 We are going to have a fabulous afternoon together. I want to thank you all for coming. You were able to get through the traffic. We've got a lot more people that aren't yet here, and we'll be here shortly. Which one do you want us to? If I could just say a word of introduction and welcome. We are here today to celebrate what I think is really rather a seminal work. It's not only an important intellectual contribution. It is itself its own event, because it commemorates an important period of modern American history where we decided to positively engage a country that had been a pariah state for us for so many years. And this book that Henry has written takes you through this fascinating history. It really is a splendid piece, and I know many of you are going to want to be getting the book and studying it as I am currently studying it. I want to give you a sense of what we're trying to do. The book is part history. It is part political theory. It is part biography and autobiography, and it's just a fascinating combination. And the only way to really give, to truly honor, the content of this book, its sweep, is really to create a program that touches across this landscape. This is not your normal book event. This is one where we're going to drill deeply with the best intellects in Washington. If I were at graduate school, I would try to get into a seminar taught by any one of these people we're going to hear from today. We have three superb diplomats. If you were to list the top 10 American diplomats in the last 35 years, three of them are sitting here with us right now. And we're going to be listening to their insights and perspective. They were there at creation, and then they have been constant companions along this journey where America and China have interacted with each other. And Richard McGregor is going to be the moderator of this discussion. God help him. He'll barely be able to keep up with these three, and I think it's going to be fun, although he is a China expert in his own right, a correspondent with the FT. He was stationed in China for eight years, as I recall, Richard, and has written a remarkable book on the Communist Party. I would recommend that you all get that too, although we're not going to sell that one today. And then after this session, we will then hear from Henry Kiss, from Zbig Brzezinski. Now Zbig in many ways picked up on the foundation that was started by Henry and, of course, took us to formal diplomatic relations. And he will be discussing this in conversation with David Ignatius. And then finally, we will hear from Henry and when he's going to be interviewed by Bob Schieffer. This is going to be just a splendid, splendid afternoon. I'd like to say thank you to our friends from Chinua News Agency who have made possible these pictures that are with us. Now they're actually going up on display in New York, I believe, later. But they're a fascinating recounting, and I will say, well, you know, jazz freeman looks a hell of a lot better back 35 years ago, but there's good reasons for that, OK? But it is a remarkable recounting, and we're just going to be part of what's going to be a fun, very exciting afternoon. Richard, let me leave it to you now to get this started for real. Thank you all for coming. Thanks very much, Dr. Hamry, the CSIS, Dr. Kissinger. My only line was stolen. All of the three ambassadors here were present at the creation in one way or another. So I think we want to start the discussion today at the creation, as it were, and then try and get a sense of how something similar or how that might even reverberate today in a relationship which is much more complex and perhaps much more significant even when it was back then. I mean, let's start, Ambassador Lord, you were there, literally. I mean, just remind us, set the geopolitical scene as it were. I mean, what were the factors that brought these two fierce enemies together? What were the motivations of the leaders on both sides? And it was very much from the top. Well, you have to put yourself back to the late 60s, early 70s, the international and domestic contacts for both sides. This was a seminal event ranking with the Berlin Wall, 9-11, maybe the Arab Spring, and a transformed international landscape. Now, the Chinese had two clear objectives. They were in the midst of the Cultural Revolution with all the chaos and were isolated internationally at only one ambassador abroad. And of course, they were facing the Soviet Union on their border. They'd been border clashes in 1968 in Czechoslovakia, the president of doctrine. So they were looking, number one, for security against the polar bearer to the north. And number two, come out of their isolation. They knew that if they opened with us, Japan and Europe would come along and they'd get into the United Nations. Those were their goals. They achieved both of them. On the US side, the Nixon administration had inherited the Vietnam War and also the decade of the 60s with assassination, race riots, et cetera. And the objective here in the midst of the Cold War dealing with the Soviet Union was to demonstrate to the world and to the American people that we could be an effective diplomatic country despite the travails that were not bogged down in Vietnam. So that was number one objective. Number two was to show that Moscow wasn't the only spokesman for the communist bloc. Number three was to demonstrate to the American people we knew there'd be a messy outcome in Vietnam to put that in perspective and raise morale by opening up with a quarter of the world's people. Number four was to improve relations with the Soviet Union which happened dramatically in the wake of the trip. Number five was to get help on ending the Vietnam War by isolating Hanoi and dealing with its two superpower patrons. And then finally to establish US position in Asia for the long term. And all of those objectives were more or less met. Ambassador Roy from your perspective, you are actually in Moscow at the time. I mean, sitting there from that perspective, did it change the world? Did it immediately change the Soviet Union's calculus? Yes, in a dramatic way. How did that happen? Essentially this was the turning point in the Cold War both psychologically and in a geopolitical sense. And the Soviets realized it and realized that they were in many ways the party that was most damaged by the breakthrough. Because the initiative transformed a bipolar world into a multipolar world with the United States in the best position to manage that multipolar relationship in ways that enhanced our national interests. The Russians realized this and my own work was personally affected in a dramatic way because I had been unsuccessful in getting any access to the Soviet China specialist. And after Dr. Kissinger showed up in Beijing, they were inviting me in because they were trying to find out what the Americans were up to. There's a second aspect of the breakthrough that I think deserves mention. And this is showed that we are not victims of impersonal historical forces, that leadership can dramatically alter the course of history in positive ways. Because nobody thought that this breakthrough was possible because they didn't think that there were leaders capable of bringing it about. And in fact, they did bring it about because they saw it as in their national interest to do so. And if you go to the conclusion of Dr. Kissinger's book, this issue is discussed and really it rests on leadership to make sure that we don't end up in a zero-sum game and our relationship with China. Yeah, that's the fascinating Chrome memorandum which we're going to come back to. I mean, Ambassador Freeman, against that background, I mean, we want to bring this up to date, are there the conditions for a comparable strategic breakout today? I mean, you've been talking a little bit about this in some of your speeches lately. What's your perspective on that? I'm actually quite concerned that there isn't the sort of strategic vision or background in statecraft that you can glimpse when you read this book. This is not, in my view, a work of psychology, although it's been given to psychologists for review and gotten some very good reviews. It's a reflection on strategy and statecraft and an appreciation of the Chinese traditions of statecraft and diplomatic culture with some very interesting and vivid portraits of Chinese leaders over the last 40 years and a memoir. And I think it ends appropriately wondering about exactly the question you're asking. Whether these two countries which came together in the face of a threat from a common source can now work together for a common good, or several common goods, or whether it's only in cases of severe stress that we can find a basis for cooperation on the sort of level that the book documents are doing. Well, that's right. The US and China at the time came together on a well-defined issue, the threat of Soviet hegemony to use that wonderful word. I mean, what would be the basis of a similar breakthrough today? I mean, that well-defined sort of threat is not there today, is it? I don't see it. I don't think there's an existential threat to the United States. Although we do suffer from enemy deprivation syndrome and wander around looking for such threats, I haven't been able to find one. So really, this is a challenge to us to look at the possibility of cooperating for a mutual advantage rather than out of common fear. One can ask whether the sort of leadership that produced this breakthrough, because I completely agree with Stape, this is an illustration of how people, specific people, can move history. Whether that sort of leadership is to be found in this city. At the moment, we can't even pass a budget and people are squabbling in an infantile manner about the debt ceiling. And there doesn't seem to be any overarching vision or purpose to our actions either at home or abroad. So I'm not holding my breath. I think I agree with Chaz. I don't think we're going to see a breakthrough because the world has changed and the relationship has changed. I think Kissinger's prescription at the end, which I think echoes what the Obama administration is trying to do is the only one, namely, to build patiently when there is a cooperation. There's bilateral, of course, economic and others. There's regional, there's global terrorism, non-proliferation, climate change, the economic system. Both to address those problems, but to build up constituencies in both countries for the relationship and to put in perspective the inevitable tensions over issues like Taiwan and human rights so that our respective domestic publics will see that we have a broader agenda. And so we're going to have to manage it in that way, sort of incremental, and it's going to be a floor and a ceiling. I agree with Chaz that they're not going to be an enemy. China is not trying to export it to theology or send troops abroad. It's got tremendous problems at home. It's going to preoccupy it. And we have no territorial claims against each other and nuclear war is unthinkable. On the other hand, there's a ceiling because of Taiwan for the Chinese and human rights for us. So we're going to have to navigate patino ceilings. I don't think we need to break through. We just need statesmanship of a sustained quality to produce this kind of mixed relationship. Yet I think it's true that we're working ourselves into a disastrous, potentially disastrous, military rivalry on very disadvantageous terms. The United States at the moment is fiscally hollow. I think we can cure that if we try hard enough, but there's no evidence that we are. In the meantime, we're engaged in planning a war with China as China is planning a war with the United States. China has a rapidly expanding economy and it is not suffering from any strain in financing its defense budget. We are. And yet the nature of the competition, which is asymmetric, is very unfavorable to the United States. That is to say, we build aircraft carrier battle groups for $30 billion of pop. They build a $1 million missile that can sink a carrier. We build and launch expensive satellites for communications and reconnaissance purposes. They take a half a million dollar missile and shoot them down. We patrol aggressively off their coast with our Navy. They infiltrate our cyberspace. In each case, and I could go on, but in each case, the cost advantages are hugely in their favor. But the one would wonder why we need to have these competitions anyway. But since we do, I think we should take note of the fact that they are on very unfavorable terms from an American perspective. Ambassador, let's just try and look at it from the Chinese perspective for the moment. One of the fascinating parts of Dr. Kissinger's book is where he talks is the account of Chinese statecraft through the millennium, particular forms of deterrence, diplomacy proceeding by indirection and the like. I'm wondering if you look at his point about Chinese history where he says there is no precedent for China participating in a global order with or in opposition to another superpower. I mean, does China also need to come to terms with its own history with how it approaches foreign countries? Yes, it does. And this is what makes the early chapters in Dr. Kissinger's book so interesting. Because when the Chinese look at their geographic and historical circumstances, they have to go back 2,500 years in order to find a circumstance where China was not the dominant country, but was one of many, well, we didn't even have a unified China in those days, but you had Chinese states that were in a Westphalian type of constant competition with each other. And a Chinese scholar at Tsinghua University has gone back to that period. And what you discover is that Confucius and Menchus that we think of as sort of philosophers about how humans should live their lives, like Socrates. In fact, we're military strategists who were wrestling with the fundamental question of, is human nature good? Is human nature bad? Do wars result from that? And how do you deal with that? What other country in the world has to go back 2,500 years in order to find comparable circumstances of the type that China finds in the world today? Well, is that a strength or a weakness? That could give you a sense of history. It could also calcify the way you think. Well, I think too long a history if you become dependent on looking at your own history for historical parallels can be a weakness, because the world does change, and China is living in a different world from the last time that China was the dominant country in East Asia. And that's not going to change. So in a sense, China has to adapt to a world in which the traditional precepts of Chinese statecraft are not as relevant to the current situation as they were before. And that's going to be a wrenching change for them. A couple of points. By the way, I hope everyone can hear the chairing for Dr. Kissinger's book. I'm not sure what point the Star Wars theme kicked in. Another historical reference that Dr. Kissinger makes in his book is when Mao is contemplating an opening to the US, he summoned four marshals to give him geopolitical advice. And they decided to appeal to him not based on recent history or balance of power or World War II, but on the basis of the novel, the romance of the three kingdoms, which went back many, many centuries. Final point about the Chinese world view, as Stape has indicated, they have a very complex view of the world based on their history, because they've had so little experience of dealing with the outside world as equals. As Stape said, for 4,000 years, they were the middle kingdom. Everyone else is irrelevant or tributary. And then at a bad century or two, 150 years with Japan and Europe occupying them, et cetera. So it's only been the last 30 years that they have to deal with other countries as equals and take part in an international system. So there's this curious mix of middle kingdom self-confidence with a long run, even arrogance, and a need, on the other hand, for outside help, but paranoia and xenophobia mixed in. It makes them particularly difficult to deal with. I want to go back to some of the points you made at the outset, William, because I think you very accurately described the motives for the opening between China and the United States. And those took place in the context of a grand strategy called containment, which ultimately produced a victory in the Cold War. But in that context, the move toward China was a very cold-blooded, calculated act with very limited objectives. It fit in this context of containment. And yet, it ended up doing much more than that. And it ended up, if Dr. Kissinger wrote a book many years ago, which is actually why I got involved with China, called A World Restored, in which he described Metternich's policies and the operation of the balance of power in Europe in the 19th century. Part of the objective that Metternich successfully pursued was pulling the fangs of the French Revolution. And in fact, what we ended up doing really without, I think, perhaps Dr. Kissinger understood we were doing this, but not many did. What we ended up doing was transforming China's relationship with the outside world from one of standing outside it, trying to overthrow the order, to being in the order and, in fact, becoming, in many ways, one of its strongest defenders. The Westphalian system that China did away with 2,500 years ago is now very much favored by China. There is no stronger supporter of the UN system in the international community than China. China, in an odd way, has embraced the rule-bound international order that the United States helped create and champion at a time when we ourselves have developed doubts about it. So I would say that, yes, this history is very relevant, but we have, in fact, helped the Chinese make many of the adjustments, not all, but many of the adjustments that the state suggests they need to make. A couple of modest disagreements here. By the way, you mentioned French Revolution is an absolutely true story to get back to this historical references of Chinese foreign policy. Kissinger asked Joe Enlai in a meeting that I was the note-taker in, is what do you think the implications are of the French Revolution? And Joe Enlai said it's too early to tell. And that's an absolutely true story. Now, on the Chinese embracing international system, I think the jury is still out on that, to be honest. They haven't embraced international human rights levels. They're challenging aspects of law of the sea, and there's a tendency to be a free rider on some issues as opposed to being a responsible stakeholder to use the words. So I think they're embracing them more. I agree with you on the trend, but I don't think they've fully come in. Now, they have a right to say, well, we don't just inherit the system, we have a right to shape it. And I think we've been correct to enlarge the GA to the G20, and they have greater say in many economic institutions, that should continue. But I think the jury's out on whether they've actually embraced the system. But they're a joiner these days, right? Yes. More than anything else. Well, much more than their history. And his basic point is correct. I think it's significant that differences on law of the sea are now argued by the Chinese in terms of the law of the sea and interpretations of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. I don't think it's anyone who certainly was obvious from the first moment of contact with China that they were not interested in embracing our values as to our ideology. So I have to sign less significance than you do to our continuing disagreements on human rights. Just one sort of footnote to your remark on the French Revolution. I was there, and it was such a wonderful... Not at the French Revolution. It was not the French Revolution. It would have been fun. The Napoleon complex. That's right. But one of the things about that exchange that was too delightful to set straight was that Joe Enlis thought Dr. Kissinger was asking about the student revolution of 1968, the so-called second French Revolution. That ruins the story. It does. And I've withheld this information until now. Oh, no. That's fantastic. I want to add one point on this, though. I think that it makes the point that one of the differences that we're going to have to manage in our relationship with China is our different viewpoint on human rights. And the fact that we tend to have an urge to messianically interfere in the affairs of other countries in order to straighten them out when they engage in practices that we don't approve of. But there's a chapter in the book which Dr. Kissinger expands at greater length in his book Does American Need a Foreign Policy, which points out that the only region of the world now where you really have a pure Westphalian system of nation-states attaching absolute importance to sovereignty is in East Asia where the countries, many of them used to be under colonial rule. And for them, protecting your sovereignty is vitally important. We have moved to a kind of post-Westphalian view of believing in humanitarian intervention. As a principle of international law, it can't stand up because it turns out that it's only humanitarian intervention by strong countries against weak countries. Strong countries don't engage in humanitarian interventions if the costs are too high. So as a principle, I don't think it stands up. As a belief that when you're strong, you should use your power in order to affect changes that are consistent with your own value system, then you can understand what we're doing. But this brings us into conflict with China in particular, but other Asian states also who are very, very protective of their own sovereignty. And this applies to the human rights sphere as much as it does to many other spheres. Well, let me intervene here. First of all, Henry does discuss this in his book and he's getting an unfair criticism at times because he does lay out the case for different approaches to foreign policy and he admires those who have a different emphasis on this issue than he does. But I think it's too simplistic to talk about mesoniac intervention and so on. First of all, when you raise this issue with the Chinese, you should not do it arrogantly or with the Asians and say, be like us. You have to appeal to their self-interest and in China's case, because the change is gonna come from within, not from outside pressure. In China's case, in a global economy based on information, they're gonna have to loosen up the system. At a time of instability, they're gonna have to have safety bowels besides going to the streets in order to let off frustration. If they want Taiwan to get close, they gotta have a more pluralistic democratic system. If they wanna lift the ceiling on relations with us, they're gonna have to have a more pluralistic, open, transparent system. And it's simplistic to say we raise this issue, which by the way should be on our agenda, but not dominated. We have too many other interests. With Burma, you can just focus on one issue. With China, you gotta balance the issue. So I'm not saying we should have it as a dominated issue. But it serves concrete national security interests, not just our values, not just to maintain domestic congressional and public support. Democratic nations or pluralistic nations on the hold don't fight each other. They don't harbor terrorists. They don't export refugees. And also there's an impact on our relationship. If you don't have a free press or the rule of law and you have corruption, food safety and pandemic flu issues can affect other countries and kill people because they're covered up. A key part of our relationship are exchanges bilaterally and these are hurt when journalists are harassed and write bad stories about China, when education exchanges are affected by Chinese censorship of history, when NGOs can't help them build a civil society. So I think it's a legitimate item and it's not just a mess and I, it's in our national security interests and I think it's in China's self-interest and I think they'll go that way over the long run. Well, let's stay in East Asia and Southeast Asia and Chinese diplomacy for the moment. 2009, I mean, the US I think got a lot of pushback from Southeast Asian countries during the sort of the 90s, the era of Asian values so-called. This has trailed off a little bit and seemed to trail off a lot in 2009 at a time of what many people would have thought a very aggressive Chinese diplomacy. And in fact, you see the US invited back into Southeast Asia by Singapore always had the US but Malaysia and other countries, Indonesia and the like. From the perspective of Chinese diplomacy, Dr. Kissinger talks a lot about the traditions of the old tribute system and the like. I mean, does China really conceive of Southeast Asian countries still like that in such a traditional form? I don't think so. I don't think, one of the more interesting points that Dr. Kissinger makes and which I think is aptly documented in Chinese history is that the classic Chinese method of handling the zone beyond their borders or the China, the outer marches of China was always to divide the barbarians in order to ensure that they could not coalesce and form a coherent threat to China. Whereas to the moment they seem to. But the Chinese behavior now, even though they do perceive a threat in some respects from the United States is not consistent with this. There's no effort to divide and rule as one would have predicted on the basis of this past history. Instead, they seem to be prepared to tolerate the order that the United States has presided over as long as it isn't too challenging. So when we get into confrontations over issues like the South China Sea, which is I think what you're referring to, we're coming up toward a limit, but we didn't cross it. And I don't see the Chinese in fact behaving irresponsibly. Now, having said that, it's natural that any country with a very large, increasingly powerful neighbor would look for support, encouragement, reassurance in relationships farther away. And I don't see anything unnatural and I don't see anything the Chinese should properly object to in that. And frankly, I don't see them objecting. I'd also say finally that I think the notion that somehow the United States absented itself from East Asia and then suddenly returned is very nice rhetoric, but I don't think it's accurate. Well, I think that became more welcome, I think was the point. Here, I don't agree 100% with the way Chas put it. Beginning with the Asian financial crisis in 1997, we saw a decade of very aggressive institution building in East Asia and during that period, the United States was distracted by 9-11 and our focus on terrorism, so that we did not become a active participant in this process of building new institutions in Asia, some of which for the first time did not include the United States as a player since the ASEAN plus three annual summit meetings that emerged. This period is ending because partly because of China's behavior patterns after the global financial crisis and its rapid recovery, Chinese behavior reminded the Southeast Asians that dealing with a rising China that is subject to nationalism the way other rising powers have been, including the United States is difficult unless they have a player like the United States who is part of the mix. So I think there is a turning point where a US desire to re-engage more effectively in Asia coincided with an East Asian, Southeast Asian desire for us to become part of the East Asian institutions at least some of them. But what about the, I mean, you could argue that China has done very well out of Pax Americana in the Western Pacific. I mean, how far out into the future does their tolerance for that system extend? I think, you know, they have embraced the system that we created to a remarkable degree. And whatever role we play in that system in the future, it's been to their advantage and I think it's going to continue to be to their advantage. So I'm less concerned. I mean, I think there are issues, for example, when properly raises differences over human rights and other questions of values. But in terms of the emphasis on global order, on peaceful development that the Chinese have, these are sensible things that we should applaud. You don't hear the kind of rhetoric from Beijing that we've heard in the past from countries on the rise and on the make. They're on the rise, but the evidence is not there to suggest that they're planning to be on duly aggressive. I agree with most of that in the sense that right now the Chinese leaders are overwhelmingly preoccupied with their domestic challenges. Income disparities, corruption, the environment, the demographic challenges, the population grows older. And there's been no evidence of the outward push that you saw with the Soviet Union. I think we can, as Dr. Kissinger strongly recommends in his final chapters, coexist in the Pacific community. China has a rightful place in this and because of its economic clout, the Asians are not going to want to join us in any containment if we were stupid enough to try it. So China's going to be there, but there's plenty of room for us and the Asians need our military stability, as you said. We've seen that particularly in the blow black over the last couple years. So I'm optimistic about the Asian area. The trick is to, first of all, get our own house in order and jazz alluded to that. Whether it's dealing with China or dealing with the entire world, the strongest thing we can do for a foreign policy is to grow up politically, stop polarizing the toxic debate in this country, have the Democrats talk about entitlements of Republicans, taxes, and Obama's lead that are being a candidate. And we might get somewhere, plus the other things we have to do. Then on top of that, for Asia, we have the economic dimension where we need as free of trade as possible, including the Korea Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which raises the final point that we have to create and encourage Pacific institutions that encompass both sides of the ocean so as to head off Asian-only institutions, which are legitimate in certain areas. I want to strongly endorse that. I think China's getting its act together to a considerable extent at a time when we don't seem to be able to do it. And I think the key to our competing successfully internationally, not just with China, but with the whole array of newly rising powers is to focus on getting our own act together, whether it's fiscally or culturally or scientifically or in terms of economic policy. We need to spend some time thinking about restoring ourselves. Because the opening was driven, at least in part, by a belief, a Chinese belief in US strength, correct? Which has been damaged in recent years. Damaged but not destroyed. I mean, first of all, I also endorse what Wynn said and Chaz's additional points on that. But I think that the wise commentators the wise commentators in China are reluctant to accept the view of the United States as a diminished power. They may think that our period of transcendent power is past, but that's quite different from saying that we are a power so diminished that China can have ambitions to establish a hegemonic position in East Asia. I do not see that as a dominant theme in Chinese thinking about the region. Yeah, let me add to that. First of all, there's no question given a Chinese performance during the financial crisis and our contributing to it, let alone managing it well, made it for reassessment in China about our strengths on the economic front. There may be even a little bit of hubris and arrogance coming out of it. But they recognize better than anyone the military gap, the technology gap and we still do provide some stability in Asia which they welcome at least for a couple of decades. So I think it gets complicated in figuring out what China's view is that there's many more voices now in China on foreign policy. With Mao and then Dong, you had essentially one person running their foreign policy, not to mention their country. Then with Jiang Zemin, there's more collective leadership, even more so under Hu Jintao and I suspect the next group. So you don't have a single person with an imprimatur on their foreign policy. Then you've got with their rising power different constituencies speaking out, whether it's the PLA or retired PLA officers, whether it's economic agencies who may favor exports over domestic consumption, whether it's nationalist blogging or think tanks. There are many different views, some of which are suggesting the US is going to decline in China or to stand up. But I think the leadership essentially has reigned that in, saw the blowback of its assertiveness in 2009 and 10 and a series of speeches and the summit meeting with the president and the strategic dialogue were getting on both sides a more sober and realistic appraisal of the relationship. It is the vast differences between the two countries' political systems. Is that an obstacle to the kind of improvement in the relationship? Foundation for a better relationship that you're talking about. I mean, the CCP, it's a very opaque organization. That does that matter at all? Well, it's certainly ironic that we started out this relationship with the United States in a position of advocating global diversity and the Chinese advocating global revolution along their model. How serious they were is a question. How serious we were about supporting diversity may also be a question. But in any event, the positions now are somewhat reversed. We seem to have a habit of saying you can't have a relationship with us unless you're like us. If you want to deal with us, you must embrace our ways. Chinese make no such demands. So in a funny way, we've reversed the positions. My own feeling is that there are interests that are very powerful that tie these two countries together and that ought to provide a basis for a mostly cooperative relationship with some elements of competition and that the political systems should not be allowed to get in the way of that. Let me add to that. First of all, I've said my piece on the human rights. I won't go over all that. You certainly can and should have a relationship no matter what the disagreement is on values. And I'm strongly in favor of moving ahead with China. I've worked for it for 40 years despite my distaste for some of their system and today it's becoming a police state. Let's face it, it's appalling what's going on in China. Nevertheless, we should move ahead with them. It doesn't mean you don't have a relationship. It means there's a ceiling on it and it will not be like Japan and Europe. Now you can call that arrogant. I call it calling attention but it's up to the Chinese to do this to their own self-interest. And I think an evolution that will take place over time but it's just realistic that we're not gonna have as close a relationship with a society that is opaque and does abuse its own people at all. On a more theoretical level, differences in political systems are not the determinant of relationships because there are other factors that come into play including national interest considerations. We have had good relations with despicable regimes and we've had bad relations with democratic regimes. Our history of relations with France has been marked by all sorts of deep resentments on both sides and the fact that we were both democracies was not the determining factor. But you cannot have a sustained long-term close relationship that as interests change with countries where there are such significant differences in systems that national attitudes begin to impinge on the relationship. I think it's fascinating that one of the most annoying things about China is that it consistently refutes our ideologically based predictions about what must happen. China can't succeed without having sort of First Amendment freedoms. Well, it's done pretty well. And it reminds me all of the predictions they used to make about us and how capitalism was doomed to collapse which turned out to be quite wrong. Every now and again. Every 40 years, 40 years ago, people around the world were discussing the question of the transition from capitalism to socialism. But for the last 20 years, we've been working on the transition from socialism to capitalism, including in China. So I'm really very hesitant to embrace theories about what must happen in other societies because they've so consistently proven wrong. It would be nice if the am bourgeois of China led, as it did in Europe and elsewhere, to the kind of democratic reforms that I think everyone in this room probably favors. But it's not a certain thing. Look, I agree that so far China has defied history, where whether it's Chile or Taiwan or South Korea, you build up a middle class, you have economic progress and then people demand political freedoms. China, so far, has successfully co-opted the elite, people making money, people are suffering the most or at the bottom of the scale, ironically, in a communist society, the presence of the workers and the income disparities are growing. And they may well have developed a new model that will defy history. I wasn't predicting, although we have been over-optimistic in the past in that path, I wasn't predicting that's gonna happen. I think the jury is out on that. I do think there are forces at work to give me hope, not a demand they change, not a certainty, but a hope they'll change. There's universal aspirations for freedom that do build up. There's the need in a global economy for information. I don't know how long you can segregate what's to be censored and what isn't. You can't get a corruption without a free press. But we're not just talking about elections, we're talking about more basic things like civil society and the rule of law and a free press. And this is where it's gonna have to come from the Chinese themselves, from the bottom up. We can't impose it, nor should we. But I'm somewhat more hopeful that over time, technological necessities, universal aspirations and a Chinese-owned problem will lead them in a more pluralistic, transparent direction. Which, just before we go to questions, brings us back to, we've skated over the issue of the Crow Memorandum at the end of Dr. Kissinger's book and the possibility that a rising state inevitably comes into conflict with the established order and an established state. What do each of you think about that? I touched on that in my opening comments. I reject the concept that there is anything inevitable about international affairs or diplomacy. And I also think that the Crow Memorandum was wrong in some of its analysis. It posited that it was in Germany's interest to spend as much in building up its navy as it could afford, meaning that it was natural for Germany to challenge Britain's naval capability. That's nonsense. The British were running a global empire on which the prosperity of Great Britain depended and their navy had been built up to defend that empire. Germany had colonies abroad, but they were trivial in terms of their contribution to prosperity in Germany. Germany did not need a navy of the size of Britain's and it was setting the goal of surpassing Britain in naval capability that put the two countries on the path to confrontation. I think that's the point, isn't it? That mutual misperception, mutual misunderstanding, an attribution to the other of objectives that the other may not have, mirror imaging, all these things lead in the direction of unnecessary conflict. I took the Chrome memorandum not to be, and it's mentioned in the book, not to be a prediction, but a caution that we should approach a country like China realistically, not attribute to it things that are convenient for vested interests in the United States or conform to our ideology, but look at it as it is and deal with it that way. And similarly, the Chinese who have a tendency to misinterpret the United States need to do the same thing, which is why the value of the strategic dialogue, the diplomatic dialogue that Dr. Kissinger undertook was the process of mutual education and it's just as necessary 40 years after it began as it was when we began it. I think all three of us can agree on this prescription, namely the kind of strategic dialogue that Dr. Kissinger calls for in his book. So we don't have miscalculation where we can have parallel policies where possible, maybe different tactics for common goals, and where we do have differences, we can manage them, but above all, we don't demonize each other any more than we sanitize each other. So I think the right note of caution is struck by the Chrome memorandum, but Henry himself talks about the opposing view and his cautious view that we can avoid such an outcome. Before we got a question, I'd just like to add one point because of my fellow panelists here. We are correctly celebrating the opening to China in the early 70s and Dr. Kissinger and President Nixon's trip. I would like to pay tribute at the same time, and this will probably come up at the next session, to the achievement of the Carter administration of normalizing relations, which a state and chairs had a very strong hand in, took considerable courage, and I wish Pazinski was here but please get me credit with him and tell him what I said. While we're talking about major trips, Pazinski's trip in the spring of 1978 was absolutely crucial. I'll tell him about Kissinger's trip and Nixon's. This is another one. At that point after one year, the Carter administration was having difficulty with China advance, had a difficult trip to over Taiwan to China. They were dealing primarily with Moscow. As big went over there in the spring of 78, reinforced the geopolitical thrust that Nixon and Kissinger had developed, talked about cooperating in Afghanistan and joint intelligence on the Soviets and laid the basis for the normalization process, which took place soon afterwards. So this has been a process over 40 years of both political parties and great courage and statesmanship, and I must say continuity over those decades. Thank you very much. Now I think we've got a reasonable amount of time for questions, so just put your hand up and go through the usual protocol of identifying yourself and the like down there. Well, I think one of the things that has been transformed in China in recent years, in fact, is the extent to which the Chinese people in general and Chinese leaders in particular do travel abroad. If you go to Paris these days and go to the Galilee Lafayette, for example, the big department store, you'll find a whole section of the department store where the concierges speak Chinese and the signage is in Chinese because it turns out switching cities. In London, Chinese tourists on the average spend 3,500 pounds on various luxury items. This is now a very competitive luxury market. Anyway, people are going outside China. There are huge numbers of Chinese studying in the UK, in Europe, and here, and elsewhere, and the country as a whole is very plugged in. Now the next generation that's coming into power, if we go through the predicted cycle, in fact, consists of individuals who did not have a formative experience abroad, but who have traveled abroad. I think on a comparative basis, most Chinese officials seem to have passports and most Americans don't. So I'm not quite sure who's more insular. Do you want to comment on it? Just very briefly, a shocking number of the leaders have their children studying in the United States or elsewhere. I first met Xi Jinping in New York City three years ago when he visited New York. Other Politburo members have showed up in New York frequently. If you look at Dr. Kissinger's calendar, you find Politburo members scattered throughout there because they want to see him when they come to New York. So I would say that insularity is probably not the problem we need to worry about. They are much more exposed to the outside world than the current generation of leaders who were the Cultural Revolution group. They didn't have opportunities to study abroad. Their children didn't have opportunities to study abroad at that time. They had much less exposure to the outside world. I would make two other points on the transition. First of all, the leader in China, the party secretary and his other titles, the president and so on, much less important than in previous go-around. Mao ran foreign policy with Zhou, Deng ran foreign policy, Zhang Zemin, as I said earlier, more collective leadership, Puchetou even more so. And so you can't identify Chinese foreign policy or even domestic policy by trying to figure out who's the top guy. We pretty well know who's gonna be number one and number two. What is important, the other seven slots, which are gonna be filled, what their attitudes are, and we don't know very much because of that opaque system. The second point I'd make is we always predict wrong on Chinese leaders. I don't think we would have predicted what Mao did opening up to the U.S. Zhang Zemin was consistently underrated, as Dr. Kissinger says in his book, and thought of maybe sort of a buffoon and so on. And he got Hong Kong back, he got the economy moving, had good relations with the U.S. He was really quite an effective leader. Puchetou, we thought might be a closet Thomas Jefferson. He was close to Hu Yabang, a political liberal by Chinese standards. He had at the Central Party School, where I met him, where they were studying political reform. In fact, under who they've gone backwards on political reform and things have gotten much worse. So number one, the individuals are not as important and number two, don't try to predict. Hey, good afternoon, I'm Mike Wang. I'm a Chinese. So my question is, you probably know that China has conflict with Vietnam as a southern China sea. And a lot of islands were actually, as a matter of fact, was taken by Vietnam. Historically, we had a war in 1979 with Vietnam. If there's anything happened like that, United States provides support or create a dialogue in that area rather than provide support to Vietnam or other countries in that area. Thank you. I think the American concern in the South China Sea is the avoidance of war, not taking sides. It's a very tangled history and there are some very interesting elements to it that go back to some things we were saying earlier. Here you have a group of mostly rocks and reefs in which you're barely above water, most of them uninhabitable. And both Vietnam and China, who are the principal claimants, the ones with the longest longstanding claims, base their claims of sovereignty on activities that occurred in the 19th century or before when neither of them accepted the notion of sovereignty, which is a Western concept. So they're reading back into history concepts that didn't apply at the time. And I'm actually fairly optimistic about this issue. I note that Vietnam and China agreed at the end of the 90s that they would settle their land border and demarcate it. They did that on schedule. They agreed that they would take the Bebu Wan or the Gulf between them in the northern part of the South China Sea and delineate that with a border. They did that on schedule pretty much in 2002. And they also agreed that they would pursue a settlement of these island claims. And I think they've been working on that. They haven't done it. Anybody who's negotiated as Dr. Kissinger has with either the Chinese or the Vietnamese knows that this is not, can be a pleasant, but it is not an easy process. And you put the two of them together and I think you have to expect things to go on for some time. But no, not a war. Maybe we can get Henry to mediate between the Vietnamese and the Chinese. Something I'm sure he'd volunteer for. Thank you. I'm Hanifin Duckley. I'm an investment banker. There was a recent announcement by the Defense Secretary about the fact that cyber attacks could be construed as acts of war against the United States. And coincidentally, there was a cyber attack that was linked to some Chinese entities. My question is to what extent will, since the internet will continue to rise and attacks will continue to increase, to what extent will this complicate US-China relations and the potential for the miscalculation that Ambassador Freeman spoke about? In fact, one of the stories said that there was a conscious attempt at fishing at all the China experts in DC. So I don't know whether you've been subject to that as well. The short answer is cyber attacks are a potential problem in the bilateral relationship. Both sides have recognized that and at the recent security and economic dialogue, the issue was addressed, I believe, for the first time between the two countries. It's a very complex area. And it's also one shrouded in secrecy. We attribute lots of attacks to China, but we rarely hear about things done in the United States that may affect the interests of other countries. So it's a complex issue. But it's one that the governments ought to get involved in and there need to be some rules of the game so that when attacks of the type that have occurred recently occur, the two governments can take actions designed to protect the security of their systems because China has as much interest in protecting the security of their systems as we do. I shouldn't comment because I'm just barely managing my iPad after years of blood-eyedism. Part of the problem is you're not quite sure whether it's coming from the government or coming from individual people for commercial gain or even pranksters. That's part of it. But it's interesting, as Stapes said, that in the recent military dialogue, which, by the way, has added to our political and economic dialogue, started under Bush and continued and upgraded under Obama, which I hardly approve of, the weakest link has been the military-to-military talks. I don't know whether the PLA was dragged kicking and screaming into this, but they seem to welcome it and there seemed to be a better relationship beginning to emerge. But the one topic we chose on our side to raise at this initial dialogue with the military was cyber security. They chose maritime surveillance. So this has just begun, but it's a very important area. It's not gonna go away. We have a cyber command now, which focuses on the use of cyberspace for attack by us, as well as on defense against others, and this is just a feature of the world. Why is this the case? Because in a sense, if you take the sea as a place from which you can access the land and therefore, in a sense, a superior strategic domain, and the air above the sea and the land as an even more superior strategic domain, and space above both of these as yet a higher strategic domain, then cyberspace is above all of those. And it is natural when there's international competition that it's going to spill over into this space. I think it's gonna be a continuing problem. I don't think it's unique to the United States-China relationship by any means to ask the Iranians about Stuxnet. Any other, that's 233. Hello, my name's Stephen Profitt, and I'm representing Senator Luger's office. Mr. Freeman, I had a question for you. You mentioned that mutual misperception and the attribution of certain motives can often engender unnecessary conflict, and I just wanted to know what misperceptions you think exist between the United States and China, and how our foreign policy orientation should change to redress those misperceptions. Thank you. Well, I think on the Chinese side, there is a tendency to imagine that the United States has some sort of grand strategy of curtailing, limiting, or suppressing the rise of China. And it's impossible for the Chinese to imagine that we not only don't have a grand strategy, we don't even have a strategy, and that we're not, in fact, attempting to hold China down. Quite the contrary. There are areas of U.S.-China interaction which disprove that, if you think about them, for a moment, economic interaction, for example, where this is an increasingly important partnership for both of us, really decisive in some ways, and cultural interchange. Anyway, lots of forms of interaction. We do have a problem in the military area, and I think in this area, each side has come to perceive the other as, in a sense, the enemy of choice. And there's an awful lot of military planning going on for contingencies that, one hopes, will never occur. And I think, when is correct, the least developed element in the relationship is the military element, and it's the one that requires the most attention to avoid this problem of mistaken assumptions, untested preconceptions, and misinterpretations of activities on both sides. So, I think on the U.S. side, probably we imagine the Chinese are far more united and coherently coordinated than they are, and we tend to read into their behavior lessons drawn from, let's say, the rise of Germany, or Japan, or the Soviet Union, or even ourselves, which probably are questionable. So I think we need to work at this. I agree with that, and we really underestimate the Chinese preoccupation with their domestic challenges. This is gonna limit their ability and their desire to be adventuristic. You have to be careful, you've gotta have insurance and good relations with other countries as a hedge, but we should build good relations with China and recognize that when their leaders in the Apollo Bureau wake up in the morning, they're not worrying about the South China Sea so much, and frankly, even Taiwan or some other issues, they're worried about income disparities and corruption and the environment, and their demographic nightmare. And so this is gonna constrain them in any event as we move forward, but above all, it reminds us of the need for this kind of strategic dialogue to avoid the demonizing of each other. It's not all about us. My name is Joshua McGee, I'm a current intern at CSIS. I just wanted to see if you guys could comment on foreign direct investment in Africa and how that would possibly further complicate our relations with China, and also the fact that we tend to have more strings attached to our foreign direct investment in our investments in Africa, and it seems as if China does not. I just wanted to see if you could comment on that phenomenon, thank you. It's a potential source of misunderstanding and between the two countries largely because we approach Africa very differently. Our governmental operations in Africa are largely focused on conflict resolution, migration issues, health issues, such as HIV, AIDS and malaria, humanitarian interventions. Our commercial activities are carried out by our private companies. In China's case, their investments in Africa, in the minds of Americans, are all carried out by the government through whatever mechanism they use to make investments in Africa. I have participated in US, Africa, China dialogues, and I find it's very hard to get the Americans to understand that China's purpose in being in Africa is to acquire the resources necessary to keep Chinese rapid development going, and they're not there for the types of purposes that our government engages in there because our private sector operates independently. So this can easily lead to misunderstandings. To the extent that Africa has resources or other parts of the world have resources that are important to us, I can assure you we are heavily involved there. Take Saudi Arabia, for example. We have very few strings attached to our interest in Saudi oil. So it would be asking a lot of China to be attaching strings when it is vitally necessary to get the resources in order to fuel their own domestic development. But on the whole, China, with governments in Africa and elsewhere, say they're not worried about environmental concerns or human rights concerns, they're just the commercial aspect, which gives them certain advantages competing with reform-minded Western countries. There's been some blowback, however, in terms of some of the citizens in Africa feeling that the Chinese workers are gaining at the expense of local workers at the colonialist exploitation of resources. But on the whole, China's objective there is one of their two objectives in their foreign policy. One, as you say, is to get resources, whether it's oil or minerals around the world, to serve their domestic economy. And secondly, as I've already alluded to, to have as quiet a global and neighborly environment as possible so they can focus on and get on with their domestic challenges. I think it's been the case in the past that we have tended to emphasize aid, and the Chinese have emphasized investment. And investment is generally much more welcome and free of restrictions than aid is. There are now a million Chinese resident in sub-Saharan Africa. Most of them are small shopkeepers, not workers for large companies. And finally, I think actually one of the great misconceptions that we have, going back to an earlier question, is the notion that somehow there's China incorporated and that the state owned enterprise means the only company of its kind in the Chinese economy. One of the problems in the Chinese relationship with Africa, which the Chinese have been trying to address, is the profligate logging activity of furniture manufacturers in China. Who now make 60% of the world's furniture and are looking for sources of wood. Well, China has 50,000 furniture manufacturing companies, 50,000, almost all of them privately owned and operated. Now this is not the government. Even in the oil sector, sometimes Chinese oil companies compete with each other. I was involved in another country in a mining situation where I was working with a Chinese company. There were 58 bidders on a mining concession, one Australian and 57 Chinese companies competing for this. So it's not as simple as we sometimes imagine. On that note, thanks to Ambassador Freeman, Lord and Roy, thank you very much for that. And I think we now have a 15 minute break. Very good. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's always a pleasure to be on panels with you, really.