Covert, Coercive, and Corrupt: Countering Chinese Communist Party Malign Influence in Free Societies

[Music] good afternoon i'm larry diamond senior fellow at the hoover institution with hoover research fellow glenn tifford i lead the hoover institution project on china's global sharp power we join with the center on u.s china relations at asia society our co-sponsor today in warmly welcoming you to this event with the assistant secretary of state for east asian and pacific affairs david r stillwell who is joining us from tokyo today and will address the theme of today's session covert coercive and corrupt countering chinese communist party malign influence in free societies following his address he will engage in a conversation with two leading china scholars orville shell and orianna mastro but first it's my pleasure to welcome for opening remarks the director of the hoover institution and the 66th secretary of state of the united states condoleezza rice i'm delighted to open this session of our project at hoover on chinese sharp power and i especially want to welcome assistant secretary of state for east asian affairs david stillwell this project i think is one of the most important that we're engaged in because we face an extraordinary challenge with the rising china ever since deng xiaoping decided to bring china out of its isolation and presidents like nixon and carter followed up to get us into a position where we were actually in diplomatic relations with china where we had recognized the people's republic of china where we had come eventually to one china policy continuing our obligations to taiwan to help it defend itself but really with an expectation that with this country of more than a billion people and economic potential that was potentially unknown uh in the history of the international system there was really a decision that we had to integrate china and that belief that integrationist narrative if you will really dominated american foreign policy for four decades there were expectations that this china integrated into the international system would be a net contributor as my colleague bob selleck once called it a responsible stakeholder and indeed there were some benefits to china's integration of course 500 million people were lifted out of poverty and of course china did contribute to international economic growth first by being the low-cost provider of labor but also being a place where people could manufacture where they could assemble and so china was a contributor to the international economy there were also hopes though that over time china would be not just a responsible stakeholder but a more liberal society there were those who believed that china might go all the way to democracy but even those who didn't see that as a possibility believed that the exposure to the international system the exposure to the outside world would ultimately lead to governments in china that were more tolerant of their own people that has not happened and there was always a risk there was always a risk that by having a closed society within an open international system that that closed society would eventually take advantage of the openness of that system for so many years that system had been dominated by democracies not every country within the international economy as it emerged after world war ii was a democracy but the most powerful countries were the united states great britain the countries of europe japan and so there was uh harmony between the domestic politics and the domestic system and the checks and balances of democracy and the openness of the international system for the first time we have a very very powerful state that has been admitted to that international economy to that open system and has remained and even become more authoritarian at home and so the question before us is how to prevent this authoritarian regime from taking advantage of the benefits of openness and indeed taking advantage of those countries that are democratic and open themselves we have to understand how china is coercing we have to understand how china is influencing and we have to understand how china is using the benefits of the international economy and the open system to increase its military power so that its more assertive role in places like the south china sea and indeed in its aggressive behavior toward taiwan is actually using military power that has benefited from this connection to the open system this isn't the cold war the cold war was an ideological struggle between the united states and the soviet union but the soviet union was a military giant but a technological china is a technological giant and well on its way to becoming a military giant as well and so this is an incredible challenge it is a challenge though too to our values to be true to those values while not allowing ourselves to be taken advantage of we do not want a situation in which innocent people just because they are of asian descent are somehow held in suspicion whether they are citizens or green card holders or visitors we want to remain open to the world and to them and they do not we do not want them to feel intimidated in any way we want our universities to be cognizant of what is going on in some of the programs that have been sponsored by china we want the universities to be cognizant of what is going on in our frontier technologies labs in ai and quantum computing we want our universities to be cognizant that there are those who under the guise of a fellowship or a phd program might in fact be those who would go back and help the pla to make chinese chinese military power even stronger we want to be cognizant of that but we also want to remain universities which are open and we want to influence the next generation of chinese students because one day we have to hope that that belief that integration into the international system openness to the world will indeed have an impact on china too first we need to understand what we're facing we need to understand all of the ways that china carries out policies of coercion or influence or increasing its military capability at our expense using our knowledge we need to understand the relationship between the communist party the pla and research enterprises in china with whom we would then have relationships we need to understand two our tools for dealing with it and our tools are many a free peoples i believe free people will always triumph but free people have to be cognizant and they have to be aware of what is going on around them i want to say one other word about a truth telling and that is this that when we tell the truth we are at our strongest i'm a veteran of the old cold war and the soviet union and the marvelous way in which at the end of the cold war it was clear that our values had triumphed i'm often asked about some of the tools that we used in that time and one that always comes up because people are concerned about chinese influence operations and chinese efforts to to cause dissension in our systems and i'm always asked well what about radio for europe and voice of america which obviously had a huge impact on the outcome of the cold war and i say the truth about voice of america and radio for europe is that they told the truth they told the truth to a population that knew that their government was not telling them the truth and so we need to use whatever tools we can to let it be known what china is doing to let it be known in africa to let it be known in europe to let it be known to the degree that we can in asia and certainly to the degree that we can in china itself because ultimately that is our best tool truth-telling openness again i am very excited about this project because i think it does give us a chance to understand what we face and to design strategies to deal with it i want to thank larry diamond and his colleagues in the china sharp power project again i want to welcome uh that assistant secretary uh stillwell and i want to say to all of you watching out there this is a battle we have to win and we will thank you very much it's great to be with you thank you uh so much uh secretary rice for those inspirational remarks now it's my honor to introduce the assistant secretary of state for east asian and pacific affairs david r stillwell before joining the state department in this increasingly pivotal role assistant secretary stillwell had a distinguished 35-year career in the united states air force retiring in 2015 in the rank of brigadier general as the asia advisor to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff during his air force career he served multiple tours of duty in japan and korea as a linguist a fighter pilot and a commander and as defense attache at the u.s embassy in beijing from 2011 to 2013. from 2017 to 2019 he served as director of the china strategic focus group at the u.s indo-pacific command in hawaii in june 2019 he assumed the position of assistant secretary in addition to his bs degree in history from the air force academy assistant secretary stillwell also earned a master's degree in asian studies and chinese language from the university of hawaii and he was awarded in 2015 the department of defense superior service award assistant secretary stillwell thank you so much for joining us hey thank you for the the introduction and for the opportunity here to ex explain and elaborate on all we're doing here at the state department hey greetings from tokyo uh being in the region is what i do i'm happy to be here uh and and again a good chance to work with stanford and hoover and asia society heroes like larry diamond orville shell uh again people i've long looked up to and studied and and read and benefited from and also it's great to uh share a stage with secretary condoleezza rice uh again it's a real honor to to be here i really appreciate her summary it tees up what i'm going to present here uh well especially the part about truth-taking uh truth-telling you know one of my goals in this job has been messaging to tell our story better and to tell the truth and it's ironic but it's actually symptomatic that both uh the soviet union and chinese media outlets have the word truth in them pravda uh and yet uh the opposite is generally true and so the topic of uh chinese influence and corrupt coercive and um uh covert activities uh is uh especially meaningful right now and what you're seeing the administration doing uh as i talk about this hopefully it will be uh it'll make sense it'll be coherent so um the topic is that the the fact that the chinese communist party challenges our free and open uh societies and again secretary rice made that point very clearly um but the prosperity liberty and security of the american people and our friends around the world are at risk and it hinges on how we meet this challenge to pro uh to succeed uh effort is required not just by policymakers and national security professionals but by all elements of society as secretary rice anticipated i would say uh and not just uh in america but everywhere which is again part of why we're trying to get the word out in these another forum a major worldwide defensive enterprise of this kind is difficult uh but it's a noble undertaking the foundation is a common uh threat assessment that the chinese communist party is highly capable it's ambitious and it's also hostile to our basic political principles of democracy openness and individual dignity it's important first of all that we recognize this challenge i think we're there the narrative has changed significantly in the over the last year is uh but it's also necessary that we give it the priority it deserves despite many other pressing matters that inevitably demand our attention so the trump administration's 2017 national security strategy centered on the observation that we are on a geopolitical competition between free and repressive visions of world order secretary pompeo says that china is the first challenge he thinks of thinks of every day when he wakes up the chinese communist party strategy implicates private as well as governmental targets around the world which is why it is important for all institutions in our society private and government to understand the strategy and adapt measures to manage the risk to counter coercion and to protect free expression the hoover institution has been exemplary in this area including through its 2018 report on china's influence and american interests promoting cognitive vigilance so today i'm going to emphasize three points first influence and interference operations are fundamental fundamental to how the chinese communist party engages with the world and that's with all of us we might prefer to think of china as simply a trade partner or the home of great civilization but the ccp today has taken an adversarial stance toward its neighbors uh not just today it's been the long-term process we're we're recognizing it today they're also uh this adversarial response touches on its immediate neighbors contiguous but and all other uh democratic and other societies like the us and the rest of the world the goals are not stability or live and let live respect for the sovereignty of other law-abiding nations no the strategy is aggressive and it's intrusive it not only rejects our democratic political principles but it sees them as a prime vulnerability that it can exploit china's role in the world today cannot be understood without reference to the wide array of malign activities that the ccp undertakes to influence our societies in ways that are covert coercive and corrupting ice we borrowed that language from john garneau uh in australia who's been a leader in the australian government have led very well in this in this endeavor so i want to give credit to the folks who coined that term second the principle of reciprocity is vital to understanding this problem uh and encountering it reciprocity is basic in international relations you've got to give to get you send your diplomats to my country and i'll send them to yours i open my markets and you open your markets as well yet for decades we in other countries made exceptions for china but we allowed the chinese communist party to engage with our societies on a non-reciprocal basis and beijing exploited the imbalance and now our insistence on reciprocity is a long overdue defense that was the second point third coordination among allies and partners is imperative this problem is global in many ways we and others around the world are still only waking up to the mass the scale of this problem we benefit from sharing information and ideas beijing prefers to exploit its size against individual countries in a bilateral fashion uh it is often only by uh acting on concert that other countries can shift the calculus in favor of reciprocity transparency and freedom uh and so we must do so the bilateral uh aspect is is noteworthy in that the narrative out of beijing is often it's the us versus china and we've been working very hard to shift that it's not just us uh it's many other like-minded the drumbeat especially coming out of eu uh lately is impressive so a lot of this hinges on the whole concept of the united front united front work department the world is increasingly aware of how the ccp is using its foreign engagements to influence interfere and coerce the awareness is disturbing and even shocking for many people because for decades the u.s and other countries forged links with china based on the optimistic good-faith expectation that shared prosperity and trust would result from our diplomacy our trade and our investment it worked so many times in the past but we've had media and academic and people to people exchanges also falling under that same assumption but the sad and dangerous reality is that the ccp has chosen to weaponize these engagements to its advantage and it uses them as a channels for malign purposes again primarily for to maintain its position and to advance its position to accelerate its growth and and uh development beijing officials claim to seek uh quote win-win exchanges they claim uh to practice non-interference in other countries affairs this is an important point uh the irony of uh this insistence on non-interference and the five principles of peaceful engagement uh is interesting when you see the totality of this activity and i think we should sign to quote john garneau some sunlight on this in reality the conduct is systematically predatory and hegemonic the ccp wants control and at least it wants a veto in public discourse and political decisions uh globally world over so this is what guides its foreign interference activities uh these activities that china calls united front work and we better understand this political warfare xi jinping calls the united front uh a magic weapon of the chinese communist party and mao zedong saw it the same way so how does it work i'll give you a couple uh visible examples that again once we are awake to the problem become unbelievably obvious uh united front interference in australia has produced years of cascading uh news headlines an up-and-coming senator was forced to resign over improper ties to the chinese beijing linked donor numerous senior officials retired into jobs with entities controlled by beijing advertising boycotts were organized against chinese language newspapers that won't tow beijing's line an intelligence chief warned of the catastrophic harm australia is subject to as a result of espionage interference sabotage and malicious insider activities at the university of queensland last year students demonstrating for hong kong's democratic rights were roughed up by classmates connected to a beijing-sponsored students association the prc consul general uh praised the spontaneous patriotic behavior of the pro-beijing rallies uh australia's defense minister then uh warned foreign diplomats not to suppress australia's free speech new zealand has had similar experiences after university campus skirmishes over hong kong local prc diplomats praised the spontaneous patriotism of the anti-democracy brawlers response new zealand's prime minister asked officials to remind their chinese counterparts that new zealand will uphold and maintain our freedom of expression and oftentimes this is the a fairly simple solution is just stand up recognize the problem and say something and there will be threats that come from that but we've seen those threats don't are very rarely carried out in 2017 new zealand media revealed that a chinese-born member of the parliament had lied about his background when applying for new zealand citizenship concealing that he had spent 15 years working for the chinese military intelligence the parliamentarian who had previously played a prominent role in bilateral relations with beijing lost his seat on the foreign affairs defense and trade committees but remained in the parliament co-opting friends and neutralizing enemies are two sides of the united front coin in australia and in new zealand scholars critical beijing have faced burglaries and death threats in suburbs from new south wales to new jersey chinese dissidents and activists are hounded by chinese communist party agents you've heard about foxhunt and other things the united front targets not just just people but also information including private data about large numbers of public and private individuals in the united states and across the world we see systematic theft on a huge scale of intellectual property and technology from universities businesses medical labs most recently at the united nations in capitals around the world the ccp agents are behind bribery scandals beijing's overseas infrastructure projects often go hand in hand with bribes for local elites and really harsh financing terms hidden in secret contact contracts with non-disclosure agreements aggressive united front propaganda work then dishonestly portrays arrangements as benevolent rather than rapacious the ccp is increasing its propaganda on television and in newspapers worldwide while at the same time undermining independent chinese language media wherever it is found pop culture arts and sports are major battlegrounds too americans saw the national basketball association thrown into crisis over a single tweet about hong kong players coaches and owners known for strong opinions are cowed into silence when the topic is china fans are booed from stadiums for holding signs that say google uighurs uh or flying a tibetan flag and it's amazing that we haven't said more about this to date we see the conspicuous absence of hollywood movies willing to depict china critically or to portray the heroism of young people of hong kong the leaders of underground chinese christian churches or tibetans just trying to preserve their culture there's also an increasing number of hollywood movies portraying beijing as a benevolent global leader even in areas such as space where in fact beijing uh very recklessly carried out a anti-satellite missile test back in 2007 littering low earth orbit with a lot of space junk so we see the bullying of corporations marriott mercedes-benz and many more to parrot ccp talking points lest they face state-backed boycotts undermining and impacting their bottom line business executives are enticed to tow beijing's line lest long-promised access to the chinese market be cut short curtailed or not materialized meanwhile we've got covid19 disinformation we have ppd ppe shakedowns globally and wolf warrior diplomacy all these things are especially recently telling examples of all things i'm describing so all these manifestations of united front work they subvert interests and principles that we all cherish uh they all reflect the intertwined dangers of this coercive covert and corrupting influence and so we described this of late as an iceberg what we see of this what's i call fuzzy panda activity is what's above the water line but there is so much below the water line that we have either ignored or just simply not recognized and so again my goal today and all along has been just to point out facts right seek truth to facts beijing's instruments for exerting this influence are enormous in recent years xi jinping has been has added 40 000 cadre to the united front work department making it four times the size of the state department's foreign service corps and that doesn't even count the other parts of the beijing party state that play a role in shaping foreign opinion and foreign governments to beijing's liking these include the ministry of foreign affairs the central propaganda department the ministry of state security the ministry of education the international liaison department the political work department the central propaganda bureau and the people's liberation army these entities in turn guide a plethora of official quasi-official and front organizations that operate around the world often and through diaspora communities some of these united front organizations identify as beijing backed but most try to present themselves in as independent grassroots type ngos or cultural exchange for friendship associations you'll hear that word a lot when you hear a night of front you'll see the word friendship uh chambers of commerce media outlets or academic groups then there are confucius institutes of colleges and universities and more disturbing is confucius classrooms at the k-12 level these are funded by beijing in play by beijing's role rules they were launched in 2004 by no less than the head of the united front work department uh leo yandong in 2009 uh pull up bureau standing committing member and ideology tsar li chang chun called confucius institutes an important part of chinese overseas propaganda setup all told we face a large and deliberately opaque amalgam of chinese communist party officials agents and cutouts seeking advantage in our societies and that advantage is readily had because as the secretary secretary said we are we pride ourselves in being open and easily accessible and so think in terms of this iceberg above the water line official prc diplomats conducting legitimate diplomatic activities uh for example but below the water line there is a far larger and murkier mix of actions and entities whose ties to the communist party have been long ignored overlooked or understudied these include prc diplomats conducting activities inconsistent with their diplomatic status such as the espionage tied to the prc consulate in houston before we shuttered it this summer prc state media personnel masquerade as legitimate news reporters when their real business is propaganda and espionage i ask you to show me a byline by any number any one of these many uh um you know supposed reporters researchers sent by the pla into our high-tech university labs especially those who illegally hide their military affiliation on their visa applications the iceberg further includes confucius institutes confucius classrooms and the chinese students and scholars associations that chill academic freedom and free speech in our schools and universities also united front organizations working to co-op state and local governments diaspora communities and other targets and don't forget china's state-owned enterprises which aren't just owned on paper by beijing but can be used by beijing as at beijing's will as instruments in this battle of policies and narratives there are also pla owned enterprises of which there are many operating in this country and around the world and even uh private chinese firms which just last month received aggressive new guidance from beijing to follow communist party dictats uh and support united front work you saw the fifth plenary just wrapped up and it re-emphasized uh these points so this iceberg deserves a serious study and scrutiny across our society and across the world we must better track expose and when necessary counter these vectors of influence and interference that is why the state department has taken steps recently under the foreign missions act to identify organizations operating in the united states under the control of the communist party by designating them as foreign missions of the people's republic of china it's just a fact it's not a judgment the they do work for the uh directly for the government therefore they qualify we have so far designated 15 state propaganda outlets and the confucius institute center the united states uh and the national association for china's peaceful reunification this week a key united front group similarly the pentagon this year for the first time identified dozens of companies operating in the united states that are owned by or affiliated with the people's liberation army meanwhile the justice department is pursuing a wide range of law enforcement actions against covert coercive and corrupting activity this includes alleged visas visa fraud by pla researchers in u.s universities economic espionage by corporate executives ministry of state security agents and others drug trafficking money laundering and more just this week the department of justice charged eight individuals with acting as illegal agents of beijing to harass stalk and coerce u.s residents forcing them to return to beijing against their will so without greater transparency reciprocity and cost beijing will continue to exploit this openness of our societies and advance their interests at our expense we just want a level playing field we'd like reciprocity i'm gonna treat us that way uh we're gonna have to take similar measures so let's dwell for a moment on reciprocity president trump said reportedly or said repeatedly that reciprocity is his favorite word and mine too it is an especially useful concept when applied to china because reciprocity and the lack thereof captures so much about the troubled and imbalanced relations that countries all around the world have found themselves in with beijing reciprocity doesn't fix everything it doesn't have to and it doesn't have to guide our interactions in all cases everywhere and always but it is a basic guide to fairness prudence and caution attributes that the world generally discarded during years of reckless engagement with beijing 40 years of trying hard without any real response we allowed the chinese communist party to access our society that never extended to us diplomatic access educational access trade access ngos three four years ago no longer they have to be sponsored by the prc investment access science and technology access even data access we thought it was worth it you know that it wouldn't cost as much that it would aid china's development and crucially facilitate beijing's political transformation into a responsible and friendly regime as you know the response the result of all this though is quite different so access to our societies our economies and our technologies certainly helped china develop but the chinese communist party only doubled down on leninism mercantilism and hostility to the west now we scramble late but not too late to protect our own societies from being transformed by beijing and so reviving this idea of reciprocity give to get is a absolutely fundamental and principal step so there's no reason why beijing's diplomats should be able to enjoy open access to american society while the folks that i us work with in beijing and those of us who've been there are prevented from even the simplest of interaction with society travel and and many other typical normal diplomatic activities visiting universities is not too impo impossible right now and uh other uh interaction just is very difficult and even if they don't make us they don't stop us for interacting the people that we talk to are then harassed that's just not not fair there's no reason why beijing state media propagandists should be treated as independent journalists in our country while beijing further restricts the few americans remaining in china and other independent foreign journalists left there there's no reason why beijing state enterprises military affiliated companies and their technology national champions should enjoy every privilege of the american economy while beijing denies market access to a large share of american firms and it certainly doesn't boost it doesn't host major enterprises that serve our military so in these areas and more we are taking policy regulatory and law enforcement action across the u.s government to correct years of non-reciprocity imbalance and abuse it works inside the u.s but again to be effective it's going to have to be global it's gonna have to there's an international aspect that's really important as secretary pompeo has said we encourage every leader of every nation to start by doing what america has done just simply insist on fair equal treatment and reciprocity insist on transparency insist on accountability from the ccp among the propaganda narratives promoted by the united front is the notion that any scrutiny of the communist party activities is somehow a hostile act against beijing or against the chinese people we talk about the party you hear that we don't allow them to conflate that with 1.4 billion people is all sorts of businesses and organizations know well how to do risk management how to do due diligence and how did you understand knowing your client it's long past due that we start systematically applying similar approaches to our engagement with china and the chinese communist party indeed one reason why is that under xi ji ping it's just become effectively impossible to engage china without interacting with the party things have changed over the last uh seven years we encourage countries to study your own icebergs uh take stock of your own policy toolkits examples do you have laws like our foreign mission act uh as our foreign agent registration act if not do you need them you know since 1991 we've assumed that the threat has decreased well we know now that it's not the threat is there what about a china initiative like that of our justice department the sorts of uh espionage theft corruption visa fraud coercion and other abuses being uncovered by our law enforcement investigations they exist wherever the chinese communist party operates it's not confined to the u.s australia seeing a few years ago that its laws in government structure were lacking in certain key areas passed a landmark series of bills on countering foreign influence australia helped teach the world how to organize against this threat and how to think and speak about it as prime minister malcolm turnbull said we will not tolerate foreign influence activities that are covert uh coercive or corrupt that is the line that separate uh that separate legitimate separate legitimate influence from unacceptable interference so let's learn from each other and let's coordinate not only to compare notes but also to establish deterrence despite the magnitude of the challenge we have massive leverage especially as a group the chinese communist party wants access to what other countries have lucrative markets and capital advanced technologies world-class universities and laboratories international prestige we must no longer give these away to beijing easily in hopes that the ccp will respond to our good will and kind its record shows that it won't transparency reciprocity fairness accountability rule of law the golden rule right treat others as you'd like to be treated these are necessary guides if we are to prevent the ccp from continuing to assault our societies from within as we posture for this challenge it is also important to underscore that our concern is not with the chinese people as i just said who we admire greatly but with the policies of the chinese communist party precise language uh and strategy are vital the ccp tries to make itself synonymous with the chinese people and civilization but it certainly is not it also tries to equate criticism of the party with criticism of the people uh we must be clear in rejecting this and it's showing that our free and open societies value the very ethnic cultural and political diversity that the ccp seeks to crush and just look at the facts right see two two facts look at how things are in this country free world and then look at how they are in china and the obvious the differences are glaring and so the stakes uh why is it essential that free nations of the world exercise vigilance over the growing iceberg of worldwide ccp influence simply put the leninist pull up bureau that runs china wants to set the rules for the rest of the world it has to it needs it you know the existence of free and open democratic societies is an inherent threat so a future pact seneca fully realized would be aggressive it'd be contemptuous of human liberty and and domineering instead of a rules-based international order uh peaceful resolution of disputes respect for sovereignty of law abiding nations a ccp oriented world would require obedience to an unelected clique in beijing technological advances in surveillance and control risk casting the entire world into an age of tyranny ask the booksellers of hong kong for proof ask jimmy lie ask his holiness the dalai lama ask ai weiwei or leo the widow of leo ask the uyghurs ask the brave citizens of taiwan ask any neighboring state with china the chinese communist party poses a real risk to our basic way of life to prosperity security and liberty our task is to recognize alert others and then take necessary steps to defend our hard-earned freedoms they must be defended thanks and with that i look forward to uh conversation i want to really issue a deep and heartfelt thanks to assistant secretary stilwell you mentioned the off-quoted phrase from prime minister turnbull and john garneau covert coercive and corrupting i would uh offer another three c's to characterize your remarks uh cogent uh comprehensive and compelling uh this is i think uh the best uh 25-minute characterization of where we're at and where we must go um that i've heard and thank you for mentioning uh mr assistant secretary our hoover asia society report on china's influence in american interests were toward constructive vigilance this was a report that we produced in collaboration with our next speaker orville shell the author ross director of the center on u.s china relations at asia society which is again the co-sponsor of this event he is the author of 10 books about china including most recently wealth and power china's long march to the 21st century and he organized with me the asia society hoover institution working group that produced that report he'll make some observations perhaps pose a question or two and then we'll hear from our newest colleague at stanford university specializing in china orianna scholar mastro she recently joined stanford as a center fellow at the freeman spogli institute for international studies where her research focuses on chinese military and security policy asia-pacific security issues war termination and coercive diplomacy dr mastro is also a fellow at the american enterprise institutes and serves in the united states air force reserve for which she works as a strategic planner at indo-pacom so we're really doubling down on the u.s air force today very proudly uh orville we turn to you first well thank you larry and uh thank you for your uh very comprehensive speech assistant secretary stillwell um i really have don't want to make lengthy remarks myself except to say i i do believe we are something of a of a transition moment when all all of the assumptions and policies of the past do beg our reflection and reformulation uh i think we we are truly beginning to see china in a very different light partially because it has become stronger and more and more influential let me ask you this um you've just been on a rather epic trip that's taken the secretary of state to the maldives to india sri lanka indonesia vietnam and now uh you yourself are in tokyo and i wonder uh you've limbed a pretty uh uh you know dark picture about what it is that we confront uh from china not just militarily not just in terms of trade but in terms of this sort of this united front policy and influence seeking how have you found these countries you've just visited in terms of the way they are reappraising their own attitudes towards china and what do you think that bears for this idea of the quad which started off as pretty much just an idea but now seems to be getting fleshed out with some more real uh substance uh so talk a little bit about your trip and and how it's changed your views of what partners allies and friends of how they're looking at the people's republic of china sir that's a great point uh some shameless advertising uh one of my favorite books uh i know it's one of the early ones but it's i still reference it uh a lot of what's in there is cogent uh today um so travel uh that's the best part of diplomacy i think is actually going to see people where they are i was in japan three weeks ago during the quad i got to witness uh the the merging of an agreement on the issue and not just the issue itself not just admiring the problem but the solution and just the coming together i mentioned this this position of beijing that says this is the u.s hostile policy trying to make this bilateral and ish you know the quad the recent travel statements out of the stops we made that you describe increasingly align and you know this helps the message and it helps beijing understand that it needs to change course it needs to simply comply with the system that exists it uh it's a functioning system it's it's existed and functioned for 70 years quite well um yes it wants to change that system to accommodate its own leninist perspective on the world but i do think that there is through uh multiple voices through a chorus of voices there is an opportunity here to just simply get the ccp to slow down and to again abide by the rule is that over years it convinced us it was going to do that was the hard part was acknowledging that what it was saying wasn't joe sure it wasn't uh quite right uh it was deception uh i'll i'll address your question here specifically in one second though but again i'll point out the you know one of the issues one of the areas we've been focused on is media well i mentioned wolf warrior diplomacy the mfa spokesman saying things if you just take a hard look at anything they say uh it's just a model of disinformation and i use the term you know interference and you just suppose that with the uh theme that we keep hearing is non-interference in internal affairs and then you look at the facts in australia again uh turnbull and garneau were the first to actually shine some sunlight on that just look at the the reality of it and there's always this you know propaganda disinformation aspect to it that when if you just consider what is being said and think about it and use critical thought apply you know free thought which things that we pride ourselves in the uh the disinformation becomes very uh visible uh as far as the trip uh it represents quite well that what we mean by the indo-pacific strategy in the past eap uh east asia pacific bureau never uh well i don't want overstated i don't want to offend anybody but the eap responsibility and the south central asia responsibility and approaches didn't always align and so i hired uh my my deputy uh to kesha he is a south central asia expert and one of my goals and one of the things you should take out of this trip is that this trip uh exemplifies what we mean by the indo-pacific strategy uh it is a coherent hole and this is why we changed the name in 2017 uh indobaycomb and all the rest so um they uh are still a varying stridency you the narrative coming out of india sri lanka maldives indonesia and vietnam aren't all the same the volume isn't all the same and that's that's you know expected and i think you can attribute that to sheer size and heft some like the us and australia feel they can afford economically to to stand up and be counted we believe this gives space space to countries like indonesia and vietnam who with the july change in the u.s south china sea policy acknowledging the 2016 tribunal outcomes and debunking chinese maritime claims indonesia and vietnam and others have been able to now exert their uh proper use of their economic zones and the rest uh sorry for the wandering response i'd be happy to you know be cross-examined on that uh i will note that it is 4 50 in the morning here so give us 15 seconds on the trend line that you discern having been to all of these countries what's what direction are they heading well i believe uh you know given all that we just laid out i think that trend is very positive um i don't i don't expect them uh to do everything they um they can't in many cases uh but just simply being transparent about what um what is going on in their countries by simply examining what's going on in their countries in fact they were in the past they were um deterred from doing that just just don't look there the one thing that we have to address further and this is the idea of sunlight is going after the corrupting aspects of this strategy uh because if you buy off uh the elites uh you know and if the people don't have visibility on that or if they're being told they can't comment on that then this strategy by the united front works uh it depends entirely on you know co-opting leadership and so part of this and the reason we focus on media so much is enabling empowering me to to research and investigate great uh well uh i'd like to come now to dr uh orianna skylar mastro and uh we welcome your observations and questions for the assistant secretary good morning thank you larry and i apologize to the viewers for my romantic lighting over here i think assistant secretary stillwell is uh up a little bit earlier than i am i'm in sydney australia uh and unfortunately uh in an apartment where natural light lights the whole place so we don't have the sun yet but hopefully you can still see me um okay uh assistant secretary stillwell it's great to see you uh and have you uh here at hoover um i wanted to ask you a bit about how to decipher or differentiate between sort of legitimate illegitimate activities and in some cases you didn't use these terms but people often use inappropriate and appropriate so given obviously i'm here in my civilian capacity but given my military background i feel like i am much more clear-eyed about some of the threats that you have mentioned and i'm very happy that you have discussed them um and i think in the university sending in particular they can be a bit of a naivete about um you know what what uh the goals are of some of these engagement efforts and so i really applaud the um desire to bring that truth and to bring that knowledge more broadly given that you're a china specialist um what i want to sort of ask you is to put on the china hat because one of my main concerns is how um acceptable or open other countries are to this narrative that you're presenting so sort of two specific questions the first is this legitimate illegitimate appropriate inappropriate we say it's very clear from our perspective but i wonder for some of our viewers it's less clear why voice of america is okay um and you know the insert to the washington post or something would not be okay or the difference between confucius institutes and alliance frances for example now you mentioned you know there's a difference between covert activities so i'm wondering if like a pla scholar did put on their application their visa application that they were pla or then are we open to them coming because to a certain degree people even i when i go to china i gain information and i want to bring it back to the betterment of my country right so where do we draw the line on some of these things and my i wonder you know how much if you put on your china hat what would they say to everything you just said and i can imagine some of the counters things like you know the united states has tried regime change 74 times between 1947 and 1991 you know isn't foreign military interference worse than some of these political interference is it what they're doing just basically you know politics to a certain degree so i'm wondering if you can just sort of specify a bit more on of course china's going to seek influence but you know how are they going to seek influence what would you want to see them do as they seek influence and along those lines you mentioned reciprocity and as you know there's no chinese word for reciprocity but the chinese word that they use is like mutual benefit and so how do you think some of these different views about reciprocity might actually impact our ability to get them you say to give is to get that's different than to give the same thing and get the same thing should we should we continue to scale it based on you know what china can give us and so i'll i'll leave it there um and and i look forward to your thought we've wrestled with those quite a bit um exactly what what's appropriate and what's not and i don't think i can give you a yardstick for what that looks like but i would say again going back to the idea of reciprocity is that if you're going to do these things in my country then i should be able to do those in yours right they will always say i mean when i confronted them about why when i was a defense attache i could not uh call my counterpart i could not call my counterpart directly while the chinese defense attache in the u.s had every phone number in dod and set up meetings on a regular basis i asked him why is it that i can't do that and his answer was a smug because that's not our system so your point is is exactly right is it is a bit of apples and oranges you know their system is different their culture is different but look we interact with 190 something other countries on this planet uh without this same uh you know there are ways of coming to agreements on these things that gets us the uh the balance and the relationship that we seek i don't think anybody would argue right now that the relationship between china and the rest of the world is in balance you know the diplomatic corps in beijing when i was there all agreed it was very difficult to operate and it was getting more and more difficult to operate there compared to what they were giving their chinese counterparts in in their specific countries uh so there's a couple of examples that we gave you mentioned the military uh this is an area where transparency and uh greater interaction is increasingly necessary um and yet the what we're seeing here is the ability to actually communicate uh with the chinese government uh is is getting more difficult uh and so it's not just nice to have this uh interaction this reciprocal access is incredibly and increasingly important to make sure that uh tren you know the the messages are crystal clear that there are no uh wu panwujie you know misunderstandings and miscalculations that they often talk about so in the military space they call the relationship the ballast and the rudder of the relationship i i really hope that they begin to act on that and you know instead of closing down that they act more openly there's many other aspects i could talk about since but since we're speaking in academia here i'll also note that i think it's more difficult for uh academics and for school schools to insist on you know responsibly since you don't often go to china to talk to their students and scholars although i know you do but it's not so formal then i would just simply look at what the example they set in the country is uh and either ask them to abide by those same rules in the u.s or insist on opening up access uh there are there was a a few folks came out the eastwood center when i was living in hawaii uh who you know in 2015 and 16 were noting the the impressive and rapid clamp down on conversations inside china and then you quickly saw that clampdown happening outside where conversations were being uh squashed because they might be uncomfortable might be talking about the dalai lama and other things that they don't like on that orianna i would just say you know be who you are universities you insist on academic freedom and academic integrity uh you know insist on it um remember cambridge university purse cambridge university press couple years ago took down 250 articles the ccp deemed inappropriate and then they reversed that decision which was very encouraging you know you have to think about those things that's a one uh would you like to redirect or cross-examine no no sir i'm good thank you i do think there's a lot of work to be done to understand actually the details of these activities and i think you're right that what they do in universities is different than versus the government which is different in the media versus ngos and so you know we need to figure out how to prioritize what are the most dangerous activities and you know and which ones we should address first last and how we should address them great uh i'd like to uh call on my uh colleague in the china global sharp power project at the hoover institution who also uh mr assistant secretary just co-edited a very important study global engagement rethinking risk in the research enterprise which very much uh uh addresses the challenge you posed of uh pla uh scientists engineers and so on at the so-called uh seven sons of national defense universities not disclosing their ties and then coming here and collaborating on research projects and being visiting scholars so dr glenn tiffart would you like to pose a question thank you very much larry and thank you assistant secretary stilwell for joining us today i wanted to pull together a couple of threads that others have raised and not talk specifically about the academic issue but talk about security cooperation and broader alignments we're starting to see greater coordination and alignment among democracies in the indo-pacific as they face the challenges posed by china's more assertive posture in the region for instance secretaries pompeo and esper just concluded a productive round of two plus two meetings in india that resulted in the becca agreement and india just invited australia to join its malabar naval exercises later this year the reinvigorated quad composed of japan in the australia and the us is one of the most promising platforms for a collective multilateral response to china but opinions differ on how far its constituent members are willing to take it in light of the united states national security and national defense strategies could you articulate the vision that the united states has for what the quad could accomplish and how you'd like to see it develop thank you that's a a great question and since you mentioned national security strategy uh i'm a simple guy you know i was a heavy equipment operator in the air force for 35 years and uh i do know that getting too complex and complicated makes frequently just defeats whatever you're trying to accomplish so let's just go in simple terms the national security strategy h.r mcmaster uh wonderfully i can talk about that there's a good story in there noted that this is a strategic competition we've never actually said that before you know the first step in in any problem uh solving is acknowledging that there is a problem and so by noting strategic competition we then give uh latitude and voice to people in the country to actually stand up and compete uh what you saw then from the prc was a very shrill the sky is falling you know the hostile american policy and just remind them whenever i can that internally they refer to the u.s and others as the enemy and they've always done that consistently so i guess the first step in all of this is just acknowledging the problem and then making your words align with uh the the reality uh euphemisms don't help we need to speak clearly uh and again these are simple solutions to the larger problem relating the nss national strategy and the competition aspect to the quad again for a one bit processor they are self-evident i don't have to restate how many times in my short interaction with india since i started the pentagon 2013 until now that you've seen a very confrontational relationship in in an area of a contiguous border and then that relationship with pakistan chinese pakistan uh cooperation also puts india on notice i would i would note in the quad uh that it is not uh one it's not directed by the us it really is a four point um consensus-based and um sort of naturally occurring outcome of democracies who see the threat and want to stand up to that threat uh and uh in in my past experience uh the u.s often one person said when we show up at asean or we show up in southeast asia we don't make problems better or worse we just add energy to the issues i think we've gotten better at maybe showing up and listening more rather than just you know showing up in the room with three other partners in the quad and dictating terms and if you saw the opening statements for the quad in tokyo um three weeks ago you heard the same story from all four partners is that we want to acknowledge the issue the problem and then we want to protect our own interests we want to protect our own systems we don't want to have our systems adapted or amended or just outright changed by a uh authoritarian government so in short what i'll tell you is the quad uh is obviously uh visible it's being it's increasingly productive but it's um uh organic it's naturally occurring it's it's just a obvious response to uh a rapidly accelerating and aggressive prc strategy great well uh we have only about uh 10 or so minutes left uh mr assistant secretary i'd like to get to a couple of audience questions at least um let me uh begin uh by taking off uh on india this was the first stop of uh secretary pompeo's five-day visit to asia i don't know if you were with him on that leg but um we did sign a new basic uh exchanging cooperation agreement with india uh ties between india and the u.s with concern about china seemed to be deepening there was a question about that agreement it's got some implications for air force to air force cooperation so you might have a thought about that is there anything more you want to say about that visit that agreement and that relationship uh as you know i was there uh it was a great trip i i had my own meetings with china watchers in in india in delhi and new delhi um so i can't speak to the exact outcomes of the two plus two conversation but the fact that we had that conversation and the fact that there were tangible outcomes output to me uh speaks volumes um uh and i think that's about like talking i can't talk about the details on information sharing i will note though that um as orianna knows that uh you you know you need systems that can talk to each other in this in this age even if you're doing something as simple as humanitarian uh relief disaster assistance uh in an information age uh information military cooperation is driven largely by information and so the more we can um move things like information agreements and all those uh the better off we'll be able to respond to these things great as i mentioned we've just finished six sessions focusing on taiwan and the indo-pacific region the lengthening shadow of the communist chinese party state and its oft-declared ambition in its words to reunify uh taiwan with the motherland uh taiwan of course and its friends have a very different view about that language uh and that relationship uh hangs like a dark shadow over all our conversations now what can you say about the challenge of preserving taiwan's democracy and uh its right to be a free society in the wake of this seemingly accentuating resolve in beijing to possibly uh you know address this situation by means that are covert coercive and corrupting or just plain coercive what assurances would you want to give to the people of taiwan and its friends and how do you see that challenge in the wake of what beijing has done to the people of hong kong [Music] uh we could probably talk for hours that should be a topic uh you host for the next event that's a it's a really important subject uh i give a speech by the way most of the stuff i do almost all of it other than this free talking is done by others smarter people than me uh so i always want to give credit to the the fifes and the keships and others in this world but uh there's a speech this time last year on 40 years of trying uh 40 years of giving you know a little bit to the prc in order in exchange for consideration on issues that we consider important and the realization after 40 years that they never intended to give back uh you saw this summer uh i gave a presentation at another think tank on the six assurances that were recently declassified and the reason we're doing this uh is to uh go back to the original agreements from 1979 1982 where we did agree with brc that you know we would recognize them or we have a one-china policy and all those things but that the question of taiwan would be resolved peacefully without coercion or use or threat of use of force and what we've seen over time uh in part of this the in the there was another document declassified august 17th 1982 where the reagan administration noted that you know although we want to trust the prc we should trust but verify famously and that if you know arms numbers on the weapon sales would go down but the opposite happened therefore there was uh an acknowledgement that we might have to continue arms sales uh to make sure that the balance across the street gives taiwan the ability to negotiate without coercion or use of force what has happened over the years look at wha recently world health assembly where taiwan was able to participate freely through 2017 and it was uh excluded and excluded again this session even though they've got lots and lots to offer we are our policy hasn't changed we're just going to uh insist on it vice allowing it to be whittled away and eroded and again you'll hear the beijing uh gets very uncomfortable with this but i you know i will just reassure that there is no intention to somehow expand we just want to get back to a place where taiwan can deal with the mainland from a position of so we can negotiate the solution by having it dictated to them great we've got just a few minutes left i want to ask orville shell and orianna maestro if they have any uh brief additional questions maybe i'll give you each a minute and the final words will go to the assistant secretary orville uh i'm curious to know how you look back on the period of engagement was it a mistake were we deluded were we just uh unapprised of the of china's intentions or was it a smart move to try to shepherd china out of its revolutionary past and then you know uh what part of engagement should we still cling to even in this period of adversity so that is that is the question and that speech last week last year 40 years of trying and no nowhere in there do you hear me criticize the last 40 years we had to try i it worked in the past and we've seen peaceful transitions i look at the republic of korea uh this activity this sort of engagement brought korea out of uh you know when i was there in 1980 a dictatorship uh and it moved it into a strong vibrant democracy so you had to try but there is a point where you have to acknowledge and i came to this conclusion in 2011 when i showed up in beijing that it's not going the right way um i i we should pat ours we should be very proud of the patients we've demonstrated but we should also be insistent on making sure that china lives up to its many uh agreements and it's not doing that and so we have to go a more firm stance um i think i'll leave it at that we we definitely uh we had to try and we're just going to take a more firm line now orianna yes thank you so now sir we're in a great power competition with china and uh i'm very happy to see that kind of formulation as you know china has been competing with us since its founding so it's good that we've kind of woken up to that uh i won't ask you what victory looks like because i think this is a long-term potentially sort of perpetuating state so i'll ask and said what does winning look like you know how do we know that we are out competing in china or you know that we're doing well and what are some of the sectors areas or indicators that that you're looking to um that for you are the most important that you'll be the most proud of uh if if we actually reach certain goals wow it's like it's like it was planned that's my getting off stage this will be my my uh closing points that's fantastic what does victory look like um i would send you i'd refer you to the secretary's uh speech at the nixon library i think uh that uh gets to uh much of the the point and uh he said it far better than i did uh i will point to the secretary's um very vigorous approach to speaking out that's victory the fact that people uh not just the us anymore and it's not just secretary pompeo or the president people globally are uh speaking out the checks the czechia trip to taiwan 90 member delegations without fear of the reprisals that come from that that's victory the germans inviting taiwan to the bundestag is another victory the wto w i'm sorry the world bank taking a harder look at chinese state-owned enterprises and whether or not they should be included in contracts the china communication construction company and others that we recently designated as soes uh all these things are victory call me uh pollyanna uh say i'm overly optimistic or maybe i'm too close to this subject because you know we're right here but my assessment is that victor uh well we are on the way to an accommodation some sort of a balance between a free and open democratic world and a system uh in the prc uh that that doesn't appreciate that but the longer these two uh systems are in competition the more obvious the right answer will be uh the same answer we came to in 1991. hopeful that like we mentioned before that four years of engagement might actually help this system morph into something that's you know less confrontational and something that appreciates fair trade and free access and and and real competition uh i think we can get there uh i'm hopeful that we can and then i'll point to this uh forum where it's not just dave stilwell ep secretary pompeo it's many many u.s and global organizations that are finally uh joining in chorus to tell the prc that they need to adapt and change uh and and accommodate our real interests and concerns and we're well on our way but i give credit uh again to stanford hoover to all of you for doing that um for being strong partners in all of this so again thank you for the opportunity um look forward to working with you uh even more great well uh i thank you assistant secretary uh stillwell once again for these uh cogent uh and compelling remarks uh were just a few days away from the most sacred sacred exercise in any democracy which is a national election and whether we have another second trump administration or a return and rotation of power uh either way i hope that the important innovations uh and uh really i think historic steps toward a u.s china relationship based on principles of cognizance as you said constructive vigilance and reciprocity will endure as guiding principles in american foreign policy i'd like to thank you for your remarks today uh thank secretary pompeo for lending you to us for this hour and 15 minutes uh thank our audience and c-span for joining us uh uh thank orville shell and orianna mastro for their remarks uh thank um the center for u.s china relations at asia society and our staff at the hoover institution and wish you all a good weekend and assistant secretary stilwell a safe return to the united states thank you all so much [Music] you

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 16,296

Keywords: Covert, Coercive, Corrupt, Countering Chinese Communist Party Malign Influence in Free Societies

Id: 0czT3aODVOk

Length: 80min 37sec (4837 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 03 2020