 approach to – well, thank you again for joining us. And as I mentioned before, our second panel is going to discuss these multifaceted challenges facing Southeast Asia in the future. I mentioned governance, the impact of globalization, infrastructure needs. You can think about that in hardware terms and also software terms. Changing balance of power. There's already been a lot of discussion about China so far in competing political economic models going forward. Certainly the way Thailand is approaching things is a little different than the way some other countries are right now and Myanmar is undergoing its own transition. So before we begin the discussion, this is just going to be – we're going to start off with an open discussion amongst the group, but I'd like to introduce our panelists. We're pleased to welcome Dr. Takashi Shirai-shi here all the way from Japan, although we got him via New York for this trip. He is president of Japan's National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, or GRIPS, and also the Institute for Developing Economies, GETRO, IDE GETRO, in Japan. He's one of Japan's most accomplished scholars on the region in a pretty comprehensive way. At GRIPS, at Tokyo University, Kyoto University, and Cornell, and I think it was when you were at Cornell that I first met you. You were doing some work with Jack Bresnan at Columbia on Indonesia and had a chance to meet you then. He served in the cabinet office and several influential policy panels formed by the government of Japan, so we're very, very glad to have him here with us today. Muhtaya Alagapa all the way on the far end is our own here, Carnegie, a non-resident senior associate in our Asia program. He joined us after two years as the Tun Hussein-owned chair in international studies at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Kuala Lumpur. He had a long career at the East-West Center as well, both in Hawaii and establishing the East-West Center Washington office here several years ago, and was a career officer in Malaysia's armed forces for 20 years to boot, and has written extensively on governance, security, civil society, and political development in the region. Mr. Mark Mealy, to his left, is vice president for policy at the U.S. ASEAN Business Council. He began his professional career as an international economist with the International Trade Policy Division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Services. He was a Foreign Service Officer in that regard, and while at USDA he was, oh, was accepted into the U.S. Foreign Service, was also director of the Trade and Investment Program at the African American Institute, and served as a staff member in Congress for four years, I understand. So it's one of the fun things about convening these panels is I learn a lot about the people I actually meet every day in Washington, and next to Mark is Craig Stephenson, representative to Asian Development Bank's North American representative office here in Washington. He was assigned as a country director to ADB's Thailand resident mission in 2010 to 2013, helped engineer ADB's re-engagement with Myanmar in 2012. He's worked for various development agencies in the region in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, the Peace Corps, and rural Philippines, including Kazakhstan and Afghanistan. So we have a very diverse group here today because we're going to talk not just about the economic side of things, but the political, security, foreign policy going forward, and I'm going to shift down here and begin our discussion. Before I open kind of our formal questions and conversation, I wondered to give the panel, if they had any initial thoughts or following on from the conversation they just heard in the first panel, anything in particular you wanted to take up? Can I just say something about the question about the high-speed train project in Indonesia because apparently many people are interested in the project. As Kawaisensei said, the Indonesian government basically decided that it should be business to business deal and therefore the decision fell on to the minister of state-owned corporations and therefore she decided in favor of China, despite the reservations expressed by four other ministers involved in the decision. But actually when I heard the decision first time, one thing that occurred to me was the decision in 2005 when Hu Jintao met with Sushilobamba Yudhoyono and offered short loans without government guarantees to build eight power stations, thermal power stations. And as it turned out, because the project didn't require any government guarantees, all the Japanese companies, I mean, power companies declined to bid for the project and only Chinese companies bid for all the project and they got it. And while they got the project, the funding turned out to require risk premium in addition to soft loans and risk premium turned out to be 8%. So at the end of the day, the Chinese state-owned banks required 11.5% interest rate and President Yudhoyono was outraged and basically decided to fund all the project with their own fund. And how many power stations are now working in Indonesia, none. So this is a kind of deal they got 10 years ago and therefore I would say that even though Chinese companies are going to get all the projects about high-speed train, I mean, once they started to negotiate the interest rate, especially risk premium, you don't know whether Indonesians still buy the project and number two, whether China can maintain, does not commit cost overrun and so on. So I only see this as a first round. There will be second and maybe third round of negotiations and therefore the best way to see is, you know, I mean, actually just wait and see. And this leads to another question and that is AIIB as well as China's all the ODA economic cooperation initiatives. I mean, certainly I would imagine even Chinese state-owned banks do not want to have bad loans for all the projects, right? And that means actually they need to figure out what are the good projects and what are not. And that is part of the reason, you know, I mean AIIB is willing to cooperate with ADP and other already, you know, I mean, banks with good performance. And if Chinese state-owned banks accumulate bad loans in the coming, say, you know, five years, 10 years, then China, Chinese government, itself will have interest in learning the kind of experiences that United States, European countries, Japan and so on already have accumulated. So this is a very interesting test case and I think it is very important not to make any sort of judgment at the moment, better wait and see what would be the effect of all these initiatives long-term, not only for the countries which receive infrastructure fund but also for China itself. That is actually what I wanted to say. Great. Well, thank you very much. Actually, that's not a bad way to start because part of what I'd like to do this session is to kind of dip our toe into some very specific current detailed issues but also pull back and think longer term based on part of what we talked about this morning just in the previous session and then thinking longer term as well and then some broader issues. So before we get back into the specific issues, the first question I wanted to ask about and get your reaction up is from a U.S.-Japan perspective, what are our objectives or goals for the region going forward and how do you perceive the landscape within which those goals are going to be pursued to be in the coming few years, you know, the foreseeable future. What kind of, in contrast to some of the goals we talked about in the first session and the evolving landscape over quite a long period of time, presumably our goals are a little bit different today or I want to ask what you think about how they're shaping up. You're all coming at it from slightly different perspectives, different backgrounds and what's the environment in Southeast Asia that we're going to be pursuing those goals. So I open that up to whoever would like to begin. I'll try to kick us off. Coming from, I guess, working with a lot of the American multinationals that are members of the U.S.-Asian business council. I think first the environment is interesting. Obviously we are in the environment right now, quote-unquote the global environment being a little bit less supportive in terms of maybe some slowing of growth, maybe some additional financial instability on the horizon whenever our Fed decides to raise up rates and all the kind of subsequent dynamics that that can affect. I think another important sort of environmental question I think we probably don't fully understand yet right now, but I think it will have some context is sort of the recognition that at least my own opinion here, not my organization, that the Doha round of WTO is pretty much dead in its current form. I think that's the direction that it's taking on right now, the evolution towards these greater support for more pro-lateral arrangements does seem to be the direction that at least I'm observing and I think there are others out there who are observing. So that'll be interesting to kind of watch that dynamic. But I think that then potentially then for the goals that how the United States and Japan in terms of the private sector, I think could be a very interesting opportunity to really find ways of collaborating as well as competing. I think in terms of goals, number one I think has been mentioned earlier, I think we would start with what are some of ASEAN's own goals, looking forward, maintaining ASEAN centrality in terms of the Asia-Pacific trade and financial architecture as it evolves, being able to move forward in terms of the launching of the ASEAN economic community and addressing some of the kinds of big picture issues of closing development gaps and such like that, making these processes be very sustainable. I think that's going to be very, very important going forward. So I think that's an area where thousands of ASEAN's goals, can the U.S. and Japan in terms of our business communities, are there opportunities where we could play a role in trying to help ASEAN or support ASEAN to achieve some of those key objectives? I can say I think there are some already some good examples of cooperation already going on amongst our private sectors, things that we've been involved in and things that we're seeing that I think bode well for laying an environment where moving down the road, there can be some initiatives perhaps in partnerships or collaborations where we could play a supportive role on some of the key issues in Southeast Asia. No, that's great. I appreciate that. And later on, I definitely want to talk a little more specifically about kind of a common agenda going forward for the two. But, Luthaya, if you... Jim, you know, you asked about U.S. and Japan. I'm not sure what I'm going to say is going to relate directly to that. But I want to highlight something in the region which I think is rather important. So much of the discussion in the first session, and I presume will also be in the session, will focus on economic growth and development. Development used to mean a lot more than just economic growth and development. Political development was a crucial part of development. And that seems to have fallen down off the radar right now. But it seems to me a fundamental challenge in Southeast Asia is going to be in the area of political development. A case can be made that political development has stagnated and is in fact on the retrogressive side of things. Almost every country in Southeast Asia that you take, you see there is political turmoil in those countries, whether it's Malaysia or Thailand or Indonesia or Burma. You see political turmoil in almost all countries in Southeast Asia. And so the question is whether... I'm not sure what Japan and U.S. in do in terms of political development. But I think it's important to the prevailing landscape in political landscape in Southeast Asia. It's important to understand the landscape. And I think it's important to define development broadly. Both to encompass... I'm not arguing for abandoning economic development or growth, but to define it broadly to include political development as well. I think without political development, it's very difficult to get maximum economic growth and development. One only has to see the period of Suharto and the transition of Suharto and how the Indonesian economy suffered as a consequence of the political change. And I think you can see what's happening in Thailand, what's happening in Malaysia. And it's not just politics alone, but it seems to me that politics and economics and development has to go hand in hand. And political development is crucial and should come back onto the agenda. It has actually dropped off the agenda. And I'll just stop here, but I'll be happy to talk more. Before we move on next, just to press you a little bit more on how would you define political development? Would you characterize it in terms of a particular type of governance structure or just issues of plurality, legitimacy, dealing with inequality? What are some of the components of that as used? You know, if you look at countries in Southeast Asia, all of them became independent after World War II except for Thailand. Thailand was not colonized, but as a semi-colony and all the others became independent. And the boundaries of states were actually drawn by colonial powers. Indonesia is today what it is because of Dutch boundaries, Dutch colonies and rule in Indonesia. Malaysia's boundaries as a consequence of British rule and also subsequently formation of Malaysia and so forth. So political development basically encompasses three very key areas. One is nation-making. We all tend to assume, we talk blithely about China, about Southeast Asia and about India and so forth, but these are all in the process of making nations and they're all contested internally. So we talk about minority issues in Southern Thailand and Southern Philippines, in Burma and so forth, but these are just not minority issues. It does not be in the center and periphery. They're really contestations over what the nation should be. What is the identity of the nation? What basis is the nation? So to me that is one fundamental issue that we have to address. You look at Scotland which went for a referendum from Britain. That was not considered a security issue. It was considered a political issue, right? Whereas in most of Asia, including Southeast Asia, it's treated as a security issue. So political development has to go where you don't securitize all these issues, but you actually become more willingness to accept how people want to be governed. So nation-making is a fundamental issue in political development. Second is state-making. What type of political system? What structure of political system, whether it's a federal system or a unitary system, are you willing to explore issues of autonomy and so forth? And also how do you compete for state power? That is the second issue. And the third issue is how do you exercise state power, governance? So I think these three are critical areas in political development and there needs to be institutions and processes for managing all these three issues. And to me, Southeast Asian countries, I was rather surprised this morning in the first session when people talk of Southeast Asia's success story. It's so much just grounded in economic thinking, what has been achieved. But without political development, you can see what has been the consequences of that. So I think we need to have a broader definition of development to encompass political development as well and to talk about institutions and processes in those countries. And I'm not sure what U.S. and Japan can do about it. We'll come back to that. Should I just say, can you give us a feel for kind of the view from Tokyo on my first question or a little bit of what I was talking about, is that on the agenda in Tokyo or how would you view what Japan's goals are in the region going forward? Yeah, certainly. If you ask what kind of Southeast Asia is the best, not only for Southeast Asians, but also for Japanese or Americans and others, I mean, certainly it is kind of peaceful, stable, open, democratic and economically dynamic Southeast Asia. Probably no one has any problem with that. The question is how to get there. And if you look at mainland Southeast Asia, I mean, we can certainly see the kind of problem Mutir is now talking about. I mean, Vietnam is a party state regime. Laos is a party state regime. Cambodia is dictatorship. Thailand is under Hunter. And Myanmar is, you know, Myanmar's constitution is modeled after Sohotu's constitution, Indonesian constitution. And so, you know, I mean, all the regimes are also Italian. And if you look at maritime Southeast Asia, then the Philippines are democratic, Indonesia democratic, but Malaysia is in trouble. And Singapore hopefully in 10 years will be more democratic, too. But, you know, so, there is definitely the question about political development. But if you look at economically, I mean, from economic side, I mean, over the last 30 years, actually per capita income in local currency, of course, you know, eliminating the effect of inflation. I mean, the lowest, I mean, the poor, the poorest performing country in the Philippines, and yet per capita income increased by 200%. And in the case of Vietnam, it increased by 400%. So in a sense, you know, in this past 30-year performance, I mean, expanded the kind of expectation people have for the regime and therefore the task is not just, you know, economic development, but actually by developing economy, meeting or inflated inflation and hopefully to make sort of transition to democracy. I mean, that is the kind of issue. And I see, for example, in mainland Southeast Asia, Thailand is the most important country to test. I mean, to see this test. Because, you know, I mean, Thailand enjoyed democracy in the past and probably hopefully after the current transition, I mean, Thailand, both, you know, I mean, royalists as well as, you know, taxis people would make a grand bargain and come to another political system. But, you know, it takes time and therefore we have to be patient and never sort of, you know, condemn these people simply because they cannot really meet our expectations right away. Thank you. I think where we see this kind of reality is observations about the politics at the regional level. Again, it's probably, again, the real weakness to really develop regional institutions. Which, particularly, I think many of us would say, you know, if I was trying to really have a greater cohesion amongst itself until some of these kinds of political and institutional challenge at the national level are perhaps worked on and improved, that will probably remain a source of weakness to develop those regional bodies that are probably really going to be necessary for the vision going forward of the economic community to really reach its full potential. Well, speaking of regional bodies, Greg, we talked a little bit before about this, but you brought up the point that, you know, much of the neighborhood is graduating or will graduate in the middle income status and that means something in terms of its relationship with certain institutions but it also means something for the societies themselves and what are some of your thoughts about this? Well, from a regional perspective, I think the Asian Development Bank is probably focused more on infrastructure development and regional integration as much as we are anything else nowadays. We tend to look at urbanization occurring in these countries and the fact that there are still 120,000 people a day moving into cities and the need for housing and water supply and sanitation and electricity, schools, clinics these sorts of infrastructure challenges primarily from an urbanization perspective and it points to huge needs for infrastructure. We did a study in 2009 of this infrastructure for a seamless Asia that showed that roughly 8.3 trillion dollars was required between 2009 and 2020 or about 750 billion dollars a year to fill the infrastructure gap and in Southeast Asia I think that number is it varies from one report to the next but roughly 70 to 100 million billion dollars a year and it's pretty clear that between governments and their development partners and the current pace of private investment in these sectors whether independent projects or public-private partnerships that we're nowhere close to addressing this infrastructure challenge which points to the need for the private sector to step up their game I think but the only way to do so is to create an enabling environment for them to carry the ball and that's what a lot of people are spending a lot of time talking about and now it is to create that enabling environment to resolve this binding constraint which is a reluctance of private investors. We do talk about that kind of infrastructure gap and that size of a number in terms of investment need. I guess the immediate thought that comes to my mind is that we're superimposing essentially a certain expectation about what their level of lifestyle ought to be. Certainly you wouldn't just say here's a country at this position they need a trillion dollars to get to this position. By that I mean in a sense that large number is driven by the size of the population and because it's really a part of the world and I would say globalization and technology. In other words, expectations you're talking about the flow of people into the cities because of how the economies are developing but they need places to live, level of sanitation education, healthcare services that's where that number comes from you start adding up and it's not just our superimposing of what we think their life ought to be it's expectations internally are rising is an impression I get which cuts back to this issue of political development and legitimacy or meeting the needs within the society as it's changing. I guess I want to dig a little deeper on some of these infrastructure needs going forward and what thoughts the panel has about ways to contribute to developing this enabling environment of such believe it at that point. One certain place to start was kind of picked up from our earlier panel where again I see a real synergy of perspective between the United States and Japan in terms of our private sectors is clearly trying to build capacity foster sort of values of certain approaches and even the real objectives of trying to quote unquote develop the infrastructure that your societies are expecting are looking for. So we've mentioned China and Japan and Indonesia a couple of times I'll throw out another example one of our colleagues earlier mentioned in the case of the question of electricity and its current administrations that's sort of their number one priority is to massively improve the production of electricity for the country because obviously for you ever want to have a manufacturing sector you've got to have electricity if you want to try to promote more inclusive growth in this society obviously there's parts of society that need to have electricity so it's a fair priority by the administration. In a discussion that I was fortunate to have with the president they noted that we recently did a power project and a Chinese company got the project and they were the lowest bidder and what have you and the project has basically never produced more than 50% of the quote unquote prescribed electricity and we were kind of saying sometimes they'll say you kind of get what you pay for the notion that it was not overtly said but they were kind of saying maybe going forward we should learn and we were like exactly and the lessons include things like you need to have a value of life cycle costs in projects you need to incorporate maintenance in projects you would hope maybe the project would have a quote unquote an employment generating impact because we know sometimes the employment benefit is very small depending upon who you work with you work with a US firm we're not going to fly over 10,000 Americans by a higher 10,000 Indonesians so all those kinds of things represent an area where our governments and our business communities probably jointly want to promote those types of values and ideas and approaches to even just how you want to go about building infrastructure in your countries okay actually let me just step back a little bit and look at the history of the kind of division of labor Japan and the United States had in the past I mean for example after the war in Vietnam was over but still in the Cold War era I think there was a division of labor between Japan and the United States basically the United States maintained the security and stability in the region and if there are regimes that needs to be fixed Americans made intervention just like in the Philippines in the mid 1980s but after that when these countries entered the reconstruction phase then the Japanese pick up the bill that's the kind of division of labor in the Cold War and both Japanese and Americans became very unhappy with this deal in the 1990s it sort of culminated in the split between Japan and the United States as regards how to deal with the East Asian crisis in 1997-98 and after that probably we now need to work out a new division of labor given the fact that Americans are now rebalancing and this rebalancing is turning out to be quite successful both in security as well as in the form of TPP and Japanese adjusting and actually doing its own part to support this American rebalancing both in security as well as TPP and therefore for example in infrastructure development probably we need to think something to work out the kind of cooperation between Japan and the United States especially in the private sector supported of course by ADP, JICA Bank and so on and of course it doesn't mean that exclude Chinese but rather actually as I said Chinese banks are also worried about their bad bonds and therefore they have their own incentive long term at least to cooperate with us Craig and then the time Most countries in Southeast Asia invest less than 3% and some as low as 1% of GDP per year in public and private spending on infrastructure that's far behind the 2-5% range that they were at before the Asian financial crisis that began in July 1997 and it's a lot less from the 5-9% that the ADP believes to be spending today on railways, on seaports on roads, on power generation transmission and distribution on logistics centers and the like there are 4 things that we believe could and should be done to speed up the rate at which infrastructure projects are being provided first is governments really need to step up their game to fast-track infrastructure delivery and clear bottlenecks to create a pipeline of transparent and well-structured projects that allow for private investors and market mechanisms to take hold right now if you go into a lot of government offices and say give us all the infrastructure projects that are ready to be funded well there's just a whole there's not much there I'll put it to you that way it's not for lack of financing I think there have been a lot of discussions that show that finance is not the issue when it comes to affordability of these projects it's really the fact that there just aren't a whole lot of projects ready to go in some ways these countries are victims of their own success they've developed very quickly urbanization has been the fastest we've seen in modern times anywhere in the world it's really no mystery that there's traffic and canals are clogged and so on when you look at how many people have moved in to these cities in recent years no one has faced a situation like this before people are still sort of adjusting to it the second thing that could be done is for emerging markets to improve the enabling environment by providing a more sensible mix of economic, financial, social and environmental factors to attract good foreign investors and engineering and construction firms to set up there that would help deal with the current back-load of projects that are not being carried out by the domestic construction sector third, projects basically have to be structured more effectively there's a lot of room for innovation when it comes to financing of projects pointing to public-private partnerships in particular the rise to the challenge of the World Bank and the G20 and others are doing a lot in these areas nowadays to crank out well-structured projects that can be financed without a whole lot of trouble but the fact of the matter is we're having difficulty achieving our own targets in ADB alone want to do more than 50 a year and that's going to be hard to do without a lot more stuff fourth you know as I said it's not just a question of how much money on the table it's also the need for countries to improve their governance regimes and I'll sort of wrap up here but we're for all of these elements in place funds might be expected to rush into Southeast Asia their own accord without a whole lot of help from anyone but absent these elements all of the quiddity in the world bouncing around Southeast Asia is probably of little use in getting what's required off the ground what's that yeah you know I just want to get back to the theme of past this problem I'm taking up from what Takashi Shiraiishi has just mentioned it seems to me that the situation has changed quite dramatically from what it was from the post World War II era and so whether in fact previous divisions of labor as well as approaches would work in the coming years is questionable it seems to me and second it seems to me though I'm an advocate but I can see how difficult it be to get political development into the equation because almost everybody talks in economics and this is how in fact the term has been so used that development only means economic growth and development that's what it means and to get political development into that is almost impossible you're swimming against the tide but to me I think that is the greatest challenge in Southeast Asia and unless one can come you need a lot of innovative thinking in terms of how to fit that into here in your case US-Japan cooperation but more broadly into you know the ADB and the World Bank talk about governance but in a very apolitical terms but governance is not apolitical you know I mean you listen to Greg about governance it's very apolitical but governance is political and how do you get at that you know you need to think about how you can actually begin to address those issues state institutions are so central to governance professionalism impartiality, efficiency meritocracy all those affect state institutions and how do you deal with that you know do you want to go the way that was in Taiwan where the KMT was so fused with the military and the bureaucracy and so forth as it is in Singapore where the PAP is so fused with the bureaucracy and the military and so forth or do you want to talk about the private sector is the private sector so dependent on the government or is it a private sector state-owned enterprises right so it seems to me that politics is very much part of this and we don't have a handle in terms of how to address this particular issue and how to get left out and we're going to go back to the more easy ways of how we can deal with infrastructure connectivity and all of that and that's how we will move forward without addressing the very critical issues and to me that is the biggest challenge in Southeast Asia and if you don't address that we'll miss the book well Tai let me ask you then if we take up that challenge which is there a country within ASEAN that you would kind of point that's doing it a little bit better or on the right track a little bit more than I would point to East Asia I would point to South Korea and Taiwan as a countries that are actually managing this much better not so much within Southeast Asia Southeast Asia nearly all countries are facing challenges within Southeast Asia and one has to Philippines to some degree under this present administration but Philippines has gone through several it's gone through the Marcos phase and then the Kino phase and so forth but right now I think under this Kino phase the Philippines is doing quite well but overall I think each country in Southeast Asia faces a good political problems and trying to talk about economics without talking about politics it's not going to get us where that's true I try to where again I very much appreciate the observator I think there's two areas where even the multinationals we see where the politics and the economics really intersect and we're sure there's more than two but I'll share two with you very quickly number one is we all know quote unquote how political education is in a society and can be in a society so when we talk about human capital development those types of things and as part of the role of the public sector you see how politics can play a very huge role in that equation which is fundamental for business and multinationals whereas talent if we don't have talent you could have a lot of other good things going on but if you don't if you're not producing the people that we need that's a big challenge and of course the other major area it's a 21st century area cuts across all industries and sectors where we see this intersection is the intersection of politics and the internet and we see commerce those kinds of issues fundamentally important in terms of sort of the next generation we talk about TPP and those kinds of things what TPP we'll be interested to see how TPP as a trade agreement will require certain countries and we can probably imagine our friends from Vietnam really had to wrestle with this those disciplines around freedom of the internet in a society where freedom of the internet is as fundamentally political as we can imagine and yet internally there must be some degree of a negotiation a battle or reform process to allow the governor of Vietnam to find a place that they felt they could make a certain commitment as part of that negotiation but one can imagine that was probably more political than anything in terms of the economic elements or the questions of the internet and TPP that's I think where we certainly see it well in terms of where these intersect and I thought about it a little bit in the first panel because we talked about the money that flowed in whether it began with reparations and normalization of relations and later on with ODA and other kinds of things where they intersect ultimately is or at least at one place is the allocation of resources decision about where to allocate resources for economic development is ultimately a political bureaucratic at least often political decision and it's an issue being addressed to some extent in China right now Michael Pettis was here a few days ago talking about rebalancing within the Chinese economy and essentially trying to reallocate resources away from unproductive investment because that's where the economic system and the political system has been funneling and the incentives are all there to funnel funds into a certain direction that are not necessarily the most efficiently allocated to address the needs of the people and shift some of that some of those resources to the consumer side how does that play out in Southeast Asia in terms of these decision making of allocation of resources if we talk about AIIB and these are outside institutions that they're going to have to figure these out with local structures I would imagine I would say I agree with you about the importance of the political system but this is one thing which outside forces if the United States cannot really fix and if you try to intervene in trying to fix this kind of system then you will be resented but at the same time if you are patient and if you think the logic of the current system you can be cautiously optimistic what I'm saying is for example I just mentioned there is a kind of inflated expectation now people expect that their life would be better tomorrow and their kids' life is better than your life and any government needs to respond and meet this expectation otherwise they will fall and that means actually they have to deliver economic development and to deliver economic development you have to actually make investment in infrastructure human resources and so on and if people get educated and better educated then eventually this will translate into a political system I'm actually cautiously optimistic but at the same time we don't know when it is going to happen it might happen a generation from now it might happen 50 years from now so we have to be patient that is actually for them let me just take this off from there and I tend to agree with Shirai's but the only thing that concerns me is this we can push from the outside because it will be seen as imposition intrusion I'll go to Malaysia and talk about democracy it really created a negative reaction even among liberal groups in that country so I think cannot be pushed and this is where I think we need to think about this innovatively what is it that we can do how do we do it this is not something that has happened before we have been very easy to talk about economic assistance and talk about strengthening ASEAN as an economic community I have very serious reservations about ASEAN as a community but I will not get into that right here but I just want to say that you have to think in terms of supporting civil society groups regulation of cyberspace these are things where people don't have knowledge or in-depth knowledge internally and where external assistance can help and so I think this has to be supported and so we have to think of development in a very broad sense and quite innovatively it seems to me like development of state institutions this cannot be imposed from outside capacity building this can be to help the government itself in power so it's not something that's being imposed so I think we can really think about issues in which the promotion of democracy and human rights was seen as a new position Mara Hebert mentioned that this is one of the planks of the pre American foreign policy I'm sure you want to promote democracy and human rights but there are ways of doing it without appearing to impose an intrude and I think state institutions capacity building, effectiveness professionalism, these are something that will be welcomed by governments in situ as well so I think we have to think about this innovatively and try to incorporate the political dimension into and to me I think that is a fundamental challenge that's facing almost every country in Southeast Asia whether it's Thailand or whether it's Malaysia or even Indonesia talk about a successful story as a democracy but one looks at Indonesia very carefully and sees the great influence of the military in the Jokowi regime and why is that I mean you can understand and you can rate raise questions but it seems to me that if you skip this issue then we are setting up for an unrealistic assessment of what is happening in the situation, in the region so that's and I agree with Shiraishi I think we need to look at this not imposing from outside but an exemplar beacon on a hill in terms of political development yesterday I was, I'm not a U.S. citizen by the way right apparently being a U.S. citizen I was watching the presentation of the election of the speaker yesterday before I forget now and it's interesting how the process just places itself out so development of institutions and processes is very central to most of these places how do you deal with minority issues in Burma for example some come out and say Rohingyas are not Burmese so citizenship issues become central to that and so it seems to me that the development of institutions and processes in political development is crucial and we ought to be encouraging them certainly that's been kind of one of the traditional stereotypical differences between the way the U.S. and Japan have designed their policies vis-a-vis the region the policy environment in Washington and Tokyo is different vis-a-vis Southeast Asia our policy environment places very high strong emphasis on democracy, human rights and some of these issues to the point where the administration of the State Department wants to try to do certain things or the Defense Department wants to do things but Congress won't let them and they're constantly thinking on those terms whereas Japan has had perhaps more of an economic first or a trade first focus than that now that could be kind of a good cop bad cop thing it's also led to I think USAID for example developing stronger relationships with civil society and NGOs in certain places where they had trouble or were prohibited from dealing with some of the government institutions whereas Japan had stronger relationships perhaps with the government so in some ways there's a complementary dynamic that's come out of this policy environment do you think that's just going to continue going forward that's the way it is, that's the way it's always been or is that something that might kind of change between the U.S. and Japan vis-a-vis Southeast Asia this is really driven by domestic politics as well as domestic the kind of experiences people have for example let's say that Japanese public would love to see all Southeast Asia countries going democratic at the same time if you tell them then probably they will tell us what we did during the war the past always prevent us from saying something which might invite their resentment to the Japanese and that is different from Americans and also Japanese themselves have learned that economic development or economic growth is crucial for the kind of growth and maturing of Japanese democracy over the last 70 years and therefore we talk about from our own experiences about what we expect in Southeast Asia and Americans have different experiences so I think this is not something we can coordinate but at the same time I think it is very important to be aware that we have different approaches to Southeast Asia countries and one example is Thailand I mean for example actually when the coup took place when was it? I already forgot a year ago in May last year Americans were very tough and even wanted to sort of suspend or postpone Cobra Gold military exercise and we are really alarmed not only because actually the suspending the Cobra Gold would send a wrong signal to the region especially to the Chinese as well as Thais but also we are worried that Americans might be too impatient to say and do not really understanding the kind of problem Thais are now being confronted with I mean one rain is coming to an end and every time there is a rain comes to an end there is a major transition in any monarchy and the new monarchy has to reinvent itself so that kind of thing needs to be understood I think we are going to finish up here a little bit and then we are going to open it up there is a lot of talk about China and Southeast Asia nowadays I wish there were more talk about India and Southeast Asia and for that matter Europe and Southeast Asia because the opening of Myanmar a few years ago was particularly important to the prospects of the sub region to move forward I think as we see more rail connections and seaports and airports and trade and commerce between not just China and Southeast Asia but across the Eurasian super continent it is going to create constituencies for change that do not exist today which I think I have lived and worked in that part of the world for 30 years things may not happen tomorrow but they do happen I worked in Thailand for 14 years I am amazed how literally every single time I go back there is something in the newspaper that has happened that we were pushing a couple decades ago and it is because the right things usually happen and I guess it is my confidence in that that leads me to believe that some of the questions we have today about what will happen we are going to sort themselves out let me build a little bit the role of China came up I definitely want to address this before we open up to the audience clearly China is going to play a bigger role going forward compared to the past but I wonder in terms of whether Craig you want to pick up on this first in talking about creating an enabling environment for development in Southeast Asia clearly China has an interest in that and they are a potential ally in this whole process of trying to help create that environment how do you see and whether it is the AIB or other companies coming in or more multilateral collaboration vis-a-vis the region through institutions or through ad hoc collaboration what kind of role do you see for China going forward China has clearly shown a willingness to assist in the sub region in a way that we are sort of unaccustomed to not just because of the rise of AIB but because if you look at lending of China Ex-Im Bank China Development Bank over the past decade the Chinese have taken a real interest in that part of the world for sure and it seems to be playing a constructive role I think we all have our doubts whether they will live up or adhere to the safeguards social and environmental that we are hoping that they will adopt under AIB but ADB has been working with AID on these safeguards and there is a draft report about this thick that looks really good so far from our point of view it needs to be fleshed out and that will happen I guess in December but so far I was a little skeptical of what might happen but it seems to me as if they are playing things perfectly to date so I am an optimist at this stage about possibilities for ADB and AIB to co-finance projects together on our terms at least initially to allow them some time to develop some capacity to design and implement projects like the multilateral development banks but so far the relationship is going well I think it is a very good point I think we are seeing obviously the growing commercial relationship between ASEAN and China it is real and when you talk to businesses large and small and big and dynamic that people think about I think at the government level I think it is safe to assume that most of the ASEAN governments have a position of they don't want to see obviously a zero sum kind of game between China on one hand and US Japan on the other so that is not perceived as in ASEAN's interest I think the second observation that we see is that as we see more Chinese businesses being more active in Southeast Asia like one of the conversations that I have with my friends from the Japanese government is how do we maybe collaborate and we are actually doing this now collaborate to drive better channels of communication amongst the private sectors Japanese private sector American private sector and the ASEAN private sector as China's product becomes more active in the region as an important commercial partner and we are beginning to see some of that actually with those channels now I think are a lot stronger today than they were four or five years ago and I think that is again from a business point of view a commercial point of view you see it again as a positive thing going forward that is in the interest of both Japan and the United States as we kind of move forward is that as China plays a role we kind of see certain areas where they seem to be more active there are areas relative to America where Japan is more active I think America tends to think there are some areas where we think maybe we have certain advantages to be more active in I think those are also overlapping but I think there can be areas of collaboration cooperation give you one example so one of the areas that I have engaged with a number of friends from Japan where they said Mark it would be really we think it would be really helpful for both us and ASEAN if the US plays a more active role in trying to engage around SMB development in Southeast Asia and another area around the development of services because that is not in a certain area where Japan's historical linkages in the region have been as developed so that was something I said if you all were more active in services talking about those kinds of things that would be very helpful for all of us so to speak in the region as we try to again promote business in a better environment I think these are some of the kinds of things that we merge again as we all recognize China's increased commercial presence in the region I would say that China offers both pluses and minuses from ASEAN perspective I mean certainly China's economic cooperation initiatives in terms of expanding trade as well as providing infrastructure funds and so on big plus for most of Southeast Asian countries at the same time I mean if you look at what is happening in South China Sea certainly those ASEAN countries like Vietnam and the Philippines are certainly alarmed at China's moves and Indonesia and Malaysia more quietly alarmed and so and whenever I talk with top leaders of Southeast Asian countries quite often privately they say that there might be a moment in which Chinese leaders come to them and tell them now that our economic presence is so large which side do you choose I mean that kind of grand strategic worry is always there and therefore I think it is very important to be aware that it's not just plus because China's economic cooperation means a lot for Southeast Asian development and security also matters I mean that issue of stability we touched on it earlier one of the questions I kind of wrote to ask the moment came up was are we in danger of dividing Asia again in the sense that we have this Cold War dynamic this communist anti-communist that ideological battle became a proxy by which different political fights real and imagined were fought and money was allocated and battles were fought and lives were lost here I'm not as concerned about that same kind of division certainly China clearly has a stake in stability in the region and we're interconnected in a variety of ways and it's not as ideological but still is there a danger of China becoming a dividing issue going forward or how do we protect our interests from a US Japan context how do we maintain our principles and protect our interests without dividing the region if you ask what kind of grand strategic choice they are now facing probably you can talk about Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia on the one hand and Vietnam, the Philippines Indonesia, Brunei Singapore and Malaysia on the other and mainly because all the four countries do not have any territorial issues with China and therefore they actually benefit more from China's economic cooperation while maritime Southeast Asian countries plus Vietnam need to worry a lot about territorial issues and therefore if you look at Vietnam and the Philippines they are even very cautious about economic cooperation with China this grand strategic choice is very important to understand and for us I think it is very important to keep Southeast Asia, ASEAN united as well as integrated and therefore this region remains sort of open and that is actually what I wanted to say and ASEAN is important because ASEAN can work as a kind of leverage both in security and economic development for our individual ASEAN countries I think Southeast Asia and more broadly Asia is not a chessboard on which everybody walks I think these countries have become much stronger more resilient in some ways not in other ways but more resilient in some ways I don't think the U.S. and China would divide Asia it is really for these countries themselves and they look after their own interests it seems to me so I don't think we should really worry about there is a tendency to look at the Cold War as having divide in Asia if you really look at the balance of power the distribution, the competition and the actual happenings on the ground there was not that much of a connection if you look at everything else Vietnam one can argue was a Cold War competition from an American perspective but from a Vietnamese perspective it wasn't a Cold War competition it was a war of national liberation and unification so I think there is a tendency sitting here in Washington to view this in a macro sense and to talk in terms of dividing the area up between China and the United States and so forth but I really think that that kind of approach doesn't help very much one has to understand what's actually happening within individual countries and the region as a whole and Southeast Asia has been put into this larger Asian context rather than been treated separately and just now when you ask me for examples I said maybe Taiwan and South Korea were examples and not any country in Southeast Asia so it's a broader canvas on which to look at Southeast Asia and China to me to be quite frank it's only economic power nobody if you go to the embassies of China and the United States you'll see the difference how many people are wanting to emigrate to live in China how many are willing to emigrate to live in the United States there is an artificiality to discussions in this town talk about China as a big power it's a big power in economic terms and only in growth terms not in terms of sophistication of economy and one of the ways I think that Japan and the US can contribute to Southeast Asia is sophistication of economies in Southeast Asia it's very shallow everything we've talked about is focused on growth rates but it's much more than that economic development even just economic development we need to strengthen the economies sophistication of economies in Southeast Asia and where politics and economics mix is developed on a private sector a development of civil society inequalities and those are issues which you can focus on enough for Japan and the US it's a new issue it seems to me environment as mentioned and so forth so there may be new issues in which to focus on where they both intersect and that's the way maybe to get a rather than democracy and human rights but say let me open it up to the audience unless I have any final comments on that point and we'll begin the group discussion so I have these two ladies here we'll start with good afternoon I'm focusing on research for international conflict management initiative I'm sorry I came late this is a very important dialogue for me but I would like to share with you that I was attending the Indonesian symposium on Monday which is the Indonesian cabinet was there so I want to share with you looking at that that I would see that the old regime of Suharto was still wanted to hold on in the financial and I will bring this the issue of Southeast Asia environment okay and I thank you so much for Mr. Alagapa brought up about the nation making it is crucial in Indonesia we cannot go in the economic development without the nation making the outsider do not see how divided this is the human capital I echoing that it's divided the society is with Chinese the sense with the nationals and there is writing say that that maybe economic development will be the nationalism will be interfering it is not I want that to be noticed that nation making like how is to combat corruption how is to elevate poverty and non equal distribution and education we have to take care of that I am an Indonesian American and I want American to be successful and it will be for long term not a short term with jumping economic development and my suggestion as India have a very strong culture related with the Indonesia perhaps the more involvement of India rather than China as when you said that too much China maybe India role involve with the society involve with the nation making thank you so much take this question and then we'll get some reaction from the panel thank you I think we should have some Asian voice here and I'm a Vietnamese American I feel that the panelists have a lot of good points but you only understand us 50% and many will false understanding I was very dismayed to hear Mr. May Muir from the U.S. Asian Chamber of Commerce to say what you had just said because you confuse us people from Vietnam you scare us that the U.S. is ready to do business with China and regardless of the high values that our Southeast Asia Vietnamese people aspire to and those are the soft power that the whole world aspire to human rights civil rights and civil society civil society is going to be the key nations from the ground up so let me just be short I think the landscape is different the environment is different Southeast Asia we are small we're not large and our connectivity has a lot to do with the waterway maritime and waterway so it doesn't cost you 800 billions or trillions you don't have to rely on China to do that protect our water rights protect our maritime navigation freedom of navigation protect our trade through the South China Sea that's the key build our people build the civil societies civil societies will help from the ground up so I beg you to learn more not from the top government but from the people because you are sitting here trying to impose on the people of Southeast Asia I hope these things but not true because I can say that Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar even Taiwan even Hong Kong try to aspire to the values now have become universal values that the US leads through the United Nations not through the US it's become universal now and we look up to you but now you're sitting here and you say we want to do business with China you give out a big message I don't want to keep going too long I think you've actually missed a little bit of the point of what he was saying but I understand what he was trying to say he was trying to talk to China he wanted to work with China let's let him have a chance to respond my point is this we need to build ASEAN based on the values that the United States put out the standards that we aspire to and highlighted by the United Nations those are values of human rights 1.3 billion of Chinese wanted those human rights we want human rights, we want civil rights we want civil society I do understand, I think we want to let the panel have a chance to respond we also want the rule of law to be applied in the South China Sea and we also want the rights to be honored thank you we look up to the US to protect us we don't look up to you to work with China let's have a chance to respond because China is entitled to their opinion but let's share some of the panel's opinions about the two different comments that have been made let me start if you interpreted my remarks first of all I have no recall really much of anything about China because I don't work with China what the comment I observed was that China is doing more work and commercially in terms of business in Southeast Asia that's an observation okay, let's please Miss, please we're just trying to let's conduct this in a normal kind of panel format here in Washington so the observation that I was just trying to offer I think with you regard to Vietnam was the fact that in the TPP negotiations that while none of us have seen the text of the actual agreement I think this is an area where the US and Japan have an opportunity to actually make sure there is no division between China and the United States etc. because in some of the areas that are very politically hard regardless of whether we have a sense of the governments being authoritarian or democratic or not the US and Japan in those negotiations actually demonstrated from what we understand a great deal of flexibility in terms of the times of commitments and requirements that every society that's part of those negotiations will have to adhere to my observation would be demonstration of that kind of flexibility will be very important going forward to make other countries feel they can be brought in to an agreement like TPP which does things for the first time like have provisions around labor rights and environmental protections things that basically don't exist really in other major international trade obligations but yet that can become a source of contention because obviously every society of their own politics, their own level may feel we can't commit ourselves to that, we can't agree to that for whatever kinds of reasons I think it will be who nations like America and Japan to be able to show that there are ways that even developing countries can be brought into these kinds of arrangements and where you can actually be perceived as being inclusive because they recall when TPP first got started some of the real perceptions in Southeast Asia where the TPP was going to be divisive in Southeast Asia and TPP is a very exclusionary process and we know the other side the debate was trying to make the argument that what the RCEP negotiations involving China that's inclusive China's being inclusive and that was some of the perceptions that were being debated and kicked around when these two in agreement processes first got started and then finally went forth both of these processes are going to move forward there is not going to be one or the other and I think countries of seven other countries are in both Japan being one of them actually will be quite interesting so to speak is one of the seven countries the four ASEAN countries in both it's very interesting to see how they as being part of both of these negotiations internalize the kinds of commitments and disciplines from both in their own societies and also for their own workers for their own firms we may see who generates quote unquote the better types of development impacts from these different initiatives that those seven societies are in for so it will be interesting to see going forward well and I admit I'm certainly guilty of being a guy sitting here in Washington trying to talk about these issues overseas in a way that was a part of what we were from a U.S.-Japan perspective so obviously there's going to be a missing component to that but hopefully we'll bring that out over time we go Prashant and then I'll go behind Prashant with the diplomat magazine so I just wanted to go back to a sort of theme or recurring comment across the panel which was this idea that in the long run we should be somewhat more confident in the U.S. and Japan being a little bit more competitive to some of the short-term gains that China's been making and I'm just wondering so often when we hear about the long-term game it seems very straightforward so it's an issue of if the Chinese come up with something like the AIIB we should support it we should make sure the standards are okay if there's a loss on a project Japan should focus on quality infrastructure and China can focus on some of these other short-term things that they're doing but my sense is that while there is a long-term perspective China has also played the long game and that long game basically to summarize is that the greater or the stronger the economic linkages we make with Southeast Asian countries over time we're going to be able to use that for strategic security and political gains which is why the linkage between the economic political imperatives is very important so my instinct is to say yes I agree with the long-term confidence in the models but I'm not so sure about the short-term whether these setbacks that are suffered so whether it's the high-speed train issue whether it's the influence of the AIIB because if we look at it in a very short-term perspective these are big losses whether they're actual projects or when we talk about AIIB versus World Bank and ADB they're competing for funding and for projects so while you can say yes it's great that there's a certain amount of funding and so there's more funding out there there is a certain competition so I'm wondering how do we address the gap between the long-term imperatives and some of the short-term gains because A like I said both actors or sides or how many of you are playing a long-term game and a short-term game and as was mentioned in the earlier panel while we have a longer-term perspective when we're talking about these kinds of panels the politicians that run these countries and we're talking about these products have a very short-term perspective so let's hold on to that keep that in mind and we'll take one more Thank you My name is Takamoto Suzuki Marubeny Corporation is one of Japanese investment and trade companies and now I'm working for CSIS and just one question is current Chinese excess capacity and in terms of manufacturing goods Chinese export drive to the Southeast Asia this is some kind of new problem because one of my affiliate companies bankrupt in Thailand last month because of Chinese export still exports the drive now today we are talking about some kind of infrastructure building in Southeast Asia but if concerning about Chinese excess capacity and Chinese manufacturing exports it is effective or sustainable to invest in Southeast Asia for example not only urban area but also rural area Thank you a couple things to think about there to one or the other First of all the question is very good I really appreciate the question long term in a sense I'm quite confident because at the end of the day what matters most is trust you know and this is the asset we have we meaning both Japanese and Americans have in Southeast Asia and that's why I always caution against any sort of hasty intervention because they invite resentment but at the same time I think there are lessons we need to learn from the recent especially Japanese failure in the case of Indonesia and what I learned most is actually we really needed private sector collaboration between Japanese and American companies I mean Japanese government tried to take this initiative only with Japanese companies and therefore it became a kind of competition between China and Japan and then you know I mean of course Indonesia government especially the president worried more or rather scared more of China than Japanese I think you know that's the lesson I learned but at the same time it is very important to observe what is now happening within the government I mean as I said it was a minority decision and there are already reactions among really top elite leaders that you know they made a mistake and therefore they need to make an approximate with Japanese leaders and so on so we need to be very careful and actually sensible to these moves I mean these are the things I should say and China over capacity I think you know I tend to see one belt one road initiative not only as counter rebalancing but also this is a way of creating business opportunities for overcap... I mean China state-owned corporations now suffering over capacity and that is bad for I mean business both Japanese and Americans but at the same time you know you can't do the same game right I mean that's why I'm saying that you know I mean if we can we better be patient so that China also would have incentive to cooperate with us I mean that is my position Any other I also say one area that I think like thinking long term that I think again an area where Japan and the United States can really do well in engaging Southeast Asia and I think you already see it happening already so it's almost like it's there and perhaps more could be done is really in the area of working with and nurturing and developing you know the whole entrepreneur and startup ecosystems which are being basically which are taking off right now in a big way in a number of societies in Southeast Asia these are sort of the next generation these are younger people who really are influenced by the world and they're outwardly open in terms of their thinking and you already see a lot of American and Japanese venture capital firms and funds being established to really nurture and support those entrepreneurs and startups but I think that's a great long term area where the US and Japan could quote unquote compete vis-a-vis China in a commercial area that potentially will be even and then who gets the next biggest high-speed rail project which more is a short-term play but who helps a young Malaysian become quote unquote the next Malaysian version of what Uber like a grab taxi is right now already now a multi-billion dollar business so to speak a Malaysian company so to speak I think that could be quite interesting for us long term. Thank you. I have two more questions here and we'll finish with that. I'm sorry before you go. Just quickly I just wanted to add I think Prashant's question is a very good one and I just want to and I think this is where the values are much longer term rather than you know I agree with your political leaders in office for a few years and they want to maximize whatever they can during that period and we see that happening all the time but from the US and Japanese perspective I think a longer term view would help and I think this is where the politics and economics intermix becomes really Christian and I was trying to point out that nobody really wants to go and live in China at this point in time but you know and I think this the aspirations of the people in the region are important the political and socio-cultural and economic aspirations are important and to the extent that Japan and US can tie into that I think that will become much more important in the long run I tend to look at one of the key roles that the US and Japan can play is in the construction of order in this region I see the TPP much more in that light rather than in terms of who benefits from what the construction of an economic order construction of security order rule-government interaction and I think to the extent that Japan and US can cooperate in the construction of an order in this region which promotes the values that one aspires to that would be a very long term contribution and it's something that one should look at very seriously okay Grace Clegg at East West Center in Washington I'm going to jump directly to my question for Shiraishi Sensei you had mentioned that as the United States and Japan transition into a more balanced approach to development in Southeast Asia both in security areas and economic that there is a need for a greater cooperation mechanism of some kind I'd be interested in your suggestions as to what that mechanism would look like would it be a matter of finding out different areas that they can pursue in parallel that would result in no overlap or would it be direct cooperation on areas and projects where interests do overlap thank you should we just take one last one and then we'll finish up sorry American University I would like to ask a question to Dr. Alagappa Southeast Asian leadership used the idea of Asian values as a some form of resistance to say western form of democracy and we see this coming up in shape in Myanmar in terms of the western sanctions versus ASEAN constructive engagement regionally we saw around 2007 onwards that Indonesia taking up that role within ASEAN of steering this democracy and human rights agenda and we saw a certain degree of resistance actually a powerful resistance coming from other ASEAN members and we have seen now that domestically there is a very powerful resistance towards political development agenda and so it seems that right now the system is kind of shutting out the great powers they don't have this political development agenda that you're referring to regional groupings regional region doesn't have that agenda as well domestic leadership definitely doesn't seem to have that agenda whether we talk about as you mentioned in Indonesia the rule of institutions is kind of being undermined as through say for example in direct reference to the military so where do we go from here and on this political development agenda thank you sorry I took long should I just say well I mean about Japan US cooperation in Southeast Asia I mean most important economically or I mean rule building is of course TPP I mean I'm very sure Japanese parliament will pass the TPP but I hope American Congress also pass I mean that is most important security I understand there is already some coordination going on between Japan and United States I mean for example Americans are more sort of putting emphasis on naval capacity building while Japanese government is putting more emphasis on coast guard capacity building and in fact my school has started mid-career coast guard officials training I mean both from ASEAN countries as well as Japanese so and also I think given the fact that for example Southeast Asian countries even Vietnam didn't have the kind of surveillance capability and Vietnamese government didn't know when China started the Chinese cooperation started exploration of Vietnamese coast right last year I mean this year so I mean I think it is very important to provide the kind of you know maritime security surveillance to assist that maritime surveillance system capability to some ASEAN countries and here Americans are much better than we do but I think we can do together and there are a number of things we can do together on this issue so not exclusive kind of mix and match depending on the issue yeah you know I would tend to say that the system is not shutting out these values if you look at Malaysia right now for example Mahade was one of those who was very anti-West anti democracy anti-human rights but today he's turned around he's actually arguing for greater participation and so I think even within countries Singapore became more responsive you know before it was government knows best what's for the people but now government tries its best for its people there is a switch and it is a function of what's happening and the aspirations of people for greater participation so I think you know the situation is changing and if we keep on to old paradigms then I think we'll be stuck with old paradigms we have to think of innovative ways where we can actually bring politics and economics together and I think that's a fundamental challenge it's not an easy I don't have any easy policy prescriptions but at the same time I would just want to caution that if we miss this out then I think the whole approach would be missing out on a very big you know Southeast Asia is actually full of problems one can be cautiously optimistic optimistic in terms of what's happened last 30 40 years but today it is facing fundamental problems ASEAN is being stretched to its limits everybody here talks very favorably with ASEAN but what is the dynamics within ASEAN you know and what are the problems within ASEAN and so I think it's important not to get caught up in certain paradigms and then just push that forward without and I think it's important to see what are the challenges in the region itself what are the aspirations of the peoples in the region and how can Japan and U.S. cooperate to help propel you know and I think let's not be caught up with just China there's so much discussion about China at this point in time China is important and I don't want to downplay that but at the same time it is not the 800 pound gorilla that's made out let me start Thank you Mataya anyone else want to chime in or that's not a bad place to kind of keeping that past as prologue theme going the gentleman I really want to thank you for your contributions today I've learned a lot and been very stimulated by this conversation and I appreciate that the audience's participation as well so downstairs there's actually a stairway out to the right where you can go down by the elevator we'll have our reception but before we do that please join me in thanking our panelists