During a speech at the Brookings Institution in washington, d. C. After he spoke, china policy experts talked about chinas Regional Power. And president xi jing pings leadership. Good morning. My name is bruce jones. Im the Vice President and the director for Foreign Policy here at brookings. It is my pleasure to welcome you here. I see lots of old friends in the audience and several new ones. Its a pleasure to invite you to our event. Im delighted to welcome randy back to brookings. Weve been fortunate to engage him on several aspects of our policy research. And while hes been serving in the Administration Since 2017, and randy, thank you for your service to our country and the Important Role you play in this administration. Randal schreiber was appointed on jan 8th, 2018, prove lees having served for east asian and Pacific Affairs under which portfolio he covered china, taiwan, hong kong and aus tailia, all the easy stuff. Earlier he held the role of also served as an active duty Naval Intelligence officer in Desert Shield and desert storm. Beyond his government career, hes been a leading thinker on a range of issues that play into the u. S. China relationship and hes been a robust voice on that asking critical questions to help manage and shape american policy in the region. And with that background, we couldnt ask for anybody better to join us today as we continue to role out our project on global china. I think we all recognize now that china has emerged as a global actor impacting every region in the world on almost every issue. Its cast aside its strategy of hide and bide and is assertively seeking influence not only in asia but well beyond. The effort of this project is to capture a Baseline Assessment of that role. It draws on our deep bench of east asia and chain e perts and pulls on the expertise in the strategy, regional, technologies and economic skold scholars to try to capture the full scope. It will capture research, strategic competition, frontier technologies, critical regions, and approach to Global Governance and norms. Today well have two sessions. Mike al arca cast will chair a discussion. Then well have a panel that draws on three sets of the papers that are being launched or are still underway today. Audrey wong who contributed to a paper looking at the future of chinese Foreign Policy, chung lee and looking at the domestic drivers. And rush doe shooe on the strategic competition. Before i invite randy to the stage, two further notes from me. It is of Course Campaign season which means the think tankers are off trying to influence political campaigns as well as doing their day jobs. And at brookings we disclose all of that. You can find on our websites their affiliations. It is an important part of how they which about policy impact to put our research into the lifeblood of the campaigns. As of now we have scholars add vooiszings the biden, warren, buttigieg, and those on leave working in the trump administration. All of this has seen scholars from the Foreign Policy program serve in the state department of every president since nixon, both republican and democrat. Of course nixon tried to firebomb us. Second i would like to thank the Ford Foundation for its support to this project which has not only allowed us to do this but to communicate broadly to the Scholarly Community and to policy makers that we hope will use the evidence and find and have a baseline approach, empircal approach to china policy which will be a defining feature of american policy in the coming generations. Let me welcome Randy Schreiber to the stage to give some hoping remarks. Great. Thanks, bruce. Thank you for the invitation to return to brookings. And i really appreciate being part of this rollout of this impressive project. Been following some of the papers that have already been released. But hearing your twoyear plan to help us really both deep dive and really baseline this enormous challenge is really encouraging to know that youve got this project underway. And thanks for allowing me to speak as a part of that. What i thought i would do is talk about our approach to china, our competition. What i thought i would do is go into a little bit more detail on sort of the fundamentals of this policy. A lot of people sort of jump right into, were in strategic competition or a competitive environment, without talking about the fundamentals. What are we competing for . How is it different from confrontation or conflict . If i could take a few moments to do a deep dive and explain our perspective from the department of defense, i hope it would sit the stage for a discussion that would follow with you. Respect to our strategic competition, we believe that it is a major element of our strategy. We feel as though we are in competition fundamentally because we have different visions, different aspirations, different views of what regional and Global Security architecture should look like. If youre familiar with our National Security strategy, National Defense strategy and our d. O. D. Indo fapacific we t about a free and open indopacific. Its founded upon what we regard as enduring principals and principles nearly universal and widely shared and believe that theyre principles that benefit all countries if countries embrace them. These include respect for National Sovereignty no matter a countrys size, fair free and resip roecall trade, rule of laws and rules based order and peaceful dispute resolution. We fundamentally believe each nation must be free to determine its own course, and we believe all countries can both benefit and participate in preserving a rules based order. We observe that china under the leadership of the ccp has a different vision. As i said, different aspirations that is increasingly developing the tools to pursue its vision, and it seems willing to accept more and more friction in pursuit of that vision. We are competing with china therefore because we see chinas leaders have assessed that theyre in competition with us, both our ideas and our capabilities. Globally china seeks to shape a world consistent with its author tain model and national goals. We see that domestic governance in china as a result of ccp rule is increasingly author tain and less respectful for human rights and dignity. And that they are even beginning to export some of these tools such as facial Recognition Software and nation wood surveillance capabilities to other countries who are learning from chinas gone nance model. Were concerned its growing more willing to apply pressure against other countries and accept friction into pursuit of its vision. We observe china using influence operations to interfere in their domestic politics of others threatening internal stability using economic coercion. Weve seen that in mongolia, australia and canada, promoting theft of technologies, exporting the most effective tools from its tool kit to other nations for surveillance and potential use for internal repression. We see them exfendetending military presence overseas and expanding the one belt one road to include military ties with china. And we see deploying weapons, despite pledges at the senior most level that they would not do so. In d. O. D. We focus on the military component of the chinas growing global activities and take china at their word. They seek to be a world class military by 2049 and they are making progress toward that goal. The department of military developments in china as seeking to erode u. S. Military add vangz. Theyre working to become a preeminent power while sim ul tainiusly under tagging plans to expand and develop capabilities to sustain operations farther from chinese shores. We see them widening the operational reach to match what its leaders consider to be the Global Nature of chinas economic and National Interests. Press reporting indicates that china has sought to expand its military and access in the middle east, Southeast Asia and the western pacific. Chairman xi jin pichk himself has called for the completion of a Security System to strengthen its overseas interest to secure the security of oversees projects and personnel. Its defense minister has decided its a framework to increase its military cooperation with other countries. While our competition with china takes place on various levels, at the most fundamental and basic level what were really competing for is to sustain a position within the regional and International System which allows us to promote, spore a rules based order which has fostered peace for decades. All of this matters because if the ccp and china were to be successful in its approach, the world could look much different. States will finally have less control over their decisions. Institutions could become less independent and effective such as ausin and others. Freedom in the seas and over flight of the indopacific may be challenged, the freedom of those bodies of water. We could also see a normalization of the lack of respect for individual and human rights. All of this portends a less free and less open and more untable indopacific region with these trends to manifest on a global scale. As i said, we view competition as being different than confrontation and conflict, a competitive strategy is not meant to lead us to conflict. For the United States, we seek to maintain competition as a stable deterntd that avoids conflict. While we compete vigorously with china, were aimed at reducing risks. Well cooperate with china where our interests align while competing within a rules based framework where our interests diverge. And we will continue to call out chinas behaviors that are counter to that rules based order. Briefly, d. O. D. s response and as i said changing our mindset, we seek to refain the advantage and play to our strengths. We want to deter china and to improve our capacity to deter and prevail at the outset of a crisis. Meeting the china challenge requires this fundament of shift in mindset of our establishment. We are no longer in a period of overwhelming american dominance but rather one in which our armed forces are adapting to fight against near peer competitors who are fielding sophisticated capabilities. Instead of expecting to dominate, were learning to expect to be contested. Our National Defense strategy in our indopacific strategy within the department focuses on a couple of pillars that will be key enablers for us to succeed, namely the first two pillars of our National Defense which include building a more lethal joint force and strengthening our partnerships. The first line, preparing a more resilient joint force takes into account the scope and pace of our competitors prioritizes investment in modernizing key u. S. Capabilities across a range of domains. Our nuclear forces, space, missile defense, and looks at how our force can be resilient in having more access options, dispursal opportunities and adaptive basing. Were changing how we organize for longterm strategic approved the establishment of a new deputy secretary of defense for china. This position is both outward looking and inward looking. The inward part being to help us drive alignment on china across the department as we carry out our National Defense strategy and its implementation. The second line of effort in our National Defense strategy is strengthening alliances and attracting new partners. Americas alliances and partnerships are crucial and durable asymmetric advantage that no other country can match. For countries that value a rulesbased order the strongest way we can demonstrate our support for these principles is the action we take, both individually and together, to uphold a free and open region. Our alliances and partnerships are important for a myriad of reasons. For example, there is inherent trust and confidence building that comes with combined training and interoperability. Militaries that train together and trust one another are more adaptive. In this vein, the department is expanding collaborative planning, and training for highend combat missions in alliance, bilateral and multilateral exercises. We look to strengthen both traditional partners and relationships such as japan and we are working to integrate our National Defense strategy with japans National Defense program guidelines. And were also working very intently and seriously on important emerging relationships, such as with india, singapore, indonesia and vietnam. The ten asean members and u. S. Navy forces tested key Maritime Security tasks during our first ever annual what we hope now is annual, u. S. asean Maritime Exercise last month. Were also enhancing our engagement in areas such as the Pacific Islands to preserve a free and open order. And we have enhanced our engagement in the freely associated states and beyond in that regard. Beyond the indopacific, the department is engaging partners across the globe and we have brought the china challenge into our discussions in europe and the middle east, for example. China and others recognize our advantages and are actively working to disrupt our alliances and partnerships in these key areas. But we, nonetheless, see strong interest in greater alignment on these challenges from our partners. We are also exercising with our partners in real world operations to include enforcement of the sanctions against north korea. Japan hosts the enforcement coordination cell, a command center of eight countries to include south korea, australia, canada, new zealand, the united kingdom, japan and france. Were all committed to enforcing the u. N. Security council resolutions. Were also working with our partners in the maritime spaces to include the South China Sea and are working with partners to build capacity through initiatives such as the Maritime Security initiative, which has boosted key partners abilities and helped them conduct Maritime Security and awareness operations. Were also part of a whole of government approach, which is allied and partner centric in response to chinas expanding influence and coercion and their interest in acquiring and advantaging themselves in the hightech area. We have ongoing deep conversations with our allies about protection of the Innovation Base and about the risks associated with new technology, such as 5g. To conclude, the unfolding i longterm strategic competition with china is the defining challenge of our generation and we embrace that at dod. Our current trajectory is largely driven by the ambitions and choices of chairman xi and the ccp elite, the acquisition of capabilities to apply toward realizing those ambitions and the current policy choices and actions which demonstrate active pursuit of those ambitions. We remain open to changing this trajectory and our vision for free and open indopacific is inclusive for any country, china included, who choose to support the enduring principles embedded in our vision. But we should be clear that we do understand these to be consequential times and consequential decisions must be taken. The costs associated with complacency could be extremely high. But the benefits of competing well and competing to prevail are equally high. With that, i look forward to the conversation with ryan and the questions and discussion that may follow. Thank you. [ applause ] first of all, assistant secretary, thank you for being here with us and providing a rich overview of the work that is being done in your area of responsibility at the pentagon. I want to give the audience a chance to jump in, because i know there are a lot of questions that they would like to pose to you. But before i turn it over to this distinguished group, i did want to ask you a few scenesetting questions building upon your comments today. First, you talked a bit about the u. S. china militarytomilitary relationship. I was wondering if you could take us into the engine room a little bit of that. How is it working and is it being insulated from ups and downs in the overall relationship, or is it a derivative of it . Well, we continue to hear from our chinese interlockers they want the relationship to be stabilizing force in the overall relationship. We welcome that. So we have maintained a robust level of engagement to include highlevel engagement. I think 2018 was the first year on record where there was both a visit to china and a counterpart visit in the same calendar year. So by that metric, our engagement remains robust. Our focus is on how we engage with china in this context of overall competition. So that places a premium on confidencebuilding measures, on safety of operations, so things like the military maritime consultative agreement, other measures that help us to ensure a safe operating environment, while we know we operate in close proximity to one another with greater frequency, how we make sure theres no unintended incident or accident. So that continues. I plan to go to china next week, so our policy talks continue, our emphasis on confidencebuilding measures and safety conditions. So, there are i see many oldtimers in the audience. Were more insulated from the political ups and downs than we used to be, and i think thats a good thing. I agree. Thats great. Strategic competition was a theme of your presentation. Its also one of the themes of this event today. Can you talk to us a little bit about where that competition is felt most acutely in your daytoday work, and also where you expect your successor ten years from now in 2029 to field the competition most acutely . So i would say theres an in