Its a great pleasure to see this crowd. You will all get cspan so be on your best behavior. We are here to launch a very important book on the future of the u. S. China relationship called the struggle for power u. S. China relations in the 21st century. I want to say word about that but first i want to recognize some very distinguished guests. I want to recognize the cochair of our Organization Former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice who was here with us. [applause] and youll be hearing from secretary rice in about half an hour. She will be one of our conversationalists. Our other cochair, harvard ever does professor, could not be here with his buddies very much part of this effort. I want to pay tribute to our former secretary of defense and a very good friend of mine, secretary bill cohen and mrs. Janet cohen. Welcome secretary. Janet, welcome. [applause] i want to pay tribute to one of i think one of the people who for me a bodies bipartisanship whos involved in every effort to bring people together across partisan lines and thats steve hadley, our former National Security adviser who was here today as well. [applause] our director is anja manuel, my close friend. We Work Together. You will be seeing anja on stage is one of the people during the interviews. Our subject is china. I think all of us agree that our relationship with china is going to be the greatest challenge that we face as a country in the next several decades. Its an important moment in that relationship. We establish full diplomatic relations and march 1979. Jimmy carter and deng xiaoping. For most of that time in both republican and democratic administrations we all felt in both administrations that we were seeking cooperation with china. That was the basic strategy and the chinese felt the same way. In recent years theres no question that both countries have swung from cooperation to a strategy of competition. That competition gets to the heart of our Vital National interest overseas. We are competing for Strategic Military dominance in the indopacific where the United States has been a dominant part with our allies japan, south korea and australia for 75 years but the chinese are making a a concerted effort to cut into that american and alliance military power. We are competing to see who will dominate the next generation of military technology, and two years ago the Aspen Strategy Group spent three days thinking about that subject. Ai is going to be militarized. Quantum computing is going to be militarized. Biotechnology is going to be militarized. Which country will get their first in the new generation military technology that will define power in the world. In the next several decades. Were also competing as the number one and two economic powers in the world. Using President Trump with his trade negotiations with the chinese in the first phase of deal. That was announced just last week but certainly competing for economic primacy and from the perspective of the United States and i support what President Trump has tried to do to get at the heart of chinese difficulties, will the chinese agree to live on a level Playing Field in terms of trade with the United States, with japan, with europe and the European Union . Finally, if you think about these battles i have just talked about, strategic predominates in the indopacific, military technology, trade, theres a fourth battle and i want to talk to secretary price about this, the battle of ideas. Xi jinping is bringing with selfconfidence about the authoritarian model of how the country has organized a think it should be exported and he thinks other countries should adopt it and Vladimir Putin thinks the same way. Mohammed bin salman and president erdogan think the same way. Americans disagree. Europeans disagree. Japanese disagree. Its not a cataclysmic battle of armies. Its a battle of systems and ideals about how we think society should be organized. The one cautionary note, we spent three days, republicans and democrats and independents together debating this issue. We produced this volume that all of you i hope have a copy of. If you dont there are Copies Available just in the back which is being launched today. We produced it on a nonpartisan basis. The ethos of our organization is where americans. We believe in our country first. We do not believe that partisanship should interfere with our analysis of big strategic challenges like this. But they cautionary note would be this. Are we overestimating chinas strengths and underestimating chinas weaknesses . Are we even underestimating the ability of the United States and its allies, europe and in asia, to cope with this threat peacefully and successfully . We had someone here in condi rice and spent the better part of her academic career, early career think about an empire that crashed, the soviet union. There were times when we were working together, steve, myself, senator cohen and maybe the 70s 80s when the overestimate the strengths of the soviet union. Do we have selfconfidence to think the United States and its allies have we forward for success in the 21st century . I commend commend this volume to you. We have republicans, democrats and independents riding auditor today we will hear from four people. My colleague anja manuel will interview Michael Pillsbury mike is an advisor to President Trump, a china specialist, hes really smart. Hes at the Hudson Institute and it was a pleasure to spend three days with mike earlier this year. Second interview i will interview my close friend and former boss, Condoleezza Rice, about these issues. The third interview im going to interview Kathleen Hicks who is one of i think the smartest, young strategists we have in the United States on the position of the American Military and our ability to respond to these threats. Shes at csis where sector cohen is on the board. And fourth, anja will interview i guy who is a force of nature, kurt campbell. Ambassador canada for president obama was our assistant secretary of state for east asia, architect of the strategic pivot at the United States bank to the indopacific, a compelling thinker on these issues. So we have four conversations. We hope it will be useful to you. We thank you for being here. Without further ado, anja manuel and Michael Pillsbury. [applause] thank you all for being here today. I have to say when we were in aspen last august, i thought we had one of the best discussions we have ever had at the Strategy Group, in terms of depth of substance, diversity of opinion, but being respectful of each others differences of opinion. And you will see have slightly different format today than we would normally do with the budget big panels for everybody talks. We wanted to give each, we want to highlight a couple of our authors with books and give each of them really an opportunity to dig deep into what theyre trying to say. Mike pillsbury of course needs no introduction. Thank you. But im going to do it anyway. A fellow at the Hudson Institute, former senior Government Official in the Reagan Administration and elsewhere. Currently i would say draws modest but i was a you are the number one outside advisor to the administration on china, back channeling if i can say you took six trips every very far this trade deal. Impeachment discussion it does not. [inaudible] it was, it was. We will stipulate to that. But so i wanted to restart broad and then narrow, if you could im not asking you speak for the administration but you know a lot about what they think. What is the Trump Administrations objective, whats the cope with respect to china . Is it to level the Playing Field and tried to get along and bottle through . Is it pushing back like we did on the soviet union . Physical you only get a different system . What are we driving for . I think the first point to make about the Trump Administration so i can edit my remarks . I think the first point to make about the Trump Administration is the multiple voices within it who, from the point of view of the standards established by previous administrations, shamelessly leak their debates often on the front pages of the wall street journal. You will read Something Like yesterday, the Oval Office Someone said this, someone said that. So this is an administration that its very difficult for outsiders to understand who speaks for the administration. So in my view its the president alone. One thing we are learning, the ukraine impeachment discussion, seems to me, is the permanent bureaucracy up to and including the cabinet secretaries, are not necessarily involved in what the president is concerned with. So my observation, i was not a Trump Campaign supporter. My candidate lost, but i was still invited to the Transition Team, and what i observed from the very beginning is the president elect, at the time, was deeply personally interested in china. This surprised me. I thought during the campaign when he would frequently say phrases like china is raping our country, if this is Just Campaign rhetoric, it clearly works in some counties, and thats the end of it. But, in fact, the president has acted, as i say in my chapter in the book we are here to discuss today, president begin to act as the china desk officer himself. As a china hand, people like david in the room and lonnie and others, we should all be thrilled that the president himself is taking china very seriously. Many president s really havent. But the hazard to that is that everybody around him and wants to influence his view and find out what is view actually is. And over three years what i have come to understand about the president s approach to china, he thinks of itself as a dealmaker. Hes a businessman, a billionaire, anyones to make a deal with in some sense another company which have to run by another ceo, xi jinping. So his focus from the beginning during the transition was on xi jinping. One of the Early Development was he had in my view unfortunately made a phone call, taken a phone call from taiwans president , was a chinese say, socalled president. And the chinese begin to punish the Trump Administration for that phone call and would not actually have a summit anywhere until the president clarified his views. But the way he did that, set e tone for the next three years. He said at the request of president xi and the phone call, i am going to abide by our onechina policy. That opened, that moved the obstacle for the maralago summit. Im not quite sure what you want to go. Since you know the presence of mind on this as well as anyone, and its possible there are multiple goals here, but is it watching as at the outset observe, i live in california. I sometimes hear from the administrations announcement, we are looking for china to really fail. And sometimes i hear no, were just trying to create a fair Playing Field here so our companies can compete and that we can have our own spheres of influence and we can find a way to all get along. Which ended and do you think hs on . Ive been advocating that the president should give speech on china himself. And after these kinds of questions your racing. The Vice President spitted the Vice President has given to make speeches in great detail, but they, too, have created questions about what exactly is he saying. He specifically said we dont want to decouple. But soon thereafter, People Associated with the emaciation, steve and in particular and this committee on the present danger from china, which im not a member of, they begin talking about no, decoupling is exactly our goal. In fact, it is happening. Inadvertently, inadvertently. So if the president were to give a speech on china himself, i think you and others in this room would probably be well advised to suggest what should be cleared up. I think theres considerable ambiguity. My own view of all this, president for some reason i dont understand invites me into the oval office to witness some of these debates. And there they all are. Do you participate . He uses the kind of as a foil and doesnt take long before you realize who in the room likes need to be there and who doesnt. So that debate continues, and i think the president s speech i wont ask you the obvious. The president , when i joined the Transition Team i quickly placed order with amazon. Com for all 14 books the president has coauthored. And several of them have china sections where he lays out some of his thinking. Next time a new president comes in and are working for him or her, i recommend you read all those books before you go to the first meeting. And they are pretty tough. I have read some of those sections and theyre quite tough. He has appointed doctor china, bad china which he has a set publicly yet but its in the book. And he lays out a good china that he would like to see, and then he demonizes a bad china and imply something that Steve Schwartzman has also said several times on television, that this really, the whole course of u. S. China relations to a large degree is up to china and the debate they are having. They have their steve bannon and they have peter navarro. They have their steven mnuchin. And that debate is part of what im supposed to be following, because ive known some of these scholars and former officials for 30 years. Let me actually go there with you next, the china sector you have written the book 100 your marathon thats never required reading in all of washington. Its an excellent book. When you go to china now, when i travel to china very frequently, i see the hardliners winning. Its harder and harder for the reformers who want domestic reform for the own purposes much less anyone who wants political reform to really get the ear of their president. And the worry is that the hardliners on both sides are winning and thats tried it as a partner is what you see . Yes, it is also at Henry Kissinger warned about in the very last chapter of his book on china, that is nightmare, and he forecast what he called an unfathomable war on the skill of world war i between the u. S. And china. If the hawks on both sides got into power. And imagine, i got the title 100 your marathon from one of the chinese hawks i know pretty well, and dr. Kissinger spends a whole page on that particular we had it on his first visit to america, we had a Cocktail Party for him and it took them over to the pentagon, but dr. Kissinger said this will never happen. This is a fringe element who reflects some extreme of thinking but this will never happen. But it did. So i think the hardliners, which is a a very vague term. By the way, the china field and the cia is not a great deal about the hardliners all along, but the general estimate has been they were not very powerful. In many ways all of us fell victim to the Foreign Ministry in beijing telling us these hardliners have no power, nobody listens to them. The ones you want for western events. You raised kissinger at a bloomberg form that just happened in november, kissinger famously said we are in the foothills of the cold war with china. That doesnt mean we need to go all the way. Where do you see the administration going . Do you see them pushing towards a cold war or do you see them wanting to pull back from that . Again, many voices are inside the administration. I dont think the president wants a cold war with china at all. I i think is quite aware of chinas military improvements, but you will notice a little microindicators like the South China Sea, to what degree to our freedom of navigation patrols observe innocent passage rules what you dont turn on their weapons radar, they dont go in circles, they dont go at night, the five criteria in the law of the sea treaty for how you can make innocent passage without challenging the countries actual territory. Seems to be as i understand it from Navy Spokesman we have not aggressively challenged the chinese with these kind of maneuvers. We have come close, and theres a wonderful harvard study about this i dont know if youve seen it, people reference the study on exactly how we approach the issue of freedom of navigation missions. But that could change. If a whole trade deal goes out and its very volatile both sides, i could envision a cold war breaking out inadvertently, for lack of the better word. And when you look back at the details of how did the first cold war start, its not as though the two sides and 19468 okay, lets have a cold war cold war. Its a series of blunders. Will, at some point you had the x article we did formally launch it pick you think were not quite there yet with china. We havent speak i agree with kissinger said phrase about the foothills of the cold war. I think it can be avoided but it takes two sides and the intricacies of this trade agreement could have laid the foundation for a cold war. Thats like i do want to get to the trade agreement since youre so instrumenta