China’s Power: Up for Debate 2021 - Debate 4: China’s Sphere of Influence in the Indo-Pacific

welcome to csis online the way we bring you events is changing but we'll still present live analysis and award-winning digital media from our drakopolis ideas lab all on your time live or on demand this is csis online okay good afternoon and welcome to the fourth and final debate of the 2021 china power conference i'm bonnie lin director of the china power project and senior fellow for asian security at csis thank you for joining us today our debate topic today focuses on china's influence in the indo-pacific is increasingly utilizing its growing power to shape developments along its periphery as china's economy has grown countries in the indo-pacific have become more economically reliant on china china has been willing to coerce countries through targeted economic and trade actions china's economic ties in the region are also poised to deepen as a result of china's inclusion in the regional comprehensive economic partnership one of the world's largest free trade agreements in addition to its growing economic influence the chinese military continues to modernize at a rapid pace china has increasingly asserted its interest in the region against many of its neighbors this april for example china amended its maritime laws to include additional requirements on foreign ships entering what it calls seeds under the jurisdiction of china the recent dod china military power report assesses that if china realizes its modernization goals by 2027 china may have more credible military options in a taiwan contingency given growing chinese power and how assertive china has been this has raised many questions within dc and elsewhere on beijing's intentions and goals for the indo-pacific among them is a key topic of debate which is does china seek a spirit influence in the region and what would a chinese sphere of influence involve this is a hotly debated topic and not surprisingly chinese officials have repeatedly emphasized that china is not seeking a sphere in the influence in the region and is instead seeking to foster stability and economic growth in the indo-pacific so our debate today is on this topic but we want to focus not on what china seeks to do but actually what is possible for china so our debate proposition is given china's growing power china will have a sphere of influence in the pacific by 2027. so before we go to our two very esteemed debaters i want you to take a moment to cast your votes either for or against this proposition so i'm now enabling the poll and you should be able to see it on your screen in a second i will give i will pause here for about 30 seconds to give folks an opportunity to vote and then i will introduce the speakers while we give you more time to vote so we are incredibly fortunate today to have two leading experts as well as practitioners on this topic joining us today so arguing for the proposition is dr graham allison the douglas dylan professor of government at harvard university dr allison is a leading analyst of national security with special interests in nuclear weapons russia china and decision making dr allison was the founding dean of harvard's john f kennedy school of government and until 2027 served as its director as the director of the belfast center for science and international affairs which has ranked the number one university affiliate think tank in the world as assistant secretary of defense in the first clinton administration dr allison received the defense department's highest civilian award the defense medal for distinguished public service for shaping relations with russia ukraine belarus kazakhstan to reduce the former soviet uh soviet nuclear arsenal we're also delighted to have us today argue against the proposition the honorable david stillwell former assistant secretary of state for east asian and pacific affairs at the u.s department of state general stillwell is a seasoned leader in the foreign policy world serving not only as the assistant secretary for east asia and pacific affairs between 2019 and 2021 but also as the asia advisor to the chairman of joint chief of staff during his time in the air force general stillwell was a member of the air force for 35 years and served multiple tours in korea and japan as a linguist a fighter pilot and a commander he enlisted in 1980 and retired in 2015 with the rank of brigadier general during his time he served as a defense attache in the u.s embassy in beijing from 2011 to 2013 and directed the china strategic focus group at u.s indo-pacific command in hawaii from 2017-20 2019 thanks to both graham and dave for joining us today so before we begin debate let me share the results of our live poll so our polling results show that about 78 of the participants agree with the proposition that china will have a spirit influence in the pacific by 2027. 22 percent disagree with this so now let's share the polling results from our twitter poll which we've been conducting the last couple of days the twitter poll shows a slightly different result but partial but that might be partially explained by the question that we asked was slightly different so the proposition for the twitter poll is china will establish a spirit influence in the pacific by 2027 and this poll shows that the results were relatively even 50 50. 50 agree and 50 percent disagree so with that let me now turn the floor uh to graham for his opening uh comments uh he'll have 15 minutes followed by uh dave so graham over to you thank you again so uh thank you very much it's a great opportunity to be part of a panel at csis with david whom i know and respect over many many years and with bonnie who's i've known since you were a student and admired your work i also applaud the efforts css csis has made uh put a spotlight on the dramatic rise of china's power and your excellent graphics on this and to try to promote discussion and debate about the implications of this and so that's why i was happy to be asked to participate today now as to the proposition which i think is not really the best focus i think the proposition is a bit awkward and i think it unfortunately risks taking us down some semantic uh rabbit hole off the target so but any case i'll address the issue we have and then i'll say a few thoughts about where else i would hope we can take the conversation so basically sphere of influence is one of the core concepts in international relations as all of us were ir analysts understand the term was actually initially used the sphere of influence as a as a term in the 19th century but the concept is as old as lucidities when the spartans tried to prevent the athenians from rebuilding the walls around athens after the joint effort of the two had defeated the persians so anybody who's a student of international relations and who doesn't understand that spheres of influence are one of the fundamental concepts probably doesn't deserve to be in your in your audience we take a slide here please if you can do me anna so basically hans morgenthau is the i think teacher or dean of international relations for most of us and as he says it's obvious from political history of the human race that balance of power as one concept and the concomitant spheres of influence are the very essence of international politics so what what do we mean when we say sphere of influence and i would say we mean what the dictionary says it means if we do the next slide which is the oxford english dictionary definition so a sphere of influence is this arena or area in which a country that has power exercises it to persuade another country to behave differently than it would have have behaved otherwise so it's an area in which another country has the power to affect developments through it though it has no formal authority so if that's the definition of sphere of influence then the proposition that will china uh by 2027 have a sphere of influence in the indo-pacific i i think they are given the answer is too obvious it's hard to be labor now i i would suggest as we think about it just ask your ask ourselves three questions first already doesn't china have a sphere of influence in the indo-pacific today that is an area in which it's using its power to shape and change behaviors of other countries that would be otherwise did it not have a sphere of influence secondly given the projections of china's economic political military growth will it have an enlarged sphere of influence in the in the pacific by 2027 the anniversary of the 100th anniversary of the pla and again i think the answer seems to me obvious so thirdly if trump and biden are correct and i believe they are or were correct in defining china as a great power competitor what is that what does that mean what the definition of a great power competitor doesn't that mean that just by definition it has the power to and will exercise that power to influence the behavior of other governments and in the chinese case in the indo-pacific so as i look at it i think the answer is yes yes and yes so china has a sphere of influence today it's almost impossible to make the argument to the contrary but i'll be interested uh in what david says about it uh by 2027 will that sphere of influence likely be enlarged i believe the answer is yes and when we talk about china as a great power competitor or we per se recognizing that it has great power and that it will exercise that power to advance its interests and values and is doing so and again i think the answer is yes so we're to go from here and i think i hope in the discussion we can focus on the more important question is given that china has a sphere of influence today and is expanding that sphere of influence what can the u.s and our allies and partners do to try to maintain a favorable balance of power or correlation of forces in order to protect our interests and values that's beyond the scope of the point the proposition stated but i hope in the conversation we can go there so let me try to support this proposition by simply asking or making us or asking us to think does china have a sphere of influence today in the military realm well what would the commander of pacom say does it have a economic sphere of interest in the indo-pacific what would lee kuan yew say is it going to have an expanded sphere of influence in this region again what is pacom planning on what did lee kuan yew anticipate and finally if this is a new realm of great power competition as jim mattis the former secretary of defense whom both david and i greatly admire said what does that mean in terms of china's ability and will to act and use its power to affect the behavior of other nations in the indo-pacific so for those of us in the unclassified community we had a rare window into the classified discussions when admiral davidson the commander of bank of indo-pacific testified in march for the senate armed services committee and somehow his slides leaked so if we take the first slide please so here is the slide that leaked from march of this year uh testimony by admiral davidson in which as you'll notice in the brown area he calls this a area of pla influence area and sphere are synonyms so what this chart shows is that in the period after 1996 when i was in the pentagon when china tried to coerce taiwan and the us brought up carriers and forced it to back down china began a building program which even by 1999 had unlocked given it a much bigger footprint of influence in the adjacent waters so that's 1999. now what about today this was admiral davidson's second slide if we take the next slide so again according to davidson slide uh china's military sphere of influence or an anti-access area denial capability has now expanded in this instance almost to the second island chain so first island chain i think uh inside of that taiwan out to okinawa second island chain all the way to guam so these are areas in which having deployed d21 so-called carrier killer missiles china is able to threaten american military forces if they attempt to operate in this area and finally his third slide if we take the next one projects to 2025 that's not quite 2027 but it's close enough and you can see that on the current trajectory china's military sphere of influence that is arena in which it can deny the u.s the ability to operate without great risk of being sunk uh is expanded so just to conclude my take on the expansion of the military sphere of influence china has since 1996 built up military capabilities that impact the us and our operations and as admiral davidson reportedly testified in the classified session but which making the statement that former vice chairman winnefell and former separate deputy secretary of defense bob work have also commented on today when the u.s plans for scenarios in the peripheral seas around china the carriers remain outside the first island chain almost a thousand miles away beyond the reach of the d26s which therefore means they are basically beyond the reach of the battle if it should be a battle over taiwan so military sphere of influence yes what about in the economic realm if we take the next slide so this is a slide i made as part of our great rivalry report and it's hard for most americans to remember that while in the year 2000 the u.s was the major trading partner of everybody in 2020 china is the overwhelming trading partner of every major uh asian economy so twice as much trade with south korea as the u.s does a time and a half or as big trade as japan way way way bigger than the us with australia so what so what does that mean well it means that if we look remember the incident in which the japanese captured a fishing boat that was a chinese fishing boat in in in japanese waters and held the captain china cut off all the exports of rare earth minerals to china to japan that that was about 97 of their imports and to no one's surprise japan quickly released the captain or if we wanted more recent and relevant example think about south korea and missile defenses in 2016 when south korea angered china by announcing the decision to participate in the u.s lead terminal high area defense area fed by punishing and ultimately basically destroying the chinese operations of a major south korean uh retail conglomerate latte what did how was that ultimately resolved and it was resolved in october of 2017 when south korea announced what they called three no's no additional fed batteries no participation in the u.s regional military defense system and no trilateral alliance with the us and japan so again back to our proposition is this a demonstration of china's use of its economic power to change the behavior of other nations in the indo-pacific and i think obviously it is finally i just remind you of lee kuan yew about who is my basically my tutor uh fortunately i had a good fortune to be a student of his in effect for many years to try to understand more about china and china's expanding influence and as he said chinese always say oh no we don't have a sphere of influence we're we're we're we're not a hegemon uh uh all powers are equal big and small but liquid you said when we do something they don't like they say to us know your place there are 1.4 billion chinese think about how many people you have know your place so as lee kuan yew said the anticipation of that already significantly shapes the behavior of other states for their fear of coercion and thus they pray a degree of deference to china and that's exactly what happens when you're within somebody else's sphere of influence so finally uh secretary mattis in 2018 uh issued what he thought of as a in effect a wake-up call or an announcement of the end of primacy so if we take the next slide so this is the 2018 national defense strategy and as he says the primacy which people cherished and which many people have got so deeply embedded in their heads that they can't recognize the world we're facing today uh misses the fact that there's been as he says a major shift in the global security environment one in which we now have to recognize china as a great power competitor so he contrasted this with the before and after which is then essentially the consequence of china's establishment of a sphere of military influence in the indo-pacific before he says the u.s has enjoyed uncontested or dominant superiority in every operating domain we could deploy our forces when we want it assemble them where we want it and operate it how we want it that was then today and going forward as he says every domain is contested air land sea space and cyberspace so china's buildup of its military capabilities has increased its ability to contest u.s activities and the consequence of that has been to change the costs and the risks and actually the plans for our operations so just to conclude uh does china have a sphere of influence economic and military in the indo-pacific today yes will it have an enlarged sphere of influence in 2027 yes almost certainly and the question of whether and how the u.s can work with allies and aligned to contest that and to sustain a correlation of forces to which china will have to adapt is a question i think we should focus on going forward thank you professor allison thank you for the very in-depth uh discussion as well as the very clear definition of what a sphere of influence is so let me now turn to general stillwell to offer your views on this topic including if you agree with this and if you're using the same definition of sphere of influence so dave over to you oh thank you um to your first question uh it's the same definition but i i look at it more broadly uh rather than focusing purely on military and economic or look at the overall or comprehensive as xi jinping would say and here's my slide it's a it's an excellent book on um how this phenomenon works and how we need to get out of this mode of comparing bullets and rivets and and those things and look at the overall picture that includes its ability to influence hearts and minds and reputation uh reputational cost and the rest so my position is that the chinese influence in the region will be greatly diminished by 2027 and i'm going to point to trend that began in 2010 and continue today in short we have achieved and we've seen peak china that's my position so for 25 years i was a fighter pilot as you can see from my decorations in my my room here and i was convinced that really the only way to change behavior of another country was through force you would coerce them through threat or use of force and not having seen diplomacy in action i didn't understand the mass or the state department how diplomacy works or its utility upon arriving in the embassy in beijing in 2011 i was forced with the opportunity uh to consider how diplomacy works even military diplomacy and granted i wasn't that effective and granted it's difficult military diplomacy we were more effective in other areas but people like bob wong and ryan hass and other very good friends that i met while i was there kind of guided me into the light on this and so i began to think about what other means there are of changing people's behavior and in this case the prc fast forward to 2019 i am at the state department and um i don't have bullets and bombs anymore to force people to change their behavior i only have whiskey and words as a diplomat um and the conclusion i came to is although it's a much slower process and more difficult process it has more lasting effects because what diplomacy does is convinces people of your position creating long-term effect look at the 70 years of nato and our alliances in the indo-pacific and the rest uh we don't force alliances the people join in because they share our ideals and and our our thoughts um the compelling part so you can either coerce people or you can convince them and in my mind uh the coercion is a very short-term uh process and this is what china has been using as dr allison right they pointed out using economic and military coercion uh over time but what we are seeing now uh you know as we uh speak china is more and more uh countries people others are willing to stand up uh and resist uh this chinese coercive power it's not to say that they don't have the ability to convince but that ability is waning as we've seen a series of empty promises uh broken none more egregious than the uh walking away from the joint declaration uh related to hong kong uh that they did uh in 2020 and so we'll have they will have a sphere of influence they will have a spirit of influence in 2027 but it's going to be significantly diminished after 20 years of endless empty promises uh beijing's ability to exert influence versus compelling acquiescence has waned considerably and will continue to do so the trends are almost all negative i'm going to run through some headlines here uh a major factor in beijing's failure is their failure to follow through on their commitments which has eroded their credibility and legitimacy of what they claim to be a better form of government because it calls commitments and treaties mere scraps of paper the most egregious example as i mentioned was a hong kong uh which is continuing to affect them as the olympics come up by the way and this short-sighted decision has significant knock-on effects to start with in taiwan and the um pretty much elimination of the woman the kmt as a political factor they're having to re rebuild uh beijing's loss of political diplomatic and economic influence is attributable to its failure to recognize the importance of preserving its credibility uh and trust by making its words and its actions align this newly aggressive china has definitely eroded china's brand which will have impact on its ability and influence going forward so the first step uh in solving any problem is to recognize there is a problem and for the longest time we have denied that i again am taking heart and as i watch the headlines and and pole data go that um china's comprehensive power is being diminished and we can talk about economics and military those are areas that require more work again as you look at broad political power and political warfare their ability to affect others uh through their influence is definitely not what it was five years ago or ten years ago so here are some headlines pew poll 78 of people from 14 countries surveyed have negative or very negative impressions of xi jinping and nobody likes cult personality another headline uk blacklists dozens of chinese biotech firms that ate the military 10 years ago in the embassy or or five years ago with the joint staff this was unthinkable that we would actually take these steps and others are following suit uh here's another one harvard professor goes on trial on charges of lying about his ties with china this is dr charles lieber another headline hackers backed by china are exploiting a major security flaw xi jinping's leadership style call on micromanager that leaves underlying scrambling people are actually talking in beijing communist party members are actually talking because they are frustrated with how things have gone and how um you know xinping has probably uh overstepped uh lithuanian diplomats leave china after beijing downgrades the embassy lithuanian is a country for three million people and this reflects young j chur's attitude that you're all you know china's a great a big country and you're all small countries and that's just the way it is believe me that does not give you positive um convincing power or influence in in any country um especially in the indo-pacific and finally um u.s public turns against the chinese communist party in the worst poll savaging uh since last year here's two funny ones um the call for china cadres to have three kids sparks outrage if you've been watching the demographic problem that they've created is is really starting to come to uh uh call and so going they've gone from one child policy to three child policy and they have directed all communist party members 90 million to have three children uh under uh pain of uh punishment and then there was one this morning i didn't get basically mandates vaccine or it eliminates opportunities for vasectomies for men so again these are things that affect china's brand not just in china but outside uh influence comes in many forms it's no longer just a cold war geographic or military you know spheres of influence issue like we saw with the warsaw pact uh and others and again going back to other forms of influence social uh information is a big one uh we've been losing that fight for a long time people are starting to wake up uh in our internet social media um another issue and then dr allison rightly pointed out is it's not the us versus china they've tried to make these contests bilateral but as we know um it's the like-minded allies and partners things like the quad and auckas and others um beijing has no counter to that so whether it's in a military economic or other spheres it's very difficult for uh the beijing um to respond because who do they can who can they fall back on we you mentioned china russia that's a possibility uh again one worth discussing interesting and encouraging for me that both eu and nato have become interested in this and so the spheres of influence can be um responded to with again as you mentioned balancing of power and again getting europe and nato involved uh has been uh a very positive development we've seen the us um germany france canada others actively deploying in the military space to the south china sea and elsewhere in the region to make known that we have our options as well in terms of balancing power the china eu summit has been delayed indefinitely again the conditions are not right they're noting and on a personal note i was invited to rome three weeks ago to talk to the native defense college on exactly this topic and so uh along with others and so they're paying attention and that's encouraging also it's not just the region it's more global japan has been again a very positive outcome here as they make very explicit commitments to the defense of taiwan this began in 2010 as dr allison noted with a chinese fishing trawler ramming a japanese coast guard boat and the result may have been a short-term acquiescence due to the rare earth issue but the long-term result was prime minister abe shinzo the the dpj only lasted about a year and a half and after the 2010 event that government fell and a powerful ldp returned and this is getting what we see this is the result of this sort of heavy-handed uh approach and it does have effect on china's spheres of influence india has come on very strong both by itself and as a part of the quad um and so even though hard power is increasing it's being checked geographically with allies and partners the gwadar port project it's still indo-pacific uh as you have seen in lately in the news is not going very well there's active protest because the promises uh have proven empty and there's been no benefit in fact it's been uh mostly to pakistan's detriment um so more broadly china's non-military influence uh is premised on a single factor for me is credibility you can't promise everything and give nothing you know my formulation there is if you take words and you multiply it by deeds words and then actions the result is is trust or credibility and beijing has played this middle power approach for the longest time and has been given short shrift to following through on his commitments i mentioned hong kong non-militarization in south china sea i mean almost every day i mean how many times have you seen the people's daily or sinhwa say have xi jinping saying china will continue to reform and open its markets to the greater world while doing the opposite this has gotten a lot of the economic sphere interested although there's a lot of work left to do uh our businesses and sadly not so much our financial world is starting to take notice and it's going to be more difficult for them to continue down that path so um the p china is inevitable after the world finally acknowledged that these are empty promises and that you cannot put stock in what china says and therefore you need a verification regime if you remember in may of 2019 uh leo came back to beijing with an agreement and then it tore it up because because the u.s side insisted on verification regime china was going to sign it and then not follow through we're seeing this with the current um um you know the tariff issues the the agreed on uh frame the framework that was agreed on during the trump administration i think beijing has fallen through on about 60 which is going to mean even harder uh um position of the u.s and u.s trade if you watched beijing's response to the summit for democracy it was shrill because they saw that this is their weak point this is where they're vulnerable they claim that this new type authoritarianism uh is good and and positive and you know is uh applicable outside of its borders and uh the summit for democracy you know proved otherwise uh this again affects their ability to project influence not just in the region but in the world um look in the informational and cultural space i mean this matters social media matters it changes the ways people think vote act um the world tennis association and the detention of pong pung shui he's got a lot of people up in arms you would have thought that the nba would have taken a similar approach when daryl mori uh and and uh made his tweets supporting the people of taiwan i mean hong kong sadly it didn't but the wk example is a positive one and we hope that the nba the nfl and others will follow suit um the business interests are great but you still have a reputation to maintain and you still have to stand up for who we are uh as in the free world the genocide determination another major hit after the u.s made that determination while i was in the state department we have recently an independent tribunal came to the same conclusion you can deny access to the shindong area but people are going to find out and you know information is like water it leaks the olympic boycott yes it's diplomatic but it has impact and you could tell from beijing's response it's uh important we have yet to hear about the michaels this is another example of beijing hard power and losing in the influence space you know uh the huawei heiress hmong it was detained in canada and the prc wasn't even apologetic about saying they took two uh hostages in canada and china uh and held them until to exert pressure not influence but pressure on canada to change its course we heard from hmong we have not heard from the michaels and i think this uh we need to hear from them because it's important to show how they were treated compared to how hmong was treated it will change people's approach to this chinese influence uh success the belton road forum the barf barf one the attitude was that belton road one belt one road is china's gift to the world interestingly after having experienced it barf 2 message was 1.1 road isn't so bad and these are all positive indicators and i think the trends are going in the right direction um in geopla politics that's a little more difficult but the effects are there mekong water conference basically showing that the mekong downstream countries need that water and china is going to have to to play ball another one is uh the asean for claimants in the south china sea as you saw the u.s changed well in 2016 uh unclaused ruled in philippine philippines favor a small country took on a large country ruled in their favor that china's claims were illegal and its actions were illegal the u.s changed its policy to match last year in july and so us policy also denies china's unlawful maritime claims uh in the south china sea uh and the region has begun to echo that pick up on that and finally demographics um this is part of chinese influence sometimes for better or worse but as i mentioned um one-third of the chinese population is uh is old is over 60. this is not a positive thing this is a negative thing if you've gone to a restaurant in beijing what you'll see is a table of seven one child generally male two parents and then two grandparents on each side that's great for the kid because he's getting lots of attention and food but in 20 years that kid's gonna have to support six people that is not a sustainable uh demographic and without the ability to draw people through influence uh in terms of um immigration this is gonna be a very difficult uh problem for them to solve so finally um to have staying power and to maintain their spheres of influence great powers need buy-in and they need willing cooperation not coercion coercion is temporary the soviet union had to exhort force to maintain its warsaw pact uh sphere beijing should have continued its hide and bite policy and made gradual uh changes but for some reason xi jinping is in a hurry and he's uh basically abandoned heidenbeide uh which is is creating these problems as we saw with the soviet union this use of compellence can create the short-term acquiescence but to have staying power sustainable spheres of influence require beijing to move from coercing to convincing and it's clear even small countries are no longer convinced thank you general thank you a very different perspective in terms of whether china has the ability to have a spirit influence particularly as you argue that china's power might be declining from between now and 2027 so let me now turn the floor back to uh professor allison so graham over to you for your initial five-minute rebuttal so thank you very much david i thought an excellent presentation and we're going to quit calling you general and call your ambassador so i i like the discovery of diplomacy and the focus on it i think that's a helpful reminder i think you also rightly remind us that china is not 10 feet tall china has many weaknesses and that china's recent diplomacy which has largely consisted of bullying and their wolf warriors has had a negative impact most places so a significant decline in their popularity i think all the evidence shows that so all those things seem correct but i think when you get to the bottom lines uh i still strongly disagree and so i i start first to try to just say we should look at the facts so let me advertise a study that we've just released at belfor uh we've released two of the five chapters first one was on the great technology rivalry and the second one just yesterday on the great military rivalry and the third one is on the great economic rivalry and the fourth one is on the great diplomacy rivalry and the fifth one is on the systems rivalry or between democracy and autocracy so just briefly if you look what the what the study did was respond to an assignment that asked what just compare for us the facts uh the year 2000 and then documenting year by year to where we stand today in 2020. so snapshot 2000 snapshot 2020 and the evidence about what happened in between and you can't look at this without being genuinely shocked even i mean i study i watch this problem all the time but when i look i think no no it cannot be that china is a serious competitor of the us and quantum how could that be that couldn't be to which answer is excuse me it is well china could not be ahead of the u.s in some applications of a.i well if you look at the technology rivalry chapter you'll see that china is clearly ahead of the us in facial recognition in voice recognition in integrated surveillance even in fintech despite the recent disruption at ant so what this what these studies show and i think what the evidence shows is that in 2020 a nation that we could hardly find in our rear view mirror we cannot find in our rearview mirror today because it's beside us or sometimes even right on our heels or slightly ahead of us so if you think about the olympics basically if this were a series of olympic contests a nation that was in the distant past this in the in in our back distance in the back in the rear view mirror is now beside us or even slightly ahead of us so with respect to the military look at the military balance over taiwan david i'm sure is familiar with this in 1996 clinton felt very comfortable the pentagon very comfortable in recommending send two carriers up and force china to back down as uh as davidson testified if that were the scenario today you would not send two carriers into that area because they would be at risk of being sunk so the military balance in the regional has changed significantly if you look at the uh technology rivalry a country that was as i say distant past is now as we say a full spectrum peer competitor one of the most interesting areas that i've tried to drill down one is ai and eric schmidt has been my co-author there the fellow who had been the chief executive of google when they got deep into ai as he says in the year 2000 you couldn't see china it was back with europe not really a competitor today in the ai space google sees china as a serious pure competitor if i do economics in the year 2000 you had a poor developing country just getting entry into the wto and the us was the number one trading partner of everybody today you have an economy that's as big as the u.s depending on whether you use mer or ppp but certainly in the range of and was the dominant trading partner of everybody then who was the world's manufacturing workshop we were who's the world's manufacturing workshop today so we go through the and in the diplomacy arena just as you say fortunately even though for americans as bill burns puts it in his memoir diplomacy is a lost art and unfortunately i'm afraid it is the good news is at least it hasn't been found in beijing so their ugly bullying is not being successful so just to the bottom line has china today the ability to impact the behavior of south korea and japan and the us not necessarily whether they like them but how they behave the answer is it does will it continue to do that in 2027 i think unfortunately yes it will i don't think that's deniable can we could we imagine a sustainable us strategy for doing a better job of balancing this seesaw so that we have a favorable correlation of forces for our interest and values yes we could but will we do it that's the big question so maybe we should go there before we're done buddy but my view is that yes they have a sphere of influence today yes they will have a sphere of influence in 2027 and what we're arguing about is how significant that will be and which of our interests and which of our values it will impact thank you professor allison many questions hopefully that we can get to during the q a too but let me turn first today general stillwell for your initial rebuttals there it's tough to argue with your points um you know all uh very well argued and um backed up um i guess i would say just in general i would quote churchill here and say america will always do the right thing after it's tried everything else we've tried everything else all the things you pointed out um were us helping i gave a speech at csis in december 2019 on this you know running through 40 years of us actually helping china become our biggest competitor and we did it with a full heart and i think for all the right reasons that make again our worldview attractive all the numbers you quote are exactly accurate but they don't forecast uh what happens in five years and if you look at the curves if you look at those trends on trade in manufacturing they are starting to bend and so my point is that in five years they will have bent i think we've reached peak china which is why they're bending if you look at what covet has done to china not only a massive blast to any credibility it has you know after arresting a doctor who simply notif noted that we have a problem here and then not allowing anybody in for investigation and all those things and then the subsequent shutdowns that have made doing business in china even more difficult if you look at what businesses are doing they are leaving china it's not a wholesale route yet but it is no longer attractive demographics labor costs are too expensive now um regulation is increasing and it's tougher to do business and then with the michaels pong shui and all these others it's just dangerous living in china if you look at the national security law it says if you say or do or anything on your computer something that offends the communist party or undermines its national security uh you're therefore subject to not just arrest inside china but arrest outside too so it's extra territorial these things are all having an effect yes they are they have a definite uh growing trend in tech i mentioned dr charles libra and there are others through their thousand talents program where they even infiltrated our universities and academia and our research uh facilities uh if we continue to shut that tap off which we have done by uh eliminating confucius institutes uh you know in my world closing houston consulate which was uh doing just uh terrible things to both the uh academic and um md anderson medical center they were at in their wholesale stealing what happens to this magnificent r d capability in china when they can no longer borrow or steal uh all the knowledge that's out here and available that door is closing and um it will continue to close i believe and by 2027 it will be entirely indigenous development and the chinese people are just as creative and capable but they're in a government that doesn't allow free thought and creative thought because it's dangerous and we've seen that as well um i guess uh the last thing is yes you're right military it is hard to make the argument that they've peaked um but i gotta say that uh and my understanding of the plan of the ccp is they do not have great confidence in um their military capability uh there's another great book here on dung shopping's long war the invasion of vietnam 1979 and the great doubts they had about the loyalty and the capability of the pla those doubts remain and so the taiwan option still i believe remains very distant there'll be a lot of posturing and there will be a lot of empty threats what we need to do is that they're empty acknowledge the complete lack of credibility and do what we do uh and stay true to ourselves thank you thank you dave so now let's move to the q a portion i see a number of folks have already figured out how to submit questions uh you basically type in the question to the chat function and then we'll see it from our end so as we're waiting for questions to pop up i did want to touch on a topic that was mentioned briefly by both of our distinguished uh debaters which is uh russia so i want to ask about as we think about china's ambitions and its influence in the indo-pacific to what extent do you see china-russia relations as either strengthening or weakening china's sphere of influence in india between now and 2027. so maybe let's let me turn to professor allison first and then today bonnie thank you very much good question i wrote a piece in 2019 was the cover story of the national interests basically taking so answering or arguing that the relationship between russia and china and particularly the relationship between xi and putin was stronger and more significant than u.s alliances with many of our most precious allies and then to make it pointed since my colleague bob blackwell had been ambassador to india was much more consequential than the relationship between the us and india so the the the peg for the piece i hadn't actually meant to do it but they the magazine got after me and asked me to go look and do it and so i tried to find a framework for comparing the strengths and significance of the lies and aligned and i i couldn't find any framework so we invented a poor man's version of it but basically if you if you look at it spig bashing had the insight back in 2017 just before he died he said what the americans are doing is creating an alliance of the aggrieved that we couldn't have designed a better policy for pushing two unnatural parties into an alignment or alliance and i think that basically is a right insight i give the reasons why first brilliant diplomacy by xi jinping he immediately figured out russia was going to matter to him and he could deal with putin so they now call themselves best buddies and when they have conversations like the one they had just yesterday or the day before what is the first topic they always talk about how the americans are trying to undermine undermine our governments and specifically our regimes and our leadership and are they correct about that well to some extent yes we don't like their autocracies and the way they behave secondly if you look at that compar their their sharing of military intelligence and of their military and sales and military arms and even military exercises again compare it with u.s and india more significant so i go on that a checklist i think unfortunately this is a it is an unnatural mattis would always say they can't possibly be related to you know having to have a healthy or have a working relationship because if you were living next door to china if you think we're concerned about china's rise what about russia with a half of its territory essentially unpopulated and full of resources on this budding a border that's full of people and no resources so it's very hard to make these two countries work so effectively together but the combination of she's brilliance and our clumsiness i think has done so thank you general stillwell um i'll just give an example of why it's not working it's the friendship bridge that they built uh over the i think the usury river connecting heilongjiang uh to uh the soviet uh siberian chinese built this beautiful bridge the russians never built the uh the approach to it so the bridge that doesn't work i think that may have been remedied since but this is a demonstration of just how a little love is lost um the city of vladivostok the original the chinese name of it is hai shenwai right sea cucumber cliffs if you talk to chinese netizens when they hear the the term uh when when the government says um not one inch of uh sovereign territory bequeathed to us by our ancestors they asked the first day one of the first questions i asked is what about vladimir stock or i shall why there's this sense of uh aggrievement there as well and and it's interesting question i think and it's a really great question that uh nadia uh uh nadeshiralan addressed in her book on central asia is you have the traditional russian spheres of influence in central asia and it's being impeded imposed on and intruded on by the belton road so you've got chinese pipelines and roads and rail going right through um central asia to get access to eurasia into and europe um and there's definitely hard feelings about that not just in the countries themselves but in moscow and so uh and and finally look how much the shanghai cooperation organization has produced i mean what india it has members of india and pakistan um it it's a bumper sticker without any real capability it could be and the concern is that that thing actually were to become effective it could possibly create problems but again with india involved i can't see that happening i got a point to the history um you know they fought active war in 1969 and before that it doesn't seem like it's going to be easy to paper over those differences his point is dr allison's points correct there is u.s actions and u.s defending itself you know globally is creating a an unnatural relationship but it really is unnatural and it's not going to last thank you so i have a actually a couple of questions from the audience for general stillwell a number of folks wanted to see the book that you were uh highlighting first if you could just um because we couldn't see the author of the book so it's political warfare by who's okay great and then along the lines one of the um questions from the audience i thought was quite insightful um the question is saying that dr allison is talking about higher power and general stillwell is talking about soft power basically arguments aren't too contradictory from this audience member and his question is will the threat of a rising china push china's neighbors away and will they be intimidated subjected to china's strength so general still i want i wanted to first turn this question to you and then over to firster allison another reason i showed this book uh you know they're fighting vietnam the history there is also instructive if you go to vietnam uh and if you go to hanoi there's a war museum there and as you walk in the first building it's got i think 27 busts of great uh vietnamese generals i'm going oh boy here we go vietnam war two of those generals fought the us and the french the other 25 thought the chinese invasion of 1000 the chinese invasion of 120 the chinese invasion like that there is no level lost uh among japanese 14 neighbors of which they fought wars with 12. and they're fighting now india today um you know when you're a great power like that when you're a big power you just you naturally create antibodies and especially when you're using hard power and not soft power um through pressure invasions influence in those things right you know um influence as in violating china's policy of bulgan right non-interference internal affairs of other countries very cynically do the exact opposite um i i think it's a very easy beyond the economic draw it doesn't take much to explain and argue that china's neighbors are not real happy with being aligned even pakistan is lips and teeth ally so thank you professor allison well again i think i mainly agree with the with david here i think that it's fascinating the relationship between china and vietnam this is the 50th anniversary of the you know kissinger show and lie conversations and for those that have never read the transcript those are now they had been previously highly classified but they're available and they're fascinating so obviously kissinger is mainly looking for help for getting the us out of vietnam this is 1971 just 50 years ago and uh uh sho and lai and mao are mainly interested in taiwan and that's where you ultimately come out but uh uh show and lie says the kissinger says you know we actually know a lot about vietnam and it comes up and henry says well what about that he says you know actually we were defeated by vietnam by two uh women women gender women generals and kissinger hadn't didn't know the history he said what and he said yeah he said actually i went and laid and showed lysa and i went and laid flowers at the graves of those generals so there's certainly no love loss in vietnam for for uh china one of the senior leaders once said to a colleague of mine he said have you ever looked at the map of vietnam and i said no they look at it says it looks a little bit like a backbone but it's kind of deformed he says that's us and it's deformed because china's been sitting on our back for 4 000 years so i think china has left something to be desired in its relations with its neighbors but before we get too uh hyperbolic about this it's worth remembering on the u.s behavior towards our neighbors and how they actually may think about that so nobody in mexico who's a strategic thinker forgets that big chunks of a country are now called new mexico maybe that will give you a hint or texas some portions or california in my book destined for war i have a chapter on what if xi champaign were just like us which is one that americans like the least of this one but it compares american behavior at the beginning of the 20th century when we were entering what we were sure was going to be an american century under the leadership of one of my heroes teddy roosevelt and the way we behaved and if you look at it i think if teddy roosevelt and xi jinping were having a conversation teddy would say you know you seem to be pretty tame pretty reserved as compared i won't take you through all of the chapter and verse only to say that if you go look to see how did the u.s acquire the biggest uh forest in our national forest system which is the strongest national forest in the fat tale of alaska i've been there fishing it's absolutely wonderful we basically stole it from canada fair and square if you go to the canadian national museum they have a great display about this i'm glad we did we can fish in the territory and it's now ours but uh i think that's not forgotten by canadian strategists fortunately if you're living with weak neighbors who need you more than they do they can learn to live with things that are fairly uncomfortable and even most of the time forget about them thank you so professor allison another question for you actually a couple of questions i'll roll up into one so you mentioned um china's significant growth from 2000 until 2020 and the range of studies that you look at here from your perspective what are what do you see as some of the major weaknesses in china's development now or up until 2027 a particular question relates to if you think for example china's financial system and whether china suffers from potential major economic vulnerability from that it's a great question though you can find serious analysts who argue that china has peaked david mentioned that and who argue that weaknesses in china's economy are now coming home to roost and there's 10 favorite ones and you can find equally serious analysts who argue that yes china has huge obstacles but it's demonstrated in the past that it can overcome them and it will do so in the future actually the conclusion of this chapter that i mentioned of our great rivalry on the economic rivalry the conclusion of it is ask the question will china continue over the next decade growing at more than twice the rate of the u.s since it's the relative position of the two parties that matter and it says here's the arguments for no and here's the arguments for yes so in the no column you start with debt and the real estate bubble that has been recently lanced over evergrand though if you watch the way to jump to the yes column the chinese government has handled that it's been much more effectively than the u.s handling of the crisis we faced after laymen and without a great financial crisis and without the risk of a great recession so there's demographics david mentioned that the demographics is a serious problem created by a crazy one child policy that's now relaxed over time that will adjust well will that affect next the workforce well the workforce will be shrunk as the demographic shrink but the retirement age in china today is 60 so it's not very hard to adjust that to the american level of 65 and therefore normalize your workforce as required plus this additional 500 million people they're trying to get out of the countryside into the cities so that's another huge undertaking but in terms of of your workforce so you can work your way down this list my bet is that uh if i had to bet i mean i would say oh my goodness i but if you look at the people who make their living betting [Music] does elon musk think that his evs are going to be produced more and sold more in china or in the us china they've just opened this big new factory does apple the world's most valuable company produce its iphones in the us or somewhere else i mean in china or somewhere else in china so that's where iphones are assembled does the world's biggest manager of money blackrock has it doubled down or has it reduced its exposure to china it's doubled down does the world's largest uh foreign investor ubs with their voting about china they've doubled down so i think the if i follow the smartest companies and the smartest investors they may turn out to be wrong but they're betting that china will continue at a slower growth rate than it's seen in the past but at more than twice the rate of the us and since for me it's the geopolitics that's that i care about more than the economics the economics is the wherewithal for that i would like to take comfort in the fact that they had that the trends had had uh had turned and they had peaked but i not going to count on it thank you let me um now make sure that we do ask the the question that um allison actually asked at the beginning and turned that question to uh general stillwell which is um one of the questions that you raised uh first allison was what are the main or major ways that china that if uh as we look forward china's sphere of influence will challenge u.s interests so i'd like to turn that question to a general stillwell and maybe we can then wrap up quickly um and i'll give a little bit time for both speakers to also address the question that first rounds when you add uh asked early on which is what should the united states do very briefly as the last question after that so general stillwell to you first on ways in which china spheres influence challenge us interest and then any thoughts that you have for what the united states should do um good let me just answer uh make one very important point here um there are a lot of stats quoted about business opportunities in china you can't believe any because you can't verify them the official death rate from covert in china today is still four thousand six hundred and eighty six it has been that since last april that is the official death toll there is no stat i can think of that's more definite than someone's alive or dead and we know it's much much bigger than that but legitimacy hinges on this and now they've told this lie and they can't back down from it and then on tesla tesla is being pushed out of china and all that technology is going to a chinese company called neo um apple iphones you're seeing tim cook there's a story that he paid 250 billion dollars to maintain access to apple iphones in china these things are not sustainable and we need to continue to try to verify um these things again if my theory is correct and we've seen peak power uh china's um beijing not china remember it's the communist party not the people um but their actions will become more dire and desperate and so it's going to become more overt and it's going to become easier to to uh identify but we have to have the will to identify and then deal with it and this involves department of justice fbi and the rule of law matters in this country this is why we have an attractive uh philosophy is we dismiss cases unless we have you know strong evidence strong proof convincing proof uh unlike kangaroo courts in china uh today and you're seeing you know in hong kong where as um judicial independence was the one thing that gave hong kong some semblance of autonomy you're seeing even that whittled and you can't even speak of it judicial independence inside china i mean did the michaels get any due process and how can you do business in a country this is what hong kong's utility was was uh it had the legal framework would at least give foreign businesses opportunity inside china to take them to task so my point is the challenges will become more overt but i don't think they can afford to be more overt in the military sphere because you end up with power balancing and it won't be just japan i mean the australians said if there's a conflict it would be conceivable that australia not being would not be involved india is joining in in uh exercises in the indian ocean in the south china sea and so it's a it's a push-pull it's a newtonian each action creates a reaction and if these these are not the type of actions that people can understand and buy into uh it's going to create even greater power balancing and reactions thank you so before we go that's my concluding point thank you so before we go back to both speakers for your last words on what the united states should do with our allies and partners i did want to activate the poll so folks can do the final debate poll as we're listening to our speakers wrap up their um their thoughts on this topic so i've just activated the poll and i'll close the poll after we um turn to professor allison and again general stowell for any last comments on um very briefly what you think what is the top thing that you think the united states should do with our allies and partners as we think about china's sphere of influence so uh general so sorry professor allison over to you okay so let me make just one brief comment on on david's point and then i'll answer your question i think i think the uh uh one needs to look very carefully at uh what actually businesses are doing in china and what they know about it so if you ask the folks at starbucks they know how many lattes they sold if you ask the people at kentucky fried chicken they know how much chicken they're selling if you ask tesla how many cars have they sold in china this year answer 416 000 so do they have good data you bet that's their business and i think if you look at the financial companies as they've been investing again their information system gets beneath the government system and way better than what you would read in the newspapers so i would say don't discount china's economic growth as and the judgments about it as reflected by people who are betting their money and big money they may be wrong but it's clear they're not doing this as a matter of emotion or otherwise in terms of what to do i think the objective for the u.s that i think the biden administration has appreciated is that china's power is rising and will continue to rise so i compare this in my book to a see-saw as if there were kids sitting on either end of uh of a seesaw on a playground and if the party on the other side of the seesaw is bulking up so that my feet are lifting off the ground i either have to eat a lot and that's hard to do or i have to get some other parties with weight to sit on my side of the seesaw and david mentioned actually we've been doing this to some extent with some success and china as it's been bullying people is actually helping us so to the extent that japan makes a clearer choice to be aligned with us in the quad and even begins to think about planning for those purposes that's weight and it counts on this side the orcas to the extent that australia is making a long-term bet on the u.s military relationship for their submarines this is somebody sitting on our side of the seesaw that matters to the extent that india if it should ever end up playing any operational role that would be useful i remain skeptical hopeful but skeptical but if it were to do vietnam i'm i'm not again thinking these need to simply be democracies to the extent that vietnam interests align with our interests that's called good and in my view since it's the geopolitics that interests or that i think most impact our our interests so finding ways to create a web of a lied and aligned who have weight not ones that come with more liabilities than than strength that they bring to the party we need strength and we'll recognize that of course their difference their interests will not be the same as our interests there'll be lots of complexities it won't be some one one alliance they're not going to be a nato and an economic iron curtain and it's even going to be so much more complicated because china will remain the dominant economic power in terms of the relationship with most of these parties even while we're trying to get them in our side of the seesaw for security purposes so the reason why i think this is the most formidable challenge any american government has ever faced is we're facing a country that's become as big and strong as we are at risk at likely becoming bigger and stronger in some dimensions and that it's not an isolated country it's a country that has understood that geoeconomics matter as much as geopolitics and that economic relationships and the power that that gives almost matters as much as the hard power of military and so have become a second backbone of the global economy and one from which these other countries are not going to decouple so i i think that's the challenge going forward to try to build a correlation of forces that'll be favorable to our interests and values and that only being possible by some artful web of a lie that aligned thank you president allison really excellent final remarks uh general stillwell over to you for your final comments or thoughts yeah the the argument is black and white and it reminds me of dungeon pings you know matters not whether a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice so i think that i i learned a lot in the process and of course it's neither black or white here and i did learn a lot from uh professor allison's paper uh from last last spring on a new spheres of influence sharing the globe with other great powers i commend it to those who are watching professor allison you you know educated me through this process you continue to be a great educator and i thank you for the opportunity um i'm going to use your seesaw analogy for my final uh closure words matter again an ex-military guy look at those airplanes up there i i never used to think words were that great words absolutely matter uh and the words i'm gonna point to here are the continual uh um trope coming out of beijing that says you just need to meet us halfway and what that says is in the seesaw analogy is if this is stasis if this is pure fairness that the relationship is heavily skewed in the us's favor and that the us needs to be reasonable and just meet china halfway to get this relationship back where it belongs now we all know the relationship as we showed by uh identifying the excesses their diplomats uh are doing in our own country their media that claim to be doing news or in fact doing uh propaganda and worse we know that it's skewed grossly in their favor now and what china is saying is we want even more in our favor we are going to win without fighting by simply making appealing to your sense of fairness uh and getting you to give in and give just a little bit more it's a beautiful strategy it's admirable but the time of of wishing in a way is over as as uh as professor allison made very clear in the military sphere and economic sphere and others that we we need to gird up and we need to remember what great power competition is about and get busy and i think once we're in the competition competition mode fully engaged there's no question how this is going to turn out thank thank you general stella i'm gonna end the poll right now and share the results um the results are actually remarkably similar to where we started with um and i think actually both speakers agree to some extent that china already has a sphere of influence it's a matter of whether that's going to be increasing or decreasing as we move to 2027 so let me close here by thanking both of our excellent panelists and debaters for joining us today and i want to note that this is our last and final debate of our china power conference and um we will be wrapping up our work for this year and we hope that you will be able to join us next year and last but not least quite important is that we hope that everyone will have a happy uh holidays and we hope that you will join us again in the new year as we have a number of events um a podcast um uh lined for the next year so thank you again and happy holidays [Music] you

Channel: Center for Strategic & International Studies

Views: 37,876

Keywords: Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS, bipartisan, policy, foreign relations, national security, think tank, politics, China, East Asia, Indo-Pacific, Asia, China’s Influence

Id: 3qtW0WaxZHc

Length: 82min 40sec (4960 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 20 2021