 Good afternoon and welcome to the United States Institute of Peace for the launch of this important report, China and Reshaping of Global Conflict Prevention Norms. My name is Rosie Levine. I am a senior program analyst for China at USIP. For those of you who are not familiar with the United States Institute of Peace or USIP, we were established by the US Congress in 1984 as a national nonpartisan public institution dedicated to helping prevent, mitigate and resolve violent conflict abroad. Over the course of the last decade, the People's Republic of China has shown an increased interest in playing a role in conflict prevention and global security. This ambition is being pursued through a variety of avenues from funding streams for UN projects to promoting its own security norms through regional organizations and providing security assistance to countries in the global south. In the past year alone, we have seen China put forward a position paper on the political settlement of Russia's war in Ukraine, host talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran that resulted in the resumption of bilateral diplomatic relations, and published the Global Security Initiative concept paper, which seeks to define China's own conception of security in a way that differs from the United States in the West. As we look upon these events and others, many are seeking to understand what did these events tell us about how China approaches international security and what characterizes China's approach. These are the exact questions that this timely report sets out to answer. Today, I'm pleased to welcome this expert group of panelists who each bring a wealth of knowledge to discuss the findings of the report, China and the reshaping of global climate prevention norms. There are hard copies in the back if you haven't grabbed one and it's available online for those tuning in online. We are extremely grateful to have our panelists with us and thank you all who are joining in person and online today. I will now turn it over to Susan Lawrence, Specialist in Asian Affairs at the Congressional Research Service, who will moderate today's discussion and introduce the panelists. We look forward to hearing your thoughts and thank you all for attending. Okay, sorry. Well, thank you very much Rosie. I am delighted to be able to moderate this panel today. And as Rosie has mentioned, this report is incredibly well timed. We had two developments yesterday which fit very neatly with this report. One, we had Secretary of State Blinken gave a speech in which he referred again to the People's Republic of China as posing the most significant long-term challenge to the United States. Because it not only aspires to reshape the international order, it increasingly has the economic diplomatic, the military, the technological power to be just that. So again, it's this very central characterization of China that the United States, the Biden administration has put forward, but it's this idea of China as a revisionist power that aspires to reshape the international order. So Secretary of Blinken's speech yesterday went into those issues in much greater length, but it seemed a very, very good setup in some ways for your report. Also, yesterday China released its proposal of the PRC on the reform and development of global governance. And I'd love to later on hear your views on how your report might shed light on that proposal for reform and development of global governance. But we are now going to turn to our panelists to our co-authors of this wonderful new report. So we have Carla Freeman who is a senior expert for the China program here at the US Institute of Peace, formerly with the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Ally McFarland, who is a program specialist for research here at the US Institute of Peace, has got some wonderful experience in China and elsewhere. And we have Bates Gill, who is the executive director of the Center for China Analysis, which is part of the Asian Society Policy Institute. And that's where he's leading a team of research fellows and staff to deliver on the Center's aim to be a global leader for policy relevant objective analysis of China's politics, economy and society, and its impact on Asia and the world. And Bates has had a long career working on the issues that are in this report in many different incarnations in many countries around the world. So I'm going to turn it over to all of you. Thank you so much. Well, good afternoon, everyone. And thanks so much, Rosie and Susan, for the introduction. And before I start my brief comments, I just want to thank all of the USIP colleagues who've been involved in organizing this event. It takes quite a few to put even a small event together, and I'm very grateful. I also want to thank the extraordinary publications team here at USIP who has helped us produce the report. We can be proud of it. It's really pretty as well. We did our best on the research side, but very grateful to them. And I want to thank Bates and Allie for being such great partners in the project. We've had a wonderful time working together. And that's continuing with some new research focused on the global security initiative, which we can discuss. Also, thanks to all the reviewers in the report, some of them are listed, but many people here at USIP also helped provide great feedback. And of course, thanks to all of you in the audience. We're looking forward to your comments and questions. This is our first, this is our rollout, the first time we've shared this research. As Rosie and Susan both alluded to, we decided to conduct research on this particular topic of China's impact on international conflict prevention here at USIP because we're at a moment of intensifying change in international relations, what we're calling a post-Afghanistan era. But I'm sure that there will be other labels for this era. Biden, President Biden likes to talk about it as an inflection point. And of course, the Chinese talk about changes unseen in a century. But we're clearly in a period where the risks of conflict are on the rise, with great power competition intensifying, you know, not least between the United States and China. This raises a lot of questions about the role of the world's major powers in conflict prevention. In addition, as we explore in this report, especially in the last decade and a half, and most obviously, since Xi Jinping became China's top leader, China has demonstrated a growing interest in exercising its increasing global influence to play a bigger role in international security. This includes playing a bigger role in conflict prevention around the world. So we wanted to understand what this meant, including how China's approach might differ from existing more established norms and practices in the area of conflict prevention. So to get our discussion going today, let me highlight four of our principal findings that are, as I mentioned, tied to some of the questions that drove our research. First, in answer to the question, how is China approaching conflict prevention, what we find is that China has been associated with the idea of developmental peace. And I think that's the idea that economic development is the most critical pathway or the foundation for achieving stability and preventing conflict. What we find is that China's approach to conflict prevention is becoming securitized. It's moving away from this developmental peace paradigm. And we can discuss this further in the Q&A, but I think what we find is that this shift is very much in line with the heavier emphasis on security in China's approach to domestic policy, whereby security is seen as a prerequisite to development or else there's a discussion about the integration of security and development in Chinese framings. As I think Bates might discuss in more detail, we see this shift at the global level in China's United Nations engagements and at the regional level in China's regional interactions and also in China's bilateral interactions in the area of conflict prevention. And we have a case study on the Solomons, which illustrates that. Second, in terms of our second question about how China's approach appears to differ from existing conflict prevention norms and frameworks beyond the continued importance that China assigns to development and poverty alleviation in stability and in preventing conflict, we find that what China emphasizes in conflict prevention is quite different from some of the prevailing thinking about conflict prevention that's prominent at the United Nations. So we take a look at how China's conflict prevention preferences compare to conflict prevention practices around the world, that were around which there appears to be at least general consensus. We have to acknowledge that there is in fact no single recipe for conflict prevention and in fact the term conflict prevention is heavily debated. But that said, there is an extensive body of shared understanding gleaned from decades of systematic effort at conflict prevention around the world that we can use as a reference point to locate Chinese practices. And so we draw on a couple of frameworks. One is the conflict prevention curve that is associated with Michael Lund and there's a beautiful illustration of that on page five of the report. I won't go into the curve itself, but on the left side of the curve is peace and conflict, peace promotion, conflict prevention activities at the height of the curve is where you are dealing with the conflict itself and then on the right side is the post-conflict peace building activities. And we may reference this, I think in Ali's remarks she may reference the curve. We also reference thinking about conflict prevention that divides it into three levels. There is the systemic level which is focused on the role of global and regional multilateral institutions in conflict prevention. Then there's the structural element focused on some deep prevention activities including trying to eliminate the underlying sources of conflict. For example, strengthening human rights, building accountable governments, fostering a more robust civil society and also promoting inclusive and sustainable development. Those are all factors in this structural approach to conflict prevention. And then a third operational emphasis on conflict prevention through activities like preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping, confidence building measures, and the preventive deployment of police and other armed forces. But with an emphasis in all of these operational activities on inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability and that's a really important, those principles are important elements of these best practices in using these approaches to conflict prevention. So I'll let my colleague Ali provide more detail about all of these frameworks including the conflict curve and these three levels of framings relate to China's specific approaches to conflict prevention. But just to say we observe from our research that China's approach to conflict prevention reflects China's own long-standing preferences for non-interference, a preference for government-to-government state-to-state engagement over interaction with community organizations, civil society, opposition forces. These are norms that align with China's own preferences for a strong state and domestic stability and security. And then also an operational emphasis on preventive security measures, proactive preventive security measures. Again, I think Ali will give you some illustrates some of those points. Third, in response to our question that we posed to ourselves about where we should be looking to better understand China's approach to conflict prevention, we find that China's efforts at conflict prevention are largely concentrated along China's periphery, perhaps not surprisingly, and also where it has other significant economic and political states in the global south. And I think again we'll hear from Bates on some of the illustrative cases that we identified. And then finally in response to a fourth question that we asked about how China's approach to conflict prevention might affect multilateral security institutions, we do find that China is seeking to promote and win legitimacy for its preferred norms internationally through the United Nations and through what we call Sino-centric multilateral institutions. These are groupings where China plays a leading role. So before I yield the floor to Ali, let me just sum up by saying in short we find that China is playing a pursuing a more proactive role in international conflict prevention alongside an overall push to shape the norms of international security. And this creates both potential opportunities as well as challenges for U.S. policy. Great. Thanks so much, Carla. I'll begin by echoing my thanks as well to everyone at USIP who helped produce this report and put on the event. So as Carla mentioned, I'm going to be providing some details about where China differs and how we use our lens before moving on to dates for our findings and the case studies. So I wanted to start by addressing the question of terminology. So Carla mentioned the term conflict prevention is debated and we use it in this report and found sort of the relevant frameworks useful for our analysis. But it's important to note that the PRC officials and scholars will often avoid using this term because it can be associated in their eyes with Western intervention and in particular military intervention. So instead, China will prefer other terms, for example, and expert circles. There could be a preference for preventive diplomacy instead. And then an official discourse, some PRC activities that could be described as conflict prevention will instead fall under different labels such as promoting regional stability and security. And as some other scholars have noted, official discourse will even use alternative terms for conflict areas such as describing them as hotspots or hotspot issues. That said, Chinese officials have used the term in certain contexts, for example, in UN discussions that are explicitly about conflict prevention. And Chinese officials will also emphasize this term prevention in other contexts such as in crisis prevention between the US and China as preferable to crisis management. That being said, it can still be useful to look at China's activities through the lens of conflict prevention and in particular the framework that Carla had mentioned of systemic structural operational. But the systemic level, Chinese officials and experts have generally seen the United Nations as occupying a particularly critical position in conflict prevention and sort of describe the UN as being the most universal, representative, authoritative, intergovernmental international organization. And there is considerable consensus among both Chinese officials and scholarly communities that it is important to adhere to UN principles of sovereignty and non-interference with the will and consent of all conflict parties and especially the sitting government being respected. But how China interprets these principles can differ from how other UN member states do. So for example, looking at sovereignty and the responsibility to protect R2P promoted a more flexible understanding of sovereignty that is based on the responsibility of a state's government to protect its people. And there has been some recognition of a more limited sovereignty by Chinese officials and experts, but overall the PRC has emphasized a more status approach to R2P that focuses on strengthening prevention by building a state's capacity to protect its citizens rather than on instances where a government is unwilling or unable to act. And in addition to express support for the UN's role in conflict prevention, China has also supported regional organizations and peace and security processes and Beijing has prioritized regional entities where it exerts significant influence. And this includes the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the China Africa Peace and Security Forum, among others. And then looking at the structural level, as Carla already mentioned, there's an emphasized thinking on linking conflict prevention to economic development with experts and officials sort of making the argument that by focusing on economic development they can tackle the root causes of conflict. And then with its own activities, official statements will explicitly highlight connections between China's major development initiatives, most notably the Belt and Road Initiative and conflict mitigation. So for example, Xi Jinping in 2017 stated that we should build the Belt and Road into a road for peace and official Chinese discourse has also linked the BRI to China's role in preventive diplomacy involving various multilateral organizations, including the UN, the Arab League and the African Union. That said, again, as Carla noted, there has been a growing emphasis on security as being fundamental to both development and peace. And so this shift in Chinese foreign policy extends to global conflict prevention norms and its interactions such as the Global Security Initiative, which Beijing has promoted as another public good from China and bringing Chinese solutions and wisdom for solving security challenges facing humanity. But importantly, whether emphasizing development or security, PRC structural approaches to conflict prevention tend to favor the prerogatives of existing governments, including when these preferences run counter to other concerns related to accountability, transparency, social inclusion, et cetera. And then lastly, looking at the operational level, today China has expanded its operational role in conflict prevention through both multilateral organizations and bilateral activities. And so these include activities such as the provision of mediation services, military assistance and arm sales, as well as counterterrorism programs and law enforcement training. And I'll stop there and share it over to Beijing. Thank you very much. Take the decision about which proposals to fund. In the study you had before you, we've listed a number of examples of where that funding has gone and to give you some better sense of the priorities that we can see coming through for the funding and support of these various activities in relation to peace and security. I won't go into the details there and encourage you to have a look, but we have sort of a four principle takeaways on this particular case study. First of all, I think it's important to see this effort within the larger context of China's ongoing effort to have a greater voice, obviously within the UN system, generally, but also increasingly, especially with regard to security affairs. So steering funding towards activities obviously helps China build up a image within the United Nations as a responsible player, especially around security affairs. And we have to assume that it is through that committee that I mentioned, keen to make sure that the activities that are funded would be in alignment, in general alignment with China's interests and approaches towards conflict prevention. Secondly, another notable aspect of this peace and security fund is that much of it goes to UN training and capacity building activities through particularly three important organizations within the United Nations, the Department of Peace Operations, the Department of Political and Peace Building Affairs, and the Executive Office of the Secretary General. And those three parts of the United Nations system have received some 60 percent, received funding for some 60 percent of all the projects that were funded under this fund. Third, the African region is explicitly noted as an area of focus for this funding. And then lastly, we note that the work of this fund reflects China's ongoing strong interest in countering terrorism and encountering certain criminal activities related to terrorism, such as terrorist financing, especially again in Africa. Now, you know, there are some, I would say, vulnerabilities to some of this research, because as I said, there is not significant amounts of open source information about this fund. And of course, we have to make the assumption that UN entities have their own agency. It's not as if China's telling them what to do. And of course, at the end of the day, it's very difficult to draw causality between what may be China's preferences on conflict prevention and what the outcomes of these various activities funded are. But we nevertheless think it's significant to note these activities, little known to most persons that China is undertaking in relation to this fund. It shows a significant and ongoing investment by China to engage with the UN system and to become a more influential actor in regional security affairs, especially in relation to the issues we're following, conflict prevention, preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping, and mediation. The second major case study, we wanted to look at how China's trying to promote its version of conflict prevention norms and activities through what we've termed Sino-centric multilateral groupings or mechanisms. And in particular, in this case study, we focused on two organizations. One, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the other, the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia, often abbreviated CICA. These are two intergovernmental organizations within Central Asia primarily that are prioritizing regional security. Interestingly, in this case study, we find a great deal of work being done by China, particularly at the at the operational level of promoting conflict prevention. It also is helpful in sort of socializing and promoting China's normative approach to conflict prevention, which we go into detail using these organizations then to amplify and sort of socialize and rationalize and justify China's approach to conflict prevention. In particular, we provide a great deal of detail as to the financial and technical support for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in relation to conflict prevention activities, maybe first and foremost above of this is the significant support that China has provided over the years to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's regional anti-terrorist structure or RATS. We know that this organization is dedicated to trying to prevent terrorism, extremism and so forth, but it is almost without saying also intended to try and prevent the emergence of so-called color revolutions within the states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and particularly those within Central Asia itself. Indeed, one of our interlocutors in preparing this report made the comment that for China, conflict prevention is actually color revolution prevention. And so we see at the operational level offers by China, for example, to support the training of some 2000 law enforcement personnel from Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states to create a China SEO training base for counter-terrorism personnel and is encouraging the harmonization of legislation across SEO member states to better confront the emergence of potential security challenges within them, including a promise to assist in setting up a training center for judicial exchanges among SEO members. At the May 2023 China Central Asia summit, Xi Jinping said that China is ready to help Central Asian countries improve their law enforcement security and defense capability construction and has offered up loans to enable Central Asian states to acquire security technology. So for example, Chinese facial recognition and artificial intelligence software and other technologies. So it's a clear example, especially through the SEO of China attempting to normalize, socialize, and strengthen its approach to conflict prevention through the activities of these Sino-centric regional organizations. And the SEO is not the only example where we see these types of activities, but we focused on it in particular. Finally, thirdly, we looked at the case study of China, Solomon Islands Cooperation. And in particular, we focused on the important agreement which China and Solomon Islands reached apparently in early 2022, in which among a number of other offers of cooperation, China agreed to provide security assistance to Solomon Islands under certain circumstances. And let me just read the key clause of that document. Solomon Islands may, according to its own needs, request China to send police, armed police, military personnel, and other law enforcement and other armed forces to Solomon Islands to assist in maintaining social order, protecting people's lives and property, providing humanitarian assistance, carrying out disaster response, or providing assistance on other tasks, as agreed to by the parties. China may, according to its own needs and with the consent of Solomon Islands, make ship visits to carry out logistical replenishment in and have stopover and transition in Solomon Islands and the relevant forces of China can be used to protect the safety of Chinese personnel and major projects in Solomon Islands. It's a remarkable statement between these two countries and I think may be among the first, if not the only, such agreement, possibly with the exception of China's relations with North Korea in a formal agreement to provide armed force outside of China. In practice, this has worked out to be primarily the provision of a small team of Chinese police who are now more or less permanently stationed in Solomon Islands known as the Chinese police liaison team, which serves as a liaison function to help promote cooperation between China and Solomon Islands in the form of police training of the provision of technologies and the like. This cooperation is ongoing and as I said includes in-country work, provides training and equipment and help to bring capacity building for the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force. There have been multiple exchanges of police officers from Solomon Islands to China and Chinese police officers to the Solomon Islands to provide training, to set up a forensic autopsy laboratory, to connect the Royal Solomon Police Force to interpole systems and introduce digital communication systems and the like. The best data that we have on this is that up to the end of late 2022, this level of assistance was estimated to be around five million dollars, so still relatively small, but ongoing and on the ground activities, nonetheless. So these are the three case studies that we looked at and I think, you know, the findings there are very much consistent with the sorts of findings which Carla and Ali have already outlined. Looking at that conflict curve, what we see then is a great deal more investment than we may have seen in the past on the on the left side of that conflict curve to try and prevent the emergence of conflict within these societies, but with certain Chinese characteristics and that is by strengthening state capacity to suppress the possibility of opposition forces or disgruntlement in the life within societies to the exclusion of that more open accountable inclusive approach, which is often care of engaging with elements of civil society as a means to prevent conflict from emerging. But I'll stop there and look forward to our discussion. Thank you. And Ali and Carla really enjoyed this report. I was struck first that you've done everybody a great service because China has been pumping out policy document out of policy document proposal after proposal for all sorts of initiatives. We had the global development initiative, the global security initiative, global civilization initiative. These often have kind of catchy names, but the details of these proposals can be really quite opaque. It can be really hard to work your way through some of those documents and understand exactly what China's trying to do. And I think you've done everybody a service by unpicking some of those documents and unpicking what China's been doing and trying to present it in a more accessible fashion with some great analysis. The conflict curve, I also found a really helpful addition to the report and your point about China putting, it sounds like a lot of new energy into the left side of the curve, which is peacetime diplomacy or politics, preventive diplomacy, crisis diplomacy, peacemaking versus the right side of the curve, which is peace enforcement, peacekeeping, post conflict, peace building. That said, of course, China has got a lot going on in the peacekeeping space and has always that's been quite high profile. It's something they've been very committed to. They put a lot of money into it. And so I just felt like maybe it would be useful to just a flag, but that's still a major commitment for the PRC on the peacekeeping side. I'd like just the whole reports of a good reminder that the PRC has this very status approach. You say that they favor the prerogatives of existing governments, and you talk about how the Chinese approach doesn't tend to prioritize reaching out to other stakeholders, including opposition groups. And of course, this becomes a challenge when you do have governments that we have countries where a government may fall and a opposition group may come to power. And if China's invested a whole lot of time and energy with the existing government, that creates challenges for China's efforts going forward. And I don't know whether the documents, whether the work that you've been looking at kind of grapples it all with that challenge. Also, great case studies. The UN trust fund details were fantastic. I appreciated that you had highlighted that China had eventually promised that $1 billion to the UN trust fund and then actually ended up delivering $200 million, the details of how it operates, very helpful. With the SEO and the RATs, SEO RATs being the regional anti-terrorist structure, fantastic acronym, and the kicker, that piece was very striking in talking about the degree to which China is training police and counterterrorism personnel. The challenge is how we assess the effectiveness of that training. I mean, what is the impact of that training? And that's just so hard to get at. And I don't know if you've had any ideas about how one might get at that question, because this is that issue of when you're looking at evaluating projects, there are those indicators which are basically counting numbers, how many trainings offered, how many people trained, versus the qualitative, the outcome indicator on what's the outcome of all that. And I know that through some work, I know Maria Rettnikova has done work like that, looking at the effectiveness of PRC media training, but I don't know if we have, I mean, if there's any work out there, looking at the effectiveness of those efforts to train police forces and other kind of security personnel. And the Solomon Islands piece is also fascinating. And I hadn't realized that, yeah, but this is the perhaps only thing that provides armed forces outside China. It seems kind of quite different from, I mean, what they're doing in the Solomon Islands, you talk about it as perhaps kind of a pilot or an idea of where China might be going. But I'm very struck at how different that seems from some of the things that China has done before. The report talks a lot about the coherence of sort of the way China talks about these things, but you also do highlight some of the contradictions in the way that China is going about its approach to conflict prevention or management. Particularly the one that seems to just sort of leap out, of course, is the Russian war in Ukraine. And you note that China says that it has this kind of rhetorical commitment to sovereignty and to Ukraine's sovereignty, and yet it doesn't condemn Moscow's invasion and deepening ties with Russia. And it's keeping its ties with Russia. So it seems like within that coherence, I guess it calls into question how coherent the whole thing is when you have such a big outlier like that. The questions for you, I guess a couple of questions. So one, you have recommendations in your section of recommendations to the US. You say that China's initiatives have aspects that are assessed as beneficial by many countries around the world, including some US allies and partners. You then recommend that Washington should respond to China's activities with policies that reflect unwelcome elements, but also identify opportunities to engage with constructive PRC contributions. So that sort of begs the question, what do you see as the constructive elements of China's approach? What are China's constructive contributions? That's one question, and I have a follow-up, but maybe we'll look at that one. I'm actually not going to turn this over to you, Bates, but I do want to say to the audience that we would love to have your comments and questions. I know looking at the audience there's some leading experts on this topic here, and we had planned for you to write your questions on note cards. So I don't know if you have any of those yet, and if you have questions, and then we'll collect all of them. I think the note cards are there, but if that's not an efficient enough process, we can also just use the microphone that Bates has in his hand, but Bates maybe I'll let you start with an answer to this question, and I'll probably make some comments as well. Well, I mean, I think we point, for example, to the work of this peace and security sub-fund in the United Nations, you know, this is providing, I think, legitimate and useful capacity building to such agencies as the Office of Terrorism and Crime, obviously peace building activities, strengthening the capacity of those blue helmet forces and so on. I would think that could be a relatively neutral area where the US and China could come to some common ground about, you know, supporting those sorts of activities under the auspices of the United Nations and presumably already, of course, the United States is doing a lot of that. But, you know, you could certainly try to find some common ground there. Looking at other areas of activity, you know, I think there's an effort underway now to do more in the way of trying to limit the spread of small arms and light weapons in areas of conflict. It strikes me that that would be an obvious potential area of the United States and China to be doing more as a kind of approach to conflict prevention. But there may well be many, many others. I guess we just had in mind that there, you know, we didn't want to make the case that everything China was up to was necessarily malign, but that we should be at least aware fundamentally of the different normative approach and different sort of principles that China's bringing to the table in many of the ways that it wants to promote conflict prevention. Yeah, I guess I would, yeah, I agree with Bates. I can't say have much more to add. But yeah, I would just say that we wanted to highlight that when dealing with sort of countries, particularly those in the global south, I think having this narrative that is entirely pitting China in the negative can be very difficult for the US to come in. And then while we need to sort of present our own sort of solutions where appropriate, that many states do sort of need help with capacity building. And sort of if there's a way that we can work or sort of provide areas of convergence to have this capacity building, then that would be beneficial for sort of both the US interests within the state, within states within the global south, as well as sort of what the global south is looking for. I think generally speaking, just as with the Belt and Road Initiative, this effort by China and the Global Security Initiative really does shine light on areas where the United States needs to make bigger investments around the world. And I think that's a big takeaway. We've also seen China play a constructive role in what could be considered preventive diplomacy, say for example, the Iran-Saudi deal there and also in efforts to mitigate conflict in the Great Lakes region of East Africa and so on. So there are spaces where China is a trusted partner of many of these countries and where their efforts should be recognized and valued. I mean, in conversations with some Chinese experts even about the Iran-Saudi deal, they will highlight the importance that the Abraham Accord played in the ability for that deal to be done. So that would be a case of indirect, a process that involves two major powers improving peace and security in a region. Just a quick question for me and then we should go to the audience. But I wondered about the policy actors within China involved in these initiatives. So you're talking about how China's approach has moved more, it's moved away from development being central to development and security being at least equal and maybe security first. So are we seeing much greater involvement from the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of State Security, you know those kinds of, we just saw the Ministry of State Security weighing in on the issue of US-China relations, which was the kind of unusual thing to see the Ministry of State Security doing. So are we seeing them becoming much bigger actors globally and also the party? And I was struck, I just was thinking that you talked about how in the Solomon Islands one of the motivations perhaps for China's activities there is this desire to protect ethnic Chinese in the Solomon Islands. That idea of protection of overseas Chinese or just sort of engagement with overseas Chinese has been an integral part of China's, the Communist Party's United Front Work Department. And the party holds up the China's evacuation of civilians from Libya in 2011 as an example of a strong United Front activity that they undertook. So is the United Front part of any of these initiatives? Is it part of what's happening in the Solomon Islands? Anyway, but policy actors on the PRC side. Well just just quickly to your point about the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of Public Security, definitely those two actors are more significant, particularly on the operational side. We see a much bigger role for the Ministry of Public Security. And this is true with respect to China's relations with Central Asia. And also we mentioned the Global Security Initiative that there is a pilot project that will be at least as proposed within the Lansang Refund Cooperation. It looks like the lead actor there on some of the activities at least is the Ministry of Public Security. So I think I'll let Vapes respond on the Solomon case because he really took the lead in that. That's certainly the Ministry of Public Security. I think you know the training for example is being done I think by the Fujian Province Public Security Bureau. So they're playing a very, very big role there. And you know I likened a little bit to the whole gray hall, white hall, gray zone differentiation that we see in places like the South China Sea. And it's obviously much less controversial to have members of the Ministry of Public Security police force making this first foray rather than sending the green uniformed PLA into these situations. So I think it's a kind of a testing of the waters in a way. So we do see an expansion of the Ministry of Public Security and its related entities. You know in terms of the technology and surveillance and other support services for the police. So they're playing a much, much bigger role. Ministry of State Security, do you see them playing a big role too? I've not seen any overt evidence of that but being primarily I think concerned with internal Chinese internal security but you know no doubt elements of internal state's repression and tech maybe technologies and tactics in that regard may well be finding their way you know out into these efforts of conflict prevention that China's engaging with other countries. Do we have questions from the audience? I think we have to get cards around. We have questions. Adam Fields, Department of State, I just returned from Beijing actually a foreign service tour. This is a very timely and interesting conversation. I'm wondering if I can just two questions. In your research if you were able to sort of pick up on anything regarding what I think is a really underappreciated component of the topic you're discussing and that's the announcement I think it was late last year that the PRC wanted to organize an international organization for mediation I think in Hong Kong and there's very little information about that organization however my understanding is unlike GSI or GDI or GCI which are more slogans this will actually have a secretariat with rules for new members which is much more institutionalized than say even BRI and if there's any info you have on that it would be very interesting and then the second in your research a lot of the people I spoke with over the last three years on this topic and I can't quantify this but they linked the rise in sort of Xi Jinping's domestic security focused slogans like comprehensive national security his emphasis on political security bottom line thinking with the with a sort of a corresponding outward push particularly along the BRI to focus more on security and a lot of them sort of reasoned that this was a just a sort of natural manifestation of what Xi's domestic priorities were sort of spreading out not intentionally per se but that everybody along in the PRC system had to think about these slogans and incorporate those into their work even if they were working on a you know hydropower project in an African country and if during your research if you found any of those sort of links particularly quantitative data on the domestic linking with the with a global would be interesting. Thanks maybe I've given that our time is short we might take one more question I think there's a question in the far left there if you have a question we might just take one more if you have a question. Thank you so much I'm Eduardo Haramio from the China project and something that really jumped out to me just now this kind of small detail talking about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and cooperation on judicial matters setting up a judicial training center not something we usually or that I usually think of China as a leader on or as a shining example on the world stage and I know this isn't really the the main topic of that case study but it just jumped out to me and I'm wondering if you can add any detail on what that looks like in practice or maybe just comment on what might be the judicial principles or lessons that China wants to share or you know spread across the region. So maybe we'll go with those two questions start and then we can take more time allows thank I'll just thank you for that that great question and also the point about perhaps this is you know Xi Jinping thought being transmitted along the Belt and Road I yeah it's a question that I have and I we don't address it in this report per se but in some other research that I've done I'm trying to see whether lessons from the field kind of to the extent to which those may be impacting China's thinking about security and development along the Belt and Road and you know one great case study there is the China-Pakistani economic corridor where you had you know a huge amounts of Chinese investment forward into that very bold initiative to transform Pakistan and stabilize it and by 2017-2018 it was fairly clear that things were not going well and actually when Xi Jinping makes the statement about the BRI as a road of peace in 2017 that's sort of that that's a turning point as far as I can see where feedback from BRI projects building up and perhaps influencing Xi Jinping's thinking about and maybe China's thinking depending on where you place decision-making in China about the Belt and Road and how to address security concerns and so it's with CPEC you see the introduction of a new new Pakistan agency to manage security along the Belt and Road and a lot more emphasis by China pressure by China on Pakistan to protect its assets along the Belt and Road you see you've done a little bit of work on some other projects you see a similar kind of pattern elsewhere so that it could be that it's kind of a natural extension of domestic politics and in fact it is I mean everything that China is doing is about domestic security and political and economic security but it also could be feedback as well from what's happening on the ground beyond China's borders and it doesn't surprise me that it would prioritize what's happening right along its periphery those places to have the biggest spillover potential spillover effects and impacts on China's own security so that's that's what I would I have that's the comment I make as far as the the this judicial training I I think this is something we're going to see a lot more of and it it reflects an emphasis on by Xi Jinping on on lawmaking and the whole discussion about you know laws in in authoritarian or in in Marxist-Leninist countries and their their role is is a really interesting one that is an area of scholarship that I have not explored yet but I think we will actually have a chance to learn more about this because the next phase of our project will focus on Central Asia so stay tuned if you have any online country do you want to do online? Sure I'll just touch briefly on the international organization for mediation I think that yeah I think you know as much as we do at the moment I think that they they'd opened up the preparatory office in Hong Kong just in February and I think sort of limited has come out of it sort of just sort of promoting it as the first intergovernmental legal organization dedicated to resolving international disputes through mediation so it seems like it will be more structured and I think it has an interesting list of signatories to the joint statement including Algeria, Belarus, Cambodia, Djibouti, Indonesia, Laos, Kazakhstan, Serbia and Sudan so but we haven't necessarily seen it put into practice yet and so what that means on the ground I think is also something that we'll be looking at for the next stages of our research. I'll just say that you know broadening out from your question about the relationship between domestic and the foreign it's not only at this operational level of trying to really strengthen state capacity on the left side of the conflict curve it's also about spreading the normative understanding that state centricity and absolute sovereignty is okay and should be acceptable and in fact not only acceptable but applauded and appreciated because that is what ultimately will in this this is the Chinese protection or this is their principle that is going to guarantee security more than anything else so socializing that norm is all what's going on here even as the operational activities are also underway so it's very much in my mind a way of legitimizing the internal externally and it's being done in myriad ways not just in in relation to conflict progression as you well know um so I see it in that context very much very much so thank you all very much I think we might be at time Victor do you have one more thing may I just I mean I just wanted to you asked a really good question at the beginning about um you know basically makes the question why is China um seeming to be putting more emphasis on the left side of the conflict curve why is that given that over the previous eight 20 years we've seen this enormous investment in UN peacekeeping for example which you know should be I think applauded and appreciated um and I would just have two quick responses to that one China's hands are tied more on the right side of the conflict curve a you know they can't just undertake those sort of peacekeeping activities by itself unilaterally it has to do it through the UN system and and and too often in China's view the exercise of UN sanctioned force has been done in a way that they don't like that that they would claim you know western powers you know unfairly or unjustly convinced the UN to to intercede and intervene in ways or to sanction interventions that were in the end of the day um unjust in China's view and I think the real tipping point there obviously was in relation to the Libyan intervention and so I think maybe they're walking away from that a little bit and not finding as much value in what what what it wants to see done through that side of activity and secondly this is um you know the right side of the left side of the curve is where China has a lot of strengths right they can deliver surveillance they can deliver police training they can deliver um um normative approaches about state centricity and and state capacity um and they can do it themselves unilaterally with the people they want to rather than all the complications of dealing with the international system and the UN system and so on so it seems somewhat contradictory because of course China is a major supporter of the UN uh at at a certain rhetorical level but I think it's often frustrated at an operational level of what it can and cannot do of course there's a lot of resources into UN peacekeeping and dot warfight there's room for debate with those um I think this would be an interesting subject to to kind of probe a bit further what's going on with the peacekeeping fight uh we are at time however so thank you very much for that fascinating uh set of presentations and for a great uh report that I think will be a wonderful resource for all of us um going forward and thank you all very much for coming today and for those of you online for logging on thank you