Institution for a decade. One of our finest and most objective i think in scholarly think tanks in washington so im glad to be here. Glad to be with ryan and patricia will have a conversation and i will not bore you with a long speech. They have asked me to give a few introductory comments. I wanted to do that to set the stage of where i think we are in u. S. China relations. Ive just come back four days ago from beijing and its been a very active period in a relationship with the china and was with the president in woodside, California North of the stanford campus for his meeting with president xi jim king. I look at this and i think most people do come of the u. S. China relationship is the most consequential relationship the United States has now. Particularly we will have it for the next couple of decades. We are the two leading economies in the world and will be into the 20 40s and we are the two most powerful militaries in the world and certainly will be for the next two or three decades. We are the two countries with the widest global reach if you think about the economics, societal, political, Strategic Interests both countries have. We are vying for a global power as well as regional power. I think we are systemic rivals. If you think about our larger security and economic and political interests around the world. In our administration, President Biden has set out a clear policy called invest, align and compete. Thats the policy secretary tony blinken put forward a year and a half ago at a speech here in washington at another institution, georgetown university. As we look at the longterm competition with china, we have two invest in our own country and thats the infrastructure bill of 2021, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, three hundred 69 billion were you putting into Clean Energy Research which will revolutionize the economy of the United States and its also the chips and science act where we have to make strategic bets on Certain Key Industries that are at the heart of our competition with china to enhance our competitiveness economically and as a society as we look forward. Thats the invest part. The align part is critical to the United States. Our advantage if we think about this competition with china is that the United States has long, historical alliances with the Key Countries of east asia. With japan and that alliance under President Bidens leadership i think is of is the strongest weve had with the japanese. A newfound and revived alliance with the republic of through the camp david summit the president hosted with historically good and productive relationship between japan and republic of korea itself. Our alliance with the philippines which dramatically in 2022 has swung back in favor of a very close Strategic Military, political and Economic Engagement with the United States having access to nine bases in the philippines. Its important as we think of our geostrategic position in east asia. Australia comics for important and close forced for security and strategic relationship and the development of australia, the United Kingdom and the United States working as an investment in the security realm and the development of the quad, india with japan, australia and the United States. This is an initiative that both republican and democratic administrations have been putting forward for the last 20 years. We worked on the quad back in the george w. Bush administration. President obama took it forward, President Trump took it forward and now President Biden. India is not a formal security ally of the United States. Its not aligned but india is choosing to have a Strategic Military and Political Partnership with the United States, australia and japan which is a game changer. Thats in terms of the politics of south asia or the indo pacific. That is the invest part. Whats been interesting in 2022 and 2023 is the degree to which europe has begun to think strategically in a very important way about its relationship with the u. S. , japan, australia visavis china. Both the eu and nato have now called china a systemic rival of the europeans. I think thats been motivated in large part by the fact that china has swung its support into russia, in support of their barbaric, illegal invasion of ukraine in february of 2022. Its also because i think those countries in europe want to see a stable indo pacific for economic and strategic reason but we are cooperating inside of nato is one of the founding members and in our strategic conversation with the eu leadership, but with the president of the eu commissioner, very close relationship between us. That Alliance Part of it is the unique american strength, our alliance in nato but also these east asian alliances. Finally compete we are in a competitive relationship. We are competing for Strategic Military power in the indo pacific. We see china pushing out illegally in the south and East China Seas, claiming territories that are not theirs. The International Court of justice in the case of the philippines ruled clearly in favor of the philippines in july of 2016. Thats irrefutable. Using the rather dramatic actions recently over the last weekend in scarborough shoal. These are issues we are involved in as a Treaty Alliance under the 1951 u. S. Philippines mutual defense agreement. If you think on the competitive side, the larger firmament of issues dealing with the East China Sea, and the taiwan straight. It is such an important place for the global economy. 50 of container traffic in the world flows through the taiwan straits daily. 70 of the advanced semiconductors in the world are produced on the island of taiwan. Think about that as a strategic economic space as well as strategic politically. This is a consequential part of the world in terms of Strategic Military and political and economic interests. Technology on the competition side has become the heart of the battle in a way. Its not just the commercial rivalry that might be normal if you think about the development of ai in Machine Learning and biotechnology and quantum mathematics. Its the fact that many of those technologies will be militarized into a new generation of military technology and we dont plan to be the number two and that Technology Battle of the future. You seen the competitive actions weve taken over the last couple of years to restrict supply of advanced semiconductors for instance into the chinese economy because they are ill used technologies potentially. I was in shanghai last week and talk to members of our business community. There is no level Playing Field be for American Companies in china, intellectual Property Rights violations, forced technology transfer, massive subsidies. Not just from the government of beijing but from provincial governments in china to Chinese Companies thereby putting their american rivals competitors at a distinct disadvantage. You see the competitive nature of trade and technology. Last but really first is the philosophical differences between the communist party of china, the peoples republic of china and the United States. Human rights day was last sunday marking the adoption of the universal declaration of human rights where the secretary of state issued a major statement globally. I issued a statement as investor to to china condemning chinese human rights practices in tibet, hong kong, the lack of religious freedom, the lack of political freedom. In these competitive areas, that tends to dominate the relationship between the United States and china. Our job is to wake that competition and do so practically, peacefully but to wage the competition because these are our National Interests at stake. What makes this relationship complicated and complex and doesnt render a simplistic analysis is the fact that we are competing with china but we are also engaging china. And we have to engage china. President biden and president xi have agreed that we have to work on Climate Change together. China is the largest carbon emitter in the world and we are number two in you seen john kerry and his chinese counterpart working practically together. They had 50 meetings over the last three years before they arrived together at cop 28 in dubai the just concluded. So we have to Work Together on Climate Change. We have to Work Together on fentanyl and that was one of the breakthrough agreements at the california summit between the two president s. Fentanyl is the leading cause of death in the United States of americans age 1849. It is the greatest Public Health crisis we face in the majority of the precursor chemicals that are shipped to the drug cartels in mexico come from blackmarket chinese firms. The chinese leadership have agreed to work with us to cut off that flow of precursor chemicals, to defeat the drug cartels and reduce by a large margin we hope, the fentanyl coming across our borders into every town, every county and every state in the United States. So we are cooperating and engaging with china on fentanyl. We have to engage on global Public Health. We didnt do such a good job of that back in february, march, april, may and june of 2020. The law of averages, we will face another pandemic at some point. In the coming years, we are the two countries with tremendous capacity in global Public Health. We would rather cooperate with china if thats possible on global Public Health than not. Full security is another area where we want to be engaged. We seen a dramatic reduction of grain coming out of the black seaports with ukraine and russia. Thats a major impact on the horn of africa and subsaharan africa, in south asia. We are trying to work with the chinese on that. Finally, agriculture. One of the anomalies of this relationship, i started with the competition of the largest market for american agriculture in the world is china. 1 5 of our agricultural exports go to that one country. I spent a lot of time with farmers, ranchers and their fishing industry. If you talk to soybean farmers from illinois or corn and wheat farmers from nebraska, iowa, kansas or western ranchers were the fishing industry from the Pacific Northwest or my home region of new england, red sox nation, massachusetts, thats the largest market. I want to introduce the idea of complexity. That a single onedimensional shot that this is only a competitive relationship doesnt get to what the heart of the relationship is. I started with competition because a lot of our vital National Interests are focused and they have to be focused on competition. All the americans, great Public Servants and ive worked with them all in china and i are focused on competition. We probably spent undoubtedly the majority of our time competing defending, advancing in those areas i talked about, security, technology, trade, human rights. We also have to work with china. On these other engagement areas because our interests sometimes are aligned and weve got to do something about Climate Change and global health. And Food Security in fentanyl. This means that we have to think of a balance of interests as we deal with china. Its not weighted evenly. The competitive balance is certainly weightier but we have to engage this country and thats what President Biden has decided to do. We will test over the next couple of months and implement these agreements from california on fentanyl, on the resumption of our military to military ties with high communications at high levels, starting to talk about what the advents of Artificial Intelligence means for two global superpowers in the global balance of power and finally and i will close on this and we can have our conversation bringing the American People and the Chinese People back together again. Its the palpable insights we feel every day at u. S. Mission china is that the american and Chinese People were pulled apart by covid. Im not blaming either government for that. Let me give you some data points we had 15,000 American Students, six or seven years ago in china. Last year, were down to 350 American Students in all of china. We doubled that population with American Students now but it doesnt represent the interests we have. Im looking at a lot of young people and im a former college professor. We need Young Americans to lured. We need them to have an experience of china. We need Young Chinese and there are nearly 300,000 chinese in our universities to understand this country. To understand our democracy because 40 years ago, the young people here are going to be running our society. They will be president of brookings and president of the United States and secretary of state and for an American Leadership of the future that is cut off from china, that hasnt had an experience there, that doesnt speak mandarin, thats not in the National Interest. We are trying to put our students back together. I will give you another example, tourism. Chinese tourism in the United States is a 30 alien dollar business for the American Economy. I was struck when secretary Gina Raimondo came out in late august to beijing and she and i talked to the representative of los angeles county. This representative said in 2019, there were one point 2 million Chinese Tourists in los angeles alone. In 2022, 106 to 1000 Chinese Tourists in los angeles. 162,000 chinese terrace. We are opposed on all the grounds i suggested to what the Chinese Government is doing. The people of china are not our enemy. We want to live in peace with china. No person in the right mind should want this relationship to end up in war. We will have to develop a relationship where we can compete but as the president says, compete responsibly, drive down the probability of a conflict and bring our people together as ballast in the relationship and thats one way to do that. What im trying to suggest for our conversation is we have to think of this as a very complex undertaking, how we relate to the Chinese People and government. Its not simple. The pervasive color as i learned at Johns Hopkins site across the street often in International Relations is not black and white, its great. Lets start the conversation there. Its great. Its gray. So lets start the conversation there. [applause] well thank you for your leadership also for the candor and clarity of your comments this morning. I think you set us off on an interesting course. I think it is important for us to hold two countries thoughts in her mind at once when we think about china. We want to dive in a few too a few of the issues to draw out your thinking on the outlook for the relationship going forward. But most importantly to observe as much time as possible for this wonderful audience to have the opportunity to engage with you. I will get us started. You were in the room with both leaders in woodside. Not many of us have had that opportunity. Bring us into the room, what was the atmosphere like, what was the conversation, how would you rate the quality of the conversations . I hope people can hear me. Not working . Is the voice quality ok . Good. Youve been in that room when you served in the National Security council. One of the advantages we have in this important relationship is that President Biden and president g hsing paying avenue known each other for 13 years. They dont agree a lot of things you can tell by my opening comments how many issues divide us. There is a sense of mutual respect. They spend a lot of