Debate: It’s Time to Treat China Like an Adversary not a Partner

[Music] thank you [Music] thank you hello good evening and welcome to intelligence squared tonight's debate is asking a very timely question is it time to treat china as an adversary or a partner we're very lucky tonight to have four brilliant speakers to help us decide but before we do we just wanted to get a sense of where audience opinion lies before we go into the debate so whether you're an expert or you're just a keen follower of the news could you vote now and tell us whether you're for or against the motion is it time to treat china as an adversary so the motion is it's time to treat china as an adversary so if you're for that please vote for if you think we should be treating them as a partner please vote against you can vote by going to the link that you were sent in the email when you booked or through the qr code you can see just behind me if you're struggling with a qr code we do have ushers who should be walking around with versions to help you vote if you're watching the live stream then you should be able to vote using the polls button on the right if you click on that it should bring up a series of options if you're not sure at this stage and hopefully we might swing your opinion one way or the other by the end of the night but if you're not sure please vote undecided um we'll announce the the pre-vote results after we've heard the speeches now tonight's debate really couldn't be more timely we began the week with the leaders of the world descending on glasgow some of the broadcast media admittedly turned up in edinburgh but you can't tell americans anything for what was the is the currently the most important world gathering on climate change in an attempt to lower emissions and and stop a terrible climate disaster one nation was notable by its absence not least because it's the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world china and it's the leader of the president xi the leader of china failed to turn up the american president joe biden called it a big mistake and criticized china as a nation that wants to show leadership on big issues but somehow missed the perfect opportunity to do it also earlier this week the times an excellent newspaper reported a meeting a year ago between the foreign secretary liz truss and the british ambassador for china caroline wilson in which we are told caroline wilson pointed out that in order to increase trade and and have a stronger partnership why can't the uk treat china like the french it's reported liz trust replied because the french don't commit genocide so the rhetoric is ratcheting up throw in tensions over hong kong fears over taiwan and a lot of frustration over china's reluctance to aid the who's investigation of of covert 19 and its origins and there are an awful lot of people at the moment you'll hear all over the media and all over politics across the west who are saying it's time we treat china as an adversary whilst that's what the hawks will tell you not everyone agrees some people believe that cooperation with china rather than confrontation is the biggest and most important foreign policy objective of the 21st century we're not going to defeat china in the way we defeated the ussr they'll tell you china will always exist and the more hostile we are to it the more its people are likely to be hostile to us unlike the ussr china isn't trying to impose some global ideology on us so is it time that we sort of understood and sought to manage china's interests and seek partnership in as many ways as we possibly can which side is right hopefully by the end of tonight you'll have made up your mind let's hear from our speakers and the first speaker tonight to propose the motion it's time to treat china like an adversary is nathan law a remarkable hong kong activist who's currently here in exile nathan during the umbrella movement in 2014 was one of the five representatives who took part in the dialogue with the hong kong government debating political reform he set up his own political party along with the now jailed activist joshua wong and he was elected as the youngest legislative councillor in hong kong history in 2016. he's also just written a book which you can buy at the end of the event called freedom how we lose it and how we get it back ladies and gentlemen nathan law good evening ladies and gentlemen when it was in 2017 i remember when i was in hong kong jail um because of participation in peaceful assembly i can still remember i was treated like a number instead of a citizen still i was luckier than a lot of people living in xinjiang human rights report says that there are roughly 1.6 million to three million vigors being locked in modern day concentration camps they're forcefully detained to unlearn their culture and sometimes being tortured there are variety reasons why they're there sometimes they're just texting their foreign relatives uh sometimes they're learning weak language and sometimes just being a teacher and sometimes there are just no reasons some of you are professors sitting there being a professor and a wigan in china could be dangerous you come to tate a weaker scholar promoting modern modern nation moderation and reconciliation between han chinese and uyghurs was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2014 according to his friends and daughter he is nowhere near an extremist or violence agitator some of you sitting down there i can see a lot of young faces are student activists joshua my best friend who is now in jail who was just graduated from university and the face of protest in hong kong has been jailed for almost a year the government accused him of participating in a primary election so the government basically says that if you participate in a primary election in hong kong in order to get the majority in the legislature and in order to block government's bill you are committing a subversive action in order to overturn the government under this definition every single opposition candidate in the uk will be jailed in hong kong the regime has also prosecuted thousands of protesters in 2019 some of them are prosecuted just because they chanted certain slogan some of them just because they upheld certain political beliefs ladies and gentlemen these are all done under the chinese communist regime do you really want to partner with them tonight's motion is it's time to treat china like an adversary not a partner how do we understand partnership partnership is about trust is about respect and identify with each other's value so the fundamental question you should ask yourself before you phone next is is china led by totalitarian regime chinese communist party and the dictator xi jinping are trusted and respectful ally that shares similar values with us we're not talking about war it's a narrative that is a slippery slope and people who want to give a free pass impunity to china uses because we've got a lot of different mechanisms to hold a human rights perpetrator accountable other than going to war it's not about cold war style containment strategy we all understand that the world is so complicated so intertwined that it is impossible to dissect into two worlds in two economic systems i think of identifying them as adversary is to make a clear point human rights and freedom are our central beliefs we should try to stop a totalitarian regime like the chinese police party to get a free pass china as an anniversary we could still do business we can still interact doing these things does not mean that we have to see them as our partner we see the chinese party as an adversary because it intends to dismantle democratic values by totalitarianism attack democratic countries by short and soft power and deprive their people from their democratic rights the very first priority of the chinese community party is to retain empower at all costs even though they have to roll over their people with tanks in china nowadays they are literally more sophisticated and more technologically advanced than the overlapping states china has the largest video surveillance system in the world monitoring everything including your water bill and how you walk social creative system is in place in some of the texting cities that it control how people behave and also persecute activists more by limiting the opportunity to travel to take buses to take plane they have complete control over media every media outlet there are party organs to monitor them and let along the gigantic internet viable that chinese people just cannot receive the information from external world propaganda surveillance disinformation denial of truth and manipulation and rewriting of the past these are textbook characteristics of a totalitarian state and china does it better than the one depict in the book 1984. in 2013 the dictatorship just assumed power in issue document number nine it describes promoting western constitutional democracy promoting universal values civil society and free press etc as the seven not worthy problems that destabilize the head germany of the chinese communist party these concepts have to be wiped off from their system and from the public discussion these are just a part of the abundance of proof that from the very beginning they see the democratic system as rivalry as adversary we didn't stop that idea they did if a country is so hostile to our fundamental beliefs do you feel like it would be possible for them to be a good partner and their attacks is not only happening on domestic level but on the global level they're supporting different human rights perpetrators regime around the world including the myanmar military tutor who just murder people uh and who just conducted a coup in february and also the north korean leaders and also persecuting exile activists extraterrestrially extra legally and also economically blackmailing countries that criticize them like norway like australia and lithuania all these things combined the chinese communist party becomes the largest champion of dictators around the world the latest human rights foundation report says that it is a driving force behind global assault on human rights and even so even though there are still people from opposition claim that china is too important and too powerful to see them as a rivalry of course i understand the massiveness of china's economy but that's the reason why we should start resisting start to decrease our reliance started diversifying our economy we've been on the wrong track to presume china would liberalize themselves for over the past decade which should be worrying but not appeasing when you see such a regime become so powerful which at 10 years ago we should act yesterday which act now wishing that we should not wait until tomorrow before the democratic values erode so deeply that there is no turning back if democratic countries united we've got more than half of the global economy and that's enough to counter beijing's threat in 2020 despite beijing's economic coercion china remains australia's largest trading partner overall trade between the two nations is down just two percent in value since china's import bans new markets were found for many australian ports for example much of the wine once that signed for china now comes to the uk standing up against a chinese communist regime is not a doomed day and for some they will say that well we must collaborate with china over climate change issue i agree this is the most fundamental most important issue that we have to face in this era but i really don't like the idea that we must relinquish our critics to china's human rights violation otherwise they won't do nothing it is basically not true china themselves have strong incentive to address the problem they have a lot of heatwave float extreme radars we've seen that on news when we engaged them before we have solar grounds to believe that they have no intention to honor promises and treaties from the experience in wto south china sea dispute and from the situation in hong kong what we need is not empty words of collaboration but developing concrete means to measure and ensure the outcome of it we've seen so many atrocities conducted by the regime alone and tonight is our opportunity to say enough is enough china is not our partner our totalitarian regime is not our power it's not our partner and never will be vote for human rights vote for democratic values and support actions of conscience support iham to text joshua wong jimmy lai lester shame edward learn remember their names they should not be forgotten they are not numbers they are human thank you so much um now before we go on just apologies like this is clearly a sign of the digital age but i don't actually have a pen to hit the water so i'm hitting it with my mobile phone when you've got a minute left so take that as a sign if i start manically uh whacking a bottle with a phone um i'm delighted now to call up our first speaker to oppose the motion tonight it she is shirley yu and she's a director of the china african initiative at the london school of economics she's also a senior fellow at the ash center of harvard kennedy school and a frequent speaker on china's political economy in particular china's belton road initiative and its geopolitical implications she's written three books in chinese on china by ambassadors and the rise of the renminbi and the fall of the yen are saved ladies and gentlemen welcome surely you [Applause] thank you intelligence squared nathan where one people i feel natural closeness with you madam chair ladies and gentlemen i have been waiting for the past 10 months to hear the biden administration's clear strategy on china and this is the best i've come to understand we must compete with china on some collaborate on others and confront on the rest i call this the biden administration's piecemeal china policy for anyone who appreciates the long telegraph and the containment strategy that brought victory to the cold war we understand that their policies need to be strategic comprehensive and clearly articulated and today let me ask you that's the us the leader of the free world sees china as an adversary or a partner you may just tell me it's puzzling when the liberal global water was established in the 20th century the united states took up nearly 50 percent of the global gdp now with that kind of global scale the us could absolutely build the global order according to its own image today no longer the us is about a quarter of the global gdp china came close to about 80 percent of the united states and china's economic side is already bigger than that of the eu combined chinese economist justin evelyn asked the rhetorical question when would the united states concede to china's success it would be when china's economy is twice the size of the united states and its per capita gdp at half of the united states and i agree that when china gets there it'll be almost too late for the united states to reverse courts or history the west should not treat china as an adversary reason one because the u.s is currently suffering from imperial overreach just as the uk did at the turn of the 20th century the u.s is no longer exerting the type of global leadership that are essential to support and uphold global liberal democratic values in july 2019 u.s congress passed the hong kong human rights and the democracy act there were rumors at the time that the u.s was going to sanction chinese banks by removing them from the international swift system and had the u.s done that the chinese banking system would have just collapsed the u.s did not choose the fatal option and instead u.s congress sanctioned the lineup of hong kong and chinese senior officials the outcome the only pain i think for carrie lam is that she has to get reacquainted with using cash and at next week in beijing at the sixth planum of the chinese communist party's congress a new chinese leadership lineup will be announced for the next decade and with that the current legislative lineup will be deemed obsolete so the pain the u.s has imposed on china over hong kong and other issues has been so minuscule and that's important china on other territorial ambitions in january a coup happened in aung san tsuji's government in myanmar the biden administration waged the sanctions but the military junta is still running myanmar if no protection of democracy could be achieved in a small economy such as myanmar think about what the u.s can do to a large economy such as china if that does not destroy the illusion of how much the u.s is actually supporting global democracy and human rights movement i don't know what else does so nathan the us's fragile support has helped co-create hong kong's tragedy and maybe soon in taiwan the west should not treat china as an adversary because a cold war can be peaceful and competition can be great the u.s and china have been in the de facto cold war 2.0 for a couple of years now china is now going out to the world to build a global proletariat community as mao zedong once claimed and it would be wrong to conceive today's global paradigm on an ideological basis but cold war 1.0 was ironically also named the long cheese a bipolar global water is inherently more stable than the unipolar world bipolarity brings not only peace but also severe competition centered on technology so today china is arguably the de facto global leader on telecom infrastructure china will soon launch the world's first major sovereign digital currency that aims at revamping the 20th century global monetary order china's autonomous driving technology the first widely adopted application on ai is arguably a par with the united states china owns 70 of the global solar energy supply chain and most of it is located in xinjiang china of the top 10 wind turbines dollars in 2020 seven were chinese and in 2020 china launched one third of the global satellites two millennia of global economic history has taught us one thing that the world has only begun to economically take off on the back of the industrial revolution so whoever owns the next global technological frontier is going to own the leadership of the 21st century now competition is a great thing during cold war of the 20th century u.s landed on the moon we stopped that because competition was over now in 2024 americans will be on the moon once again and in the meantime china has just launched the core cap shows capsules of its own international space station now when we have the world's two largest powers in the fierce competition eventually it is the whole world that are going to be the beneficiary with this level of exacerbated technological diffusion the world should not treat china as an adversary because china is the bridge to the 21st and the 22nd century china's technological rights is not isolated chinese bringing the developing world with it with china's judicial partnership rwanda a country that suffered from genocide in 1998 has just become one of the world's top five fastest growing economies according to the imf and in a cuban newspaper a headline flashed that havana is going to have 5g before miami not think about this possibility what about nigeria having 5g before the uk it would be because of china because china's rise means the rise of the developing world africa by 2060 is going to have the labor force equivalent to both china and india's combined and it's china supercharges into an aging society china will be left with no option but to deeply intertwine its industrial supply chain with asean and increasingly with africa china today single-handedly owns twenty percent of africa's debt builds one-third of africa's power infrastructure china finances in various degrees 46 ports across sub-sahara and africa and china has built submarine infrastructure to provide high-speed internet to the continent now on the country we see consistent u.s fdi outflow out of africa if the west isolates china then how does the west connect with the 21st century global economic reality that is going to be led by asia and the 22nd century increasingly led by africa the last point why the west should not treat china as an adversary is because china by definition will evolve over time chinese history has shown that it's extended over 20 major dynastic periods starting from approximately two millennia bc and in some of these dynastic periods of course china was divided into five or ten kingdoms at the same time the people's republic of china as you may say is the 21st major ruling period of the chinese landmass and now without a doubt this won't be the last ruling polity in china or the end of history for china what has given the chinese communist party the ruling legitimacy has been the consistent rise of economic prosperity the current plan is by 2035 china's per capita gdp is going to hit 20 000 u.s dollars putting china solidly in a high income country status now if there were a concept of social contract and by the way there is not it would be exchange of economic prosperity for social stability but there is a danger that the chinese government may not consistently continue to produce that economic prosperity so china will remain a vulnerable power filled with many domestic challenges and i would suggest that the west let's just stay chill for by 2050 let's give china the benefit of the time and let china mature and i can guarantee you by 2050 the china that we will be dealing with will be a very different china from the one that we see today fukuyama once said that human history must be seen not as a succession of civilizations or succession of economic accomplishments and more importantly it must be seen as a succession of different forms of consciousness we are on a learning curve together thank you thank you shirley and now our third speaker tonight is another speaker for the motion for the motion it's time to treat china as an adversary rather than a partner and i'm really glad tonight to be able to introduce you to alan mendoza who is the co-founder and executive director of the henry jackson society the foreign policy and national security think tank which promotes freedom and liberty um allen is also a columnist for the city am the london's business newspaper and is a frequent commentator for the bbc sky bloomberg every every respectable everyone wants a piece of alan so we're delighted he could join us tonight thank you well thank you for that very warm uh introduction and i want to start this evening ladies and gentlemen by focusing on the actual words in the motion itself or the language of the motion because it asks us whether we should be considering china as a partner or an adversary and i think those are important terms because a real definition of being a partner is not merely one of being engaged neutrally with another personal entity but the sense that you share something much bigger with them a commonality across various areas that you are consciously working towards building something better as a unit than you could do separately think of a business partner for example or even dare i say see a few of those a romantic partner even would you feel that those are people who had your joint best interest at heart of course you would would they be people you respected for the way they behaved absolutely would they be people you trusted completely of course the answer is yes now contrast that with the behavior of an adversary that is someone who you are invariably engaged in competition with and i think actually shirley pointed out all the areas of competition which will drive us towards landing on the moon again but there are areas of competition nonetheless with a country that is clearly an adversary would you feel that such a country had your best interest at heart of course not do you think you would admire the way they behaved not at all would you trust them absolutely not i think you can see where i'm going with this because the plain fact is that when you consider the reality of china today in its regime it is clearly in the adversary camp and not in the partnership and i think it is important to state as we said at the start actually this is the chinese regime we are talking about the communist party of china not the chinese people many of whom would agree that the state is unthinkable to its interests and hates them because the way it controls them if only they had a chance to express themselves because of course ladies and gentlemen the reality is that in 2021 china is an oppressive police state and a surveillance state now back at the old cold war days it was a joke you would go to a hotel in the soviet union if you're foreign you'll turn up there'd be no towels and you'll say stand in the middle of the room talk to yourself there are no towels in this room and suddenly a flunky would appear at the door few minutes later with towels that was soviet style surveillance today in china it is much more advanced than that your your thoughts are monitored on the internet your words are checked out in social messaging apps everything is monitored to make sure that you do not divert from the party line and if you do divert from that line you risk losing benefits or you risk being taken away you could even risk never be seen again that is the nature of china today and that is of course if you are part of the majority han chinese population if you happen to be one of those poor unfortunate people who are a group the chinese state wishes to subjugate like the ouijas like the tibetans like the falun gong your fate is much worse those freedom fights in tibet risk constant arrest and torture for their actions if you're the falun gong you have to go deep into private life to practice your beliefs and of course if you're a ouija you face a prospect of slavery in concentration camps and worse acts of genocide that we know have been taking place in xinjiang province now i ask you look at that for one second think about it is that the behavior of a partner you would like or is it the behavior an adversary that you actually face because those are not the values of this country but they are the values of china today but perhaps you need more convincing so let's take a look at cop 26 just in the news of course efforts made internationally by many countries to try and counter the terrible threat of climate change now china is the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter and it is responsible for 25 percent of the world's total emissions yet its president chose not to attend the conference and instead gave a million mouth statement that merely restated current commitments of china and china's national emissions plan is widely regarded as not being anywhere near enough to keep the global temperature from rising above 1.5 degrees celsius and equally if you look at what china has done in recent weeks it is of course not signed up to the uh methane emissions treaty that many would like to join 80 countries did china didn't and of course it's decided to start firing up coal uh power stations now why is it doing that because it needs to it for its own economic interest so here we are sitting in the uk at glasgow trying to act in the world's interest and china once again acting in its own interests why because it's an adversary not a partner partners work together adversaries work in their own interest in china once again has demonstrated that but okay let's take that aside let's try another arena let's look at how china's neighbors and our other friends in the region view that country would that give us some confidence about china's true intentions unfortunately not wherever you look in the east and south china seas china generates only fear and concern about its behavior whether it is seizing or building islands in its neighborhood in breach of the united nations convention on the law of the sea or sparring with countries like japan south korea and the philippines china's aggressive bullying behavior should give us cause for concern about where our own relationship might be headed pity poor australia which was hit with a barley and wine boycott for having the temerity suggest that there should be a proper investigation into the origins of which even the world health organization now says is impossible to conduct because of the opposition of the chinese regime to allowing us to understand what really went on in the wuhan institute of virology in those days before coronavirus began to run riot around the world and spare a thought for taiwan a true partner to this country constantly menaced by the chinese military and chinese diplomatic maneuvers designed to threaten and cow that country in submission for daring to suggest it might be better off as an independent nation rather than reunited under the communist jack boot partner or adversary our other friends would say very much the latter and then there is the ip theft and industrial espionage that china engages on an industrial scale would you trust a country that stole from you because that is what china does to countries who once saw themselves as partners the u.s independent and bipartisan commission on the theft of american intellectual property estimated that iep theft cost the u.s between 225 and 600 billion dollars annually that's one point three percent to three percent of us gdp and in its report the ip commission was clear where the blame lay stating unequivocally that china is the world's principal ip infringer and in case you're feeling left out here as a british audience sitting here in london tonight in december 2018 the national cyber security center announced that a group of chinese hackers known as apt-10 acted on behalf of the chinese ministry of state security to carry out a malicious cyber campaign targeting intellectual property in the uk and its environment note that body revealed that the uk was a significant target of ap 10. perhaps this is why the british and u.s governments have banned the involvement of chinese companies like huawei from involvement in critical infrastructure projects because they believe it is too great a risk to have chinese involvement in them hardly the behavior expected of a country regards a partner much more that of an adversary i could go on i could cite the fact that china recently engaged in threats against british naval wrestles excising the right of freedom of navigation in international waters near china or that china has placed sanctions on british members of parliament former colleagues of uh savints who have dared to call out behavior but i don't think i need to because the plain fact is that many of us in this room will feel that china's doubts about china's intentions have grown not diminished in recent years and are likely to grow still further the china of 2050 that was spoken of is out of china more likely to be our friend or our enemy i'm afraid the direction of travel is clear and that is why i hope you will listen to those voices that you have said tonight what china is really about and agree with this side of the house that china today and even more importantly china tomorrow is an adversary and not a partner thank you thank you alan and i'm delighted now to announce our final speaker tonight sir vince cable mp for twickenham for over 20 years leader of the liberal democrats between 2017 and 2019 and he was the secretary of state for business innovation and skills in the coalition government between 2010 and 2015 and the president of the board of trade vince has also written a number of books including his latest which will be available at the end of the event tonight called the chinese conundrum engagement or conflict examining the long history of china and the west well ladies and gentlemen well ladies and gentlemen i i agree with the previous speaker the the debate hinges on what we mean by partnership uh and i want to start with with the economic arguments and repeat some of what cindy said earlier that if we go back half a century we had some in china some of the utter horrors of the modern world a great leap forward the cultural revolution this was a country characterized as it had been for a century with famine hunger poverty and chaos but deng and his successors converted china into a successful capitalist economy and in the process turn china into what is now the biggest economy in the world on some measures biggest trading partner in the world the biggest recipient of foreign investment and china is the future of the world economy followed by india in due course and it's self-indulgent to the point of silliness to believe that we can do any other than seriously engage with a country of this kind and i spent five years in government trying to do that and we had good outcomes we know we still have an integrated steel industry the chinese firm bought scanthorpe from tartar steel we we will have a um electric vehicle industry because the chinese company is building one of the biggest battery companies in the world in the northeast of england jaguar land rovers vast sales and profits in china have helped that company to expand the industry in the west midlands astrazeneca has provided our vaccine on the back of massive sales and profits in china i'm based listening to university and british university students expansion has been financed by 125 000 chinese students every year coming and paying commercial fees but that's a bit parochial if you look at it from a global standpoint it was actually the chinese along with gordon brown and obama who refloated the world economy after the crash and the banks collapsed the chinese have consistently over four decades used their vast holdings of american dollars to keep the world monetary system stable to prevent currency wars it wasn't the chinese it was the last president of the united states and probably the next one who systematically tried to sabotage the world trading system on which the prosperity of rich and poor countries depends and coincidentally right now the chinese are amid this plethora of economic announcements opening their economy as they've been urged by westerners to do uh to the financial sector um biggest banks in the world the black rocks and jp morgan's right now i've been given free range to go into china set up institutions buy up shares for western investors um but of course it's not all economics we've we've heard about human rights and china is authoritarian extremely authoritarian can be brutal there's no point trying to conceive like i don't conceive it but we have to what we have to look at is the balance between on the one hand there are enormous advances in economic and social rights and the very very lamentable record in human rights and in fact china ranks above only saudi arabia in the freedom house classification of human rights abuses saudi of course being one of our close partners economically and militarily but but it is a you know the new arts abusers of course there's no doubt about that but there's one fact to remember before the covid restrictions came in every year 130 million chinese left china to work to study to shop do their tourism at the end of it they went back freely and it's worthwhile remembering that the henry jackson institute was set up in the name of an american senator who campaigned against the soviet union because they wouldn't let people out the chinese do let people out they go and they come back and they consent to do so so this is an authoritarian regime but of a particular kind that commands the support of a large number of its own people but the concern that's been expressed on the panel is it's the way it looks to the rest of the world and you in a caricatured form you often say you know china's militaristic it's aggressive it's trying to conquer the world it's worth noting the chinese spend two percent of the national product on defense the same as we do nato average the americans and i'm a great fan of the united states have 200 military bases around the world the chinese have two they are little known fact the largest contributor to united nations peacekeeping so it's you know there is a lot of aggressive language but the reality is a bit different and president g set out as stall very clearly 10 years ago when he became president he said look china is like this we we don't export terrorism we're not sending you hungry refugees we don't mess with you don't mess with us okay it's crude but it's a very clear statement of a chinese approach to the rest of the world which is non-interference and territorial integrity which is accounts for the position they take on xinjiang and hong kong and taiwan and it has a lot of support in the rest of the world you know we feel there's also moral indignation in the uk about china but when the american administration the trump administration alleged for the first time about the abuse of muslims in xinjiang and leading to extermination on some claims and undoubtedly is human rights abuse every single islamic majority country in the world of any substance including the democratically elected indonesian malaysia bangladesh pakistan nigeria supported the chinese position why would they do that but the argument is not about fundamentally about non-interference it is about partnership to solve common problems and just my final comment is this that we we have a whole series of international public goods common headaches global warming is one pandemics is another nuclear proliferation is probably the most serious of all now without china we cannot begin to solve these problems you know our existence depends on having a partnership with them and you can argue about whether the chinese or the americans made the biggest lack of contribution to the climate talk but actually they have to work together and they have to cooperate otherwise these problems will never be solved so that's why i believe we have to form a partnership a new cold war doesn't help anybody thank you thank you vince and thanks to all of our speakers tonight um we are about to open the debate up to the audience so do feel free to send in your questions if you're watching the live stream you can do that by clicking on the q and a button do type in your question if you want to add your name and where you're tuning in from it's always nice to know if you're in the room in a slightly sort of um post-covered gesture we want you to rather than putting your hands up would you mind just coming and queuing behind one of the mics here we'll form an orderly queue we'll try to get through as many questions as possible before we do that though i just want to announce the results of the pre-vote that we did at the start of the session and i looks very much at the start of tonight's event that the fall for the motion so um people do think we should be treating china as an adversary by 53 against people for partnership was 22 percent undecided 25 so there's still an opportunity there for you um let's see how we get let's see where we get to by the end of the night um we're already getting a cue which is great do keep coming if if you have any questions at all um but could we begin with you thank you very much um i'd just like i'd like to ask shirley and vince just one question what would each of you what's the single thing you'd want china to change to be easier to partner with maybe i'll go first china has developed enormous hard power needless to say both economic power but also military power but china has not yet matured with its uh soft power the west that has tremendous amount of self power and so if china needs to learn one thing and grow maturely on the global stage it would be that china needs to learn and develop is soft power i'll give you one quick example in the recent postcode 19 world the china continues to talk about win-win solutions when we talked about the relieving african debt china said well we prefer to resort to african debt issues on a bilateral level on a win-win basis now condoleezza rice former u.s secretary of state said once if china wants to be the global global leader let it because unless china becomes one china would not understand the sacrifices it takes to be a global leader in china needless to say as if china does aspire to take on the global leadership responsibility then china needs to understand the world is no longer about win-win it is about lose win because it takes true leadership to lose in order for the rest of the world to win finns well it's a slightly flippant answer but i i would say probably the most important thing they need at the moment is good public relations advice they got terribly terrible at presenting themselves actually there is a very good defense well i've written a book you can form your judgments as to whether what rule it performs but you know actually you know there are the little factoid i mentioned about participating in u.n peacekeeping uh the fact that their their military defense is very very limited except in some highly specialized high-tech areas uh they've they've started using this rather foolishly in my view this wolf warrior communication system which none of us understand it's it's a peculiar use of language and it's very off-putting and gives the impression that chinese are highly aggressive which is actually not the case i'm actually going to extend that question to this side too is there what would need to change in china for you to think they'd be a good partner now it's government um i mean basically vince has given you this wonderful impression that china is this benign why certain majority muslim nations didn't vote on the ouija issue because china has literally bought them with billions of dollars of economic development aid in the belt and road initiative [Applause] that government is a source of problems and until china is not a communist state it cannot be a partner nathan is there one thing is it is it human rights is it sort of more protection for the citizens of hong kong what is the one thing that would make it china a much easier partner well definitely the government i think i think that's the perfect answer if we look at what the opposition has been saying that they're saying that they're economically superior so that we have to see them as partners but they forgot one thing is when bad people when the malign force have more power they're actually doing more damage to the world and that's why we should start thinking we should start thinking about like what are their systems and what they're using the power with their economic uh of power in the world and how we can hold them accountable when they do such a lot of human rights violation around the world and i think this is exactly the problems that we should ask um i'm going to ask a question from the left before i do if is there any women who'd like to ask questions please do come forward too don't do don't feel you you can't um i would like to ask the opinion of each of the panel why each of them feels why there are so few chinese spaces here this evening it's a very interesting question i think we'll start with nathan i'm sorry so few chinese chinese faces here this evening so i've had um a lot of talks in universities and there were a lot of times that chinese students approached me and to talk to me after the talk because they were worried that when they are present and they are being spotted and they are being turned to the embassy or anything that they could get in trouble um um surveins just said that um there are lots of chinese people coming out and coming back but they but we we just have to remember that these people even though they're overseas they're continuously being monitored they are having a lot of connections in their country whenever they create troubles there will be calls to their families their family store will be knocked and there will be uh police or any sort of these um thing to come up and to threaten them so this is a concrete worries for them even though they're outside of the country vince is that is that some yes well i teach quite large numbers of chinese students have the same institution as cindy they're very forthcoming they speak freely ask intelligent questions i guess the reason they're not here we actually have a very small chinese minority in the uk probably if we had a more liberal approach to immigration we would see more of them if i made you sad it could also be because of kobe 19 restrictions i almost didn't make it tonight uh traveling from the united states back to the uk but also there is certainly a trend of human capital decoupling between china and the western world there's no doubt about it shirley do you worry as nathan said that people would be afraid to come to a forum like this to be seen oh i'm sure many will be afraid of course i teach at harvard kennedy school and of course you know that the past year we have to do uh lecturing online and so i was told just as a general a cautionary note that don't ever assume that the zoom will not be off the record it's just on the record and what that means is that a lot of the chinese students who are participating in political debates at universities back at home in china they may be cautious about what they speak is that alarming is that something makes it harder to for us to work as partners giving it such a different culture it's the reality allen anything to add well i think shirley is a sleeper for the proposition here tonight and she's she's telling you exactly why the chinese regime is such a disaster and why we can't possibly be a partner with them if even chinese students dare and speak in public but it is look the surveillance issue is a real one it's very important china monitors people abroad as well as at home there's a case in the us right now where the u.s authorities have uh you know have accused china of surveilling a dissidence in the u.s that's the reality this is not the behavioral partner however alan may i just come back just to defend my position we have to learn from harvard something i just i was at harvard two weeks ago and i was so happy to see many chinese faces there can you imagine an enormous amount of pressure for the elite universities in the united states today to accept the chinese students to come to the u.s to debate about these fundamental political issues we have to give them a lot of credits to have the guts to continue to welcome chinese students and we have to welcome and engage with china there is no other option than that we will come to you in just a moment but actually because i called for them i sort of feel like we should just give one of the women a chance first thank you hi um thank you for this um so my question is first of all i was very surprised by the results i find them very emotional i would i would personally propose partnership but my question is we've talked a lot about the u.s but what's your view on the european union and also on a in a post-brexit era what's the view on how the uk and eu should be working on defining a partnership with china because i think post-trump we're also alone in this so i'd love to understand for a good partnership there needs to be you know two sides and the u.s has mentioned a fair bit but really love to understand more about eu uk and and how we're going to how we're going to get there together well vince we'll start with you um what should well yes i think i think particularly brexit context is a very good one i mean i think if britain wanted to be in the comfortable position of always dealing with countries with the same values and same standards we should have stayed in the european union but we didn't and we're now a global britain which means we have to engage with the world as it actually is outside and we we tend to forget i mean there's a lot of you know pontificating about china but some of britain's closest economic and defense relationships are with countries like saudi arabia and the gulf states egypt turkey which have human rights records which in some cases are as bad or worse than with china but that's the world we have to deal with uh and you know i'm afraid just shutting it out i mean just just a quick rejoinder to an early point people that the indignant that the chinese are lending money to africa why are they lending money to africa because we have walked away right britain's cut its aid program western multinationals have pulled out there's a vacuum the chinese have advanced capital for development because nobody else will and then we lecture the chinese and say they're behaving badly i mean there's extraordinary self-righteousness here which is totally unacceptable alan i'm going to go to you um i mean did you accept vince's point in the post-brexit world we now have to we now have to take partnerships wherever we can get them no one is saying that we shouldn't engage with china i mean no one on this side would say boycott china go towards that's not what we're saying we're saying be alive as to the reality of who you are dealing with you know and vince mentioned certain regimes who we aren't particularly uh proud of our i think our human rights uh uh you know records yet we still deal with them the reality is that we know what those regimes are all about we know and with their limits as a result of how closely we do act with them and that's really where the eu's going to have to go with china as well it's going to obviously have to trade with china no one suggests that's not a good thing however must it trade in china in key strategic industries where national security of various countries are engaged with you know you discover that china actually ends up with a monopoly or at least um a large proportion of some of the most key components to uh a nation security that's not a sensible place to be once you've identified it's not really a true partner and adversary okay trade with it trade with it in certain goods but let's not pretend that we can avoid where that country's at real likely interests are they won't be aligned with us we therefore need to protect ourselves so it's a realistic engagement it's understanding china's a big country we want to be part of it but we must make sure we are not so intertwined that should there be a crisis we are not held hostage to what the chinese do because we've seen it so many times before the australian case is just one example of how china punishes countries who don't agree with it and that's a bad news for everyone in that sense so can i just quickly respond to this national security issue because the issue of huawei and 5g was raised earlier and i happened to deal with this in government over a five-year period and it was repeatedly reassured by the intelligence community who should know that our dealings were totally safe and the same judgment was followed by theresa may when she succeeded the government i was in and the reason we have disengaged from china and huawei and 5g has got nothing to do with british national security it's because we were told by the americans that we had to and the germans who took a view in their national interest kept with 5g and as if britain had we would now be at the forefront of countries using the most advanced telecommunications technology and we're not no i have to come back i'm sorry i have to come back on that because that's that's a point of view however the other point of view is quite clearly that having a company which has um which would be of course uh responsible to the chinese government at any moment it wanted data and control of that company being part of your communications network is a disaster for this country we've seen examples where chinese companies have been told what to do by the chinese state that's not a place for any country which has serious national security issues to allow such a company to control its 5g network and that's why britain did not do it nothing to do with american pressure in that regard so am i taking from here that the eu the uk don't have a strategy to engage because it seems uh should i jump in this question yeah well i think if we we're talking partnership as if we're seeing china that no problems in china and there are no problems in the way that we engage with them for the best tech case and that's something that i don't agree with we have to engage with it but we have to see how they abuse that kind of like trading relationship and their power over the world to conduct all sorts of uh bad behaviors including they're using forced labor to export uh the solar panel they're using forced labor to do work on xinjiang cotton they're doing a lot of economic uh blackmailing to countries like norway when they well after they uh the no the nobel peace uh prize was awarded to lucha ball they blocked the trade even though it was not about the government but the institute but the chinese government still do so still using their belgians behavior in order to silence the other countries if you look at the case of the australia the propaganda machine is describing australia as the gum under the shoes and that's the reason why we have to work on defining that as adversary in order to work on these problems until we've got a respectable and we've got a relationship that both sides agree on and and this is the result why we are not talking about partnership now but we should have made some change thank you um we will come back to some of the questions here i just wanted to ask a quick one from um some of our online audience got a question that's coming saying how can we make china accountable if another pandemic emerges from the country um shirley do you want to take that oh i remember uh when kobe 19 first broke out um at the uh in spring of 2020 we had a lecture at the llc where we had a conversation with larry summers from harvard kennedy school larry was amazing and he said look this sort of pandemic the world has to be prepared for it to come back once every decade or so and that is fundamentally because of rapid urbanization all across the developing world and particularly in asia pacific and if you look at asean economies they are rising very quickly indonesia i think the gdp growth is like five and a half percent and so with rapid urbanization there is a higher need of uh protein consumption and the human and animal interactions are going to become more intense it may not break out in china it might break out in another developing country but i think the world would have to be prepared that there will be more these type of virus that will eventually spread into a global pandemic and what that calls for are pre-active proactive responses you see the global government are they tend to be reactive when emergency happens and i should say that i see many masks in this room and we are still suffering from the aftermath of covet 19 and that really caused for multilateral organizations and the national governments to really set up proactive responses in order to protect the citizens livelihood when the next one hits and that china is included as well should there be more accountability though should they should they be doing more to to enable the current investigation into into the origins and how do we how do we trust them to be more open next time it's interesting because uh president biden has announced a 90 days i believe independent investigation of the origins of covet 19 and i believe that result was released sometime at the beginning of september and then that was the u.n general assembly where president biden president xi jinping were both present via video it's just almost as if this whole covet investigation disappeared from the universe no one seemed to talk about it and today we seem to have gone past that era of accusing one another but i think as rational citizens what we really ought to do is not to say that you know the effect of course we need to continue to investigate because that helps us to prevent the next pandemic from happening but we really ought to hold our own governments and these global multilateral organizations accountable vince was there anything you wanted to add how do we make china accountable the next time there's a pandemic sorry the question was how can we make china accountable if another pandemic emerges from china well as far as the last pandemic is concerned the the biden administration just as you know just set up an investigation into it and established that an accidental leak was perfectly plausible but the most likely outcome almost certainly was that it was zootonic transmission it was an unfortunate accident the chinese did spend two weeks covering up what was going on which was highly reprehensible but they then cooperated fully in the getting to the dna of the of the molecule and cooperating in solving this problem and as you know from the recent crackdowns last few weeks they're now taking this disease a lot more seriously than we are so yeah i mean we have no alternative but to cooperate i mean this is a it's like climate change like um nuclear proliferation these are common problems the chinese accepts that their party to it they're unlike some administrations they're guided by science they do serious research and one little detail that was forgotten in all the arguments about wuhan was that the the wan institute where this leak may have occurred may have occurred was a joint project with the united states which mr fauci who was the head of public medicine in the united states was overseeing so if there was a if there was a failure it was it was shared it wasn't unique to the chinese so responsibility is widely spared here let's not just go around pointing fingers you've waited a while do you step hi um so my name is rafi and i'm here from city of london school today and thank you very much it's been really fascinating fascinating debate so far um i wanted to pick up on something shirley mentioned in your speech said at the very beginning um about you use the imperial overreach to refer to the usa and in doing so you draw a parallel between the us at the moment and britain at the turn of the century now the thing is um between the the sort of changeover of global domination between britain and america is that these two countries shared fundamentally a similar view of the world and as you know the proposition defined partnership so well you know britain and the uk are very close partners so my question is that the thing is nowadays is that china as again the proposition outline is a country that should have very different values to us and i think that you know the western society that we have created is something we should be proud of you know the free society we've created is a moral achievement and we shouldn't forget that and you know it's it's something we should be proud of i the question is actually opposed to the proposition because i agree we should treat china as an adversary but when we're seeing political division and countries turning inwards looking at ourselves you know trump won on a campaign of america first you know how can the west regain its sense of unity to properly treat china as an adversary as it should alan do you want to take well actually i think firstly good to see a a citizen that's marvelous to have you here with us um being an old citizen myself but leave that for one second let's look at what you just said about you know our own divisions what's fascinating is that say in the us today which perhaps the most divided if you like of our political societies what is the one issue the sole issue on which there is a genuine bipartisan consensus guess what it's china it's fascinating actually the democrats and republicans both seen this issue as one which is the biggest uh threat to global sort of stability going forwards and together they have senators congressmen even you know the presidents have both accepted that china is that threat so i think this tells you something significant it means that even with our own divisions in uh in our current contemporary political alliance the same by the way is true here if you look at the labour front bench you'll see lots of criticism of china tory front bench the same um you end up with a consensus on this one issue and that should tell you that people have woken up to the reality of what china is they're convinced they have to do something about it it doesn't matter what party you're from action needs to be taken now we are almost running out of time but i just want to try and get a couple of very quick questions in so um do you want to ask yourself uh yeah so hi uh thanks for the debate so far so uh i'd like to ask uh the pastor i think the opposition opposition suggested that the past of china suggest they would eventually change and become more democratic but surely we've tried for like a golden decade we had xi jinping come and meet with the queen etc and including under the coalition and there's been no change but just an increase in hostility in taiwan threats against australia hong kong and terrorism and so genocide in xinjiang what makes you think this time or any time in the future will be different so that's a quick one for vince i think given that you were a member of the colonies hearing these questions um so uh as a member of the coalition during that period with david cameron and george osborne where china was being welcomed in um there were state visits the doors were very much open to a partnership we don't seem to have made very much progress on stopping uh genocide or on sort of building up a relationship that sort of functions i think that's a quick summary of the acoustics um so during your time in the coalition when david cameron and george osborne were opening the doors to china it doesn't seem to have made much difference in our ability to change chinese behavior or influence them in terms of the problems of the uyghurs or climate change well we we weren't trying to tell them how to run their own country we were trying to conduct business with them in a practical and equitable way and i gave some examples as how this has worked out productively but as it happens um i was in meetings with um actually one meeting with the president of china who jintao proceeded to and the issue of tibet was raised and it was raised in a proper and respectful way and we notified them that this was a problem that some people in britain were concerned about and they responded um and providing they were not sort of we were trying to ambush them or humiliate them they're perfectly capable of engaging with these issues i had a very long conversation um and having our conversation with a man who's now in the politburo and will i think probably be the next one of the premiers um about human rights in the labor force because you know i was responsible here for you know minimum wage and all that and i made the point to them that um you know you're a socialist country so supposedly um but there aren't very many labor rights and i'm in a wicked capitalist country and we have minimum wages and protection of trade unions and so on and it didn't um you know throw up his hands i refuse to discuss it we had a perfectly sensible discussion based on the fact that you know china is evolving many of the things i was discussing with them are now being implemented in china as part of their so-called common prosperity move they actually asked me to send literature from the uk on how we were dealing with minimum wage enforcement and my experience of dealing with the top chinese on issues of this kind is that providing we're not presenting ourselves as a sort of patronizing westerners lecturing them on how to run their country but treat them as a great power and equals and with respect you can have a perfectly sensible discussion about where we go you know there is an issue about respect and about face which we have to understand if you're dealing with china but it can be done and we did it uh very quickly we are completely out of time but i just want to get one more question i'm so sorry to everybody else i get this makes me a really brave chinese by the definition so um one question very simple one so like i can see the argument say that oh because they don't share our same belief or value a liberal democratic society but they really want to see china as a liberal democratic society to rewarding silence and donald trump do we want to see another ift in deutschland and another le pen in france let let me remind you china is running very high on nationalism people are populistic and they will elect leaders to have i mean a strong leader that might be stronger in terms of nationalistic views than xi jinping right now so um i guess that's the question for both sides thank you well i'll start with alan you you called for an end of this government do you do you think you've asked for you know better the devil you know no definitely not when that devil happens to be a genocidal authoritarian regime that enslaves hundreds of millions of course not look the reality is china had a great moment of democracy potential in 1989 and what happened the tanks literally crushed the democracy protesters they literally killed them okay that's the reality of it and since that time the chinese communist party has been ruthless in its maintenance of power and its desire to control its people and it's only getting worse not better because the internet age and the surveillance afforded makes china an even more susceptible country to surveillance by this regime and that's your real problem you've got a state an authoritarian state that's getting more authoritarian not less and more dangerous as a result can i just add something really quickly that's actually a really profound question i just had this conversation with a harvard professor recently about vladimir putin in russia and so the idea is that what the whole uh post the cold war era people have been hoping for a liberal russia and then we got putin but his conclusion is that we should be happy because in 10 years time the person presiding over russia might be even more authoritarian than putin and then in 10 years time we're going to be so happy to say oh my god that was the golden arrow when we had putin so it's really interesting i think the west is totally unprepared today about what's going to happen to china next because there is a clear directional shift during xi jinping era particularly this year on the cusp of the second century of the chinese communist party that now there is a strong sense of re-nationalization china is definitely turning towards the left but who will be the successor and that potential successor one day might be even more on the left to xi jinping and then how does the west respond and so i think we really are in a steep learning curve and we ought to put in a lot of realistic thinking about how to realistically deal with china that is possibly going to increasingly become more prosperous but we are uncertain if china will increasingly become more liberal or not just very briefly yeah just one word um in order to verify your statement we should have an election in china if they are so popular by the time you and i can vote and we will see the result of it we've just got time now i'm so sorry we've just got time to to move to the closing statements i'm going to invite vince first to just in a minute sum up your side of the argument well i i just in the two minutes i have perhaps just rehearsed what i said at the at the end of my my original comments which is to try to focus on those issues where we have common threats and the need to build partnerships to deal with them i mean the whole week has been filled with cop and climate change and rightly it's an existential problem and there's a lot of finger pointing you know the chinese are the biggest emitters well actually in cumulative terms there certainly aren't but anyway regardless of who is to blame um there are many things that you know the americans are doing positively and others that they fail to do on coal the chinese have actually made a commitment and are now implementing carbon pricing which has proved too difficult in the west particularly the states they have banned the export of co-generation power stations they have got the biggest renewable power sector in the world and they're putting it to use but if we're operating in a cold war environment in which there is no cooperation and china is treated as a threat and we're obsessed for example by you know the intellectual property around solar power rather than actually how you share it then this problem is not going to be solved and it is a horrendous issue i'm much personally much more concerned about another problem which is nuclear proliferation we have issues of north korea iran pakistan and the taliban the chinese as it happens have an entree to those governments which we don't have they could if they were minded and we worked with them act in a restraining and helpful way or they could make mischief we don't know but it is in everybody's interest that we actually do work with them and the rules of the world international economic system that has made this country and the rest of the world prosperous in the last 70 years is in serious peril you know the world trade system the monetary system it needs stable governments the americans led it for this time and they've generally led it pretty well until trump but we've now got two two economic superpowers and they're going to have to share responsibility and the chinese are going to have to be given equal status and they will do it in their own way with chinese characteristics but we need them as partners there is no other way that we can deal with these problems without them thank you just in a minute absolutely right two questions for you the first question is do you deep down think about it carefully do you feel more worried about china internationally and domestically than you did five years ago today i think deep down all of us somewhere feel that the answer will likely be yes to that and if that is the case you don't that's very interesting i'd love to know later why um after all the bullying the harassment the international threats the breaking of international law the economic exploitation the genocide after all of that okay we can talk about it we can talk about it now the second question whether you answered yes or no to the first given the direction of travel think about five ten years time do you think china is going to be more or less of a threat internationally and domestically than before and the answer indisputably on this side of the house is yes it will be and if you do believe that then you surely have the obligation to think about this carefully and go that means there's an adversary and not a partner adversity doesn't mean you don't you cut off contact with it you've still got to do engage and you've still got to do things but be realistic about where that country is heading and it is not to a good destination thanks alan just in a minute shirley your case alan is a great campaigner but let me appeal to some reason here in the peloponnesian war ccd said the norm of the state is that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must 600 years ago world economic gravity has shifted from the eurasian continent or the inner crescent of the world to the other crescent to the atlantic region and now we are starting to see the world's economic gravity shifting back to the eurasian continent but for that few centuries we have had the liberal democratic values that have essentially defined the world and we have been living in a cozy pax american world for the past seven plus decades pakistan americana and pax britannica were amazing golden eras of our world history but they are not the global norm in the post-pax american world before the us and china definitively win that in this global economic race until we see a definitive winner the world is going to be fundamentally dominated by hopsin values that is international relations will be once again governed by anarchy and the power in security and in this hopsin world international relations national interest matters and balance of power matters nathan final word in 1969 after the tamil massacre a lot of the foreign countries indeed input a lot of boycotts in hong kong in china and have albums about goals and a lot of different measures uk was among one of them who were the very first to ease a relationship to warm the relationship in the year 2001 china joined wto in the year 2008 they had the olympic but then i was a proud chinese i cheered whenever chinese got the gold medal everyone in the world cheered for china's achievement in the year 20 2014 2015 the uk government coined the term of golden era it really means that uh the uk government back then wanted to have a warm and nice relationship with the chinese government but look at decades of engagement what we have left are millions of people living in modern day concentration camp forced labour's hong kong protest has been cracked thousands of my friends in jail and china when xi jinping talks about win-win situation it means that china wins twice they're dominating world's economy but also exporting their authoritarianism and we've got improv evidence of it so when we talk about partners when we call about adversary we're not partnering with someone who has the power has the economic superiority because they could use those things to do bad things we are partnering with like-minded allies to promote our mutual beliefs to promote our democratic values because we believe in inner dignity freedom and democracy and that is why we have to see it as an adversary that's why we have to make it strict that we're doing it for global democracy and for future generations and for the people who still felt could still speak freely and who could still live from fear thank you i'd like to thank all four of our speakers tonight for making their cases so powerfully the talking on this side of the room is now over it's time for the audience to decide so please do now submit your final vote for or against the motion it's time to treat china as an adversary not a partner you can vote using the same link you used earlier for the pre-vote so either the link you received in the email or the qr code behind us if you're in the room if you're watching via the live stream it's the little poll button on the right of the screen please do vote for or against the motion if you're still not sure please do vote undecided we'll bring you those results any minute now just a quick reminder before we do though where we began at the start of this event before anyone had heard the speakers 53 of the audience was for the motion was for treating china as an adversary 22 percent were for treating china as a partner and 25 percent were undecided so it'll be interesting to see where we get to um in the meantime if you would like to tweet about tonight please do using the hashtag iq2 if you want to continue the debate so apologies for anyone who didn't get their question in do carry on on twitter and we'll we'll all between us try to answer if we can but keep it keep keep the argument going um we should have the results for you any minute now um before we do though i just wanted to thank our speakers again tonight so nathan law alan mendoza shirley you and vince cable thank you very much we haven't quite got the results yet this is sort of the moment where the countdown clock is ticking the tension is rising um we should know any second oh here we are so the post results are a triumph for the motion 69 of the audience here for treating china as an adversary 23 for treating china as a partner and only eight percent now are undecided so thank you all very much for voting and for contributing and for sending in your questions wherever you were

Channel: Intelligence Squared

Views: 109,341

Keywords: china, america, socialism, communism, politics, chinese, nathan law, capitalism

Id: OVJrtzbK4zE

Length: 87min 0sec (5220 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 09 2021