Relations during the george w. Bush administration i believe it was successful in doing two somewhat opposite things at once, and successfully stabilizing the situation across the silent straight. That was a strong support for the defense and strong warnings against the use of force to cohearse and assuring statements that oppose provocative measures in taiwan in particular the 2010, 2008 referendum to apply to the u. N. Under the name taiwan, which was seen as an assertion of Taiwan Independence on the mainland. To give both of those things coercion looks attractive and necessary because the u. S. Position is not designed to promote something that china fears. In the Obama Administration, i think iran administrations handled the dispute with china quite well. In that it has reiterated that unlike other sovereignty disputes in the region the despite falls under the article five of the u. S. Japan alliance because United States recognizes administrative control and strengthens alliance of japan for last few years but statement according to public report has strength by japan and criticized for whitewashing world war ii through various statement and actions. I think thats a good mix. But second thing is we need to invite china to solve problems and if china doesnt solve a problem or contribute to the problem we have to try to solve them in ways that perhaps china will not like. That might bring china around that happened in tweng as you remember north korea sunk a ship south korean island and china position was nobody else should react. Asked to contribute, they chose not to. Put pressure on north korea. So the United States turned to its allies to south korean, japanese, in connection withed among three china didnt like the coordination and by the end of year by public report he put pressure on south korea to not carry through with the south korean exercise. So what have a shift on chinas policy. On the humanitarian issues, i think it is important to combine two things. Focus on prescribed behavior and not on regime change youre not to get them onboard or for regime change and local organizations onboard with the effort before you approach the chinese if you can do two things you can get china to sorch soften traditional allergy to intervention of affairs of the United States and that must be gotten over if youre going to get china onis board to handle most of the humanitarian issues because they do involve getting involved in the sovereign country in most cases you have to get china to get other there. Theyre not going to get rid of that principle any time soon in the entirety but they soften their interpretation of it now have to actually cooperate. We have success examples of success on that as well. And in 2006, 2007 china changed its position fairly strongly on sudan from purely protected cartoon regime from International Pressure from starting to put the cartoon regime to accept the u. N. Peace plan to deploying to keep. The United States went to the African Union first. Tried to get a link to the African Union. They dont like intervention in general but they wanted to do something about the genocide and the United States and others assured china that the goal of the darker intervention was not to carve up sudan. Or to overthrow the government cane cartoon and i describe that in the book. That was an important piece that was left out by the public coverage of the issues which was all about the olympics. China wanted to improve its image before olympics which was true but that wasnt the whole package. There are other examples antipiracy examples of multilateral engagement getting china to do some things and there were parelles and we have zimbabwe during the Bush Administration failures, why because the chinese got impression that the u. N. Pressure on zimbabwe designed to overthrow the government in those countries. And the u. S. And parking lot europeans and others didnt do enough to dissuade chinese of that idea and abuse of chinese of that idea. What did china do it vetoed even condemnation not everyone sanction. When we see that again in libya an finish with the Obama Administration experience in libya because it provides really good a really good example of what to do and whatnot to do when engaging chinese on humanitarian issues. China did things with north korea and didnt expect. And china was softening its position on rigid position on internal affairs from 2006 up until 2011. 2011 was the peak of that process. In february, 2011 the United States and a european raised a security counsel resolution that was going to send gadhafi government to the International Criminal port on humanitarian ground. Right . I dropped my coffee i was reading New York Times im a chinese professor i dropped my coffee when i read that there was a unanimous u. N. Security counsel vote to send gadhafi government. [inaudible] love so they voted to do this and a lot of chinese were surprised not as surprised how did this happen . The Obama Administration others approached the African Union they approached they approached arab league, and these are traditional defenders of the notion of the colonial nationalist regime an they all wanted to send gadhafi right many of them. You know more than i do, sir, so many of them gong board with this. Chinese didnt want to alienate all at once. They didnt want to alienate all at once. And the measure was limited it was limited compared to what happened scwentsly. We then had the use of force and china more sustained not to alienate all of a those actors again not only to protect the population from slaughter. What happened after that stopped that positive trend and Chinese Foreign policy in my opinion. And that is nato air force as that were used in libya were used to destroy the regime there. It wasnt about defending benghazi but providing air force until they killed him. After that it was beginning to be difficult to get chinese to buy in and put in syria. It was going to be difficult to get Chinese Support criticizing russia on ukraine why, because the china on tech happed in kiev is most important. It was european and american interference and in kiev that led to the ukraine crisis that should be focused on. This regime change feddish of multiple administration and a United States in the both parties. So syria the Obama Administration opened with assad has to go. If assad hassing to you cant have International Pressure to alienate other actor who is dont want to see the u. N. Be used for change. So it doesnt work. So the way put it in the book isnt that regime changes always a bad idea. But it is not very good diplomacy particularly if you need the cooperation of china to really put pressure on the regime in question. You shouldnt talk about it. Even if you wanted. Right . It is not wise diplomacy to talk about it. And thats a problem across the administration and across regime and that is something i think we need to recognize. That if you focus on prescribed behavior youre leakily to get china so to provide sucker and support for any target of International Pressure an china so powerful in u. N. It can block multilateral organizations from taking action on those issues in question. Do you have to take chinas view into consideration . And then you have to try to get china to contribute actively to global governess to stabilize a system from which countries have benefited none has benefited more since china, so it is not an fun workable l and possible task. But it is a very difficult task in having work in the the state department not what the state department is designed for that is going to take an imagination and going to take some new approaches to diplomacy for americans and europeans and like minded states to be successful in getting china to pull its weight and there there by help stabilize. I talked too long. But were and i still academic but i would love to hear your questions. Ing thank you. [applause] i want to pick up in the experience we were talking about at the very end you probably saw a couple of who was the indian ambassador on the security counsel. We remember there was excitement in this community because that mandate was the first one to include responsibility to protect language. And that was seen as a victory by lots of people here. Then we watched you mentioned dropping your coffee. I use image of the glass of water falling off a table you see it falling off the table but you just cant stop it. We saw as that suddenly became a nato operation and became a regime change outrage and knew instinctively that the games that you mentioned that had been made with countries like china which were so reluctant to ever approve any anything like that, had just been completely lost. And so it is a sad reminder but we witnessed the whole thing here. Tom, in your book, one thing that interested me was that you said basically american policy threetion for the past 15 years going back through administrations of boths including Bush Administration which you serve, has always been constructive towards china. As a matter of fact, you have a charming reference that i wrote down here in 2006. When you were there as an American State Department official excuse me. Trying to persuade china or trying to persuade china that we americans backed the idea of them expanding and growing and having success you said, quote imagine a group of responsible republicans, calling for bigger government and doing so in a country already ruled by communist. That was a way of saying, nobody wouldnt realize at that time that actually no matter when party was in power announced 10, 15 years has been to basically what you say shape the choices to try to persuade china that our purpose is not to hold them down. It is not to divide them. But that actually, we their success or our success they depend upon each other. My question has to do with that. Its amazing to me how persistent that chinese suspicious is even given the deep nationalism thats involved and the history that china has with the west and is feeling of being oppressed and neglected. And do you see you sorts of hit what you see now some movement. Some recent afnght in the part of china but you a also say that the zero sum look at this is much more pref p prevalent in china than it is here. Can you track the progress of that . Do you see that . Because i find this, this is soft diplomacy im talking about. But this seems to be a decor of so many things that the supernationallist chinese view even among very educated people, people educated in the west. Afterall daughter of china goes to harvard. That seems to be so persistent. Do you see it being eroded . Not eroded but people hold views with more or less intensity in china but fairly widespread in large part because it is part of the National Education system in china. Grow think about what the Chinese Communist party has become, it has largely genocide communism since 1978. For Market Economics it has large but large communism so relied more heavily on patriotism in the Education System and legitimacy and Chinese Youth are taught that big countries are out to get china and that the imriets United States is bullying china. And is worse when you get to japan and talk about leadership of japan so chinese citizenry their more or less sophisticated in china an they have a sophisticated diplomatic core but theres a limit to how much Public Discourse is going to break away from that legitimatizing narrative of the communist party. I think the domestic political issues very important. That is why i emphasize when i talk about course of diplomacy. The fact that the nation has been fed that line for so long that countries like United States leave china ill make it is more controversial when the United States is involved in either East China Sea with tehran and in many cases u. S. Goals are distorted. And that dialogue that i described in 2006 led by secretary paulson i thought was terrific from a Security Specialist point of view. Because i worked in security quite a signologist himself. Hes quite an expert traveled there 70 times before he was in government i dont know how many times now. I read his book which is terrific and the message that was being sent by the United States during those economic and economic dialect were very important from security realm because nobody can walk away from those meetings thinking that the United States was trying to keep china down. United states, officials could be accused of being condescending naive about local conditions other things but they were clearly trying to help china continue fast paced Economic Growth long into the future and there was no other interpretation useful from my portfolio in the Security Dialogue and i dont say mine. But i was working for someone who was more senior. I dont to exaggerate the importance of my position in the government. But it was a Revelation Television a revelation to see that as a scholar and theories that are out there about how the Reading Power should hold china down and how u. S. Officials were engaging with the issues it was a stark contract. Looking at this south china and east asia in general. One that i worry about outside is china and japan. I mean, the chance of a miscalculation that could lead to something much worse and much higher, can you talk about that a bit . I think that china, japan is one of the prime examples. Because they both have significant power. Japan has a very strong ally, obviously, in the United States. Theres a history there that is very very bitter. And then exaggeration to say theres widespread hatred of and japanese in chinese society. It is a fact and you can ignore to be politically correct but not useful to ignore them. Thats said by Education System as well. And in addition in japan you have the sovereignty dispute. You have a japan that has a desire to play a larger role in security realm thank the United States is urging it to. Because the traditional u. S. Japan alliance has been lopsided u. S. Defending japan. Japan not really committed to any kind of defensive of the United States or other u. S. Interest in the region. In an act aive way so china is created more it thats a good thing to cause more friction with china, and gej the fact that the japan believe islands are japan and that chinese really believe that the islands same islands are chinese is a big problem. The fact that theyre sincere means theyre more likely to stand firm. Somewhat fortunate that no one lives on islands when people are involved it gets more complicated theyre just ghosts. So that make it is a little bit easier to deal with. But it is a very, very tense situation. I do think it is manageable l and at the end of the day economics are important. Japan is a very important partner of china and vice versa and you see things like protest in china, for example. Boycott japanese goods. Those signs are usually handwritten if you see them. Theyre not the preproduced ones of the official protest sign. Boycott japanese yourself that a problem for japan . A lot of japanese goods are made by Chinese Workers owned by japanese plants. A lot of chinese would lose jobs and chinese leadership knows that. So ting that ch is more sophisticated than a lot of this ideological rhetoric suggest thats a good thing. But i think theres hand strung on a range of issues because they hammered sort of basic legitimacy crisis. Youyou know over the square trying to tie to the mound and you have a higher efficient. S worst distribution in china than you do in the United States. And you have massive corruption all right. And you have environmental deeing regages i think it is a big problem per for the government. They have a lot of challenges i think nationalist issues feed into those and cant rewrite the history book overnight and perception overnight even though they dont like the north korean regime and they have problem with it and real problems for their diplomacy. One last thing and then go to the floor and this is domestic, she and the Anticorruption Campaign has brought big figures to heal how does that fit into the design and plan for china and also isnt it very high risk given the people hes going after . I think it is high risk. I think hes assertive leader by personality. Appears to be not just internationally but domestically. He seems to be ideas about where he wants the Chinese Party to mauve and he seems to understand that the corruption issue was a major destabilizing force for regime stability in china and he said so frankly. So when tom an american scholar says china has real concern about domestic stability and they have real science of domestic stability it is not just a foreigner looking at chinas society but saying that the chinese lead reverse frank about the stability problem that they face. And theyre really frank about the effect of corruption on legitimate city of the party. And has gone after it. Gone after very big fish including Popular Committee memberrer kong a top general. So this is a major campaign. Popular with the public by the way . Yeah. Broadcasted and make it public. Any corruption is public as far as what we can tell. But i believe it is. Theres no reason to believe it isnt. The problem in my opinion is that you take a big club and you hit a couple of top leaders with a club in public. And then i would scare some people for a while. But it seems to me that the problem is more systemic. China lacks in independent judiciary. Lacks free media. And it has a single Party Hierarchy. The judges are all in that Party Hierarchy, media members all have to answer to that Party Hierarchy and it is very difficult to have systemic anticorruption unless you have Investigative Journalism and unless you have a court system that can punish people who are very powerful. So if your judges have a party ranked below the rank of the person being prosecuted, and that fern person is not subject to someone more powerful still it is beginning to be difficult to prosecute. Very dangerous for the very brave investigative journalist to go around and reports on the ill gotten gains of local officials. Because they might run into real trouble, and theyre lawyers, their lawyers try to defend journalist and then they get into trouble for for destabilizing behavior. So without those kinds of reforms over the long run i dont think theyre beginning to be able to tackle the anticorruption problem. But i do think theyre serious about it. And this is how the Chinese Communist party operates with a mobilization campaign. Theyve gone after top officials but a lot of officials at Convention Level and probably somewhat of a positive peskt but i dont think it is beginning to solve the problem over the long run. How will the country manage the slowdown of the economy, and do you believe that economy will simply slow or are you among those who think theres a pont for real crash . It is slow but thats been growing so fast for so long it is not not beginning to get any nobel prize for saying that the chinese economy will slow. But when it slows, you know about when it slows from 7 to 5 it is pretty high growth. Could it crash . Yeah it could crash and lesser reasons to think it is unstable. Banking system is shaky. I think the leadership realizes that and trying to reform it. The local debt problem has gotten a lot worse since the financial crisis when china injected a very, very large surplus package the big etion of any of the major economies. As a surplus package. But that money went to some project through the normal channel and help feel corruption and a real estate bubble over invested infrastructure and local debt. And those things are things that the chinese leadership knows about. This is what i always get back to is i can sit here for 15 minutes and i will have problems with the chiensz economy and what i was really struck by in the Strategic Dialogue is americans they talk about problems that say saw in the Banking System in the social safety net system thats where i focused on that comment about republicans. For larger government. Social safety net is a big problem because people sock their money away for a rainy day. They dont have the kind of Health Insurance and pension for Social Security that we enjoy in other places so they socked money away and a well consumption that has financial implications so i can list all of the thing. But i was struck by how the chinese leaders that we saw dealt with the same problem. It wasnt as if theyre saying no, no we dont have that problem. All we do is say we need to deal with it more slowly or gradually or done more than we think weve already done. That was the spirit of the discussions it wasnt a big argumenting no, thats wrong. There were few cases of that and wont go into them real differences but it was more a question of youre not going fast enough in reforms. Reform for quickly. You cant be too careful because you have to straighten out problems before they become a crisis. Great love to get questions and comments from the floor. If you raise your hand phil call on you. Wait for the microphone, and if it is okay with you three questions at once, and then you can make a note there start in the front row number two and number three. Introduce yourself name is raquel and i first of all, i think your presentation was extraordinary thank you very much. But i wanted to know you discussed iran but not really very relationship of china and iran. I thought that theyre part of sanctions on on one hand and other hand helping iran. I didnt understand it and woundrd what is their position on isis. On isis. No one likes isis. [laughter] well get to that. On cspan so they can see you. Im monik im a journalist. Youve not mentioned much about president chi until spoken about him. Can you shed light about his azona . And secondly could you also how do you read the situation in hong kong which is facing the crisis . Thats two questions. Thank you. And then the third here in the front row. My name is ann board of ipi i was actually fascinating. I thank you so very much for that presentation. I have two quick questions one is ive recently attended an Economic Forum on china. And the powerless consisted of primarily scholar and a businesspeople who do business primarily with china. One of the panelist i found it astounding he spoke about virtual attempting cities that have been built by to give a lot of jobs to chinese and construction. And the cities are large cities. They have many condominium buildings and theaters. Malls, and on the malls i have all a of no one is there. Without any merchandise in it. And nobody lives in these cities because nobody can afford to. My question is this is this really not an communist but it doesnt sound like very sound Economic Policy to me perhaps you can comment on that. So four here actually. I have four. Astangeding. Astangeding other question i have youre going to have five. I can handle it. Theres so much rhetoric that flies loosely around by campaigners. It has what it sees as the problem in its northwest that has waited to international fundamentalism. I think sometimes the link between the problems that china has with fundamentalism malintent vitalism is exaggerated but those points are real so china doesnt like Successful International militant islamic fundamentalist movements to be successful. So i dont think theres any support for isis in china. The issue of i ran was raised and chinas relationship with i ran is complicated. I do not believe that china is actively supporting Irans Nuclear program. There was a day in which china used to sell advanced military technologies and Nuclear Related technologies to i ran. I believe the United States and others have engaged china to such a degree on that issue that i dont see a lot of evidence that china is actively supporting any of those programs any longer that china does have robust economic relationships with i ran and it is the largest purchaser of Iranian Energy and the largest exporter to i ran of consumer goods and when the rest of the world is sanctioning i ran and china is also sanctioning i ran according to the p5 was one process china waters down some of those resolutions as much as a kansan every time theres any kind of opening it seems in the negotiations between i ran and the outside world china quickly upgrades its economic relationship so in the first half of 2014 of 40 increase in chinas Energy Purchases from i ran. Why . Because the real sanctions that china worries about come from congress and come from unilateral sanctions from individual european countries. The chinese firms dont want to get caught in the crosshairs of those sanctions and when the United States and the europeans are negotiating with china as part of the p5 plus onebased china knows the executives in those countries are going to try to keep their legislatures from raising sanctions so they can more safely afford the increase but it shows the will to have a more robust relations with i ran and the real. I think its shortsighted and thats my own perspective but it is a real problem and they are a major player. The same time they participate in that process and the to vote yes on the sanctions on i ran as well. The iranians dont like that so its not a pure picture. Xi jinping. Xi jinping . Im not a psychologist. Have you met him . I have. I sat in a meeting with my boss deputy secretary negroponte who is a great diplomat in 2008 with then Vice President chi and i was impressed in the following sense. His job was a thankless task which was to guide the olympics preparations. Had to be her fix and if it wasnt perfect it was a disaster. Thats highpressure it seems to me and we were talking about Global Security issues is part of what was called the senior dialogue in the United States to treat take dialogue in china which has been melted without economic we mentioned. Those were important meetings and we have that says to the Vice President and he spoke for 45 minutes to an hour about problems all around the world. He had been a largely domestically focused leader and he didnt use notes and he seemed to really talk about social problems. I was impressed with him. In terms of personality im not a good personality and list but i can say his reputation and his posture is more assertive than his predecessor president Cushing Powell who had a reputation for being more cautious so he worked his way up through the bureaucracy and being more reserved in his expression. Thats not much much of a personality interest. He has big challenges and takes them on with these big campaigns. And he is trying to tackle a lot of these economic problems that i mentioned and corruption problems that i mentioned to her big measures. The question is will he be successful . Is far too soon to tell but he seems quite powerful. As an individual more powerful than his immediate predecessor and he seems to have some idea about where he wants to leave the country. The unfortunate part of it is that he has also he has also encouraged a very strong crack down on freedom of expression in Academic Circles and media circles that i think is not only wrong on straightforward moral grounds but i think its the wrong answer for china when you look at the problems that china faces. They need our freedom of expression, more debate more exposure of corrupt officials to the media and not lessen unfortunately has chosen the path of being more constraining on freedom of expression in china or its. Hong kong. Hong kong . Hong kong is a very difficult challenge for the mainland because hong kong has a wealthy stable educated cosmopolitan population that has every reason to want to have represented did not receive end all the arguments that are made in the more sophisticated than arguments made on why the mainland isnt ready for competitive democracy do not apply to hong kong because it has the education and has infrastructure so its very difficult to come up with a reason why hong kong should not have direct elected officials but the mainland is very worried about it because now they have gotten hong kong back since 1997 and they see such politics is potentially getting out of control so they agreed that contagion from their perspective in my seat as a positive thing could spread to the mainland. So they tried to allow universal suffrage in name without the actual choice free choice of candidates by controlling the nomination process and that is obviously going to be frustrating to many people in hong kong so will it be more protests . Its quite possible. I do think its a more call to get a process that i have time to answer. I do think some of the tactics of the protesters were insufficiently sophisticated to further their own goals and i would have to get into a discussion on basic law and how they can work within the framework of the basic law to further their goals with them moving away from the basic laws and if they move away from basic laws the end result may be in some ways worse for hong kong rather than better because it provides certain protections for the hong kong economy that if they were moved hong kong could be in a worse place because they be under more direct mainland control which nobody wants ill think theres any reason for them to want that he. Virtual city is this the same as the real estate bubble that has created these nests of highrise. Buildings which are empty . Is a real estate bubble for sure. What happens is job creation becomes a major goal. They believe they can produce enough jobs to maintain stability and there is constant concern about stability so they lose the money supply through the normal channels which are Stateowned Banks local officials, local officials have a very weak tax base which is something a lot of people dont realize. Communist countries with tax base to local officials. The local officials have a strong incentive to find wealthy capital holders to sell land to so what they do is they will seize land from local citizens and in Eminent Domain cases they will sell them to Real Estate Developers to get a big loan from their connections with the Stateowned Bank and they will build some things that dont fit the market and there are dramatic examples like the one you discuss. I have heard and is only hearsay but ive heard that example in the New York Times is full now but there are other examples. A big country. Its at the moment on those things can fill up over time and not always going to be albatrosses for local officials forever but sometimes they dont. It shows the misallocation of capitol and that something that Henry Poulson when he was leading secretary poulson when he was read leaving the strategic economic powers was trying to drive home. You need to create this additional power so that you can have more freemarket action in the financial realm and more of a stock market and less reliance on the Stateowned Banks. If you want to have the most innovative forces in your society supported by capital and a timely fashion and i think that makes a lot of sense. He is a lot more experience in the financial world than i will ever have and i think a lot of chinese know that. The question is how do you get there . How do he get there when the Stateowned Banks employ so many people and you dont want to cause instability and i think thats a big challenge . About myself about your last question but i cant read my own notes. Im an independent first of all i dont recommend the u. S. Government anything i say here and in the book is my own opinion. I am nonpartisan and have been an independent by entire life. If you look at free trade theres money and on both sides of the aisle. Sometimes its criticism. I dont want to say demonization. Criticism and human rights is justified. Criticism on a ripoff is justified. There were Land Reclamation project in the South China Sea not by their very nature but that the timing and intensity of it to stabilizing and criticizing so criticizing chinas find that there are arguments that dont make a lot of sense. When you hear arguments that antifree trade i shut down. I think this is blaming china for economic problems that we have at home and when i hear things about china taking over the globe and replacing United States is a leading superpower i think they are grossly exaggerated. And i hear things about china rewriting the rules of International Relations and i find them grossly exaggerated. I find a lot more examples of the chinese cheating on existing rules then i see a blueprint so you see ipr rip off any sea dumping and solar panels on occasions and things like that. Those are not rewriting the rules. Those are skirting the current rules and i have never seen an ad in my studies of china blueprint for an alternative institutional system to replace the wpo to replace the imf and even aaii be the Infrastructure Bank in asia that could be quite constructive. It doesnt doesnt necessarily the right of the rules of International Relations and why would china want to change the current rules when it has benefited so much so i dont see evidence about total rewrite either and thats one of the forms of exaggeration. Seatac lets get to more questions. We have one in the front row in number two and number three and we will get you next round. Thank you very much for a very enlightening explanation. Id. Will you introduce yourself . Her name is sally cater and i represent the u. N. Organization. I came back from china a few weeks ago and we have now. Theres a problem with the mic. In shanghai is so a person that is also representing us was here with the diplomatic corps from our government and she made several remarks to me and one of them is how proud they all are about china that goes into any country but we never interfere in their politics. Like any other big powers. So she would always say we go in and we do whatever business we have to do and then we come out and we never interfere. The other one is that the Womens Movement has been extremely successful and we had a big meeting with official organizations and the head of the chinese Womens Organization. They are very proud of their accomplishments so they are moving forward but one thing i also noticed is they are very candid about their problems and what they are doing about it and how far they have gone and what they are doing for women. One remark. There are two other questioners. She said because she was here during Hurricane Sandy and she said what struck me is that the American People werent helping each other but there was no presence of the government. Had this been in china everybody would be against the government. So thank you. The gentleman in the third row. Thank you. I am from a Human Rights Agency chinese reporter new york city. I thank ipr for inviting me here. I have two questions. The first one is about u. S. China relations. I think professor you were there at the first to teach it dialogue between the two countries so now the new round of strategic and economic dialogue taking place tomorrow and paying a visit to the u. S. So how do you expect them to promote ive noticed there are some pessimistic views. I think you call yourself an optimist but there are also pessimistic views saying that china is challenging u. S. Dominance and the u. S. Will fight back and there will be more fighting in operation for the two countries so how do you see ties . Thats a big question. I havent finished yet, sorry. Given the president ial race and the next administration how do you see, will there be some change in the u. S. China policy . Thank you. Snack and then this gentleman here. I am from the department of Peace Keeping operations focusing on africa. Hold it closer to your mouth. I am from the department of peacekeeping operations for the United Nations focusing on african affairs. Thank you for your presentation and i was wondering with regard to the u. S. China Strategic Dialogue there is a tendency among chinese diplomats to stress the notion of sovereignty when it comes to discussing extension of president ial mandates beyond constitutional timeframes and i was wondering whether you would have can you say that again because its kind of complicated complicated. I noted a tendency by chinese diplomats to stress the notion of sovereignty when it comes to discussion of the extension of president ial mandates beyond constitutional timelines and i was wondering whether the question could be raised in the Strategic Dialogue . Immune president ial mandates and the present of an individual country stretching beyond [inaudible] the chinese position thats a typical chinese answer. There was one less woman i wasnt able to get to so you wont have time after this. At eye name is mary and that im a policy consultant. My question is regarding corruption and local governments in china. I know the Chinese Government was experimenting with local level elections in early 2000s with the hope of either improving governance on the ground are the perceptions of governance on the ground and momentum for those have slowed. Im wondering why that is the case and also if they are experimenting with other practices that can strengthen governance and decrease the perception of corruption on the ground . Five minutes to answer all of those. The Womens Organization i wish them well. One of the problems of the organizations from my perspective is they are never free of government control so they dont play the same role as the Civil Society in the United States in europe and canada. The governments biggest concern any resolution that become his party does not have direct control of regardless of content and that applies to religion that applies to religious organizations. I wish them well and i think they can do a lot of good but it would be better still if you could have independence in this organization to present the government direct and try to get people more involved in politics politics. I think there are a lot of problems in u. S. China relations and i think the way you put it has a lot of americans make the argument that china is trying to replace United States and tried United States out of the region. Ive spoken about that. I dont think thats the main problem that china can be assertive in its prosecution of that sovereignty claims and it has been so i think there are some real challenges in the u. S. China relationship and there are real tensions and thats not a bad thing to me was diplomatic respective to bring those tensions up in that dialogue. Thats the appropriate place for it. Those tensions are real. Theres going to be a push by the United States for china to clarify what that line is in the South China Sea means whether its consistent with International Law how the chinese interprets things like artificially made islands and whether they generate in chinas perception 12 nautical mile territorial waters or even zones so those types of things are going to come up. Theres a difference in the issues of whether china is going to be dominant to kick the u. S. Out of reach or take over the world and i think its unfortunate to focus on questions like that rather than how is chinas real rising capability in its own region and also locally pose challenges for the real issues of United States and likeminded states face and i think that sony to focus on and should focus on in the style logs. There are specific issues and i dont want to go into too many that should be addressed on the economic front. A bilateral treaty would be a good thing to reach and there has been progress during the obama a pass rush no negotiations on that issue with china and china has accepted what the americans call the notion of the negative list which means each actor in a bilateral treaty will lift all the things we can invest. In the past china you are the places where you can invest in everywhere else you cant. Just accepting that concept is to move forward and i hope that ball can be pushed forward during the negotiations. There are real differences. I dont want to come across as saying because we are not enemies that we dont have root differences and i dont want to come across as saying because i dont think that we should treat china as an enemy or try to contain chinas growth that the United States has to take tough positions on a range of issues human rights security Economic Issues like ipr ripoffs. I do believe United States needs to take decisions on those things that those dialogs are very useful vocations to do then its much better to have a set dialogue meeting where you know you all have to be there and is scheduled no matter how tense relations are. Many ginebra me talk about and thats better than some of the alternatives. Is that the last word . I thought there was one more. Theres one from the u. N. I am never surprised when china takes the position away not going to get involved in the internal politics of the country even if the constitution of the country in question is being violated. Im never surprised because of the standard position. We were able to move china as they said not to abandon that visible but to soften it. United states unlike i did states in the period since 2011 and the capstone of that was that and if you look at the statement that china made they were very uncomfortable with the vote. Many people in the chinese establishment say government and i was out of the government at that time didnt know that china voted yes. They voted yes to send gadhafi to the icc. They voted yes. Unanimously. They went through so they did not stop it in any way. So they said we must have abstain. He did not abstain. And they made a statement saying why they report in the statement was very short and it basically said because of special circumstances, that means they dont want to press it that they are going to do this. So for china to support Something Like this is really extraordinary. Its more common for china to say that the business of the people in that country. And if they have a constitutional problem they should address the present themselves. Sad because in many cases the instability in countries created by that kind of situation can create civil disturbances that spread around the world and create contagion and sometimes literally in the form of disease. You worked on this and thanks for doing it you know it better than i. Afghanistan is not a great power but it harbors actors they can destabilize the system. Global governance and rtp principles are very important. Getting china on board with that is going to be difficult. If you look at chinas statement about what it doesnt need for china and i think thats going to be a real challenge. Local elections. I havent followed that closely and havent seen a lot of progress up the chain. Those local elected officials do not only controlling their own budget which is a big part of the politics but that they have to rely on Party Members even if they were not Party Members elected for their own budget which limited their power but it was a move that was healthy because it provided some check on local corruption and local abuse by officials. Noncommunist were allowed to run. There was always a limit to that in the sense that what china would never allow, the Chinese Communist party the chinese commies party would never allow his independent Party Systems away from the Chinese Communist party. If you think about elections you are going from the village level to the county level in china. The county level has millions of people. They have provinces that are the size of this country. He can have a noncommunist member even if you allowed at the higher level you can have a noncommunist member candidate in those elections without a platform, without a system without the ability to get the word out about what that platform is to a large group of people. At the local level you can become a member of a family in a village. The family has it commonest party candidate. Everyone knows each other. On it to get the word out that much in mr. Wong can meet mr. John. You cant do that when you have an election that covers the interests of tens of billions of people. You have to have a plan warm you have a campaign and you have to have a party or a station that chinese commies party doesnt want other Party Organizations to exist. They dont even want only weeks to exist unless theres a party cadre controlling the bowling league. Its going to be difficult to move from those local elections at the higher level elections they really pose a promise. Im going to save promise because i think of a good thing for china of eventual liberalization and multiparty democracy. Im going to keep tom here to sign books if you purchase them and bring them forward. To pick up on his last metaphor tom i think its 10 pins. I think you knock out all 10 pins. It was at terrific presentation. Thank you so much. [applause] [inaudible conversations]