 The U.S. Naval War College is a Navy's home of thought. Established in 1884, NWC has become the center of Naval seapower, both strategically and intellectually. The following issues in national security lecture is specifically designed to offer scholarly lectures to all participants. We hope you enjoy the upcoming discussion and future lectures. Well, good afternoon and welcome to the 12th issues in national security lecture for this academic year. I'm John Jackson and I'll serve as the host for today's event. River Admiral Chatfield is not able to join us today, but I'd like to extend a welcome to each of you on her behalf. The series was originally established as a way to share a portion of the Naval War College's academic experience with the spouses and significant others of our student body. Over the past four years, it has been restructured to include participation by the entire Naval War College extended family to include members of the Naval War College Foundation, international sponsors, civilian employees, colleagues throughout Naval Station Newport, and participants from around the world. We will be offering six additional lectures between now and May 2021. An announcement detailing the dates, topics, and speakers of each lecture will be posted by our public affairs office. Looking ahead, on Tuesday, 9 March 2021, we will hear from Professor Pauline Schenck-Skuren, who will speak about racial and gender diversity in the military and society. Okay, on with the main event. As a reminder, please feel free to ask questions using the chat feature of Zoom, and we will get them at the conclusion of the presentation. Nearly every day, we see something in the press about the role of China in the Pacific. The South China Sea is the epicenter of China's maritime expansion, and Beijing seeks to enhance its maritime security, regional status, and access to resources. Pursuing these objectives increasingly puts China at odds with its neighbors, with international law, and with maritime states around the globe. Professor Peter Dutton will address these dynamics and questions such as, why do China's leaders press forward despite these challenges? What are they attempting to achieve? What makes the Chinese strategy so difficult to counter? And what are the policy implications for the United States? Dr. Dutton is a retired Navy Judge Advocate and former Naval Flight Officer. He holds a JD from the College of William and Mary, and a PhD from King's College London. He is an adjunct professor of law at the NYU School of Law and a research fellow at the U.S. Asia Law Institute there. His research focuses on Chinese views of sovereignty and international law, and how those views are shaped by geostrategic and historical factors. He frequently advises senior officials and military leaders across the government, and has testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees. I am pleased to pass the digital baton to Dr. Peter Dutton. Peter? Thank you very much, John. It's a pleasure to be with everyone today. I'm looking forward to sharing my research and the research of the Institute from which I come, the China Maritime Studies Institute at the Center for Naval Warfare Studies. I probably should have titled my talk today the Strategic Dynamics of the South China Sea, because I won't be dwelling too much on the types of disputes in the South China Sea, although if during question and answer you would like to ask about those, I have a lot of background in them and would be happy to talk about them. I'm obliged to say that what you're about to hear for me is my own personal perspectives, not the perspectives of the Navy or any other agency of the government. And I'm also grateful to say thank you to the Naval War College Foundation for their generous support for the College and in particular for the study of China and Asia by those of us on the faculty. So thank you very much. So I'll go ahead and share my screen now and we can begin considering some of the issues. So, Commander Ross, just give me a thumbs up or something if this is, if we're good at this point. All right, good. Thank you, perfect. Okay, so the three main themes that we're going to look at today are the way China views security wealth and status in the pursuit of its maritime expansion, which is centered around the South China Sea. So just to get everybody oriented, obviously China is that big pink spot in the middle. The South China Sea is just the right in the center of your screen there. And you've seen no doubt in the news that there's been a lot of tension between military tension between China and the United States centered in the South China Sea. On your left is a picture of a Chinese bomber in H6 that carries anti-ship cruise missiles, in fact. But on your right, you also see that recently the United States had two carrier strike groups working in the South China Sea, operating together and demonstrating American intent to ensure that the South China Sea remains an open part of a free and open part of the Indo-Pacific. I do want to point out that because it can be very difficult to tell. For those of you who have never been to the South China Sea, looking at that on the map, it's really difficult to get a sense of the of the expanse. But one of the ways of thinking about the South China Sea is that it's one and almost one and a half times the size of the Mediterranean Sea. So we're talking about a vast amount of ocean space dotted with little island groups, the Paracel Islands in the north and the Spratly Islands in the southern part of it, with Scarborough Shoal off the coast of the Philippines and Prattus Island off the coast of of China. These are the four island groups in the South China Sea that China claims, all of which are disputed by one or more parties. Prattus is actually only disputed by Taiwan, but there is an active presence of the Taiwanese forces on Prattus Island. So there's a lot of tension in the South China Sea over land features, over the water space and who owns the resource rights to them and what is it that the international community has to do in this vast water space is also disputed. So just to keep our focus, I'm going to give the bottom line up front and what we'll be talking about is China's maritime expansion. So what is a maritime expansion? Really it's the active projection of China's growing national power out into the maritime domain in all of its dimensions. It's not just naval, it's the Coast Guard, it's a maritime militia and it's not just security related, it's also resource related. China's got an enormous fishing fleet, it's got an enormous maritime fleet, it's also got a large and capable oil, hydrocarbon, gas exploration and exploitation capability as well. So it's this projection into the maritime domain of all of its national capabilities and this is centered on the South China Sea. What are China's objectives? Well there as John introduced there to establish and expand a security perimeter around China's coastline to ensure China's wealth through security of its trade and then to enhance its status, China's status as a leading power in East Asia. But these policies of course challenge certain American interests and the interests of China's neighbors and also they challenge maritime stability in the region. So these are the things that we'll be discussing. Well here's the big guy himself, Xi Jinping who as leader of China has really become a ramped up campaign to advance China's interest in each of these three areas, wealth, security and status. You have to look back you know more than 200 years to begin to understand why this security challenge is so is so sort of hyper focused in Chinese policy right today. So at the end of the 1700s the Chinese were a tremendously powerful continental empire ruled by the Qing dynasty, a Manchurian dynasty and China was probably at the apex of its power by the end of the 1700s by about 1800. But right about that same time there was the beginning of internal instability that over the next 40 years accelerated due to a number of factors including population explosion and the inability to to deal with or to produce sufficient resources to deal with all of the increased population. And so internally China had begun to weaken even when it was at the apex of its power. And that led to a series of wars throughout the 19th century into the 20th century wars and then revolution. And then after the Chinese communists came into power in 1949, 40 years of really fairly constant internal upheaval resulting in a final upheaval which was the Tiananmen Square massacre. 1989, 1992, that time period after Tiananmen Square became a turning point as China, the Chinese Communist Party asserted control over the country and began to generate the next factor which was wealth, consciously attempting to generate wealth because China has recognized long that wealth and security are related to each other. So in this period of time wealth and security rose dramatically in terms of GDP per capita pulling at least half a billion people out of poverty and by some estimates a whole billion people raising to a standard of level that is equal to the global middle class. And so China now that it is both wealthy and reasonably secure, believes that it should have much more status in agenda setting of the regional politics but also rule setting. And so China has begun to assert itself more within the region to assert that status. So let's first start with security and we'll take a look at how the Chinese think about security and the way that South China Sea factors into it. So I need to begin by looking at two different fundamentally separate approaches to security. So some of you may recognize this gentleman down here in the right hand corner, Sir Alfred MacKinder, a British geostrategic theorist actually whose writings extended from the late 1890s into the late 1940s. So he saw enormous change around the world through the first and second world wars and theorized that over history this central part of Eurasia, this pivot portion of Eurasia was a very powerful position around which other countries on the Eurasian continent had to organize their security because that central pivot area had the capacity to generate power and to move at every corner around the pivot in order to bring that power to bear to achieve political influence all around its periphery. The only ones who were not directly affected by this were the maritime powers, those who were in what he referred to as the outer Crescent or the insular states. So that would of course include North and South America, the southern part south of the Sahara of Africa, the island states like Britain and Japan, and the island regions such as the maritime, Southeast Asia, and Australia. These areas were not directly subject to the influence of the pivot and therefore could generate power of their own through maritime means, through trade largely. And so generating power through trade versus generating power on the continent were two very strong positions in the world according to Mackinder and they would clash in this area, this inner Crescent or marginal portion of the Eurasian continent. That would be the zone of clash between the two major powers and we saw this play out in the strength of Russia and the Soviet Union and then the strength of Britain and the United States and the Marathon coalitions that they were able to generate. So that is one way of looking at the world. Now Chinese geostrategic thinkers believe that they can shift that pivot area to the right. In other words, rotate it 90 degrees to the right and in essence to make China the pivotal area of Eurasia and require all other states including modern Russia to generate security based on China's power. And still yet they realize that they need to deal with, they the Chinese need to deal with the maritime powers that stand outside the continent. But one key lesson that we can learn from this is that whether the pivot is Russian or Chinese, this land power generates security through concentric circles of control, decreasing control away from the continent. And so you think of a bullseye for instance, the center is the territory you need to defend and then the decreasing rings of control farther away from the center. That is the approach of an interior security strategy to achieving security, this concentric circles. Well the alternate perspective is called the exterior security. This is essentially surrounding the bullseye. So this is the approach that the United States has taken. And Nicholas Spickman, the gentleman down here in the right was a geo strategist, a maritime strategist out of Yale University. He was a Dutch actually but he practiced and was a professor at Yale. And he theorized that yes it's true there would be contests between the maritime powers and the central power of Eurasia and that there would be actually contestation in what he referred to as the rimlands of Eurasia. But he theorized this exterior security strategy essentially, as I said, surrounding the bullseye. And he gave sort of a new structured thinking to the way Britain and the United States had developed this strong exterior position around the globe by dominating the commons, dominating the maritime domain, eventually the aerial domain, space domain, as the zone within which power would be projected from the insular states to Eurasia and supported by allies along the continental periphery as NATO and the alliance system in East Asia and in the Middle East can now attest. So this is the American security strategy. It requires us to have a very strong position able to move at will across the commons in order to bring power to bear into Eurasia as necessary. So what you see with China as an expanding interior security strategy that is an expanding bullseye comes directly into competition with the United States which has to project power across the oceans and be able to influence events on the continent with resident power in East Asia. Of course, freedom of the seas becomes utterly essential to the American perspective on developing security in this way. So this is why in littoral East Asia there's a fundamental geo-strategic dynamic that results from two powers with with divergent approaches to security having to find a way to either coexist in the same space or God forbid to engage in conflict over that space. So that's the dynamic of the challenge that we face today. So this has a long history in Chinese thinking. What you're looking at here is the deeper red is ancient Ming China. Now before the Qing came into power in 1644 the Ming dynasty controlled China. The Ming were a traditional Han dynasty and here what you see is in the in the deeper red is roughly the extent of Ming of Ming China. Although to be entirely honest to color Taiwan deep red at this point is probably a bit of a stretch. It really was indigenous people lived in Taiwan and it was not really controlled by the Ming and indeed in the later portions of the Ming period the Dutch were able to establish a colony on Taiwan without any interference or even concern from the Ming. Ultimately the Dutch were chased out by Ming loyalists who established a small short-lived kingdom in Taiwan of their own until they were defeated in the late 1680s by the by the Qing. So nonetheless what you see here is in the deeper red is the extent of the Ming dynasty at 1644. Now the Qing I mentioned came from Manchurian that's in the upper right hand corner. Then there's the Mongolia and the Mongolians and the Qing were actually allied as I'm sorry yeah the Mongolians and Qing were actually allied and together really under Manchurian leadership under Qing leadership they defeated the Ming and the Qing became in 1644 took power in the north and Beijing and eventually were able to assume control over all of what you see in the deeper red there and then over the course of the 1700s the 18th century the Qing dynasty projected its power westward and northward. Now why would it do this? Why would it expand? Well partly because it was a continental fighting dynasty with strong armies and that's partly you know conquering is partly what it did but it was also under increasing pressure from the Russians which as early as the late 1500s had come into Siberia and put pressure both on the Ming and eventually the Qing dynasties from the from the north and there was tension between those two empires and then eventually there was pressure from the from the British in the south as the British became a presence in the Indian subcontinent and so the Qing dynasty pushed outward to develop a continental periphery that they could defend in the northeast they had a strong position in Manchuria guarded by rivers and mountains and and and forests the same was true to the north in Mongolia and to the west they pushed out to the to the deserts and the mountains of the far west and were able to build fairly stable borders with a continental peripheral buffer that that was essentially the expansion into the continent of that interior security strategy that I referred to earlier. Much of this done was done by this this dapper-looking gentleman down in the left-hand corner here who is the Chen Long Emperor who ruled for 63 years really 66 years in the in the 1700s he stepped down at 63 years because he didn't want to embarrass his long-lived four-bearer the the Kongxi Emperor who had ruled for 63 years and he thought it would be unfilial to to rule directly for more than 63 years himself but he ruled through his son for three more years after that until he died but it was under him that they conquered much of this territory creating that continental buffer zone in the expansion of that interior security strategy that I mentioned earlier to deal with the increasing threats brought about by major strategic change in Eurasia by the expansion of new continental competitors. What they failed to do the change that is what they failed to do was to be able to secure their maritime perimeter their maritime periphery that really wasn't too much of a problem no single state on China's maritime periphery nor even any combination of states had the power to to attack China from the maritime domain and to cause any strategic concern to China from the maritime domain until when until after the Napoleonic Wars written through the Napoleonic Wars has industrialized had it had improved its governance had expanded its empire had expanded its trade and had developed such industrial strength that it was able to create seapower including the open war in 1840 was the first war in which the British used steam powered ships as part of their their warfare and so with a relatively small fleet and well relatively small landing forces Britain from the maritime domain in the 18 between 1838 and 1841 we was able to bring the Qing Empire essentially to its knees and to capitulate to open trading rights for for Britain into the into what had been a relatively closed empire with a very narrow trading system focused on Canton or Guangdong Guangzhou in Guangdong province and so beginning in 1840 the the Qing had a series throughout the the 19th century the 1800s of defeats from the maritime domain 1840 and 1860 the first and second opium war against the British they were defeated by the French in 1885 and finally they were defeated defeated by the Japanese at sea in 1895 all these major maritime defeats left China in a very weak and vulnerable condition so what was clear was that although the Ming rather the Qing dynasty was able to develop its continental periphery it failed to complete the arc of control around China to create a buffer zone to to to secure China proper from an attack either on the continent or at sea and China today is determined to not to repeat the Qing's failure and so this map here which is a map of China today that shows missile missile ranges around China's periphery I think does a very good job of both showing what an interior security strategy looks like but also of helping to demonstrate how China is securing not just its continental periphery holding the empire together but also securing its maritime periphery as well I should have noted earlier that in the South China Sea China claims those four island groups I mentioned earlier plus essentially 80 to 90 percent of the waters of the South China Sea as being under its jurisdiction of course we know China claims Taiwan and China also claims the majority of the water space in the east China Sea and the islands that are currently administered by Japan called the Senkaku China claims them as the DAU islands and so it's expanding into the maritime domain with its missile power in order to achieve increased security but it's also attempting to legitimize its ownership of of both the islands and the water space in the east and south China seas in order to project its national presence into those spaces so my colleague Andrew Erickson uses the phrase I think it's actually a rather popular one but but he he he's the one who popularized it to me so I'll credit him for it that China uses the land to dominate the sea so so we talk a lot about China's growing navy it is a strong and growing navy it's an important navy but it's not what the United States is fundamentally concerned about when we think about the challenges of for instance defending Taiwan or dealing with a crisis on the Korean Peninsula or even defending Japan against Chinese aggression should it occur why because China has tremendous missile forces both ground-based missiles and air-launched missiles that are that are it's an asymmetric approach to securing sea space obviously the United States as I showed earlier has to project power across great distances and to sustain that power in the face of this rather strong land-based power in in the region so as I've as I've also shown China is expanding its interior security strategy quite far out into the central pacific but if you look at the red line there that's the df-26 missile which has both as multiple variants it has a land attack variant but it also has cruise missiles capable of attacking targets at sea and you can see how far China's missile range can go from its continental territory now now to be honest there's the farther China gets away from its maritime periphery the harder it is for China to launch missiles into the maritime domain because of the problems of search and search and location of the targets that it's attempting to attack so I don't think China has the capability yet of attacking targets from land-based positions into the Indian Ocean but it's my personal view that China is seeking ways to develop that we can talk about that in Q&A later but for now China's focus is on its near-seas objective and in particular Taiwan developing control over the east and south China sea is is important to secure China's periphery but in the end for the Chinese government and the Chinese military it's all about Taiwan so China does maintain an overseas presence mostly overseas naval presence although there is a growing peacekeeping contingent mostly in Africa but when we talk about China going global it's really a very different thing really what it's talking about is at best presence or maybe occasionally reach that is to say the ability to undertake activities in peacetime in uncontested areas beyond the missile range that China benefits from using the land power as an umbrella for its fleet so my view is China is developing a global presence but not a global sea supremacy navy or a dominant navy on a global basis yet now that's we will come in a few minutes to what we might be looking for for that to change so as we look at China's maritime expansion as I've already mentioned there is an operational dimension which includes a growing navy this is this is the old Soviet Bariya carrier some of you may recognize the type that China has refitted into the Liaoning aircraft carrier it's got a growing navy and it's it's now building its own indigenous carriers it has launched one it is building two more indigenous carriers if I recall correctly but it's also got a really powerful capable destroyer fleet so really it's cruisers what what well large destroyers it doesn't call them destroyers large destroyers medium-sized destroyers and frigates that are really quite quite advanced but China uses the land to control the sea as I've as I've already mentioned and so this is this is a fundamental challenge in a number of ways it's not just the technology that's a challenge that's certainly part of it but it is it is also a challenge in that missiles are a whole lot cheaper to build and to and to and to field than is a fleet and so China is pursuing an asymmetric advantage in both directions that is to say using the land to control the sea in ways that are asymmetric to us but also a much more cost effective strategy to address security concerns in East Asia additionally in addition to a navy China is very actively developing a large coast guard it has the largest coast guard in the world and not just in terms of the number of ships but also in terms of the size of the ships China is is building a coast guard cutters up to 10 000 tons of 10 000 tons in size and that is that's roughly the size of a of a good size destroyer and and and so what we're talking about a real powerful coast guard vessels that are clearly meant to do more than simply enforce laws against small ship fishing vessels so China is using not only it's the land to control the sea it's now using an asymmetric approach to generating law enforcement capability in the areas that it claims this is what's referred to as the gray zone i'll show you this later but it's the gray zone in the sense that it's not war and it's not law enforcement not really why because China claims these waters even though international law doesn't allocate them to them and so and so China has created domestic law to claim the water space and then created domestic law enforcement capability to police and dominate that space from other other participants who who actually have a legitimate right to be in that space like vietnamese fishing vessels etc and so using a maritime militia which are based on fishing vessels and using their coast guard they stay below the threshold of naval force but nonetheless pursue a maritime expansion in a very coercive way that crowds out neighbors but is less likely to involve the united states this non militarized coercion has been an effective gray zone strategy in building Chinese power in the south China sea so here's what i mean when i talk about this it's another way of looking at the problem on the left there are there are various ways that the chinese could resolve all of the disputes in the south China sea but they have rejected them and on the right are the power-based options that they could use i've already mentioned the non militarized coercion and the armed conflict but of course diplomatically they could negotiate outcomes they could with you know one one country they could work together with multiple countries since there are multiple claimants or they could go to international courts to resolve the disputes well China prefers of course one-on-one negotiations where the power is in China's favor when others try to collectivize their power such as working through ASEAN China forestalls that that pathway because the power dynamic is is is not favorable to to China the Philippines therefore being foreclosed from the other approaches went to an international tribunal to resolve their dispute um China in response accelerated this non militarized coercion because the u.s. has so far in east asia deterred conflict as a as a source of dispute resolution so what the united states policies are attempting to do is to is to move out of power-based options towards diplomatic or institutional options but what we see china doing is pushing out of those options toward power-based dispute resolution the real problem of course is the escalation danger that that poses bringing on the potential for armed conflict in the region which is why china has focused on this non militarized gray zone approach to its operations in the south china sea and frankly to the east china sea as well so we can talk later about the policy questions that this brings but we have to ask what what non military tools can we bring to bear that can deter china's non militarized coercion also what can our military do to to continue to deter chinese aggression without escalation danger because because nobody wants war between two nuclear powers so let's now shift out of security into china's pursuit of wealth so what is the problem that china is trying to solve well this is actually a depiction from the economist magazine of what is called the the middle income trap so what is the middle income trap the middle income trap is is a is a that that center of the diagram when states start in the boat in the in the bottom left is low income area they are often if they have the right condition say a growing population an educated population lots of natural resources but still they're at a low level of development that means essentially they have a lot of latent development available if the conditions are right such as good government regulation and openness to external investment and so what you see and this is fairly typical is a period anywhere from 10 to 30 or more years of rapid growth as easy development is achieved going from the low income to the middle income what becomes very difficult is to move into the upper right corner right where not only you begin to get rich but you stay rich why because you have an economy that's based on innovation that's based on not just production or or resource extraction but on a high end manufacturing high end innovation and services a strong service economy and including a strong domestic economy so so moving up into that upper right hand quadrant is very hard to do the conditions really have to be right and so what what keeps Xi Jinping up at night is is as challenging as all the security challenges are it's the it's the middle income trap that Xi Jinping worries about now some economists don't believe that there is such a thing as a middle income trap I happen to be persuaded that it's true but it's not even my views that's important it's the fact that Xi Jinping talks about China being stuck in the middle income trap he talks about it repeatedly in in major policy speeches as the the number one concern to him and so he's thinking about how to get out of that middle income that that place where China is stuck simply relying on manufacturing and and achieves perhaps a modest level of of income per capita but never actually achieves a high income per capita GDP and is able to sustain it that's what keeps him up at night because of poor of course the competence of the Chinese Communist Party is really the only thing that keeps a single power a single party in power indefinitely so what are some of the problems that that China is confronting well you can see that they've been successful for really for two decades in achieving high income but you can also see that the income level has begun to level off the GDP per capita growth has leveled off over the last roughly five to ten years and what are some of the headwinds that China is experiencing well demographics is one of them it's not just their size you know almost a billion and a half people it's it's uh it is in fact that they have an an out of balance demography demography um what you ideally will have in in being able to move uh to high income levels is a lot of the ratio of a lot of workers to few non-workers right so so a few people in retirement and and you know a big a big working age say from 20 to 60 compared to under 20 or over 60 and so you have favorable worker demographics so that there's a lot of productivity within your society but when you have fewer people supporting more non-workers say lots of children and in particular longevity and a lot of people say living beyond working age now you have fewer workers sustaining more non-workers and that's a that's a demographic problem uh is something that China faces in part because of the one-child policy but there's a number of reasons for that demographic challenge. Um second is uh social expectations Xi Jinping knows that um as the incomes rise middle-income people expect more they expect better schools they expect better hospitals they expect a cleaner environment they expect better infrastructure um and so social expectations uh have a cost as well as uh as uh as the investment into uh future industrial capability so that's a headwind on China's economy and then finally geopolitics as China's policies have brought it more and more into contention with the United States that becomes a drag on China's economy as well so what you do see is Xi Jinping attempting and really the Chinese leadership not just Xi Jinping the Chinese leadership over time attempting to shift into more of the type of economic activities that do move you from the the country from the middle income into the upper right hand permanent wealthy societies such as services but uh that is uh that has been very difficult for China to do and to sustain so one of the things that China is doing is reaching out now you can debate whether the Belt and Road Initiative is in fact China's China's grand strategy or even if it has much meaning but we do know that China is investing externally it's investing it's investing in infrastructure around the Eurasian landmass and into Africa in particular these are long term investments I can't underscore this enough a lot of investments going into China's periphery particularly Southeast Asia and into Northeast Asia as well but Southeast Asia in particular developing strong economic relationships there in part because this is this is good for China's peripheral security if you can tie these countries to China economically you can also tie their policies to to China as well but China's invest so China's investing on its periphery in Southeast Asia through Pakistan etc and even into the the stands in Central Asia in part for wealth but in part for stability on China's periphery right so it's essentially a way of investing in security but when you get to Africa for instance China is actively investing in things like resources extract extraction infrastructure and also betting on the long term demographics of East I'm sorry of East Africa so for instance Ethiopia China has targeted Ethiopia as a country worthy of long-term investment why because it has all of the hallmarks of a future country moving from low income per capita to at least middle income per capita and and China can be the one to extract the wealth through that process the way the West did in our investments of bringing China out of that from roughly 1990 to today bringing China out of low income into middle income so I think China is attempting to replicate its own success really the West success in China through investments in places like Ethiopia and others where one of the things that I think will surprise you if you if you look at the top 10 countries by demographics in 2020 and then look at what it is in 2100 you'll see a a lot of change China India and the United States will be still be the three biggest populations but you'll see Nigeria you'll see Ethiopia you'll see Tanzania you'll see Pakistan among the top 10 most populous countries in the world all of these are countries that China is investing in for the long haul betting on wealth for the future so so this is the process we can talk about later what they're doing with the Belt and Road Initiative I'd be happy to discuss it more later but this is a way to generate wealth well how does China reach these these investments of course through the sea and what's required is generating security so how does oh I should mention China's investments in Africa which I've already talked about we can talk about that more if you like also in in Europe a couple of interesting facts have emerged over the last couple of years one of them is that the EU as a block has become either China's number one or number two trading partner it depends how you look at it whether it's the EU or or the ASEAN states as China's number one or number two trading partner but what we've seen is that the United States is China's number three trading partner right so behind these these other two now you might say well okay United States is one country and these are multiple countries yes except the EU is operating as a system a trading partner with a fairly significant trade pull increasingly positively towards Beijing additionally with ASEAN yes there's a lot of division within ASEAN but here in trade China has been very strong in developing RCEP the one one trading system and the CP TPP which is the follow-on to the Trans-Pacific Partnership which we abandoned and so China has actually engaged as a block with Southeast Asians quite effectively so if you think of the United States as a trading block EU is a trading block and now ASEAN is a trading block the United States has has come to number three and I think that's an important geostrategic change for us to begin to think about because of course your trading partners are the ones that give you your have leverage over you and if China has two other trading partners equal to or perhaps even larger than their trade with the United States that dilutes our ability to assert leverage through trade with with China so here's the intersection of what we've been talking about generating wealth and security in the South China Sea now some of you are probably aware that China has built a naval base in Djibouti this is there's a lot to say about that the China maritime studies institute has done a very good amount of work on that and and I'm happy to talk about that in Q&A but you can see in the black circle where that naval base is that's the far left farthest west that that China essentially can project power and if you remember all the way back to that slide where I showed the concentric rings of missile ranges they reach almost to not quite but almost to the Babelman deb the straight here on which Djibouti sits and so China's China's this is actually within China's near periphery if you think about how deep into continental Eurasia China's territory extends well China's also got naval bases in the South China Sea I'm just using this location it's not exactly where they are but I'm using that location to to generate the basic idea so these are the east and west anchors of what I of what the Chinese are saying but also we are observing is a move into the Indian Ocean region moving out from the South China Sea so China's ability to exercise power in the South China Sea is the maritime center from which it is moving outward connecting those bases with friendly ports now China has no bases yet beyond Djibouti in the South China Sea but connecting it with friendly ports such as in Guadar in Pakistan and Chao Puy in Myanmar so we for time we won't focus on Djibouti but but really what we're looking at is we're thinking about how China is moving outwards we're looking at the politics of bases do they have this top level base where there's a permanent presence with a political commitment like an alliance well China really doesn't have any of those today they just have a permanent presence without a political commitment in Djibouti logistics hubs logistic supports friendly ports all of those are useful in peacetime but less useful in conflict so my view is China is not ready to go go globally with its navy at least not in in a posture to try to assert sea supremacy on a global basis so what about status we'll end with this so prestige matters a lot to the Chinese Communist Party China's global prestige matters a lot and this is in part why China refused you see the whole right side of the screen here is a void of people on the left are the the Philippine representatives and their lawyers at the arbitration hearing for the South Tennessee arbitration on the right are empty chairs China refused to participate in the arbitration why there's number one is a matter of prestige how could China possibly let a small country like the Philippines embarrass China in a large international tribunal and possibly take something away from China so China simply refused to participate in the proceedings related to the South Tennessee but out of that came some very clear law on the left what you see is in the dash blue lines what the coastal states ought to be able to claim in the South Tennessee so that's you see the dash blue lines depicting Vietnam's exclusive economic zone China's the Philippines Brunei's Malaysia's Indonesia's etc but China claims everything within the nine dash line on the right there's a better depiction of what that would look like essentially China China groups together the islands and then claims resource zones from them well the arbitration tribunal said that that was patently not lawful according to the United Nations Convention on the law of the sea and so China's claims are not lawful but yet it's a certain jurisdiction over that entire area within the South Tennessee regardless of the fact that international law gives the resource zones to other states so we have to worry about that because there is in fact there are in fact some other countries that have similar policies as you see here where their exclusive economic zones if they were to follow the tana approach could generate a similar outcome and take parts of the Indo-Pacific away from that free and open commons that it is so essential to American security interests so we see here how East Asian maritime disputes are resolved does in fact have implications for the global regime of law and power because because if China's approach that is to say power dynamics can exclude as a matter of law or or power other states and their navies then we have a big problem in our ability to achieve our interest in East Asia with our own naval power so here we come back to the bottom line again China is undertaking this maritime expansion we've discussed it's centered on the South China Sea China's objectives in pursuing this maritime expansion are to establish a security perimeter as we discussed earlier essentially to complete that arc of control around China's periphery that the Qing failed to do to ensure China's wealth through secure trade not just in the with Southeast Asia but into the northern Indian Ocean and as far as Africa and then to enhance its status as a leading power in East Asia and as a leading rule maker not only in the region but perhaps beyond that and as we've seen this challenges China's China challenges American interests in its approach it also challenges the interests of its neighbors and it challenges maritime stability in East Asia so with that I'll stop sharing my screen and I'll be looking forward to hearing your questions well Peter thank you very much for a very interesting discussion of a very very complex topic we've got time for about two or three questions here well let's start with one that says that ask is the US government appropriately structured to deal with the multi-dimensional aspects of dealing with China and where should the policy coordination function be located state department national security council endow paycom somewhere else well certainly not into paycom in my view that's not that should not be a military function you know whether probably it's not even the state department it's probably where those two come together the political military and economic functions of our of our government come together at the national security council so probably policy coordination should be done there I'm actually quite encouraged by the structure that has been developed for this policy coordination under the new administration there's Eli Ratner has taken a position in doing policy China policy coordination for the Department of Defense actually for the office of the Secretary of Defense and there's a very good team under Kurt Campbell at at the national security council that will be doing this and and we'll see those positions fleshed out throughout treasury and commerce but all of those will have to come together in my view in the national security council and I'm encouraged that that this administration has done a good job of putting together that that that kind of team I mean there there are some very competent people in the previous administration as well doing very good work on China policy I think frankly more people are needed to do that work than perhaps the last administration relied on and so I'm glad to see this administration fleshing fleshing that out very good a questioner asks about China's propaganda machine their use of social media etc to to convey their issues and whatnot how do you feel about what they do and how do you feel about how the US responds to that effort um China has very sophisticated propaganda has a very sophisticated propaganda system that's the first thing we need to recognize very sophisticated and quite frankly is way out ahead of us that said probably the most sophisticated propaganda system in essence is the American propaganda system in the sense that a free and open press a free and open dialogue a free and open national dialogue international dialogue is is a very powerful thing obviously it's it's attracted you know there are many people attracted to the United States because of of this of this level of freedom I would say you know that that is in part why China has felt so pressed to come up with a you know a powerful propaganda system to try to to try to counter this sort of independent open conversation that that we have that said I will say so I do maintain a presence on Twitter only China issues and I occasionally see Chinese officials you know having having their way on Twitter and I'm I'm deeply disappointed that Chinese officials are allowed to engage in our conversations but Twitter is banned in China and so you know it's one of those things where we don't have an entirely even playing field fortunately we have the strength of an open and free society and my view is that in the end that that's always going to beat out over authoritarianism but but we have to be actively engaged in seeking out you know seeking out opportunities to be persuasive and to and to generate conversation you know to to push back against you know false Chinese narratives for instance the most recent one if it weren't so such an incredible human tragedy it would be laughable is you know Chinese officials saying that the the Uyghurs in in Xinjiang province are you know happy people going through you know job training as opposed to you know oppressed people forced into concentration camp and and worse I would encourage you know the listeners to go out and actually learn more about what is in fact the incredibly horrible human rights abuses going on in China today that the Chinese government attempts to paper over on on social media by simply saying oh well this is you know you know people are people are being employed they're happier than ever dancing in the street I mean it's absurd so it's not exactly a level playing field in that regard I make a mark on my wall every day that I tell a work I've now got 347 marks on my wall has the pandemic impacted on the ability of China Maritime Studies Institute and others to understand what's going on in China I'd say the short answers no the pandemic has has not longer answer is we certainly have had to shift our our approach obviously we you know it's harder to collaborate we we generate a lot of knowledge through things like conferences and workshops obviously that's harder to do there's only so much zoom time people want to put up with and so there are certain things that we have to do that are different but I wouldn't say that it's you know I think we've we've managed to be highly productive you know honestly what has what has become a barrier to us are our policies coming out of the of the deteriorating relationship between the US and China I'm not you know I'm not commenting on the on the politics of whether our relationship should deteriorate or not you know we need to be pursuing our national interests plain and simple but but we are finding it harder to travel to China we are finding it harder to engage with Chinese at all and these are important functions of our institute that that do help us gain insights but but so far we've been able to do good work I think right through the pandemic and and I haven't kept tally on the wall but I do recall that the last time I taught a class in person was March 5th 2020 so we're coming up on a year it's been a long year yes indeed one last question I think we've got time for here and the commenter says that the UN is apparently not very effective in working issues related to China is there any other international organization that is able to meaningfully stand up to Chinese issues you know that's a really good question short answer short answer no um longer answer so so all international organizations you know um are to some degree a balance between power and and law right international law and the institutions that that that develop and enforce that that law but there's a balance between the two so you know the United Nations of course can't you know force countries into the international court of justice can't do it the United Nations you know is is is hard pressed especially to drag you know another country before the security council why because that country has a veto on the security council and so you know what you really have is some combination of international diplomacy and by that I mean for instance let's take the Uyghur example you know raising this question in the security council you would I'm sorry in the General Assembly at the United Nations you would think wouldn't be especially controversial this is a you know Canada just came out this weekend labeled a genocide ad as has both the Trump and Biden administration labeled what's going on in in Xinjiang to be genocide so it shouldn't be all that difficult to get the international community to to you know condemn what's going on there and that would have profound political effect with you know possibly the ability to change Chinese policies well what has stopped that China is playing politics too it's just playing politics with its money and so the Chinese are generating mixed interests right throughout many countries Southeast Asia South Asia even you would think you would there would be a lot of support for China or or for condemning China from other Muslim countries and you don't see Muslim governments condemning China why well one of those reasons is the divided economic interests that countries have and so you know that that helps to dampen any tendency to criticize China so I think what has to happen is there has to be clear sort of taking the covers off of the of the things that the Chinese are doing domestically and internationally some of them are good but many of them are not and so when you know when China is doing something that is not good that needs to be publicized and generating political political cohesiveness to push back on China is a long-term effort that does have an economic component and how the United States pursues its economic policies and it does have a security component and how we pursue our security policies so the link between politics economics and security is always present especially when you're dealing with a great power like like China and yes China is a great power is it a superpower not in my view but it's a strong global power when you're talking about economic and and political power and so you have to confront it as such and that's the requirement the challenge that we have ahead of us I'm happy to take a few more questions if if you all are happy to do it I think we've got one last question and then we'll have to stop there and that is is there a potential for the Chinese to convert their huge merchant fleet to some kind of wartime posture well yes I mean if you think of lend lease and other things that you know that the United States does has done in the past with our merchant fleet fleet yes I mean there's certainly wartime utility to a large merchant fleet additionally there's the real possibility of eyes eyes and ears on a global basis right so in in forming China of of changes you know in in locations of interest around the world so so I would say yes I mean there and and we know that there are circumstances you know even as I can recall the Falkland wars you know using Britain used its merchant vessels to support its ability to to to bring the fight to to the South Atlantic so so yeah I think there's utility but I mean it's a fairly limited utility I don't think we're going to see China turning its large merchant fleet into you know into combatants anytime soon frankly China has a pretty good size a fleet of its own my colleague Andrew Erickson again has done some good work demonstrating that China's got the largest navy in the world today okay Peter any last comments you'd like to make before we secure for the afternoon well I'm thank you so much it's a privilege to get a chance to share the CMS I research with everyone you know a lot of what I presented today is my research but a lot of it's also you know draws on my my colleagues and I need to give them a shout out as as well I do want to return to that to the point I started with which is thanking the members of the foundation because you know a lot of the research that we do is is dependent on the good their good support and you know hopefully you've you've seen the fruits of that support and I I just am very grateful for it so I'll leave it with that John thank you very good thank you Peter all right we're going to take a five minute break and then we'll reconvene for our family discussion group meeting so let's call that at about 542 and we'll come back and hear from the fine folks at the Navy Federal Credit Union so we will now take a break