The State of U.S.-China Relations: A Conversation [2019 Annual Members Program]

[Music] let me offer my welcome I'm Carla hills and I just thrilled to see so many friends in this audience and I don't have to tell this audience that these are tumultuously academically politically and technologically and it's affecting all of our relationships but in the headlines and what is in our mind is the us-china relationship now Jen barrows told me that I was to be brief and you know I always follow the boss but I cannot refrain from saying that we have never had such a superb panel here all with experience Doug Paul raise your hand Doug not only did was he vice-president of JPMorgan China but he was our unofficial envoy to Taiwan and then I go to Ken Lieberthal evan Madero and both of them were special assistants to the president for the National Security Ken with prep under President Clinton working for President Clinton and even working for President Obama and know not to omit Danny Russell who was Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and again a special assistant to the president for the Asian arena and last but not least susan Thornton who was a successor to Danny Russel and served took over the responsibilities as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia so what I say we have a superb panel you know that these people and you have there resume our the very top of the ladder we're proud of them and we are so grateful that you are all here and their conversation will be tied together by the best moderator I've ever heard Steve Orleans our president so Steve you're on thank you and let me just reiterate that we have got an incredibly distinguished panel let me start with a you know a question which will give you the opportunity to talk about your time in government and what was going on in us-china relations so in the case of the four men when you were senior directors for for Asia and in Susan's case when you were acting assistant secretary what were the major issues in us-china relations and most importantly what are the lessons in how you dealt with those issues then for today's us-china relationship start with Tuggle we're going in the chronologically from when they entered government because as as Doug pointed out to me he entered the earliest but he didn't leave the earliest well thanks it's great to be with all of you this evening I got a lot of people to fill in the time slot so I could do a memoir here just out my turbulent time in office managing relations in part with China from the period of 19 1989 through 1992 late 92 early 93 and I had the privilege of working directly under thread Scowcroft who's kind of a model of on a lead in national security council but also under the leadership of President George HW Bush who had the best funeral I've ever been to last November because there were so many good memories at this his life in time in office and and we had colleagues at the various departments like James Baker over at state who was a trusted and knowledgeable and hard-working guy at the time dick chaney at the Defense Department was was a different Cheney than what we got to know a little later and in that period President Bush came in having served in China in the liaison office as the second chief of the liaison office in nineteen basically mentioned 73 before he came back to the United States politics again and he really loved his time in China he and his family had a great experience and and he was really attached to it during the time he was vice president and I was serving under Ronald Reagan I could always count on good meetings with Vice President Bush even though Reagan was sort of you know in his own world on these things because Bush really cared and our instruction when he was elected president in his own right in 1988 was to prepare for him to make an early visit to China the Emperor of Japan Hirohito had passed away there was going to be a ceremony for his departure right after Bush was inaugurated he said I want to go to that funeral then I want to go right to see my old friend done shopping before it's too late and I can't see him anymore and so we he sent me off of the group to do the advance team work for that trip and a lot was pregnant at that time they was a lot of stirring and the educated in the intellectual community in China and I visited the embassy we made the kind of formal arrangements one normally does and then I had some private time with embassy officers who said we need to go out in the park land and talk that we did and they said you know we're not reporting here from Beijing some of what's happening and you need to know is to me to come back with a white house that there's a real fire building up below ground here in China but people are really fed up with corruption leadership mistakes the city is about to blow up I was told this at the end January in 1989 we came back and we saw that the build-up which eventually stumbled from event to event to the events of the Tiananmen Square massacre and for me then to shorten the dialogue that the discussion a little bit I went through a kind of Groundhog Day to all of you know Bill Murray spelled the Groundhog Day well if Groundhog Day comes every 30 years the first one was when we had the June fourth incident in Beijing where we saw overnight a complete transformation of the public support for China or relations with China that had been built patiently from the mixen to the Carter through the Reagan years and institutional connections had been built budgets had been put in place for every agency big and small to have some liaison with China and to develop deep working relationships and friendships in China with the gunfire at Tiananmen we've watched budget after budget remove those funds because no committee members know of any committee of all the Committees of Congress we're going to permit money to be spent and I saw in those days what I'm seeing today which is the collapse of the support network for various forms of constructive relations between the peoples of China and the United States and just to jump ahead again we tried a couple of times to reach out to China try to find ways of finding a meeting point to help put our relationship on a more stable foundation that did not go well for reasons that really were coming out of China and and from the collapse of regimes in Eastern Europe we I can't tell you the shock that was through the Chinese leadership over the assassination or execution of Romanian presidential Cesco the leaders of China the eight old men who were non official leaders of China saw that film and froze up and they stayed frozen really until 1994 when I was been out of the out of the White House we were unable really to build momentum in that relationship again until done shall pinging himself in 92 and thereafter made the southern trip and it's strong effort to get the China moving back in the reform direction ken thank you but like Doug it's just a great pleasure to have the opportunity to participate in this panel with colleagues who I respect so much and who had been in the line of fire and over a period of several decades I had the advantage of two things one I served from 1998 through 2000 two and a half years of President Clinton's second term and by then frankly President Clinton had gotten to know all the leaders of Asia gotten to know the leaders in China and had a kind of theory of the case as to what we should be doing with China to move this relationship forward and secondly the impeachment proceeding was against the president had gained momentum and were actively being pursued and therefore he was reluctant to make any public appearances that focused on domestic issues because no matter what he wanted to talk about every question was about a very sensitive embarrassing situation so he turned his full attention to foreign affairs and that was just terrific if you came in as a specialist in foreign affairs he was especially focused on China so it was ironically while it was a tough time in US politics it was a great time to be on the NSC what China Steve asked for the since the biggest issues that we had to deal with and then what are the lessons for it from dealing with them as I thought about that question frankly the categories of issue haven't changed the three biggest issues when I was in the NSC were one negotiating the us-china bilateral accession agreement for China's entry into the WTO in other words economics and trades and trade what rules apply how do you get US Congress to think that's a good arrangement how do you get the Chinese on board and then how do you how do you work the entry into the WTO so at the core of the economic and trade relationship second cross trade tensions there were a variety of things that fed into that but the most dramatic was when chun treyvion was elected president in taiwan taking the chinese totally by surprise they thought he was going to lose and frankly our intelligence agencies and determined that based on their information he was trying to win and they called it almost to the percentage point to the decimal point right the Chinese were so blown away by that result that turns a bien who is really quite so independent was now going to be the president Taiwan that it created an immediate crisis and third the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade which I would put in the category of things that you never imagined what happened suddenly are at the center of your relationship with China right and so the question is how do you manage that let me give you up I happen to go in you have to go into details on any of those if you wish and that's in response to your questions but let me just give the lessons for today from from those Sciences one economic on trade negotiations it's much easier to negotiate nuclear arrangements to negotiate ceasefire and you know in some civil war it comes to negotiating trade agreements I say this with former us dr Carla Hill is sitting right in front they are the toughest negotiations imaginable and they always are because there's real money at stake and everyone can figure out how much they would like me to lose in a worst-case scenario and every one of them that has serious digs in it goes tooth and tong to stop or at the shape that the variant written so those are extremely tough on both sides it's not only in the US as much in China as in the US the difficulties are especially great in terms of the domestic politics in each side and navigating those frankly makes to my mind it's just something that any trade negotiator knows which is that nothing is is finalized until the whole deal is done and signed and feet up to get ratified on both sides and before that anything can change because these things are just very tough secondly on prostrate issues they are the most dangerous issues out there in this relationship and since recently we've all gotten accustomed to not worrying so much about prostrate issues they we've had a period of relative calm you don't get on the wrong side of prostrate issues and avoid the potential for conflict they are fundamental for any leader of China and they are not so clear in u.s. politics at this point in time so when when Chen shui-bian was elected literally sandy Berger the National Security Advisor gathered Stan Lee Roth who was Assistant Secretary of State sitting out here and me and a couple of others and flew us over to China with him to assess what the Chinese leadership was going to do and frankly our assessment was they were so panicked that we had no idea what they were going to do but it didn't look like it was going to be very sober rational thinking and the kind of terminology two minutes okay and the terminology that we use to kind of ward it off to keep it ambiguous was that we will not sit idly by if you take a kind of measure that is but that you plan to meet the conflict and give details later as you wish third is the unanticipated events and let me say the Embassy bombing in Belgrade how that played out drove home for lessons that I think of remain extremely important one when there is a real crisis that emerges the communications back and forth are often misread by the other side so you think you are communicating something very clearly and they understand it as something as you're saying something very different I had the chance to go back and forth with whom I knew on the other side ex post facto and it was just amazing we just crossing in the night you know all the way through this crisis secondly establishing personal trust with certain key officials can potentially be crucial at preventing escalation when you're both at the point of an incident that could literally cost lives within hours third domestic political interests on both sides will slow down communications will skew them to advance their own causes crises don't stop that from occurring in either place and those real problems and last and finally that given the lack of full factual knowledge the dots are connected by underlying assumptions about what your long-term intentions are and so it is a huge problem when the assumption is that your long-term intentions are to deny the other side it's it's basically that they regard as quite the cumin let me stop there Danny either your time as senior director or assistant secretary Karl as you said it's a good panel but it's audience Stanley who is both assistant secretary and senior director funded I personal hero of mine who haven't seen for a while tremendous patriot I was brought over to the NSC by Jeff Bader who's here in spirit on the very first day after President Obama was inaugurated in 2009 for the first two almost two years I was the director for North Korea South Korea Japan and then became senior director I left in the summer of 2013 in the second term moved over to the State Department and replaced Campeau assistant secretary Mike my one real claim to fame is that I successfully ensured that the people who succeeded me in the NSC and in the State Department were better than I it was and I'm very proud of that so at the beginning of the Obama administration there was a strong conviction which really emanated from the president that the economic and security interests of the United States required us to engage more actively in the asia-pacific region in general and that we needed to reallocate our priorities in our you know resources and mine share so as not to be so absorbed in the Middle East and in order to be more engaged in Pacific and I certainly had the view I think it was pretty widely shared in the administration that the Bush administration had focused intently on China and made Asia sort of adjunct of China policy we thought that that China needs to be a component of our Asia strategy and that man in strengthening our alliances it meant constant getting our own house in order looking for ways to participate influential a meaningfully and regional and multilateral institutions men improving our relations with some of the other emerging powers in the cetera it men focusing hard on the economic agenda because after all the u.s. was digging out of a deep recession and it meant finding a way to ensure that our values [Music] represented in our engagement in a way that was sustainable and not just preachy and not phony another obstacle to actual progress we had you know the usual baker's dozen of problems with China from South China Sea and North Korea prostrates issues to economic issues IPR theft cyber etc to the treatment of American citizens journalists human rights the familiar list we also had the opportunity and the challenge of helping to steer or influence the transition from Fujian towel to she's in pain who we knew Secretary General and its president and we have worked on a number of strategies including the Biden to China and Xi Jinping's return visit as vice president to try to establish those connections and get a head start I'd say terms of lessons learned for me it was really a constant quest to find ways to generate leverage to deal with China find ways to translate that leverage into action agreements processes and fun ways to translate those at those agreements into sustainable solutions as opposed to just paper solutions and that's the kind of challenge that we will always face in dealing with China and it's a greater challenge as China grows wealthier and stronger and more determined or confident I think in terms of where we are now we're in the middle of an experiment and we really don't know how we'll end the experiment is the application of brute force against the largest most populated country and practically it's great it's moment of greatest ik ascendancy and thus far although the administration generated tremendous amount of leverage it is entirely unclear that that will result in progress and that progress will be durable the last point I'd make is to build on something that Ken said it's not just personal relations it's not just friendships across the Pacific the fact is that unless people in the other camp want to do for their own reasons the sorts of things that you have the breed got them to agree to or that you're asking I'm going to do you will find it at best a steep uphill battle and if you can find a way of harness harnessing your agenda to things and the quantum us-china climate change agreement is a classic case two things that China for its own reasons pollution was inclined to do you have a fair chance of engineering well thank you very much Stephen thanks to Carla and all of you for joining us here today I served at the NSC from 2009 to 2005 first as director for China also brought over by Jeff Bader and then of course his senior director for Asia let me make three points first the moment in international politics the global economy and u.s. foreign policy really shaped our China policy from 2009 when Barack Obama was elected there was this feeling that US foreign policy really needed a makeover the president was very focused on the challenges of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan right America wasn't involved in two very intensive Wars the global economy was careening towards a depression and that obviously had to be a major major priority but also we had inherited a us-china relationship that I would argue as a a fundamentally different character in other words it was a relationship that was now global it was no longer a bilateral relationship focused rightly on the issues of trade Taiwan human rights non-proliferation sort of the traditional issues of the 80's 90's and 2000's but rather China had risen quite rapidly the Chinese were sort of you know beginning to feel it a little bit they were questioning whether or not the US was going to play as dominant a role as it had in previous years and so we had inherited this relationship where on the major global challenges non-proliferation of course the global economic crisis climate change China was going to be have to be at the table and a constructive relationship with China or at least cooperation from China episodically was critical to those solutions so that that context very much shaped the approach toward China and that's why we always talked about the sort of mix of cooperation and competition because we were acutely aware that the challenges we were facing from China were growing exponentially but we didn't know sort of what mix of cooperation and competition was going to work to elicit good behavior working with us on global governance global public goods and solving bilateral problems versus competing in those areas where we disagreed so the moment had a lot to do with our approach to China policy point number two in terms of lessons learned I would say from my six years at the NSC one big lesson I take away is that cooperation with China is hard and and always work we the Obama administration I think had a pretty mixed record to be very fair the areas where we got meaningful cooperation from China were on Iran and working on the Iranian nuclear program and that was both work within the UN Security Council and bilateral work with the Chinese to try and use the sort of mix of pressure and diplomacy to that to get the Iranians to the negotiating table the climate deal obviously in 2004 is another signature success in which you know as Danny rightly pointed out we sort of used a mix of the Xi Jinping Obama relationship combined with you know a very intensive diplomatic effort all of government to help the Chinese understand why this was in their interests but there are also some very meaningful issues where we didn't get progress from China that was pretty frustrating on the cyber issue and specifically cyber-enabled economic espionage on maritime issues Chinese sort of behavior in the East China Sea South China Sea and then on North Korea I can't tell you the amount of time that Danny and I spent trying to get the Chinese to sort of work with us more on a pressure effort to create the conditions under which the North Koreans might think about re-embrace ngey nuclearization ultimately it wasn't very fruitful but those are issues where we spent an enormous amount of time and one of the things about the Obama administration is very distinct from President Trump was we built this what we thought at the time was this very smart very robust infrastructure of dialogue of course you had Obama and Xi meet a lot and talked a lot right in the eight years of the Obama presidency you had Obama and Xi meet more times than all of President Obama's predecessors combined so a lot we Danny and I created a channel between Tom Donilon and his sort of rough equivalent in China we had the strategic and economic dialogue we had dialogues on asia-pacific course lots of numerous defense dialogues under the premise that personal relationships robust conversation would elicit more cooperation it's unclear whether or not that's the case for precisely the reasons that Danny talked to the Chinese didn't really feel that it was in their interest to do so final point Taiwan so in the obama administration we had that week we had one very fortunate circumstance which was the cross-strait relationship after mine Joe was elected and oh wait stabilized and stabilized immediately for a variety of reasons that I'm happy to get into but that allowed us to test the proposition that the Chinese had been telling us for the past the previous 30 years which was if you only solve the Taiwan issue everything else is possible but unfortunately we learned everything else wasn't possible because we did create stability in the cross-strait relationship due to a lot of good smart diplomacy in Washington Beijing and anti Bay but that didn't sort of open up the pearly gates of getting the Chinese to work with us on the issues that matter to us and so you know during the Obama years because of this transition from who does she the Chinese begin to see the gap in relative capabilities close they felt that they were stronger they had more global credibility and I think they were beginning to explore what the boundaries of that could be under the trump administration fortunately got to take over from Danny Russell who sadly departed early on in the Trump administration so what I would say is that it's a little bit different my discussion here from the other four predecessors because generally speaking previous White House's had what you would be able to call at least in rough outlines a China policy but you know we we really don't have a China policy we really still don't have a China policy and this administration it's no surprise you've read about it in all the different books came in to office quite unprepared across the board including on foreign policy and came in more with an attitude or a narrative and I'm glad Steve talked about narratives because that's really what had come from the campaign with Donald Trump into office on China's is a narrative and an attitude and you know we early on saw signs of this when we saw the call between Donald Trump and tying when in Taiwan in December before the inauguration sort of unprecedented direct contact between a leader of Taiwan and the and the well at that point president-elect of the United States so we knew we were in for some unusual and difficult kind of turbulent times I think at that time of course the Chinese were looking kind of high and low for who it was going to be in the administration that was going to be a conduit for them to get messages and information to the top how were they going to work with this new administration that didn't really have any kind of outline of a policy but that had a very negative attitude obviously toward China coming off the campaign and I think that search initially seemed to be satisfied by their connection to Jared Kushner who they had been talking to and who they'd met several times and I think they felt like was going to be able to at least pass messages up if things got you know out of control in their view that they could reach someone in the administration and express their concerns because I think at that time too it wasn't clear sort of how the cabinet was gonna take shape and who was going to be in it whether anyone was gonna have any kind of background or experience in dealing with China you know once the administration came into office you know my direct contact was of course with with Rex Tillerson but there were a lot of meetings at the White House and you know Donald Trump clearly really focused only on the trade deficit I mean that was mentioned earlier and I think it's clear that that's pretty much still the case that he was very focused coming off the campaign on the trade deficit on the economics competition with China but mostly on the trade imbalance and he wanted coming right into office to sort of go after that issue but he also had been told by President Obama in one of his outgoing meetings that North Korea is the most urgent national security issue that you face and I was unable to do anything about it a whole long line of previous administrations were unable to tackle this issue so that kind of I think sparked the imagination of the incoming president and he really did put his new national security team to work on coming up with an approach to North Korea that he thought he might be able to sort of pursue and do something very different and I think just it kind of appealed to him so you know we started off general generating a policy on North Korea that would look pretty familiar to most of the people up here on the stage and most of you you know a bottom-up process considering various options rigorous interagency meetings and then finally came up with this policy of maximum globalized pressure and and pursued that policy in a very familiar way all the time not really ever having the same kind approach to a China policy for the administration but because China became so important in the global maximum pressure campaign on North Korea president Trump's attention sort of shifted from you know the focus on going after China on trade to the hope help that he hoped he was going to get from them on North Korea and that took us through pretty much all the way through fire and fury you know a lot of meetings with China the first mar-a-lago mean meeting was mainly devoted to discussions of Korea and and all the way through the end of 2017 and you had the turn to diplomacy in North Korea and you also have the turn to you know the sort of more focus on trade and economics in the China relationship and I think you could see very clearly if you track the timing that you know right after Donald Trump's summit meeting with Kim jong-un in Singapore five days later basically the tariffs went on on China so you know I think basically the idea here is that Donald Trump's got North Korea now in his own personal control and it's time to move on and take on the China challenge which he still sees frankly mainly in terms of the economic competition and the trade deficit so the other thing that's unusual though about the Trump administration is that there is is almost no structure so while you have a president that's very focused on this trade deficit issue and has tasked his economic team to go and take care of that you don't really have anybody running of a framework for very complicated China policy that basically is involves almost every issue that we have in international affairs and so while you're devoting a lot of attention to the trade and economic issue there's not really any high-level focus or coordination on the rest of the pieces of the relationship which is how we ended up with kind of every agency run their own very kind of independent China policy and how we've ended up with a lot of Chinese confusion about what is the u.s. doing what is our approach what is the goal here and you know how can we work with these peoples so I think we're still in that stage and I'll just leave it there come back to it that's a perfect segue into kind of my first question I think they're all great answers the knowledge what this on this stage is extraordinary you all worked on the preparation of national security strategies when you were part of the the NSC in December of 2017 the national security strategy called China a revisionist power and a strategic competitor Howard give us some insight of how these strategies are prepared and your view is China a revisionist power and when did it become a strategic competitor I didn't assign this to anyone so who wants to address this one when Chinese come around and asked me about this all the time because Chinese take these documents very seriously I say to them the best way to view security strategy is through the rearview mirror because you're never gonna see it again it'll never be out there it's always back there now in this case we had this characterization of China and Russia as revisionist powers fairly recently then person responsible for the report and the person who drafted the report made a public appearance at Pennsylvania and were asked the same question what is the meaning of this term revisionist power and they said they did not know the answer so if you're asking us to give you the answer I think we're at a disadvantage to the authors of the report this was an example I think of a political effort trying to set a new tone trying to sound very theoretical sound very strategic and yet lacking the structure and the and the assortment of subordinate policies that would make it mean something Susan you were there then was that a clear draft wasn't really a top-down effort this isn't something that you know the president was super focused on it was something that his national security adviser at that time HR McMaster was very focused on and you know HR McMaster did try to institute more processes regular processes you know coming from the military I think he was wanting to institute something that was like a policy process and this he thought would be an overarching framework I think it got you know hijacked a little bit I would say yeah a little bit and you know I think it's what I've said to people is you know the Chinese don't like it when people write books about their strategy base the documents they write for their internal audiences books about things like a hundred year strategy to take over the world for example and I try to say to them this is a sort of internal political document as well even though it's obviously public but it's it's it's meant for a different purpose than actually setting out you know a new strategy or a new underlying theme along the lines of which every single US government agency is now supposed to orient its work or reorient its work as the case may be Ken and Evan or all of you want to come it go ahead ken Danny and then Evan two quick comments I'm sorry is this mic working or not I was yes two quick comments one is I have not seen any evidence that President Trump has used any of the phraseology or analytical assumptions of he remains focused on the trade deficit and so it's number two on the question of what is a revisionist country who has revisionist goals China clearly wants to have a larger role they want to redefine some of the terms that we have long used [Music] United Nations and elsewhere they don't want to overturn the structure but they're bigger players and they want it to be more sensitive to their interests and their views of what respect respect more they go about things Danny one last say and Donald Trump wants to change the way we go about things do including the definitions so we've got two leaders Donald Trump each of which came into office wanting to make big changes to enable one revision has to the others how other not revisionist it sounds to me like a not very useful distinction to make so strategy having a microphone is also a good thing but having an strategy having a paper and national security strategy document or a microphone doesn't mean that you have a strategy what is particularly important is whether the national security apparatus the departments of government and the president are working in tandem are working towards common purposes or communicating with each other and they were in 2010 and 2015 when the Obama administration issued two different national security strategies that I think is what was important and gave us a certain amount of home when there when there's a real disconnect between the president and the apparatus and Suzan described within the apparatus then having that piece of paper really doesn't get you anywhere it's important to note that there is both classified and unclassified national security strategy and one of my concerns with the product in 2017 which was in development while I was still in the State Department was that it misallocated some of the terminology what's the reason that you want to call out China and essentially publicly define it as an adversary if not an enemy what are you trying to achieve that way it's there's no inhibition and no restrictions no no cost for discussing China in very straightforward terms in a classified document that will help you coordinate internally there's an indoor voice there's an outdoor voice the last point I'd make with respect to get into the revisionists question per se but that the fewer channels of communication operation there is between the US and China the greater China's incentive to try to gain a decisive strategic advantage in global governance even if that's only to protect its interests I'm not saying that cooperating with China is going to turn it into a docile pussycat but is clearly removing incentives for China to color within the lines when we cease communication and coordination Steve I think that the key point that this discussion about the national security strategy brings out is that for China policy to work well across administration's there are some fundamental elements in particular you need a good process process that's both bottom-up and top-down and that means you have principles committee meetings deputies committee meetings interagency policy committee meetings the kinds of things that all of us would chair to debate and discuss among all the stakeholders in the government so you need a good process you need priorities and the only way that those priorities come about is through this good process and you sort of send those up to the principal's and they make recommendations to the president and number three you need sort of personalities people in an administration that are really invested by in China see the NSS is a vehicle for all of those I mean in the Obama administration I remember very distinctly Jeff came to me and he said okay Evan they're drafting the NSS draft up two paragraphs on China so you know sit down at my computer tap it out give it to Jeff he read lines it for all of you that know Jeff that's that's his thing thankfully it was much better text after Jeff's input and then it goes into this process where the deputies get together and debate strategy so the NSS can be very important as a tool for internal debate it forces everybody to come around the table and not talk about sort of the minutiae of how are we going to review the talking points on the Secretary of State's upcoming trip with the Chinese foreign minister but talk about some of these strategy issues and then to Danny's very good point then what do we say publicly how do you use the NSS as a mechanism for communication so the NSS can be important for both internal functions as well as communication I don't think that happened in the in the with the Trump administration but on this question of revisionism I think this is an important question and so when people ask me is China revisionist State I say yes and no because China in 2019 has one foot in and one foot outside of the system on issues like maritime issues right South China Sea in East China Sea human rights its implementation of its WTO commitments it has pretty bad behavior it really doesn't like some of these rules and norms and doesn't want to agree to them there are other issues where it sees that its interests absolutely are aligned with agreeing with dominant rules norms and institutions and participates and I think China is very much in a sort of transition phase where it's trying to figure out what's in its interests and what's not what's a challenge I think is when the US looks more revisionist than China it undermines that calibration process now just because the u.s. is revisionist and I'm not just talking about Trump right think about concepts like responsibility to protect r2p for the foreign policy expert among us this is a very revisionist concept because it undermines one of the most basic institutions at the core of international relations state sovereignty so this is a sort of complicated process but nonetheless I think there you know there are good reasons to be concerned about how China what kind of rising power China is going to be how is it going to use its newfound economic military diplomatic capabilities and are those going to undermine US interests and I think there are lots of ways where those interests even as China Rises where those interests converge but it takes time and effort and hard work to get there and there are also areas where they diverge and I think it's important upon the US and its allies to sort of set those limits terrific answers the head of policy planning a job occupied by some of America's great foreign policy thinkers including George Kennan les Gelb Winston Lord Richard Haass an animal Reese Lauder who actually was interviewing the head of policy planning at that point and she said in China we have an economic competitor an ideological competitor with a global reach that many of us didn't expect decades ago I think it is also striking that for the first time we will have a great power competitor that is not Caucasian and it's not Caucasian wow she better study some history she then went on to say foreign policy experts should take the rose-colored glasses off when it comes to China how should we think about those comments you've all served in government this the head of policy planning obviously is talking about this with people how should we think about those we shouldn't I mean the one unfortunate thing is that this comment has gotten a lot more play among the 1.4 billion people in China than it has among the 330 million people in the United States and I think that's you know really really unfortunate because I don't think that many people in the US would subscribe to this kind of statement and I don't think it accurately really reflects what's going on between the US and China but does it accurately reflect what's going on in the State Department or in the NSC that we're talking about a non Caucasian competitor I mean I mean as you know one of the challenges we face in interpreting the Trump administration it is there is no process it's not clear whether or not policy planning plays much of a role in supporting the Secretary of State it's unclear whether or not the Secretary of State is part of a broader principles committee process does the you know does that process actually work but to Susan's point I mean framing the us-china relationship is a Clash of Civilizations serves does no one any good in the sense that it suggests that there is sort of this is a sort of cold war like ideological competition that I don't think is supported by the facts and it also puts you down a pathway if you believe this is a civilizational contest and competition that leads you down a pathway toward you know a highly highly competitive relationship that I don't think is in US interests what I'd say is look it the issue is not rose-colored glasses the issue is looking at the world through a nativist america-first lens that views allies as freeloaders and competitors as enemies and that takes you instantly to a very bad and a very unsustainable place that's setting aside the racism component of the comment and it's also sitting aside a little historical factoid which is I remember middle of last century there was something of a tussle between the United States and we've got an enormous amount of experience negotiating directly with the Chinese government on this stage 17 days ago the Trump the the the it's been at the administration claims the Chinese agreed to a deal and then walked away from it what do you think happened does this sound consistent with the way the Chinese negotiate anybody want to take that one ken okay good okay let me give you the WTO experience just briefly as a as an example of what happens when we negotiated WTO agreement with China this is a bilateral accession agreement it turns out that that agreement not only was negotiated in English but had never been translated and circulated to the officials who thought they should have a major input into it they learned the content of that draft agreement when drew Angie came to Washington he hope to sign the agreement in fact that did not happen frankly you are bad and then someone in the White House I've never learned who put the entire agreement on the White House website and it was read by Chinese in Hong Kong and Beijing and they exploded and akkad to room key in great trouble so after that you had to backtrack I mean you know that all kinds of things still had to get renegotiated it is clear that you have to have the support of the very top guy to do the negotiations in the first place but then there is a process to get this actually nailed down and again nothing is settled until everything is settled and so I'm sure everyone of us has run into situations where we thought we had something held down then suddenly is open again on the Chinese side and believe me they've run into the same thing with us and by the way we saw an example that when Leo was here met with President Trump in the Oval Office president Trump somehow allow cameras to stay in the room and so all of this ended up on YouTube and President Trump told light hyzer who was there saying you know we've got mo use that are very detailed firm commitments etc etc and the president sat there and said I don't like mo use throw them out they're no good I want agreements right I'm sorry I think yoga was taken aback and so was Robert light house these things happen and so to toss out everything because of that is and do it publicly is is frankly not very constructive Doug well this this incident was the second incident where the president reversed his own negotiators position having watched Lou Dobbs on Fox TV the night before first May of last year dissecting and dismissing the agreement that the Newton and Ross had brought back from Beijing with light Iser and then this year when Leo who was sitting there talking and White House was talking about mo use the president repeated what he'd heard on TV the night before from Lou Dobbs how agreements are never as good as mo use and so white eyes are flipped right in front of the cameras it this process just is not worthy of serious consideration now we had a lot of weight has been put on the argument that the Chinese refused to be bullied into passing legislation that if they made an agreement they would keep their agreement they shouldn't be forced to pass legislation I look at that and say who thinks that legislation matters in China it's the Communist Party if they issue a state council directive that's as good as you're going to get you put it in legislation that doesn't make difference when it comes to the courts implementation of what the party in the locality or the center want to do so this is a false issue in my mind and I'm a little bit suspicious that somehow it was introduced to poison the chalice to make an agreement that some of the parties to the agreement did not want get rejected Steve you think they didn't want an agreement some of the people I guess good because I know they're a bunch of journalists here who would want to ask this question so I'll just ask it how long do you think the tariffs are gonna stay on oh I think we should expect tariffs in the us-china relationship for years going forward I think this is sort of part of the new normal of the us-china relationship I think it's even if a new president gets elected in 2020 I think taking these tariffs off are gonna be politically very very difficult to do but look I want to come back to this negotiation question very briefly because it's often and rightly said the Chinese are tough negotiators but sort of what does that mean right any good negotiator is a tough negotiator I'm sure Carla was a super tough negotiator right I can testify that right both internally and externally so what does it mean to be a good negotiator so I think this is what I think it means for my experience that the conditions under which you can get a deal from the Chinese are actually really really hard number one you need a sense of urgency on both sides number two both sides need to believe the negotiation is in their interests number three you need people that are empowered on both sides to get things done number four you need both sides to meet really frequently because the amount of time and political space you have generally speaking is pretty limited and lastly you need political leaders at the top that are committed to getting a deal and it's very very hard to get all five conditions present at any one time and I think that's why on a variety of issues that we in the Obama administration were frustrated on North Korea cyber maritime etc it was simply because the Chinese increasingly didn't think it was in their interest they didn't believe that it was a sense of urgency creates an enormous sense of frustration on the US and that's why people do things like naming and shaming China publicly taking unilateral actions to penalize China because you're trying to sort of you know if you don't if you don't have those conditions present you have to try and gin them up and it's a very difficult thing to do and then oftentimes by taking an action to try and gin up a Chinese interest or sense of urgency you you you undermine the very process I would just follow sorry I would just follow on that and say that a recent dialogue with the Chinese this question came up which is you know China there's a narrative now that talking to the Chinese doesn't get you anywhere it doesn't ever produce any results and so we said to the Chinese you know why is it that you never want to get anything unless we create a crisis and then when we create a crisis then it appears that we're pressuring you and that's bad for your domestic political process to get an agreement but it seems like that's the only thing that ever works so you've created this kind of self-fulfilling negative situation and why don't you engage with us when we first raised a problem and then it'll be much easier to resolve it well they didn't have they kind of scratch their heads and said yeah that's true and they didn't have a good answer so there is you know was WTO accession created by a crisis in China by crisis in the us-china relationship well how many years did that take it took years but it ultimately got done and I think the narrative that China failed to comply with WTO is not entirely accurate and I don't agree with the narrative that you can't get anything done and there can't be any results from dealing with the Chinese but I think that this is Marie's anice has come up in people's minds right but I mention two things if I could one Carla correct me but Mike Froman loved to tell a story that we still have tariffs against some European chicken part as a legacy of this buuuut from night over autos from 1967 so and trucks okay so it's a lot harder to take the tariffs off than it is to put the I'd observed that the you know the Chinese have been sending delegations of scholars and former officials and so on to the United States had a much faster pace in the last two years than in the previous 40 trying the connaissance missions trying to figure out what the hell were up to what to expect and for some time that over the last two plus months the key question that I keep hearing is what does us-china relation should look like the morning after a trade deal hour things going to get better and it's plausible to imagine that for the Standing Committee of the Politburo for the leaders in China facing this draft text immediately before Riojas return to Washington presumably to put some of the final touches on it that they got cold feet when they saw the combination of signals the tweets from the president the determination on the US side to publicize every jot and tittle of the agreement and characterize it as a victory over China the actions against Huawei across the board so one could easily imagine that sitting in Jonah and I people started thinking do I really want to own this am I going to have a problem is the party gonna have a problem with perceptions and hence a redacted version return to Washington Steve going back to your question how long will the tariffs last I have the dark prediction three months from now and six months the phenomena a year from now the commentators are all going to say it wasn't so bad and it'll become like the wallpaper we're going to live with it and it's going to be very hard as Evan said politically to remove them when nobody feels any particular pain about them being there and so I think we've got a long time ahead the pain that farmers feel the pain look there's a difference so many Americans are gonna feel is really significant I'm sure that the political pressure on this administration is not going to build to the point that before the 2020 elections it's going to be necessary to remove those terrorists but see if it's not a binary question there's dialing from 20 percent to 5 percent there's exempting certain products there's we've got tariffs you know whether its energy or agriculture you become price uncompetitive so the soybean farmers the corn farmers in the middle of this country are losing that market and their view is they're not losing it for 2019 they're losing it forever because others are going to become the preferred suppliers lightning-round because I want to open the floor to questions so this will only have one person answer and then try to make them real brief I guess the first one is for Evan or Danny because you were both there did we react strongly enough in 2013 when China started building on the reefs in the South China Sea you were senior director and then let's ask Admiral Locklear yeah for us first of all this is the secret of the boiling frog you don't notice how hot the temperature has become until you're scalded but remember that the issue was not the rocks it was rules it was would there be a normative approach by China and all of the claimants there were no angels here the US wasn't out to defend Vietnam or Malaysia's claim we were out to try to ensure that the operations in the maritime space and the operations are the interactions over the disputed territories were consistent with international law and good neighborliness so a big part of our strategy was diplomatic and a high degree of engagement in the East Asia Summit and other forums on bilateral multilateral basis a good part of our effort was demonstrative was ensuring that everyone could see including China that the US would be undeterred would sail and operate and fly did not accept declared unilaterally declared eight is in the East China Sea and so on and try to ensure that there would be pressure political pressure and reputational pressure on China to observe the decision of the law of the sea tribunal and Duterte put a gaping hole in that strategy okay this is lightening round four you have to be real brief because I want to open it if these were Americans being arrested not Canadians in retaliation for the detention of the CFO of Huawei to be extradited to the United States what would the United States do we may find out when they transfer her to the American courts at Americans so what do we do anybody in that diplomatic suggestion look huawei needs to come in to the Justice Department and do a deal to make up for its mistakes in Iran and other things for which it's liable ZTE did that when they got in a similar situation the price of reaching such a deal now is higher than it needed to be and as part of that the if they come forward and make very important mitigations in their behavior and pay important fines we can settle the case of the arrest of Milan Joe on the side I don't think there's any other way of doing it but that the Muslim world has been remarkably signed now Turkey is finally beginning to speak up about the treatment of The Weavers in Xinjiang what should the u.s. be doing I can't I think we're doing now the best we can do which is making information available backing it up with photographs you put it on an international agenda you put it on the Chinese agenda too and at least they then feel they have to explain policy and defend policy but beyond that there's not a whole lot we can do frankly and my guess is from the people I know in China who are Han Chinese the this approach to cynjohn is not causing a lot of heartburn among the honorees yeah so I don't think we have a constituency there that will be energized over this I think it's worth quickly noting that most Turkey has been the exception recently and Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister has said something but most of them the majority Muslim countries have similar concerns about their own population that China does and they actually sympathize with what China is doing Evon should we have joined a IIb absolutely well actually no we could we here's the issue joining a IAB would have required the president to ask the Congress for an allocation never would have happened and in particular when the Chinese asked us to join the AAB didn't actually exist write the articles of agreement didn't exist there's no way I could have walked into the Oval Office and said mr. president there's this Chinese Bank let's go ahead and join it even though we don't actually know what we're committing ourselves to or what it's all about but you know it's a good way to signal that we want China to be part of the global governance strategy so I think that the there's no no question in my assessment that the way we handled it was a mistake because it created this impression that we were trying to kill the which was not our strategy our strategy was to ensure that the AIB was an international adhered to international standards and reinforced World Bank and if lending practices and that it wasn't a tool of Chinese foreign policy and so the theory of the case was we and other g7 economies should stay out while working with the Chinese talking with the Chinese about what kind of standards would be necessary to make it an international institution not the Chinese institution that strategy got perceived as America is trying to kill a IAB and keep its allies out that I think is what the policy failure was all right this is a yes/no question should we recreate the TPP and should America be part of that yes yes it's a no-brainer yes that's why it's a yes/no question Danny what does it mean to recreate the TPP other words you have the TPP kind of okay I got a news flash for you Steve the world has people never the TPP the US could negotiate its way back into TPP spensive probably not on identical terms I would predict we have triggered adaptation in the region that has created now a block independent of the US and China so that chip is sales we don't own it yeah agreed yes Susan all right let me open that I have another dozen questions but I'm gonna open the floor to two questions and let's say people who didn't Maggie manglu at Seton Hall I want to return to Taiwan because last week's Shelley rigor foolish article in which she expressed concern about the possibility of open conflict and I've always wanted Shelley the dose of optimism and one of the concerns was mixed signals from DC so what signals should she be sending both Taipei and Beijing to hopefully decrease that Oh Doug is probably you know from where AIT head shelly rigor did a great job in that article of identifying actually it's the three corners that are fragile in our relationship right now and the one point she did not make in there was all add it to her argument is that when in the past the US and China relations have been solid and maybe improving Taiwan has had been able to expand its scope of activity become a more accepted part of the international universe and when the opposite has happened Taiwan usually pays the price first they get the most pressure from China the last two years pressure has been rising on Taiwan militarily diplomatically economically and politically and there's no indication that I see from China they're going to let up and now that we've gone to this phase post last week abandoning the talks and imposing tariffs China is less inhibited than it would have been a week ago about putting pressures increasing pressures on Taiwan including maybe even more displays of military capability and beyond I know the PLA retirees are speaking for the PLA forces and arguing for increasing military pressure on Taiwan this could break various a dangerous part of the world for this sort of thing so it would have been a good idea if we didn't descend into confrontation on trade or on all the other issues that we've gotten to it would have been a good idea if china hadn't gone down the path it's gone down for the last ten years and I'm really not very hopeful within the administration today there are more activists for doing things at a higher level with China than we've had in previous admit what I want with in previous administrations oddly enough Trump has been the lid on the can whatever reason it is I'm not quite sure I could get into details in private with you but he he has kept his administration from expressing the feelings that are welling up within it at this point I'm really worried that if he stops doing that we could be in deep water fast and how will the elections that about to occur effect this well you've got I want you've got a series of candidates in both parties all of whom are really not proficient on management of cross-strait relations for the last ten years you've had two former mainland affairs commission chair persons presiding over this and they knew where the red lines were and on which side to stay that's not the case with these untested political figures who much like our own politics two years ago they're now welling up in the polls in Taiwan and so it adds a great degree of unpredictability to the situation there Gerry you got a microphone that'll come I was simply asked after this wonderful discussion about the mechanics of negotiations the insiders problems of formulating and executing policy that's all great but you said at the outset sirs we have no China policy this is a great group of what should our policies be I'd like to hear that after all this talk about organization of mechanics misunderstanding what should our policy be we gotta walk out of here and know what we want we're talking about specific issues I couldn't disagree more with saying that we're do without all what can we become change we should be doing a lot from the president of course we have to improve our own policy toward Muslims but the president of the United States the secretary everyone who speaks in reform and what about the consideration of the Magnitsky Act should mr. Chetan tranquil have that implied and we can apply it of course that she did take although he's the one who really is responsible for all this anything should we stop American companies that are profiting from the equipment they're shipping the people or the torturers shin jeok we look back on FDR's weak response to Hitler I had the Jews I lost over 40 people in my family as the United States dilly-dallied about how to respond before Hitler started telling them what should we be doing we can't be complacent about this we ought to be speaking out you talked about there's no clash of ideology or civilization there is a clash between decency international standards tree knows who and those who are against them this is an ideological clash and we have to we just can't say we ignore what's happening these millions in Jinja and second of all they've all been prejudiced against these people you can't convert these people people it's like trying to tell homosexual people were going to convert you into heterosexual I think we can't be content with this I love it here for experts [Music] [Applause] well I'll take a stab at it first of all you know I think even if the president's not raising human rights in his meetings with the Chinese would take I believe he's probably not but I think a lot of other people in the administration of course are raising this issue personally I think the place to try to deal with this is at the UN and multilaterally there's a lot of outrage across the world not just in this room not just in the United States and I think that's you know a mechanism that's well established for this exact kind of outrageous and atrocious behavior and activity and I think that is one where we ought to be normally we're playing a leading role in that institution we're not playing such a leading role now we're kind of counting unfortunately on other countries to step forward and play the leading role in the UN and try to get independent rapper tours into shinjang I think is one thing that certainly others are making a big effort at trying to get get more transparency from the Chinese about what's going on over there I know some because of our pressure some journalists have gotten into these camps and seen what's going on there recently in China so I mean that's the kind of thing that I think we as the international community can do i I mean I I hesitate to you not say anything about the comparison between what the Chinese are doing in Xinjiang and Hitler and the Nazis in Germany because I'm not sure that that is adding to our understanding of what's happening there but I agree that it's atrocious and that everybody needs to come together and try to put a lot of pressure on the Chinese to be more transparent to revise and and restructure what they're doing out there they clearly though from conversations with very high-level Chinese about this frequently over the last several months I can tell you they clearly think that this is about containing a problem of potential terrorism in their country I was told there were 1,200 bombings in Xinjiang in 2015 or 2016 so they clearly have a domestic imperative and as Ken said I would certainly endorse his observation that the vast majority of Chinese people that I've talked to about this think that this is a prudent way for them to go about addressing this very serious what they feel is a threat to their security so did the Germans Gerry I think that Gerry I think that my family had people that perished in the Holocaust also and I don't think it's a good analogy and at this point in time to make an analogy between what's going on in qin qiong which I deplore and what happened in the 30s in Germany is really not helpful it's an exaggeration should they be doing it no does it help in resolving the problem by making that analogy I would argue it absolutely does not because the Chinese just go we are not incinerating people what are you talking about that is what people are saying here and by doing that you're basically creating a narrative that is not helpful in resolving the problems that it's not the way we should go and it's an exaggeration that is that is repeated in every area of dealing with China whether it's IPR theft whether its effects of state-owned enterprise whether you name it you go and you find that there these distortions and exaggerations and by making that analogy you in effect are participating in the exaggeration if it moves in that direction we will all stand up and scream and we will cut off relations with China and we should cut off relations but we ain't close to them only raw thought affiliated I want to add to this discussion but not from the point of Holocaust and we could have a competition who lost the most relatives but the truth is we all agree that what's happening is disgusting awful getting worse and needs to be addressed I think one of the things that the administration hasn't done because it's too contemptuous is to use the Congress I lived at as a staffer when I work for Steve so Lars and we went after Marcos on the salvaging 's and all kind of human rights abuses doug has a lot of stories about how work was done even with democrats in the reagan days and in the bush days to use the congress as the bad cop hold hearings bring people to testify get on national TV of course go multilateral has already been stated but you end up in the position that then the administration goes that the Congress has done a court of trade that Congress is going to prohibit us from having a summit the Congress has done to all kinds of horrible things that work with us and then you form a secret Channel and you're trying to make progress but for a high-level visit so we do have to address it and it's the ineptness of the Trump administration at least I'm sorry the Trump president see as well as the lack of interest and the lack of concern about human rights issues that is part of the problem in managing the issue and I think we should deal with this outside the context of the Holocaust cause it's horrible enough on its own terms without being distracted by the debate which is worse or is it going to become this herb I wish to introduce a note of optimism and that is when but I was in Hong Kong before most of you were born we got word from Britain President Kennedy's assistant that he wanted to do something on China but don't send in any recommendations just send in things either CIA or the Foreign Service about things that were changing and openings among the leadership but very very low key and we said to these visitors when people came on airplanes that have propellers what why is this and he said well he's so taking it on the chin for the loss of Cuba and these guys are suffering for the loss of China but he wants to see if he can get something didn't do something so we sent in little things and and the White House would put out something on Friday night the Federal Register as a technical change in some regulation nobody seemed to notice it and we got away with it and then Kennedy was assassinated and we were very busy I was the duty officer and a lot went on well then LD they came in and he had other things on his mind than China then Nixon wrote articles about how you can't ignore two fifths of the world's population peoples the Republicans said well he'll never come back in he's a that's a cola vice-president we could ignore him and then he got into office and on Rockefellers recommendation he got this funny professor from Harvard at his national security adviser and I tutor that's the time herb well I was just going to tell you how it all happened but long story anyway Henry was not too intrigued but it was the president who said we got to do something with the Chinese Henry was the Europeana stucked him into it and we told him you know the first Chinese demonstration been an anti-american Dennis station because the German colonies have been given to the Japanese well he knew about the schleswig-holstein treaty but he didn't know about that one the point is that it was the president who wanted to do something al haig said don't worry the military has had it in Korea we're getting murdered in Vietnam we're not looking for another confrontation in Asia I'll handle the generals and we found a couple of congressmen and Senators who said well if you guys got to propose something we might back you I'm bothering you people with with all the history to suggest the things can look very very grim the Democrats are not going to give Mixon any credit my god who is the Vietnam War and the Republicans or more anti-communist than everything but if someone high up in the government besides this is a useful thing to do to have a decent relationship or try to have a decent relationship with the Chinese you can get it something accomplished what if there's no one at the top of the government then you have to leave it entirely to Orleans in the National Committee any final comments kind of getting to wit this relationship is in a downward spiral what do we do to pull it out of it we unfortunately have about 45 seconds each well I think Susan touched on it by talking about the UN I would say we need to build coalitions of like-minded countries we've got two huge countries that have to disentangle coq competing interests and we're gonna have to take it on issue by issue and where countries will work with us this form alliances or coalition's and that may be different countries at different times on different issues or not even beginning to do that today Ken I think that we need to think through [Music] approaches that will put this relationship on a better more stable or mutually beneficial course but we're going to have to wait for political space to open up to actually move those things forward but to sit here and say nothing can be done and so it's not worth trying to figure out what you would do a space opened up is not how to be helpful at the same time to put a lot of these suggestions forward now we'll just subject them to ridicule by this administration so I think if the Chinese would listen to the frustrated traditional supporters and stakeholders in the us-china relationship who have largely given up or who are in despair because of their objections to Chinese behavior they could cut through a lot of the static and confusion coming out of the White House and begin taking steps to address some of the very concrete problems one is the policy of treating all ethnic Chinese as if they are still the sons and daughters of the Yellow Emperor in this case maybe the red and from the US side I think that we need to focus on the sin not the sinner and concentrate on the problematic behavior and dealing with the behavior and not vilify the entire Chinese nation and the Chinese people Steve I think as an institution and as people that are committed to the us-china relationship I think we first and foremost have to all accept the reality that we're in a new era a new normal of persistent inconsistent tensions in this relationship there's responsibilities on both sides but the Chinese certainly haven't helped their case to danny's point about separating the sins from the sinners and understand that in this new era of competition that China policy is going to have to evolve and that evolution unfortunately means we have to think more seriously and systematically about competitive strategies that seek to shape Chinese behavior where they're you know inimical to our interests and to those you know values rules and norms that have created an international order from which many in the world have benefitted I mean Doug made the critical point that sometimes the best China policy is not what you do with China but what you sort of how you shape the environment around China to affect its incentives and unless we think about what competitive strategies toward China look like think about working with allies and partners and institutions globally we're not going to have a shot at this growing challenge of a rising China yeah for me it's just very simple what is it that we want do we want to have an economic relationship with them or not do we want them to be our enemy or not to me it's that simple and then if you can get an internet national consensus around that answer you can work to build specific policies that get you there but if you can't figure out what it is that you want you know do we want primacy or do we want to have you know coalition's in the region I mean they're we're so confused I think it's it's very hard for the no wonder it's very hard for the rest of the world and the Chinese to figure out what we're what we're doing it's funny you know herb you said we got to end on an optimistic note it's funny it's an optimistic and pessimistic note that in the end we're gonna need to confront crises in this world with the Chinese a great paid commander pay Khan commander said the greatest crisis is climate change the greatest threat is climate change and we're going to need to with the Chinese or there's going to be an epidemic a pandemic which we're gonna need to confront with the Chinese or there's going to be an economic crisis which we're didn't need to confront with the Chinese and there will be a groundswell in the end I don't know if it's tomorrow next year or five years from now where the people of both countries are going to understand that we need to work together to confront these global crises and that's gonna ultimately pull us together so even though we're going through this incredibly difficult period in the long term and it's why the National Committee keeps working the way it does because in the long term it's the people of both countries who are going to decide what the relationship is and it's the people that are gonna tube and a cooperative relationship so that's the optimistic note I want to end on thank you all for a wonderful wonderful time

Channel: National Committee on U.S.-China Relations

Views: 15,027

Rating: 3.9798658 out of 5

Keywords: us-china, china, bilateral, nsc, xi jinping, xi, trump, donald trump, foreign policy, foreign relations, diplomacy, national security, national security council, state department, policy, policy making, economy, trade war, trade, bilateral trade, xinjiang, uyghur, engagement, decoupling, white house, security, strategic issues, international relations, tpp, transpacific partnership, aiib, asian infrastructure investment bank, obama, clinton, bush, reagan

Id: edhoU_WFF2s

Length: 93min 17sec (5597 seconds)

Published: Wed May 22 2019