here david what is it what's the prospect for for that that activity cranking back up again yeah well neil thank you and and a couple of points in response to henry's really good questions um one first of all with respect to students uh it is encouraging to see us get back toward something that looks more normal in terms of the flow of students in the flow of people within the constraints of covet 19 which are significant but at least we're moving back in the right direction you know there was a there was a 12 month period where year over year we actually saw and i think it was from 2019 to to mid 2020 we actually saw a literally 99 drop in u.s student visa issuance to chinese students from i think it was um 80 000 to 800 approximately that was the scale at one point we we we issued 80 000 visas and then over the next 12 months we issued 800. some of that obviously was coven but a lot of it was also just a very fundamentally different view under the trump administration about the value or what they would have regarded as the lack of value uh in in having students from china come to this country what what neil what you understand and what i understand and i think what henry understands is that actually there's huge value in having students from all over the world come to this country and contribute to our research and development contribute to scholarship at universities contribute to the development of new ideas and innovation new companies and um the notion that by turning off that spigot and shutting that down that that's good for america is just about as dumb an idea uh in terms of the modern uh 21st century economy as i can imagine and so to see it move back toward a more normal level at least in terms of chinese students coming to the united states and i certainly hope we'll see an analogous upward tick in u.s students getting back to china once the overall health situation allows for that these exchanges are great for our countries and we need to increase them not decrease them just as a side note relative to henry's question in terms of what's the low hanging fruit in addition to getting student numbers back up i think we need to get the fulbright pro program back up and running again we need to get other cultural and educational exchanges back up and running we need to get the usp score functioning in china again assuming china still welcomes that yes of course henry you're right we need to get the two consulates back up and running again uh neil and i both feel very strongly about that and so many other americans we've got it you know we're not helping anybody by shutting down the the chinese consulate general in houston or the u.s consulate general in chengdu it hinders both countries abilities to provide services for citizens to support business and trade and so forth and so on so there are a number of things in that area but henry the final point i would make uh that i think is uh goes to your question is uh there are areas that the by-administration identified very early on as uh areas that are fruitful for and that are potentially very beneficial to both countries in terms of collaboration one is public health we've talked about that and let me also note both china and the united states made some very serious mistakes in their early handling of kovan 19. there's no question about it that being said the question now is how do we actually make the situation better so we've talked about covet 19 but also the issue of climate climate change just as neil noted and henry as you noted at the outset the issue of arms control the issue of nuclear non-proliferation including on the korean peninsula but not limited to that particular space now the issue of afghanistan the united states and china need to come together and talk about this incredible and tragic situation that we now see in afghanistan and i think there's much to discuss there the question of iran's nuclear ambitions and other issues piracy on the high seas there are a whole host of areas where it's in each country's interests to work together and we just need to set emotions aside yes we disagree with china we as a nation disagree with china on any number of issues and china disagrees with america yes china does some things that are immensely problematic for america no question and america does some things that are very problematic for china we have to set that aside not in a clear-eyed way and focus on where we can make a difference and there are a lot of areas where we can and that's what i hope we'll see over the coming years yes yeah thank you thank you davey and neo i think absolutely i mean i i agree with you i think that uh you know both u.s and china uh being the two largest economy has a really a very strong responsibility and uh to work together i mean you're right i mean the the the k you know the the issues the chaotic century in afghanistan uh where where is next how can we really work together on that uh should we really you know china u.s and the country in the region should really work out a a post war plan uh maybe for the peace and stability there and of course the issue of korea north korea uh korea peninsula and there's issues of iran and you know china was one of the talking parties there and so there are many international issues and but most almost what's more important i i think that uh this this world economy is also need us to uh to really work together to to put it up uh uh also for the developing countries for for africa for for latin america and so many countries that we we really need to work together so absolutely we need to put aside our differences and maximize our common common uh positions uh so david i actually i noticed that you actually in january this year when you uh talked at a hong kong forum that organized by u.s china business exchange foundation there that you talk about the way forward you mentioned about six point there which i think is really interesting uh you said of course we should reopen uh two consonants in houston and chengdu since you and georgia and neil are both uh uh in texas where the the the concert was located i'm from chengdu i mean i i really want to see the consulate open there too and also the second recommendation you said restore the fulbright program and third recommendation said restore the u.s peace corps presence in china and uh and also the first reconditions the united states government should seize the uh the deceased from itself in the shutdown confuses institute and the number five is that more openness in trade and investment but also to people to big exchanges and and and also six is to think about creating an international visitor leadership program uh china to think uh you know uh creating this program to uh between the southern south americans and chinese and in both directions so yeah right because you are one of the early uh scholars come to china you you can read us firsthand so so for for those things uh you know plus the climate change i mean can we really do more uh uh and also we can elaborate on those points that very good point you made well henry thank you so much for noting that and and let me just say um you know i i think there are there we are facing a very turbulent and contentious and difficult and challenging time in the relationship right now it is going to be very difficult to do big things at this moment because of the tenor of the rhetoric and the mindset in washington and for that matter you know you sometimes hear some heated rhetoric from the chinese side etc and so there's a lot of tension there but so the question becomes what can be done and the things that you noted that i had talked about earlier this year and some of which i mentioned in this discussion are things that are actually doable they're they're not things that are really that controversial they're not things that are that difficult to do most of them can be done uh with a presidential um executive directive um and or executive order rather uh as they were in many cases undone by trump with an executive order so can they be restored by the same uh mechanism and so you're not talking about new uh legislation which would be a very you know very difficult thing to achieve in this environment um and so all of those things i think are just i propose that we do them not because they're good for china but because they're good for america and yes they're also good for the relationship and they can serve as confidence-building measures that can get these two countries uh back moving back in a direction where we're actually um speaking to each other in a business-like way and focusing on solving problems um the one thing i would amplify henry from the kind of list that you just mentioned of proposals i had made earlier in the year is i do think china this issue of what i refer to as the international visitor leadership program or ivlp that is a program that exists in the united states whereby many thousands of foreign citizens come to the united states at the expense of the american government the federal government the u.s taxpayer and they come and spend two or three weeks it used to be four weeks in the united states and they learn about this country firsthand by traveling across the country meeting people and learning about america as we would say warts and all not just propaganda but hey here's the things we're doing well here's the things we're not doing well and going back with a better and more textured understanding to their country of the united states i think if china were to do something like that it would be very beneficial because not all but many of the sharp the harshest critics of china in the united states have never been in china or never lived in china unlike neil unlike me and unlike many others they haven't actually interacted with chinese people at a human level in many many cases and so um they don't necessarily have the their fingers on the pulse of what's happening in that country in the same way and so um i i think china would be well served to create what i've called and what the us government calls an international visitor leadership program and literally bring thousands or even tens of thousands of americans to china every year in the way that the united states brings foreign citizens including chinese to the united states and help americans more americans get a much better understanding of the real china warts and all the good things the the bad things the things we agree with the things we disagree with because that foundation of understanding can lead to some really good things and i i think china under invests in um in people-to-people exchanges of this type and i think china would be well served to invest more uh and and frankly the united states would be well served to invest more as well we need it more than ever uh during this very challenging period in u.s china relations yeah yeah absolutely i agree i think that you you know we hope that we can restore the food right program uh from the us but particularly you you'll make a very good recommendation that china publishes set up international visitor leadership program that we can have like us did in the past and we can bring hundreds and thousands of of us leaders and things like that to uh to to visit china and and also to understand china because c is believing and and uh you know when people come and then really interact and have this human touch and human bond uh that would greatly change many things uh uh going forward as a matter of fact as ccg we recently did launch the international young leaders dialogue program together with a partner and actually that program we are not able to attract people from outside china but we're doing the for you know those international young planets already in china that was really going on very well we had the six true uh organized six trips visited six provinces over 100 of them and among 30 of them actually wrote wrote to president xi and the president should reply to them and it was really encouraging this kind of a move and hope to bring more people uh to to come to china to to visit china and see the real china so i think you're suggesting just uh very timely and i'm sure you know this could be a very good recommendations uh so so now neil i would like to uh uh ask a question for you as well and uh you're based in taxes we know taxes is really abundant for the energy uh uh you know the energy cooperation between china and the u.s is is one of the big big areas i remember when uh when president trump came to china in 2017 he signed over 250 billion uh dollar uh you know various deals and a big chunk of that is energy due and you know from texas from alaska uh so so we see you know before he started a trade war we see a lot of corporations uh uh going on then and uh and also of course i i did some study there and because if you want to uh import the energy or whether share gas or rng from the inland of texas to the port and then pour to china the cost from inland to the taxi sport is double the taxpayer to china so the lack of infrastructure uh in in the taxes uh in really uh you know export to china and actually china could companies could help on that on those infrastructures but jv was u.s companies to do that so that's one area the other area is also texas a great center for for us in the airspace and aviation and you know things like that and there could be potential for for china and u.s collaborate on the on in our aerospace we see now the the famous businessman now flying out of space i mean i remember they are saying when they look out from uh the the space look at the earth we are really one you know we are one one village one one human being raised in the nest how can we really fight each other so so probably no from those point you know in addition to consulate and other things the area can collaborate uh you know like from from a texas point of view and or you as in that matter what are those areas and maybe you know further further to promote that um first of all i'm going to reflect back on david's comment about comparative advantage that trade is really about comparative advantage and one of the great advantages that texas has and that the united states up until recently has had is that we've had a surplus of of oil production and natural gas production and and and you know i'm not i can't speak to the infrastructure issues and the cost of transport from west texas from the from the permian basin to the coast of texas and then shipping it around um but to the extent that there's a demand in china for these products and to the extent that we can provide the supply to meet that demand at a cost on a cost reasonable basis we should engage in that trade period it's just as simple as that and the trade trade deficit will be reduced by it which is i really don't care about the trade deficit but it's just a fact that it would be reduced and some politicians will be able to brag about how they brought the trade deficit down um so yeah there's there's clearly air and i lie and i love your suggestion that that we should be very open to having you know joint venture collaboration you know invest in infras investment in infrastructure by chinese and joint ventures with american companies to get to you know get access to these supplies makes total sense to me um you mentioned aerospace the the bush china foundation has been a co-sponsor of a of an event that's happened three years in a row called the um the international symposium for the peaceful use of space technology with a focus on health and in this uh organization has brought together uh leading space-related agencies and organizations from around the world from from europe france and and um germany from japan and russia the united states um and it's been pretty remarkable the last couple of sessions have been in person in china but virtual for all those outside of china um and and it's but the first one that was held in tainan island was very successful in bringing people together and yeah i'm not sure about the privatization of space and how that because there's gonna be there's gonna be competition you know to get out there to try to attract customers you know to make to make the economics of space travel for tourists you know competitive but there's all kinds of science that can be gleaned from and and gleaned from space related work um and that's the kind of science that's going to benef benefit humankind and and to the extent that china brings something of value to to that exploration and we bring something of value in the europeans and then we should collaborate no doubt about it yeah absolutely and so uh so uh you know i mean there's a lot of interest we we usana can collaborate and there's a lot of uh uh things that we can uh work together uh but uh but but now and as china now uh you know gdp is is also getting larger but also it seems that maybe uh with the number of years china may surpass u.s on the gdp status but maybe per capita still far behind but what do you think about you know this uh how can we really now uh uh you know accept each other maybe co-exist with each other peacefully we cannot i remember probably you said before that you know the u.s has a system that fits u.s china has a system for china we should not really try to change each other or something can we really reach that kind of a common understanding or maybe how we can do that i mean i mean i'll give you an example you you the the topic of afghanistan came up my my brother president george w bush and his wife my sister-in-law laura have very strong feelings about um their concerns for the rights of women and children in afghanistan with the taliban coming back into control there was a small military force there that helped support the afghan troop troops of 2500 so i'm not quite sure of the numbers but very small compared to what's on the korean peninsula today and it seems to me that for civilized nations around the world that are concerned for the rights of these women and these children that that may be you know thrown back into the dark ages or the stone ages through this change of leadership that civilized nations would be motivated to work together to keep a presence there to maintain the stability the american people are kind of tired of being the the sole what's perceived to be the sole protector they were allies there but not in great forces but the american people elected biden with his promise to withdraw president trump made the commitment to withdraw a better strategy would have been to say let's get countries from all over the world people that have a notion of what what it is to be civilized and find our common humanity and work together you know to secure the rights of the people of afghanistan not to nation build but to be protectors of those basic human rights so that's that may be idealistic and naive but i do believe we're going to get there the world is becoming so connected so close so you know there's everything is is is far more transparent than it has been in the past and and so where there's a wrong that needs to be righted we need to work together to right that wrong and and of course i'm on the edge of very controversial issues here specifically related to the treatment of minorities in xinjiang for example i i just hope the chinese are very very transparent about what's going on there and that that the truth be known so that the world can settle down and um you know and and in the meantime i'm all in favor of america expressing our values that where there are human rights challenges let's bring people from all over the world to put pressure on it to to address those human rights related issues and that relates to afghanistan and other places in the world today yeah yeah no uh yeah yeah i think that uh that's exactly i think the more communication and uh and as i said you know the visit of each other is so crucial as a matter of fact i mean xinjiang now is really welcoming uh foreigners to visit i mean so because of the kobe we really hope that more people come to xinjiang and visit that and that probably will clear things up as you said i've been to xinjiang twice by the way not recently but i've been there twice and okay come come come come back again we'd love to okay yeah yeah please yes so so david uh what's your uh uh uh take on on the question uh about how we can really you know uh can we really co exist peacefully together and uh and maybe gradually uh uh accept each other differences we cannot fix that because kobe 19 china has been managing now with china basically putting a lot of community interest on individual interests whereas u.s has really emphasized human rights and cannot violate it and and and that the whole society actually has less freedom whereas china probably individually yourself a bit but the whole society gained a lot of freedom and right on that so so what's your uh ideas on that well henry thanks that's a great question and let me just say um first of all back on the topic of energy i want to make a quick point and then i'll come to the the broader and very important topic that you've raised in terms of how we can you know go forward together um on energy uh just to amplify some of the really good points that neil made um you know we at the bush china foundation care a lot about the issue of energy we've been advocates for um an idea that we created we coined called the u.s china energy free trade and investment agreement or us eftia or fta as we call it and the u.s china energy free trade and investment agreement is an idea that we are advocating that we're building out and that we hope we can advocate for the implementation of and it's a very simple concept at its at the conceptual level and it's exactly what neil said in terms of energy uh the united states has it china needs it so let's do it it's uh it's it's pretty simple we can we can genuinely create a win-win in the energy area and our idea is take energy out of the trade war fast track it for uh for a more robust trade and exchange and create the legislative and policy context and um regulatory uh predictability so that the infrastructure investments henry that you mentioned can be made and so that we can export for example liquefied natural gas which texas has in huge abundance to china which has said that it wants to double its liquefied natural natural gas consumption over the next uh 10 years or so and move from seven percent of the energy mix to 15 percent it's a perfect scenario where we can sell something that we have china can buy something that it needs we can put a texas size den in the us deficit for those who care about that just as neil said exactly correctly and everybody walks away a winner and and america walks away a winner but the state of texas really walks away a winner and others that produce liquefied natural gas it's an obvious idea the reason that we don't see the kind of trade in that area is because of the poli the legislative policy and regulatory uh unpredictability that we have seen surge in the last several years nobody wants to make the investment of billions or tens of billions of dollars that would allow this trade to occur in terms of terminals that can deal with liquefied natural gas and so on and the bottom line is this is an easy one and we ought to do it so we've been advocating that and just very briefly we've also advocated for the idea of the united states and china actually working together uh governments former government officials business leaders uh non-profits and others to come together to mitigate the impact of energy poverty in the developing world and specifically in what we might term the bottom billion to use the term that was coined by others by another author uh and to to you know one of the big problems among the one-seventh of the population that is least fortunate uh or poorest is energy poverty and so what can the united states and china do together to alleviate and mitigate the impacts of energy poverty on that segment of the global population we're working with the rockefeller foundation on a really interesting project in that area but henry to your broader point i think the one thing i just want to say is that those of us i think who understand uh china well and who've lived there been there many times etc understand something that we don't often say but that i think is true and that is a number of the differences between the united states and china are simply irreconcilable period we are never going to see eye to eye on those issues we're never probably going to see eye to eye on on the issue of taiwan for example china has its view the united states has its view the views are essentially irreconcilable we're not going to see the issue of the south china sea the same way china has its long-held view the united states and many other countries have a very different view we're not going to get to a point where we have a meeting come away from it and say hey now we agree on it so there are some irreconcilable and by the way same for hong kong same for the issue of human rights and a number of other issues so the point is given that there are differences that will always be part of the fabric of the relationship between our two countries how do we manage the relationship in light of that and i think the view that neil and that i and that the bush china foundation and other moderates in the united states the few of them that seem to seem to be out there at this time is it can be done we can have a business like in a in a functional constructive results oriented mutually beneficial and politically sustainable relationship even with those differences being unreconciled and we ought to aspire to do that and rather than say look because we disagree on all these different profound issues let's take our ball and go home we advocate the opposite we advocate neil advocates i advocate the bush china foundation for the idea that this is all the more reason that we need to come together uh with a problem-solving mindset so that's what i would say i think it can be done it just requires the vision the vision that george h.w bush had the vision that neil has is our founder and chairman um and the vision that we seek to give expression to at this foundation um it's possible to do we're going to keep doing everything we can to move in that direction and i know that there are many in china that feel the same way and many in america as well and we're going to continue to stand strong for that sensible common sense moderate perspective on how to move this relationship forward thank you thank you uh neil and and and david actually you you made a lot of uh you know what's why i noticed point i i i think that you're right you know we we should probably really maximize the the the commonalities the common ground and minimize the differences of course as you said because of the culture historical and and geographically all those big differences uh you know there are some differences probably will remain for a long time to come but but definitely we have such a huge uh interest a common interest not only for the both countries but for the world that we should really work together so that we can really avoid the catastrophe or maybe a hot war i mean you know these days uh we had a lot of uh populism and national on the rising on both sides and that is really dangerous i think we as you said moderate but maybe cool heads and realistic i think we need more people like that in both both places so absolutely important uh now my staff was telling me we had a you know uh uh you know live from several portals we have almost we have over 200 thousand uh viewers uh watching us and listen to us and uh uh but but we have also collect some questions from online uh viewers as well uh media as well we have a uh a few questions but so i just uh read them out and we have one question from cgtn basically it was saying uh in which area that can china-u.s corporate monopandamic area i think we already probably covered some of that but what do you think of the biden's afghanistan policy and can china and u.s work together in afghanistan and and how those are from cgt and then we have another two from china news agency uh regarding the investigation of origin of virus some argue that there's more politics into that rather than a scientist into that and so what do you thought on that how we can get out of that and how should china use corporate uh on fighting against pandemics basically they've been living uh you know linger on those questions that we we touched upon briefly uh perhaps you could give uh uh your uh you know uh answer to that uh as you see your feet and maybe uh maybe neil uh and then we'll have david but of course with the calculation we just i'll start on the uh the last question you raised about the origins of the virus you know i'm i'm not as concerned for example about the origin of climate change whether humans cause climate change or whether it's a natural occurrence or whether it's some combination the fact is there's climate change and we need to address it and there's clearly a role for the us and china and all the nations of the world to lock arms in addressing it china's got its 2060 you know carbon neutrality pledge the government governments at all levels the private sector will be unified in their effort to do that and i have no doubt that china will be major players in in the collaboration to try to address climate change i mean the same thing kind of rings true to me with the virus who cares where it originated whether it originated you know in a lab or from a bat or from the united states or from other wherever it was who cares the fact is we have a pandemic that continues to affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of people all across the globe and there's there's a pressing need for mature civilized nations in the world to work together and so so david will may have more specific ideas on how we can work together but it seems like collaboration is very natural when it comes to something as big as this in the origins of it really and i will i will put a little you know caveat that you know i reject the idea that there was some malicious effort to release a virus a virus that causes a pandemic i think that's a crazy notion there's some intent from one side or the other you know to do this do this on purpose so you throw away the crazy conspiracy theories um and just assume that there was there was there was you know an origin of some kind it doesn't matter where it originated let's deal with it together yeah right absolutely i mean we we can't find where does aids originate there what's some say in africa something america you know who cares i mean that's that's cured let's find a cure for that and and also uh you know i mean how how would it be so silly for chinese to to invent the lives of the kiwi itself is starting to be in china you know it doesn't make sense so it's a huge notion yeah yeah so david what's your uh you know answers to those questions yeah well thanks henry and uh let me just start by saying i completely agree with what neil just said that the idea that this was something that was unleashed upon the world with intentionality is ludicrous and and and just not a serious idea um why would a country unleash something on itself and everyone else that it trades with and so forth it just doesn't make any sense um so yeah again there are there are areas i think within the context of coven 19 and pandemics more generally that we ought to work on together let me make one point at the outset which is covet 19 is not going to be the last pandemic that we as a world ever face i mean we know that there will periodically be pandemics they'll originate here they'll originate there meaning very you know this country country a country b um and we will have to cope as a global community with pandemics forever uh periodically and so learning how to work together and to actually solve medical and public health and epidemio epidemiological problems is a good thing for our countries to be able to do i think we were able to do that to a greater degree when the when the relationship was less politically charged than it is at present and we've gotten away from it but it's too it's uh it's unfortunate for all of us that that is so and rather than focusing on the blame game and demonizing and so forth in any direction uh just as neil said and as i said earlier we should have been focused on solving the problem right at the outset i'll be honest as i've said and i said in the global times one of china's prominent newspapers uh back in may of last year that i think both the united states and china uh china first chronologically in the united states second chronologically because of the way that the the the pandemic developed didn't respond in the earliest stages of coven 19 to the pandemic with the openness the transparency or the sense of urgency that we should have and i think china made significant mistakes in its early handling and i think the united states also made significant mistakes in its early handling given that the question now just as neil said is how do we actually work together to solve to solve problems for real people and i think we can do that in the areas of uh research and development vaccine um you know comparing notes on what's working what's not working bringing medical practitioners and public policy experts together around the issue of the delta variant specifically helping each other as we did in the early stages in both directions with providing material personal protective equipment uh that was a good thing to do i'm glad that we as a foundation were part of that along with many others in both directions um so there are a lot of things that i think we can do but fundamentally focusing on solving a public health challenge rather than politicizing a medical issue and a public health issues is what we need to be focused on on the issue of um you know afghanistan i think there is clearly an opportunity now because of unfortunately the the tragic circumstances in the country with the taliban retaking afghanistan there is an opportunity and i think a need for the united states and china as players that have significant interests in afghanistan coming together and and really talking to each other honestly about um you know what what we're thinking about the situation what our assessments of the situation are what our you know plans are as individual countries relative to how each country intends to engage afghanistan going forward and i think there's a lot that could be done to exchange views and in fact the bush china foundation uh this october in in less than two months will be bringing people together on this topic to kind of get a conversation started and i'm sure others will be doing that as well but i think any time there's a global crisis or a global challenge the two countries among others that have to be at the table are the united states and china as the two largest economies two members of the p5 permanent members of the security council of the united nations major global players with president presences across economically and in terms of development politically across the globe and afghanistan is a clear case where i think there's benefit to sitting down and saying what do you think about what's happening there and here's what we think about what's happening there just at that level alone there's utility so you know all of these are areas where i think there is room for improvement um and i hope that we'll see that improvement because as i've often said the united states cannot be all that it was meant to become without china and china cannot be all that it was meant to become without america we need each other whether we like it or not we do and we've got to get this relationship right because the consequences of getting it wrong are far-reaching and very unpleasant great thank you uh neil and david bose for for for voicing such a very clear message i think that is really uh very stimulating uh for people in both countries and probably to the world as well i think absolutely right we really need to concentrate on working together in solving the pandemic problem and the challenges and preventing the future pandemics as you said it may not be just this time we could come again and we really have to work together as a human race rather than as a country so so probably should have a summit of some kind or maybe who should convene the big countries together to really work out some recommendations for how to work together uh very importantly i i think that is really facing the whole countries in the world and of course afghanistan i agree with neo that probably even before the last evacuation which you know the u.s should get every country work together you know we could talk i have a country in the region and have a discussion maybe we could have you and have played more active role or or even have a ump skipping force to to safeguard the evacuation uh uh to prevent future disasters so there's many things we could to talk absolutely we need to bring our parties together so now given the time we probably come to the conclusion of our dialogue uh i think we started with this dialogue with the 50 years of the u.s china exchanges uh started with of course with the nixon visit 50 years ago started with uh china joined the un one when george h.w bush as a usual ambassador then and had the you know neil was mentioned that they had a really great encounter then with the chinese delegation but also with the legacy of both president i mean best than george h.w bush but also h george w bush as well i mean uh uh george jr president as well i think that the legacy is is have more exchanges more dialogues uh more you know uh you know understanding of each other and then also maybe we should uh try to avoid uh you know major disasters and deterioration and we should really seek the common ground and minimize difference so maybe just in concluding words from both of you you know what's your final message to to to our audience here in china maybe also around the world uh that uh given the 50 years of anniversary of exchanges between china u.s with china johnny um for 50 years with china uh you know first secret visit by dr kessinger to china 50 years ago and also was the two president of bush maintaining promoting and strengthening the ties during those past years how can we look forward and how can we really uh going forward uh giving this you know bush votes president bush you know that's really proud of them i'm very honored to have a new bush uh dialogue with us you your family is really probably uh you know one of the greatest in the history that produced the two presidents of the united states uh that that now you have a bush foundation to to still working on push china foundation that that shows that the the the family is really care about this relationship so we want to hear the last word from you and also from the president of the ceo of bush china foundation david uh firestamp so neil why don't you go first thank you henry um i think i'll start by reiterating that my father often said publicly openly said that the bilateral relationship between the united states and china was the most important bilateral relationship in the world um and and it was prescient of him to say that many years ago because it's becoming more true now than ever given the the gravity of the the issues that we face you know as humans on earth um i i would further say that globalization has been a given the united states economy our gdp and our individual wealth a huge shot in the arm our biggest partner in the world of globalization has been china so the united states has been a beneficiary of trade as imperfect as it is as david pointed out with all of its warts this trade relationship has benefited our country tremendously and there's no doubt that china has been an enormous beneficiary of of our trade relationship as well um and as we've had more and more cultural exchanges and student exchanges you know there have been millions of chinese visitors to the united states they all go happily go home to china there's you know it's not like there's something restraining them from getting back into their home or their desire to go home but the reality is that we've benefited tremendously from this bilateral relationship and so the past to me is is what we should look for look to to the to kind of predicting the future the future is going to be even better and we've come into this kind of crazy time where china's rise is all of a sudden being recognized by politicians as a threat to the united states and and once we can get over the hurdle that china doesn't represent an a threat of of you know to our national security or to our economy or to our freedoms or to our basic way of life then in in through dialogue we'll establish you know better understanding and more cooperation so i i pledge to continue to work with david and our team at the bush china foundation to do whatever i can to to you know help speak truth and and shed light on on this very very important relationship in a way that hopefully will allow for greater collaborations across the board not only on basic on all these major issues but on on basic things that are taking place day to day our gov governments at all different levels should be having meetings to to you know to share and to better understand to put ourselves in the other guy's shoes and to to you know create a better more peaceful and harmonious world as a result thank you thank you very much neil yeah david please your last word well henry thank you so much and and uh let me just um conclude by saying again it's been an honor to be with you and this is such a wonderful platform and and we're just grateful for the opportunity for to have this conversation you know president george h.w bush brought incredible vision to the u.s china relationship and fundamentally he asked himself a question about the relationship that was different than the kind of thing that we're seeing today today political figures are sort of saying where is the relationship going to be 15 minutes from now when i do my next tweet and what president george h.w bush asked was where do i want this relationship to be in the service of the interests of our nation 50 years from now and a hundred years from now and that far-sightedness that that ability to kind of pay less attention to the headline of the moment and more attention to where this relationship could go over the long haul that was a hallmark of president george h.w bush and that's what we carry forward at the bush china foundation the notion that what's happening today is less important than where this relationship is ultimately going to be and we fundamentally believe as neil has noted and as we've said in this conversation that the u.s china relationship is the most con single most consequential bilateral relationship in the world it matters to america and of course it matters to china as well and we've got to get it right and we have to think in terms of the long term because the turbulence that we're seeing today will not always be with us yes there will always be disagreements and differences in perspective on some pretty important issues but the tonality shifts from time to time uh the way that we think of different countries can shift based on what's happening in the world and we're looking at the long-term interests of the united states that's the angle that we're coming at this relationship from um the final thing i want to say henry is i think i think we as americans need to do a better job as a whole as a whole people and as a nation in recognizing the validity and the truth and the truth of two statements at the same time number one china is the most formidable competitor that the united states will ever have in the lifetimes of every american alive today and and the reverse of that is true as well but it is also true that china is an indispensable partner to the united states whether we like it or not and america is an indispensable partner to china we have a stake in each other's future and we need to be able to work together with that in mind and i think if we can recognize that there is truth to both of those ideas and by the way competition is not a bad thing competition is what has made the world what it is today it's generated progress it's generated the better mousetrap it's generated technological innovation so yes we compete but yes we must also cooperate we understand that at the bush china foundation and i i couldn't be more privileged and honored than to have the opportunity to be neil's partner uh in carrying forward the legacy of someone for whom i have extraordinary reverence and respect president george h.w bush thank you thank you uh david for your really uh impressive remarks uh uh in the last conclusion yeah i think that uh you know half century is really it's long but also it's short but like i i remember when i saw the photos one when uh when george h.w bush uh president was riding bicycle in beijing he was uh he was uh and neil was such a young age i'm a teenager then now we are all getting getting senior getting older so so what has happened in the last half century has really remarkable you know china become you know from uh from the one of the poorest countries now become one of the second largest economy that that's incredible i think i agree with you you know china usa is in december in this sense indispensable for from each other and really need each other uh so how can we come come you know together and continue our efforts to maintain such a relation i think the bush foundation bush china foundation has done a remarkable job and also ccgs also we are trying to become a bridge between uh you know china and outside world so so we hope that we will continue our dialogue we'll continue our discussion but also we will you know uh have those rational have those uh uh you know reasonable and also uh more human touch between our two countries so so neil that uh your your your father and your brother came to the beijing uh summer olympics and the hope that the winter olympics uh you know next february we'll have you come again for the for the good times we hope that uh you know we we have those sports people to people's changes to the exchange tourism you know and uh and all the other uh programs that can revive we really as you as david said we cannot separate from each other we have a huge bond and let's continue the legacy of the of the bush president so thank you so much and thank you for our viewers uh uh so many of them tonight and also around the world thank you so much we'll see you next time thank you thank you so much thank you very much

Channel: The GHWB Foundation for U.S.-China Relations

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Id: 1GaRjrv4OF4

Length: 109min 44sec (6584 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 01 2021