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[inaudible conversations] >> all right. fantastic. thanks to all of you who have stayed after senator van hollen and teen cuellar's discussion, this panel will be talk ago little more directly about some of the work that we did in the edited volumes that we are releasing today, along with this event. i've got a copy of the volume right here, called u.s. china relations for the 2030's, toward a realistic scenario for co-existence and comes out of the fact that in the america class program in carnegie.

we're focused on strategies that will help with the turbulent waters in the 20th century and amongst some of the most important issues that we deal with, china looms very, very large. and the specific em impetus for this is the under trump and president biden, the united states didn't seem to have in its china policy a very clear picture of where it wanted to head and this was a little bit disturbing to me because essential tenets of strategy development is that it's really important when you're developing a strategy, to have a picture of where you want to go if you want to have any chance of your strategy succeeding. and so, i thought, you know, that it would be helpful to try

to layout a vision of where u.s. strategy might try to head and so that's what we do in this volume, specifically, we try it layout what a realistic scenario for co-existence with china a decade from now, we're looking towards the medium to long-term here. what that realistic scenario for co-existence with china might involve and it's important that we look at the scenario from the perspective of is being a scenario in which u.s. vital interests are preserved, but war and other worse case scenarios of which there are many out there today are avoided. obviously, there are a lot of negative scenarios about the future of u.s.-china relations are discussed in washington and other parts of the world these days, and one of my hopes is by

providing a somewhat more positive scenario, at least certain elements of it, each of the chapters provides a different sort of view on some important part of the relationship, by providing this vision we can sort of help to avoid allowing those negatives out there and avoid letting them become self-prophesies. and how the authors share this view, there's no guarantee that the united states and china will avoid the worst and the volume we have is not predictive, we have been careful to say we're not predicting the way that u.s.-china relations will go, just discussing one of the directions that it could take.

you know, one of the things that said that i learned in working on this and thinking about it with my co-authors is that, you know, it's not impossible, it's actually maybe not as difficult as it seems from today's perspective that we might actually get to that scenario where there is co-existence united states and china and u.s. core interests are still protected. and i'm not saying that it's easy, but just that it may not be quite as difficult when you think 10 years down the road, as it seems from today's perspective. so, in other words, while just like senator van hollen made clear, you need to be clear-eyed about the realities that we face in the u.s.-china relationship. we can also take some heart and not assume that the negative trends of the last decades are

necessarily going to persist in the next decade. they might, but there's also scenarios in which they might not. so my hope is that this work that we've done here will help to open up the policy imagination in washington and beijing about what might be possible. okay. so i have been especially pleased in the work that we've done over the course of the last year and a half to have such a fabulous group of scholars helping with this project. i've learned, really learned an enormous amount about u.s. china relations from them over the course of the last year and a half. the people who we have included in the volume, you know, represent a different, a range of different disciplines and somewhat different perspectives on china. all i think i can say is share a common concern with the trajectory that the

relationship has been headed and the desire to see it go in a better direction. and so, i'm really pleased to be able to have five of the authors here with me today and i'm going to ask each of them to start off by explaining in-- just in two-minutes or so, what they think the most important point that they tried to make in their chapter and then we'll have a general discussion and also be interested in taking questions from the audience. so, i'd like to start with my current and former colleague, professor evan madeeros who is the family chair in asian study and fellow in china relations at georgetown university, as i mentioned he's a nonresident senior fellow here at the carnegie endowment for international peace.

he has a background both in academia, but also in policy. he served for several years in the obama administration white house as a director for china, taiwan and mongolia and then also as the special assistant to president obama and also for asia. so, evan, we're thrilled to be able to have you join us today from santiago, i believe. you wrote a wonderful chapter that was really crucial, in my thinking, about how we ought to approach the project. your chapter is called scenarios for the u.s.-china relationship, reflections on positive, but realistic futures. could you tell us a little about what you think, you know, some of the most important points that you would want people to take away from that? >> thank you, chris. and thank you for inviting me to be a part of this important volume.

assisted in path breaking in many ways, and very, very excited to have been a part of it. because i think it puts boundaries around the conversation in the united states about the future of the relationship and the core point that i hope that people take away from my chapter is that the future of the relationship as consequential as it is uncertain. a trajectory toward conflict in the relationship is neither inevitable, nor is that trajectory immutable and my chapter tries to layout what the range of possibilities are and i do that by beginning to identify what i consider to be sort of the control panel for the u.s.-china relationship the metaphor that i like to pursuant forward is you're sitting in front of the control panel with a series of knobs and these knobs have different

values and as the values shift over time, that will influence the trajectory of the u.s.-china relationship being both positive and negative and so the chapter starts by sketching out what the knobs will look like on this proverbial spaceship of u.s.-china futures. so i look at the sources of competition. the channels of communication, the areas of bilateral cooperation, are they narrow or broad. what are the sources of balster. do they form the formation of a political consensus for both countries for managing the u.s.-china relationship. where are the allies, are they sort of us or encouraging us to tap the brakes on more

competitive strategies? and of course, you have to -- you have to put the u.s. china relationship in the geopolitical context. so, those are the seven variables i look at and depending on what value you set on those knobs on your control panel, it generates different scenarios, from the positive side of a-- or the positive end of the trajectory of the u.s. condominium through the fifth scenario which i call a new and occasionally hot war. so there's a range of different options there. readers can take a look and see which one they think is the most likely, but again, nothing is inevitable. nothing is immutable in trying to think through how the values of the variables that i talk about, how they change over time and what that means for the relationship, i think it's the right frame work and that puts boundaries around what the trajectory might look like.

>> i think that's fantastic and one of the things i really liked about your chapter and learned from our conversations is the extent to which, you know, the future is more open than we may feel like it is right sitting here in washington d.c. today, with the experiences that we've had, and the experiences in the last five years or so in the u.s., china relationship. it doesn't mean it's going to better, but when you think about what you identify, it's fairly broad and i think it's a good starting point for the development of strategy. so i'm appreciative of you for that conversation. this question of uncertainty is one that's important, also, and introduce you. john is currently a nonresident center fellow at the global china hub at the atlanta council. he's spent a lot of his career as a cia, senior intelligence

office working on east asia affairs, and foreign policy issues. he was a colleague of mine for a little while on national intelligence council where he served as the national intelligence officer for east asia from 2015 to 2018 and in that capacity drove some really important intelligence community work that supported the development of high level policy on east asia, on east asia issues. john's chapter is called envisioning positive u.s.-china relations for the 2030's. john, would you talk for just a couple of minutes and when you think-- it's a fascinating chapter. what do you think are some of the key things that people ought to take away from your thinking in that? >> thank you, as you might recall, i sort of had a hard time accepting the assignment, but just underscores the need forest says like these that

actually envision the possibility of peaceful co-existence. i think we all consciously map to the old cold war because americans feel comfortable with that framing, after all, we won that cold war and we also forget as far as china was concerned, it also won the cold war because it was on the winning side, not the side of the soviet union. so, i actually then turned that to my advantage to sort of walk through some of that mapping and make a case, i hope, that the things that are currently lacking in u.s.-china relations would have to exist for this peaceful co-existence to be possible, both sides would have to agree on what things are out of bounds, like regime change by either against the other side. some aspects of military buildup or especially in the nuclear realm. i think that overall, a consensus would have to shift from war preparation to war

prevention. i then note that that really happened in the good old cold war with the cuban missile crisis, but even in that case we wouldn't learn for 30 years just how close we actually came to annihilation and you know, all of this was sort of interesting in the context of china until the department of the defense revealed in 2021 that china is now massively increasing its nuclear forces. they're going to build it up five-fold terminating as far as the dod can tell us for now, i think their next report is due out shortly. at around 1500 nuclear warheads and sizable icbm force most of it directed to the united states. it's going from the mid 2010's having the smallest nuclear force of any of the united nations numbers and where it's going to stop. it's travelling-- not to overdwell on this. dod informed the world that

china is doing this and the chinese didn't. and the force was consistent with that, minimum credible retaliatory force, the force they're building is not consistent with no first use or no launch on warning, or no more aggressive series of nuclear deterrents especially combined with the realms of deterrents in cyber and space. and finally, all of that adds up to an existential race to the bottom. the most natural response to a chinese nuclear buildup, aggressive russia nuclear posturing, it's already happened on the hill, large increases in u.s. nuclear forces. part of this is because arms control is really been decaying globally, between the two former, you know, super powers, russia and the united states. we're both u.s.-- i'm not counting us as former

just to be clear, but you know, a lot are no longer in force and even the current restrictions on strategic arms, the new treaty has a termination date of 2026. russia doesn't seem to be interested in negotiating the extent of that treaty. what i then kind of walk through are things that sort of characterize the regime today because they think in order to understand how we got on this perhaps dark trajectory is to look at this, how china views us, and how we view china. we have these kind of complimentary narratives which is essential to cold waring. and i worked my way through all of this, and it got to the point where evan said, found this in mine. the future is not written.

china has changed tremendously at various points over the last 40 years, it's not inevitable that xi jinping's china is the forever china, there will be authoritarian, more authoritarian today than it was a decade ago and that we will be committed to this kind of racing. if we can work through those mechanisms that can provide a path toward peaceful co-existence. >> i think it's fantastic and you know, i learned a lot pr reading your chapter and i actually enjoyed the process of working through it with you and getting to that point where we both said, yeah, we agree that the future is not written. and you acknowledged with clear eyes, if your chapter today. i want to get back to you, war preparation versus war prevention. and to my colleague, the japan chair, for a world without nuclear weapons and the

vice-president for studies, again here at carnegie endowment for international peace. he is a leading expert on nuclear strategy and nonproliferation issues, as well as cyber conflict and new approaches to international public-private management of strategic technologies. george, also thrilled to have you make a contribution to this work. your work obviously focuses on the nuclear dimension. would you just sort of brief a little bit on what you think the key points you're making are? >> well, i pick up right from where john left off, which he think is a really good description of what's alarming now, especially in nuclear competition, and it is basically an arms race. it's a three-way arms race with russia, china, the u.s. and no formal restraint once the stark treaty ends and affects what india and pakistan do.

india is worried about china and balanced with the u.s. that ties into the whole global nuclear order. where i try to come in is to look at what could be alternatives to the worse case. john kind of laid out what is the current trajectory, which could move towards worse case because there are no formal restraints. well, how might you affect that? i would say the military industrial complex is in both systems, as well as in russia. like worse case, they help produce worse case. so, that's very hard for political leaders, especially in a democracy, to kind of push against that process. and i think there's another underlying driver that's problematic in both societies, is that if internally, your politicians and others don't see the value of compromise,

which is clearly the case in the u.s., so, even within the republican party, they don't compromise, and then now there's not compromise between the parties to pass budgets and things like that. it's that much harder to imagine a leader coming along and saying we can't compromise amongst ourselves, but we ought to compromise with china or the iranians or some other evil actor, so it doesn't work. and autocrats aren't very used to compromising. they kind of get there and get their way. to have the kind of restraint, ultimately you'd have to have the actors compromise and their political system support that so that's a very tall challenge in the current moment. to begin, i'd have to say, you have to understand trying to understand the threat perceptions and intentions of the other side and john rightly pointed out, china is building up in a way and we don't really credit how restrained they were for 60 years, or 55 years, they

were incredibly restrained. had a tiny nuclear arsenal compared to the u.s. and the soviet union and they would say, look, come down to our level. you guys should come down to our level. we totally ignored them about that, and they said, we have no first use, you should have no first use, no serious country has no first use. so then at some point, i don't find it surprising, all right, do what you do, maybe you'll pay attention then. so they're building up and guess what? we're paying attention. so how do we unpack that with them? what are the threat perceptions that make them feel like they need this big icbm force and what would they do with it. what are our threat perceptions conveyed to them. another important point, regime change. chinese leaders like russian leaders, iranian leaders, north korea leaders believe that the u.s. is about regime change. they may be paranoid, but that

doesn't make them wrong or crazy and how do you get at those threat perceptions and then find ways to mutually reassure each other that the worst actions we each expect aren't actually driving the process. that all seems obvious, but none of it's being done, really, and that was true in the cold war with the soviet union, until the 1960's and then the '70s. so, it's-- and it's not being done by india and pakistan, not being done by others where you have leaders at i highest level communicating what their communications and threat perceptions are to begin to reverse the process and have restraint. so i think that's going to be a key with china after the u.s. election, whoever the president is, to pick up where president xi left off and a couple of things left on the table. china proposed talks on no first use.

they rejected u.s. talks on strategic dialog and they have rejected that. we resisted it, we're never going to adopt the united states no first use, why not say why do you think it's so important? how do you reassure that don't believe you, china, that that's your policy? and they're building up a force that doesn't look like it's consistent. how is it consistent? please tell me. we could have a similar conversation about regime change? you think a conversation about regime change, how would we reassure you? and the last concrete example i put out there, something the u.s. and protest union did in 1972 which was an incident that agreement, that both sides agreed when their navy and naval air forces were out exercising, they'd fly too close to each other and do i think so this to like scare and intimidate and it was a great

where you could have an accident. that accident could create a nationalist demand that the leader make them pay and you could get conflict out of that. it was precarious. so they agreed on basically norms of operating forces at sea and that helped kind of cool the competition and create more military to military dialog and show that some kind of cooperation was possible. and i think something like that ought to be on the agenda. thanks. >> thank you, georgia. audrey, i wonder if i could go to you next in keeping the order of the chapters in the volume itself. audrey long is a jean kirkpatrick enterprise institute and she focuses on the asia pacific issues and state craft and how authoritarian states like china shape political process in

democracies, was she termed informational state craft and also assistant professor of political science and international relations at the university of southern california and her contribution to our volume is called china's economic and informational influence and activities and it gets to the question again, how, you know, china, but also implicitly i think to some degree the united states is competing in the space. can you talk about what you think some of the names and points that you want people to be aware of from your chapter are? >> absolutely. it's a privilege to be on this panel and to contribute to this volume. i do think, unfortunately, that you're thinking about the domains that china is increasingly focusing on in the last few years that the picture is somewhat less rosie to face the trend and trajectory that we're seeing. i think the possible that we can manage it and we don't have

to overreact, but compared to the nuclear demands and uncharted territory in terms of the nature and extent of china's influence and activities. and maybe talking about the economic front. are you looking at a lot of research that i've done on chinese economic state craft and beijing have often shot themselves in the foot in terms of the subversive and corrupt ways they're doing things. and to really drive wedges within countries and across countries. that's where china i think has been most effective. it's hard for the chinese government to really achieve, i think, long-term alignment and support rights for the chinese government and its sort of objectives globally as well as domestically, which is good because it means that the united states doesn't have to overreact. we don't have to be worried about, you know, everywhere that china has economic investment presence and, but i do think that one thing we

should note is that china has been able to disrupt, you know, sustainable coalitions and u.s.-led coalitions and china's skeptic coalitions and it's coherent in the long-term, in objecting and coordinating actions against chinese policies and chinese interests and i think that the recent example where you know, germany and major economy, has been made a vocal objector to, you know, e tariffs and i think it symbolizes what they foster with the economic influence. talking briefly about the information front. i think we're seeing that china is sort of increasingly adopting the russia disinformation play book and seeing the reports about election interference, and one thing that the chinese government is really to do is

to exploit wedge issues in the united states and other countries eas baiting polarization and talking about issues of racism, about violence to sow chaos and discard and delegitimize democracy for a public audience. and we're seeing growing efforts at authoritarian efforts at depression and china diaspora abroad. another important element to mention is sort of china's domination on the global scale. especially, in developing countries and on the global scale and that sort of includes sort of free sharing agreements and china is able to provide its version of events at a very low cost to struggling media outlets in many countries, providing the training for the local media outlets and journalists and one thing i've

noticed in my research is a lot of this china messaging, propaganda in the global, focuses on less provocative we're for diplomacy, but less provocative sort of propaganda that really touts the benefits off the chinese model and how it provides performance outcomes and development and growth and public goods for citizens as compared to the sort of contested or corrupt nature and problems in democracy and i've seen that that can have implications for public support for democracy in many of these countries. i think this is a nation that's a problem. in the u.s. and elsewhere and i think the reach has been relatively limited and some have been clumsy and we need to pay attention not just to efforts in the u.s., but globally, more propaganda, how

that affects china and the united states. >> concluding point, i think it's hard to really change to any incentives and behaviors in these spaces, so it's up to the united states to focus on increasing the economic and informational resilience of itself at home and as well as off the allies and partners by countering chinese narrative and providing alternatives viewpoints and information. not just voice of america, but providing resources and training and equipping local media outlets to report, and to have other sorts of information apart from the chinese government and i think, you know, within the u.s. we want to raise awareness of the influence i think at the local and state levels not just at the national levels. i think that politicians are unaware of the potentially

corrosive actions and less willing, not to conclude on a pessimistic vote, but areas of concern how we think about managing on a relationship with china going forward. >> thanks, i think one of the things in your chapter that i really provoked thinking for me is first of all, obviously, how corrosive can china growing tendency to interfere in our domestic politics is and something we could see to grow in the future. given this, how important it is how to avoid this, it's almost as if we need some way to get china to make a credible commitment or at least may require both sides making a credible commitment not to interfere in each other's domestic affairs. i don't know how easy that would be, but certainly, if it could help to stop the interference in our own

politics, it would be something in a step in the right direction, from my perspective. leapt me turn now, steven, to you. and steven is a senior fellow in the america state craft program here at the carnegie endowment of a historian of u.s. policy and analyzes contemporary problems in american strategy and dip mroemsy. diplomacy, and global supremacy much discussed around washington. and steven, great to have you on this program as well. you wrote on a theme somewhat related to audreys, in the united states. can you talk a little about that? >> yeah, you know, there's all of this talk of a new china consensus in washington and i wanted to kind of analyze the

conceptual contours of that. and i realize that actually, there may be less to the new consensus than some think. so, the united states had what i would call a conceptual framework for relations with china from the mid 1990's through the obama administration and that was engagement. it provided an overarching logic to u.s. individual policies and it was publicly articulated. it was articulated to the chinese and they received it in various ways and it was articulated in american domestic politics and that mattered. and what i think has happened is, the united states has developed the kind of bipartisan consensus against engagement for, i think, some good reason. i don't think we should go back

to engagement. i don't think we are going to go back to engagement and even if i thought that we would. but that's about as deep as it goes. we have not actually landed on a positive replacement for engagement that has the kind of qualities that i just mentioned, that engagement did as a conceptual framework. so i wanted to think through what are some distinct alternatives for post engagement conceptual frameworks for u.s. policy toward china that we might be able to select among some and might see take root in 10 year's time. so i used evan's wonderful scenarios that start the volume and mapped on some of the options onto his scenarios that were based on conditions in the bilateral relationship. so to put this a little more provocatively than i do in the chapter itself, because i think

i'm just trying to-- as i'm sitting here on stage, i'm realizing what i was really trying to say. right now, if there is a concept actual, the first thing to a post concept actual frame work would be strategic competition under the biden administration, power competition under the trump administration. now, it's very plausible that that kind of framing will continue. on a conceptual level, i kind of think it's going to give way, one way or the other. it is quite question begging, nebulous and has an liminal quality. over what are the united states and china competing? are they competing toward to common set of rules, over who gets to set the rules for the other to follow? are they competing in a contest for power in which rule following is not even important? what is the end state that the

united states wants to achieve for the bilateral relationship, et cetera. and the biden administration has found itself trying to answer some of these questions in the domestic political sphere, so i tend to think that we might go in one direction or the other. so what are those directions? well, one alternative, which is certainly not engagement approach, would be in a valid cold war kind of approach in which the united states would say what beijing often alleges, that the united states is seeking the containment of chinese power and influence in the world. and that might sound appealing from the cold war and that's one of the reasons that has conceptual roots for americans, although, we should not forgot that during the cold war, containment was actually quite contested, it was from almost

the very beginning, seen as a dirty word by many critics who then pushed for rollback or even regime change and we now see those kinds of calls coming into prominent places in washington with respect to china. so, what's the alternative that would be in line with the spirit of this volume? it would be something that actually, some scholars have talked about and it's present retorically in the biden administration's own repertoire, which is co-existence or more realistically competitive co-existence. that would be a distinct alternative to the cold engainment approach because the old engagement approach was premised on the idea that china would converge and china would be more like the united states pan liberalized politically and economically, a junior partner to the united states in managing international problems and china would not develop

military power to challenge u.s. positions around the world, including in the western pacific. okay. those things aren't happening and competitive co-existence would say, okay, yeah, that's true. we don't actually need china to liberalize, but we do need to place a premium on establishing mutual red lines, respecting each other's sense of their vital interest so that we would prevent a conflict. and so, i think, you know, we will probably move in one of these directions or the other in the next 10 years, although, of course, i'm not making a prediction as to which. >> i mean, i think that's-- i think you're actually getting to some of the issues. i haven't talked about my first chapter where i try to bring some of the threads of the values together and so many interesting points that i obviously can't summarize them all in that chapter, but one of

the core observations that i make is that, you know, in order to get to this kind of co-existence scenario there needs to be an acceptance on both sides that the other side has, you know, a legitimate right to exist and is legitimate, as it exists today. despite the fact that we have conflicts, including conflicts of interest. and i think for the united states, what this means is, you know, first of all, not hammering-- not casting the leadership of china as illegitimate, even if we can be critical of their national behavior and in general, accepting that the reality may be that china will have a greater role in their national affairs, whether or not-- whether we like it or not. and flip side of the coin is for beijing to make an attempt not to overthrow the united states as a global leader or

not attempting to do away with, you know, the american-- the international order that the united states has been central to, even if asking for certain, you know, potentially legitimate reforms to it. so i try to lay some of that out in the first chapter. we have the possibility for a little bit of time for questions here. you have cards at your desk if you want to submit a question, if you do so i'll get it on my ipad here. before that, i want to turn back to the panelists here and ask a sort of more present kind of question. we're looking at a scenario in 10 years where the united states and china co-existence and protected. is there any that you thought about that, that the united states ought to do now or not to do now that would increase the chances of that particular scenario, you know, emerging?

george, i think in your piece there are some specific things, would you talk a little about i think so this that the united states-- you make some more concrete recommendations about things that the united states in its policy needs to accept or not do depending how you look at it. >> well, i think there are, you know, there are some force issues and i don't know where they'll go in the next administration that ought to be avoided that will look provocative, but i don't know where those would go. so i think the most important things are, like i side, as soon as possible direct engagement or offer of engagement for the heads of state to address some of the issues of fundamental attention and addressing china's buildup

and the motivations behind this and what could be done to reassure each other and that would involve, for example, the question at some point 6 missile defenses and is the u.s. prepared to limit missile defenses in principle or if it's an untouchable capacity. because if it's an untouchable capacity, then people would draw conclusions from that. so, it's more at that level and then i think going on what steven said, too, how do we each address what is now a growing concern here and it's been a long concern there about regime change and limiting the interference and internal affairs. it's getting underneath each side's skin and agitating. it's not clear you're convincing somebody that you

know where the limit is and i think that's going to be-- >> trying to put guard rails on that aspect of it. and important to the united states for the reason that audrey points out this is not great, the trajectory, it's not good for american democracy. evan, what do you think about this question? >> yeah, i think this is a very, very important question, chris. and in my chapter, what i argue, sort of at the end is that there are two basic fundamental requirements for sustainable interaction between the united states and china, number one is working out some sort of strategic modus between the united states and china which is a collection of lots of things that we've talked about here. you know, whether it's about regime change or, you know, boundaries around competition or guardrails or whatever. there's got to be a combination of those in which leaders on both sides basically decide

that the concept of strategic restraint which the u.s. and soviets only adopted after the cuban missile crisis is a component. that's requirement number one. requirement number two, you need to develop a political consensus in the united states and obviously doing one and two is going to be very, very hard to do them in tandem. so i think that our policy makers need to better articulate what the goals are in our policy towards china which should be more about america and the world that we want than it should be about any particular decision we want china to make and then we need to begin building a domestic political consensus around it and that means that american policy makers are going to have to make some very, very hard decisions, like, for example,

what the policy makers think about the u.s.-china trade and investment relationship and the biden administration has been very ambivalent about this. they haven't been willing to actually come out and say, yes, there are some sectors in which it's okay for americans companies to do this, and this in china. they're very am biff ambivalent. because we're in the early stages of the competition where we're figuring out the boundaries of the competition, where we're going to compete and how we're going to compete, i think it's hard to articulate it, but i think that policy going forward needs to keep in mind these two components. at some point, getting to a strategic modus and happen only after xi jinping, that's entirely possible, and thinking about building a domestic political consensus and those components will be essential to the kind of world that we aspire to. or the world that we envision

in writing this volume. >> that's really interesting. steven, i wonder if you have a reaction to that. to focus on this, but in thinking about the u.s., domestic narrative. what do you think we should or shouldn't do? >> well, my reaction is that evan nailed it. so, i had some footnotes. >> okay. >> you know, i do think one thing, in our domestic narrative of the relationship, right now, the basic narrative, if you read the national security strategy from the trump administration, the biden administration, basically the u.s. pursuit of engagement, china didn't deliver the things it was supposed to deliver, therefore we must clamp down on x, y and z. and that ours for china were

naive, even belligerent sounding if you tell them you expect their regime to change, et cetera, even through soft means or hard ones, so we have to come to that realization, not to blame ourselves for china's often bad conduct in order to get out of this trap of just blaming china for everything, as totally unreasonable. that's one thing i would say, just on a couple much issues, we have to continue some of the progress that's been made bilaterally on the taiwan issue. it is very tenuous, and the upcoming u.s. elections has major implications, i think, but if we get to the place where reassurances for the united states are clear and consistent and we have a little more trust in the way that china is reacting, you know, that's a big one.

the other thing is the war in ukraine. so, i'm not going to say that the following consideration ought to necessarily govern how we behave in this conflict. there are a lot of important considerations at play, but if the united states and china were able to play a constructive role together, in helping to resolve the conflict and achieve a cease-fire, that would have a range of benefits for the united states and for the bilateral relationship, it would slow down the convergence of u.s. adversaries, into the so-called axis of-- whatever they're called. and lots of phrases and no one figured out the phrase that everyone latches onto yet. before we get there, perhaps we can arrest that alignment from continuing further and also, come to see china in a bit of a more constructive light in terms of the role that it can

play on the international stage. again, not predicting that that's the way it will go, but if we see an opportunity, it would be wise to take it. >> i think it's important to point to that potential geopolitical benefit. i mean, if we were able to get to a relationship like the one that we envisioned in this report with china, it would really weaken russia, north korea and iran. that grouping without china doesn't look at all the tame same. and so, that's a potential benefit that should be making us more willing and more eager to achieve the kind of outcome that we describe here. what do you think? >> i think i would-- well, i think sort of that is-- i agree with that and i think i sort of wanted to add to evan's point on the domestic political consensus, that that's not possible, as china is actively involved in this or aligned with a lot of these countries, and also, this consensus not

possible if china continues to sort of act this way and try to shape political processes on u.s. soil, whether it's direct question of activists or, you know, through interference and trying to shape how local and state politicians think and so, i think you know, that's a crucial red line that the united states needs to draw, right. we're going to say, we're not going to advocate or shoot for regime change in china and neither should the chinese government act this way and try to interfere with legitimate democratic processes on u.s. soil and i think that that would be show for constructive and-- >> good, good. john? >> i'm thinking about what, if we had a gathering of chinese counterparts here who were asked to write something for xi jinping and how interesting. they literally, especially if you're trying to make a point that xi jinping would find

acceptable, they'd have to find his, power centric, a bit reductive and in their view, china hasn't done anything wrong. the nature of the u.s. is hegemony, and to maintain primacy in every domain, and you know, important for your essay is to note that, of course, the east is rising and the west is declining and the world is undergoing changes unseen in this century. with that. you got past the old man's filters and he's finally paying attention to you. there are things he would be willing to do or conceive of that would go towards peaceful co-existence. in a way, it's harder because they view themselves looking at this relationship almost a defensive prism, but at the same time they see weakness in some domains.

if we're competing with them militarily, we're doing a poor job of it. we built some awesome platforms and spent the money, and that taylor freedman was going on to an apples to apples comparison to defense spending and it did say that china probably spends around 417 billion dollars in an apples to apples comparison, but the same, america spends 1.3 trillion on defense. while our navy is basically shrinking. that we have enormous procurement problems and another thing that xi would find interesting in one of our entries, the u.s. may see china as a pacing threat or whatever vocabulary that you like. super powers don't get to pick where they get pulled into engagement, especially if they're still bent on primacy globally. so war in israel, war in ukraine, wherever the next crisis emerges, the u.s. may want to stare at the china

problem and focus policy and resources and public attention and wealth, but we don't have, you know, don't always have the freedom not to choose, to have to deal with these others that arise. if we come up with masterful blueprints and footsteps on the dance floor, and they seem a lot more willing than we are on the stage here and other authors to believe that a kind of dive toward the bottom isn't baked in. if you look at, you know, what their conditions might be towards returning to more stable engagement, there are sort of a hard list of asks. probably require a fundamental change in u.s.-taiwan policy, require a return to a less allied centric posture, especially with regard to japan. a lot of things have been done over the last eight years in response to the threat that we

perceive from china, and have really kind of changed pieces on the field. so, the things that they used to take as comfortable signs of american acceptance of the need for stable relationship really aren't there anymore. so, some of those, if we're going to try, you'd have to get them to agree they can't return to the past, but there's a future, that would have enough of the conditions that reassure them of the things that they consider red line issue. primacy of the communist party. its legitimacy in the international system. taiwan and territorial integrity. >> so, that about finishes our allotted time for this. this has been a really useful discussion and for our audience i hope it's been a good introduction to what is in this volume that we've just released on u.s.-china relations for the 2030's. ...