Potential locations for the next naval base. This event was hosted by the Heritage Foundation. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our program, china future naval bases, new Empirical Data points to likely places. Please welcome the director of the Heritage Foundations Center for National Defense. Thank you very much everybody, great to see you all, those in the auditorium here and those joining us online, we are delighted you could be with us today. A reminder to silence your phones so we can be uninterrupted here. If there is one area of bipartisan agreement in this town of which there are very few, there is one and that is the danger that the Chinese Communist party is presenting to the interest of the United States and the western world. Congress holds frequent hearings on this topic and has stood up a select committee on the strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist party to call attention to this issue. Function of the number of ships and missiles that you have. It is indeed the sum of many factors, logistics, training, and our topic today, naval ports. Amidst the recent tensions about Chinese Naval activities, ranging from the South China Sea to the bering sea, a major concern is where do they go next, and one way of ascertaining where the chinese navy may go next for sustained operations is to wear basic bases today. There have been a few places that have been in the news on this front. Equatorial guinea, cambodia, of course the Solomon Islands. Today were going to hear from experts on this topic you can give us some insight into what is shaping chinas thinking about such future basis. Prompting this discussion is the promulgation of a recent report titled harboring global ambitions, chinas ports footprint and implications for future overseas naval bases by a data, a Research Institution based in williamsburg, virginia, on the campus of the college of william and mary, my alumni, who used a range of novel techniques to provide insights to policymakers. For over a decade they have studied chinese financial movements and overseas Port Investments. So id like to invite our guests up to the stage here first. Alex willey, director of partnerships and communications that aid data. He has contributed to Foreign Policy and wrote one of the cover stories for the fall 2021 issue on the u. S. Navys shipbuilding was and in 2022 he wrote a story for folarin policy on the implications for the South China Sea of the sinking of the russian cruiser,f moscow, which was a Foreign Policy most read story. Alex is a former section editor of the georgetown journal of International Affairs and a former officer in the British Royal navy. He holds a master of arts in Security Studies from georgetown university. Also with us is brent sadler, joining Heritage Foundation after a 26 year navy career with numerous operational tours on Nuclear Powered submarines. Previous assignments include tours on the naval chief of operations staff at u. S. Pacific command and as the Senior Defense official in malaysia. As heritages Senior Research fellow, brent is focused on Maritime Security and the technologies shaping our future maritime forces, especially in the navy. He is the recent author of the book, u. S. Naval power in the 21st century, which discusses what he calls naval statecraft to contest chinas designs to reorder the world to its interests by playing to the interests by playing to the chinas weaknesses. So were going to start up on stage here with me asking these experts some questions and after a bit of that we are going to go to you, the audience, for your questions, both online and the ones in thea auditorium here. So when we get to that portion please be thinking of a question. If you are online you can use the application to submit a y question at any point in time and we will chew those up and have them ready. And if you ask a question now and its subsequently been h answered, of course we wont ask that question again. I think without further ado lets get to it. Alex, thanks so much for joining us. Did you come up tuthis morning from williamsburg . Actually yesterday. The traffic on i95 wasnt too bad at all. Im fascinated by this report. Im unaware of anything similar to it in recent years. Could you talk about what sets r this report and the methodology kind of apart from any other previous works on this topic . Absolutely. For more than 10 years aid data and william and mary have been collecting very granular, project level information on project level information on so that typically goes into a very large data set that has many, many rows of information, to help us as well as analysts analyze chinas intentions and strategy around development finance. Finance. Data set coming out in the fall of this year that will include 20,000 projects, looking at all official Chinese Development planning to 155 countries. From that we then subsumed a set specifically of ports. So we wanted to sort of delve a little bit into that subject matter. Today is obviously very newsworthy and of concern. Ce so we then took that data which incorporates a lot of c geospatial information as well as project narratives, a lot of information about financial flows, and we then combined that with other data inputs, so this included looking at how o the host country of a potentiala naval base aligns in u. N. General Assembly Voting with china. We looked at satellite imagery to look at the ports themselves. We look at the regime type of the potential host country, to i identify the potential ports. Safe to assume that the Chinese Communist party graciously makes all this data y available to you . They do not, and they dont typically signal where their on intentions are. We gather them all through open source information. We are lucky enough that st william and mary to have an y integrated team of faculty and staff of more than 100 student researchers who are engaged year round in scraping this information and we then tried to do deep dives into this is fascinating stuff that some of this is not in english, that you actually have to use a native speaker to kind of mind some of this data. We are very lucky to leverage the multilingual staff, including students who have many languages, be deable access information, for example, through the coast countries, their depositories of information. Okay, very good. Brent, over to you, sir. We talked about naval bases and it doesnt sound that ominous and threatening, but what are mm some of the negative av implications if the Chinese Communist party does establish a new naval base on the atlantic side of africa, for x example . Right now its one of the areas theyre looking at. Y its one that weve also looked at at heritage in the gulf of guinea in west africa, and of course mauritania, a couple interesting ports of interest. Beteresting ports of interest. Be a new entry for china to be that far away. It would allow them to sustain naval operations, military naval operations, military again, the key transit routes from the panama canal, which they have major investment and n presence, and also with that de trade and that traffic over to europe, and back and forth. From a trade perspective, high interest, but also from a military operational perspective it could also al happen. Also the function islands, not too far away, thats where the United States military does its missile testing and certification of its rocket forces. You know, say a chinese shipw makes a port call at just a normal port. It can typically buy bananas g and diesel fuel. What would be the big deal about the chinese getting a od naval base, if you will, in one of these countries . Theres a recouple aspects. The logistics, getting food, medical. Most commercial ports you can get food and medical. Most commercial ports you can also get diesel fuel, marine diesel fuel. Highend, more modern warships require jet fuel. Thats a lot harder to come by. So thats one of the items that if you have a presence and you are invested in you can make sure youve got that when you needed to sustain military operation. Then theirs dry docks and repair facilities as well that enter the mix. Very good. Alex, ack to you, sir. In your report, which i commanded to the audience, its really fascinating reading, you identified eight races as potential nearterm Chinese Naval bases and you do us a in favor of ranking and ordering them and what you think is the priority. But missing is any port in the Solomon Islands, which has beent in the news. He lots of people talking about it. Its mentioned in your report ig but it doesnt take the top eight. Can you talk about that . Sure. Absolutely. Our Data Collection effort covers all Chinese Development islands invested from 2003 f 2021. The fairly recent nnannouncemen about awarding a contract to a Chinese Construction Company who work in the Solomon Islands is from this year, so its a little bit outside our existingy data set. But we did look carefully at the Solomon Islands. F obviously last year they refused the u. S. Navy warship ei and a british ship from docking. It puseems like they are being pulled in a few different directions. I think late last year the leadership there looked like it might be leaning back toward australia to provide some security assurance. And then developments this yearo obviously, such as this recent construction. From our point of view, in some ways it was less important for c us to focus on the specific port than the region. S i think we are all agreed that the South Pacific is going to be clearly a target region. We identified venue at two because core to our research was tracking the money and where the money has gone. Because thats what we do, we th looked at where china put the most money. At that point, vietnam made a significant investment in the fi Solomon Islands. I think in 2019 they tried to purchase an sop. China tried to purchase an m island in the Solomon Islands t that there is not big, significant, financial investment. When we look at vanuatu and th port luginbill, where they donated dollars to upgrade and expand the port bill, have been in our particular region. But for wherever we look at before example to brents point about west and Central Africa, theres a whole swath of ports t where they put massive amounts of money into and we sort of landed on caribbean cameroon and Equatorial Guinea as two of the very likely ports. There only 100 miles apart so th they are probably going to choose may be one of those or one of the other ports around west africa. From our point of view its e like they are going to have a base somewhere in that region. H where it might be, they are noty telling anyone. As you look at these wide range of years, you looked at 2005 through 2021. Any trends in constant dollars, perhaps . Are they spending more in recent days or is this a trend . Can you discern a trend there . I dont know about a trend. There has been an observable pause, we think, and Infrastructure Development generally, during the pandemic. So it looked like they might ha have hit pause during that t period. But really the Port Investments the entire rl period. We actually tended to sort of downplay a little bit some of the Port Investments that were very early on, and they were completed. Because we also tend to see sort of an increasing convergence of the economic and the geopolitical. From china. So what might have been t seen i a purely commercial venture 20 years ago, it seems like, in addition to the belt and red initiative, china has a number n of other initiatives that have h a little bit more clear strategic intent, so its very t possible that theyre sort of uniting a little bit more throughout the commercial and these other, a little bit harder sort of initiatives that sort of bring those two together. So we tended to favor a little e bit the more recent chinese investment. Maybe early on they were sprinkled in money over a wide place and now in more recent years theyve become a bit more strategic. I think thats definitely a possibility. They were looking to portray it themselves been very openhanded with their money, and the narrative throughout has been, we are like you, we were a veryt poor country not too long ago. We are not colonial, unlike the other sort of powers that are ua being active in these regions. So were presenting something completely different and we just want mutual cooperation and Mutual Benefit to be om generated through the bri. I think whats interesting as well, from our point of view, there is a fair amount of Public Events right now because the bri is turning 10 this year, by most peoples count, from 2013, which is roughly the same time that the u. S. Launched its asia pivot, as well. So looking at how, over the past 10 day 12 years, how thoseo two different movements have paralleled and differed, but i e think theres definitely a move more toward strategic intent to the economic investments. Very good. Or brentz, i want to go back to you and your book. Brents book, naval power in the 21st century, you advocate for this use and this tying together of u. S. Diplomatic and naval presence together to kind of create a synergistic effect. Can you talk about how that might address chinas pursuit of naval bases . I think its really a useful construct or framing for how to actually compete with china. China has actually emerged, the way they approached all this, the economic would lead military or political. Now we are seeing the geopolitical becoming increasingly backed by more explicit military or naval presence. Theyve been exercising what i would call naval statecraft ef already. So what the United States needs to look at is reframing the way that it does statecraft and es integrate the naval presence with Economic Development and also with more forceful diplomacy. But the key thing in the work that alex and aid data is doing, it helps so you can get t ahead, look at certain key factl theirs. And for example, Equatorial Guinea, focusing not on the elite sort of powerbrokers in es the country, which is the chinese favored approach. The United States and the naval statecraft construct takes a a counterinsurgency where the people, the population, the center of effort, still looking at helping small and Medium Enterprises in the waterfront fishing communities, helping the Maritime Police and the rake coast guard in these countries, help her safeguard the local communities, the larger, popular, money and capital it generation in each countrys gdp market. Thats where the u. S. Has an opportunity to kind of push back on some of this, and te thats one of the aspects of the book. I think thats one of the so what, what do you do with this data. Its to inform the where next. Right now and can video you see some things playing out right ut now with what looks to be a naval base for the chinese. We Solomon Islands is another place that there could be some room to apply a naval statecraft approach as well, backed by the work theyve done. I remember still to this day, it was at least a couple years ago that this report, at least to me, came out of ho nowhere, whirl of a sudden the chinese were expressing chinese were expressing and i remember, like why should i care about that, and you were very persuasive in your writing that this actually is a big deal. Can you just talk a little bit more about that . I think when you look at that whole area, the first question is there is a whole bunch of port chinese are investing in, they can go to any one of them. It has to align with the fact e that they are looking at the political alignment, the assurance that that regime in power is going to survive, itse going to be favorable to the chinese. Equatorial guinea stood out. Its obvious from that io perspective that would be a place theyre going to double down. They also had a footprint in there, economic footprint imports angiography. You cant avoid geography. If you have a deepwater port thats an asset and all those things are there. Why it matters, the first thing is the missile range is not too far away and if you wanted to be the chinese, you want to watch what we are doing with our Nuclear Submarine force, and what we are doing with our ballistic missiles, you want to park nearby. Thats also similar to what was playing in care of us in the South Pacific where we have another mistletoe strange as well, so theres an operationals piece to this, as well, the economics. Great, thank you very much. So a question i like to draw from sherlock holmes, the question of the dog that doesnt bark. Lets say despite your data and your forecast, china does nothing about a naval base for the next five years or so. Does that mean anything . Should we draw any conclusions m from that or does that mean they decided maybe the time isnt right . Its a great question. I think from our point of view, china and she has built this enormous navy, now numerically larger than the u. S. Navy, not intended to be a brown water navy. Its clearly a blue water navy. There is a lot of rhetoric that china itself deploys about wanting a ship to go further afield. Theres been incidents over recent history where chinese ships have broken down, unable e to get repaired, et cetera, s because they dont have of facilities. You do see these ship visits to different parts of the world. The fact that they have this new aircraft carrier, a kettle bar type carrier which is very similar in concept to a u. S. Carrier, all of that is for ti projection and being further out in the world. And then you also sort of think they do not belong to a typical Defense Alliance like nato or like the new office. They dont have relationships with countries where theres been some level Playing Field in terms of the relationship sh where they could base their ship like the u. S. Fleet in s naples, for example. Theres not that equivalent for china. Theyre catching up in terms of replenishment at sea vessels but they are still a little fars behind, so if they wanted to or deploy ships further afield, they dont have relationships with an ally, with a host naval base, they dont have as many relationships as other modern navies might have. So it makes sense to be looking for a place to have a naval base, from our point of view. But they definitely, clearly, and we make note of this report, theyve taken their times of our. It was 2017, and back in 2016 ar chinas foreign minister said we are going to be looking for increasing number of supply and logistics basis. It hasnt come yet. Theres really something, which is also acting as a restraint. T we dont know exactly what it is, but i think its inevitable , the growth of the chinese navy is going to continue in the next decade. Its not like theyve reached a steadystate final number, so they are going to increase the membership. You would like to have a e base see what it matches. Its a little bit hard to imagine that there isnt going to be overseas naval base. Frank, to that point, this distinction between china embarking on a blue water navy, the pursuit of it, i think theyo have plans for at least three carriers, i want to say, and yet the lack of any real overseas presence, is there a d contradiction there . Ive always had this thought th that maybe this fascination theyve developed with carriers is a mirroring thing, that they think great powers have carriers, hence we need to have a carrier. How do you think about that . T its worthwhile reflecting on the history. The chinese denied any intention of ever developing aircraft carriers until they had one. Thats like decades of basically saying that when it became almost impossible to ignore just before they announced that aircraft carrier. They are finishing up the type iii, which is the first indigenous flatback, not with a ski jump at the end of it. That allows you to sustain Strike Missions at further range. They also designed the type cmi heavy logistics ship, which can also travel at speed with the carrier. Its like our Carrier Strike ay groups, to have the ability to rearm. Rearm. Three or four days, you need to resupply fuel because it is still a conventional carrier. Es by all measures, there navy has been responding to historic new been responding to historic new the secretarygeneral in 2004, r 2008 they do general Piracy Missions off the horn of e africa. They start doing exercises in large numbers passing through japan, into the philippine sea,t beginning in 2010. Its become commonplace in the last few years. The basis that they need to sustain if theyre going to go to the next step, you need a place like djibouti where you can store munitions and fuel, jet fuel most importantly. Because the cruiser that se defends the aircraft Carrier Strike group, the rent high, the type lv, uses gas turbines like our highend warships, so they need jet fuel like the aircraft. So you have a military base, you can ensure you have access to critical fuel and emissions. Places like graham on the naval base in cambodia stand out as a place to reload munitions and to also reload maybe critical y fuels, less as a place where you have sailors based. Very good. Question for you, your report has a section all to its own about russia and we know that putin and xi have said their partnership or whatever, friendship enjoys no boundaries, its boundary less boundaries, its boundary less nevertheless, in your report, although you talk a fair amount about russia, no russian port made the top eight. Can you speak to that . Absolutely. Theres one aport that is actually in our data set but unfortunately of the amount the china gave is so large and we cant desegregate what part is only the port. So on the coast theres a port called sub essa which is an lng facility and we believe that china has invested 13 billion into that. But its a total facility so that includes a shoreside and other associated infrastructure in addition to the park. But because we are unable we included as an asterisk in our data set and i think at the same time china also funded the construction of a number of icebreakers. They will be using the port. And i think we made the broader point that Strategic Point that as china looks at the success of the pri after 10 plus years and increasingly m, theyve built these ports in a e vacuum, these commercial ports, while we were focused on the global war on terror, iraq and that, et cetera, china now is seeing what is the extent of the bri, how successful its been am and in terms of for russia, if china gets a lot of pushback against building a naval base, do they potentially look at staunch allies like de russia and look at locating a naval base, for example, somewhere in russia . We mentioned as a possibility sabetta could be an option. A lot of people do not count it a part of the belt and throat initiative but china itself ss calls of our arctic pearl. The arctic passage is one of three blue passages that china calls it, main see lines of communication. Thats clearly of interest to them. Then we look at potentially co locating a Russian Naval base. N so petra pavlov for example on so petra pavlov for example on be an option or somewhere in the barents sea or somewhere t like that would give them the same strategic advantage and again, they would not have to ho worry about necessarily persuading a host country to join their effort because theyre already operating together. There navy is operating together , also in africa, with the iranian navy, et cetera. Theyve been doing joint exercises around japan, for example. There might be some logic to it but it is pure speculation on our points. Presumably the National Security council, the pentagon l have been fascinated by your. Report and ask you over to speak to it . We have been doing briefings and the invitations are coming. Id like to think that we will avoid strategic surprise and maybe try and get ahead of this before we get the next newsflash that the chinese are in some port somewhere. We have a digital question to take. Who is monitoring those . Do we have any . Please lets have the first one. Question for the panel. How do you see the differences between how many u. S. , for s example, uses bases like in singapore versus how the chinese may use some of these bases, and does not have e implications for their ability to project power specifically in areas like the atlantic . Ill start with that. So the first real look at this was back in 2014 at National Defense university, looking at different types of models, and t there were six different modelsh if my memory serves me right. The one that seems to be playing out is this hybrid where they use a commercial port to support military operations, because many of these chinese entities and the port that they control is all owned or controlled by the Chinese Communist party, even p if it is a commercial shipping or ship builder that just happens to be operating in that port, or infrastructure. Thats what we are inseeing pla out and why you see Chinese Naval visits, theyre very likely being supported by controlled contractors. So that model is playing out. S but the second, very close second, because you cant move munitions and you cant necessarily do sensitive naval vessel repair, especially in wartime, where you need to have access to large dry docks and you are going to be doing a highly technical and very sensitive from a security classification but also from a physical security aspect, repairs to warships that have severe battle damage. That means it drives them more to djibouti, the actual basing construct. Cambodia is somewhere in between, a naval base to allow munitions places like Solomon Islands, i have a big . Because of geography and also if theyre going to operate more distant in the south and central pacific, they have to have a place that they can relyi on to do repairs and also shipping munitions. Their model is different. But in many ways at the end of the day, they are going to have bases that look like the United States. To brents point, our starting point by looking at the financial flow was also the financial flow was also template, if you will. T china made a real commercial investment in djibouti right before it made the military t investment. So theres a clearer tie in between some of the commercial r and in the clinical. To brents point, in our data set that we released in 2021, we tracked more than 300 official chinese entities that Fund Different types of projects. Projects. Some of them will have the appearance of being commercial, when in fact they are actually official entities of the government or a state government, or a corporation, which is ultimately referring to the government. In our next data set, which comes out in the fall, well bes tracking more than 800 official chinese entities that are carrying out these Financial Investments and some of them can be traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and still be part of the state apparatus. Xt when you look at these investments, im assuming they are a mixture of what i would gi call grants, were just giving you money, and some of it is loaned. Is there overwhelming are they mostly loans . That will typically be the inversion compared to the u. S. Model. The u. S. Model typically has es been more aid and less its called commercial looking investment, another financial flow. In china its the reverse. The majority are these other financial flows, not strictly aid, according to the definition of the oecd in paris. So the overwhelming are these e things that may look commercial, that are other types of financial. Mostly not just gratis. Its money that there is some obligation, theres some collateral or some kind of exactly. I should be sort of clear, as well, our data set does not d track strict before direct investment. Not strictly privatesector. But it has to come from an official source, is what we are trying to do. State owned enterprise woulde qualify. Even a majority state owned enterprises included in our data. Lets look to the audience here. Wilson, you have a microphone. Sir in the middle here, please. Im peter harpring, an Intelligence Analyst and a former diplomat. Im taking that particularly in the case of the solomons, the interest is much more for future utilization of feral manganese nodules and to a lesser extent fishing, rather than some grand geopolitical scheme beyond the Second Island chain. Did you look at all at those resource potentials . We do and we have parallel study events at aid data, study events at aid data, Transition Minerals that i think china is very interested in, and we also look at ports where and to some degree downgraded them in our analysis if there are ports where clearly they are building a port for accessing a natural resource, for example. And we dont think theres any potential military potential. Theres a port that they y financed in vietnam, which i think is linked to maybe coal production. So thats clearly we didnt think that necessarily as a military application. The other thing as well, i think your point is that breaking island chains is clearly going to be one of the main incentives to the Solomon Islands or vanuatu or whoever else. So far the investments have notl been significant enough that you would be able to have a naval facility with drydock, e et cetera, et cetera. So far the investments being small and extending a peer or at wharf that might accommodate frigates or destroyers or maybe the fuji on class three aircraft carrier. I think that is logical. But in the short term the er Solomon Islands, for example, would be more stocking a naval station and a resupply space rather than a fullscale naval base with an operating dock and et cetera. They do have anchorages. May have deepwater anchorages so a naval ship going into ho anchor, limited on the type of logistics you can bring in and how long it takes, and if youre in a crisis you want to get in and get out quick. That has a consequence. In but in peacetime there are a couple of anchorages there. Of course to turn some other shallowater ports into deepwater ones, its going to be a tell because they are going to have to do significant dredging and theyre going to have to do significant investment on some of the waterfronts before they get there. I guess to rtthe gentlemans point, the Solomon Islands did not make your top eight. That validates a bit of the pulling up the economic ports versus military. We still had a lot of hands in the air. Yesmen, right here. Fer that was convenient, wasnt it . Thank you so much. Thank you for a wonderful, th fascinating panel presentation. My question is based on a statement that i think alex made regarding china being nu numerically greater then us now, by numbers in the navy. Te will your talks with the pentagon include strategies and structures to elevate our navy men and other military folks . When i wrote my article in Foreign Policy in 2021, one of the sort of key themes was addressing the numeric shortfall of the u. S. Navy, and specifically how to increase not only construction but also repair as well, for example. As we all know, this long delay in being able to reset submarines and aircraft carriers, et cetera, there is not enough shipyard. You had an entire period of many decades of consolidation of shipyards, now not enough, and we know the u. S. Navy is intending to expand when in fact it is contracting at the nt moment. T so losing ships while intending to grow. I think its han ongoing conundrum that really hasnt been solved as yet. Well know more about this. Yes. We could do a separate event on this and brent could talk for an hour. I will Mention Congress sees this as well and last year the National Defense authorization act, they called for a commission on the future of the navy, and that panel was supposed to be up and running ma this year by march, and thus far not all the members have been appointed to that committee, if you will, or commission, rather. Its just kind of out there, lingering with no future of it, much less a future of the navy. Are there questions in the re room . Yes maam, over there, please. Thank you so much for a really interesting talk. We really appreciate it. A question i have regarding the investment in naval bases, so can you talk a little bit more h about the nittygritty of how you draw causality between the investment and future establishment of naval bases . Sure. Ca so theres not causality because we dont know for sure where china is like the to base this on. What we do is we start with the financial and we look at it some degree from phasing for beijings perspective. So if you were in china and you have this massive and expanding navy, and you do want to go further afield, where would be the logical places . And from our point of view, to s construct a massive civilian port requires years of patient e investment, not only in terms of the economics of it, but in building the relationship. So you cannot build one of these huge ports in west or l Central Africa without becoming ingrained in the partner country and the host country where the port is going to be built. So from our point of view it would probably be unusual for china to think about a naval base in the place where it has not made these types of investments. From our point of view, looking at some of the correlation might be, in terms of the amount invested. So we talk about, for example, freetown, sierra leone, where china has put in some 750 million for the port out there, the Queen Elizabeth ii port in freetown. 750 million in a country where the total gdp is 4 billion. That is a massive amount of leverage into that country, and china has been very successful at also building relationships with the elite, with political parties, with the media, et cetera. So if china was then going to think about having a naval base in west africa, any of these places along the coast where its made these enormous investments would seem to be the more logical choices, than somewhere starting afresh where there is no economic investment. Especially given that these economic investments again are coming from official entities, a ming from official entities, john deere or caterpillar, an ap American Company that just happens to have been invested in an overseas port. Its coming from organizations, entities which are ultimately y reporting to the chinese government. Do we have any more . Lets go with another online question, please. Le do you think that chinas future locations for naval bases will limit the location of u. S. Bases, for example, there base in djibouti . I guess the first thing, when i look at this, in looking at this question for many at this question for many perspective. Is from the perspective of whati operational need drives a base, and for still today, nothing has really changed. The main operational focus is on a war over taiwan. So in looking at that, thats what that debate is, and the ty what that debate is, and the ty chinese maybe now have, does that inform the type of bases . So the new ships they have, the new carrier commonly type iii, the rent high, these ships have a depth requirement, they have a length requirement, they have a fuel requirement and they also only have so many days of t endurance, those in combat as well as peacetime. Om is measured in a couple of weeks, several weeks. So that tells me tif you just d the time distance, you look at where those operations would have to be, from a military conflict, which would be taiwan, the philippines sees se first and foremost that distant ops and then the geopolitical part if youre going to try andr influence the indian ocean because you want to secure yours access to market in peacetime. I in wartime anything is going to go in the philippines in the east and South China Sea, around taiwan. So thats what the basis would be and my calculation is just ak little bit different. I look at places like cambodia as a place to reload munitions, not a place to be repairs. Get in and get out quick. You also have a base there, a naval base thats by an ally or close to an ally. S Solomon Islands, if you are going to be sustaining operations to enter u. S. Shipping, it makes a lot of sense to use these anchorages to reload and restock for the food and maybe some fuel but if. You have Nuclear Submarines operating in the pacific, getting in and getting out. Quick to just reload the food because you dont need fuel for a Nuclear Submarine thats going out and sinking the u. S. Auxiliaries and logistics ships makes more sense. Eet i would agree. I think china has stated that the indo pacific, indian ocean, Pacific Ocean are asian priorities geographically. Theres the idea of protecting their see lines of communication, which again, the major ones s cross the indian ocean, come through the malacca strait, straits of hormuz, et ns cetera. Breaking these island chains, these perceived island hichains that contain china, i think ared allimportant. To brents point, as well, intercepting where the u. S. Might send reinforcements from e along these different sort of areas. So it might come from the mediterranean, it might come from the indian ocean, the e gulf, et cetera. In would also be so high priority, which is again where the indian ocean comes into it. Also we are always inking, too, about they also want to Balance India within the indian ocean, as well. So theres somewhat a n. Fight f regional hegemony within the indian ocean, too. T i think the answer to that question was no, that they put their bases where they suit them and not so much where it would suit us, its looking at p the world in a different way. We might go on here for a ns while. Really quick question . Lets do it really quickly. Thank you for the talk. I really appreciate it. I know you said theres no direct causality between where china is putting its bases, but are you seeing any tipping points of where china is slowly moving out of just having the economic relations that would make you think that theyre moving more towards naval bases within those areas, of course that you listed in the report . Not necessarily. Theres clearly, as i was mentioning before, theres clearly more of a broader geostrategic focus that china has. Its the lines to the economic, so i think the thinking is probably that these two are sort of more interconnected andl they have been in the past and clearly, because of the pandemic and because of domestic Economic Conditions as well, clearly china is thinking, reassessing the bri, thinking, reassessing the bri, belton road initiative, and what they potentially want to do next. I think these other priorities have the u. S. And allies push back on some of these potential Expansion Efforts of the chinese military, i think its all going to sort of coalesce within sort of a calculus within china itself. Great. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much but unfortunately we have run out of our allocated time. We will be posting yothe video this event to our website here in just a day or two so i encourage you to share that with your friends. To our guests, lets give them a round of applause. And we look forward to welcoming you to a future e, heritage event. In the meanwhile, have a great st rest of your day, please. A healthy democracy doesnt just look like this. It looks like this, where americans can see democracy at work and citizens are truly informed. Our republic thrives. Get informed straight from the source on cspan. Unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. From the Nations Capital to wherever you are. You get the opinion that matters most to your own. 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Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. Coming up, Supreme CourtJustice Elena kagan talking about a senate bill created to establish a code of ethics for the high court. The democratic measure was put forward in response to recent reports of potential ethics n. Violations involving justices clarence thomas, samuel alito, and sonja soto mayor. Justice kagan spoke at the ninth circuit judicial conference in