Geopolitical Reset 2021: Implications for Asia | ST-WEF Webinar | Davos Agenda 2021

hello everybody and welcome to this webinar geopolitical reset asia 2021 brought to you by the straits times and the world economic forum i'm vikram khanna i'm an associate editor of the straits times and i will be moderating this forum i have with me uh four very distinguished panelists uh let me introduce them briefly on my right is professor wang gong-woo who is an imminent historian and a synologist associated with the national university of singapore to his right is john heng chi who is ambassador-at-large in singapore and she was the former singapore ambassador to the united states for 16 years to her right is mr giorgio he is senior adviser to the kwok group in hong kong and foreign former foreign minister of singapore and to his right is kishor mabubani who is a distinguished fellow at the asia research center at the national university of singapore and a distinguished author of several best-selling books so welcome everybody we are also joined by our bureau chiefs in washington and beijing respectively they are nirmal ghosh hello nirmal and dan don way from beijing so let's get this show on the road uh without further ado normal maybe we can just start with you if you can just give us a sense of the mood in the united states a week after the biden uh inauguration is there a sense of relief a sense of optimism or is there some foreboding that the country is still very divided that coveted 19 is going to get worse before it gets better and that given that the the congress is almost evenly divided there will be formidable political obstacles ahead so which can you just give us a sense of what the mood is thank you vikram i think it's all of the above there is a sense of relief that the inauguration went off well it represented uh it represented a sort of reaffirmation of the democratic process of course it took 25 000 armed troops to get it done which was unprecedented but still they did get it done and there were the usual calls for bipartisanship and so forth but there are no illusions either as you said the congress is the democrats have a very very razor thin majority in congress uh joe biden is up against the the covet pandemic and he has about 100 days more or less to show demonstrable results that he could get it under control and link to that of course is the economic recovery if the pandemic can come under control by the summer or by the late summer then at least the feel-good factor will return uh visibly you know people can go out at restaurants and bars and that creates a lot of optimism but uh there's also it remains a very deeply divided country a majority of uh republican supporters still believe that uh donald trump won the election and was somehow stolen from him so uh we are in for a very uh fractious few months and joe biden has a mountain has several mountains to climb and his work is absolutely cut out for him so it's it's not it's not a terribly rosy outlook i have to say a lot of hope but no illusions thank you for that uh sobering picture which is also realistic i suspect uh thank you nirmal uh dawn if we make may come to you for a minute could you tell us uh how the biden electoral victory is being viewed in china both by officialdom and by think tanks and others is there a sense that a sense of optimism that there will be a positive reset in the u.s china relationship or is there a sort of mood of cynicism which that nothing much will change and that in fact things might even get more difficult for china so can you fill us in on those points thank you sure vikram well certainly from and official perspective uh there have been many overtures and signals about wanting to reset ties and have a fresh start uh you know foreign minister wang yi described um the new presidency as a new window of hope that has opened and the state media have also pushed out many conciliatory and hopeful editorials about how china can partner the us in dealing with the pandemic you know with climate change and other global issues while at the same time continuing to demonize the trump administration perhaps the way to try and set it apart from the administration um but providing a warning to it as well you know we saw for instance just um hours after president biden was sworn in and china announced that it was uh sanctioning 28 outgoing officials including uh secretary of state mike pompeo and that move quickly drew a rebuke from the new biden office which said um china was playing two partisan defense and um some communist party insiders that we've spoken to uh in the past months say uh that while they think relations under president biden will certainly not be as bad as it was with president trump they're not quite optimistic about mending those ties completely and they fully expect and continue to be convinced that the u.s is out to contain china uh one of them told us that the message china was sending with the latest sanctions as well as all the expressions of hope that ties can be reset is very clear and that is beijing wants to normalize relations but it will not put up with what it sees as incessant bullying or demonization so while china appears to be welcoming of the biden presidency and continues to speak of wanting to continue with dialogue it is at the same time quite wary of what's to come you know not not in the next few months perhaps um as mr biden focuses on dealing with domestic issues but um certainly in the future um already you know even in the early days of the biden administration some of his cabinet officials have made comments that have not been um seen as particularly friendly to china and um i think beijing will for now be restrained and take more of a wait-and-see approach right thank you dawn um for filling us in um okay so the from what we have read from kurt campbell and anthony blinken and jake sullivan the new administration seems to recognize that having been preoccupied in the middle east for the better part of the last 20 years it has severely under-invested in engagement with asia diplomatically asia has always been a sort of secondary theater uh diplomatically speaking and dealings with asian countries have largely been bilateral there has not been um a region-wide architecture of any kind um but there's a there's a sense that that is going to change that uh the center of gravity of american diplomacy is going to shift to asia uh which will become a primary theater and by all indications there will be some kind of new architecture in the region so with that that background in mind the question is how should the biden administration deal with asia some of you have suggested that the first duty of any diplomat is to listen to their counterparts in whatever region they're dealing with i think kurt campbell has actually said the same thing so let me ask you if you had kurt campbell sitting in front of you and he asks you okay i'm willing to listen please tell me how you think the united states should deal with asia what can it do that would help the region's stability and prosperity and how should it go about the task so what would you say to him so who would like to start henchi you seem well ready i will say congratulations congratulations cut good to see you in the administration now as you know the u.s china relationship is the most important relationship the fundamental relationship affecting peace and security and prosperity in the region is also becoming an important relationship for the peace and security of the world you've got to get that fixed dial down the decibels calm the relationship and it has to be more predictable your article which you publish in the foreign affairs just before you were named the coordinator of the indo-pacific indicated that to establish a stable regional order there must be buy-in from the powers in the region and i think that's a good way to start and you talked of having some role some way of bringing china in to you know accept some of the rules and work with china in some respects so we would like to see predictability please help us create that and i think you can begin by having dialogue there is right now no dialogue platform for seriously for the united states and china liuha talks to you know meets with like robert like zika last four years is gone obama president obama had the s and e d president bush has sorry what is the sned strategic and economic dialogue you know officials secretaries met regularly over the year years and uh george w bush had the strategic economic dialogue sed where uh bob zelick talked of a stakeholder role for china and so on you need to restore dialogue i think that's the first thing and that's very important then you trust is hard to build just in a year or even four years but you have to begin somewhere and take steps then i want to make a pitch for southeast asia i would say cut when you were assistant secretary of state for the asia and pacific hillary clinton visit 10 southeast asian countries all the arts and states it is unheard of and you establish policy dialogues with all 10 asean countries strategic dialogues and policy dialogues try and do that it ensures your presence diplomacy is about presence and constant gardening that shows you know so having these structures will help constant gardening should i continue no we we can come back to some of those issues particularly on china and southeast asia may i turn to mr yo would you like to add to that immediately there's a sense of relief that there's a return to dignity and decency in the white house and this makes possible civilized dialogue both regionally and internationally that's that's immediate effect of the new biden administration we can talk normal business again but there is a larger backdrop which is very important which cannot be ignored and there is a widespread view that transits on the ascent and the u.s is in relative decline those of us who know the u.s who have lived there know that american society has this amazing ability to renew itself but when we look at the graph when we look at the trends then it's almost inevitable that china will overtake the u.s economic heft and in its importance to many countries around the world and definitely to all countries on the chinese periphery when the u.s wants countries in asean to make a choice between china and the u.s it puts us all in a very difficult and unpleasant position the fact is no one wants china as an enemy no one can afford to have china as an enemy unless china provokes us instead of asking for a choice the u.s should work with this reality and say look yes china is important to you and will become more important in the future surely you also want us around and that would immediately resonate with all countries which see china as the most important account and a growing account and will instinctively worry about being too influenced by china to subject to china's wishes there is a desire for diversification in every country on the belt and road if the u.s doesn't foster choice the u.s is welcome everywhere and u.s diplomacy becomes very easy all you have to do as hingji said is to come and people will welcome you but provided you don't say choose us or choose china thank you mr yo but i think to be fair i think mr campbell has made the point that the u.s understands recognizes that countries do not want to choose so i think they're starting from that premise but we'll go more into some of the more interesting issues that you you've also raised uh kishore i'm sure you have many words of advice for kurt campbell uh what would you tell him about how the u.s should conduct itself in asia well let me begin by saying i agree completely with everything that heng ji has said and what george has said and i want to compliment what they said and i would make three points firstly the democrats must stop saying that the one thing that trump did right was to beat up china because at the end of the day the trump policy on china failed trump made china stronger he didn't make china weaker if you won a piece of data in the year 2009 the size of the retail goods market in china was 1.8 trillion the united states was 4 trillion more than double 2009 10 years later three years after trump's trade war the size of the retail goods market and uh china goes up from 1.8 to 6 trillion three times and united states from 4 to 5.5 trillion smaller than china how did china become weaker after trump's trade war it didn't work so they should stop saying it at the same time everybody in this region is watching united states very carefully you can make all the soothing statements you want they cannot wipe out what happened on january 6th and an awareness that the united states is a deeply divided country so the united states want to really take on china his first got to fix his own fix his own house and cut campbell did say that in his essay actually the one that hinchey mentioned uh in the magazine foreign affairs so the wisest thing frankly the u.s could do today is to at least press the pause button on the us-china geopolitical contest fix your own house work with china to kill covet 19 work with china to take care of global warming and reset the agenda completely and say we will liberate ourselves and whatever trump did on china so just to clarify sure when you say the u.s should press the pause button what do you mean oh you know the unit the united states has been carrying out all kinds of negative actions on china imposing tariffs uh throwing away all the agreements on taiwan imposing sanctions on people in hong kong stop all that frankly it's achieved nothing it hasn't made the u.s stronger it hasn't enhanced the u.s standing in the region and frankly they should do something positive like for example rejoin the trans-pacific partnership if you really want to anchor the u.s presence in this region do something difficult join the trans-pacific partnership and explain to the american people that that's what you need to do to ensure the u.s has a strong presence over the next 10 to 20 years right okay professor wang from your vantage point as a historian with the longview and the sinologist what would be your advice to curt gamble on how to engage with asia going forward i'll take up from what kisha said just now which i think is quite a good beginning to say that this question of the trans-pacific partnership is to me the most important thing to emphasize because i think there's been too much talk about security and military affairs all this question of containing china or at least making sure that the rules international rules of the game are kept as the americans like it they've talked in military terms more than anything else it seems to me that is the most striking part whereas it seems to me that what really people would care for today the other economic question the worries about the economy of the world the global economic system the free economy all that all the uh the threat of decoupling all these things are actually very alarming to people they won't help the relationship and i think they shift over to much more emphasis upon economic benefits that we can share and and and really concentrate our attention on on rescuing the world from a very disastrous year all that i think is a much better message than to constantly talk about military cooperation between the democratic countries like the quad in the indo-pacific simply whatever you say about that it looks as if you're trying to contain china and that part of the message seemed to me is not the one that you should emphasize today and i think much more demonstration of sensitivity to the economic needs of all of asia i know that we at the same time say that economy in asia is actually picking up compared to the developed countries and while their shift of uh economic dynamism to asia is is true nevertheless asia still feels uh meet with have faces a lot of very difficult problems in the economy and the economic developments here to a large extent did depend on the economies in west in western europe and in in the united states and if they are not doing well we're not going to do well so i think if there's some way of conveying that the fact that they have their problems doesn't mean that they will neglect the rest of the world where economic development is concerned is an important message to carry and less emphasis upon security and that message about keeping as if the region under the united states care and and protection that seemed to be a much more important message to emphasize okay yes of course right um you know i fully agree with those who say that cptpp is important and we should change the narrative from emphasizing security you know its military alliances and so on and move to something that allows for cooperation and frankly asia is about business you know it's partly about military and security and that undergirds business but asia is primarily interested in business but i think and here kishore i whilst i i agree with the sentiment that you express i think it's very hard to tell kurt campbell press the pause button and you know just do away with everything that trump said and sort of recount that because as we all know the united states is a divided country the republicans in congress will not allow him the republicans and him and president biden and the administration and you know you saw the hearings on the hill for confirmation you know the all the future secretaries all took a very tough stance on china they had to if they were going to be confirmed so it's not so easy just to pray but they can press a pause button about not increasing the tariffs that is a point just don't add more you know review understand it which i think the biden administration will do but to ask for a total reset from trump i think the biden administration will find that hard to do especially on china you know i completely agree with heng chi that it's going to be very difficult and there's a strong bipartisan consensus that the time has come to beat up on china but at the same time the united states at some point has to ask the question what is its strategy towards china and as you know the one thing i mentioned in my book as china one is that was henry kissinger who told me united states doesn't have a long-term strategy for dealing with china why keep on doing things that strengthen china and weaken the united states and that's what i would do as the biden administration point out that trump has actually strengthened china's position in the in the four years of trump administration and the us position frankly has declined in the four years of the trump administration so you actually the dividend administration should take a fresh approach both to china and to the region i completely agree with hinchey for example to have more dialogues in the obama administration i'm told there were 100 dialogues they were cut down to four cut down to one in the trump administration you can't go back to 100 maybe go back to 50. similarly i agree with hanchi that talk to southeast asia engage with southeast asia and at the end of the day the question is a very simple one world the bottom 50 percent in america whose standard of living has declined now over 30 40 years creating the deaths of despair sea of despair that angus desert has spoken about biden's got to first lift up the standard living of the bottom 50 percent if he's going to protect himself and the democrats that's his priority and if if you know fighting china means they go down some more he's damaging himself so think of think of things that will strengthen the united states in the long run instead of making dramatic gestures that don't damage china and don't help the united states to be sure to be sure i mean there is a emphasis on revitalizing the american economy revitalizing american democracy race relations these are all top priorities so it's not that the biden administration plans to neglect the sort of domestic priorities that are there as for the strategy with china sorry there is a strategy which we will talk which we'll talk about when we get into the specifically the u.s china questions sorry um right now in order to achieve a reset is to help biden with his domestic strategy biden must preoccupy himself with solving america's ameliorating america's domestic problems and the more the chinese are able to help him achieve their objective without appearing to be so the easier it is to reset relations i'm not too worried on the chinese side i'm more concerned about the u.s side because decisions on technological decoupling on chinese students in the u.s on tpp on the pivot to the east all turn on one question is china an inevitable strategic threat to the u.s if china is going to be a threat to the us then it's better to react against china today to contain china today than to wait so the strategy is confrontation earlier rather than later because confrontation later will be more difficult would be more difficult more difficult here it depends on that and whatever the chinese may say about imperialism not being the dna you will not be believed by most americans you will this will have to be established through a prolonged period by actual practice so i realistically see this trial of strength between the u.s and china going on for many more years to come the chinese are aware of this which is why they have developed this dual circulation economy which is being embedded into the 14-5 year program as a strategy to to give the u.s time to change its deep view of china that there's no action which the u.s can take which will provoke immediate conflict the u.s may want to contain china but china has always been the most self-contained country in the world and the dual circulation will make china less vulnerable to u.s actions disruptive actions so we should expect this period of tension to continue oscillating between core and copies for many more years to come but in the meantime china will continue to grow and if it pursues a wise foreign policy then people will say look yes it's growing but you will not behave the way western imperial powers did in the 19th century and once that hits home in the us then attitudes policies will change thank you i think if i'm coming to say that this question of perception of threat is also something that needs to be explained very carefully to to both sides this question of threat is not really the chinese whatever they do cannot be a threat to the united states the united states itself is not being threatened by anybody they are really most powerful they are very secure they are far away from anybody else they have virtually known enemies in the neighborhood they are not threatened the threat is not to the united states the threat is to their a custom place as the hegemon of of of the world as with the the sole civil power that they had inherited from the 1990s which they believed is their right because they represent all the good forces and so on so understandably they were triumphant about that and that triumphant phase of their history has led them i think to see anybody even questioning that power to to determine and to virtually tell the world what is best for them is something that uh is it's very difficult to get over and i think that kind of conflict deeply underlying the almost all the thinking about strategic containment and so on that is the part of me that's very difficult it seemed to me and then i'm suggesting this that one way to to to get away from that mindset is to concentrate on what the globe the whole world really needs including america and that economic recovery from what what has been happening the last few years and i think this will this would itself be a long time the global economic recovery will not happen in a year or two we seem to me many years of of tremendous effort on the part of all the countries who concentrate on this economic problems that the world faces i think to shift that emphasis it's actually good for america and good for everybody else and it also shortly showed the chinese that this was not a question of threatening the chinese it's a question of enabling the united states to show the world that what it stands for and what it can do to the well-being of the whole world is something that everybody should support i think there's a much more positive image to present but if the view is that china is going to become a competing hegemon then economic cooperation will just feed the dragon and make it more dangerous so better to starve it now than to continue feeding it i think this is a deep calculus in the minds of uh american establishment sure yeah please uh you know i think uh gang you touch on a very important point and george raised it the united states views china as a threat a threat to is a national security threat and countries elsewhere in asia particularly they're sort of thinking how is that a threat exactly as gangu has said is not a direct security threat but a threat to the dominance of the united states now how do you deal with that dominance if you if the united states keep leveling you need lateral punishments action after action after action on china everybody scratches ahead and say wait a minute this is competition is that how you deal with competition that's not even american you know so i think there is this acceptability or not but the united states should be aware and is aware some of them are aware that actually nothing they do will be able to stop the rise of china that's what secondly the world stage today is no longer just occupied by the u.s hegemony china is there india is there you know and the european union is there so the united states has to find a place there but the point that gang will mention which i would like to elaborate on is that he emphasized that the united states can take leadership you know to be dominant in the world doesn't just mean military power and you know how many countries are in your military alliances but can you offer global leadership in thinking about economics about the pandemic and so on and they can work on that and this is for the greater good of the country of the world and i think the world will appreciate that and they will look up to american leadership when they think about leading everyone you know to the next level okay we'll come back to some of those themes that you mentioned but but before that yeah go ahead so very quickly uh i want to actually very very strongly agree with a point that juan gangbu made that the americans must make a distinction between what is more important their primacy in their global system or the well-being of their people and that is actually strictly speaking a a major strategic dilemma is that a trait that the united states faces because you know you look at it united states spent 5.1 trillion dollars fighting post 9 11 wars okay if that 5.1 trillion dollars had been given to the american people each person in the bottom 50 would have received a check for 30 000 that's money actually wasted in search of primacy they should go back to looking after the american people but at the same time i also want to agree with the key point that hinchey made that what the united states can provide is not the old-fashioned hegemony where you have to be the dominant power and and to to follow trump's policy or make america great again i would say that trump policy completely failed because it alienated both allies and adversaries but in america can come back and say we actually have a vision for you where we can give you a win-win vision for the world of the 21st century where you you succeed we succeed and we can work together to deal with common global challenges like covet 19 and global warming so there is space for american leadership but there's no space for american domination okay um can we just shift gears a little bit uh to a slightly different question now especially bearing in mind that joe biden will probably be a one-term president given his age um look at maha taylor no look at mother that's true that you never say never never say never true but the question is can asia trust the the more sort of internationalist policies that are being pursued by the biden administration might they be rolled back you know by a future republican administration as indeed president trump did with president obama's more internationalist outlook right so i mean the question is so what would convince asian countries that the biden's internationalism is durable i mean it won't be enough of course for him to just declare that america is back he has to take concrete actions concrete measures maybe put some institutional mechanisms in place that will endure so what could those be or what should those be would anybody have a thought on that let me let me just quickly start i mean this is something a point actually martin wolf made in the financial times that the biden administration may be a pleasant interlude between either two trump administrations or two trump-like administrations and for me frankly the strategic nightmare for china and for the world is if mike pompeo becomes the next president of united states in 2024 because you'll be a far more intelligent and assertive trump like president and of course the world will go back to square one uh at that point in time so the most important message that the united states has got to send to the world is that it is fixing its own problems and frankly it has got to reduce the remarkable amount of polarization in american society and move towards a bipartisan foreign policy on in critical areas they won't agree on everything but if they can agree to a bipartisan policy and frankly as gang was also saying come back to the trade issue and work on trade and economic relations to stabilize u.s relations east asia then that sends a positive long-term signal so it's not about words it's about deeds okay everyone contributes between the u.s and china today and what they see to be the future all policy makers in their minds ask themselves in 10 years time what would the world look like regardless of who is president in the us the deeper question esquire is is the u.s healing is the direction of the vector changing if it is then you say okay in 10 years time the u.s would have recovered and china would not have such a clear run and china itself may run to difficulties so it's how people perceive the future they will decide how they will react today and retriangulate their positions so if you could focus on what institutional mechanisms what permanent measures can be taken by the administration that would convince you that yes this switch this change in policy is durable one of the simplest things to me and the most obvious thing to me is to show respect once more to the international organizations have been set up since 1945. i mean it's not only united nations but a whole whole range of associations have been set up precisely for that purpose to ensure that the world are kept in form kept linked connected together and in that everybody can sense benefits and that these are benefits are long long-term ones if they are failures they can all get together to solve it if they succeed everybody benefits that kind of international outlook which actually kept the world pretty secure for quite a long while that seemed to have faded away somewhat and people simply lost faith in that and to me that is a very regrettable thing and i think the united states actually led the way yeah to be so skeptical of all the international organizations anything multilateral they sort of feel suspicious of and i think that has been very tragic loss to all of us you know and if they can demonstrate that they still believe in it that this is actually the source of what what they had to offer the world some of the best things they offered to work after the second world war was precisely this and why have they given it up so to speak and now made people sort of you know suspicious of it i think that's really that's a very important point global public goods i mean the investment in global public because there's been disinvestment over the last four years i think we need to come back you know uh vikram my own sense is that great powers don't have much you know faith in multilateralism not just the united states you know small states middle science states need multilateralism great powers can bypass you know international institutions now it's we see president trump the trump administration really tearing up a lot of the tearing up the liberal order international order and you know weakening the multilateral institutions but frankly that weakening has started a long time ago the united states you know president bush you know in fact walked away from the kyoto protocols it's not the first time that american presidents have said i don't like what we signed let's renegotiate so that has happened countries will in fact now always wonder if i sign an agreement with the united states if the united states joins an agreement is that in perpetuity can i rely on this does it change from administration to administration i think that will always be at the back of some country's minds all right so they will hedge and that would happen and they were hedged not because biden is a one-term president they will hedge because now they want to know what is the reliability of the u.s promise reliability of the u.s as a power and certainly if the united states and president biden is able to show he can't fix it in one administration but you know if he can show that he can bring some healing back to the united states and i'm cautiously optimistic let me put it this way that's good nice to have some optimism actually i also don't buy that you know just to say he's a one-term president he could surprise us he could we could yes you would it would take time for the u.s to put right the problems that now experiences and time is important i know it's difficult for many in the u.s establishment to accept this but the u.s best strategy is to work towards a multi-polar world yes much of the multilateralism that we are used to was u.s led because they were preeminent after the second world war and when they were no longer preeminent they started showing less support to multilateral institutions but in fact in the multi-polar world with u.s brazil japan china and other polls the u.s will always be primos into paris they'll be the first among the poles and therefore more able to influence the cause of multilateral development but ideologically psychologically this is something very difficult for the u.s to accept that the others are not just american satellites but should in some way be equal poles but they being primus we'll come back to this issue of multi multi polarity in just a second uh i just want to turn to some of the key departures um that the biden administration plans to make from all statements that we've seen on china policy vis-a-vis the trump will be two key departures one is that the policy towards china is not going to be an all-out confrontation i think they've made that quite clear there are areas of possible cooperation with china covet 19 there's climate change there's nuclear nonproliferation there could be other issues maybe even infrastructure so there will be this selective cooperation second i think at least kurt campbell has actually categorically said that the policy towards china will not be bilateral anymore not be dominated by a bilateral approach it won't be as he said two big leaders sitting in two big chairs and setting the agenda i mean the china policy will be framed in the context of a wider asia policy right and here i think there's there's something interesting that's coming out and they plan to they plan to forge coalitions on specific issues not one big grand coalition anti-china coalition but say a coalition on infrastructure a coalition on trade technology and supply chains a coalition on on uh infrastructure yeah military-focused coalition maybe involving the quad uh even a democracy coalition uh involving the g7 plus australia japan and and india uh another on maritime security so there are very very specific issues on which there's be these coalitions that's that's the the overall architecture that they seem to be thinking about so the question is will asian countries sign up to these how effective will they be and what would be the downsides i mean i think this is an interesting departure that i think we must be cognizant of there's a lot of talk about going for coalitions coalition of the win willing on specific bespoke coalitions they talk of on specific topics i think asian countries will sign up if it is not seen totally as exclusive we the words we use in the region are it must be inclusive must bring in everybody and so some of the coalitions must be inclusive clearly security coalitions your court may be exclusive and asean has made it very clear we do not want to join any exclusive if the court is exclusive in if indoor if the indo-pacific strategy is exclusive we do not want that we want an inclusive indo-pacific strategy you mean inclusive anybody can join yes anybody can join china including china including china you see so i think if some of the coalitions are inclusive it can include china why not you know and the u.s has to be ready for that i think the biden administration may try that but let me also add this thought if you have too many coalitions of the willing you debase the currency what is this about you know why did we base the currency because there are coalitions coalitions coalitions so so you know people will say what is this it's getting very you know the u.s used to say this is a spaghetti bowl everybody is getting confused what is it about so i would say choose your coalitions and then you know you can actually propel that because otherwise i don't think uh you know the u.s can keep all these issues on the radar screen i think first may i just bring in thermal for a second just before we proceed normal just want to clarify from you is there appetite in the united states for uh especially in the among the republicans in the business community for greater collaboration with china or is the sort of hardline trumpist view of continued confrontation on a broad front is that still more favored i think among the business community in particular there is appetite for greater cooperation because they want tariffs down they want non-tariff barriers down they want the chinese market but there is also great nervousness because of their increased political risk and that political risk is driven by this bipartisan consensus that china is a pure competitor and a strategic threat and you have a very strong quotary of of china hawks in in the republican party people like the senators hawley ted cruz and marco rubio and ted cruz is a potential contender for 2024 as well so there is a nervousness i would say there is a lot of appetite for better relationship with china because it also depends a little bit on china not entirely on the united states it is also the trump the biden administration has inherited a set of very strong baselines laid down by the trump administration i think um the trump administration adopted something like 200 plus unilateral actions on china just in the past year uh previous congress enacted or moved 380 or more pieces of legislation aimed against china so the biden administration doesn't have to do much but it will also look for some signals from china that it can lower the temperature joe biden cannot afford to unilaterally or to to hastily roll back any of the trump administration's measures on china otherwise he will be accused of being soft on china similarly if he goes if he rushes back to the tpp he will be excoriated among in domestically in america because a large chunk of the republican supporters don't want to hear about free trade because they've been told that free trade is bad for them so certainly the american public has to be educated all over again and the the benefits of trade and engagement with china have to be have to be demonstrated now that's a bit of a hard sell um again you know the china hawks are ascendant at the moment in the republican party and any sign of being software in china will be taken as weakness and president biden has a very narrow window of opportunity to work with on this so he is treading on mine fields right so and don if you could give us the view from beijing uh how would china react to a sort of policy of u.s led bespoke coalitions on specific issues would that make it more difficult for china to deal with the us would it be easier for china to deal with the us just bilaterally what do you think yeah i think it would find it harder to deal with because you know china has always favored um dealing with countries bilaterally uh whether it's a coalition of you know like-minded allies or this global summit of democracies um beijing i think is certainly bracing itself or having to face down these alliances that may want to take it to task for a host of issues uh from trade practices to security to human rights um you know for instance the the eu investment deal that was struck last month you know ahead of the inauguration was viewed as a strategic move by presidency to thwart that um and since may last year mr c has been talking about this concept of dual circulation which mr yo mentioned earlier on and boosting domestic consumption and also ramping up um technological self-reliance which are all strategic moves um to preempt you know possible difficulties down the road you know if countries rethink their supply chains or if the us continues to deny china if it's technology or if alliances are formed and they come after china for its trade practices for instance so mr c speech at the world economic forum davos agenda was actually quite telling you know he repeatedly uh talked about the need for countries to put aside the differences and come together to cooperate instead of hanging on to what he said were ideological prejudices and you know he said that no two countries are the same and no one is more superior than the other and there were certainly bailed warnings to the us and its allies as well in the speech especially when mr c said that building small circles or starting a new cold war would uh push the world into division and confrontation i i think its biggest fear would be if these alliances push it on human rights issues or sovereignty issues that are its core interests you know such as taiwan and hong kong because there would be very little room for china to maneuver since these are china's red lines or what they like to call them their bottom line right we will come back to that very important question of human rights but sure i think you wanted to say something on the on the coalitions i think i completely agree with nirmal that the washington dc has developed this incredibly powerful anti-china consensus that is going to constrain joe biden that's a reality now but if joe biden and his administration decide that they're going to be constrained by the consensus then nothing's going to change and so that you know the question is what are we going to do and here i would say is the time for the friends of the united states who want the united states to succeed who want the united states to play a continuing role in this region we have to speak out and help joe biden and we have to make it very clear that if you want to create all kinds of anti-china coalitions it's going to be no buying but if you create a covet 19 coalition you bring china in you bring asean in bring united states in and we work together to kill kobe 19 then that that sort of coalition can work but you can also remind the united states that one reason why the united states won the cold war against the soviet union so handsomely is that it actually listened to its allies and friends i was ambassador to the u.n from 85 to 89. i can tell you that even a very distinguished you know old u.s ambassador ambassador vernon walters used to say to me kishore it's better for us in the u.n to let you take the lead and we follow you and then we will succeed and so that's what the united states should learn to do once again to listen to its friends not to have the kind of trump attitude make america great again i don't care what you think so we we have to tell the united states and we have to speak out very strongly to provide biden ammunition to get out of the straight jacket of the washington dc consensus okay sorry we have 10 minutes left if a u.s led coalition right is explicitly or implicitly anti-china its effect and impact will be limited because every country in the end calculates in its own interest asean is not going to turn into china japan what it tilts towards america maintains a very keen balance because it needs a long-term option with china if you take india the u.s wants india to be an anti-china ally but india will buy and will acquire the s 400 anti-aircraft system regardless of what the u.s does and i don't think the u.s will sanction india even australia the australian prime minister has said that australian policy in the end will be determined by australian national interests and australian national interests involves a very substantial trading relationship with china so the u.s has got to be more subtle and its leadership is most powerful when it is idealistic when it is positive and not negative well said just finally we have just a few minutes left to take off from a point that don uh alluded to i think what's coming through quite clearly is from the biden uh foreign policy people is that whether countries like it or not values are going to play an important part in u.s foreign policy going forward as the defense expert michelle flornoy mentioned uh you know after trump after four years of trump people are asking does america have any values at all what are they i think jake sullivan has also said that the u.s must shore up democracy at home as well as fellow democracies abroad and i think that is going to be on their agenda they're concerned about powerful actors trying to destabilize democracies they're concerned about anti-democratic democratic forces having gained traction around the world and that this needs to change and i think this is coming whether we countries like it or not so and one of the proposals of the the biden administration is to host a global summit for democracies this year in its first year in office so my question is how would some elements of values-based diplomacy from the u.s go down in the region uh will there be countries who will be happy to engage and could anything good come out of it two quick points all countries put their national interests first if the values clash with the national interest values take second place i guarantee you that even after the united states sets up a club of democracies saudi arabia cannot join will not join but saudi arabia will remain a close ally of the united states values always take second place second point on values as a student of philosophy the worst way to export a value is to armed with somebody and say you have to accept my values or the worst way to export your values is to to invade iraq drop bombs and say i'm exporting democracy to you that's not how you export values the best way to export values is through dialogue and if the united states wants to have a dialogue on values that we should all welcome it frankly but that's good for us that is what the conference is about isn't it dialogue yeah but why why why have it only among the tent why why talk to like-minded people if you really want to export your values don't talk to like-minded people talk to non-like-minded people and see whether or not you can have a good dialogue from there from this that's going to ask you why would singapore join this dialogue with singapore whether you apply or you are invited all right it's not clear but we've played the scene scenario before we've been there before right bill clinton in his second term what created the community of democracies you know and what became of it do you remember do you know what happened to the community of democracy you're they're invested in washington yes and i have a story to tell on that because singapore was excluded you know because we spoke about asian values and i said to then assistant secretary of state for eap stan roth if egypt is there and singapore malaysia and indonesia are not i don't buy this and later indonesia was but that was exactly the situation so i i would say this you know given what we've seen in the last few years that democracies frankly need reforming they are decaying they are degrading and the united states you know you saw the insurrection on the hill and so on i think western countries should approach democracy with some humility and really you know we can have a conversation all together on how we can make our countries better governed good governance you know and have governments that are accountable and opening up you know and allowing citizens to really reach their full potential and so that they do not fear you know the knock on the door and they will be taken away at night i buy all that fantastic we have just very few minutes left i just want to completely shift gears and talk a little bit about the legacy of kovid in southeast asia right so i mean i think the big question is what will be the long-term legacy of the pandemic on this region what long-term damage they will cause we know the short-term damage it has caused in terms of lost growth lost employment and so on so what will happen uh that will scar the region over a long period of time we can think about inequality we can think about rising debt we can think about rising poverty and also what positives might come out of the experience with the pandemic we can think about digitization we can think about supply chains coming back to the region we can think about the resetting of development priorities so just to give get your sense of how economic and social policies in the region need to change going forward this is a very southeast asian question and this is not really involving china there could there could be could be some connection with china but not so what do you think can be done policy-wise to deal with the long-term effects of the pandemic good and bad you know vikram what the kovhi pandemic has shown is that leadership matters countries with good leadership that come up with the policies care about the people pro signs will do well now having said that i think you will see economies shrink inequality increase and i think governments realize they have to put more attention to the health infrastructure they will have to redesign for density they have to worry about population is not just in the city the wealthy is everywhere because no one is safe until everyone is safe that said i would say i'm not that optimistic that countries will actually do what they need why are you pessimistic i've seen this happen the track record you know we all after 9 11 in the us everybody you know the united states started changing things and we went back to normal look at what happened with sars in the immediate years we all started becoming cleaner we you know we were more health conscious and in china they cleaned up the wet markets didn't sell all those wild animals later everything came back so i'm somebody who believes that actually it's very hard to change human behavior we go back to norm we will have a period of weak economies grave inequalities and i worry about that but i'm optimistic that you know there will be a pent-up surge there will be a resurgence economies will do better again any other thoughts on the future is a stress test right everybody is a stress test on political leadership on social solidarity on institutional resilience and after the test you know which countries are strong and which are not as strong in southeast asia singapore has come out reasonably well and that is a huge plus for singapore's future and we can tell in the inflow of money that's coming to singapore yes into investments into property purchases and so on but the country which has succeeded the most is china china last year grew almost three percent while the rest of the world went back more than four percent western countries look only at the pimples on the chinese face so they are unable to see the entire face but any reasonable analysis of china will know that it has succeeded beyond belief absolutely in its response to kobe and this has a deep impact on countries in southeast asia okay i i would say i agree with uh george and i would also put in a plug here and say that covet 19 if there's one message it sends to any country it is that you can lock up your country and covet 19 can come in so at the end of the day you really have to engage with the rest of the world and engage with the region and for me the key country to watch in southeast asia is indonesia and i'm actually very pleased indonesia has always had an attention between turning inwards or opening up to the rest of the world and here the big contrast is between indonesia and india okay india should be a much stronger more self-confident ability and be able to engage the world able to engage the rcep it withdraws from rcep indonesia which we know when i first started negotiating trade agreements with indonesia in the 1970s they wanted to keep the indonesian economy close they didn't want to open it up look at it indonesia now is ready to join rcep and the fact that president jokobi got a chinese flu jab is a very powerful statement which i think americans should pay attention to so the ability of indonesia to remain open will i think mean that southeast asia will remain open and that's why i actually am quite optimistic about asean that's why i wrote a book called miracle yes yes very good raf wang you have the final word what do you think the long term legacy of kovit will be on the region i wasn't going to talk so much about kovitch so much as in response partly to kishore but something that i think you also referred to and that is where aussie understands in the middle of all these changes that are occurring and that is that whatever we say we are located in between some very important big players and those big players want asean to be involved in one way or the other and asean has to decide how to manage all these big players they're all bigger than us but how do these 10 little states as it were in comparison how do we manage to benefit from it and and be of some service to those who are influencing the rest of the world and here i think uh asean has a definite role to play it is located as it so so happened by accident certificate in this indo-pacific thing that been built up and so important to the to the next few decades and located where we are we're actually in a position to actually influence all sides involved in the in the controversies and and problems that are being faced and here i think the agency of southeast asia as asean is simply been missed out some some something is missing we have the capacity i think we have actually a lot of very intelligent people who know each other very well in asean who can actually do this and it's not a question of speaking only with one voice all the time that it may not be possible and that to strain on that alone will not be helpful it is when people speak even separately as the ten members speak separately they they do actually have some common features and other people can understand it and share the sense of willingness the openness the inclusiveness all these very i think well proven methods of bringing keeping asean together i think it's a tremendous message for the rest of the world and i'm not sure that we can quite persuade others that ours is a valuable lesson to learn from but i believe that we should speak up and you did say that there are times when we should speak up when you say that kurt campbell should come and listen to us i would say that this is a this is a time when we speak up to somebody like kurt campbell although he knows us pretty well to tell him again that this asean has moved on from what it was before it has moved on partly because the world has changed and we are now much more in the middle of something very big happening in the world and therefore what we have to say is worth listening to and we have something to say each one of us has something to say because although we also we work together as a as an association each one of us have our interests national interests relating to the to the other powers and between that two acting for the association as a whole and acting individually can contribute towards a transformation of the kind of connections that actually the world needs and if we can prove that this way of doing things should not be just laughed out of court as it used to be but actually as a has made a major contribution to how small states in their relationship big states can actually provide a a platform for new developments that benefit all i think this is a message which we need to say we may not be able to prove it ourselves by us by ourselves but we need to tell the people that our experience is worth looking at very carefully right thank you on that constructive and hopeful note i'm afraid we've run out of time we have to call close to this wonderful webinar with a spirited discussion and thank you to all our panelists uh prof wang prof chan mr yo kishore and thank you also nirmal in washington and don in beijing thank you for joining us and thank you listeners for listening [Music] [Music] you

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Length: 70min 5sec (4205 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2021