Has China Won?

[Music] good evening or good morning if you like quiche or Malibu Bonnie I was joining us from somewhere else around the world I'm Eve oh dollar the president of the Chicago Council on global affairs and thank you for joining us today by a zoom today's program is part of our China's changing landscape series which is generously funded by the dr. Scholl foundation the title of this conversation has China one question mark is borrow from Kishore Abu Bonnie's new book I'd encourage you to read the book if you're seeking to understand the direction of us-china relations then told from a perspective that a particularly Americans now need to hear we had hoped of course to host kishore and today's other panelists richard Fontaine in our conference center for this conversation but unfortunately physical distancing has made that impossible for now we will socialize and gather online indeed the council has cancelled all in-person public events through June 5th thank you to our members who are tuning in today your support is critical year round but especially now please visit our website to join upgrade or offer any additional support to the council following the discussion that the three of us will have we'll take questions from the audience through our meeting Paul Zapp please submit any questions by typing CCG a dot live into your browser and we will be able to get to those as I said towards further in the program now on to the main event China is continually on the front pages of these of news of the news today a competition that has been building slowly for some time has more recently escalated first with a straight war and now with very diverging responses and narratives to the coronavirus we have two great experts with us today to talk about China's rise its global ambitions its limitations and America's policy response our first guest is Kishore Babu Bonnie he's a distinguished fellow at the National University and Singh of Asia Research Institute who writes and speaks on the rice of Asia geopolitics and global governance he's had a distinguished diplomatic career including as serving as Singapore's former representative to the United Nations his seven books are wildly recognized and this most recent book as China one is available for pre-sale by our partners the booksellers welcome Kishore make sure they'd be here our second guest is Richard Fontaine he's the chief executive officer at the Center for new American security formerly he was a foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain he worked at the State Department the National Security Council and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee richard was part of a scene as team that produced a congressionally mandated study entitled rising to the china challenge which was released earlier this year welcome Richard thanks for having us well let's start first of all with each of you describing briefly your most recent contribution to the us-china debate Kishore you've written for years about the rise of Asia generally and to watch China specifically tell us about your latest book why do you think China is winning the competition with America well you know when you write a book with the title has China won you're not supposed to give away the answer whether the China has won or not but let me give it a our way the answer the answer is no China has not won or more accurately not yet but I believe in many many in Asia a very puzzle that the United States has launched a major geopolitical contests against China without first working out a comprehensive long-term strategy on how to deal with China and as I say in the book this insight was actually given to me by Henry Kissinger almost exactly two years ago when I had lunch with him one on one in his private club in New York and I could sense that he was also very troubled that the United States was going hey with this contest without thinking through what might happen and and and of course the question that is inconceivable to many American Minds is can America lose this contest it's almost inconceivable but something that we should think about the second point I'd make about the book is that from the point of view people who live in Asia China's return cannot be stopped because for 1800 over the last two thousand years the two largest economies of the world have always been those of China and India and it's only in the last 200 years that Europe has taken off because taken off but the past 200 years of world history when you view it against the backdrop the past 2,000 years of world history have been a major historical aberration the Chinese fell behind very badly but they have stood up and now they decided okay you're not going to fall down again and one critical point I want to emphasize here is that whenever people look at China and the Chinese government they keep thinking about the Chinese Communist Party and they assume that if you have a struggle within democracy and communism communism always loses to democracy but I think that it's a very dangerous way of viewing China because the goal of the Chinese Communist Party is not to export communism or revive communism the goal of the Chinese Communist Party is to revive Chinese civilization and make it strong again so it should be seen as the Chinese civilization party that's what is motivated to do and that's why they're doing quite well and finally let me just quickly mention that from the point of view especially of the six billion people who live outside US and China their hope is that that in one way or another the US and China will avoid a major geopolitical contest and find ways and means of getting along with each other and it's possible for both of them to get along with each other if three conditions are met first if the United States focuses on the well-being of his people and not necessarily is primacy then frankly US and China can work together and arrive at win-win partnership examine a crisis obut 19 they should be working together rather than at cross-purposes with each other the second thing is that US and China face many common challenges again covet 19 is one global warming is the other and these global this common global challenges should bring them together and finally I think it's important for the rest of the world then to also put pressure on China to say China must abide by the rule space order and play by the rules of the road and not amend them to suit his own interests so I think if you can at the end of the day despite the competing geopolitical interest of us in China they can't come together and work together and that's the goal of this book great kishore there is a lot here that i think we can take to our next discussion but before that let me Richard let me turn to you and you were part of the team that proposed the strategy to deal with the rise of China it was congressionally mandated tell us a little bit about where the study came from and what were the principal conclusions before we get into a discussion about key sure's main points and more generally about the nature of the relationship between the two countries sure so the origin of the study that we did was in the defense authorization bill that passes every year this huge National Defense Authorization Act and there was a sense certainly by the few of the committees on Capitol Hill and I think more broadly on Capitol Hill that we had entered a period of significant competition with China this was unlikely to go away any time soon it was long term in effect but that either as a matter of having thought through what the various vectors of competition are and how the United States might fare or how the United States government society organizes itself for such a competition there really was a lack of strategy and and and forethought in the approach and it did too ad hoc up until this point case in point you know the administration had talked about a free and open indoor Pacific which is quite attractive when you hear those words but there was pretty significant disagreement on what exactly was free and what exactly was open and and and what that actually meant in terms of what the United States would be bringing to the table so they commissioned a study went to to my think-tank CNAs we had a integrated cross-disciplinary team that took this on and we published the study that that went through a number of principles we offered some principles for China competition and then went through some very specific policy recommendations and organizational recommendations about how do you actually operationalize these kinds of things when some of that got actually very specific but in terms of the sort of animating principles behind this we we said that this notion of free and open into Pacific is the right one if it means respect for the sovereignty and independence of nations the peaceful resolution of disputes fear and failure trade and free and free trade adherence to international law good governance etc and you know for the United States it would mean things that actually accrue for the welfare of Americans themselves you know access to markets for example you know strong us alliances and security partnerships that have served us what the kinds of which have served us well in the past you know things like that and and on the by contrast you have a China that is driving toward a more clothes more illiberal future for the Indo Pacific and there's aspects of this that are undermining US interests so you know we could look forward to a future where the People's Liberation Army controls of South and East China Sea the regional countries are coerced into acquiescing to Chinese preferences on on matters including matters that matter to the United States an economic order where Beijing is increasingly setting the trade and investment rules in its own favor you know things like that and and the diminishment of civil society independent media you know things like this and and you know as rising I guess pre-emptive maybe to to kishore challenge you know is this just sort of primacy for primacy sake we just sort of care about this because we we like thinking that america is going to do these things we said no this actually has stakes for americans the welfare of the american people a world where independent media is more at risk where markets are less available to american firms where companies are more the victim of intellectual property theft and forced technology transfer where there's the growing spread of authoritarian surveillance systems and things like that we're sort of where sovereignty is undermine is one that is less accrue cruise-less to the welfare of the united states and what this means when you when you step back from all this and look at the trend lines which are not terribly encouraging in some areas is that the United States needs to compete it needs to compete but not just by trying to diminish China or only compete there are certain areas where we can cooperate with China and we should but ultimately it's about renewing the underlying foundations of American power it's about making America as strong as it can as possible in terms of economics and allies and and political relationships and and and research and technology and everything else and actually much more of the recommendations that we laid out were about what the United States should do for itself as opposed to things that it should do with China or to China so I think this gives a really nice framework to think about from two perspectives that are not necessarily competing or or even clashing but can build on each other and let's start that conversation so I think we have as the basis the idea that us-china competition is is is a part of the current international environment where that competition is going the degree to which it will be competitive and become a rivalry or it can be cooperative competitive is something we don't know and we may have disagreements about but let's start with this really huge problem that emerges in the relationship which is now seen as the secretary-general United Nations said today the biggest crisis the world has faced since World War two ghovat 19 the spread of the corona virus the fact that it came from China and the fact that China has been able to address it that seemingly at least for now in a way that that has not yet defeated but at least controlled it at a time when Europe and the United States are at the beginnings of a massive explosion of the virus how Kishore starting with you how do you see this current crisis affecting the competition to the United States and China I think this current crisis will have a very profound impact on the competition between US and China because for a start as I mentioned the six billion people outside you miss and China watching very carefully how China is reacting to covert 19 how the u.s. is reacting to covert 19 and clearly they're passing judgments on which reaction is more competent and more effective and at the end of the day it's as of now anyway let's wait and see how it all plays out the the Chinese after some very bad initial missteps in in denying that something had happened once they woke up they took some drastic actions and literally froze the problem and you know what is what most people are not aware of is that the the biggest travel day in in China is Chinese New Year 24th January and the day before Chinese New Year they just completely shut down the province now that that's a amazing step to take when all the Chinese just wanted to go home and Chinese New Year and celebrate know that that's a kind of dramatic action they took and if we saw the article by Martin wolf in the Financial times today she has an amazing chart that shows how China contained the problem in one province whereas the u.s. allowed it to explode to New York California and other places and so people can see clearly that one one reaction is effective one reaction is not and at the same time the Chinese the other thing that's quite surprising is that the Chinese have also reached out to try and help other countries and so you can see the the very positive reactions from Italy from Spain from Serbia to the help that China is giving and and embarrass the United States as you know has been focused very much on itself and the Europeans themselves you know evil you know you don't matter I do well quite shocked that you the President Trump just shut off Europe quarter of Europe without prior consultation said stop no more flights in Europe so all these things affect other countries perceptions of how US and China are doing but before closing I want to emphasize one point in response to what Richard said the world wants to see a strong capable and effective United States we don't want to see a weakened United States that's bad for the world the stronger the more effective the US is the better the better off the world is yeah I want to get I will get to that key sure because I do think that I think I think we can talk a lot about China but what the u.s. does is is equally important to determine how that competition goes but before I do Richard do you see it the same way that in fact in a you know are we at this point in in in our world history and the competition between the rising China and and a faltering let's call it that the United States for the moment that this is now a competition about who's seen it's the most confident and and the kovat 19 crisis is the means to Awards determining that end that the rest of the world is looking to see which of these two powers is most effective in dealing this particular crisis and then trying to translate that into who can we rely on more who can we work with more who's going to be the global leader if I want to put it that in those terms going forward is that is that a right way to look at this this potential crisis or this actual crisis yeah I think partially I mean that unfortunately you know when even the most sort of claw bearing China Hawks in Washington would would normally say we should have areas of cooperation with China you know shared threats non-proliferation global warming in our report we put global public health as an example of this you know the the virus in China threatens the United States the virus Lee and I say threatens China why can't we work together unfortunately however we haven't seen anything approximating cooperation between the United States and China which I think has to make one pretty pessimistic for how well we're going to be able to cooperate on some of these other shared threats at least thus far and you know from the beginning you know China originally covered up the extent of the crisis in Wuhan and you know punished the whistleblowers and all this and then and then criticized the United States and and said that the United States was stirring fear in China and wasn't being helpful and and now they you know the Foreign Ministry spokesman has come out a couple of times and suggested well maybe the virus didn't go from China the United States but actually Americans brought it to China and then sort of have recast this narrative of their sort of you know autocratic imposition of secrecy that led this to have significantly worse effects and otherwise would into autocratic efficiency you know we can build a hospital in six days and and we can shut down a whole province by Fiat and look at this bumbling lethargic divided incompetent democracy like the United States they can't do it at all and and by the way we're over the hump so we can help other people even though we were keeping all of those good you know medical equipment at home the United States needs help you know those kinds of things that's a snapshot of where we are now it's not clear to me that that's going to be the ultimate verdict that is rendered on the performance of both the United States and China but what do agree with is that people will see this as a vector for competition which is to say competence assistance you know leadership things like that and and also an impasse judgment on that and I think the Chinese have realized that quite early on and that's a big part of their reframing of the original narrative so I mean clearly the Chinese have sought to position themselves as both of you have said as as a global leader in responding to to the pandemic in terms of the assistant is providing to countries in Europe and Africa and other places in terms of the the idea that our system and actually using that language our system is is better able to deal with this problem than the alternative system it's there how how effective Kishore do you think that that narrative is over the longer term how convincing is it in Singapore for example how convincing do you see it in your own neighborhood all with countries who have great clarity of vision about what China is about and they're not just taken in by rhetoric and if you want to go beyond in Japan and other parts of Northeast Asia and and the rest of the world how convincing and effective do you think this new posturing or posture without casting judgment on it is is is today and likely to be in the future well I would say it's good conceptually to make a distinction between the United States as the country and the Trump administration and I would say that's an enormous amount of respect still for United States as a country you have the greatest universities in the world the best companies in the world the most exciting culture in the world so in all the strong assets of United States are seen in a sheeted by the world by the same time you have the Trump administration that says make America great again and it is in some ways almost like an insult to the remaining 7.2 billion people in the world and saying you know we don't care about you you want to make America great again and this of course is a very different America from the one you had after World War two that said the way America prospers is by making the rest of the world prosperous so these are very two different approaches and the world is not quite sure whether the Trump administration represents an aberration and will disappear and America will go back to where it used to be oh is this the new face of America and I think what puzzles a lot of countries around the world because late earlier on when Richard was talking about the free and open indo-pacific which is a good idea but no III was a diplomat for 33 years if you have a new idea what you do you first talk to other people and that's what diplomacy is about and talking is a two-way process you talk and you listen and you get feedback and I think the feedback that was given to the Americans was we are so happy that you're determined to stay in this region and play a role in the region we want you here but don't make it an anti China crusade because once you start an anti China crusade we cannot participate in it China is going to be our neighbor not for the next hundred years for the next 1000 years and even a country like Vietnam as you know which has been fighting China for two thousand years occupied by China for 1,000 by 1,000 years even they got to be very careful and I I remember the era you know in the Vietnam War and post at Nam war Singapore the u.s. worked very closely together against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan against a Vietnamese invasion Cambodia and you found when you're dealing with American diplomat then like please our given example Secretary of State George Shultz he was a very good listener he would say huh I'm learning something new from you this is interesting now tell me how we can work together now that kind of secretary of state that kind of diplomacy is what America needs to recover if it really wants to win this contests against China and let me just say as by contrast that the if you talk to the Chinese diplomats today they tend to be incredibly fluent in many languages very aware what's going on and even though the Chinese to be to be very blunt about it can be bullies they can't be bullies but at the same time they also learned the art of being pragmatic and adjusting and adapting so this is this is where the difference is coming now and I'm a bit very saddened to see how demoralize the State Department is because that is actually where your primary resources need to be deployed and you're breaking down that Department and making it ineffective okay so I think it was your your prime minister who once said don't ask us to choose between you and China because you may not like the answer and I think diplomacy would would say before you ask the question make sure you do know the answer on that piece so that's that that's good advice Richard on how China has tried to use the crisis as a means of establishing itself as a global leader including to try to do something but which used to be the province of the only United States using soft power the the ability to say we you should like us because we are providing you with essential means and the central goods to deal with a major crisis but also because we have the kind of ideas about how to deal with this particular crisis that are better than someone else the power of persuasion rather than the power of of the gun to to use Joe nice phrase on in terms of smart soft power how do you see the effectiveness as this less so in the United States although your own view as well but how do you think it's seen in the world well it's interesting I was talking to the director of our Europe program just the other day has been doing plenty of zoom calls with European officials and others and was asking some of these questions essentially has this playing in Europe and this is anecdotal because we're right in the middle of this but you know the plane loads of Chinese goods and the statements of Tseng so the you know the the president who will meet the Chinese plane on the tarmac and things those are having a positive effect which is the entire point I think you have China providing in the first place we know from our own experience sometimes those positive effects or not.let don't last very long but you know presumably this is a an arrow in China's quiver we've seen China pushing its sort of soft power how mostly in thus far in the last few years mostly in responses to mistakes that the United States has made so you know China sort of touted itself you know Xi Jinping went to the World Economic Forum and you know 2017 and said you know he's sort of a paragon of open economies and free trade and and they're pushing our sap and things like that well the only reason that was even possible was because the United States walked away from the trans-pacific partnership agreement and you know suddenly found his protectionist in herself and we had steel and aluminum Paris on everybody all these other you know it's it's activity and some of these international organizations you know there's a bit of an American vacuum that the Chinese are able to sort of walk into and say look in the absence of the traditional leader you know we've got something to offer here and then so it's so part of this is about China finding its own an ability to project soft power and part of this is the American tendency these days to not project its traditional forms of soft power and certainly not to most of the time bring countries along toward a positive vision of what we're aiming for me and you know it's it's been very striking to me in the last two weeks that the g7 had a virtual emergency summit at the insistence of Emmanuel macron then the g20 had a virtual summit you know the Saudis or the chair which you know poses some some some problems but you know Evo you may well disagree with me but you're a veteran of some of these multilateral things I mean my time in the Bush administration whether it was a pact or the g8 or whatever it was the countries don't self organize without the United States the United States put some ideas on the table several of the countries will say yes because it's America several countries will say no because it's America you corral them all together behind common vision you kind of work it out and then you lead them towards something in the absence of that you don't see anything happen and and that's what I see a vacuum of right now and you know the administration quite obviously is is reeling from a crisis but I think this is a big missing piece you know I think that's uh clearly one one of the things that's missing and and I yeah I think one of the questions is is China for all his diplomatic prowess and I think he sure you're right that the Chinese have demonstrated diplomatically to be much more involved they're much you know they're they're they're taking the UN very seriously they have large they have more diplomatic missions around the world now than the United States the diplomats are are all over the place in order to make the case for China and Chinese leadership they're not yet able seems to me to do what the United States has done so successfully in the past which is to corral people to bring to make multilateralism work it's it's it needs that leadership and in fact in the g7 it was the u.s. that decided to torpedo the effort to get a common stance because we insisted on calling the virus the Wuhan virus on the g20 we tried to stop the meeting from happening apparently drunk called cult NBS and said let's not have a meeting but in the end we that the meeting did happen and we haven't had a UN Security Council conversation about this either three sort of major multilateral fora where you would expect cooperation and and interestingly enough the cooperation is happening but it's um happening in a scientific community on vaccine development in therapeutics it's happening in the financial and central banking community where the economic crisis is being addressed but it's not happening at the political level and and neither China is it and China's not able to put that together in the United States this seems to be absent I think that's a kind of a way to think about this state of world affairs where the old world in which the u.s. led and and drove is is no longer but the new world hasn't quite disappeared Ian Bremmer calls that the g0 world right but we can't afford it seems to me and I'm one of just as it aside want to encourage people to continue asking their questions on C c/g a dot live to enter that in your browser vote for questions that you would like me to ask and I will do so after after this one but it seems to me that in this world were that is that seems to be quite quite leaderless we're in for trouble the global economy needs coordination in order to deal with a crisis that we have the absence of alliances and partnerships is a driving force for the for the asia-pacific region in particular is an issue that both of you have mentioned how do you see this play out if if in fact the United States does not come back as sort of the organizers or par excellence that it has been for 75 years Kishore well I think that one key would that both you and Richard use is multilateralism and you know I was ambassador to the UN all together for 10 years and I was I guess a first hand direct feel of how multilateral processes work and in multilateral processes as I said earlier it helps a lot if you talk to everybody listen to them and try to bring them into the solution which is what as was mentioned earlier the United States would do and so what's interesting is that the United States was always the initiator of many interesting initiatives I mean APEC is one of them I was present when APEC was launched and as involved in negotiations and we all work together to get it moving but as you know recently the United States has become missing in action so for example the trans-pacific partnership which was essentially a geopolitical gift to the United States is a way of the what the countries in the East Asia for they wanted to anchor the United States in East Asia and they said come come in and join us and TPP and you get anchored this region United States as you know walked away from it but while the u.s. is walking away from initiatives his own initiatives China is launching new ones and for example the regional comprehensive economic partnership has been launched India hasn't joined but the rest of the countries are going ahead with it and of course China has got this belt and Road initiative which is described in the Western media as an exploitative Chinese project but I went for the summit last year and the number of world leaders queuing up to go to Beijing to participate in the belt and Road initiative is amazing hundreds of countries want to participate and join it because they gain something concrete from it I mean the Chinese as you know at the end of the day if they come in and they build a road they build a railway they do deliver something quite significant of course you could make sure you negotiate the terms very well with them and their Chinese and made some serious mistakes in the way they negotiated the deals but by and large if you look at the countries that are even friends of the United States whether it's Indonesia Malaysia Thailand they are all participating in the past and Road initiative so you have a world in which the United States is opting out of the world order and China is opting in in the big way now we are still at the start of this process we don't know what the final outcome will be but I think it is a mistake for the United States to step back to the extent that it has done so so far Richard how do you see it yeah [Music] when it comes to these multilateral fora well let me step back for a second I think there are certain things that the United States has done to step back on trans-pacific partnership for example where there's a domestic resonance there's a very complicated now politics of trade in the United States I didn't agree with the decision and get out but I understand the decision it's harder to understand the decision to walk away from some of these multilateral fora and the leadership role we would play I think some of it may stem from a misunderstanding I mean the the that you know the unilateral cowboy diplomacy of the George W Bush administration whether that was the dominant theme they don't like to do anything multilateral and ice and you know so much time working on g8 and APEC related things and it wasn't because the Bush administration had some love of globalism or or liked being you know constrained by other countries at the table it's because that was the most effective mechanism to get things that were good for us and and and that remains the case today and and and that's where the United States really does have a lot of strengths that China just can't match not only the fact that China has really events very little ability to play this leadership role in these global multilateral fora but even other things as well I mean the United States has allies all over the world China has North Korea and Cambodia I guess you know the United Sates has bases all over the world you know China has a basin in Djibouti United States you can sort of go through this international engagement and the United States has been able to use this in a sense of enlightened self-interest good for Americans but also good for our partners and hopefully good for the world as well China hasn't cracked the nut on that I don't know that it ever will because I think it starts from a preservation of the party first not you know the well-being of all Chinese people and certainly not the well-being of the region or or the globe I think this is much about you know the ambitions of the party and its leadership but you know we would squander those advantages at our own at our own peril it's unclear to me whether China even if we do sort of opt out more and more and more whether China can really come in and and play anything approximately the American role but they can certainly play some role as we've seen in our seven so these other things I'm going to turn to this some of the questions that that are being submitted online and actually there's two there that are kind of related and then pretty fundamental one is is what do you view as China strategic goals what is it after and relatedly in part because it depends on the answer to that question is is wood a dominant China be a bad thing for the world is it something that we should try to prevent from happening or is it something that we could live with Kishore how do you what do you see are the strategic goals of China mmm and and how I think that I I do answer the question in my book as China won China's strategic goal let me let me eliminate what it is not it is not to revive communism that they have no interest in that it's not to try and go and conquer the world they're not interested in that the China's strategic goal is to scrub out completely all traces of the century of humiliation that is suffered from 1842 to 1949 as you know they've got trampled kicked abuse in the second of the summer palace in 1860 which every every child in China knows about that they want to wipe out they want China to be seed will become once again the strongest most respected civilization and the key word here is civilization they want to restore the strength and dignity of Chinese civilization second question is this good or bad for the world and that the answer to the question depends exactly on how we treat China as it is rising and emerging and so for if you if you provoke China and make it angry right then you get an angry their dragon coming up in response but if you want to work with them and say okay you want this we want this can we cooperate can we collaborate can we work some things out so for example Richard mentioned the the South China Sea now Singapore's got no claims on the South China Seas zero but you know you you saw the South China Sea in the headlines three four years ago every day this happening that happening nowadays you don't get any headlines on South China Sea because behind the scenes there's a lot of negotiations going on and both sides are working Vietnam and China Philippines and China Malaysia and China Brunei in China and so on so forth so that's that's and I think the key message here is that if we want China to emerge as a responsible stakeholder then we got to treat them as a responsible stakeholder and work with them and one other very important dimension I want to emphasize here because at the end they also dealing with 3.5 billion patients and for Asians face is very important so insulting a country really gets you nowhere I mean in in in the Western context you can insult people they forget about it and so on and so forth well in the Asian context it matters a lot so the forms of engaging you know this how Asians talk to each other and how they deal with each other is very different and that's something that also the rest of the world is learning in how learning how to deal with China in that way so the forms of dealing with China is important as a substance to Richard thanks kishore Richard yeah I have a different view of the strategic goal and I think it's wrong to talk about China I think that what we're really talking about is the party the word communists in the air is of some relevance but not overarching relevance I agree that they're not trying to turn the world into communism they're not bankrolling communist insurgencies in Africa the way they did you know decades and decades ago and things like that but what they are trying to do is stay in power indefinitely in China and augment the the perception and the reality of the party's dominant power abroad and so not to invade other countries but everything comes down to the preservation of the party that explains the vast majority of actions that you can see both domestically and you know internationally as well and so the least criticism of the party domestically internationally is is punished or attempted to be punished you know that the least exercise of a writer freedom at home that might somehow threaten even in a very indirect way the party is is punished or legislated against and things like that so I think fundamentally the goal the beef is of course not but the Chinese people the beef is with the the party that runs country and the party's ultimate aspiration is rain remain in power indefinitely you know the the respond who who thought the responsible stakeholder approach was a good one for a number of years you know it's been about 15 years since that's been more or less the the approach if you think back to when Bob Zoellick and companies started talking about this in the Bush administration the problem is we just don't have a lot of evidence that China has that the approach of you know deep engagement maybe hedge on the side but embrace the Chinese as a more responsible stakeholder give them some more voting shares and the IMF and things like that um we just don't have a lot of evidence that that's actually worked according to theory and in fact since the Ascension of Xi Jinping China has become more assertive and more aggressive internationally including in the domestic politics and economics of other countries and I think the the early returns would show that a more dominant China would not be good for the United States nor good for the world China has a vision of what should be what should obtain that is far more illiberal than that of certainly the United States it's far more close in terms of economic practices it has a far more dominant role for China to use economic coercion and political meddling in order to add a minimum stop any perceived criticism of China but at a maximum to go well beyond that and fundamentally that's not a world that you know most people in at least the American democracy are going to be comfortable living it be sure you just as a last last word on this before we close down do you do you agree the part I mean talked about the party as a defender of Chinese civilization but do you agree that it is also trying to stay in power and that by staying in power it maybe it sees that as the key and core to upholding Chinese civilization yes it's absolutely the case that they want to stay in power but the question is why do they want to stay in power and the answer is that they want to stay in power because they realize that when Chou get divided taina gets exploited and so they believe a strong central government is what China needs but you know let me introduce the word that's been mentioned before freedom right if you look at what that the Chinese government has done visa vie the Chinese people right when I remember when I went to China 40 years ago first time Chinese people can choose what to wear where to live where to study where to work nothing now they have all the choices and each year in the past there were zero Chinese tourists now 134 million Chinese leave China freely 134 million Chinese come back to China freely so obviously there's something in China that appeals to them and they have seen the Chinese people have experienced the greatest improvement in their standard of living in the past 30 years in the past 3,000 years so it's a very new vibrant dynamic society in China so that's why it's a mistake to focus on the party the party has got 90 million members but at 1.4 billion Chinese people and from from their point of view they have seen tremendous improvement at end of living and when you go to China you don't you don't see people cowering in fear you see entrepreneurship you see new enterprises you see you know the the optimism of the young people so that's what you should also focus on and not just on the party I think we just scratched the surface of this really important discussion the good news is that we can ask you back to start continue the conversation as soon as Chicago the world is open again to travel and we can have in-person meetings in the meantime thank you so much for joining us Kishore early in Singapore Richard already late on the East Coast really appreciate you both being here for our audience thank you for joining us recording of the program will be available on the council website on our YouTube channel on social media shortly and a reminder that if you want to read the scene ass report you can go to their website and download it there if you want to read key Shores new book has China won it's available already for pre-sale by our partners at the bookseller a direct link can be found on the event page where we announced this program so thank you all for joining us Kishore have a great day Richard have a good meal and a glass of wine you've you've earned it both we really enjoyed your having here and for all of us for those of you who joined us today thank you for joining us in this new way to continue to engage with us online and good night thank you

Channel: Chicago Council on Global Affairs

Views: 93,968

Rating: 4.5208492 out of 5

Keywords: chicago council, chicago council on global affairs, foreign affairs, think tank, Center for a New American Security, Richard Fontaine, Kishore Mahbubani, Asia Research Institute, Ivo H. Daalder., Ivo Daalder, China, Covid-19, global outlook, geopolitical, military, military supremacy, coronavirus, politics, political science, chinese, american, international relations

Id: OfYGVDzJ2hM

Length: 48min 1sec (2881 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 02 2020

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[u/stcbdg]

My sources say no.

[u/baronjhui]

China wins when the Chinese people get their human rights back. And they win again when others stop treating them as second class human.