Views from Former Governors: U.S.-China Subnational Relations

[Music] well we've certainly reached critical mass so let's start the um delighted to have everybody with us today uh for a conversation with four governors to talk about how their respective states have been affected by the downturn in u.s china relations and how sub-national engagement can be used to get the relationship on a more stable footing i should start by saying if you don't know me i'm steve orleans and i'm president of the national committee on u.s china relations let me start off just by giving you a quick background as to how this program uh came together at the end of this summer bob holden former governor of missouri and founder and chair of the united states heartland china association called to discuss the current state of u.s china relations and how the heartland china association could work with the national committee could work with the national committee on dealing with these issues we came to the conclusion that our two organizations should jointly organize a virtual roundtable where former governors could share their concerns a month later we held a thoughtful and wide-ranging two-hour discussion with ten former governors evenly divided between republicans and democrats we all agreed that it would be important to share their very interesting views with the public so today we're going to hear from four of those governors who had participated in that meeting they need no introduction in fact if i introduce them we would have no time for the program but just to say that they are all incredible public service servants to this country bob is chair as i said before of the us heartland china association was governor of missouri from 2001 to 2005. john huntsman has served as ambassador to singapore china and most recently russia and was governor of utah from 2005 to 2009 he also serves on the board of directors of the national committee gary locke is currently interim president of bellevue college he served as u.s ambassador to china from 2011 to 2014 and prior to that as secretary of commerce and governor of washington from 1997 to 2005. he was the first i should know chinese american to hold all three of those positions he also serves on the board of the national committee and last but certainly not released is rick snyder governor of michigan from 2011 to 2009. during his term he led eight trade missions to china which resulted in an exponential increase of chinese fdi into michigan just for the record the other governors who participated in our roundtable for tom kane of new jersey uh ronnie musgrove of mississippi ed shaffer of north dakota ted strickland of ohio and tom vilsack from iowa in this program each of the governors will speak for about five minutes on how the downturn relations has affected the state we'll then have a discussion and then take audience discussions let me now turn it over to governor holden to hear about missouri and the heartland region and to thank you bob for co-hosting this event with us thank you very much steve uh for that very kind introduction and jan and all the staff i very much appreciate uh getting together again uh it uh i'll talk about missouri and in the in the heartland region and my our organization but just kind of give a little bit of background to the audience i come from a small rural community graduating a class of 25 from high school in fact i started out in the one room schoolhouse i went on to college from there and then got elected governor of the state of missouri while i was governor i also served as chairman of the midwest governors association and at that point time saw a lot of our manufacturing particularly in some agriculture leaving the state of missouri going overseas i started thinking about how the missouri could get re-engaged again and i came to the conclusion that a good opportunity would be for to develop those relationships with china and so i made my first trip to china announced missouri was going to have an office in china and from there we we expanded out and uh developed some some very very good contacts uh i as i said come from the the heartland of the united states uh where our organization is a 501c3 organization not for profit 20 states from the great lakes all the way to the gulf of mexico we work with governors with mayors with business leaders with the community leaders cultural uh activity educational institutions these 20 states all the way from the great lakes to the gulf is what we call the heartland of the united states and i would always tell audiences if you really want to understand the united states understand what is going on in the heartland and i i still hold true to that today our focus is in three areas working with cultural relationships educational relationships uh and business ties uh today that steve asked me to touch a little bit on agriculture what most people probably don't realize of the top 15 states in the united states in terms of agricultural production 13 of them come out of this heartland region 13 of the 15. we are a rural leader in agriculture for every one billion dollars in sales that creates over 6 800 new jobs in our part of the country uh china has been the largest uh uh some purchaser of our agricultural products and we want to we want to maintain that and keep it uh growing uh our farm economy our communities uh depend on a global uh exchange of uh product and and uh money to to grow and be prosperous in the years ahead it's it really provides the important aspect of our whole economy it feeds our infrastructure it supports our colleges and universities its support of course our businesses so we are tied to a global economy and we as a region and as a country i think want to make sure that we build those relationships going forward bob uh john give us an overview from the perspective in utah thank you uh steve it's a pleasure to be with you uh and the national committee and thank you for the good work that you do in bringing people together and promoting greater understanding i'm delighted to be here with uh with colleagues uh both republican and uh and and democrat i think it's important for discussions like this that we get right to the bottom line of the importance of the u.s china relationship which is really um based on or should be based on solid people-to-people ties which uh are forged through any number of any number number of means but as governor you can't help but reflect on uh your state's future the future of your state's population and how best to prepare them for the challenges and opportunities going forward and it was very clear after i had been elected governor that uh china would be a very uh uh important uh and central part of our economic relationship going forward our people-to-people are our educational opportunities going both ways and uh i made it a point uh to identify and work with china in areas where we found um a mutual benefit uh where we were able to build bridges that would serve the needs of future utahns so if you stop to conclude that the u.s china relationship will really define the last half of the 21st century we've got a lot of work ahead of us if we're going to maintain the kind of relationship that allows us both to solve problems to be honest uh in describing what our differences are but also to engage where we have some natural opportunities to strengthen strengthen bonds um in utah it was pretty pretty apparent that trade particularly in areas like agriculture and technology would be a prominent part of our future clearly the downturn in the relationship will impact our trading opportunities we've got a lot of farmers and ranchers who have built up market opportunities who have built bridges between the united states and china they grow great products uh and and they've developed market share um it would be a a bad thing if that was jeopardized going forward based on a deteriorating relationship but i think we have to prepare for for prevent for any eventuality on the economic side on tourism which uh for those of you who have been to the great state of utah you know of its natural beauty five national parks uh and the desire that many people have in all corners of the world to visit this lovely destination we made tourism a priority in fact i went over to china on one trade mission uh and and actually spoke to some of the leading uh uh uh organizations involved in uh in tourism i sold our state i told them of the lovely destinations and we we've had an uptick i'd say in the last 10 to 15 years uh uh in the area of tourism why that's important to the people of utah and i think to people all over the united states is there's a very unique economic multiplier effect that exists for every tourist that comes into our state not only do they leave with a great appreciation of the american west having met americans along the way but they leave money behind and that economic multiplier effect is a very important one from a travel and tourism standpoint and we we have noticed that the numbers of tourist tourists not just because of cobit 19 but also because of the nature the current nature and challenges of the u.s china relationship uh uh have been diminished finally let me just say that the people-to-people aspect of the relationship is probably the most important aspect to me uh and one that we must work very hard to preserve even during moments of challenge and difficulty because it's through people-to-people interaction that we begin to better understand one another uh we're able to problem-solve in areas uh based on that understanding and it keeps us out of trouble um we did a very unique thing in our public schools in utah when we introduced mandarin language immersion programs which today in utah constitutes the largest such program in the united states and the reason i felt that that was important is exactly because through language you're able to uh to better understand and decipher a different culture and that brings people closer closer together so in the years ahead no doubt the people-to-people investment will be absolutely critical uh in getting toward uh greater problem solving between the united states uh and uh and china so just a couple of thoughts there steve uh i had a couple of other ideas maybe we can hit them later on areas where we can actually work together so thank you for allowing me to participate great happy to have you gary well thanks a lot uh steve for inviting us and it's really great to be on the panel again with the great friends of mine and you know we all have different states and have different perspectives but i think we have a common appreciation and understanding of the need for job creation whether it's agricultural industrial uh to services uh and even tourism when i was at the secretary when i was at the commerce department as secretary we had a model the more that we export the more our companies produce the more that we produce the more workers we need and those are good paying jobs whether it's farming food processing manufacturing exports and tourism of course is considered an export it's really sale of american products and services to foreigners uh who who are uh supplying money and paying for those products and services the transaction may actually occur in america but it's the same it's the purchase of american goods products and services by people outside the united states our state is heavily dependent on trade one out of every three to four jobs in the state of washington is directly or indirectly tied to trade both imports and exports and certainly over the last several years with the trade war between the united states and china we have really felt that drop in exports from our cherries to our apples to our wheat to boeing airplanes and the list goes on and on our exports are down almost 65 percent uh from the pre-trade war uh levels uh and just uh imports and exports between our ports involving just not the state of washington but the pacific northwest oregon and washington are down 60 percent imports and exports so this is really having a big impact on our jobs here in the state of washington uh our ports alone account for uh some almost let me see about a hundred thousand jobs uh directly tied in terms of handling cargo in the state of washington uh in just the year 2019 and that was already with some of the effects of of the trade war boeing has not sold an airplane to china at all in the years of 2018 and 2019 or even any parts of 2020 and that's even before the problems with the max 737 and the crashes and and the suspension of orders for that while there were no tariffs imposed on boeing airplanes it was basically an implicit uh retaliation for the tariffs that the united states imposed on china so this is very very significant and we need and we were also seeing the drop in international students coming to our colleges and universities part of it is of course the and most of our international students come from asia and especially china when the embassies are closed when the policies are to say that all chinese students are in effect spies for the chinese government even if they're here to study art literature that reluctance uh uh or animosity toward the students from china is not helping and of course the kobit 19 environment is hurting international students from all parts of the world when they think that the united states is not a safe place to be residing in or certainly not to study so we have very serious problems with the trade war because it really has not only affected our exports but it's also raised the cost of doing business for businesses in the state of washington uh you know when the components that you are buying from china are now much more expensive due to the trade war the the tariffs that makes the ultimate cost of that product manufactured in the state of washington or anywhere in the united states much more expensive and then puts those u.s companies producers manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage when they're trying to sell uh compete against let's say the finished product from china or finished products from elsewhere around the world and then of course there's a huge impact on of the american consumer even before the height of the of the trade war and the tariffs imposed by the administration on chinese goods and i think the new york fed and wall street journal and other publications indicated or estimated that the average impact on american households was about six to eight hundred dollars more per year for all the various goods and items that they might be buying whether at walmart target nordstrom home depot you name it the impact of the tariffs was increasing the cost of american goods that families purchase every year at the same time we're seeing that the tariffs on on on american goods was making products from other parts of the world much cheaper com relatively in china so the american product that goes into china with the retaliatory tariff uh was making that american product much more expensive compared to let's say the french or german or uh british or canadian product and was hurting u.s companies and while many of these countries have similar concerns about the economic and trade policies of china our going at it alone strategy was actually helping the companies uh and and the competitors of american companies but these are foreign competitors whether they're in europe or other parts of the world and so this trade policy this trade war certainly has affected our jobs here at home but has also affected uh our american consumers and and uh everyday households do you know gary if airbus was selling at this while boeing's you know sales fell off a cliff was airbus selling at the same time to china uh they may not have been selling very many but they're definitely selling because boeing has not registered a single sale uh uh since uh the beginning of 2018. right and then 65 drop i assume a big percentage of that is is boeing aircraft a big part is boeing airplanes but also our agricultural goods uh we were actually shipping fresh cherries uh to china uh and these are all pre-ordered uh items and so there was no spoilage and the farmers were doing quite well actually 747 cargo loads many plane loads of fresh cherries going to china all of that virtually eliminated governor snyder well it's great to be with you steve and my uh colleagues and uh people watching this so let me share a few thoughts uh from a michigan perspective and then a couple things that we kind of specialize in our state particularly on the manufacturing front given a low background as 2008-2010 was a depression in michigan where it was a recession in most of the rest of the country we lost more jobs than any other state and that's what drove me to run for governor was to reinvent michigan and to say we had to do things a new and different way and i was fortunate enough to get elected so the role was is how do you bring back jobs to a state we were 50 out of 50 for job creation and we got back to being a top 10 state uh in that time frame and one of the key ways to do it was to go to china is to recognize we're part of a global economy we're in manufacturing powerhouse we're actually very strong in agricultural products we're the second most diverse agricultural state in the nation and to do that you have to trade and so it was important to me to go to china which politically was something that most people look down on originally because with the manufacturing job loss many people blame china for that where the greatest cause was productivity increases in the us so i went about going to china and it was successful build a lot of great people relationships a lot of other great relationships and so we became a leader in terms of direct investment coming into our state creating jobs for michiganders and to go to gary's point we also sold a lot of great agricultural products to china one of the other things is is we've got fabulous universities here and we had a lot of chinese students going to our institutions and still do but one of the things i would mention on the higher ed side is the big drop in higher ed that we've seen uh just picking two of our biggest institutions which would be university of michigan and michigan state university uh in the fall of 2018 we had over 7 000 chinese students just at those two institutions by fall of twenty twenty this last year that number had dropped below six thousand it had dropped sixteen percent in the course of two years um that's scary folks in terms of what it can do to our educational institutions in terms of their ability to survive to keep going during this difficult time uh because again they tend to be the best paying students the other thing is is the whole academic environment there was a there has been a need to do more to look for challenges in our educational system on the research side and there's been a crackdown on the chinese researchers which is not a good thing in many respects i mean some of it is important to national security so it's a careful balance that needs to be done there and i think it's creating an environment though that's create a negative environment more than a positive one uh the other issue is we've actually seen with chinese students worried about what china's been doing with respect to how they've been handling students here the anti-subversion laws in hong kong have actually had a negative effect on chinese students wanting to be in our institutions here they're afraid what they may say in a classroom may get back to china and create issues for their family so both from a us government side and a chinese government side they've seen interests that cause them to do things in the academic environment that have made it more difficult to be a student coming into this country from china and we need to work through those kind of issues and find a better environment for that on the manufacturing front obviously it's been a challenge with covet and everything else there's been a slowdown but before that even happened though the tariffs had a negative impact in terms of making it difficult to do business between the two countries which cost jobs on both sides um one of the things that i really disturbed me was how the tariffs were actually applied one of the tariffs in fact were on capital goods where literally we had companies wanting to come set up businesses in michigan factories in michigan to hire michiganders but they put tariffs on the capital equipment so it wasn't affordable to bring the equipment to our country so it continued to be an import item to us instead of a manufactured american manufactured good um we need to be smarter about how we do these things again we all need to understand there are national interests there are important security interests there are intellectual property interests but we need to be doing something other than broad broad strokes that create unintended consequences that are very negative for americans having jobs americans learning at educational institutions and us learning from one another because i think it's critically important and i found this from my personal experiences that it's not just about business it's not just about jobs but it's about people relationships and how we've done this in every area from cultural affairs to agricultural things to tourism to the great areas these my colleagues have talked about we need to encourage it in all fronts and i think one of the best ways to do it is at the sub-national level uh federal governments will have their issues but let's keep doing better things than what we've seen over the recent month or few months and last year or two because of covet as we come out of this and get vaccines let's figure out how to work together and to do more because the more we do together the safer the world's going to be fabulous introductions really those are terrific you think are you reflective the four of you are you reflective of all governors is this just that you know your job is not to worry as much about national security as the federal government so secretary pompeo and talking to the national governors association um you know warned governors against doing too much with china so are the four of you kind of reflective of kind of the 50 sitting governors um and well i guess first that question whomever wants to answer that can do it yeah i'll take a crack at i would say generally yes i think not across the board in every case but two or three attributes of governors and i love being a governor because a part of the part of us hanging out with all these guys and the peers that we had in those days is you find that governors tend to be less partisan when it comes to running a state you're responsible for running a state and you tend to get along with people better you know you're competing i competed with these guys too but we had relationships if you needed problems and help you could talk to one another and you'd do things and you'd also look at what's good for your state which was to do business across the globe and i think generally governors recognize that and we would go out of our way and many many governors made trade missions to china not as many as some of us but they made missions there so what i would say is you probably have us someone on the extreme of being probably much more proactive but as a whole i would say governors are much better about building relationships particularly with china and other places than a lot of the federal government side might be i mean i agree with that obviously you know we have to be cognizant of the national security interest and and issues raised by washington d.c but you know we're not engaging in in national security issues if you're just helping our farmers and our manufacturers sell their made in usa goods and products into china and the rest and the rest of the world that's what governors are for we're really supposed to be watching out for the welfare of our people in terms of jobs education a safety net and the more we can help our folks sell their stuff the more they're going to produce and the more jobs they're going to create and and these are good paying jobs so i i think that the governor is going to have to continue to do this because china has enormous needs whether it's feeding its people to cleaning up the environment to raising the standard of living within the countryside and so much of what we do and make and produce in america can help the chinese people achieve those aspirations and those dreams that's a win-win and we can leave you know beijing and dc to work out some of the security issues on their own and obviously we need to press china to improve their intellect protection of intellectual property and the rule of law uh but as many of my colleagues indicated the more that there's interaction between the two peoples the more there's understanding uh recognition and perhaps more support for human rights and democracy and and some of the freedoms and the liberties and the diversity that we embrace here in the united states and maybe some of that will hasten the development and the opening of china ron you want to take on that sorry no yeah go ahead go ahead yeah steve when you strip uh politics out of the u.s china relationship um you're left with two great nations trying to figure out how to get along how to trade how to solve tensions in the security realm how to exchange people back and forth and there's no more uh uh uh exciting a job when it comes to problem solving and trying to do good for your people than being governor uh it's pretty much stripped clear of politics and what are you left with you're left with a balance sheet that you've got to make work you've got entrepreneurs you've got businesses you've got you've got education bills you've got health care bills and every governor comes to find uh when they look at their balance sheet that one of their greatest trading partners if not number one uh is china and this came out of you know nowhere so if i looked at utah's top trading partners over the last 20 years 20 years ago china would not have been anywhere in the top 10 or 20. today and i suspect every state is the same it's in the top three if not number one so that naturally takes you to you know as you're trying to promote exports and economic activity in your state which is a big thing that governors do and you do that because you want to pay the bills you want your businesses to be prosperous that naturally takes you to china and that's why all of us here and probably most other governors have done trade missions to china and an interesting thing happens when you sit in china with provincial governors you get out of beijing you have the politics of beijing which kind of has like the politics of washington you sit down and you talk to to provincial governors and you have a very uh common conversation you talk about health care you talk about jobs you talk about schools and it's really interesting and so this kind of gave rise to at least some of my early thinking about a sub-national approach so if we can get if we can get provincial governors and state governors together free and clear politics just to try to figure out how best to make connections that really do serve the interest longer term of both countries that's what we ought to be focused on so leaving this in the hands of governors uh i think is a really important thing because it really does strip and free and clear of a lot of unnecessary politics last year before you know coba hit we took a delegation of mayors from cities uh to china and none of them had never been to china before in their life didn't know what to expect in fact they kind of indicated they sure didn't want people to know that they were making a trip to china uh but we went to a person every single one of them came back and said this a whole different world about china than we expected it to be it's not that we agree with each other on all the issues but at least it's the human aspect of it uh when i was after i left office myself and kept bond made trips together to china matt blood is one of our strategic advisors and roy blunt is a long time friend of mine we're of different political parties but as all the other governors have said governors and people at the governor level and the mayor's level have to find solutions uh to be to be successful and so i think we all of us reach out much better at our level than sometimes they do at the national level yeah i went to the heartland bob to peoria illinois at the request of darren lahood um and spoke there and half the audience was soybean farmers and half were caterpillar folks so um at the end of it a couple walked up to me and i said they were soybean farmers i said how's life he said it's difficult we're not shipping this is pre-covered we're not shipping our soybeans to china they're sitting in a silo i need to pay the interest on the on the loan for the crop and i need to pay for the electricity to keep the fan going to keep the soybeans dry so they don't rot and i said oh so what do you think of the tariffs and he and he said the chinese deserved it yeah that that's that's quite quite a statement i mean it really was was eye-opening clearly not in his economic interest but he felt the the the chinese deserve it so my question really is should governors both you and the sitting governors be advocating for an ending of the tariffs that were put in place since january 20th 2017 i think the governors need to emphasize to all the policy makers in washington d.c first of all the impact the economic impact of the tariffs on their companies and on their consumers uh and and hope that the administration uh the incoming administration will devise a a more effective strategy to uh combat and address the very real very serious uh economic and trade policies that china has been engaging in that are contrary to their commitments in terms of the international trading system and their accession to the wto obviously the united states companies and our government have deep concerns about the unfair trade and economic policies of china but the trade war is i think the wrong way to approach it and we need to be working with our allies and countries uh that all around the world who have similar concerns with china's policies but our allies and their companies are actually benefiting from the trade war because they're not seeing tariffs on their products which makes that german widget canadian widget much cheaper in comparison to the american widget when we're trying to sell that into china right we're effectively creating trade diversion so the china's getting the goods they're just getting from somebody else at a cheaper price so that's clearly clearly right others think that we should call for a rollback and ask sitting governors to do that and the second part of that question is does ch did china ever play in a governor's in your governor's election in your election as governor not that i'm aware of uh and and i i didn't you know seek that support but i mean i i think that we need to roll back uh the tariffs because what most people don't fully understand is when they buy our product it not only helps save the soybean provider but it also puts money into our schools it puts money into our infrastructure it puts money into our technology it puts money in all aspects of our economy because of their participation i think that i think that governors can play an important role when it comes to uh informing washington policymakers about economic impact uh on their state and on their region oftentimes governors are closer uh which is interesting because governors really don't have a foreign policy portfolio to speak of i mean that really constitutionally is a federal federal prerogative but i think we we have an important role to play when it comes to keeping members of congress briefed on what their choices and decisions are having the impact at a local level i think that that is that is absolutely correct um but you know it's it's also true that um that governors uh as they work with with provincial governors not only are you getting to know each other not only you're learning more about the other culture and how other communities function but they're also learning a lot about advancements that we have made for example intellectual property protection came up uh a moment ago and you know that's probably the most pernicious issue we have in our uh in our in our trading discussions right now um and one that's really going to have to be dealt with over time and i'm convinced it won't be until uh local chinese entrepreneurs feel they have a stake in the outcome that they'll put pressure of their own on on on chinese decision makers but as governor i found i'd be interested in hearing from my colleagues that intellectual property protection particularly in a state like utah where there's a heavy technology base really was the foremost concern i mean tariffs are absolutely there tariffs uh uh on a standalone basis are not a long-term solution they have to be part of a larger trade strategy but intellectual property theft really has been i think the greatest concern among entrepreneurs and certainly the tech sector in our state and this is one where interaction between states and provinces and the kind of pressure that provinces can put on the central government ultimately i think is going to be an important part of fixing it but i think this remains really one of the biggest trade issues that we have between us and not an easy one to fix yeah just to reinforce a number of the comments have already been made i think it's appropriate that a lot of the tarots get rolled back i'm not sure they achieved the objective that people thought they'd were intended to do to begin with as a practitioner it was much like taking a shotgun to deal with approaches you need a rifle for which is to deal with the issues that governor huntsman just talked about in particular intellectual property protection um when you talk about all these things you have to acknowledge there are real issues that we need to solve with china we need to to have better intellectual property protection we need to have a better investment environment in terms of a fair level playing field there the tariffs themselves didn't help solve those problems um we were already getting companies setting up in the us because it was economic rational to be here instead of being in china from a competition point of view in a global marketplace um the agricultural items all we did was hurt american farmers and american consumers so it's really figuring out how do we put policies in place to address the problems rather than saying throw a broad brush approach at some things saying well this will help get them to the table to solve it well we created a lot of other issues that weren't really central to the the issue that were need to deal with the most should governors that governor senator that raised the question should governors be advocating a bilateral investment treaty between the united states and china where kind of job-creating investments not fixed investments in the national security area but investments in michigan and ohio and in a lot of the kind of rust belt areas would be enhanced well i'm not sure it'd just be bilateral i mean that's the case where we actually pulled out of some negotiations to do things with all of asia because again i think one of the strengths that america should always be emphasizing is is we don't need to be on our own we should actually be trying to figure out how to broaden the base of allies we're working with and to do things in a collaborative fashion um i think that's where leadership really comes in and i think it's going back to the original point about how governors can do that look at the pool that our country's drawn on to find ambassadors of china it's governors like these two great guys we got here and we've had a couple others do that job so it's pretty cool to see uh the need to do that but i would encourage more multinational work as much as bilateral work yeah this one's kind of for gary like i see you the you know i think people it's clear to people you know in the states that the investment creates jobs it's clear that exports create jobs it's less clear for some companies like starbucks or in my neighborhood by the financial services sector where there's a lot of disbelief that china's opening in this sector allowing how many thousands of starbucks are there now in china does that create jobs in seattle how does that affect kind of the state of washington well certainly it creates jobs it may not create you know thousands and thousands of barista jobs uh in the state of washington or the seattle headquarters for starbucks because all those baristas are in china but the design of those stores uh the management uh that's still all creating anytime you're building a huge multinational company like starbucks or whether it's you know a ford motor company or or um you know a huge pork producing uh facility uh agricultural uh a firm you're creating jobs at the headquarters you're creating all the people in the management and the financial services and all the accounting and and and related support functions in law and finance and everything else so it does create jobs it does create jobs i mean the more that our american companies can grow and sell their stuff and do business around the world you're going to have more people here at the headquarters in america supervising strategizing designing uh marketing and things like that so that creates jobs it creates jobs i don't mean to focus on gary but since you are the chinese-american governor on this call uh talk about how our china policy has kind of um reinfor reinforced kind of an uh an increasing racism in the united states and talk about what governors should be doing at the state level to combat that racism you know i i may be a chinese-american in terms of heritage but i actually think jon huntsman is perhaps in many ways more chinese than i am being because he's lived in china so many in asia for so many years and speaks fluent mandarin and i actually speak kind of the grew up on kind of the peasant dialogue dialects of china and southern china let me just say that that is one of the disconcerting and troubling aspects uh i think for any person concerned about civil rights and civil liberties and and just human progress in america uh you know we started in the in the 1800s or the mid-1800s starting with the california gold rush we had large immigrant groups coming from china and then the laborers who actually completed the transcontinental railroad when it was stuck outside the mountains of california it was the laborers from china with their knowledge of dynamite and explosives that really rescued that huge project but you know there's there's been a lot of hostility toward chinese americans or chinese whether the chinese exclusion act and later on laws that prohibited foreigners aimed primarily of japanese and chinese from owning land in the united states and certainly on the west coast uh to the internment of the japanese during world war ii even though their sons volunteered and became the most famed decorated military unit in u.s history the 442nd regimental combat team right now we're seeing a backsliding in which all things chinese are almost viewed as suspect chinese students are suspect chinese researchers are suspect as governor snyder indicated chinese companies are are suspect uh whether it's in social media to even the assembly of subway cars or buses uh there's not much high tech in a bus but um i mean i i don't know but people are afraid that buses made by a chinese company even though assembled in the united states with union american workers are somehow going to spy on americans uh and the list goes on and on and we've seen of course um rhetoric from the administration saying this is the china virus the kung flu virus the wuhan virus and that's really discouraging because we're seeing acts of violence uh and harassment toward not just chinese americans but all asian americans and that's most unfortunate we really need and i think that's where the governors can play a role to stand up and say hey you know we may have very specific and legitimate concerns about the policies coming from the chinese government but let's not tar all chinese people with the same brush we need we need leadership moral leadership and i want to say that when george w bush was president right after the attack on the september 11th attack against the united states in a cabinet meeting he very forcefully said to the cabinet that we need to make sure that what happened to the japanese americans during world war ii is not repeated in the aftermath of september 11th attack that we cannot tar and feather all muslim americans for the acts of a few and the way that we tarred and feathered uh and uh incarcerated all japanese americans at least on the west coast um for what happened in world war ii on you you put in place as you mentioned in your opening marks it remarks this phenomenal k-12 chinese education program in the utah schools every report whether it's the report from policy planning in the state department to the house intelligence committee says we need more chinese speakers in the united states period we need more people who understand china better not only in the state department but in commerce treasury homeland security defense you name it why has that initiative not been picked up by other states or has it and i'm just not aware of it you know i haven't followed steve the extent of it has been picked up by others but i suspect there you know every state will have local politics to some extent that will make it difficult particularly when it's chinese language in today's challenging environment but but for me i i saw it as how do you best prepare the next generation of young kids to perform on the world stage um because it doesn't matter whether they get into business or their academics or in the legal field or whatever it might be they're going to encounter um some aspect of of china in whatever it is they do you just can't have the united states and china on the world stage as you look at the decades to come without uh coming to the conclusion that we're going to run into each other and there will be challenges stemming from that there'll be huge opportunities as well so what better way to equip young people to prepare for their future than giving them the gift of a language which you know they may be conversant after you know they finish high school that's not as important as the fact that it's through language study that they're able to it's a lens through which they can view culture and better understand somebody else who they've never met so we had kids you know it didn't matter whether they were urban or rural rich or poor or black and white black or white they would line up to sign up for these language classes starting a decade ago mostly because the parents saw the value in giving their young kids the added advantage of a strategically important language and it to my mind it was one of the better investments we made on the public education side uh and i i explained it to the people of my state by simply saying isn't knowledge of a language better than not having a knowledgeable language and when these kids encounter their peers in china most of them will be pretty fluent in english so why should we want to put ourselves at a strategic disadvantage by by not uh exposing ourselves so i i just think it's it's we sometimes we feel the presence of the atlantic and pacific oceans these are the most impenetrable barriers any country has and because of that we don't have to venture out and learn new languages but the reality is that the decades ahead are going to see the united states and china come face to face on a number of fronts and the next generation will be so much better off in terms of their understanding and ability to communicate and reason with a country that uh we're going to have to forge some sort of meaningful relationship with even during very difficult times such as today we have literally dozens of questions that have come in from the audience so let me start getting to them but before that while i go through them let me get to what john had suggested what should the sub-national level be doing what should the governors of the 50 states be proposing with respect to china policy rick you want to start with that or you need to unmute though i think we need to get started again because again i think we we've reached a low point with this pandemic and the tariffs and everything else i think we do have a new federal administration coming so there's an opportunity to take a fresh start looking at these things and to build on positive relationships so one of the things i tell people when they ask me about china is we don't tell enough of the positive stories about chinese investment in the us chinese educational opportunities the cultural exchanges we tend to hear all the negatives so one of the things from a sub national level is i think it would be great if we'd find more ways to talk about the success stories that the chinese company here that now employs several hundred uh michiganders or utahns or people in washington and the livelihoods that are being created and how they're being positive you know community members in terms of doing good things and you just start building back that way because it's hard for people when you just talk about theory it's easy to find people you dislike when you actually engage real people and make it about personal relationships and positive success stories that's where you can start overcoming a very negative bias which i think we're going to have to deal with for some time harry i think the governors have to take the lead reestablishing trade missions trying to help our companies sell their great made in usa and produce goods and services to china we need to continue to welcome the establishment of chinese companies in the united states hiring our local people and i hope that the incoming administration will focus on some projects uh of collaboration that just uh whether it's in cancer research or climate change uh clean energy we need some positive partnerships some partnerships in areas that we'll send that will help us reset the relationship steve one of the things that we could do is help link all of our elementary and secondary school students with elementary secondary school students in china so that they start learning the different cultures and the language and everything else as they grow up because our chance of convincing somebody that's 60 70 years old to change their mind is going to be more difficult than open the opportunity for a young person to to learn about another culture on you had a few you said you had a couple of suggestions you were holding back on now is the time you know i i just can't uh overemphasize enough the importance of sad national dialogue because where we have common ground uh between the united states and china isn't always washington and beijing as we have seen in recent years zero common ground zero ability to carry on any meaningful strategic dialogue where we have common ground is at the local level and again you get mayors together you get governors together they speak the same language they're trying to find solutions uh and practical approaches for the same things so if we're imagining how we can hold together this most important relationship the most important in the world and it will be for some time to come it really is going to be incumbent on local officials and leaders to forge the kinds of ties organized by your group or maybe others then i think we'll do a couple things one it will impart practical solutions uh from one country to another where people have found new ways of doing things in education or health care or how to you know how to manage big complicated cities and municipalities but second i think it will also forge the kind of lasting relationship and bond that we're going to need country to country that is based on real substance and real interaction and dialogue it's way too ephemeral and and iffy at the national level because we just haven't found common cause or issues that we can begin to build any kind of meaningful dialogue so sub-national you know is really i think where the action is going to be going forward and if everyone isn't convinced after listening to my colleagues here in terms of what they've been able to do on education agriculture trade and so many other fronts this is where we can be most productive no question about it yeah i mean it's leading me to you know i think one of the most moving experiences i ever had in my life not only as president of the national committee was going to an opening of a of an automotive plate glass company in dayton ohio three miles from where my brother lived and it had they took over an abandoned general motors facility they put 2500 americans to work and this thing was called fuyao glass and i went there and governor kasich was there and senator brown was there and congressman turner it was this bipartisan support for what was this community recreation i saw the community which my brother which i'd seen through his eyes just deteriorate as it got hallowed out over hollowed out over 30 years to to kind of being reborn it was such a deeply moving experience and the chinese founder was was not even a high school graduate and that he had done this it was you know you kind of say god if that story could be replicated 50 times or 500 times it really would would make a difference because certainly the people around dayton understood uh what was what was going on i know people were thinking of of uh you know a trans-pacific partnership as opposed to a bilateral trade a bilateral investment agreement but somehow politically a bilateral investment agreement may be maybe a little easier than than than tpp um some audience questions one from um from mark cohen at uh university of california and at berkeley um do you think you know you guys have done a lot of you've all done trade missions and this may be particularly good for gary do you find our state department supports our foreign commercial service supports these trade missions sufficiently or is there more that should be done i think that uh both commerce department and state department very much support the trade missions they have economic units uh certainly within the state department and and the both the embassies and the consulates in china will support delegations coming over from the united states and helping arrange the visits uh the potential customers for washington state or any of the companies and members of the delegations on any of these state visits so they're very very supportive and we need to in fact any state and any trade organization or industrial sector other states should insist that their governor's offices rely on and take advantage of the resources offered by the commerce department and the state department in helping schedule these visits but also to find potential customers uh and potential trading partners for our u.s companies and entities you know steve i think they they they do a very much inadequate job uh larger corporations take advantage of them because they know how to use them better the smaller companies and entrepreneurs probably are are left out a little bit but what concerns me is when we start uh revoking visas and shutting down consulates it just restricts and reduces our reach uh and i'm not just talking about diplomats i'm talking about the business community because china's a complicated market and generally uh businesses going in they like to learn all they can they like to consult with commerce department staff with the embassies and others and and and that's a good thing to do what i think we're going to see uh and we've seen this already and governor snyder and others probably have probably set the standard on this is is opening state trade offices so states are becoming a lot more active on their own almost creating their own trade promotion facility and uh staff that really does help local businesses which which i think is a good thing and we're probably going to see a lot more of that just given the the size and complexity of the us china commercial relationship yeah steve the part i would add is is i found him to be very helpful in terms of the embassy people both from commerce and state when we were on our trade missions uh they were proactive and i found it good intelligence they would want to give us briefings and to go to john's point they would also we would be taking delegations of smaller companies along with us uh to get them introduced and so we'd build that tie the part i always thought was kind of interesting as is i never saw the state department or the commerce department really on those things when it was back in michigan uh they were very good when we were in the china or whatever country but they didn't have any real engagement coming back the other direction which some ways you could argue they are spread then but you think that would also be an opportunity to have a touch point of a positive one but they they were largely absent from all that process um and in fact to go to john's point we have trade relationships and representatives in china and a number of other countries but we set up a thing in michigan we set up the u.s china innovation center in michigan to be a welcome center for all um chinese activities within our state and we're one of the very few states that actually made that investment and we set it up in a fashion so it was quasi-governmental and would last between administrations and it's been a big help i assume everyone on this call would support the reciprocal reopening of the consulates in in houston and in chengdu any and an expansion of of kind of foreign commercial service representation not only at the embassy in beijing but throughout china do i hear any dissent no i didn't expect any um let's go back a lot of questions have come in about secretary pompeo's speech at the national governor's association did yours were your successful successors affected by that speech did it did it um change the way they were thinking about doing business with china that comes from mike billington and robert wesser not affect our governor uh we we know uh how important trade with china is in those relationships china is our number one export destination at least up until the uh the tariff war and or the trade war so we know how important uh trade with china and relations with china are uh to our economic success a question from chris merk which requires us to speculate on the president-elect biden he has said he will move slowly and deliberately uh with respect to china how should he start that process you know gary probably has as good of phil as anybody on this one but let me just say if you're starting a new relationship um out of kind of a tattered past you kind of got to look at your downside risk you know where are you most exposed let's just start with the basics before we build up the the commercial and trade stuff and that would be an unintended incident that were to happen uh in the air or on the high seas between our militaries without a proper de-escalation strategy so once things escalate as we saw with an incident uh roughly 20 years ago it's really hard to put things back together again even with hotlines and all of that they just they sometimes don't work as they should so the first order of business really is how do we limit risk between the two of us and come up with some sort of proper communication protocol if heaven forbid there was an incident that had to be addressed um that if i were going in as uh as as president-elect biden it seems to me that would be the first order of business just just to make sure that that risk is properly addressed and dealt with i think also it's very important for the incoming administration to form alliances with our with our allies around the world who also have concerns about china policy and and really start thinking about a more unified approach multilateral approach uh instead of a unilateral approach because the you know all of our allies while they they were urging us on and hoping we might win uh in this trade war at least in terms of achieving the objectives that we sought but they were not about to help us because they were actually benefiting from that trade war so they were sitting on the sidelines benefiting but hoping rooting for us we need to actually have them actively engaged an interesting i guess i need to ask this john because it's it's for you and it's from bob capp uh and like you and me and bob we're the parents of uh adopted children from china as the relationship tanks what are your thoughts on the impact of this darkening relationship on these adopted kids some of whom are fully adults by now and i guess i would add to that is there some positive kind of role that they could play well they can be and bob is terrific i've learned so much from bob over the years uh uh in in a number of different areas but you know i always talk to our daughter grace um you know who is very mindful of the environment in which she's living she's now a college uh junior and very very thoughtful and mindful of this tightening environment and the way that she is looked at and viewed we've always taught her that she's a cultural bridge and she should work as a cultural bridge she should bring greater understanding to people uh she should not forsake her her home culture uh that gave her life but rather seek to understand it and help americans to to better understand it as well the great the great secret sauce in the united states and and gary locke is in his family are a great example of this is you know our ability as a country to assimilate diversity to make it work and for everyone to pull together around a common american theme um and that's where you know from time to time we seem to find ourselves in a really tricky situation based on international tensions and right now china is a focal point and i have conversation after conversation with my daughter about what it means i think that helps i think bringing greater awareness to young kids who have been adopted from china is important but also stressing with them the the helpful role they can play through it all um anybody on the call aware of kind of what's happening to foxconn's um investment in wisconsin that has kind of looked like it was going ahead now may not be going ahead anybody following that well it appears it's just behind what the expectations are i'm not sure what to what degree but uh it's not on the uh path that was originally presented yeah and it raises the whole question of kind of providing states providing enormous tax credits for foreign investment and competing with other states should there be a policy that kind of makes that you know one could argue that if you're giving a huge tax credit the people of your state even though you're measuring it and saying well it's benefiting enough to justify that tax credit but then you're competing with your neighbor next door is that good policy or not yeah well i i was always on my soapbox on this one we actually competed for foxconn uh to go to your comments steve i know the chairman of fuyo glass because i talked to him about coming to michigan um and they had that gm facility i didn't have a ready-made facility for them to move into otherwise i think we would have gotten them here um what i always tell people his suppliers are in michigan though so you guys did get a benefit is uh i think tax credits are relatively insane um and i think it's a bigger problem with uh us governments than it is with any foreign government uh to compete on that basis it's just one of those realities when people say you should have a policy well you got 50 states people someone's always going to come up to say how they can offer a better deal so it's a very difficult thing to deal with in some context short of a you know something in the internal revenue code to make it so it doesn't have value um i just i've always presented to i've never tried to get people to come to our state solely based on tax credits it's about the environment the culture the place to work and how they can be successful long term and tax credits do get misused both in terms of how much is given out by governments and how some companies take them and fail to live up to their commitments so it's just something that i always say buyer be aware on both sides when you talk about tax credits these are issues that every governor has to wrestle with and it depends on the sector the industry i mean there are various parts of the united states that are more attractive more conducive to certain types of of industrial sectors than others but you know each governor is going to have to justify whatever tax incentives investment incentives they provide to a company whether it's a foreign company whether it's bmw or or you know tyson gruff a german company setting up operations in a particular state to boeing you know the big competition among the states were where the boeing was going to build their 787 to even a foreign company a chinese company wanted to locate in the united states each state each governor has to decide this on its own merits and whether or not it really pencils out and whether or not you know from a united states standpoint it really doesn't matter i mean where where a company locates whether it's in mississippi versus florida versus washington state the benefits are going to be the united states in general and and so it becomes a a competition among the different states as to where that industry might locate and you got to really figure out is this really going to take away dollars long long term from social services from education uh from health care uh to to even other industries and um so that's an individual decision let's touch a little more on education because that's so critical at the state level i mean governor snyder's made rep made reference to the reductions at michigan state university of michigan i'm sure it's true at university of missouri university of washington university of utah so what are the long-term implications of this and what do we do to fix it what can a governor obviously will call on president-elect biden to fix visas but is it fixable or trust what's broken is impossible to to kind of restore once a decision like that is made reversing a visa decision that gary locke and others work so hard on it becomes really difficult to put back in place i'll tell you why this should be a concern because you won't find a chinese student who has spent time in the united states without having impacted them uh without them caring forever what they learned who they met uh better understanding the united states so this isn't just a master's or a phd this is a a deeper understanding of the united states and its people i mean i look at the senior ranks of chinese leadership right now and i can i can tell you those few who had exposure to the united states undergraduate graduate in fact there's one who really leads most of their economic uh policy discussions who was both undergraduate and graduate in the united states and it it's enormously beneficial in helping to understand a system that's the most outside observers here in the united states is very complicated uh chinese leaders don't don't have a profoundly deep understanding of how our system works but those who have taken the time to to go to school here be educated here they have a huge advantage and it works both ways and so so do americans who who have been to school in in china so we are by by narrowing the gap on uh on visas by by making it more exclusionary more difficult to travel back and forth we're just doing ourselves enormous long-term damage uh where we could be reaping the longer term deeper understanding of those who were able to take advantage of such programs gary did you want to comment then i go to my final question well it's you know encouraging more visitors to each other's countries is in both of our political and economic uh self-interest i mean tony blair said many years ago that diplomacy first starts with people-to-people exchange and the more chinese are exposed to american democracy our diversity our history our culture and especially our freedoms you know certainly we have problems but at least we openly admit those and and confront them and try to address them compared to many other countries but the more that the chinese and especially the students can see how america operates and understand the secret sauce of our success that entrepreneurialism that uh rule of law uh and and you know constant innovation uh and protection of intellectual property the more they're gonna want back for in their own countries and so i i really think that we need we need to encourage more of that exchange and certainly those international students as as governor snyder was indicated i mean they actually helped subsidize the cost of education for our in-state students because those international students actually pay more than the actual cost by and large than the actual cost of education so they're helping subsidize the education for our in-state students because legislatures have been actually cutting back on funding for for all of our public education and raising tuition and so the more that we can get outside dollars in uh the more we're able to keep uh college more affordable for our in-state students i i had a student when i taught at webster university and at the end of the year i always let them talk after i turned in their grades and she was from china and she got up and she said governor i will not go back to china the same person that came to america now what better foreign policy promotion could you have than that opportunity and i've worked for years with the american legion boys state and girl state program and we brought some chinese students at high school student level coming over and participating one year one of those young ladies happened to get elected governor of missouri girls state and then they found out she wasn't an american citizen uh so the thing is building this collaborative relationship uh between cultures the young age benefits all of us last question is is you know president-elect biden has talked about a values-led foreign policy values-based foreign policy uh governors obviously are trying to create employment in their in their states and want to expand business ties with china and build bridges the chinese government is you know over the last few years engaged in we've already heard governor snyder referred to the national security law in hong kong you know we've seen really incredible crackdowns in xinjiang we've seen increasing tightening vis-a-vis tibet vis-a-vis dissidents in china vis-a-vis the lawyers for the dissidents in china how should a governor think about kind of that aspect of china versus the job creation aspect of china in their home state that ended with a tough one yeah i would say steve that uh governors carry american values wherever they go it doesn't matter whether you're republican or democrat i mean you carry the values of freedom and liberty openness transparency uh all our first amendment rights are on full display you know when when a governor is around because you were kind of the the the walking embodiment of of of the american system so i think i i think that is helpful washington has a role to play obviously and they're going to have to deal with some of the thornier issues but i really do again getting back to the sub-national idea uh that kind of gave rise to all of this so much of what we do uh in our system so much of how we raise and educate our next generation so much of our free market in a innovation is based on freedom uh and uh it's on display at the state level it's on display at the local level in ways that really does speak for itself so why is it that china has tried to replicate so much of what we have done here uh whether it's research universities or whether it's other aspects of economic and technology development because they have seen models at work so our values are going to be uh um uh in in in contention we're going to see the world differently we're not going to be able to solve a lot of our problems nor should we expect to but uh leaders at the local level particularly uh governors they they really do and all that they all that they do as governor uh carry within the values of the united states certainly the governors can't ignore um the concerns that we as americans have about some of the human rights and issues occurring within china or how china treats its people we we have to acknowledge it we can't turn away from it but at the same time we can talk about how we in america try to address these issues just as john was saying china tries is trying to emulate so much of of what we do in america and i think that the more that whether it's students whether it's business visitors or government government officials from china that might be here on a trade mission looking at it for investment opportunities where they might be able to locate a factory or set up shop here in the united states during those interactions with our local and state officials they can we should have those discussions about how we are trying to address some of these very same issues and how we openly confront them uh how we try to learn from our mistakes and how we're always trying to move forward that's a in huge contrast to what occurs in china where everything is swept under the rug where ethnic minorities really have little chance of reaching high positions in government or business uh or academia in china uh and and how women uh almost very few women are in high roles in china so we have much to be proud of and and even though we have problems um we should be proud of how we have tried to address them and how much we have how much progress we have made on so many of these issues and that can actually stand out in contrast to the way that china has approached it so we shouldn't shirk away from these tough issues and we can openly admit that we have similar issues but we're trying to deal with it in a very transparent way and trying to move forward rick i just reinforced that it's important on any of these issues that we have to acknowledge differences that we have or things that are important to us just like i talked about intellectual property earlier in the trade things that human rights are something that represents america so you can't just assume it's all pollyanna it's important to put the issues on the table but then say how do we constructively keep moving forward in areas we can why at the same time trying to increase understanding and the need to address some of these kind of things because these are tough issues that they have a fundamentally different perspective on than we do and some of them we do have to work through some will work out more naturally but the civil rights issue is a huge one that i think we're going to have to continue to have dialogue on it and figure out how to strike that right balance as opposed to just simply pushing away and closing the door how do you keep the door open how do you keep growing together and learning from one another so our point can be received in a more constructive way bob you're muted the more open we are the better we are the better better situation gives us the opportunity to truly influence and change attitudes you can't force it but what you can do is open the doors so people can see a better way to approach it and i think that's the best way we can deal with china and the rest of the world the i have i think i've run way over which is unlike what the national committee uh generally does uh are we allowed to go to two o'clock or 45. 2 45. 145. so so we i did run over i was 100 sure but that's because i was absolutely entranced in this in this conversation you know i think it's people always are calling me these days and saying your life is really difficult because u.s china relations are so difficult and it must at times be depressing and the truth of that is it is difficult and at times it is depressing but when i have a meeting like this when i talk to four incredible public servants like who have been represented on this call um i'm fond of saying you know my heart soars like an eagle and as he said that little big man but it's really it's so impressive um you guys have been terrific um i think this has been a wonderful informative program um i'm happy that you've been governors and i hope that you continue to play a role not only in your state but at the national level because your your thoughts and your views are so incredibly valuable but thank you for giving so generously of your time um and thank bob for helping put the governor holden for helping put this together with the the the u.s china heartland association

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

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Length: 83min 20sec (5000 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2020