US-China Relations & Business Implications for Southeast Asia

[Music] foreign [Music] good afternoon ladies and gentlemen i'm victor mills chief executive of the chamber which means i'm chief vision officer it's my pleasure to welcome you here today and thank you for your company i am particularly delighted to welcome back our speaker this afternoon he's one of singapore's most distinguished and respected public intellectuals a man who devoted many years of his life to purposeful public service for singapore and for singaporeans and he's also a businessman please join me in warmly welcoming mr george yo george it is a pleasure to host you at the chamber once again my team and i and many people in the audience fondly remember our spirited dialogue when you were our distinguished speaker back in 2016. you set the bar very high for yourself george is with us this afternoon thanks to the enabling power of our member brunswick group for which george is a senior advisor i would like to thank will carnworth and adrian chung for exercising their enabling power to bring us back together with george will who is a partner of the firm and head of the singapore office will be our moderator today for those of you who may not know the brunswick group it is a leading global critical issues advisory firm from the united kingdom the group singapore office was opened in 2016 and is focused on helping multinationals successfully navigate the critical issues they face in southeast asia as well as supporting the region's leading companies with their national regional and global expansion plans some weeks ago adrian very kindly gave me a copy of the firm's inequality report which is one of the most thoughtful quality pieces of work i have read for some time but let me return to today's topic u.s china relations and their implications for businesses up in asia in a few moments i will invite george to speak after which will will moderate our dialogue as always at any time during the webinar you may type your questions into the q a function in the zoom toolbar at the bottom of your screens you can also vote for those questions which most appeal to you and help make will's job as moderator a bit easier i will be back just before the end of the webinar to make brief closing remarks but for now it gives me great pleasure to invite mr giorgio to address us george over to you thank you victor thank you for your very kind introduction i'm glad to be addressing the sicc again we are now living in an interesting period i had expected electoral relations between us and china to take a pause after the biden win but it seems to be not getting better in fact i think it's getting worse and this may continue for a period of time partly because the banana administration is more sophisticated more subtle better at working with allies and friends and china is responding in kind i think most of us would have watched the rather feisty exchange uh a few weeks ago in anchorage and after that wangi the chinese foreign minister flew to quiling in china for a bilateral meeting with sergey lavrov the russian foreign minister after that wani went on a sixth nation tour of the middle east he went to riyadh then he went to tehran to ankara then the iran then to the emirates oman finally to bahrain when he was in tehran china and iran signed a 25-year strategic cooperation agreement which had been floating around as a draft for the last three years or so which envisages cooperation between china and iran across all fields including military technology and also the establishment of a china-iran bank which presumably will bypass the u.s sanctions and swift after that wang yi through to fujian where a number of other foreign ministers including singapore's vivian balakrishnan went up to have bilateral meetings with him so what we are seeing now is the u.s putting pressure on china on many fronts through the quad earlier when they met at the assignment level as a us japan australia and india and through various bilateral initiatives japan with australia with others and and most recently uh when the g7 foreign ministers met and at that meeting in the joint statement there were seven paragraphs but the g7 explicitly or implicitly took issue with china on its adherence to rule-based international order on the xinjiang and tibet hong kong taiwan's uh on the east and south china sea and on china's cyber space behavior it's the first time the g7 had in a very deliberate way laid out his case against china everyone knows that it was the u.s which pushed this offender these seven issues collective case against china the chinese are aware that in the coming years uh american pressure directly into his various alliances and in various combinations will be pressing on china and the chinese response is to to develop an internal circulation economy which is robust against external interference and then around an external circulation economy which they fully expect could be disrupted from time to time the more they're able to preserve the integrity of the internal circulation economy the more flexibility they will have in managing the external segregation economy don't have the internal self-confidence then when the u.s puts pressure on them they will have to escalate to deter which may in fact make things worse which in some ways is russia's response to western pressure some years ago there was a threat to remove russia from swift and putin had a one-line response he said well that means war and he left dagnan is to think through what russia could do in retaliation and there are many things the russians could do which could be very disruptive to the us and the western powers but china doesn't want this tense situation because the chinese and american economies are integrated at so very many points even the decoupling the technological decoupling which many u.s strategic thinkers and policy makers think is necessary will be confined because even for many american technology companies china is a bigger market in the u.s and they don't want to lose that market what all this means is that in the coming years the world will be more tense or well it may not be a cold war but it will certainly feel like a cold peace when it's not a war and many of us as countries as corporations even as individuals find ourselves caught in between and are wondering what is the best way to to position ourselves and here i'd like to talk about civilization about asean asean has seen china through its and fall over the centuries so the rights of china causes asean countries to go back to history to have a sense of how china would behave and what the rights of china means for southeast asia most of the time the rest the rest of china meant prosperity for civilization because every time china became the world's biggest economy it drove a very lucrative china trade which swept through all of southeast asia all the way to europe it was at one such period that cities at hong kong and singapore were established and this new china tree which we are seeing and which will cross through the new berton road will bring a new area of prosperity to civilization but provided were able to manage the dual political tensions many companies are now looking at diversification from china they can't pull up from china because it's too big a market and chinese consumers matter a lot to them but they don't want to be caught in the crossfire when they are trade disputes or when there's technological decoupling between the china and the u.s if the u.s says you can't deal with china in this and the other area then companies may have to choose or they may subdivide themselves i remember how when there were arab sanctions against those who dealt with israel the japanese companies divided themselves into two groups a small group dealing with israel and a larger dealing the rest of the world there will be many such responses but our best is still maybe closer to one side and to the other i mean if you were cambodia now she may be closer to china and in fact the fast train from kunming to long prabang will be open at the end of this year all the tunnels have now seen light if you are singapore well you have close defense links for the u.s and australia so you may turn in another direction but collectively for asean as a whole we can't afford to be divided we cannot be highly integrated recurrent with taxes and subsidies but we've always had variable geometry which gave us flexibility when tectonic plates moved and there's a stickiness in asean which tells us that yes whatever the tensions don't break off and i was not surprised that the the myanmar senior general in jakarta he knew he would get a earful but he had to turn up when i was a minister in the singapore cabinet street minister as foreign minister they always learn leaders ministers officials even though they knew when they came to the councils of asean they will be criticized there'll be tremendous peer pressure but there's a deep instinct that better to go with asean than to go with the larger neighbors or to bigger powers further away that there is instinct for civilization even vietnam which has a love-hate relationship with china and courted by the us as a kind of counterbalance to trend there's a limit to what they would do and two weeks ago i followed with the greatest interest the visit by the chinese defense minister general away from her to hanoi there he met general secretary chong he met president and he met his counterpart the vietnamese defense minister but in his conversations with general secretary john and president for there were public statements the china fully supported sorry the vietnam fully supported china's one china policy and opposes any attempt to subvert that that vietnam would not allow any external power to spoil the good relations between vietnam and china and in particular the way they resolved their disputes in the south china sea i was somewhat blown away when i read the statements that were issued i wondered how much the chinese had to conceive to cause the enemies to issue those statements whatever whether it is vietnam or the philippines or laos or cambodia of myanmar indonesia or singapore there is an instinct that looks you can afford to have china as an enemy of course is china decisive an enemy then china will be an enemy but you're not going to make china an enemy because somebody else tells you that you should make china an enemy for this reason i tell my american friends if you ask people to choose between china and the u.s and southeast asia you may not like the answer i'm glad that secretary blinken has said more than once that no the u.s doesn't require that that at least is a public presentation in private the us continues to exert pressure china in all its public statements sounds reasonable objective and melee fluids but china also exerts pressure and those of us who are small fries in this game of titans i mean we we know what we can do what we cannot do the best thing is not to be caught in between and to move to the side and triangulate very carefully naturally people look forward to the future and ask themselves in five years time 10 years time 20 years time how would the future look how do i position myself when they look at china and the progress they're making across the entire continent and in all sectors it is breathtaking when they look at the u.s when they see how trump continues to wield enormous power within the republican administration and we're all wondering what the midterms look like in the u.s there's a sense that a country is divided and we don't quite know how long it will take for the divisions to heal if they can ever be so these are the the considerations my concern with current u.s approach is is too negatively obsessed with china so when the u.s deals with a country bilaterally the subtext is always how can you work with me against china and when people enter such a meeting they don't have a good feeling it used to be that america represented something bright and shiny on the hill values you aspire to a country you'll be proud to send your children for studies an association which you flaunt a largeness of heart which the free flow of students and researchers of trade well we don't know how long the us we have to go through this period it's a wrenching period for the u.s but i hope the banner administration will understand that you are better able to solve your domestic difficulties by having a positive foreign policy rather than one which is negatively driven sometimes i get the sense that this is like an f1 race where america is a leaked car and the chinese car is behind threatening to overtake the us car and the us car instead of stepping on the accelerator and doing all he can is move busily moving side to side to prevent the chinese car from overtaking so when biden said i will not under my watch allow china to surpass the u.s well whether or not china surpasses the u.s it depends on whether the u.s is able to revitalize itself we've always strength and it's access to global talent to push the frontiers of science and the global economy not on how it's able to disrupt china's progress so in the audience there's a certain discomfort that this is not what the race should be unfortunately this may be what it is and therefore we'll be in for a rather troubled period for some years to come and here in southeast asia we are price takers in the world we just stay united stay neutral be friendly very body if someone presses too hard from one side then we lean a bit more to the other side of balance but otherwise do not likely side or the other so thank you okay i'll just try and turn on my video i'm able there we go it was a little uncomfortable for me to speak to a blank screen because no one no one has put his image up so i was talking to a blank screen and it's rather strange feeling nice can you we're all here 90 91 all of us we're listening in wrapped attention um thank you for the for those comments i guess um plenty plenty of calls for concern there um and and rightly so a couple of your comments that sort of caught my intention particularly in light of previous discussions that that you and i have had in terms of surprise that things have in fact got worse um since the start of the biden administration in terms of china-u.s relations and that the feeling that the field the world may indeed be more tense in the future than it has been in the recent past um when we spoken before bob zolicka um a colleague of both of us has mentioned um looking for what he calls off-ramps in this tense face-off i just wondered what are the mechanisms channels and organizations that you see being sort of important assets for both sides in terms of rapprochement and seeking areas perhaps outside of trade where um they they might find um the ability to work together or at least to to step closer together europe will play a key role in maintaining balance and honesty in the world i was quite troubled by the g7 statement because you know the chinese remember the eight nation alliance against china in response to the boxing revolt and six of the eight countries involved in eight nation alliance are members of the g7 so when the chinese read a statement like this the immediate association is with the parkway engine the 8th nation alliance which ravaged beijing in the surrounding areas for over a year in which extracted from china a crushing indemnity of course the statement is nothing like that but there's a feeling that oh these are the same people now come back to hurt us europe should not allow the g7 g7 agenda to become the european agenda and europe can say look yes we have our differences with china as we have our differences to the u.s we share the u.s similar civilization groups and naturally are many issues like human rights like the way an international economy should operate we should work together but not say well i ally the u.s because i fear china's rise and i do not want china to surpass the west because if china has that feeling then the whole world will be clever to do and then it may become much uglier because the whole conflict then takes on racial overtones so the wisdom of europe here is so critical china strategy your strategy is to support a strong europe and to support a strong euro all above europe in southeast asia we are my nepal but we and if you push us too hard you know we are not so comfortable so the americans have kind of given up on asean the asan can never become an ally of the us against china the americans are working on india but frankly i think they'll be disappointed because india too bad india has too deep a history too great a sense of itself to want to be made to yourself he will play his own game and for this reason if you watch the pattern of weapons of sophisticated weapons purchased by the by the indians fatter aeroplanes rockets they stick to russia europe they will buy some from the americans but they will never be as dependent on the americans as left to say singapore is or japanese or korea is so i think asean can be a rule europe can play a big role i think india has instincts so to brazil so even though some americans may not understand this the world is moving towards multi-polarity the u.s will still be premised into paris and we will still need the uss leader but he must accept that there are other poles and there will be a world of multiple systems thank you just to to pick up on your primos into paris um point um one of the areas where where the u.s has for a long time been first among equals was in terms of reserve currency and uh elton tan had a question about the digital yuan your expectations for uh how much of a threat the digital u1 poses to the reserve currency status of the of the us dollar i'm very sorry for the u.s the the way it is printing money as if there's no limit to the supply can you imagine if your home you have a money printing machine and any one of you your wife your children when they need it can go to the store room and print print you would have distracted and i feel that increasing the money supply minimal restraint would destroy the will to confront challenges and to overcome that the world watches with concern but it goes on the game goes on so asset price is it doesn't mind because being printed and in recent years the weaponization of the financial system is creating great resentment among many countries and sooner or later there will be a coalition which will say look no we find a way to bypass this and i believe that's one of the objectives of china's digital currency one of the objectives the other major objective is controlling corruption which is endemic to the chinese confucianist system but the chinese are very careful to say look no no no no this is not to displace a u.s dollar this is not to replace with far from them we'll work with with the us we'll work with swift but precisely in the affirmation is the warning that look if you push too far we have an alternative so i don't see this continuing indefinitely sooner or later a crack will appear in the cookie but how it crumbles who knows no thank you another area where where the u.s has perhaps if not led certainly set the tone along with europe is on is on climate um and the environment um you know the reporting standards and um the standards of corporate behavior and the huge shift we've seen in nemo for the last five years a question from ravi alfred's about how whether you see china perhaps catching up and surpassing um the position of leadership that the u.s currently holds in terms of standard setting around um climate and climate change frankly i don't think china has a desire to to lead the world in this initiative his constant refrain is we make the greatest contribution by looking after ourselves in terms of carbon emission and environmental protection because china is a continental nation it is a big emitter it's got a huge population and it can solve this problem for itself it would have made a huge contribution to the rest of the world so we'll find china very cooperative it is good under the banner administration they've got senator kerry come back to take the lead he went to china they had good meetings there and at least on this front we'll see joint action had some progress okay thank you a question i'm going to uh use my prerogative to ask you another question of my own i'm afraid there's a few questions around uh defense and so i'll try and wrap those up um in terms of the um you mentioned the china-iran 25-year strategic cooperation agreement um i'll be interested to to hear your thoughts on the rhetoric we can expect at the upcoming shangri-la dialogue when we will see the first meeting between uh u.s defense secretary general lloyd austin and chinese defense minister wei feng-ho who you've you've already mentioned what are your what are your expectations for the rhetoric that will won't come out of that meeting for the chinese if you run through the seven paragraphs of the g7 statement the one which sticks up the most it's not xinjiang because china will do what he feels it needs to do to curb islamic extremism it's not too bad because there's tremendous economic development in tibet it's not the south china sea because i think eventually they'll be resolved between asean and china and there's a good chance the quota condom will be signed if not this year then maybe next year it's not going to be trade because there'll be a lot of algae budget around trade it's not going to be about cyber space because regardless of what you say countries will do what they do and i don't believe china is a bigger perpetrator of cyberspace misbehavior in the world it's not going to be the east china sea because terry island and what's going on around there i think that's a kind of a more modest video guy it will be taiwan on taiwan if it's misplayed the other side there will be war and the chinese will listen very carefully to what secretary austin will have to say about taiwan and what's u.s intentions the u.s have sent retired obama officials there with the chinese have taken umbrage with this and they are telling the u.s please don't push this because you know when it will lead to and if the u.s overplays taiwan i think there'll be a reaction from china you'll find that the chinese will freeze all cooperation north korea and china will begin to turn on the second stove in iran you mess around this side of the world but let's see what happens in the others in the other part of the world so if secretary blinken has said well you know we have relaxed some of the old restraints self-imposed restraints but we've put in stronger guard rails stronger guard rails i think the chinese will be asking oh what are these stronger guard rails and if indeed there are stronger guard rails which are forward of chinese raid lines then there will be stability a related question uh from from victor actually was your thoughts on biden policy on taiwan to this point i just wondered whether you had any any sort of more points from the from the u.s point of view about where you think they've uh played it well or less well you know building on your point about secretary blinken's comments to me it is it is it's a very stressful brinksmanship that we are watching from the trump administration into the by the administration the u.s is playing the taiwan card and the dpp is happy with it because it gives them more maneuvering space and it with them domestic political support until there's grief so china has been deliberately intruding into airspace claim at taiwan and daring the tawa needs to do something about it and if the taiwanese make a major wrong move it will be the last move now the american indo-pacific command has i mean this is not the secret has thought through various scenarios what happens if china makes a move on taiwan and it could be in response to a taiwanese move and say in a week they occupy taiwan what would the u.s do would there be an exchange of aircraft carriers would there be bombardment of chinese cities would there be nuclear weapons and if there are nuclear weapons is there a limit to it no one wants an exchange of cities so the u.s one reason why he has pulled out from the middle range accord because russia is so that you it can threaten to use medium-range weapons in east asia against china in a taiwan scenario and they're trying to end china to have intercity nuclear exchange when people start thinking in those terms god they are playing with the planet and the chinese take it seriously so last week or two weeks ago two weeks ago or three weeks ago sitting ping was in hainan to launch three ships one is a helicopter carrier because taiwan is a hilly place in zutara tabanese i can land forces in quickly so you think about it second is a destroyer which will increase the ability to move out into the blue ocean but the third was the most interesting it was a new submarine which can fire intercontinental ballistic missiles each with multiple warheads to cover most of the us and for land-based missiles you might arguably say can all be detected and destroyed by the u.s in the first try and even if china were to hide missiles in the complex of tunnels for railroads and highways maybe the us has already identified the entrances to those tunnels and can seal those tunnels but if these submarines are out at sea added an additional joker in the pack and that was the real purpose of switching visit to tell the us don't play this and can you let's push the scenario further let us say china occupies taiwan so tsmc cheat making capability will now be denied to the us instead of only being denied to china then what happens and let us say if in response to that like in response to putin taking the crimea there'd be 10 years of sanctions against china i think the chinese have thought through all these scenarios and one reason why they have embarked on the dual circulation economy is partly in anticipation of such doomsday scenarios i'm from the military when i was in the armed forces it was our business to think dark thoughts but however dark the thoughts we thought they are light com compared to the peach dark thoughts being played out being thought about in the pentagon and into manhattan i think that's um yeah no very sobering um one of the one of the other things and you've mentioned the dual circulation a couple of times i think a lot of brunswick a lot of our clients are uh considering what their posture would be in a bifurcated world do you see um bifurcation being a sort of a corporate thing as you've described with japanese companies uh wanting to work with israel or do you see it as a much more holistic sense of by china developing a a dual speculation economy many of the other big economies in the world will have to do the same you see that as a sort of its own arms race in terms of trade circulation the key factor is china doesn't want an escalation canada's responses will be firm will retaliate but we won't escalate the huawei has effectively destroyed sorry the u.s has effectively destroyed always international handphone business but not destroyed but greatly diminished china could have easily taken action against [Music] such a biggest market i mean he didn't have to ban apple or do anything nasty all he needed was to save for apple machines you need to make one more you need to press one more button before you can effect the payment just add a little friction that alone would have greatly affected apple in china but they say no welcome apple welcome general motors welcome tesla welcome whoever wants to work with us goldman sachs morgan stanley please establish offices in china for their approaches don't escalate and we talk about rare earths but not yet and move proportionately don't escalate so that a cost is imposed and hope that one day the u.s will decide look maybe there's a better way to achieve a better outcome but when that will how long that will take i don't know i think it'll take years so some decoupling will happen but you only be in the field of high technology maybe in ai maybe in super computers maybe the most sophisticated chips but most computers most chips will not be affected because there's too much money to be made by u.s companies yes um thank you for that coming back to to more i guess strategic matters a lot of the questions uh seem to be focusing on this area um abhishek bhatti had a question about the role of quad which you mentioned earlier um in asean and and with asean do you see a role for um cooperation and discussions between the quad group and asean as being summer as it develops the court doesn't say it but everybody says that the quad is an alliance against china and asean would not want to be a part of this alliance against china it's too provocative and even when the u.s and japan started talking about the indo-pacific and occasionally indo-pacific of free and open nations they all could worse to exclude china to the credit of asean and to indonesian leadership to say no the indo-pacific is a geographical fact and an economic reality but this is how we see and how asean sees it it's not how the u.s or japan see it's easy so the quad at this point is a loose association it is kind of a demonstration not yet too serious i'm not sure how serious it will become if it becomes very serious the chinese will respond i think india will be the most reluctant okay thank you uh one more question from devadas krishnadas um singapore hosts uh the us seventh fleet um and provides support to them what in your view would be um the repercussions or challenges perhaps of of in in the spirit of even-handedness trying to offer similar um support to to china liquin you uh made me make the announcement in parliament that singapore was going to offer facilities to the u.s navy and air force after the philippines stopped the agreements on clark and subbing and the reason why we wanted the u.s to have facilities here is because only the u.s could ensure that the straits of singapore and the states of america open to international shipping so for us that's our arterial lifeline and really of the greatest strategic importance to us and that was the reason why we offered those facilities to the us but i remember lee kuan yew telling us very clearly he says if there's a conflict between the u.s and taiwan we're not going to get involved and i believe i've left government for over 10 years i believe that remains a cardinal principle now the the question is do we only provide facilities to the u.s it was never exclusive i was a visiting scholar in beijing after a live government in 2011 it was in november i think i went to the national defense university which which was a closed campus i did not know i went there my dreams and kept my backpack and people started saluting me because i was a i'm a brigadier general i felt so awkward initially but i spoke about u.s china relations from a singapore perspective to senior officers from all three services of the pra and one stun looking officer put up his hand and said you allow the u.s to use a basis would you allow china to use your bases without pausing half a second i said of course i say you're welcome to use our basis there was a few seconds pause and suddenly the whole audience applauded but this is this is singapore's approach the more the big powers are involved the greater the assurance that the straits of singapore and the streets of malacca and the south china sea and the andaman sea will forever be opened to trade which means that we remain in business and that singapore's approach of course they don't need the kind of facilities which the u.s forces need but i believe chinese ships have made use of the mcus of facilities here so the russian ships and then recently there was a flotilla from london with a brand new aircraft carrier come steaming by or it's going to come steaming by someone said look isn't this hostile to china i thought but why we are part of the five power defense arrangement with australia new zealand and malaysia and the uk of course we will come down here it's also good business i remember once being invited by the u.s ambassador to bought one of the aircraft carriers and before boarding i met the singapore supplier and he was loading eggs how many eggs are you loading there's so many of them you see two million eggs two million eggs i said you got a zero wrong it says no no two million eggs so i did a rough calculation 5 000 sailors 100 days at sea they're young men say four eggs per sailor that's so it's also good business for singapore very good um a question uh you know we've talked a lot today about the rise and strength of china and indeed the sort of far-reaching uh both in terms of history and the future reference frame that that they use which i think is has often been a course of misunderstanding uh internationally and david ong had a question in terms of what are the biggest internal and external problems that you see for china that could put them back or indeed topple um the status quo there throughout its history it is china which destroys itself and china is always destroyed by corruption and corruption is endemic in the chinese system because of confucius we are required to make gradations in our relationships so when the mother decides whom to give rape packets to a chinese new year she makes careful distinctions between relatives between seniors and juniors young and old closer and more distant friends and then we asked our children how much have you got because in this gift-giving we establish relationships beyond a point the angpal becomes a bride then it becomes a big pride how does china overcome this because the emperor may disapprove he may send his inspectors down but how many inspectors can you have seating king's greatest contribution to china it's not in domestic policy or foreign policy it is in this crackdown on corruption it was getting very bad it would have been the end of china if you're not turning it around and he did it within a few short years it's 100 it's only 50 done but he reversed a tendency and that tendency would have destruction and they're hoping now that by using data analytics and by tracking the flow of money more accurately through the digital currency that they can solve a problem we should be devil all previous chinese administrations that have corruption thank you a question um from i know we're running short on time now but a question from daniel thiel about um perhaps might be a little uh delicate one for you to answer what advice you might offer to the 4g leadership in singapore in terms of managing the balance between between china and the us the internalization of this balance is not just in the prime minister or among senior ministers i think it's in every singaporean you pull out anyone from the street and you ask him how do you react to this day or the other and everyone knows look hey we're in service asia yes we will be three quarters chinese but we are in the southeast asia where the chinese are in a minority and not always well treated so better better have a sense of proportion better stay balanced don't get carried away so i have no doubts that 4g 5g 6g that whoever runs singapore will have a keen sense of the balance is required okay thank you another question from from victor a slightly uh pessimistic tone perhaps but um saying that this year is the 50th anniversary of nixon in china and the great coup that that represented how have things deteriorated so far since then well they're getting worse and i feel they will get more worse in the coming years until a point is reached where the u.s finds itself getting nowhere and when the u.s softens china will suffer because there's a strategy they know they're getting stronger it's not in the interest to precipitate the conflict but if they walk over then the conflict will come earlier so from the viewpoint of game theory they always use aphorism they said we don't want to fight but we don't fear a fight in game theory it means if you try to push me to a win-lose quadrant forget it it's either win win or lose lose you decide i i guess related question in terms of the deep internal divisions we see in the us will it require the healing of those divisions at least somewhat for a softening of the us position china will inevitably be caught up in u.s domestic politics if the burden administration were to go soft on china trump's boys will go after him and if trump trump's voice for the good stuff on china well the abandoned people will turn it against them so there's this move in the u.s that china is a bogeyman when will it change it will change when the costs become high it will change when it's not yielding results it will change when americans come to the conclusion that it's in their own interest to achieve some kind of a modest event direction and the chinese should understand this they should and i think they do make a very careful analysis of u.s domestic politics and without taking sides be helpful don't be destructive don't make things more difficult for you as politicians make it easier for them if china is not antagonistic you'll find that your problems are easier to solve yes i think perhaps in view of time the final question before i uh hand back to victor and from from gear japan who who you've mentioned the us-india relationships and how the us's hopes in that regard may be um a little optimistic what's your sense of how the china in your relationship um may develop in the in the near medium term well right now it remains very tense the the unresolved border demarcation has been developed by natural relations all these years and it was the cause of the 1962 war which was largely forgotten in china but level deep sky on the indian side and and the 20 deaths suffered by the indian army in the gowan valley last year i think that that will open many old wounds so india has retaliated on the broad front china has not escalated at all in fact he's done nothing in retaliation because it's not in china's interest to have around persian india and the more they can bring relationship within their background even kill they will try to but china sometimes also becomes a part of india's domestic politics right now all political factions all newspapers and empty china they are now going through hell with this condemning i think china is probably doing more than any other country to help india but this is gradually accepted and not well reported precisely because it's too difficult for the indian public to accept but china's approach is that's fine we're not asking for publicity but we are doing this as an earnest of a good intention so that later on when we sit down to have tough negotiations you have a sense of who we are so i'm not pessimistic that the two sides will come to serious blows i'm not saying that they will become charming friends or that okay well thank you very much and thank you to to everyone in the audience for um some excellent and and challenging questions uh victor i i think uh with that i'll i'll hand back to you for some closing remarks thank you very much indeed will and and thank you george for another tour de force um dialogue really appreciate your time your expertise and thanks again to will for moderating and also for enabling us to come together again it's been such a pleasure i mean the the uh the amount of time and energy that people are spending talking about u.s china relations is absolutely exceptional it's the topic that comes to the top of many conversations and people you can see and sense the concern that people have um and the hopes that they can get along so that we all can get along too thank you uh for this wonderful opportunity to um hear your thoughts and on behalf of everybody at sicc uh and our very engaged audience i thank you all farewell and look forward to the next time and we're going to make sure george that we don't wait five years before we have you back thank you so much oh thank you victor thank you bill thank you for this opportunity you're most welcome bye-bye you

Channel: Singapore International Chamber of Commerce

Views: 23,611

Rating: 4.7799044 out of 5

Keywords: Singapore International Chamber Of Commerce, CNA, Chamber, Victor Mills, Chamber of Commerce, Commerce, sicc.com.sg, [e-mail], SICC events, SICC Awards, awards, SICC, ICC

Id: aM4DuGNwOnM

Length: 61min 42sec (3702 seconds)

Published: Wed May 12 2021