where were you when it happened? i was there. blackwater blew up the levee. until you go after the truth, this was a undercover land grab. they control the revenue that flows through the city of new orleans. they have control. they outnumber and they voted. the only way for the money to go back to the local people was to move them niggers around. host: we will leave it there. guest: when government breaks down, its bonds 1000 legends, 1000 theories. what happened in katrina was a plain old government failure driven by government snafu and bureaucratic sclerosis and the failure to address fema.

the homeland security failure did more to contribute to katrina than any other event which occurred in the wake of 9/11. fema was decimated. i do not believe that blackwater did it. now, blackwater has done a lot of things. i am not forgetting them. but blowing up a levee? i do not buy it. host: we will talk about that at another time. "greeting high-performance government, a once in a generation opportunity" at the wagner school of government, a professor paul light is the director and has been our guest for the last 45 minutes on "washington journal." thank you for being on the program. guest: it is the wagner school of public service. it has been a pleasure. thank you for the opportunity to host: -- opportunity.

host: wagner.nyu.edu. we will see you tomorrow. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] cable satellite corp. 2011] . >> the senate was scheduled to take a week-long break for july 4, but majority leader read decided senators would return to continue negotiations on the debt and deficit. lawmakers need one week to draft a bill and get it through the house and senate. they will start work on military

operations in libya. they are in at 2:00 p.m. today with a procedural vote at 5:00 p.m. the house returned to legislative business at 2:00 eastern on wednesday with the vote after 6:30. the main work in the house today will be on defense spending for 2012. follow the house live when they return tomorrow, here on c-span. >> mission control, houston. >> roger, discovery. >> asset is on schedule for the final shuttle mission. look back at the shuttle program, starting with the launch of sts 1 columbia.

c-span.org. >> it used to be, we did not released transcripts of arguments. now we release them within a half-hour. it used to be the auditor recordings of the court's argument were released at the end of each term. now it is every week. so we are moving in a particular direction. cameras present all sorts of challenges that these other areas do not. >> right now on our youtube channel, watch chief justice robert comments about cameras in the court room. >> nasa administrator charles bolden last week maintained america's position in space flight after the shuttle program which launches its final

mission this friday. a former astronaut himself, he says he expects private companies to begin carrying cargo to the international space station and less than a year, followed by human transport in three years. he is joined by mark kelly, the husband of gabrielle giffords, representative of arizona. to donate to programs, you can see our website about that. on behalf of our members and worldwide, i would like to welcome our speaker and members of the audience today. our table include tests of our speakers including working journalists. if you hear applause in the audience, we would know members of the general public are in

attendance, so it is not necessarily lack of journalistic of activity. i would also like to welcome c- span, nasa television audiences, and those watching on public -- listening on public radio. you can also follow the action on twitter using the cash tag # poundnpclunch for our head table guest, i will introduce each of you and ask each of you to stand up briefly as your name is announced. we will begin from your right. ken is a writer and former deputy manager of "kipling washington editors." director of client services with social driver and the dynamic chair of our events committee. he is doing a fabulous job.

jim is the managing editor with "aviation week and space technology." david weaver, social administrator for communications at nasa. mark, additional news at npr. captain mark kelly, astronauts, two-time shuttle pilot, commander, most recently commander of sts 134. spouse of a member of congress that has traveled to space. skip over the podium. melissa with news took media. she is the very effective speakers' committee chair who helped to get things going here for armor speakers' committee. lee perry man is the director of

emps with associated press. he has organized two luncheons in a very short amount of time, and we are grateful for that. lowry is the nasa deputy administrator. elaine is the director in chief -- the editor in chief of "aerospace america." chris chambers, a professor at georgetown university and commentator for "russia today." mark, executive director with goi foundation. former national security assignment editor, reuter correspondent and pentagon producer at abc news. [applause] today's luncheon is not just about charles bolden, but about the future of nasa, which he

leads. it is about his vision, president obama's vision, and some daunting and harsh budget realities, and how he will deliver it. headquartered in the nation's capital with more than 18,000 employees, many more working as contractors, nassau also runs tend field centers and a number of research centers around the country. as we all know, nasa has a registry of unique scientific and technological achievement, although its most visible projects of late have been the space shuttle missions. the shuttle program no ending, with no immediate replacement in sight, critics have been skeptical of what nasa will or might become. although the speakers insist there is no retreat from space flight, but that there is an emphasis to do even more more affordably, working with the private sector and partners. it is important to understand

what makes our speaker tick, how he made it to the top of the nation's space agency, only the second astronaut ever in that role. he will begin his third year as nasa calls 12 administrator. he will watch the final space shuttle launch this thursday. a retired general, his green career included 13 years that the master not office. he was named an administrator by the president in 2009. in 2002, george bush tried to link him unsuccessfully as the deputy minister and minister but the pentagon said that he was too valuable to them. born and raised in columbia, south carolina, his parents were indicators. a theme that is ingrained in his dna, according to his staff, which they say explains his passion for education and a drive to inspire young people. his father, who served in the army, taught history and cupp

football. so our guest was involved in sports while his mother kept active in community and academics. he was to meet his future bride when he was 3 years old. their parents had been classmates. in high school, he was the water boy for his father's football team. good practice for working in washington. then the trainer, manager and that a quarterback. he stepped in and saved the day during a state championship when the first string quarterback was injured. he grew up believing he could do anything with hard work and set his sights on an amendment to the naval academy, something that was not in the cards in the segregation of the south. he wrote the vice-president johnson for a recommendation but was told to write back when he was older. after johnson became president, he wrote again and two weeks later, a navy recruiter knocked on his door and the rest is history. he graduated in 1968 and was

commissioned as a contender in the marines, later stationed in thailand. back home in the u.s., station in california, he served in a variety of positions in the marines and received a master's from usc in 1977. he was then assigned to the naval test pilot training school. one of his mentor's was ron mcnair, who was killed in the challenger disaster. it was him who convinced him to apply to the astronaut corps. in 1980, nasa selected our speaker as a candidate. he qualified in 1991 as one of only eight marines on the shuttle program and the first african-american marine to become an astronaut. he flew four shuttle missions, two as pilot, two as commander.

many important nasa assignment ended when his return to the marine corps and epic, the as mention of the naval academy in about. in 1907, it is named deputy commanding general first marine expeditionary force in the pacific, and during the first of a mountain and it served as commanding general of the first marine force forward in support of operation desert founder in kuwait. in 1998, promoted to major general, named deputy commander of forces in japan. serve as commanding general of the third aircraft marine wing in san diego and then retired it from the marine corps in 2003. his military record it -- decorations include the service medal and distinguished flying cross. inducted into u.s. astronaut hall of fame in 2006. he and his wife have three children. please give a warm and national

press club will come to a man that has worn many hats, including a helmet or two and earning his stripes in the process. nasa administrator charles bolden. [applause] >> thank you for that introduction, mark, and to the members of the press club for inviting me to speak this afternoon. i also want to thank my nasa team, who supports me every day, especially my deputy, lori garver, who is here with us today. also with us is one of the amazing astronauts who made the space shuttle program what it is. i am especially proud to be here

representing the nasa team, to be joined by my deputy, who is a long time space enthusiast, as a matter of fact. many in the know her because she ran the national space society for a while and is probably, if not as much, maybe even more of a space buff and i am. be sure something else in common. she has a son who is 16 who is a football player. he is a good football player. i was lousy. he was blessed to have my starting quarterback, down till i get in the game. i could not throw. i could not run. when my starting quarterback was injured, my father looked down the bench and saw me. i could see his heart start to sound. he called me up and told me to go in. his only words to me were, do not throw the football.

[laughter] it was on the evening of the day that president kennedy was assassinated. so for me, it was a day that i shall long remember. kind of a dark evening, especially to be planning for the state championship in south carolina. when he sent me in and said do not throw the ball, i did my best. as the game was winding down, my best friend came in with a play from the sidelines. the play was at 88 left. that is a pass play. i looked to the bench and i knew that gary had made the sub. he was a tight end. i figured that he had called his own play. i looked at my dad and he said, and yes. so i faded back and through this wobbly pass. the good thing is, gary was a good tight end. he managed to catch the ball and we won the game. so i became a local football

hero, if only for a moment. mitch is much better than i am at football. he is a much better quarterback. i call him my godson, because i am impressed with his ability. also with us is captain mark kelly, who has already been introduced. mark is a dear friend and probably more important, is the husband of a dear friend, congresswoman gabrielle giffords. her chief of staff is here right now and she made a gift to me? sometime ago when i visited can be in the hospital. people asked me, what are all these things that you wear? one is for my for eternity, one is a bracelet. the other is my i love gabby band. my wife always talks about these

rings. it has not even become more special. in a trip to europe a couple of weeks ago, we had an audience with pope, and the pope last this, so i count this as special for me. anyway, mark has already been introduced. thank you, marc for your dedication and when you have done for nasa and the nation. it was something that you did not have to do and by immigrant decrees you are with us today. [applause] it goes without saying that our continued bonds and prayers are with gaby. we watch her on going, marcus recover, and we pray that continues. one week from today, nasa will

launch its final space shuttle mission, turning the page on a remarkable period in america's history in space, while beginning the next chapter in our nation's extraordinary story of exploration. from the early exploits of daniel boone, lewis and clark and robert peary to the breakthrough journeys of alan shepard and john glenn, americans have always been a curious people - bold enough to imagine new worlds, ingenious enough to chart a course to them and courageous enough to go for it. and the gifts of knowledge and innovation that we have brought back from the unknown have played their part in the building of our more perfect union. some say that our final shuttle mission will mark the end of america's 50 years of dominance in human spaceflight. as a former astronaut and the current nasa administrator, i'm here to tell you that american leadership in space will continue for at least the next half-century because we have laid the foundation for success - and for nasa failure is not an option. once again, we have the opportunity to raise the bar,

to demonstrate what human beings can do if we are challenged and inspired to reach for something just out of our grasp but not out of our sights. president obama has given us a mission with a capital "m" -- to focus again on the big picture of exploration and the crucial research and development that will be required for us to move beyond low earth orbit. he's charged us with carrying out the inspiring missions that only nasa can do, which will take us farther than we've ever been -to orbit mars and eventually land on it. he's asked us to start planning a mission to an asteroid, and right now our dawn spacecraft is approaching one of the biggest in the solar system, vesta, and we're scheduled to drop into orbit around that asteroid the middle of this month. what it finds out could help inform such a mission. the president is asking us to harness that american spirit of innovation, the drive to solve problems and create capabilities that is so embedded

in our story and has led us to the moon, to great observatories, and to humans living and working in space, possibly indefinitely. that american ingenuity is alive and well, and it will fire up our economy and help us create and win the future now, but only if we put aside our differences and come together to work hard, dream big and imagine endless possibilities. the space shuttle is an amazing vehicle, and the incredible program it pioneered has taught us many things and helped make tomorrow's exploration possible. every shuttle mission has showcased the amazing talents and expertise of our astronauts in robotics and science. each mission was different. each was exceptional and challenging and expanded our capabilities as a nation and a world. atlantis' destination next

week, the international space station, or iss as we call it, is the centerpiece of our human space flight activities for the coming decade, and what a centerpiece it is! with almost a million pounds of hardware, measuring over the length of a football field and with an interior volume greater than a 747 aircraft, traveling at 17,500 miles per hour around the earth 16 times a day, it is occupied by an international crew of 6 actively participating in over 100 research investigations at any given time. in just a little over a decade, the iss has expanded our knowledge of man's ability to live and work in space; and it has become one of the most important beacons of international cooperation as it orbits our earth. the station is the pinnacle of our current achievement, a stepping-stone to the rest of the solar system and the tip of what comes next.

the shuttle allowed us to build and support the station, and the orbiting outpost's research capabilities are unprecedented. the station has housed more than 1,200 experiments to date, supporting more than 1,600 scientists representing 59 countries worldwide. every research investigation and all of the systems that keep the iss operational help us figure out how to explore farther from our planet and improve life here. studies of how our bodies respond to a microgravity environment ensure we can live and work successfully as we travel farther from earth and help us better understand the impacts of medical conditions encountered both in space and on earth. solar power and water processing are two examples of how we are learning to better operate a spacecraft independent of resources supplied from earth. we need to break the ties to our home planet and learn to live and work in space without

direct dependence on earth. the iss can be a platform for us to learn these skills. technology demonstrations on the iss will support future missions and help us improve the reliability, for instance, of future life support systems and all of the many other things we'll need to understand in depth to really become a spacefaring people who can safely reach our destinations. so when i hear people say - or listen to media reports - that the final shuttle flight marks the end of u.s. human spaceflight, i have to say, these folks must be living on another planet. we are not ending human space flight, we are recommitting ourselves to it and taking the necessary - and difficult - steps today to ensure america's pre-eminence in human space exploration for years to come but we have to do things differently.

for one, we have to get out of the business of owning and operating low earth orbit transportation systems and hand that off to the private sector, exercising sufficient oversight to ensure the safety of our astronauts. we need to focus on deep space exploration, while empowering today's innovators and entrepreneurs to carry out the rest. this new approach to getting our crews and cargo into orbit will create good jobs and expand opportunities for the american economy. and let me be crystal clear about this: i believe that american companies and their spacecraft should send our astronauts to the international space station, rather than continuing to outsource this work to foreign governments. that is what this administration is committed to, and that is what we are going to do. along with supporting the iss and commercial crew transportation, nasa will pursue two critical building

blocks for our deep space exploration future -- a deep space crew vehicle and an evolvable heavy-lift rocket. and we will make the technology investments required to begin the era of deep space exploration today. our destinations for humans beyond earth remain ambitious. they include: the moon, asteroids, and mars. our investments in the systems, research and technology for deep space will prioritize a logical sequence of future human exploration missions and forge a tighter bond between robotic and human exploration. the debate is not if we will explore, but how we'll do it. not if there will be human spaceflight, but the right path to the next generation of systems. the shuttle is an expensive system to maintain. it has served us well. but now is the time to cut the cost of transportation to low

earth orbit and foster the american aerospace base and its amazing potential to become a job-creating engine for decades to come. nasa's 21st century mission will focus on the transportation systems that will carry us beyond where we have been, to new destinations and new milestones in the annals of human history. so we're one week from a very important human spaceflight milestone, but far from the final one. we celebrate the shuttle's 30 years of success, which is longer than any other u.s. human spaceflight program. the shuttle has expanded our picture of what it means to be an astronaut. and we salute the hundreds of men and women who have carried out the program's missions both in space and on the ground. we also remember the hard lessons learned that have helped us to continually improve safety.

we shall always remember the crews of sts-51l, challenger, and sts-107, columbia, who made the ultimate sacrifice. i spent 14 years at nasa before leaving and then returning to head the agency. some of the people i respect most in the world are my fellow astronauts. some of my best friends died flying on the shuttle. and i'm not about to let human spaceflight go away on my watch. i'm not going to let it flounder because we pursued a path that we couldn't sustain. it is vital that we keep exploring, not only so we can learn to live and work other places and find out what that means for us as the human race, but also so the benefits of that exploration continue to return to the earth. so we keep generating new knowledge about our planet and our universe and new solutions to the challenges our planet faces on many levels. president obama has put nasa and several other technology- focused agencies at the

forefront of the innovation agenda for this country. we're pleased to be an essential part of this national focus on research and development, which will greatly improve our future and give coming generations more choices in how they face planetary challenges and seek knowledge about the universe beyond. we will maintain and grow u.s. leadership in space and derive all the benefits that flow from it. tomorrow's space program is taking shape right now. earlier this year, i made a decision to base the new multi- purpose crew vehicle, or mpcv - our deep space crew module -- on the original work we've done on the orion capsule. the spacecraft will carry four astronauts for 21-day missions and be able to land in the pacific ocean off the california coast. it is designed to be much safer during ascent and entry than the shuttle. we're nearing a decision on the heavy lift rocket, the space

launch system, or sls, and will announce that soon. complemented by a host of technology developments, these two systems will open up the entire solar system to us. i have established program offices for both mpcv and sls at the johnson space center in houston, and the marshall space flight center in huntsville, alabama, respectively. i have established our commercial crew program office at the kennedy space center, and we're going to work on upgrading the center's launch facilities, one of our most valuable national resources, to accommodate more kinds of users. and speaking of those facilities at ksc and across the agency, we have had tremendous interest from our commercial space partners in re-using or leasing these assets - and are close to making some major announcements about them soon. the re-use of our unique nasa assets, like the orbiter processing facilities, will help these companies keep their costs down and create jobs for the space industry of tomorrow. the mid-atlantic regional

spaceport is taking shape at our wallops flight facility in virginia. one of the first customers will be orbital sciences corporation, with its taurus ii rocket. last week, we issued a call for proposals for mission concept studies of a solar electric propulsion system demonstration, just one of many technologies we need to advance and validate as we seek to reach those farther destinations. consider how the architectural options for human exploration of our solar system will change as we develop the space technologies for which there is wide consensus we need: better in-space propulsion systems; refueling depots in orbit; inflatable habitats; high- reliability life support systems; high-bandwidth communications; adaptive avionics; radiation protection; integrated human/robotics operations; and precision navigation systems. our partners in the commercial

orbital transportation service program, spacex and orbital sciences, continue to meet milestones. the new participants in the second round of our commercial crew development program have just met their first set of milestones required by nasa, and are on a path for continued success. recently, my deputy lori garver and i have had the chance to visit the facilities of some of our industry partners like blue origin and sierra nevada. they're working diligently, and the hardware and systems they're creating and testing are amazing. the energy and ideas in the field are palpable. all of this is just the early days of our push into the next chapter of human spaceflight. in addition to this human space flight progress, we have a large number of amazing science missions coming up. just in the next six months, we launch the juno mission to jupiter. we put the dawn satellite i mentioned into orbit around a

giant asteroid in the main asteroid belt for the first time later this month. in september, we launch the twin grail probes that will use changes in the moon's gravity to study its interior. the curiosity rover heads for mars in november. in the coming years we'll undertake many more world-class science missions to observe our planet, reach destinations throughout the solar system and peer deeper into the universe. at the same time, we'll advance aeronautics research, in partnership with other agencies and the aircraft industry, to create a safer, more environmentally friendly and efficient air travel network called nextgen. it's true that the aerospace field faces many significant challenges; but challenges can also serve as catalysts for innovation. no doubt, we're going to have to develop new ways of doing business. the orion government and industry team, for example, has shown exceptional creativity in finding ways to keep costs down

through new management techniques, technical solutions and innovation. but right now, at this historic moment, america is leading once again by making hard choices that will define us anew. we're taking these bold actions because that's what we need to do to create and win the future. thanks to the many achievements of nasa and its partners, the brave and talented men and women who have soared into space and developed so many cutting edge science missions, we now have a strong foundation from which to pursue those larger goals. the space shuttle gave us tremendous insight into how humans can live, travel and work in space. because of the shuttle, we have the iss, which is giving us the breakthroughs in human health research that will help us reach and return from those new destinations and inspire the next generation of leaders. we have choices today. do we want to keep repeating

ourselves, or do we want to look at the big horizon and do the inspirational things we have always challenged ourselves to do? my generation touched the moon. together with those that followed, we built the iss. today, nasa - and the nation - wants to touch an asteroid and eventually send humans to mars. nasa is moving forward and making change, because the status quo is no longer acceptable. we need future generations to be able to do more than we can today. the students and early career scientists and engineers i speak to around the world have a ton of energy and enthusiasm. they're excited about the chance to do something new - to be on the ground floor of the next big frontier of human exploration; to put their big ideas into practice; and they should be. if you're studying in a stem discipline today, you are going

to have a great career ahead of you. not just at nasa, but at other government agencies or in private industry or academia. so when that final shuttle landing occurs, and the cheers and tears subside, we will keep on moving toward where we want to go next. your kids and my grandkids - they're going to do things that today we can barely dream about. our nation has made great progress throughout its history by innovating solutions to meet grand challenges: to build an intercontinental railway, or land a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth. these challenges not only motivated a technological workforce - they also created new technologies and innovation along the way. these achievements inspired generations to pursue challenging goals, created new industries and ultimately improved our country and our world.

fifty years ago, a young president gave nasa a grand challenge, one chosen not for its simplicity, but for its audacity, to "best measure and organize our collective energies and skills." in accomplishing that goal, nasa not only defined america, it made a lasting imprint on the economic, national security and geopolitical landscape of the time. today, we have another young president, barack obama, who has outlined an urgent national need to out-innovate, out- educate, and out-build our competitors and create new capabilities that will take us farther into the solar system and help us learn even more about our place in it. president obama not only honors the kennedy space legacy, but

also again challenges the nation with his vision for the next era of exploration. and nasa is ready for this grand challenge. thanks. i'll be glad to take your questions. [applause] >> thank you. we have a lot of questions coming from the audience. as we mentioned earlier, the want to give captain kelley an opportunity to speak before the top of the hour. i want to talk about the environment we are now operating in in washington, the news of the day, thematically with in washington involves the budgetary reality i i alluded to in my introduction. it seems as if right now there

are a lot of wheels in motion. there seems to be a lot of risk to the federal funding environment, in the sense the white house and congress are trying to come to terms on an agreement that could include avoiding a rather dangerous debt ceiling deadline down the road. so we have a short-term problem and a long-term problem. can you talk about the risk to the work you're talking about here in the short term, as well as the intermediate or long- term? just because of this problem all along? >> i think as i have tried to say in my remarks, america is the foremost leader in space exploration. no question about that. when i travel overseas and talk to my international partners, a knowledge that. we're going to explore. we have set out on a course where we are going to explore even further into deep space. our focus from now, as i hope i've got it all to understand, is in safely fly out the

shuttle. a program that we started six years ago with a well organized transition plan. we are about to realize that mark flew the next to the last mission. we are going to launch sts-135 next week and effectively close out the space shuttle program. we have the 2010 authorization act, produced by a bipartisan vote of congress, signed into law by the president, and supported with a full year cr that provides our funding. again, through bipartisan action in congress and signed into law by the president. the elements of that act i talked about in my comments. i am confident in spite of all of that turns around us, the future is bright. it is most important that america remains the leader. our primary focus after shuttle will be to make sure we have a viable domestic space industry so that we do not have to rely

on international partners to get us to and from the international space station. >> it seemed because of the budgetary environment we are in, that there is a general acceptance of the idea that we need to hand off a good deal of this work to the private sector. an environment where the risk seems to be rising, essentially, america cannot avoid a lot of things. is the risk growing that the government cannot be as much in the business of space in the future? >> let me step back for a minute. how much remind everyone. long before the present economic crisis. in the national space act, it sent to the greatest extent possible you less commercially available assets to do our work. we have been doing that for years in terms of the earth sensing data, and the like the

previous administration after the columbia accident said we need to bring about a viable commercial space industry so that nasa can be about exploration. everyone has known owning and operating a low earth transportation system is not in the best interest of the nation, that it distracts from our ability of the nation to run and grow that particular aspect of space flight. this did not start as a result of the crisis and is not a response to our financial crisis. it is the smart thing to do. >> i am talking about the risk at the moment. >> ok. my first lead, when i became nasa administrator was to look out for the safety of the crew's going to and from space, maintain the safety of crews going on the international space station. that has not changed. we will simply fly out the shuttle, safely conduct operations, and then safely

oversee the operation of commercial space entities. i'm confident that will be done well. i will tell you, if you look at any of the major companies today, whether entrepreneurial or otherwise, in many of them, you will see familiar faces. they will be former astronauts now in executive positions. if you look at spacex, we have several individuals that i akno. i am confident that safety will not be compromised because we have nasa engineers, flight directors, controllers, that are transitioning not out of the aerospace business, but to the new arena for -- access to low earth orbit. >> this is not a new question but one that seem to persist to some degree. we have had some of our greatest space heroes testify on capitol hill, to say that we think

national security is in a tied to the nation's space program. there is a certain level of uncomfortableness that we have doing business with national partners, and to some degree, taking the tradition that we have in nasa and the government sector, transferring it, to some degree, to the private sector. to what degree can you recognize the ability of the argument that they make? -- validity of the argument that they make? >> i can only say everyone that you mentioned, i consider personal friends. i respectfully disagree with the position that they have frequently taken because we are doing things that are in the national interest that will ensure our national security by producing or facilitating the success of a viable commercial space entity for this nation. we will grow our technology, jobs. everyone will admit, what is most important to the nation today, is increasing our

technological work force, insuring people have places to work, and the space program that president obama in vision, and is my task to carry out with the help of our nasa contractors and civil servants, is a vibrant commercial use to get to low earth orbit while we explore. i cannot imagine, when i flew the hubble telescope mission, the deploy mission, i do not think anyone imagined what it would do to change our respective on the universe. without shuttle, hubbell would not even be in existence today. and it definitely would not be writing the text books on a planetary science, and other things of that nature. we are going to continue to do that. i was with some congressional intern's earlier. i asked them if any of them had a parent or relative who had to go to the hospital in an ems and

vehicle. several of them had. i ask them, did it strike you as strange that when they arrived to the hospital, the doctor knew everything about their vital signs and knew where to put them and everything? it was not planned that way. happened because we decided, following president kennedy, that we were going to send humans to the moon. we realized, a quarter million miles is a long way. we do not have that much cable. so we have to be able to find ways to know how our astronauts are doing. so wireless communications, by medical instrumentation developed. not because we needed it, but out of necessity. that is what space exploration does for us and what is so important that i be able to carry out president obama's vision for increasing the amount of technological development.

the things that we do in space are vital for our national security. >> you mention or models pipes, -- orbital science, and in so far there is a great overlap between defense contracting and the space business, how do you guard against the transfer of technology out of these governments that might be hostile to us? >> i do not have a real problem with that because there are a lot of law that help me make sure i do not do that. since you mentioned orbital and spacex, going back to how we are going to explore, you may have mentioned in my introduction we are going to do things in space. i think you will find those two entities in less than a year will be under contract for us, access to lower or that -- low

earth orbit. the reason i talked about the critical importance of the domestic capability to get pardoned and crew to orbit is because if we do not have to rely on interest -- international entities, there are certain things we can do domestically that take care of national security interests. growing our international outrage is critical, a bottle part of our national security policy. but we need to have our own integral. >> the question asks realistically, how soon can a commercial company five astronauts? does -- as an aviator and that's not yourself, how you feel about flying commercial? >> i have just said, i think -- when we ask the commercial entities how long it will take -- and our previous experience

is about three years after we let the first contract, we should have a viable commercial to the ability to take humans to space, and i think that is correct. some say it will be even shorter. we are saying about three years. so roughly, around 2015, if you want to put a date on it. what do i think about commercial space, if i were a commercial after not? i would not be a -- hear touting after it if i was not willing to go get it. people ask me, would you fly if i was offered the opportunity? i say, please do not tell my wife, but in a heartbeat. >> if someone had the money -- and it is apparent through the russian space program -- that it is possible to buy a ticket into a space program. there is evidence of that in richard branson's opportunities, but when do you see that happening on and more of a

corporate racist? >> i do not want to give you an approximate date. -- a more appropriate basis? it is the type of operation that richard branson is doing. plain people who want to experience space flight. it is a repeat of the alan shepard first flight into space. one goes into space and then comes back, gets to view the planet from an incredible vantage point that many people, to this date, have not had an opportunity to do. i think that is around the corner. not that many years away, if not within a couple of years. >> considering a number of expeditions to the international space station, what is the future of the astronaut corps, and how the retain and attract those that are interested? >> the good news is, i do not

have a problem attracting people to the astronaut corps. i have a problem selecting from the thousand that apply. the fact that america is the leading nation in terms of exploration attractive young men and women, the fact that they can see there is a real possibility that they can go to space very soon because we are not leaving space, and we are going to be occupying the international space station until at least 2020, if not beyond. they see there are opportunities to fly into space. there is no cap. we will get them there. the fact that they see we are trying to get a viable commercial entity in place means even more people will have an opportunity to venture into space. so there are a lot of things we are doing to attract young people to follow in my footsteps. i am hoping we have many more that do that. >> i understand we have a member

of that-not core that would like to make a statement. >> mark kelly needs no introduction. he has become quite a figure after deciding he was going to split his time, if you will. he is it an incredible husband and father, and even more incredible commander for space shuttle missions. mark is a veteran of four flights, commander for sts-134. i consider him a true friend. mark, if you would come forward and give us an message. [applause] >> good afternoon, everybody. it is great to be here. great to see some familiar faces in the audience. i appreciate the kind words from general bolden about the time that i spent at nasa. has been a tremendous honor to be an astronaut and to follow in

the footsteps of some really great pioneers like alan shepard, john glenn, neil armstrong, and so many others that have led us into the space age. since i joined nasa 15 years ago, i have been privileged to take four trips into space, all to the international space station. it has been an amazing ride. as i watched iss fade away into the distance when i last departed space station on the 30th of may, i could not help but think that what an amazing accomplishment this has all been. american ingenuity and the vision to build a strong international partnership is what made this such a great success. with the addition of the alpha magnetic spectrometer, which we

installed six weeks ago, we now have it completed an incredibly capable laboratory in space. i expect this new instrument will revolutionize particle physics research and add to the significant discoveries that will certainly be the legacy of the space station program. ams nyone heard a of theam in this office? it was a $2 billion cost a particle detector. we did not pay for most of that. it is actually paid for by 16 different countries. 60 different universities involved, 600 physicists. ams does what hubble does not do. hubbell has been an amazing tool for astronomers and astrophysicists. it shows us galaxies, how they

looked within 500 million years, 1 billion years after the big bang. so what a ms will tell us is what are those things made of? the way it will do that is coming in the beginning when the universe was created, there was a lot of hydrogen and helium. we know that. we know there was a lot of matter. when something comes out of nothing, if there is a positive, there should be a negative, is what astrophysicists will tell you. so not only should there have been matter, there should have been anti-matter. we do not know what happened to the anti-matter. we know that with matter, atoms of oxygen and nitrogen are created within stars. but anti-matter, if there is an anti-oxygen or nitrogen atom, that would be created in a star,

too. so if we can detect just one particle like that, through this detector, then we know it came from something, a star, made of anti-matter. so a lot of those galaxies that we look at with the hubble space telescope might actually not be made out of stuff like this. it might be made out of the opposite of that. so is a really exciting time for signs on the space station, and is certainly going to add to the science program. as we continue to live and work on iss we also hope to open a new chapter in space, one that includes new launch vehicles and destination in and beyond earth orbit. how exciting will it be to see the next generation of astronauts -- it will not be too early for me. it will be someone else. how exciting it will be to see someone visit an asteroid or

venture further into our solar system. it will really be something. as we enter into this fourth of july weekend, i cannot help but reflect on how we have been a nation of explorers for over 200 years. it is our responsibility, all of us, to maintain that leadership in the exploration of space. president kennedy told us, and i quote, "our leadership in science and industry, our hopes in peace and security, our obligations to ourselves and others, all require us to make this effort." many of you have been following the recovery of my wife. she is doing well, so russia could not be here today. we are both so appreciative of the outpouring of support, the hopes and prayers of so many people, are a tremendous source of strength to her, but also to me, our family, her friends, and

her staff. i love her very much. but i have to say, i also love the space shuttle very much. the space shuttle has been very good to this country. it is an incredible ship that is difficult to let go. in just one week from today, the space shuttle will rocket off the planet one last time. how many people have not seen this before? just a couple of hands. i assume everybody has seen a space shuttle flight in person? probably a lot of you have not. well, you have one week to figure it out. i suggest you get down there and do this. charlie and laurie can help you with that. [laughter] so as atlanta's head off on its last mission, we can all be a little bit sad for a while. it is ok. i will be said. but also know that nasa will open a new and exciting chapter.

we are going to continue to inspire our children and we will continue to be a great investment for the american people. as somebody might know, i announce my retirement from the navy and nasa a couple of weeks ago. it was great to complete my last flight in the navy and at nasa by landing the space shuttle on june 1. was the highlight of my career. since then, there has been quite a bit of speculation about what my plans are. to a plan to run for public office? i find it interesting, it must be a really slow summer out there. i will go into more detail about that next week, when i visit iowa and new hampshire. [laughter] in all seriousness -- my main focus right now, and for the foreseeable future is gabby's

recovery and spending more time with my kids. she is the politician in the family, i am the space die. i see no reason to change that now. so thank you. [applause] >> we are almost out of time bickered before i ask a last question -- out of time. before i ask a last question, we have some housekeeping matters to take care of. we will discuss the future of journalism in the chairman of the nuclear regulatory commission will join us. if i could ask what the our guest speakers to come up for just a moment.

i do have a last question as well as a couple of more things. i will ask my question now. forbore to do, a very important question. what was your favorite food in space? >> shrimp cocktail. israel jumbo shrimp -- it is real jumbo shrimp with cocktail sauce. you add a little water, and it is back to normal. >> favorite food in space? >> he stole my answer. most people tend to like that. also, those cupcakes. fortunately, the way we package stuffed, you would not be able to read nascent on there. we have 400 options, so i also like the creamed spinach, believe it or not. a lot of the crew members think it is pretty disgusting, but there you go.

>> here are the other two housekeeping matters. a complementary national press club coffee mug. another thing that i notice, and i sent this to gary yesterday. short hair cuts are all the rage, so i would like to present you with complementary natural -- national press club baseball hats. air around applause for our speakers today. thank you. [applause] i would like to thank all of you for being here and thank the press club staff including the library and broadcast center. you can find out more about the press club at our web site and you can get a copy of today's program at www.press.org. thank you and we are adjourned. [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

>> missing control houston. >> roger, discovery. >> nasa is on schedule for the final mission of the space shuttle program friday with the launch of the sts-135 atlantis. you can explore what is ahead for nasa online on the c-span and the library. search, watch, clip, and share. c-span has launched a new website for politics in the 2012 presidential race with the latest events in the campaign trail, biography information, facebook updates from candidates and political reporters, links to c-span partners. c-span.org/campaign2012. >> "the supreme court" is now

available as a standard and enhanced e-book. 11 c-span interviews with current and retired justices. it now includes an interview with the latest supreme court justice, elena kagan. you can watch multimedia clips from all of the justices. available now wherever e-books are sold. >> will the 21st century belonged to china? that was the question posed at a debate in the toronto with former secretary of state henry kissinger and cnn host fareed zakaria. were hosted by the munk debates to debate current issues. this is just under two hours. ♪ ♪

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♪ ♪ >> ladies and gentlemen, welcome to toronto, canada, for the munk debates on china. i am the co-organizer with my partner and it is my privilege, once again come to be your moderator. i want to welcome the thousands of people watching this debate on line, live on the internet right now at munkdebates.com. it is terrific to have you as a

part of tonight's proceedings. a warm hello to the millions of people watching, reading, and listening to this debate everywhere from the australian broadcasting corporation, to cease and drug the united states, to "the people's daily" in china, and through our media partnership with "the financial times of london" in their prestigious china confidential unit. hello, too, to canadians coast- to-coast watching from cbc, c- pac, our own national public affairs channel, and on the network where i host a daily television show, bnn. great to have you, too. finally, if i look around this hall filled to capacity, 2700 people, who have come out again

to roy thomson hall. all those associated with this project thank you for your support for the simple idea to which this service is dedicated which is to create venues like this where we can gather together as citizens to debate the big geopolitical issues that are changing canada and the world. the success of this series, its ability to bring to toronto some of the world's sharpest thinkers, brightest minds, would not be possible without the philanthropic creativity and generosity of two individuals. i would like all of us here tonight to join me in a round of applause for our host committee the co-founders, peter and me lanie munk. [applause] melanie m unk.

[applause] for the moment we have all been waiting for, we have a motion before it, be it resolved the 21st century will belong to china. all we need now is our debaters. we will have those arguing for the motion, neall ferguson and david lee. [applause] now let's welcome their formidable opponents on to the stage, farid zakaria and henry kissinger.

[applause] to introduce our debaters, ferguson is well known to our debaters. he and charles krauthammer bes ted their opponents. he has added to his best- selling books with the publication of "the ascent of money." most important is, "civilization, the west and the rest."

[applause] our next evader joins us directly from beijing, china where he is the head of the global economics department. his family was displaced by the cultural revolution. he still has members of this. 28 years later, he received his ph.d. from harvard. one of only three directors of the central bank of china. he represents a new generation of leadership. he has 3 million followers on

the chinese the equivalent of twitter. [applause] zakaria as you will hear tonight, fareed is one of the most provocative u.s. bankers on america's role

in the world and its rising powers. fareed zakaria, a pleasure to have you here. [applause] now, our final debater. he has played a central role in global affairs for the last half century. his public service has been rightly honored by the nobel peace prize and the presidential medal of freedom. most important to us, he is the single individual arguably here today internationally who can given his china's rise role in bringing china back after their cultural revolution. tonight, he makes history again dissipating in his very first public debate on china or any other subject to. ladies and gentlemen, please

welcome the 56 the secretary of state of the united states, dr. henry kissinger. [applause] let's briefly renter how this will unfold. each debater will have six minutes to make their case for and against this motion. talking about timing, there will be a clock on the screen. when you see the countdown to 0, join me in a round of applause for the debater which will insure that we continue this debate in a timely fashion. after the opening statements, we will have our debaters cross-

examine each other's views and opinions. then we will bring you, the audience, and to the conversation. we have some notable, interesting people in the audience tonight that we will call on. we have students from the munk school of public affairs. we have questions from our own web site, facebook come and twitter which i will read into the conversation. let's see. this audience vote coming into this evening when it was a question of the do you believe the 21st century will belong to china? let's take a look at those numbers up on the screen. this is the pre-audience vote. interesting. 39% of you believe yes, of the century could be owned by china. 21% do not know, they will be the swing vote in play. the next question that we asked

is, would be open to changing your mind depending on what you hear over the course of the debate? let's have those results, please. wow. look at that. ladies and gentlemen, we officially have a debate on our hands. welcome to get us started as we have a previously agreed on, niall ferguson. will have six minutes for your opening statement. >> thank you very much. i believe the 21st century will belong to china because most centuries have belonged to china. [laughter] the 19th and 20th the were the exception. 18 of the last 20 saw china as, by some margin, the largest economy in the world.

it is more a continent than a country. if china organized like europe, it would have to be divided into 90 nation states. there are cities in china with a population of more than 6 million. there is only one in europe and that is london. there are 11 european union states with populations of less than 6 million. in just 30 years, the chinese economy has grown by a factor of at very nearly 10 and the imf recently projected that it will be the largest economy in the world in just five years time. it has already overtaken the u.s. in the manufacturing and it it is the biggest automobile market. the demand for cars in china

will increase by tenfold in the years to come. by 2035, china will be using 20% of all global energy. it used to be reliant on foreign direct investment, but today with $3 trillion in international reserves and a sovereign wealth on with $200 billion, china is the investor. what is perhaps most impressive is that china is catching up in terms of innovation and in terms of education. they are about to overtake germany in terms of new patents granted. in recent survey of educational attainment at the age of 15, the region of shanghai came in top in mathematical attainment with a score of 600. united states was 25th with 487. canada got 527. better, but not good enough.

ladies and gentleman, it is not easy being a biographer debating against his own subjects. [laughter] it is like a james boswell had to debate. what i propose to do it in a rather diplomatic way is to try and show you that dr. kissinger, and possibly fareed zakaria are, through no fault of their own, are on the wrong side of this resolution. [applause] can i quote from dr. kissinger's new book on china, page 493. "china's quest for equal partnership with the u.s. is no longer the claim of a vulnerable country, but increasingly reality backed by financial and economic capacities." or i could quote fareed.

"china is a country whose scale dwarfs the united states. china is hungry for success." the fascinating thing is that these two great geopolitical bankers agreed that the chinese economic challenge is also a challenge to the homogeny of the world and the united states. "an explicit american project to organize a job on the basis of containing china or creating a block of democratic states for an ideological crusade is unlikely to succeed." he hopes, as he concludes, for peaceful co-evolution but he fears what happened when the rise of germany challenged the united kingdom. for me, it is not just about china.

the key to the 21st century really lies in the decline of the west. the financial crisis caused by excessive borrowing and subsidized gambling, a fiscal crisis that means the u.s. will soon be spending more on debt than defense, the game of russian roulette over the u.s. debt ceiling, and a moral crisis personified by the legislature named to come and possibly, -- named, impossibly, weiner. an overweight and oversexed america, and europe, are on the slide. "you could stop and think of what would happen if anyone with a decent system of country got a hold of that mainland. good god, you put 800 million

chinese to work under a decent system and they will be the leaders of the world." i salute the achievement of that administration in reopening relations in 1972. it is an achievement to which no one contributed more to than henry kissinger. and not ask you to vote against him, but for his own analysis. that places him and his partner tonight firmly on our side of the debate. i urge you to support the resolution. thank you. [applause] >> fareed zakaria. >> my role in this debate has

been to lower the average age of this debate team. i will try to do that as best i can without lowering the average iq, which appear will also happen. bear with me and henry will correct all the mistakes i make including, i hope, firing his biographer. i actually was a little worried about having to debate with henry. the man is a legendary genius. part of debating in listening to the other side, i remember the story i stole about henry and it is what we journalists call "too good to check." it goes like this. henry kissinger has this legendary accent. germans say he has an accent, even in german. apparently he has an older brother, a couple of years older than him who speaks normal

american english. someone asked the brothers, "what explains the difference?" it is very simple. henry never listens. as i say, i hope that was too good to check. i want to make three points about china. china is not going to be the dominant power of the 21st century. this will not belong to china for three reasons -- economic, political, and geopolitical. economic. one thing we have realized is that nothing goes up in a straight line forever. china looks like they are about to inherit the world, but japan looked like that for a while. they were the second-largest economy in the world. i do not know how many of you can remember all of details we were told about how the world would become japanese and we were all going to be eating sushi.

rust that prediction did not work out. if you think about it, and most have grown that way for 20-25 years and then they shift downward to 5% or 6%. i am not predicting a chinese crash. i am saying they will follow that lot of large numbers and regress at some point to a slower growth rate. perhaps later than the others because it is a much larger country, but it is worth pointing out that there are massive inefficiencies built into the chinese system. they have a huge property bubble. growth is highly inefficient. they take in direct foreign investment every month were india takes it in over -- every year and they only grow 2% faster than india. it is not as impressive as it appears. massive investment, a huge number of airports, highways, high-speed rail.

if you look at what you are getting out of it in terms of the return of investment, not as investment. china has a huge problem that they face. the u.n. can out with a report that pointed out that china will have a demographic collapse of the next 25 years. they will lose 400 million people. there is no point in human history in which you have had a dominant power in the world that is also declining demographically. it simply does not happen. if you want to look at what a country in demographic decline looks like, look at japan. how powerful is it? politically, even if china is the largest economy in the world, and those numbers are all based on purchasing power parity where there gdp gets inflated because the cost of a hair cut is less than one in toronto, but your international power does not depend on the price of hair cuts but foreign aid, oil, and international

investments, aircraft carriers. for all of that, you need a real, hard currency. let's say china becomes the largest economy in the world. does it have the political capacity to exercise the kind of leadership that you need? remember. japan was the second-largest economy for decades, and i did not see any kind of grand hegemonic design. you need the political capacity to be able to exercise that kind of leadership. henry will talk more about these issues, but i want to telegraph to them by saying this is a country ruled by a political system that is in crisis. it is unclear whether the next succession. per will look anything like this current one. china has not solved the basic problem of what they will do when it creates a middle-class and how they will respond to the aspirations of those people. when time one went with a similar process, we saw a

transition to democracy. when south korea went through it, we saw a transition to democracy. these were fairly bloody and chaotic. as niall has reminded us, it is a very large, complex country. imagine this political and social instability in that process. finally, one. about the geopolitics. -- one point about geopolitics. there is china, inda, and japan. there is no asia. they do not like each other. as china rises, there will be a spirited response in india comment japan, indonesia, south korea. china is not rising in a vacuum, but rising in which a continent in which there are very many competitors. [applause] ompetitors. [applause]

>> two very professional debaters landing it right both on the six-minute mark. david lee, you're next. >> good evening, ladies and gentlemen. as the only one from china i am extremely handicapped in this debate -- because -- i'm serious. we do not advocate debates, especially not against a sage. but today, i urge to you read all the bestsellers done by my co-debaters. they are much better at complaining the huge amount of changes in the process. by their books you'll get all the challenges on the changes. today i'm advocating their points, however, i would like to share with you three simple points summarized by three key

words. first key world is energy. what you are witnessing at most is only halfway done in the journey of chinese changes. what we'll see is continued change in china. why? because there's energy. there's still energy there in our gas tanks for continued change, whether it's economic or political. why? because the changes came from the spectacular clash between the civilizations, between china and the west as early as 170 years ago. the clash was total failure for the chinese. it came as a big humiliation for us from gene rations through generations. even today our young kids are taking these lessons. and these huge humiliations created huge amounts of reactions and overreactions in the chinese, including the

accomplishment of the communist party 90 years to the day. so after the founding of the republic 62 years ago, we've seen overreaction of the communist party as a government in the form of the cultural evolution, which did not do good for the chinese own interests. until 33 years ago, big change happened which we call reform and opening up. reform imapplies gradual evolution improvements in our institutions, whether it's political or economic. opening up means to learn from the west. just like fareed was challenging. no detective, just do it.

i wouldn't with a friend of munk detective. i would be a friend of nike shoes, however. just do it. through the past 30 years of change shows the power of reform and opening up. today i will tell you, young people are not satisfied with the progress the -- we've made. they're eager to push for more reforms, more opening up with the power of the internet. the first message, energy. energy is still there in the gas tank. what are we driving for? destination is the key world revival. it is revival of our great civilization 1,500 years ago. it's not a revenge with the west. it's not emulation. it's not to emulate the success of the u.s. in the absolute dominance of the world. rather it's revival of the

status to have peaceful self-confident, open-minded civilization. that destination of this change which is only at most halfway through. that's the second keyword, revival. the third key world is through. what kind of influence will china have in the world? maybe 0 years from now. i would strongly argue that the influence will be multidimensional. first, china's emergence has given hope to poor countries in the world such as people in africa. they say to themselves, look, china was so poor originally. being so constrained in natural resources. if china can make it, why not ourselvess? so we are giving hope to the poor fellows in the world. it gave us an alternative model of social and economic

institutions, different in the west, different from the u.s. in this model, compared with the western models, more weight is given to social welfare, to social well-being to, social stability rather than fewer individual liberties. the third dimension of influence is international relations. china's revival of the swavelization is giving us a new picture of international relations in which china is looking for peace and collaboration just like we've been seeing in the past two and a half years of the global financial crisis. so overall i wouldn't impose my confusion upon you. i would like you to draw your conclusion. continuous change with energy, big revival, and positive international influence. you draw your conclusions. thank you. [applause]

>> well, i can't believe i'm about to say this, but dr. kissinger, you have six minutes. >> for somebody who was brought up on german, six minutes are barely enough to place a verb. my colleagues up here have spoken of the magnitude of china. i admire china. i respect its tremendous achievements, and nobody can deny, and in fact, i would affirm what china has achieved in the 40 years that i've been able to observe it directly. but the issue before us is whether the 21st century

belongs to china. and i would say that china will be preoccupied with enormous problems internally, with domestically with its immediate environment and that i have enormous difficulty imagining a world dominated by china. and, indeed, as i will conclude, i believe that the concept that some country will dominate the world is in itself a misunderstanding of the world in which we now live. china has achieved great things economically, but it had to produce every year 24 million jobs. it has to absorb six million

people moving into the cities every year. it has to deal with a bloating population of 150 to 200 million. it has to accommodate a society in which the sofle regions are at the level of advanced countries and interior regions are at the level of underdevelopment and they have to accommodate all of this in a political system that must take care both of the economic change that has been produced and the political adaptation that inevitably has to result from these huge figures that are involved in the economic change. in the geopolitical situation, china historically has been surrounded by a group of

smaller countries which themselves were not individually able to settle in china, but which united could pose a threat to china and therefore historically chinese policy can be described as management. china has never had to deal with in a world of countries of approximately equal strength and so to adjust to such a world is in itself a profound challenge to china, which now has 14 countries on its borders, some of which are small but can project their nationality into into china. some of which are large and historically significant, so that any attempt by china to

dominate the world would evoke a counter reaction that would be disastrous for the peace of the world. and the quote that niall ferguson,, who of course, is my biographer, will have the last word no matter what i say here. [laughter] spoke about the military containment of china. so i would say that one of our challenges is to accommodate the rights of china. one of china's challenges is to accommodate itself to a world in which -- it has been through 18 of the last 20 centuries in the world that it knew best. so if i may take the liberty of

rephrasing what the topic before us -- the issue before the world is not whether the 21st century belongs to china. but whether in the 21st century, which china will undoubtedly get stronger, we in the west will work with china and whether china can work with us to create an international structure in which perhaps for the first time in history, a rising state has been incorporated into an international system and strengthened the peace and progress. i say in my book that based on experience, the prospects are

not optimistic. but on the other hand, we have never had to deal before with proliferation, environment, cyberspace, and other problems that can be dealt with only on a universal basis. [applause] and this is why i do not believe -- >> second on the clock to wrap up. no, please, take a few more sentences just to conclude your final thought there. >> my conclusion is that the issue is not whether the 21st century belongs to china but whether we can make it belong to a more universal conception.

[applause] >> well, ladies and gentlemen, as you've heard, a series of fascinating lines of argument have begun to crystalize. i want to ask both teams of debaters now to quickly respond to what they've heard in their opponents' opening statements. specifically what they've agreed with most. niall, i wanted to come to you first with your rebuttal. >> i'll just take one point -- and i assume you you don't want me to wander around the stage anymore. >> whatever you'd like to do. >> everyone else wanders around the stage. my question to fareed is, if you're right and if china is going to repeat japanese history, just think what that means.

considering japan's much smaller size, and considering china's relative lilo level of development, as both of you have pointed out. if you're right and china is going to reenact japan's economic history then it surely will own the 21st century. it will achieve an enormous share, not only of global g.d.p. but also global power. because unlike japan, china never lost its sovereignty through the kind of military defeat that japan suffered in 1945. so economically and geopolitically the prospects of china repeating japanese history should be a scary one for your side of the detective. >> fareed? >> since i'm an american trained in the oprah winfrey style, i'm allowed to come out.

if you look under your feet you will see you are all going to australia -- if you vote for our side. look, the symbol is simply to point out that nothing moves in a straight line. that countries, particularly as they ascend the modernization scale find they have problems. if you look at the number of countries that have able to get past $12,000 per capita g.d.p. over the last 100 years, it is a very small number, about five. lots of countries start to do well in basic manufacturing, the government begins to turn, then you have to modernize ever element of your society to move up to that final stage that singapore and hong kong have been able to do. china with the economic and political problems, with the demographic and geopolitical

problems it faces might find that that last period will be somewhat rocky and it may be complex and as henry pointed out, it may require that china stay internally focused and absorbed in a way that will not allow it to project this kind of enormous power. i don't doubt that china is going to be an enormous economy and enormous player on the world stage. the question is will it own the 21st century? will it dominate it? and i say for all those reasons it's not going to do that. [applause] >> good point. come back on this. it was a subject of a lot of debate before this debate, the japan example, the years of g.d.p. growth, and maybe more importantly, the chance that japan in the 1980's was a society like china. one that had a lot of energy like you describe china having

dood. why isn't japan's recent past china's near future? >> let me respond to your question and fareed's points and dr. kissinger's points all together. i think your arguments are already. these points were even better made 20 or even 30 years ago about china. but china has been growing and changing for the past 30 years, right? this point didn't change. my point is that today's china, the modern challenges are making changes. let's compare china with japan. in japan i don't think there have been any fundamental changes before the collapse starting in early 1990. in china we do see that. also, compared with japan, japan has been learning from china. japan was one of the primary cultures in the world while china has been, until the

spectacular crash with western countries. also on the point by fareed about economic growth. i agree that china can never grow at a pace of double-figured g.d.p. growth. the u.s. wasn't growing nearly as fast as china. the u.s. slowed down significantly long before the u.s. became a world power. however it was keeping growing. today's china i do see changes ongoing. dr. kissinger was referring back to the past centuries in china. fully agree. but in today's china we have been sending out a huge number of young kids coming to the outside world to study. how many young kids? imagine. six times -- not students study

in the u.s. and canada. these are sources of change. this is learning. people's skills have been learning. so i do think china's emergence will be different from the u.s. and also willle not receive the problems of japan. thank you. [applause] >> dr. kissinger, would you like to offer a rebuttal? >> china is changing. it's undoubtedly the case. if one compares cha -- what china looked like in 1971 to what it looks like today, it has physically changed and it has demographically changed in a fundamental way through the one-child family, which is changing in a way the values in a predictable future.

in about 30 years, there will be only two people of working age taking care of retirement people. in 2005, there were 9.2 people that were able to deal with the retirement people. so this creates a different set of attitudes. but one must not confuse magnitude with global influence. china will have to be preoccupied with the adjustments to urbanization. with the adjustments to democracy and with the adjustments to an international system in which it will be a permanent participate rather than the center of the universe as it has been historically

conceived. these are soluble problems but they should not be eached with the western notions of imperialism. historically, the chinese roll internationally has been based on gaining respect for its conduct. it has not been culturally geared to a global role. and i believe that for china to manage its environment, its domestic situation, requires cooperation with the west rather than attempt to dominate the west. [applause] >> you want to weigh in on this point also? >> i wanted to ask -- >> absolutely.

questions are encouraged. >> i wanted to ask niall a question. which i could have done this by reading all of his 46 books and finding quotation that is contradict his current position. but instead, i'm going to put this simply. niall is a very keane student of geopolitics and i wondered what he made of the fact that china is undoubtedly rising but not in a geopolitical vac kuehl. last year china has a good year. it had a good financial crisis, came out of it feeling confident. and the manner in which it behaved -- in copenhagen it humiliated the united states and the president of the united states and refused to sign up for a defeat on the islands it angered japan enormously. on the north korean sinking of

a south korean boat and they asked them to condemn it, they con used, enraging the vietnamese. that's just in one year, right? and that's when china isn't even yet gotten to the point where it is, in fact, the dominant economic power in the world. do you think all these countries are just going to roll back and accept chinese dominations or are you likely to see a spirited response from the vietnams and indonesias and south koreas and japans of the world in which this proposition doesn't look as rosie as it did? [applause] >> thanks, fareed, for that question. i've noticed in your recent columns in "time" magazine you've been dab until economics. so this gives me an opportunity to help you out. [laughter]

you see, the thing about china's growth during the financial crisis is that it fundamentally altered china's role in the world economy. up until the crisis the main story was that china was competing with other emerging markets -- markets for market share in developing countries like canada or the united states. it was an exportser of cheap goods and able to beat most of the competition with the so-called china price. and then the financial crisis struck and those developed countries went into recession or near depression. what happened? china engaged in the biggest and most successful stimulus in the world and in so doing its role changed. it seized to be a competitor with other emerging markets and it became their market of first resort. they found that the most dynamic market they could sell to was china's.

china's neighbors throughout asia, including india, where you were born, discovered a new china. not a competitor but a market they could sell to. and that trend is just going to keep on going, because the whole aim of china's latest five-year plan is to shift from exports to domestic demand to, consumption. that's why your idea that all these little asian countries are going to band together against nasty china is a total fantasy. they depend on china economically more than they ever have. have to go to seoul and talk to people in the region, talk to india's richest man, he'll tell you just how big the china business is now is for the rest of asia. that seems to be one very good reason why the 21st century is going to belong to china. because their markets are going to belong to china.

[applause] >> the debate is proceeding nicely. i'm going to go to you david quickly then back to fareed then we're going to start looking for a couple of questions. >> faree defense was right in observing the tensions in the last years. but we have to go deeper. more than the television surface. i'm sorry, televisions are important. especially pbs programs, which i like very much. look beyond the surface. at our aggressors. who were the provocative parties? it was not china. it was the japanese government which arrested in using domestic law against chinese sailors. about the dispute on the island. the chinese side was trying to make peace with the issue. take the issue of copenhagen

negotiations. it was the choings side trying to make meaningful agreement with other cungs. on this issue of negotiations, the chinese side is extremely hammed because whatever the chinese government commits to today or at that time the government has to honor. we had a change of partly." . the partlyments nullified agreement. i'm sorry, i can be very open and abrupt. it would show for the new president obama trying to go everywhere, negotiate and expecting congress to kill the deal. not the china. ok, i would suggest you look at other evidence. during the financial crisis in the past almost three years, it was china trying to stabilize the global financial system. during the peak days to have financial crisis, their currency did not decrease against the u.s. dollar, unlike

other currencies. also, china did not sell massive amounts of treasury holdings. it has been the most patient supposing the u.s. government, which has trouble and runs the risk of default. i suggest you to look at the big picture and also go underneath the surface. thank you. [applause] >> just a quick point. niall is an incredibly accomplished economic historian and understands the economics of araba -- asia so well. but throughout history, people have gone to war and countries have happened spirited geopolitical rivalries despite the fact they've been economically interdependent. the first great his honor talked about the war and his first explanation for the reason was honor and dignity.

it had nothing to do with economics. the you -- if you look at europe on the eve of the first world war, you saw an economy that was more independent by some measures than the countries of the world today. in fact, the level of economic interdependence between britain and germany was such that it was in some ways madness these two countries went to war. there was a very famous book written by a young historian who talked about the fact that perhaps britain should not have gone to war. that this was craziness for britain to do it and it was the pity of war. wait a minute. that historian was niall ferguson. >> yes, before we end the rebuttal portion of this debate, i'd like to allow dr. kissinger the last word. >> i don't know whether one can reverse the order of

participants up here, because i think it's three to one against my friend niall. our chinese friend is saying that china has suffered a great deal, has been provoked through a century of western exploitations and that it's not trying to dominate the world. as i understand what he is saying it is this -- when the west wants to discuss climate or the financial assistance, our tendency is to say china can be a stakeholder. it can be a participant in a system they did not themselves participate in creating.

so the issue is whether it is possible to create an international system in which china participates in the creation of it without dominating it. this is really what we're debating here. and if i understand the observations of our chinese colleague, he's not saying that china will dominate the world. he is saying china is making great progress and that china wants to be heard. and that in such issues as climate, the united states should not present them with a finished product and ask for its agreement. all of this we agree with on this side of the aisle. so if you would like to move your chair --

[laughter] we will welcome it. [applause] >> a fabulous debate. we're going to move into the question and answer portion of the evening. we're going to break it down into three sections. i think we agree there are three main depentions -- dimensions to the pros and cons of chinese rise. and to start us off in our first section on the economy, i want to go to someone in the audience who's written a number of best-selling books on economic themes, including "dead aid" a great bestseller here in canada and "how the west was lost." dambesa. if i could have your one

question, please. >> yes, thank you. my question is actually to mr. lee and mr. ferguson. until now a key piece of china's development strategy has been to use soft power to accumulate and access natural resources, land, water, energy and minerals. and effectively, china has been how aggressive do you think china will become in her efforts to secure natural resources? in other words, what is the likelihood that china moves from the soft power strategy of accumulating resources to one where she becomes -- depends more aggressively on hard power

and adopts more military and colonial like strategies of accumulating resources, particularly in the context of africa? [applause] >> it is great to have you here, and i hesitate to answer a question from you on the subject of africa. but it seems to me, having recently visited zambia, and last year having been in senegal and namibia, something very important is happening in africa in which china is leading a whole new developmental push, radically different in its nature from the aid programs that you so persuasively argued had been a failure when the west tried them. this is a developmental strategy based on self-interest. china is developing natural resources like copper because it

desperately needs copper to wire its vast new cities. but the effect in africa is by no means all bad. i think it is a really big misrepresentation to suggest this is a rerun of 19th century colonialism. >> that was a question when i went to zambia. it was not the answer that i found. that is not the chinese approach. they are investing, trying to make money. they are letting the money drive economic development rather than handouts and a culture of dependency. with this ultimately lead to conflict of the sort you suggest as in the late 19th century? it is conceivable, but i see absolutely no sign of it at the moment. there is only one country scrambling for africa right now, and it is china.

>> let me follow up on that great point by adding three simple observations. number one, intention. there is no intention -- china has been working hard, collaborating with african countries. look at the african summit, which was very popular about three years ago. most of the african leaders and business people are very enthusiastic about china's investment. second, capacity. look at the chinese reality. we are still an extremely poor economy. per-capita gdp is around $4,000. there is absolutely no capacity to colonize of these african countries, even if china was trying to do it. within china, there has been tremendous effort in pushing

for new technology to conserve resources, new technologies for energy efficiency, and their policies to enhance resource prices in order to encourage across the region. in my mind, and china will have new growth, a new pattern of modernization. >> isn't it one of the traps that nations that began to assume global power status: 2, which is their supply line, the resources they have to sustain with countries around the world to fund it their development. don't you think china is at risk here of either reaching beyond itself, having to project beyond

soft power, hard power to defend these lines of resources back to china? >> china will want to require resources for its industry as a natural evolution. whether it believes that in order to have access to these resources, it must also be militarily dominant, that is another decision. if you look at the rise of germany before world war i, the world would probably have been able to live with germany having the largest -- when it developed the largest naval force, it began to threaten the long-term existence of great britain.

so there are two challenges. we have to understand that china will get stronger, and we cannot react neurotically to every indication of chinese strength. but china has to learn some self limitations in the way it vindicates its interests around the world. both of these things have to exist. cannot be done by one nation alone. it has to be done collectively. >> china's investments in africa are very popular. i think it would be more accurate to say that china's investments in africa are very popular with its dictators. [applause]

yana a year-and-a- half ago -- i was in kenya and ask what the main concern was. they said the single biggest concern we have is that china is going around africa at making deals with africa's dictators with no questions asked and no accountability on any human rights issues. [applause] i would argue that certainly that is something they have to be worried about from a long- term, geopolitical sense. we discovered in the middle east that we thought we had very stable relations with all these countries in the middle east. it turns out we had very stable relations with all the dictators of the middle east. [applause] >> hang on, wait a second. remind me, are you saying that

the west does not ever deal with african these -- african dictators? i spoke to the minors in the copper belt who had no jobs when the state-owned mining system collapsed, and now have jobs because the chinese reopen the minds and extended them. it is not fair to say that china only deals with african dictators. deals with the government's it finds in africa, including the governments that western powers propped up for many years. beck's i make no apologies for the west. i am simply pointing out that china is doing what it is doing with the leadership class that may not reflect the wishes of the entire african public. >> would africa be better off if china did not invest there? i think that is the kind of hypocritical argument that if i

were in chinese, i would find quite annoying. >> your obviously finding it annoying even though you are not chinese. [applause] >> kegan on the economic theme -- keeping on the economic theme -- i will have to separate these guys. [laughter] i am holding in my hand what many people considered to be the quintessential consumer success product of the last decade, the apple iphone. it will be interesting to see how many fellow iphone users there are out there in the audience tonight. you have one, put it up in the air. look at that. [applause] this is a fountain pen, ladies and gentlemen.

>> this andino is manufactured in china by farrakhan -- by foxconn. the software that powers it was thought up by steve jobs and his team at apple. the design factor that makes this such a coveted device by millions of people around the world leads me to ask, can china do this? can china innovate in the same way and on the same scale as apple, google, rim here in canada? they have to do it if they think they can only 21st century. >> yes, remember, no country starting from being buried pork

innovate overnight. it is a learning process. learning whatever is good. something hundreds of thousands of students in the west learn, and then gradually innovate. china cannot innovate anything 30 years ago. now at least we have railroads. we have some automobiles that are not only cheaper but more efficient than gm. if it were not for chinese operations, gm would now have more u.s. money in being bailed out. it is a gradual process and in the long run, i am sure john will innovate. there are different levels of innovation. my vision of china is that yes,

we will innovate. however, coming from where we are, we may not be at the cutting edge of innovation, but you don't need to be at the cutting edge in order to be respected in the world. it gradually improve and the process will lead to somewhere. >> i have heard that story about the iphone so many times and it is simple western complacency. the idea that we will always have a cool ideas and they will always do the assembly line. that is so out of date. china is going to overtaken germany in the next couple of years because of a huge effort by china's educational institutions to raise the game in research and development, in inducing people with ph.d.'s

engineering, and that is going to work, ladies and gentlemen. >> you are right about this a lot and talk about on your show, can china at innovate without a free and open society? without universities where you have total freedom of thought at inquiry. without a culture that allows the mavericks, the steve jobs and others to emerge? do you think that happen? >> i agree that it is a mistake to assume there is some kind of genetic deformation that does not allow the chinese to innovate. of course they are going to innovate and do things that are interesting. the point that henry and i keep making, this is going to be a world of must -- multiplicity.

there will be a lot of innovation going on. if you look at apple, apple is generally regarded as the most innovative company in the world right now. apple expense on research and development in one year what it did in one decade what microsoft spends in one year. if you break apple in terms of -- look at a list of research and development spending, apple is 82. their innovations are in design and in the way in which the human beings use technology. that may be something you learn when you get a ph.d. in media studies. [laughter] >> by the way, this is true throughout history.

the invention of the sewing machine, the great steel was not coming up with the best machine. it was figuring out that you sell it to women on an installment plan. nobody had ever so machinery to women before. but will innovation may not be the search engine, it may be the advertising program that goes along with it. part of what innovation is is a strange combination of science in consumer behavior and business. the great invention that launched capitalism was double entry bookkeeping. it was not some scientific gizmo. of course china will innovate in its own way. there's something about the ecosystem of america. most importantly, and has the ability to question hierarchy, which is absolutely key. i hear all these people talking about education and the tiger mom way of parenting.

i have been for a nation's educational system that is pretty loudly -- pretty lousy. you just learned by rote memorization and the day after the exam, you forget everything you learned. learning is a continuous process and it does not make too ashamed of failure. the ability to fail efficiently is incredibly powerful part of innovation. china will innovate, but the u.s. has something very special about it. [applause] >> i want to move on to the second part of our question and answer session which is politics and culture. i would like to call on janice stein, head of the munk school

of foreign affairs. >> thank you very much. this question is to david lee n. tofareed. the world watched recently with astonishment as young people streamed into squares and streets in tunisia and egypt to demand political rights and to demand that authoritarian and corrupt leaders leave the scene. the parallels between our world and china are far from perfect. china is a mature society. the arab world is young. china created hundreds of millions of jobs, arab governments have not. but, china, like the arab world, tolerates almost note this sense -- almost no dissent.

there is growing income inequality in china. china is about to undergo a leadership transition. will there be growing demand for political rights in china, and how will the leadership coat? [applause] -- how will the leadership cope? >> i knew this question would come up. i don't need to be reminded of the arab spring. we knew this long before, since day one of economic reform. after economic success, people knew in china that there will be more voices, more demands for expressing opinions and political participation in decision making. that is why it is very clear from day one, people knew in china that economic and institutional change will go hand-in-hand with political institutional change.

the biggest myths understanding of china is that we do have political, institutional change, starting with the way leaders are being selected. today, the way leaders are being selected unpopular decisions are made or more participated in before. as we speak today, young people in china are able to express their opinions on the internet, and these voices are being heard and decisions are being changed. i would invite you to go to china, talk to young people, and visit chinese web sites, to understand the new wage reform is being done, the new way that people express their opinions and express their difference. [applause]

>> five years ago, i think i would have agreed with david, it was very clear in china that there was a movement toward very gradually limited but real political reform. i think that over the last five years, what you have seen its economic reform and growth, but there has been a drawing back of any kind of political reform. as events have seemed to take place around the world that suggest some danger such as the arab spring to maintain the political control, what you do not see in china is an opening up, an attempt to announce a series of ambitious political reforms. in fact, you see of closing down so that china -- if you type the word jasmine into google in china, you will come up against a blank page, because of fear that somehow the jasmine revenue, to revolution will take root in china. china has by some accounts a million people monitoring the internet.

i had an interview with wen jiabao for my program, a very important interview and i was honored to get it. the chinese government announced that because it was seen as very important. the premier made some very harmless comment about how china would eventually evolve politically. the interview was taken of chinese websites and ban on chinese tv. the journalists protested the fact that this had been censored. this does not strike me as political reform. this strikes me as a circling of wagons, a fear of what is happening next. [applause] clearly, china has been moving and getting -- giving greater freedom to its people. i do not doubt that at all. but have to figure out how they are going to create a political

system that accommodate the rising middle class in a world in which people are demanding greater and greater accountability from their leaders. in some ways when i look at india and china, i think to myself, china has all of the small problems. they have built the best roads and highways in the best high- speed rail, and have done it so magnificently that puts india to shame. but india has sought one big problem, what will it look like 25 years from now politically? it will be the same crazy, chaotic democracy that it is today. but what will try to be 25 years from now, politically? the communist party of china today is the most elite political organization in the world. everybody looks like david. they are all political engineers and ph.d.'s, but those people are not reflected in the political system.

it strikes me as a huge political challenge for china going forward. [applause] >> i think this audience wants to hear you on this question, to, and maybe pusher mine forward in the decades to come when there will be a decade of -- a generation of chinese without memories of the cultural revolution. how is that generation going to approach the challenges of political reform? will they embrace it or will they reentrench? >> i believe the next decade will see china wrestling with the problem of how to bring its political institutions in line with its economic development.

i think that when you have the vast economic changes, the migration of people, the spread of education, it is absolutely inevitable that that question will be one of the dominant issues of the new leadership that is coming up in a year and a half. what form it will take, whether it will be the form of parliamentary democracy or some new form the we have not seen yet, the outcome will have to be more transparent. i believe the next leadership change which is due in 10 years from now, will reflect this. this is also why do not believe

that a country that will be so preoccupied with its fundamental change will also have time to concentrate on dominating the world. [applause] >> the final block will be on geopolitical politics. >> i remember reading a book a few years back with a title like "the picture of freedom," in which a brilliant young journalist argued that there were problems with western democracy, and especially with western democracy, that were only going to get worse. hey, that was you.

we are making a big mistake. if we think there is one, universal model of western democracy that at some point between now and 2050, if you think that is what the future of the world is going to look like, you are going to be one very disappointed person. the chances of western-style democracy emerging in any of these countries has to be between 0 and 5% at best. the possibility of alternative models is something that was raised by david wright at the begin -- at the beginning in his opening remarks. i want you to think seriously about what it implies. singapore is not worrying about the jasmine revolution. singapore is the model. think of china as a giant, technocratic singapore in which the one-party state evolves itself in ways to avoid the

collapse of the soviet experience. the second point, and this is where differ, it is precisely when nations are struggling with problems of internal political reform and challenges from below that they are most likely to pursue a more selfish and aggressive foreign policy. this must be one of the lessons of modern history and indeed, of ancient history. that is one reason why i think it is precisely at this time of political stress that we are likely to see a more nationalistic china. that is one of the reasons i am arguing for this motion tonight. [applause] >> the start of our final section of these questions and answers on geopolitics, i want to call on someone who has thought long and hard about the practicalities of china's rise. he is william cohen, the former

u.s. secretary of defense. [applause] >> i would like to respond or reply to the reference to singapore by mr. ferguson. i was just there a couple of weeks ago and they had the so- called shangri-la dialogues. secretary gates was there, making a very strong statement about the need for the united states to remain deeply engaged in the asia-pacific region. the reason he made the statement was to counter or at least satisfied that asian nations, one of whom, young man i talked to that no one in asia wants to be dominated by china. there is no aspiration for the chinese dream before the american dream, but there is growing concern that as china continues to expand its economy, it is also expanding its

military. there is concern that the united states -- we will not be there in sufficient numbers or presence. they would like very much for the united states to become even more engaged. the question i have, is said the united states must look for ways to cooperate with china and there are a number of things we can always cooperate on. there are other areas of friction, be it taiwan or the south china sea. the question is, i suggest that we need to draw lines with china, but we cannot draw them everywhere. we have to be very careful in how we draw those lines. the question i have, would you suggest or support drawing the line at china's assertion of sovereignty over the south china sea? this does raise all the

questions that you mentioned in terms of indonesia, malaysia, and also the philippines and others in the region. and most ironically, vietnam, asking for the united states to play a role in helping to so i would ask you, is this an area you would recommend we draw the line with china and how would you draw it? [applause] >> to answer your specific question, i think freedom is a fundamental principle of american policy and has been a fundamental principle of the international systems. so i would oppose the notion

that any sea should be -- should be treated as a territorial issue. and secondly, there are of course a series of specific issues about the possession of a series of -- and hopefully that should be dealt with by negotiation but on the fundamental issue, i would apply the principle of freedom to south china sea as i would do any other open ocean. the second point i want to make, however, is this -- we can of course define the emerging relationship with china as an ability to draw lines and then see whether

confrontation succeeds along these lines. i believe that this would be extraordinarily dangerous to begin thinking of international relations as a question of military containment of china. it is not the question of military containment of china. it is a question of dealing with china's inevitable rise. china has to restrain itself within definable limits. we cannot have china solve our internal problems for us. we have to remain competitive. if we remain competitive, then the next challenge is to see whether a dialogue can develop between china and us and other countries that share our views

on what the world -- what we intend the world to look like five to 10 years from now. i keep asking the question, in his first book, if the leaders of europe had known in 1914 what the world would look like in 1990, would they ever have believed that what happened in sarajevo, tens of millions of casualties that resulted, similarly, i believe the leaders of the world now have to ask themselves and the leaders of china have to ask themselves, how the evolution, some of which we have discussed here and much more which could be considered should be managed in the way that is cooperative rather than confrontational. i conducted foreign policy on

balance of power principles. i know how to play that game. [laughter] so it's not that i wouldn't know how -- how we should play it. i want to ask the chinese -- i spoke to a chinese group. and somebody got up and said you're a great friend of china. but we also read your books. [laughter] and in your books, you talk about the balance of power. how are you going to manage the balance of power? and i said, look around yourself. look at the countries that border you. and ask yourself whether we -- it's not a problem but it's conceivable, what i'm suggesting is south china sea,

it's a clear case to me, that should not be claimed by any nation. but what we really should have is that the top leaders begin to ask some of the questions that have been asked around here, look at where we want to be five to 10 years from now. and rather than dealing with crisis management month after month. and being in a situation in which every time the leaders meet, there is a communique and two months later, one has to sort -- one has the sort of discussion we have here and where did the chinese go wrong, that's my fundamental view. so on the south china sea, it's clear where we should come out with respect to freedom of navigation. but it's a symptom.

what is required is an understanding that we are heading into a new world order in which there are now universal issues. and that this world order cannot be organized on the same principles as we -- as our customary conventional thinking. and this is where the relationship of china becomes so important. because china is rising. and the question is, can china learn restraint, and can we learn to accommodate a reduction of our previous influence? that is what we need to deal with. [applause] >> fareed, to pick up on dr.

kissinger's last words there, can america learn a pattern of restraint in this new phase, because i think part of -- for your side, arguing here, part of your contention is that for china not to own the century, in some ways it has to not come in conflict with the united states, at least not m military means. so give us your sense of where the american politte is at right now -- polity is at right now, are we ready to accommodate the rise or a more dangerous dynamic as dr. kissinger writes in the final chapter of his book that we saw in the beginning of the 20th century? >> you know, everybody tends to view the united states as having this vacillating foreign policy that's unable to get its act together and constantly shifting. and on china, i have to say i think that the opposite is the case. since henry kissinger opened china to the world, and opened u.s. relations with china, the united states has had a

remarkably consistent policy toward china. and that has been to integrate china into the world, to help china gain the knowledge, the know how, the technology, the capital, and the institutional frameworks that will help it become a productive, thriving member of the international community. we have followed that under presidents that were democratic, under republicans. we're managing extraordinary consistency of policy. even on those issues like red lines such as our relationship with taiwan. our relationship with the dal i lamb a -- dalai lama. every president has maintained a coop active relationship with china while retaining some core interests and values that we thought were important. i think that my greatest worry about u.s.-chinese relations right now is not the united states. i think the united states will continue to play that role and has been trying to do so. the united states has been willing to reform the i.m.f. and the world bank and all international institutions to

properly reflect the rise of china and other emerging market countries. let's be honest. the cents that haven't wanted to do it are the -- the countries that haven't wanted to do it are the europeans because it is their voting that will be diluted in this process. i think that the -- the greater danger is that china going through the kind of political transformation that henry has been talking about might find itself in a very different road. and here i'm only quoting back what nael ferguson was saying. quite rately, china is more assertive, more arrogant a growing sense in china that the policies that peng outlined are not as relevant. and said that was at a time when we had the soviet union that was our enemy and we needed the united states and needed it for polling and we needed it for capital. we have the capital and needed it for w.t.o. membership. we have all those things. we don't need those things.

so the great discontinuity is more likely to be chinese than the united states. >> david, that poses a vital question for your side. which is will china push on certain red lines? will a new generation of chinese leadership take those risks? >> well, the chinese side is very much waiting to work on this difficult issues. the chinese side has been saying we're not making new claims. we're waiting -- willing to work with murlt tim parties. -- work with multiple parties. however, we're not willing to work with interventionist american policy. the essence of the problem is after the global financial crisis, the competence, the competence level in the u.s. has been coming down so the u.s. side has been giving us very mixed signals. even though the white house has

been very clear in its policy, the congress, the congress, the candidates for the president are giving very mixed signals. saying that the chinese side are screwing up american issues. and many chinese people do not fully understand american politics. so they take this as a signal that the outside world are becoming more and more hostage. hostile toward the chinese economic and political emergence. that's the issue. i suggest the people in the west trying to understand the issues, trying to put this very small issues in a larger context and on the chinese side it is not changing. it is the western side. you have to solve your problems all together starting with the financial problems, starting with financial system, and then when you are more confident it's easier for china to work with the west. thank you. [applause]

>> you may not have heard the voice of chinese power before, ladies and gentlemen. this is what it sounds like. get used to it. because this is the kind of firm, self-confident and more assertive china that i have seen more and more in my trips to china and my encounters with chinese academics and statesmen in recent years. let's be clear. in all honesty, going right back to the question, does the united states have the option of drawing lines anywhere in asia in the way in a it did in the days of eisenhower or indeed in the days of nixon? i don't think so. the reason i don't think so goes right to the point you just made, david. where are the resources? look at the congressional budget office projections of where the united states is going to be. i don't know if you saw jim baker's article in the "wall street journal" today. in nine years' time, the united states will be spending more on

the interests, on the federal debt, than on national security. the c.b.o. has projections imagining what the u.s. would save if it reduced its overseas troop presence to 30,000. 30,000. now, in that world, and we are racing toward that world in this decade, right now, the idea that the united states can say to china, thus far and no further, and adopt a policy and military threat that idea becomes less plausible and that's the point of the debate we're having tonight. it's this way that power shifts. it's somewhat inperceptible but when it shifts, ladies and gentlemen, it talks a little bit like david. [applause] >> well, ladies and gentlemen, i want to be conscious of our time so i'm going to call on our debaters for their closing

arguments. they're each going to be given three minutes to make their case to try to sway any final undecided votes in this hall. and we're going to have our concluding remarks in the opposite order of our opening statements. so dr. kissinger, if you could please begin. >> the issue is not whether china will grow in magnitude. that will clearly happen. the issue is two-fold -- how china uses its growing capacities and secondly, whether the united states and its allies have the willingness to adjust to the new international environment. i see nothing organic in the situation that leads me to believe that china will dominate the 21st century.

china will play a larger role in the 21st century. the challenge is whether america can redefine itself after its century of progress. and similarly, how china redefines itself when if absorbs its economic growth. i believe we do have the capacity to draw lines. but we have to be selective in drawing the lines. and more important than that, we should try to move toward a relationship in which the lines that separate us are not the crucial element but the things we do together. [applause]

>> david lee, your three minutes, please. >> let me start by reiterating a point which i made in the opening remarks that the changes in china which have been going on for the past three decades, at most, are only halfway done. the country is still changing. we still have gaps in our gas tank and the changes will be more than economic. the changes must also be societal and political. also, i would like to remind you that that's the nation of china's emergence is not dominance in the world. by no means, china, there is only one dominance in the world. that is the u.s. today. that is not the dream, not aspiration of china, not the capacity of china, to emulate the success of the u.s. and the dominance of the world. it's simply not in the gene of our confucious tradition. i urge you to think from a

different perspective. forget about the 500 years of western philosophy, western perspective, to look at the international relations as winners and losers. instead, look from the lens of our traditional philosophers, confucious, they have been advocating for a harmonious world in which individuals are at peace with others in the world and in society, people are at peace with each other. and the countries are working with each other to solve international conflicts. so i urge you to look from this perspective to understand the ongoing changes in the chinese economy and society. finally, let me call upon you to have patience, to understand that we're not bystanders. we are also participants in the chinese economic and social and political emergence. when we become hostile, when we worry about china's emergence,

we worry about the relative decline of the u.s., of the west, we indeed create problems for the world. we indeed provoke the forces in china, the suspicious forces in china, indeed this work will become a very uncomfortable world. so in the end, i urge you to think about these issues again. china's emergence is not implying that china will dominate the world. the 21st century will belong to china. and also will belong to any countries, any nations, any people who are waiting to follow the flow. together we own the century. thank you. [applause] >> fareed zakaria, you're next. >> you know, we are going flew a crisis of confidence in the -- going through a crisis of confidence in the western world.

and this has been true often when we faced these kinds of new and different challenges. and when we faced nations that seem on the rise and on the march. george cannon, the great american statesman, and writer, used to write routinely about how he thought the united states would never be able to withstand the soviet challenge. because we were weak and fickle and we changed our minds and they were long seeing and they were far sighted and strategic. we were tactical and stupid. somehow it worked out all right. i think there is a tendency now to think the same of china, that they have this incredible long-term vision and we're bumbling idiots. there's a wonderful story that encapsulates this. i think actually in a conversation with henry kissinger, when asked what do you think of the french revolution, he said, it's too soon to tell. and everyone thought oh, my goodness, such a genius. he thinks so long, in centuries. it turns out we now know he meant in 1973, the french revolution of 1968, the student

revolution, and it was perfectly rational to say at that point it was too soon to tell. so don't believe that chinese are the strategic masterminds and we're bumbling. we have managed to bumble our way through -- despite the challenges from the kaiser germany, from the soviet union, from nazi germany, from japan. and i think what you will find is that the united states and north america are creating an extraordinary new model in this new world. we are becoming the first universal nation, a country that draws people from all parts of the world, of all colors, creeds and religious, and finds a way to harness that talent and build a kind of universal dream and it happens over here. it happens here, and it draws together people from all over the world. look at this panel. three of the people on this panel, neil ferguson, myself and henry kissinger are immigrants and found their fortune in the united states

because it welcomed the most talented people in the world. and allowed them to flourish in whatever way they want, even to denounce the united states as neil ferguson is now doing. [laughter] so i simply urge you to think about this. if we lose faith in ourselves, if we lose faith in the power of free and open society, we do much more damage than anything else we could do. we need to fix our economy. we need to fix all these things we can do. the congressional budget office used to predict that we were going to pay off our debt in 15 years, 10 years, ago. now they predict that we're going to be eviscerated. we'll see how it works. my point is don't lose faith in free and open societies. vote with your heart. [applause] >> neil, your final closing remarks, please.

>> well, ladies and gentlemen, we've heard tonight that china is likely to repeat the experience of other asian countries and run out of steam. maybe. but thus far, it has done far better than these other asian countries. china has achieved the biggest and fastest industrial revolution of them all. hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. i don't agree with david. i think this story isn't half over. maybe it's a quarter over. there's a lot more still to come. the second point i want to make to you is that the west's problems are far more serious than you have just heard from fareed. and one of the biggest problems is that kind of complacency. [laughter] as we speak tonight, ladies and gentlemen, the euro zone is falling apart and an experiment with a single currency is disintegrating mainly because of the insolvency of the cradle of democracy, greece.

as we talk, as we talk, the public finances of the united states are, if you do the math, which i do, more or less in the same situation as greece was two years ago. the trajectory of the debt is not differently. it may only be a matter of time before a fiscal crisis strikes the united states. the magnitude of which we will never have seen before. you know what? if we had this debate 100 years ago, just think, the motion had been that the 20th century would belong to the united states, who would have voted for it? it would have seemed certainly to any british debater preposterous. [laughter] those yanks, trivial, small military forces? yeah, they had a big economy, but not all the social problems. look at their cities with the

squalor and poverty. it would have been very easy to make the case in 1911 that america would falter as we've -- as we've heard china will falter. and yet it happened. it happened. first the economic power, then the geopolitical power. i want to conclude with a quotation. what if china gradually expands its economic ties, acts calmly and moderately, and slowly enlarges its sphere of influence seeking only greater weight, friendship and influence in the world? what if it quietly positions itself as the alternative to a hectoring and arrogant america? how will america cope? this is a new challenge for the united states. one for which it is largely unprepared, the words of fareed zakaria, ladies and gentlemen. and that, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely why china will own the 21st century. and you should vote for this motion.

thank you. >> the result of the monk debate from -- of the munk debate from two weeks ago," 62% voted against that. you can watch all of that again online at c-span.org. we're breaking away here at the u.s. house is about to gavel in for pro forma session no legislative business today, that's expected to begin tomorrow when they'll pick up work on the defense spending bill for fiscal year 2012. also expected in the house, the u.s. commitment to a negotiated settlement of the israeli-palestinian conflict, the 2012 spending bill for energy and water development an an overhaul of the flood insurance prog