 Well, hello and welcome to a discussion hosted by INET on US-China relations called Beyond Thucydides' Trap in Search of Alternative Public Discourse, which if I was writing a headline for this for newspaper, I'd say, how do we stop the US and China going to war? Because we live at a time of growing tension in terms of US-China relations, some pretty frightening developments around Taiwan, around issues to do with the race for dominance in AI and other technologies, around all kinds of questions. And where the US and China goes next is absolutely critically important, not just to those two countries, but to the rest of the world. I should start off by saying I'm Gillian Tett. I'm US editor at large for the Financial Times. And in that role, I have particularly keen interest in this, although I'm not an expert. But thankfully today are three experts. Yunyan Ang, who's Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan. Orwell Shell, who's Director of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society, who is joining us through his voice phone. And Martin Wolf, who's Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times and my colleague. So we have three people very well placed to talk about this. But I'd like to start perhaps with you, Yunyan, to ask you how you see China-U.S. relations developing at the moment. Are they heading for the U.S. city's trap, horrible word to pronounce, but has great historical resonance? I.e., are they going to war? Well, thank you very much for having me in this set of important conversations. And I'm very honored to join this panel with Gillian Orwell and Martin, whose work I read religiously. U.S.-China competition is not going away as much as we wish that it would, because as Professor Allison explains, they are underlying structural reasons that underpin their rivalry. But I think Gillian put it very well. How this competition is being framed has important consequences for preventing the two nations from going to war. If the competition is framed incorrectly, it can be dangerously self-fulfilling. If it is framed correctly, I would argue that it can actually bring attention to problems that need to be solved within the two superpowers. So the point that I wanted to highlight today is that U.S.-China competition should not be understood as a clash of civilizations, a phrase that has been popularly evoked in the past years. But rather, I would argue that it should be understood as a clash of two gilded ages. This is an argument I made two months ago in July of 2021 in foreign affairs. So let me unpack a little bit what I mean. Now the term clash of civilizations, as some of you might know, was popularized by the Harvard professor, Samuel Huntington. And his argument is that the dominating source of conflict among great nations will be cultural. Western and non-Western civilizations will be destined to clash with each other. The Trump administration has revived this notion of the clash of civilizations and applied it to U.S.-China relations. John Bolton used this phrase in describing U.S.-China relations. And Kiron Skinner, who was formerly the head of the State Department policy planning, defined it explicitly. And I will quote her here. She said, this is a fight with a really different civilization and a different ideology. And the United States hasn't had that before. And she adds, it's the first time that we will have a great power competition that is not Caucasian. And I'm going to let the last two words sink in a little bit. She said, not Caucasian. In other words, what she really means is by clash of civilizations is a clash of races. So many academics have pointed this out. This framing is misleading. It's dangerous because it positions the two countries as being culturally destined to clash. And it provides a sophisticated cover for making essentially racist arguments. And I will add that where such racism exists, it actually provides fuel for Chinese propagandists to justify nationalism. I'm sorry to pause the moment. Is it just me or do you hear a beeping sound? I hear the sound as well. And I don't know what that is. Can anyone explain what that funny ding dong is? Maybe a little elf behind the scenes can remove it. It looks like it's worked. Great. Oh, it stopped. Okay. Great. All right. Jillian, that's a magic. Right. So fortunately, the Biden administration is a lot more nuanced, rational than Trump. President Biden himself rejects racist rhetoric, but his administration still frames US-China relations in oppositional terms as us versus them. So what I would like to suggest is if the clash of civilization is not the right framing, then what is the alternative? And I would argue that it's better to think of it as a clash of two gilded ages. Now, interestingly, if you look closely, you'll see that both China and the US have remarkably similar problems. Sharp inequality, cronyism, the rise of a new class of super rich, populist backlash from those who are left behind and systemic financial risk, which has exploded in the US and is in the process of exploding in China. So these are all defining characteristics of a gilded age where you see stupendously rising wealth with economic and social problems festering underneath. So in short, both countries are struggling to reconcile the tensions between capitalism and their respective political system. Now, for the US, that tension is between the inequality of capitalism and the equality of democracy. And in China, that tension is between the reality of capitalism and the ideology of communism. So let me just sum up. I think that the benefits of this frame is that, first of all, it's accurate and it reflects the realities in both countries today. And second of all, it tells us what the real nature of the competition is. It's not about outdoing the other party, but it's about which superpower can solve their domestic problems first. So if you look at Biden's build back better and Xi Jinping's common prosperity, I believe that both leaders are doing exactly that. Thank you. Well, thank you for that very cheering message that in many ways makes a point that what unites the two places is almost a commonality of problems, or they both face big problems and probably have more to gain by trying to learn from each other and support each other's efforts to solve those problems than by fighting. In many ways, encouraging. Orville, would you agree? Well, I tend to take a rather dark view at this point. I have to say, having watched these two countries now for six decades, I have to say, I think we're in new and uncharted waters. We are at a real inflection point. And I think as everybody knows, we did have an operating system when we called it engagement. It was imperfect but began in about 72 with Kissinger and Nixon, although not named as such. But it's really come apart at the seams. But the presumption of engagement was that if we just cooperated, collaborated, traded, interacted, we would slowly be on convergent paths. We wouldn't expect China to turn into a carbon copy of a liberal Western democracy. But the tensions were being removed. We weren't diverging. And with the end of that, I think, under when Xi Jinping came to power in 2012 and 13, we really are in a compassless kind of odyssey here. I think it's very dangerous. And at the same time, we of course had Trump in the United States who was, in many ways, a very aberrant interim for those of us who live here. And China has two things happening now, which I find quite alarming in terms of the possibility of the U.S. and China finding a new stability. On the one hand, they have a very sort of autocratic tendency within China itself. And I think there's a logic to it. I think Xi Jinping is trying to move the economy from one based on sort of property. Remember, they nationalized all property in 1949. And now they're feeding it back into the market in the way in which local governments largely survived or was through the sale of long-term leases on property. But I think Xi Jinping sees that as a source of corruption, of inequality, and unsustainable. And he wants to change that. And we see that going on now in ways I won't get into right at the moment. Then we also see a tremendous concentration of political power in his hands. So I think domestically speaking, the trend is very obvious and quite alarming for anyone believing in liberal democracy as maybe an inefficient but better mode of political governance. And of course, abroad we have wolf warrior diplomacy. We have tremendous tensions in the South China Sea, grand Chinese pretensions that reach from the South China Coast all the way down to Indonesia. And we see increased tensions with Taiwan. We all know what happened to Hong Kong. And we see that as a prefiguration of what might happen in Taiwan and tensions with Japan in the East China Sea. So this has really loaded the table with a tremendous amount of what Mao Zedong would have called antagonistic contradictions that cannot be solved, short of possible violence. It's a tit for tat world. And I think the trend is undeniably towards more separation. Yes, there will be areas where we will trade. We will not have, nor should we have, complete decoupling. But if you look at the trend across the board, the way the alliance structure is sort of forming outside of China and how China itself is creating an alliance structure of its own with the Soviet Union and Iran and with Russia, excuse me, and Iran, et cetera, you begin to find a very sort of alarming trend line. So in that context, I think it's going to be extremely difficult for the U.S. and China to emphasize those things which they should emphasize that are indeed common interests, like nuclear proliferation, pandemics, climate change, you know, the litmus. And for that reason, I think the trend line is going to be down. Relations are going to get worse. There's going to be more of all of the antagonisms that we all are well acquainted with and some of which I've mentioned. And I think it's going to take very skill diplomacy. But I do not at this point see Xi particularly susceptible to giving a little to getting a little, which is the essence of diplomacy. And in a curious, strange way, it sometimes occurs to me that possibly the best flight out short of war, which is where Jillian began this discussion, might be an economic downturn, which makes all countries recognize that we are, in fact, in this boat together. Well, the problem with economic downturn is that they often cause people to lash out and seek scapegoats to blame in terms of the politicians, which doesn't help. But I'm curious, you know, you've written a couple of articles pointing out the peculiar nature of ping pong diplomacy back in the next era that actually relations were healed through some quite unlikely breakthroughs. Do you see any chance of that happening again? No, I mean, remember when Kissinger and Nixon went to China, what they did was set ideology and politics aside manifestly. They're very proud of being able to do that. And Mao Zedong and John Lai agreed. I don't think we are in a place now where either side, whether either Biden or Xi is able or inclined to do that. And moreover, I think Xi has made it now quite an issue for China as well. And the Americans have always been rather evangelical about democracy, even though it doesn't work at home. So I think we're in a very tough bind where we cannot see saying, all right, let's set politics aside. There's some bigger issue, which brings us together. And we must rally around that. Well, thank you. Well, Martin, how do you see things? I mean, one of the joys of my job is that every morning at six o'clock in New York time, we have an editorial board conference where you sit in London and say what you think I said in New York and say what I think, along with our colleagues. So I've heard you talk about China, but I never heard you boil down to the simple question of do you think we're heading for war and or can it be stopped? So a very good question. And I'll come to that at the end. I find myself broadly as it were an agreement with both. I don't think the perspectives put forward are in conflict in the sense that Yuan Yan has talked about the origin of the conflict over the particular perspective and all of all about its consequences. Let me just, however, take a slightly different approach, which I think is also complementary. Because perhaps only one respect in which I might have something to offer, which is slightly different, which is I've actually read Thucydides in Greek, because that's what I did when I was at Oxford. It's worth remembering where this idea came from. Thucydides concept was this was a clash of powers with an ideological edge. And it seems to me the notion of this as a clash of power, not of civilization with an ideological edge to it, is fruitful. Because I think that is at least in terms of great power relations, what we're seeing. And I'll come to that towards the end, the similarities and differences, particularly with the last great clash of powers with an ideological edge, namely that between the US and the Soviet Union. Let me just start first by saying that it is my perspective that economic success of China was a great achievement of policy, including of Western policy. It was what all the effort at development was supposed to achieve. So I'm never going to regret the fact that China has been so economically successful. But second, the success of China economically has inevitably created profound tensions, which Thucydides would have said was bound to happen, because it contains within it a huge shift in relative power across pretty well all dimensions of power. And that creates problems it always has, as Graham Ellison's book points out. This has now boiled out into a conflict increasingly pervasive across multiple dimensions in which both sides are in my view guilty. They always are. And the fundamental characteristic of which again emphasize Thucydides was profound mutual mistrust and suspicion, which generates a tendency towards preemptive actions which end up in war, which is your question. And it seems to me clear that this is true on both sides, that they're increasingly suspicious and hostile towards one another. The U.S. is in a profoundly defensive position. China in one which basically seeks to achieve the position in the world, it believes it is due. Both sides at the same time have deep economic and political weaknesses, which again was emphasized, which makes external conflict a not unappealing domestic political strategy. And I think that's very important for both of them. Now, I don't think it's the parallel with the Cold War is a good one, but it has some important similarities. China is not clearly trying to spread its own ideology across the world. I think that's mainly because the Chinese don't think anyone else is smart enough to run their country the way they do. But Yan Yan can possibly correct me on that. But it is also, and this is crucial, vastly more integrated with the U.S. and the West and vice versa. So decoupling, which is where we're going, similar to what happened in the end of the Second World War, is going to be immensely disruptive. What I believe has to be done, and this I will leave you with this, is what I think I was managed decoupling. That is to say, we need to get to the point where we can agree on pragmatic deals across the various issues that concern us, which maintain enough integration for us to prosper and enough separation for us all to feel reasonably safe. Is that possible? I have no idea, but if it isn't, this is going to become a colossal mess. Well, thank you very much indeed. One of the things I'd like to ask all of you in a moment is trying to disentangle the different elements of war, because I was speaking recently to Bray Dalio of Bridgewater who pointed out that, war can mean many things. It can mean a trade war. It can mean an ideological war, a capital war. It can mean a currency war or a kinetic war. They're not the same or cyber war. So I would be good to disentangle this a bit. But Yen Yen, would you like to respond to what Martin and Orville have said? Because you appeared to be the optimist on the panel. Explain to us why you would state optimistic in spite of this gloomy outlook from both Orville and Martin. You're muted. You're muted. Sorry. Well, I wouldn't say that I'm being optimistic. The point that I was trying to make is that we have to avoid framing the competition as being rooted in immutably different cultural differences. That kind of rhetoric will dust in the two nations to war and it provides a sophisticated cover for even racist rhetoric. And that sort of rhetoric, it then feeds back into China and fuels nationalism. So I'm saying that that kind of framing is very dangerous. And what I'm saying is we need to understand the two nations' relationships in a different way. And going back to the points that Orville and Martin insightfully pointed out, is this a clash of power with ideological dimensions? I think the answer is yes and no. If you look at the clash between America and Soviet Union, that was a straightforward ideological clash between capitalist democracy and authoritarian communism. The confusion with the clash today is that, yes, China is an autocracy and the US is a democracy. But in a sense, both are capitalist economies. And they both have the ills of crony capitalism. As I've said, things like inequality, rise of super rich, corruption, and so forth. So that really complicates the way we understand whether these two nations are truly ideological opposites or in reality, are they actually more similar than we think? And I do think that in terms of public discourse, we need to change this stereotype of China and the US as polar opposites and see that they in fact have some structural similarities. Because one of the functions of doing that is that it humanizes China. And it also humanizes America for audiences in China. And I think that as a matter of discourse, discourse is powerful as I'm sure this panel actually knows a lot better than I do. Discourse and narratives are very powerful. And so we need to go beyond this lazy arguments that the two nations are culturally destined to clash with each other. Do you see any sign whatsoever that that kind of shift is occurring or any attempt to embrace that different type of public discourse? At this point, I don't think so because it is so easy and so tempting to make lazy arguments along the lines of us versus them. This type of discourse is easy to make. It's easy to understand and understandably from the point of view of politicians, you need to make your message as simple as possible. And that kind of us versus them messaging can also help them to build public support for their domestic agenda. So you scapegoat the foreign enemy and then you use that to justify any range of economic or political decisions. And so I think that's why it's important in the context of a democracy like the one that we have that we provide alternative discourse and not simply repeat what politicians prefer to say. Right, right. I mean, Orville, the ping-pong diplomacy was, you know, alternative discourse by almost by accident or that made for some great visuals and great pictures. I mean, is it possible to do what Yanyan's saying at the moment, given the social media, given the change of communication style? Well, I think my gloom derives precisely from my assessment that at least so far there's little evidence that we're being very successful at bridging the gap. I think it would be tremendously sad if this develops a sort of, as Yanyan fears, a racial as well as a cultural dimension. It already has political and economic dimension. But, you know, I have to, I want to remind everybody that the reason why we are where we are is because the system that we did have, which did work pretty well, which was one in which the Western world, Japan, even India, embraced China. That was engagement. And I lament its passing, not because it was a perfect being, but because it provided a framework in which we could have a non-antagonistic relationship. And if you analyze why engagement has been has been laid low, I think you would have to say it was not the United States that did it. And there is tremendous amity between the two countries and historically, a lot of shared experience, a very constructive, positive kind between China and particularly the United States, but also Europe. But how do we get that back in a world where increasingly, as the Chinese Communist Party, tirelessly says, there's hostile influences and where in the West now we are increasingly seeing China as threatening and expansive. That's the problem. And this, the only way to do this is to have some ability, as Nixon and Kissinger did, to turn the game. And I don't see either leadership in the United States or China, Europe's much more ambivalent, but still the trend in Europe is not good. It's becoming more and more hostile towards China's intentions, more and more suspicious, and the world is dividing. And that is the reality. And like it or not, that's where we are. And I think perhaps we could, Martyn, maybe you have some notions about what to do about it besides just lament and hope. I don't know. Martyn, okay, you provide the answers. Give us a five-point plan. Try to, but let me just, I think there is, would help if we perhaps, sort of, I agree with a lot of what being said, but let me focus on where I disagree because that might just help our discussion, or at least query. And I have a disagreement with Yuanyuan and a disagreement with Orville. So I agree completely that turning this into a civilizational, let alone a racial conflict is an intellectual and moral catastrophe. And I've found it, I wrote a column about Professor Skinner's remarks, and that even led to my talking tour on the phone. And it was only after I wrote the column that I discovered that she was of African American origin, which I found quite fascinating. Anyway, I thought they were ludicrous. I actually asked Secretary Pompeo at the time at a conference I attended, what he felt about this grotesque statement, and he sort of disowned it. Anyway, that's grotesque. But the fact that it's grotesque, let's assume for a moment we get rid of that. We don't say there that 5,000 years of history or whatever it is dooms us to war because we have different civilizations. This isn't altogether comforting. In my own column on the Chisidi's Trap book, I argue that the closest parallel to what we're seeing, war between capitalist powers, rivals in the world in many dimensions, well, that's what happened between Britain and Germany in the early part of the 20th century. And it led to a war from which, in my view, European civilization never recovered. So the fact that this doesn't need to be seen as a civilizational or heaven forbid racial conflict, isn't that comforting to me? That's my stress. It's a power conflict of suspicious great powers which don't trust each other. That can happen in the history of Britain. It fought a 130 year war against France between the 17th century in 1815 and another essentially 30 year war with Germany. That's what happens between powers which are very similar and know they are. Now with Orville, so that's the real worry, I don't agree that the breakdown of engagement is just due to China. In the, although I certainly disagree with a lot of what Mr. Xi has done in many dimensions, but the truth is that already 10 years ago and increasingly and very visibly with Trump, a significant part of the American establishment and non-established fringe started to say basically all our economic and social problems in America are due to unfair competition from China. That the China shop destroyed American industry. That the Chinese have not played fair in another list is so long. That's been going on now for quite a while and it has fermented deep conflict and it's been in my view and I think Yan Yan got this perfectly a tool for the plutocrats to mobilize the non-plutocrats on their side in the contemporary Republican Party. I haven't done a lot about this. I call it plutopopulism. You could have called it plutonationalism. So I think I don't entirely agree that this is because China has gone off the rails. I think the problem is China has gone a certain direction which is unfortunate but inevitable at this stage perhaps arguably and the US has responded in a certain way which isn't very helpful. Now you asked how to fix it. Well I've spoken for so long now perhaps I better come back to that later. Wait a minute. I agree with as you see I think it's basically I think both sides have got it wrong and they've got it wrong because we're in a classic Thucydidian power struggle. Orville I see you would jump in there. By the way I should say that if anyone is watching and wants to ask questions do please send them over by the Q&A tab and we'll try and incorporate them into the conversation. Orville tell us why you think Martin is wrong that it's not America's fault. Well because I do think that in every aspect of society was dedicated to trying to make this work. Yes we had Trump that was rather devastating but in certain ways I think Martin even you would have to admit his recognition that this relationship was not reciprocal. It was not not not equal and not sustainable was probably correct that it needed to have at least some sort of a readjustment. In that sense I agree that Trump did some things or recognized some things that were long overdue. However we we we've lost this this framework and it was one which amazingly American institutions I don't want to just make this American-centric but universities think tanks businesses churches even the military was consecrated to making work and you know in every one of those areas and civil society is another area the changes within China made it increasingly impossible for us to maintain that kind of presumption of functionality. So that's my lamentation. I recognize my country America is just as many many weaknesses imperfections and contradictions but I think in the balance if you look at it engagement died because of Xi Jinping. Yan Yan would you agree? Well thank you I'm I'm thinking about the remarks and the very thought provoking. I wanted to again clarify that I do not see anything comforting in US China competition. I do not see anything optimistic or comforting about it and I agree with Martin that my point is that the clash of civilization rhetoric it's it's not just that it's offensive but it gets at a deeper point which is that no nation can go to war without public support. So how you frame the competition has deep consequences for whether there will be public support for war. So if you look at how politicians build up public support for war the first thing they must do is to create this imagery of us versus them and basically dumb everything down and create this narrative of we are the good guys and they are the bad guys and therefore we have to go to war and that's why we have to reject or at least provide a counter narrative to this type of narrative and provide a whole range of other narratives that help people and especially the public on both sides to understand that there are actually more similarities between the two rivals than we think. There is no question that they have a raw power competition there's no question about that. The part where we can have influence and leverage is how that raw power competition is framed so that it does not create the public support for antagonism and right now the situation is pessimistic because there is a great deal of public antagonism in both countries. So I guess one of the key questions I would ask then is you know if you're looking at a case of what's going to actually bind the two powers together and even make the public understand about shared interests you know for a long time we had the idea that supply chains might be good because maybe American workers will be grateful for all these wonderful cheap imports and that there went horribly wrong. What about the financial aspect because you know some people hope that the integration of the two nations through finance in fact that you know China owns a lot of you know US Treasury bonds and would suffer if there was a default or something like that and vice versa you know Wall Street companies are dashing into China right now we've just seen Larry think from BlackRock jump in. Do you have any hope that that kind of integration might actually help lessen the hostility and the risk of war? I'd like to ask each of you that perhaps starting with you Union. I from my perspective I think the greatest hope lies in continued engagement at the social level and so the things that you talked about financial systems they are a form of coupling but they're very limited to a small number of elites and when we are talking about public sentiment what's important is that regular people get to interact with one another and that is at the level of Chinese students coming to the United States or an American students going to China at this level where the middle class is able to participate and we have seen in the past years that even these types of educational exchanges have actually become very difficult more and more difficult so I would say that we need to make a distinction between decoupling at the tuning at the national level versus continued engagement at the social level if the two societies become decoupled then they will know each other less and it's much easier than to inflame sentiments of antagonism and war among the public. So if you're an American go hug a Chinese student and pack your own kids off to learn Mandarin somewhere in the heartlands and vice versa. Orville what's your perspective? Well I think it is important to have people to people exchanges but I also think it's important to recognize that these are not possible precisely because you know you can't get a visa to go to China we don't even have very many journalists there anymore we can't even work out an agreement with Beijing to have a reciprocal exchange as we did with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. So I think that we can talk in these niceties but the question of how do you actually do this given the situation that we have at large is is is really really vexing civil society is completely frayed the Chinese have the civil society law that makes it impossible for foreign civil society organization to really function that happened what are you going to do about it I don't know so I really think that what goes on politically within each country has a profound influence on the ability of the two countries to interact in a healthy healthy way across the full spectrum of activities I don't think it's sufficient enough just to have foreign investment and in fact I think we're heading towards a very dangerous situation where more and more people and you can disagree with this but I think you can't disagree with the phenomenon are beginning to raise the question is investing in China feeding a dangerous beast what happens if they attack Taiwan what happens if we have a military clash in the South China Sea what happens if they start going to to have a military dust up with Japan over the Sengaku Diao Yu Dao Islands these are real these are real questions and we do not have answers for them and I think my my suggestion is that Xi Jinping and President Biden appoint two very high-level ex-officials send them off to Switzerland or Singapore for a week lock them in a room and say come back with three alternative off-ramp scenarios and let Biden and Xi Jinping discuss them and think if there is any conceivable way to slow this decline down in relations and to turn this thing around so instead of ping-pong diplomacy we have spa diplomacy with spa together and go and you know think deeply together while they you know go and have invigorating walks or whatever in the mountains um I must say I'm I'm fascinated by the cultural issue because I was actually I did my PhD in the former Soviet Union as part of the British Council exchanges with the former Soviet Academy of Sciences to do this kind of thing but of course that was a long time ago Martin you're keen to jump in yeah yeah let me respond again I somewhat disagree with both but I think the last point we reached is sort of what we do now but I I do want to come back to this point about engagement I mean I think the US had I'm not saying everybody did surely not over a very naive view of what engagement meant um what they thought was two things and one China would develop and grow and become more prosperous um well three things second in the process it will become more like us in every possible respect and and and third and at the end of this the relative position of the US in the world and would not really be changed I'm not saying this was explained but I think it's very clear to me that this was implicit and this was all nonsense from the beginning I never thought these things would could be the case and I think I'm sorry that at the end of the day the US has suddenly woken up and discovered my god China's going to be more powerful than us this is not tolerable now meanwhile I also think it is the case that Xi Jinping has been going to be brutal about it comprehensive disaster for China very controversial and in terms of his domestic and international policies and that has accelerated this um so we are where we are and it where we are is and I think here we agree completely whatever the story is a tremendously dangerous situation I I we can have I know Yuan Yan will disagree on this because I understand why Xi a little bit is trying to do what he's done but I still think it's a disaster now what do we do about this um well I think one model though is um uh is as it were from the Cuba missile crisis to Daytona um I see Daytona as a system designed to manage conflict with the so manage stresses with the Soviet Union in a way that um neutralized some of the possibilities for surprise war um it wasn't perfectly successful just think of the intermediate missile problem in the 80s but essentially it was designed to be the off-ramp and I think things are now so terrible I would do anything at all with a suggestion to get that sort of relationship so to define core interests and define where this is going to blow up into a into a war and stop it that seems to me absolutely decisive now and we might be in war very soon so that's a big issue beyond that because of the scale of the issues involved we have to advise and separate out mechanisms handling the great global issues like climate change pandemics things like that beyond obviously this we were just discussed we have to have a security dialogue which really manages security I don't think that can be entirely on America's terms by the way it will have to be uh compromise and then of course uh we need to work out a deal on how we manage trade the WTO is gone so what are we going to do in its place a whole set of separate not a comprehensive overarching system separate systems for managing attention which in my view is permanent right um I should say by the way you know we do have some time for questions and comments we have one comment from I think it is um James Laidler who asks why does I have why does Julian have such a superior background and the answer I don't have a superior background it's just a picture I happen to have in my dining room and I've been so busy today I haven't managed to get up into my study yet but um we have a more serious question though about um for Ang which is what Ang says reminds me of how Soviet propaganda went unheeded until Reagan once Reagan started to project patriotism and democracy it helped bring reform slash independence hmm not sure I'd agree with that but anyway what is wrong with us versus them narrative that separates the CCP and the Chinese people i.e should we be trying to keep it separate i.e what Xi is doing and what the public's doing in order to improve the discourse I'm not sure that I completely caught the question the question is what's wrong with the us versus them narrative is that the question well I think it's like blending two things but the real question is if the US is going to have a more constructive discourse with China should more effort be made to separate out or distinguish between the leader and the people the answer to that is yes so when the US uses an us versus them rhetoric it actually helps autocratic forces in China period because the autocratic forces in China will be able to say that look the US is an enemy the US treats all of us as an enemy and in fact the people who know China there are divisions within China in Chinese society and even at the highest levels among the elites so when the US uses a us versus them rhetoric it actually strengthens the hands of hawks in the Chinese administration and the moment there is a lot more nuance and we are able to unpack the different actors in Chinese society even at the highest level of the Chinese Communist Party that actually weakens the hands of the hawks right Martin do you have any thoughts or actually let me ask Orville first do you have any thoughts about the parallels with the Reagan era at all well you know the 80s was a time and Martin maybe here I disagree a little with you in the 1980s when we had Hu Yabang and we had you know Jaws Yong and these party general secretaries who were amazingly liberal actually in their thinking now they weren't about to throw the Communist Party out of the helicopter but they were certainly willing to encounter very radical forms of reform this was a period where one didn't think that China was going to turn into a liberal democracy but when you sense there was a softening of the contradictions between the two societies that there was a possibility to continue a slow ongoing process of growing more convergent rather than divergent so I mean there was a time when it wasn't so naive to think that engagement was actually working however you construe that and people were getting together remember hundreds of thousands of students were going abroad to study every year there was this incredible interaction whether it was financial markets universities civil societies churches you name it and we were actually sort of it was a kind of a melting pot and that ended 89 that was it was a tremendous tragedy in that regard not I mean because it it scared the party right out of the whole ability to imagine further reform of a political and social kind so I think that you know on that side of the ledger the non-military the non-sort of government to government relations we've that's gone and we don't have that ability now to temper the us and them narratives and the the the growing hostility that actually has does have its antidotes within history we've seen we've cooperated on many many things so I just don't quite know how we particularly in the pandemic decoupling everybody when we can't go back and forth we're losing friends we're losing institutional musculature we're losing all sorts of bridges and things that we depended upon in the past and we're we are in a state of I think very alarming a decay in the relationship in every aspect right um we have a lot of time left we had a question from Logan Brozies who says in the procession liberal internationalism internationalism was suggested as a solution but that doesn't undo realist competition capitalism capitalism was also mentioned so is capitalism a common denominator to create the you know the the more you know the more constructive dialogue sounds like from Martin well it's really a hypothesis with which I agree which is um our failure to manage capitalism domestically has made our societies fragile and bellicose and politicians have fairly cynically used external enemies as a way of unifying countries divided economically in my view and that's just as true and yen we end's brilliant notion which I agree with is that's true of both countries so a certain form of wild capitalism is the problem and not the solution in my view and that uh so and that's why in the end when the tension's got big enough it's called the catalyst of going home I mean all fill is right they are going home I've seen this myself um one other question you raise which is I think very interesting is Reaganism um I think it's a profound mistake to think that Reagan's arms build up on these nasty words about Russia ended the Soviet Union what ended the Soviet Union in my view was the perception of the elite of the Soviet Union that their economic system total failure and that went from Andropov and Gorbachev was Andropov's successor a choice and successor and he knew this China doesn't think this at China thinks the Chinese Communist Party believe that their economic system works and ours is a dud this being so at least given where we are now the idea that the Reagan approach would solve the problem in the next 10 years because China will collapse just strikes me as complete fantasy you know I have to agree with me I mean I do think it's uh I mean you hats off to what the Chinese have done it's an extraordinary unprecedented historical success story of development and it has meant that their their system of of autocracy or whatever you want to describe it communist autocracy has welded onto it a very dynamic economic substructure and this makes the game completely different well thank you very much indeed um we are sadly now out of time I'm not going to try and do some magisterial summing up of what's been said other to say that it's been pretty alarming I hope that yun yan is correct um I agree with some of our analysis and I just hope that that is indeed a path forward because if it's not that is a real problem um but we're going to carry on the conversation next with a very aptly named um session entitled towards a constructive path forward between US and China US China relations i.e. how to avoid the Thucydus Eve trap we hope um and contributing to that will be Justin Yifu Lin, Danny Roddick, Michael Spence, Adair Turner and I'll be moderated by Steve Clemens so if you want to feel more optimistic do please tune in and find out how we can actually create more constructive paths and better outcomes in the future thank you all very much indeed