My name is glenn howard, i am the president of Jamestown Foundation and we are delighted to have at our ninth annual china events and security conference the honorable Randall Schreiber who is assistant secretary of defense for security affairs. Mr. Schreiber, the point of this position and generally eighth 2018. For those of you who do not know anything about jamestown, or a Nonprofit Foundation in washington that specializes with terrorism and also deals a lot with china and we appreciate the people of this program will be broadcast on cspan. Were very excited about getting the visibility throughout the United States and that critical point of the speech, Randall Schreiber speech he appeared last, and they were off the record at the time. This year we keep progressing and how we advance was secretary schreiber and we are trying to get more attention to this issue. Let me say, a couple words about randy. He has long been known in the China Community is a robust voice on china. In 2008, he cofounded the project 2049 with mark stokes, he has been very active in this region in a wide industry engrossed career and were starting off with a Consulting Firm and gone on to different areas with a Nonprofit Organization in asia. He served as a deputy secretary of state for the Asian Pacific affairs was responsible for china mongolia, hong kong, australia and the pacific islands. And maybe you have the file for him, and one of the things he has done in terms of being a robust thinker, he is very proud of this and has every right to be. In june 2019 he helped develop the longterm in order to deal china the strategic competitor and created a new position in the department of defense called the secretary of defense for china. That has been a very Important Development because his help focus and synthesize the thinking and the pentagon on china and were delighted that he has taken the time to come and talk to us so without further ado i turn the floor over to randy. [applause] i pursue the opportunity to be back. I guess this is progression being on the record but i welcome the opportunity to have this discussion in public because i think its important inconsequential time in the region and what were trying to do to compete effectively with china. I appreciate being intervenor on the record and congratulation on the record for jamestown. Including this conference i was able to stream the discussion earlier and saw old friends like russell and helping us to get our hands around these various challenges and particularly enjoyed the discussion or learned from the discussion on the influence operation and how aggressive china and johns comments are on that. So im very pleased to be part of this discussion. I thought i would talk a little bit about recent developments in recent travels i have had and then embed that in our strategy that we are implementing and leave some time for discussion for questions and answers. I will talk internally how we are organizing for this challenge. As glenn mentioned the creation of the new position. I am back from the region and last week i was in china, the vietnam and japan. And trust me, that is the right order to take that trip. I strategic competitor, emerging partner in a close solid rock ally. I certainly learned that a lot of the trends that we have been tracking and observing are unfolding, i think the chinese did receive me at the normal protocol level and we had a discussion about the defense relationship and they continue to say to us that they want to military relationship to be a stabilizing force in the overall relationship and of course the overall relationship is facing a number of stresses, trade issues and concerns about what is happening internally in china and what is happening in hong kong. We continue to hear from them if they want the relationship to be a stabilizing factor. We are trying to better understand what they mean by that but i do minimum and want to continue the high level of engagement which we welcome. We want good channels of communication and the ability to talk about our intentions and policies and about their own. And try to advance our agenda that we are working on with respect to risk reduction, making the operating environment safer so we can avoid unintended incidents or accidents and we can still work on issues where interest may align to include the challenges we are facing with respect to north korea in the cramp lentil. We had a chance to talk to those things and understand better where the chinese are on this. But i think we also observed it as a true continued into places like vietnam and japan, although there is rebranding underway, the ccp is putting a better face on the one bill, one Road Initiative and maybe not highlighting as much of the activities in the East China Sea and South China Sea. Certainly what we see in the region as well, the branding effort might be underway in the behavior and activities are still quite robust and of concern in vietnam for example, the beat knees putting pressure on not only the viennese but other International Private companies that would do legal exploration and extracting in japan, they talk about improving relationship and their focus on a possible xi jinping visit to japan next year but in fact the same level of activities occurring around the islands in the East China Sea, the same with naval and maritime pollution postcard activities into japanese territory waters and what they regard as territorial waters. The rebranding is underway but the activities are still in the behavior of a concern to us. Its really a concern because its embedded what we understand to be longterm chinese strategic ambition and aspiration. When we talk about competition and why we believe were on the leading edge of longterm strategic competition. Its based on the different visions and aspirations. We talk about a free in open indo pacific. That sounds like a slogan and can become a mentor as we say it, its important to remember is founded on and during and widely shared its not universal principles. Respect for sovereignty in International Law and International Norms and peaceful resolution of disputes, fair open and reciprocal trade. That is what we mean when we talk about free and open indo pacific. We see the chinese in the ccp with a different vision. Sometimes we talk about the chinese being difficult to understand. Project 2049, we had a very sophisticated methodology of trend to understand the ccp. Im going to share with you. We listen to what they say, read what they write and watch what they do. If you do those things, you will start to see very clearly, a different vision for the future, Security Architecture for the Indo Pacific Region and one that could be a threat with underlying principles i spoke of, the respect for sovereignty in International Law and International Norms. We talk about competition of different visions but it is also our belief we need to maintain to include in the military domain in order to promote and sustain the concept of a free and open indo pacific along with other countries that share the same vision in those aspirations. We sometimes hear from countries they dont want to choose between the United States and china and we say were not asking you to choose between our countries and between washington and beijing but if you can support protection of sovereignty and support International Law and norms them are confident you will be with us. We seek strong and independent and prosperous partners like vietnam and japan and not an erosion of those things that countries value so much. Our competition with china is embedded in the regional strategy, we released in june, 2019 at the dialogue at the Indo Pacific Strategy report and we talked about the strategy being based on the threepiece, we have our own branding. The threepiece, preparedness, partnership and allies and promoting and network region. We work a little harder for the third p but it is there. Preparedness, increasing the joint force. If you look at our budget particularly the last budget and i tell you the one that will come after that in the next fiscal year. You will see a shift in resource allocation, you will see more investment into the types of things such as hypersonic, cyber, space, the things that we need to maintain the edge with respect to china. When we talk about increasing the joint force, we are very clear that chinas modernization is abasing threat for us. Along with russia and other strategic competitors but its really china that is abasing element for us. The second, partners and allies, we invest a lot of time in these relationships and for us it is absolutely critical, the United States is a pacific nation and i know having been born in hawaii and raised in oregon and looked pacific my whole life, but for some people you need a little reminding that we are pacific nation but not resident asia pacific nation. Even as far as one stretches the illusion island chain in alaska or other u. S. Territories, we are still not fully resident in asia. We are very reliant on partners and allies for their own capabilities that they can bring to bear with respect to the emerging china challenge, we want more capable partners to look after their own sovereignty and deal with the security challenges and contribute. But we are also very dependent on partners and allies for abasing, presence, access opportunities and as we develop these partners in alleys, all these things are in our thinking. We work with very mature allies like japan and National Defense strategy and interNational Defense guidelines align and what it means to implement and operationalize the strategies and what it means to a free and open indo pacific. In emerging partners like vietnam and beyond that. Indonesia, malaysia, further to the west and the indo pacific india. What it means not to be an ally because many countries guard their nonaligned status but to be a partner in promoting the principles giving us opportunity for trading and potential access opportunities down the road. If you look at what it means to maintain an edge against china and confident you can prevail, ultimately it does involved dispersal and educational opportunities. Part of the relationships are orientated for the opportunities. The third piece is recognition that the security challenges in the indo pacific are multilateral challenges. Increasingly multilateral challenges. When you think about protecting your 12 miles of sovereign territory into your territory waters and think about protecting, it is really about awareness and maritime security. That does not start or stop at 200 miles. Unique cueing, information, and you need to be able to get to be the same to others who have similar interest in protecting their own areas. Maritime domain awareness and maritime security, we think about how countries can move along a particular spectrum and seeing, sensing and sharing and contribute in. Seeing as it sounds the most fundamental element of knowing what is approaching or in your territorial waters and sensing is beyond and knowing something about it. What kind of vessel or element are you dealing with. Sharing means you have to be network. You have to be able to have the ability to capacity and communicate information and then contributing being in a position to respond with some capably whether its a coast guard cutter or aircraft or whatever it may be. Moving countries along that will get us to a point where the network the region is sufficiently networked to deal with the emerging security challenges. H. To have a willing partner to continue the dialogue that we want more from our chinese counterparts and the more advanced dialogue on in tensions and divisions for the Security Architecture. Contributing on the realworld problems that we think our interests do have alignment and i mentioned the Korean Peninsula that are at a particular juncture where we made an attempt to restart diplomacy with the meeting steve and his team had. We will see where that goes. Weve been doing our part to maintain pressure for the enforcement of sanctions so that they will come to the table with a particular mindset where they want to be productive, where they want to Reach Solutions with us and we think it is critical that all countries that have the capability to contribute to that do so. What we are seeing right now is some slippage from the enforcement of the sanctions particularly when it comes to transfers in the territorial waters. So we want them and need them to do better on this front. As we compete we dont say enemy. Thats an important distinction for americans because competition can be done in a way that is benign and it doesnt lead to conflict. We want to do so at a minimum safely and not spira spiral the relationship and the downward direction that would be dangerous for all parties concerned. So that is the basic framework and we are willing in the Implementation Phase of to do that more effectively. As was mentioned you may not know all of the alphabet soup of the pentagon, so underneath myself, the assistant secretary i now have four deputy secretaries and the fourth that was created as a bit of a misnomer for the china competition of the challenge because it goes beyond the bilateral interactions of the pla that would deal with different parts of the defense enterprise. Its one thing to have a great strategy but its quite another to bring the whole enterprise to the department of defense into alignment for the challenge. We will have directed its appeal witdirectorates a dealwith the e will have somebody on the desk that deals with africa and somebody that deals with middle east and europe and russia and will help our Department Work on those issues rather than integrate at a very senior level. We will have people who deal with strategy so that wont be the sole purview we will have people who understand china and are involved in informing the process in a better way. We will have people who deal with what we call the Technology Issues under the ship so everything from the challenges and protection of the Innovation Base that would be to put us in a better position to compete effectively. With that i may pause and see if that is enough to disperse some criticisms. Thank you very much. As i mentioned in the previous discussion before hand, i wanted to ask about what is the pentagon thinking about china and new york if you could address that . We put out an annual report of the pentagon called the military report for the new annexes and we did include one on china and the arctic. I would say at this point we are more in the observation phase and joining the Arctic Council as an observer the old stated policy they put the silk road just about behind everything now but they declared themselves a near Arctic States in the icebreakers so theres clearly some ambition. We are trying to understand the full spectrum of what is driving the ambition. Maybe resource interests, it may be new routes for commerce and it may be military. But we are particularly interested in what the military dimensions might be and it could be taking a page out of the soviet model and how they have used remote areas for positioning certain assets so we are watching and listening as an Arctic Council member households and interested in what unfolds. We are open to a discussion with china about it but what we mostly find this discussion with other Arctic States are interested and concerned about chinas behavior. Thank you. Well, on that note we will open up the floor to some questions. Please identify yourself. You mentioned the practical. I wonder if you could talk about that 1. 5 i dont think we are doing a lot to curtail. Weve made some decisions because of the chinese policies and behavior. To disinvite the chinese from the impact because the militarization of the South China Sea and when they took the white house theres got to be some consequence for that. But for the most part, we are interested in a variety of levels of contact, types of engagement if it can promote our interests. We try to have an interestbased approach. We dont engage for engagement sake. Our metric isnt volume, number of visits or how much engagement we have. Its promoting our interests, developing a better understanding and promoting an openness and transparency. By the way i caught the release of the white paper and we could critique is that i thought that the release was a good move in terms of being transparent and coming to grief in washington was a good move. We welcome that. But, other objectives in terms of promoting a safe operating environment and trying to develop better relationships with the next generation and future office where all these things get worked into a proposal for an annual military contact plan and then we sort of worked through with the chinese what is acceptable. I would say anything that we think can push us toward achieving our objectives we are open to. We are not saying this level or that level is out of balance. But again, you know, we dont just want engagement for engagement sake. I think that there are passed here ipast eraswhere that was ad frankly its been a metric in other relationships with something that sort of gets transported into the china field but we are trying to tighten things up in how things tha ando truly advance our interests and our meaningful. The previous speaker, Deputy Director general vincent mentioned they may consider to sign a joined an mo used to comt this information. Will you be willing