[ applause ] >> this is michael pillsbury, he's at the hudson institute, serves as senior fellow for chinese strategy. also a former special assistants for asian affairs in the office of the secretary of defense under the george hw bush administration. good morning. >> good morning. >> also president trump saying you were leading authority on china. can you expand on that? >> no. he's obviously the president of the united states so he's the leading authority on china. and my fear is this will cause further jealousy and envy by my fellow china hands. they don't like anybody getting extra prominence. we all write books and all try

to explain china to our various audiences. >> expand your back ground on china. from the previous administration, particularly what you offer to this administration in regards to input on china? >> well, i've been working on china input on china. >> well, i've been working on china either inside the government or paid by the government for 40 years. my book is kind of a memoir of how everybody including me had a lot of wishful thinking back 40 years ago that china would not quickly but eventually have both a complete free market and also a democratic form of government. roughly ten years ago that proved to be almost impossible. chinese policy has been worse ever since for the past ten years. so i kind of confess that i was wrong. and i'm sort of sorry for the advice i gave a lot of presidents. president reagan went all the way. he sold weapons to china and he

created the largest cia covert action in history by authorizing cia to buy $2 billion of the weapons from china and have them transferred by cia to the afghan rebels, get them more power for the soviet withdrawal for the cold war. that's a lot. so sophisticated weapons to china and we did a lot more. there's sort of a paradigm shift right now. we're moving from china as our almost best friend cooperative partner, number two economy in the world, so what's wrong with that kind of cooperation? we're moving towards a much more antagonistic relationship. with people in america not quite knowing who to believe anymore. >> the vice president will be at the hudson institute today to talk about china there. excerpts of his speech, it says in part that to put a bluntly president trump's leadership is

working. he is going to add in his speech, china wants a different relationship, going onto say beijing has mobilized covert actors from groups, propaganda outlets to shift view on policies. what would you say now going forward is our positioning with china? what are we going to be? >> initially the leadership on this was democrats. there was a very famous law that was passed by nancy pelosi on the house side and george mitchell on the senate, kind of forced bill clinton to take strong actions against china. as i say the chinese mobilized against that. they got what we call the globalest to defeat pelosi and senator mitchell. and this underground influence is just a small part of it. for example, there's a wall

called the foreign agents registration act. when you lobby you're supposed to tell the fbi or doj about it otherwise it's a five-year prison term. so the public doesn't really know when they're hearing somebody who's eventually being funded by china. that's what vice pence is talking about. >> you can hear it on c-span 3, c-span.org. michael pillsbury with us until 10:00 if you want to ask him questions. 202-748-000. the president did speak to you and your matters of influence on china. >> i like china and i like president sxi a lot.

from what i hear if you look at mr. pillsbury, the leading authority on china, he was on a good show -- i won't mention the name of the show -- recently. and he was saying it has total respect for donald trump and donald trump's very, very large brain. they said, donald trump, they don't know what to do, never happened. well, one thing they are trying to do is convince people to go against donald trump. because a normal regular political person that has no concept of what the hell it's doing would let china continue to take $500 bill wherein a year out of our country and rebuild our country. and they were building 29 bridges like the george washington bridge, they're building things that we don't build anymore. but we're starting to build them again. >> what do you think about what he said, particularly about china? >> well, i think the president's

right. this topic of really major studies and analysis in beijing. they've never seen a president like this before. and on ballots, some chinese analysts predicted he would win the election. and they boast his books. he has 14 books into chinese. so they have given me -- i've been over to china twice recently. they like to ask me about president trump, and then i ask them, and the kinds of things the president is saying is in fact accurate, that's what they said. they respect him. some of them even fear him. they're trying to get a handle on him, you might say. what is the minimum concessions they can make to call off the tariffs and the potential trade war. and they can't figure that out. they also can't figure out who's in charge. they're used to this kind of

power struggle. they've had power struggles around emperors in china. there's a chinese expression when you've got a very big brain -- it literally means your brain is big. but that's meant to be a word like brainy in american english. he's a very brainy smart intelligence guy. they also use a word a word that means crafty and one that means brilliant. so this is the general idea they have of president trump. >> do you formally advise the trump administration on china affairs? >> no, i don't. >> we have calls lined up for you. gene, you're up first. gene is in maryland. you're on.

>> good morning, mr. pillsbury. they have a major air pollution problem in their city. and mit has developed collusion with chinese engineers, a methanol engine that replaces in their cars and for diesel trucks. they also need a nonpollutant source of methanol fuel. they have asked us to use our natural gas to convert to methanol and ship to china. we are actually shipping -- we're doing this now in louisiana. no one has ever mentioned this. and shipping it to china for purposes of fuel and also so they can refine it into petrol

chemicals. >> he's in line with something president trump is trying to do. trying to increase our exports to china. in particular in the area of grass and green technology. in fact, china has dangled publicly not too long ago they plan to invest $200 billion or more in green technology, setup some funds to do this. so this area he's talk about is something president trump is trying to do. get more exports to china so this trade balance is not equal. this kind of idea is really quite useful. i hope it's on the web somewhere where we can find this. >> from louisiana, hello. >> hi, mr. pillsbury. for the last few years i've been

fascinated to hear socialologists talk about the fastest -- >> there's a book called jesus in beijing written by a former "time" magazine correspondent. it's just about this revival you're talking ability. >> go ahead, caller. are you still there? >> caller: yeah. go ahead with your thought. well, i'm just listening, thanks. >> one thelry is china will be the most christian nation at some point in the future. if you have $1.4 billion country, the author of this book is forecasting that could happen. >> when it comes to the recently negotiated u.s. canada mexico

deal, the president spoke of that. i want you to listen to what he had to say then and get your thoughts on that. >> but the trade deal, the largest deal ever made so far in trade, i expect to top it with china we're

working -- like a game called the encirclement game, each side has black and white chips and you try to encircle on the board. usually it takes about 300 moves to win. they see this success the president has said with mexico and canada as another step in the wei chi game. i think the president's on the right track because china is not negotiating. they've made no real offer, as he's said. this is embarrassing. the first real request was back in early may. so we're supposed to be so strong and our economy is growing up so fast. the chinese are supposed to be weakening and their stock market going down, but their regime survival depends on keeping

their promise that our sort of system will not be change. and president trump is asking them to change their system, more of a free market in buying american exports and also stopping the technology theft which has gotten to the opponent of outrageous. >> do they have leverage they then-round with tariffs of their own on u.s. products? >> not so much. we have products that are about three times higher, four times higher. so a tariff war is going to be won by america. chinese don't see it that way. as i mentioned they see this debate in the white house, they see the american business community to be on their side. they see the maerp economists with the exception of one economist, peter navarro, who happens to have a harvard phd,

and as long as they see this hope in beijing, they're probably not going to make an offer until the pressure is really ratcheted up quite a bit higher. >> were you surprised the president calling out china at the security council meeting? >> no, i think it's something that's been known by our intelligence community. vice president pence just to quote his speech an hour from now, he's quoted as planning to say that an intelligence official, a very senior one holding with china much more than russia did. >> caller: yes, hi, i appreciate your candor in saying i'm wrong, but all i can say is -- i'm wrong, wow, okay. >> that's why you shouldn't listen to me now, jennifer.

i might be wrong again. >> at all of 10 years old when i would travel to western massachusetts to visit my grandparents, actually early '80s, late '70s and i could see the devastation of skeleton factors, and my father actually grew up in high school working in the textile mills, and that was a good job for him back then. and he grew up to be a senior corporate executive. but going back there and seeing no lights at christmastime, stores had all closed, the only people with jobs were people that were working for the government. as a 10-year-old i could see this was a bad idea to get rid of the factory, so i went onto actually become a champion debater, and i was the only person in my high school who went to debate at places like

penn and -- >> you and ted cruz, right? ted cruz was a very famous debater when he was first in harvard law school. >> it's funny you mention that, because ted cruz was one of the drafters on the nafta concept of the north american union. so i would say he and i probably would have issues with what the conclusion that you came to. >> so caller, sorry to interrupt, for the interest of time, what would you like our guest to address? >> well, frankly, oops isn't great. it's really not funny, actually. >> will you read my book? the book explains why i and others went wrong. there was an element of chinese deception about this. the chinese more or less promised we're going to move towards a free market. we have elections now in our

villages. we're not -- i don't mean to say we made that big of a mistake. we saw that china did not reform, we'd be facing a really nasty rival coequal to us who wants to surpass us in the future. the cia took some things out, fbi took some things out, but i tell the story of how this might still be going on with many people. we still have this kind of blind faith. so i wish you'd buy my book. >> steven is next, arizona, independent line. >> caller: that was a great call, and sir, i want to congratulate you for saying that you made a mistake and my question is many people believe that the factories were move to china for the sole and political benefit of breaking the unions.

if it was really down to that, what is the expectations of the companies staying ununionized. >> that may be a factor, but i think the much larger factor was the way our privately held companies focus on quarterly returns, and they have to. shareholders are expecting profits. the chinese have a different system. they can afford to look ahead 100 years. they can afford to ask themselves do we want this chinese company to be private or remain under government control? do we want them to go steal resources in the congo so that we can make cellphone batteries? if so, we'll make them do it. we don't rely on quarterly profit and loss returns. so our system has a disadvantage when another country, any country is a ruthless predator. we are kind of defenseless against this. we think it's now 200 years ago, but actually it didn't.

andmarktleism and technology theft works really well. the chinese grew 10% a year for more than 30 years. no other economy has done this. and we now understand better the role of technology theft in that growth rate. >> our guest served on the trump transition team. he was an a assistant, and secretary for defense, and how concerned are you with china? >> i'm concerned in their strategy as i laid out in the 100 year marathon, they ku constantly play down their military role. target number one is not a military build up. the soviet union wanted equal number of nuclear weapons and nuclear missiles to america. so we had this dangerous nuclear arms race for more than 50 years and still dangerous.

the chinese keep their number of nuclear weapons, it's very secret but under 300. very few icbms. this is strange an economy almost our size but minimal nuclear weapons. they're not in the big conventional arms race in the sense of building b2 bombers, they have zero. in a kind of force on force comparison china is still relatively weak. i would say ten to one globally we are more powerful than china in the military sphere. but growth rate their upt 10%, that's going to pay off in the long-term. by the way, they got it from the world bank. the world bank opened its largest office in the world in beijing, 3,000 employees at one point. and much of the ideas of what to do came from world bank experts. >> joyce is next.

>> supported by us. >> joyce in woodbridge, independent line. hi. >> caller: hi. i have three little points to make so i hope you'd allow me to make them. first i'd like to say that the chinese are really brilliant people. >> i certainly agree. >> caller: yes. what they've done as far as i'm concerned is they have -- they have gotten so much u.s. technology they are at the point of being number one right now, and they didn't have to fight a war to get all of this. they got it just by allowing so many of the u.s. companies to go over there -- >> so you have read my book 100 year marathon, it sounds like. >> caller: i think the u.s. should have at some point put some breaks on and said, you know, let's make sure that we don't do this. and then the thing is that the

worst part about it is that so many of the products that are made in china when they come over here, we the consumers have to pay the same amount for these products, which break very easily, and, you know, we are hurting from all of this. >> joyce, let me hold you off there because i want to let the guest respond for matters of time, too, for mr. pillsbury. >> well, technology theft as i say was not just the idea of the world bank. they would probably condemn it in principle. but what the chinese learned in the late '70s, they came up with a theory science and technology is the most productive force for growth rate. so they mobilized their scientists, sent a large number of students, this year it's reached 350,000 chinese students

in america. basic science, technology, and they often have access to laboratories where they're doing state-of-the-art research. it was this story in nano technology, the grad student went home to china from los angeles and there's a huge success and he gives a press conference -- so i learned all this in california and i brought the nano, one of the very first ones home with me. and this is legal. as numerous as the chinese, with as much very excellent advice, the world bank does all this, should we have have stood aside and applauded the whole thing, for the last 40 years as what we've done, or should we be more concerned about our own role in the world, our own economy and our own jobs. and that's a mistake. it's kind of a wake up call,

look what they're doing. and i'm praising them. i don't think their products are as shabby as the caller said. i think some of their products are quite good. >> i'm just curious, you worked with both bushes? >> yes. >> caller: okay. and kissinger was what part of that? >> a big part. he still is. he was my boss at one point. >> caller: when president trump was in davos, switzerland, january 25th, he called the deep state together to give them a big seminar in history, emphasizing history, 200, 300 years and the plan to go ahead -- >> president xi, you mean? president xi did this at davos or president trump? >> caller: no, no. president trump was in davos, and then kissinger immediately

called together the troops here and various congressmen, and he basically emphasized the point of the plan. for the last 2, 300 years we need educators, only a few ambassadors and a few key positions. he was joined with two other people. i was not impressed. i thought it was very characteristic and a game plan for deep state, one, which i believe is a one world church and a one world government. >> okay, so sicindy, what would you like our guest to address. >> caller: i would like to see if he could expose this, because there's a two state, a deep state right now battling it out in washington. >> the deep state to my point used to be called bure ocacy. we just called the permanent government. and the permanent government has

been changing its collective mind about china. again, it's one of it reasons why i wrote 100 year marathon. some people would consider me a me member of the deep state one, as you're calling it. some people would say president trump is involved in the deep state. he's a billionaire. he's a friend of henry kissinger, he has him in the white house. so the deep state used to be quite pro-china. again, weapon sales to china, cia cooperation with them, looking aside at their technology theft. we were the biggest investor in china. we also took -- we were the biggest purchaser of their products. that's all changing now. and i sense the deep state -- if we can call it that or just the bureaucracy -- slowly shifting. and they realize they got china wrong and they better take a more cautious policy toward china. still cooperation, yes, but competition now is by far more

important. >> let's hear from georgia on our independent line. david, hello. >> caller: good morning. thank you for this segment. i came into it a couple minutes late. i guess first is a question. actually, two questions. i don't know if mr. pillsbury knows of china's attempt to buy our excess energy, energy being electricity and to really be careful because i'm triggered to this in a nondisclosure -- are you concerned china is making an attempt now to buy up excess energy, and the announcing of it might affect our electrical

rates. >> i'm concerned about increasing our exports to china. this is president trump's goal to really double or triple or exports to china. he's demanded that in these negotiations. he wants $100 billion in the first year, additional chinese purchases of our products. now, exactly what that should be, what the mix should be? it should contain some energy. what i'm most concerned about is either penetration of high technology or actual outright forcing american companies to transfer our most advanced technology to china. so i draw the line between we want exports but not everything. >> about the depth that the united states -- i guess the united states holds with china, is that a source of leverage do you think ultimately from the chinese government? >> well, a lot of friends of china and a lot of chinese say it is. i think hillary clinton made a joke one time getting into a fight with your banker.

i think it's overblown. i think it's exaggerated. they need to buy safe treasury bonds somewhere with their massive trillion dollars with a "t" everywhere, and it's pretty safe with treasury bonds. so it's a question of mutual need. i doubt very much they would ever just crash sale of their treasury bonds. there's other countries in line waiting to buy them, so it doesn't really panic me. there's a sign of cooperation going on in the mutual de dependency. >> go ahead and jump in with your question or comment. >> caller: china's a communist country there -- >> and proud of it. >> caller: and we are moving towards socialism. can you explain to the people the difference between socialism

and communism and how they're linked? >> sure. the communists are pretty clear about it. the communists party is in charge of everything. it has what they call the commanding heights of the economy. it controls all major corporations. it has a cell structure so that at every company and every government unit there's a communist party cell that gives the orders and responds to the communist party bureau at the top. as i understand socialism, it's a much broader concept. it means more social equality, and rich people should be taxed more heavily. it's a more philosophical concept without the leadership of a very disciplined communist party. today's "the new york times" has a front page story how far they're pushing it. it changednist past ten years. they're moving more towards communist control in china and

much less towards their old socialist philosophical attitudes. it looks like it began about ten years ago. in the 100 year marathon, one thing i'm very proud of, the people i worked with in china in afghanistan and on the arms sales, they were the hawks of china. they were the real dedicated communists. no free markets, you know, for them. and i maintain those relationships, and they're the ones who warn me over the last ten years, we are changing now. we are going for number one. we're going to be pushed aside by other countries as well as china, so you better prepare yourselves in washington for this new world leader, china. that's kind of a new wakeup call. in the book i distinguish between the moderates and what you might call the -- who we

know really well. and president xi seems to have pivoted towards the hawks. just right after he took over in 2012 he began to use terms like the china dream. that's kind of a dog whistle for this extreme nationalism in china, including racism, by the way. >> michael pillsbury, the author of "the hundred-year marathon," thanks for your time. >> thank you. senators are now reviewing the fbi report into sexual assault allegations against supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh. we expect a vote to limit debate tomorrow with a final confirmation vote possible this weekend. meanwhile senate floor debate continues on the nomination, which you can watch live on c-span 2. we'll also replay all of today's senate debate this evening at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 2. president trump holds a rally later today in minnesota.

he's on the road to campaign for republican candidates running for u.s. senate, u.s. house and governor seats. you can see coverage 7:30 eastern on c-span. your campaign source for 2018. this weekend on american history tv on c-span 3, saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on lectures in history, wake forest university professor david luben on 19th century artist winslow homer. and then on sunday a look how the fashion choices of pat nixon and betty ford reflected the culture of their time. and at 9:00 p.m. eastern the u.s. capitol cornerstone anniversary where president george washington and area free masons first laid the cornerstones of the capitol building during a ceremony that included corn, oil and wine.

watch american history tv this weekend on c-span 3. the senate judiciary subcommittee on federal courts held an oversight hearing to examine the structure, size and operations of federal appeals courts and their respective circuits. a senior judge and two law professors were among those who testified at this hour and a half hearing. >> this hearing is called to order. the federal courts occupy a unique role in constitutional system of republican self-government. one of our bedrock principles of our identity is as a credo nation that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the govern. that idea translates into a pretty straightforward way into the constitution vision for the executive and legislative branches. the american people are never