 First of all, I'd like to thank you all for taking time out of your schedules to make it here today. My name is Scott Wingo, and I served as the editor-in-chief for the inaugural issue of the Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs. We have a great lineup of speakers today, and are glad you could join us to celebrate the journal's first issue. Our journal aims to be relevant to both academic and policy discussions through the publication of both longer peer-reviewed articles and shorter policy-oriented articles and interviews. We hope to publish fresh perspectives from academics, practitioners, and students on current issues regarding the politics, security, economics, and societies of the world's most populous and economically fastest-growing region. In that light, we chose Negotiating Growth in Asia as the theme of our first issue. The idea of growth is pervasive in Asia today. This is most obvious in the economic sense of the word. Billions of people across the region are emerging from poverty in what must be considered history's greatest economic success story to date. Asia is now the world's manufacturing hub, and is increasingly a source of technological innovation. This transformation has far-reaching effects on actors both inside and outside the region. Our inaugural issues theme, Negotiating Growth in Asia, is about how governments and citizens alike react to these changes. At the international level, China's economic growth is fueling a corresponding rise in its geopolitical profile. And this rapid ascension is impossible to ignore. As the home of the world's largest population and second-largest economy, China has unique potential to fundamentally alter the regional and global geopolitical order. Asian states are responding to China's rise in a variety of manners, as is exemplified in a piece in our issue by CSIS's own Ellen Kim on new developments in Sino-South Korean relations in the U.S.-South Korea security alliance. Today, Mr. Christopher Johnson will speak about the rise of China and its geopolitical ramifications in Asia. Within states, too, economic growth has the potential to create political change. According to a variety of theories and historical precedents, economic growth and democratization frequently go hand-in-hand, and prospects for political reform are another important component of growth in Asia. Our first issue includes writings on democratization in the developing states of Myanmar, Thailand, and Indonesia, as well as a fairly timely article on the implications of Hong Kong's recent protests for the future of governments, not only in Hong Kong but also in Taiwan and mainland China. Asia's patterns of governance are very much in flux, and Dr. Apichai Shipper will speak today about what might lie ahead for the continent. Finally, economic growth itself creates a raft of issues for policymakers to negotiate. The economy sometimes stubbornly abides in the face of growth, and policymakers misdrive to find ways to ensure that Asia's growth does not leave behind many of the region's people. At the same time, political complications can hinder economic growth. In this light, our first issue includes articles on the politics of economic reform in India and on North Korean citizens' attempts to bolster their own food security through black market channels. Ambassador Robert Orr will discuss possibilities for the future trajectory of growth in Asia. I would like to thank everyone who helped to create our first issue. Our authors, reviewers, publishers, and editorial staff put great effort into launching an all-new journal, and their hard work is appreciated. Thanks also go out to Dr. Victor Cha and the staff of the Asian Studies Department at Georgetown University, who all played major roles in the establishment of the journal and for CSIS for agreeing to host us here today. Finally, we would like to thank our speakers for agreeing to join us today and our readers for their support. Without further ado, Dr. Cha will introduce our speakers. Thanks Scott. So before I introduce the speakers, I just want to echo the congratulations to the journal for its first issue. If you haven't been able to pick up a copy, I think we have copies, some outside, and then you can also see it online. We really tried to be different with this journal in the sense that there are scholarly pieces, but there are shorter op-ed pieces, and we're trying to feature sort of the new younger voices on Asian policy as well as senior scholars in this. So we're quite happy with this first issue. It's been quite successful. We're using CSIS today as a platform to celebrate the journal. And I want to thank Scott and the editorial team, as well as Daie, Shim Lee, in our program at Georgetown who has been instrumental also in bringing this journal to creation. So really congratulations to you guys. You deserve all the credit, and we just expect better and better things to come. But we knew that that wasn't the only reason you would come today, so we decided to put together a panel of people and give you some food. And so the theme, as Scott said, is negotiating growth in Asia. And it's a broad enough theme so that our speakers can take different aspects of it. We think it's a fantastic panel of people, and I will introduce them to you very briefly because I think they're well known to most of you. At the far right end is Christopher Johnson, who is the Freeman Chair here at CSIS in China Studies, as well as a senior advisor. Chris comes from many, many years as one of the senior analysts on China in the U.S. intelligence community. And he's really one of the best scholars and practitioners on China and Chinese leadership. Speaking next is Apochai Shipper. Apochai teaches for us at Georgetown in the graduate program in Asian Studies, where he is an adjunct associate professor. He previously taught at USC and is currently the Asia Regional Chair at the Foreign Service Institute for the State Department. And then, of course, Ambassador Skip Orr, who is currently the U.S. Executive Director to the Asian Development Bank. But Skip has also held many quite prestigious positions as Chairman of the Board of the Panasonic Foundation, as President of Boeing Japan, as well as Vice President and Director for European Affairs from Motorola. He's fighting a bad cold today, so we really appreciate you joining us. And we can get you some hot tea or something to be like along the way. Thank you. I know that Chris has to catch either a plane train or a boat to go somewhere, so I'm going to let him go first on the topic of growth as it relates to China. Great. Thanks, Victor. Just to thank you for the opportunity to be here, and I'm very happy to be associated with the Journal through its advisory board as well, so I'm very pleased with that position and thankful for that opportunity. And I actually read through the pieces during the holiday break, and I really think it's an outstanding piece, so I'm very proud of all the work that was done. You know, obviously China's growth and rise in influence is a huge topic. I think I've been giving the time of 14 minutes or something like that, so let me think about some ways to think about it. I think the main thing, and the main theme to sort of strike, and it runs, I think through a lot of the articles and pieces in the first issue, is this notion of how, two questions. One, what kind of China does China want to be now that it is rising in this way? And two, how is the region thinking about that and how do they intend to react or identify with that? I think the answer to the first question is very complex. My sense is that this is a decade-long debate that will go on maybe longer inside China. We're beginning to see the parameters of where the current leadership under Xi Jinping tends to define this notion and the direction that they're probably going in. I would recommend to everybody in the audience, if they haven't done so, take a very good look at the excerpts that were released. Xi Jinping gave a sort of very major keynote speech at this Central Foreign Affairs Work Conference last month. These events are very rare. They only happen maybe once every five years, once a decade. It's been since 2006, was the last one under Hu Jintao. And it really created the opportunity to define his foreign policy vision for China. And I think if there's a bumper sticker that came out of the speech, which was quite lengthy, the idea is we're here, get used to it. That's sort of the approach. And it's a much more proactive sort of flavor to Chinese foreign policy than we've seen in the past. I think a challenge is how do you think about this in terms of, well, what does proactive or active mean? I think it's hard in this town in particular to try to take a nuanced approach and not suggest that active somehow means aggressive or pushy or so on. I think it's just active. And for now, we have to watch and see what China is going to do. But in that document, in that speech, it's very, very clear that Xi Jinping's view is that China is the center of the region, will continue to be so in the future. And what's really interesting is that there's a fundamental shift in the way I think he and the Chinese leadership at large are defining how the region is growing in China's role in that. Previously, I think with concepts that they've had like the period of strategic opportunity, peaceful development, things like this, the notion has been China's very benign. They have benefited very much from this benign external environment that has allowed them to focus on their internal development. And that's a gift, if you will, to them that is fragile and to be cherished and so on in that within the limits of China's capabilities, they would seek to prolong that period of strategic opportunity and to push out the parameters of that sort of benign external environment. I think in Xi Jinping's speech, while he recognizes the term period of strategic opportunity, he's basically redefining it in his own terms where China is very much the engine of what's happening in the region, especially on the economic growth side. And so I think as much as we talk about China's branching out in the maritime space in the South China Sea, East China Sea and so on, the thing that really strikes me about the speech is Xi Jinping's clear goal to establish an economic framework in the region because I think what we see coming out of that is his recognition of this fundamental notion that in the region, economics is security. And he's trying to draw a very strong contrast, I think, with those comments between what he sees the US doing or I think we'd all agree not doing with regard to TPP and so on and what China is attempting to do. So you see that at APEC he signs FTAs with South Korea, with Australia, lots of talk about FTAP as an organization and so on and then the speech immediately follows that. It's all an orchestrated whole. And so I think then the question becomes how is the region itself going to react to this development? How are they going to think about what options do they have to consider given that this is the goal that China seems to be pursuing? And I think as the United States we have to think about what role we're going to play in that. And for the region, I think it's very much how do they, I mean we've seen this pattern now for some time but I think it's been amplified in the last few years, how do they take advantage of China's economic growth and dynamism while still maintaining their own sort of sense of self and not being drawn into a Chinese-driven orbit or system in the region? And I think if you look at what's happened over the last year in particular, again some fairly forward-leaning behavior by China and South China Sea elsewhere, a bit of an immune response from the region and some dialing back from the Chinese in terms of their approach. The warming or thawing I guess you could say with Japan, although it's been interesting there hasn't been much follow-up since the meeting between Abe and Xi Jinping. Obviously in the South China Sea I think we're seeing a sort of calming influence happening there. And so the question is how durable is all of that or was it just designed to kind of get them through APEC smoothly and what are they going to do this year? Obviously we've got a couple of key challenges there, one with the 70th anniversary of World War II which will make it very difficult for certain parties inside China to resist the opportunity to go hard on the history issue with the Japanese. And then of course while things have not been as contentious with Vietnam or the Filipinos in recent months, all of the sort of pressing and work continues unabated in terms of land reclamation, heavy patrolling, all this sort of stuff that we've seen. So Xi Jinping has been talking a lot internally about the normal in terms of China's economic development model which means slower growth, higher quality growth, etc. I think there's a new normal in foreign policy too and it's this notion that the Chinese are going to be very present, they're going to be very active in the region and they do have an intention to build some of these which could be described as parallel structures that while perhaps not directly competing with things like the Bretton Woods system certainly are designed to act as Asia unique manifestations of a similar model and how do we as the United States in the region deal with those? Do we try to in a way force the Chinese into integrating those institutions into the existing institutions or do we accept that there's another pathway and that those institutions can exist independently? And I don't think China's been entirely clear yet in defining for itself to run those institutions. There's a lot of commentary publicly that these institutions are a dagger pointed at the heart of the Bretton Woods system. I mean my own view is that that's rather laughable simply because China doesn't have the capacity or the intention to engage in that kind of behavior at this point in time. For the US side, I mean my strong sense is it starts with a recognition that the ground is actually shifted in the region. I think we've been, the administration has been slow to acknowledge this. I think they are now, certainly they've talked a lot about China's rise and the implications thereof in the US strategy and trying to bring China onto the world stage but also reminding China that there are agreed upon rules and norms in the region. Very dramatic shift in the foreign policy toward this more active stance. I think we've been slow to come to terms with that and think about how we're going to react. And to me that's what's going to define this new style of great power relations as the Chinese like to call it our major country relations between the United States and China is how do we allow for that rise while maintaining obviously our own presence, interest, influence in the region and you know doing our best to see if China will accommodate to these sort of global rules and norms even though they didn't have a hand in shaping most of them. So I think that's going to be the fundamental challenge for this century and probably beyond in terms of adjusting to China's rise and power. Great, thanks. Thanks Chris, very good. Up to China. Yes, first I want to congratulate the Georgetown Journal of Asian Studies or Asian Affairs and particularly congratulations to Georgetown University and to Georgetown University Asian Studies program and to you as well Victor Shah for putting this together as well as a great journal. Although I have not seen yet but I've seen some of, I've been a reviewer for one of the articles there. It looks quite promising and so I congratulate all of the students involved in that journal and if I could be of any help or assistance in the near future let me know. As you know I'm also employed by Victor. Also thank you to everyone here attending and as I am also a government official I am here as a Georgetown University researcher and here at private capacity and what I say is all my views and not the view of the U.S. government the State Department or the Foreign Service Institute. So when I first studied particular economy of development about a decade and a half ago and first taught particular economy of development one of the main theories that we study was modernized Asian theory and the argument for and that theory is that as a country develop economically and grow it will become more and more democratic. There's many variations of that theory and so many scholars, many researchers then want to find out if this is whether true or not and they examined maybe a country at what level of economic development does it become a democratic country at 5,000 GDP per capita or 6,000 GDP per capita. Other also look at at what point do we recognize a country as democracy when there's a regular change of government or transition in government or is there an assistance of competitive parties or their existence of social equality within the in the society. I think so many very scholars have actually tried to address these issues for the past two decades in some way or the other and as a somebody who's training imperative political science that is one of the theories that we explore quite seriously and in my areas of studies and research in Asia and when we look at the experiences in Asia and see how does theories really apply to Asia we see that maybe in northern east Asian countries like Korea, Japan, Taiwan this maybe it appears to apply to those countries because as you see as they become more modernized they become actually more quite democratic particularly in the past two decades or so but the rest of it looks actually it looks quite different and this is where the theories may not apply so so well particularly if you look at place like such countries like China like Vietnam it has been growing very fast for decades I think for the past two decades but there seems to be no sign of a democratic transition however I think what is really true sign maybe that you don't see so much of democratic transition I think what's you know so you wouldn't see this a high as increase of economic growth and development then you will see an increase in democracy but I think what you definitely see in these socialist countries when you see higher growth and fast growth you probably also also see an increase in corruption as well anything the country is trying to deal with with that situation how to deal with corruption and trying to police their barriers and politicians when I look at Southeast Asian countries today who would have thought two decades ago that the the shining light of Southeast Asian democracy would be Indonesia right after over three decades of of of so hot and today I think by many people's standards you know Indonesia seem to be look quite good in terms of democratic on the democratic front in fact I think many scholars particularly Southeast Asian scholars in the late 1990s would have predicted that the best prospect for democratic development and democracy in Southeast Asia would have been Thailand look at Thailand today is under military authoritarian rule with restrictive freedoms in that country and if you look in terms of other country as well if you look at that modernization theory does not apply it does not work so well if you look at for example at Myanmar or Burma here is I think the arrow is going to reverse because actually Myanmar actually democratized first before it reached growth so that does not work so well I think if it's it raises very interesting questions in among scholars and it was policymakers I think that we look at that many Southeast Asia it appeared that Myanmar or Burma or even Cambodia look actually more democratic in many Southeast Asia and who have thought that two decades ago when many people think oh look at Thailand and what Thailand will be doing so these countries I think they defy modernizing theories because if you're looking where they were how they were transformed so that's one aspect of it another aspect of it is also to look at at the how did how did these countries were transformed for example Indonesia was transformed become more democratic society after the Asian financial crisis in 1997 so it was a crisis that actually stimulated the fall of Suhato and of and what came after afterwards in Thailand as well Thailand actually after 1997 it actually became more it was a very democratic country it became more and more democratic societies as its revised constitution right right after the crisis and its its market and its and its politics became more and more decentralized and it passed one of the most democratic constitutions in its in its history so in the case of Thailand in democracies hit with a with an economic crisis actually result in deepening of democracy in that society and Myanmar and Burma is quite interesting because that's a that's a country that actually it democratized first through the military which allowed for economic development growth today and if you look in terms of the military I just came back from from Burma I was there just last week and even looking at the military today it look internally like it's actually look more democratic than even its opposition parties even in the USDP that is the military government where you see the interim of advisories and in terms of structure of governance it's actually look quite democratic in the internal structure whereas the NDL I'm sorry the NLD party the party of the opposition of Aung San Suu Kyi it's much more hierarchical and much more top-down in terms of structure so it even within its military and and within its political parties you see a much more democratic structure which can you know which has a lot of great prospect for people here in DC when we look at what would happen to to Burma after the election this this summer and so the case and what is interesting about about Thailand is that in Thailand he suffered gravely because of the military that happened in the past two decades and this is one of the reasons why I think growth and democracies has not played you can see a collaboration between democracy and growth and because of the nature of the military in in Thai politics unlike other societies unlike the United States where you see the military is under civilian control the Thai militaries are not under civilian control if anything they're under the control or I should say the to be to be exact because I think in trouble with with this to be exact the Thai militaries appears to be they pledge allegiance to the king how's that so but they don't have to even under civilian control and so as a result coups actually happened in in in Thailand quite often and they posed as a constraints to Thai democratization we can also see similar similarity with other countries in Southeast Asia like Singapore or in Malaysia as well in terms of its economic rise as well as democracy we have regular elections in those countries in those two countries but they're usually dominated by one party in Singapore by the PAP people action party and Malaysia is umno so it's not completely democratic in in that sense so in my conclusion on in in terms of colorations I see no economic growth I see that economic growth has no correlation with democracy and and democratic development in Southeast Asia but it's not to say that I'm pessimistic about about the future of growth and and democracy in in Asia so because although I don't see a structural transformation for democratization in these countries that that is you don't see a structural change in those societies societies I actually in my own research I have seen a progress towards democratic deepening in certain societies in Asia and as we witness them through the process of policy changes especially those policies in regards to citizenship and foreign workers and those are the areas that I do research and one of my students here know quite well and might this argument quite well so I'm not going to go into detail but the to summarize the argument is that when you look at at what's happening in Asia of late in terms of economic growth a company was also accompanied by a growth in migrant workers both internally as well as internationally and these people are the forces for for for transformation in those societies in those societies not structural transformation per se but but transformation through small and and consistent incremental changes through policies because as those people migrant workers move from one country to another they also they also ignite as activism social movement particularly among small social like NGOs to that's trying to push the society so their society so society to to pass laws that will change that will become more accommodating to to foreigners in terms of citizenship laws labor laws laws again trafficking so the list of laws are very extensive in all of those in many of these advanced industrial and advanced societies in Asia particularly in northeast Asia like Japan Korea and Taiwan and it's also it's also taking place also in Southeast Asia like Thailand itself where it is experienced about an influx of foreign workers coming from Cambodia Burma and and Laos and although the country's structurally is not democratic we see some of the laws and the that are they're considering in terms of changing and mending become much more democratic in terms of trying to be more accommodating towards towards foreigners in those in those societies so in that sense I actually see I'm quite optimistic that Asian society society in countries we become more and more you can see more and more democratic deepening in those societies as a result of internal as well as international migration I didn't mention internal one but it is one it's Chris probably can do can deal with much deeply within the internal migrants in China and moving from the western part to the eastern sections of the eastern ports of China and as a result you have about more than 200 millions of those internal migrants working in in the eastern coast and the situation that they deal with the who called what family registration is one of the concerns that the Japanese government is thinking and the leadership are trying to revise because they have to think how to deal and how to accommodate those internal migrants so these movements of people within Asia and between Asian countries I think are the forces for democratic change in those in those societies and and and I have a great very optimistic and great hope for the future of Asia that's the size because of that so great so we've heard about power and we've heard about democracy and now we're thinking about money investor or thanks for joining us thanks professor Shaw I just want to and I'm sorry if my voice sounds like a bullfrog but I also want to congratulate Georgetown for the launch of the Journal of Asian Studies you know I have to say that when I saw people like Victor and Mike Green and whatnot coming all over coming to Georgetown I knew that the game had changed at Georgetown because frankly when I was a student a graduate student at Georgetown Asian Studies was nowhere of course that was just after the American Civil War but you know I'd like to talk a little bit about where Asia has come from in many ways it will be reflective of some of the things that you both said and you know I'm actually a Japan hand more than more broadly and that's one of the reasons why the Obama administration sent me to to the Asian Development Bank because it's basically managed by the Japanese and they'd never had someone with that background there and I think it's helped maybe it hasn't but I've done my best at any rate Japan was in tatters of course in 1945 and by by 56 you could see the trajectory beginning to change but I always chart the real launch of Japan I mean to what to the extent that it was a very different kind of developing country to the 1964 Olympic Games where a great deal of infrastructure was brought in for example many of you know the bullet train that's a World Bank project you know the highway structure of Tokyo was all World Bank and so at the same time and again kind of looking a little bit like China it was the second largest borrower of of World Bank loans next to India it sort of mirrors China because in our case everybody at least in not only this administration but in past administrations as China has risen been trying to figure out how we can graduate China because China you know as some people in the administration have said to me how can we how can the ADB support a China as the largest borrower when it has a manned space program and so you know that's a legitimate point from the perspective of the banks like Asian Development Bank or World Bank they they appear as the best customers because they they are very you know responsive to paying back and whatnot but the United States when we look at China I'd say over 50 percent of the loans that come before the ADB board we have to abstain on and the only things that we can really support is if it is these are loans extended to the poorest parts of the country in the west and there is a basic human needs element but we put in a conundrum because for example not so long ago I had to abstain from a project that actually made a lot of sense and that was a clean bus system in Beijing clean energy which is something normally we would support but because it's in Beijing and there's no basic human needs element to it we couldn't support it so that's the kind of you know challenge that we have you know if you look back at the 1950s think about South Korea in Taiwan I mean these were these were backwater economies and not even back to the 50s really the 60s and even the early 70s I mean they were you didn't really talk about them in serious terms and now they're global leaders and that's remarkable progress in the region I think so what is Asia well Asia of course is is incredibly diverse it includes the strongest economies as I mentioned Japan Hong Kong Republic of Korea Singapore the second largest economy in the world China which as I mentioned is also the largest borrower of loans also like India and Indonesia and Vietnam that are middle-income countries what and as of recent years for example what are the fastest growing economies in Asia well Cambodia and Mongolia reached 20% in 2011 which is I think quite quite unique so in Asia these countries coexist with numerous small underdeveloped economies such as Afghanistan a few more less day Nepal and all of those Pacific Island states you know we estimate that rather you know the ADB estimates that because of the challenges of climate change we have 12 borrowers who are from the Pacific island states we predict within 15 years we'll have five because they won't be there anymore and that's a real challenge for the for those in the bank as we go forward and trying to figure out how to support them but it's a region with a lot of paradoxes it's the world's fastest growing region and still has nearly half of the world's poor poorest who live on less than a buck and a quarter a day while the hub of manufacturing and its services the vast numbers of its people are illiterate and unemployed so you've got that that dynamic climate contradiction between very fast growing and in the fall behinds they've got Asia has these vastly rapid aging societies in the same region with you know like Japan and China in the same region of with countries like Pakistan Philippines and many Central Asian states with really high population rates give you a little thing I mean since I live in the Philippines you know 100 years ago the population of the Philippines was 8 million and today it's about 110 million in that time period and so the growth has been really really dramatic to many Asians it's not really about the emergence of Asia I would I would argue but in many ways people in Asia have a deep sense of history and I think to many in Asia it's about the reemergence of Asia because before the period of colonialism say before the 1700s Asia had a larger had a larger economies than those in Europe at that time and then after the advent of colonialism it's taken a long time you know if we to get back at this rate if of development in about 30 years Asia will have about will be have a GDP of about 40,500 per capita which will be consistent with with Europe as a whole but you know with all of these possibilities for Asia it's not a it's not an automatic there are so many I think stumbling blocks that face the countries of Asia you know biggest going forward issues are things like while Asia overall is is is marching forward with very dynamic economies the inequality in these countries is significant and it is a challenge for political instability it is not an easy issue so we often talk about inclusive growth in the ADB and in the World Bank in that in the sense that development cannot simply take place like it did in the past in Asia in the past in Asia I think in part because of this concern about recolonization Asia you know went forward with development irrespective of inclusive growth irrespective of safeguards pollution issues were overwhelming take a look at China issues like resettlement when major energy projects such as hydroelectric dams are made or are built serious issues because sometimes these countries think about that last and it's a real challenge also for the donors political leadership is a real challenge I think going forward in Asia not only Asia but I think that the kind of political leadership that is you know reflects movement toward democratic order is is vital and I think a lot of that is connected with education and the extent to which the populace the voters are educated about the issues in their own countries and and governance and institutional capacity are very key and that also relates back to what I was saying about safeguards these governance issues and by the way I might add you know this is not the thrust of my talk here although I've been talking about this particular topic for a long time now AIIB which as many of you know is the Asian infrastructure investment back that is coming to in China one of the challenges that they're going to have is governance they have elected not to have a resident board whether that will change or not I can't say but nonetheless I think people in the Asian Development Bank want to work together with the AIIB because you know they they will hopefully gain some strengths from the ADB it's not going to go away it's going to be there it's going to be a player but again I just want to mention that because of good governance and the fact that they're not going to they as of now will not have a resident board so how is growth conceptualized in the region well as I mentioned before Asia was all about growth after world war two at any price so labor environment human rights often after thoughts as I mentioned the whole idea was to catch up drive you know catch up to the west they weren't going to be Asian countries were not going to be colonies again although that has not precluded other Asian countries trying to colonize on the road and speaking mainly of from the west poor people bringing poor people out of poverty without land reform however is is a really it's almost a non-starter the if you take a look at the Philippines for example where ironically general mccarthur was you know the the was the what's the word commissioner of the Philippines for many years there was no land reform and in the Philippines today the kind of crony system is quite intact and there's this huge gap between the poorest and the and the and the monied quite in contrast to Japan where the land reform did come in where mccarthur did lead that in and he had no opportunity to become cronies with the Japanese didn't speak that much English anyway and so it's a much more egalitarian society than you see in a lot of places in Asia power and growth how does that interact with democracy well as I mentioned before I do think higher education is necessary because before before education it takes place in many of these countries in Asia you do see the the the elevation of strong men in local politics who really control the political order in those countries and over time when when education is further developed the chances of that being held I think is less over time you have to relate one more thing about Japan because when Japan and these will be my last remarks but when Japan when the Americans came into Japan for the occupation you know the first thing the priority was to democratize Japan and the word in Japanese for democracy is mean shu shu gi democracy and it's very similar to Chinese I'm told but for the Japanese they took the word democracy and they made a play on words with it words with it and they called it demo kuru shi but it hurts so with that I'll yield the floor thanks great thanks to all of our speakers for so we have some time to have a discussion with the audience in particular if you have any questions on China specifically you might take those first since Chris has to leave shortly Chris tbp and it's evolving attitude if that's correct on tbp a year or so ago it looked like it was aimed at them they don't have anything to do with it and perhaps partly as a result of it they launched some of these parallel things how do you see that now do the Chinese see something more interesting about tbp something more viable for them and how do you see that playing out assuming that at some point we will get a tbp and that's something else we want to talk about thanks sure I think we definitely have seen a shift that's clear and I think there's two primary drivers for that the first was Japan's decision to get in so from the geo strategic point of view I think that's been the key driver in the shift of Chinese attitudes when they saw that happen they realized this thing is real and will have consequences for them obviously if you get an economy the size of Japan's obviously with the US also involved it starts to set the pilings if you will and the parameters for operating in the in the region I think also the Chinese were quick to assess that the Japanese were very much doing so for geo strategic purposes than for economic purposes I think that's quite obvious in the way that obvious on others have proceeded with their approach to tbp so I think that was a big factor in terms of I mean quite literally I can recall going to meetings with the Chinese earlier on where they would literally laugh when the subject was raised because they just thought it wasn't serious that it wasn't going to go anywhere when Japan got in that was a big shift the other piece I think is that much like WTO was in the 1990s there's a constituency inside the Chinese political elite who sees tbp as an external cudgel if you will to be able to do the hard things that they know they need to do anyway for the strength of their domestic economy so using that it's it's much easier for example for the leadership to be able to go to state-owned enterprises and say hey we love you guys but you know if we're going to be a part of this thing we have to do this even though it's difficult for us and I think there are a lot of folks inside that kind of more reform oriented camp who feel that tbp can play this this role as well I think they also there's an increasing recognition which there wasn't initially that you know this is the direction they have to go themselves to unlock the next you know sort of great wave of economic growth so to the degree that tbp aligns with where they think they need to go already anyway that's attractive to them what's been interesting just in the last several months I think the apex meeting certainly had a lot of this flavor is that you know now you see f-tap you know very much sort of coming to the fore in their commentary Xi Jinping was certainly addressing that very forthrightly in his comments around the apex meeting and so there's a question in my mind as to whether the Chinese see tbp as a you know stepping stone if you will along the way toward a broader f-tap which I think really is there the free traded area of the Asia Pacific which I think is really their their long-term goal or do they see even a bilateral investment treaty with the United States which really is their primary focus right now even before tbp as another you know sort of one of these stepping stones and so I think there's very much an active debate inside the Chinese system over to how to view these individual trade and economic pieces and what role China may or may not play in them and I think it's shifting you know on a fairly regular basis they're clearly trying I think in the last couple of months to paint for the region the strong contrast between what they're getting done you know in terms of practical terms signing these agreements and so on and the lack of movement on tbp indeed Ken Dellons the answer pressed I wonder if any of the panelists would like to speak about the question of international competition in science and technology and the role of the need for if such a need exists for change and in the institutions and in the patterns of training a new generation of scientists so that they can be originators not just followers I wonder if any of you would like to address that I've got a few comments and others please jump in you know this is a fundamental issue for the Chinese I think we saw coming out of the Central Economic Work Conference in December a very heavy emphasis now on this innovation led economy right this is the key to unlocking this next wave of growth that they talk about and I think there's a broad recognition just really having taken hold between the time that the now third plenum table these reforms in the fall of 2013 there's this notion that they have to move up the value chain much faster than they previously had expected you know if you talk to people about this two years ago and you said you know how long do you think you can continue to play the string on the current economic development model they all would say you know 10 15 even 20 years now they say seven five three you know things like this so you know they have to move very very quickly the trick is they haven't done the best job of innovating and you know this is a challenge is a very sensitive conversation that you have with folks in China where you sort of look at the track record and you say strangely enough for thousands of years it was a highly innovative society and and then this certain institution showed up and they've been struggling with it since then and they know this is a problem and unfortunately you can't mandate innovation you can't force innovation what's interesting to me that might be different you know their their previous pattern on this has been to to come up with very centrally planned decade long development plans so there was the 863 program there was the 963 program to develop China's S&T infrastructure what we see now I think is a much more organic approach to that that kind of touches on some of the issues raised not just using government institutions and government training and think tanks but trying to integrate the private sector developing private sector in the biggest one that I see is the their approach to designing or developing their own semiconductor industry not only are they going to be throwing about I think the fund now is up to about 160 billion US dollars at the problem now in the past they've thrown a lot of money at similar problems and weren't able to achieve but it's not just the money it's being supported very clearly by very high level leaders in the system there's also a strong integration of creating science parks creating private sector related things to funnel into what the government is trying to do an integrative strategy so I do think they're thinking very fundamentally differently about this how it shapes things like trade patterns is China's so-called going out strategy right investing abroad has shifted fundamentally in the last couple years up until recently it was very mineral and resource intensive so the target markets were Latin America Africa places like that clearly there's been a fundamental shift in that approach Xi Jinping is telling the community there we have to look not for those kind of investments which were of dubious quality and they lost a lot of money on some of these things but more in this area of particularly picking up process engineering you know help know how tech this sort of thing and that shifts them the markets they're shopping into Europe to North America and we see them using a very wide variety of tools such as everything from you know merger and acquisition joint venture partnerships greenfield investment I mean you name it they're they're doing it across the board and that has a much more so instead of this sort of very internally focused China only model trying to bring this stuff in through these acquisitions so on that's going to fundamentally change the approach not just for them but how others react to that other of our other panelists want to say something about innovation technology just a brief comment I mean I'm not I don't I haven't followed the science and tech area that closely in the in recent years but to the extent that I have I noted that the the sort of technological regime that I think that Chris was mentioning to me in some ways echoes what I used to see in Japan and particularly in the semiconductor industry when I was in Motorola and how the Japanese tried to leverage their domestic industry and create it on their own to a larger extent than than had been in the past and it was so dependent in the past on us but it it moved away from that model so in some ways I think it reflects what you've seen in China Bill Brown yeah Bill Brown from that ODI picking up on your going abroad I like actually maybe all three of you could comment another part of this going abroad this much less advertised I think is a reform project it's kind of an experiment where they're linking the Shanghai excuse me Shanghai stock market in Hong Kong stock market it's not working that well yet it's going very slowly but it's such an intriguing thought to me that looking out ahead it really does look like China's opening its capital market definitely which basically means our ordinary Chinese can invest here so the going abroad right now up until now has been Chinese state enterprises the government going abroad maintaining their monopoly control over Chinese capital yeah this open capital market blows that all the way sure does you know ordinary Chinese maybe a richer ordinary Chinese not hugely rich but sort of a middle higher income presumably will be investing abroad so my question is how does that impact the politics of this monopoly state seems like you know it's something it could be quite transformative in creating competition within China for foreign policy issues and for their own politics any any cop any of y'all yes I'd welcome comments for others I'll just say quickly that you know this is the this is probably of all these reforms that they've tabled at the third plenum and they're all very difficult in their own way this may be the most difficult one opening the the capital account in fact I've been quite impressed really by their courage in what they're doing already in that process you know I think folks felt that this would you know of all those reforms that have this kind of 2020 benchmark for some kind of progress I think most people argue did that one you wouldn't see anything until like late 2019 something like that they are moving it ahead and I think a lot of it has to do with the determination of Jo Xiaochuan the people's bank governor also the finance minister Loji Wei they're very sort of this has been their life's project in some ways to to see this happen inside the Chinese system I think the tension is exactly what you point out on the one hand you know their desire to do this stuff with the capital account in some ways is much more driven by their ambitions in terms of being a part of the big kid in the international club than it is the economic fundamentals of it right there are a lot of arguments that would say the best thing for us is to keep it closed because it's worked well for us to help us write out the global financial crisis quite nicely you know things like this and so there's a lot of debate about inside the system about are we doing this for the right reasons and are we gonna are we risking losing our shirts here you know there was an interesting study that was done by Mackenzie or somebody was talking about some trying to estimate capital outflows from China and it was massive in 2013 it increased rapidly after the tabling of these reforms and that's with capital controls on right so there's a real worry I think among some in the system that you know if they open the window all the birds are going to fly out right and what happens in that scenario so it's a very sensitive issue it's a complex one and I think it's one that they're grappling with on a regular basis but make no mistake fundamentally that's where they want to go the Hong Kong Shanghai linkage is very interesting in that my own sense is that it's basically a testbed and the Hong Kongers know this that ultimately it's linking up with the London market with New York you know these that's the ambition that's the goal and moving toward a the remand be as an international currency that's all part and parcel of it this is why we see them pushing and allow these infrastructure deals and so on to move toward convertibility with the UN in the relationships that they're establishing they're definitely moving in this direction and they see it as part of this you know the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation okay next question you get some of the students questions and I'm at the law center I I've run this this small place called law Asia so we want anybody who has something to say about Asia to come give us their ideas and participate in our programs but my question on this is the way the Chinese have been using the anti monopoly monopoly law in the last couple of years has looked less like a furthering of internal competition than it looks like a punishing of some foreign companies that there is it but tell me what you think about that do you know what I mean I think the answer just left answer your question just left but we can ask Chris the question later anybody else but Victor can answer it too I don't know if I can answer that question how much U.S. prestige is really involved in it how much real economics is really involved in it how critical is this to show those questions that are we're starting to refocus on it looks like we might actually be getting TPA and TPP yeah I mean I mean I think it's I think it's quite important I mean when you look at what what is what will be this administration's legacy in Asia and what will be the primary deliverable of the second term when you talk about Asia you know it's not so much the military rebalance or any of these other things it really is this new institution the the Trans-Pacific Partnership as you know well and I think as many people know for the trade bureaucrats this has always been part of a plan you know that started with things like chorus which had the initial template for how you do a high quality broad scoped free trade agreement to TPP and eventually to FTAP and as Chris said you know the Japanese government's decision to join TPP was a real watershed I think in the evolution of the organization because he now had the two out of the three largest economies in the world talking about entering into a trade agreement and he got a lot of people's interest so at least to me undeniably that if you know for all that this administration has done in Asia if at the end of it they get TPP that's what people will write about that's what academics will write about that's what historians will write about that is the most important institution and as we all know it's just not about trade you know I think in the broader scheme of things if it's something that does involve China then you're talking about a broader strategic potentially strategic agreement because for China to sign on to a high quality chorus type free trade agreement would mean a lot of domestic changes in China much along the lines of international norms so I think there's a lot at state here and personally I'm quite happy to see that the administration now making soundings about a strategy for TPA and TPP now I I do think that they're going to have ag reform in Japan if it's it may not look like what we expected to be as usual in dealing with Japan but I think that the pressure and the you know it's kind of a it's a kind of situation where with where China and Japan played off on each other a bit on this thing whereas when China expressed its its interest in TPP it heightened people in the Abe administration to try to get this under control which had been have been floating around for so long as you will know and hadn't had any any resolution so I think we'll see some kind of reform in the area I'm I'm a rookie here I'm not an old china hand or anything I just have a question how does the desire to produce an innovation oriented science and technology center or enterprise interact with the traditional view of hundreds of millions of students who are used to a rote learning environment well I mean this I mean it's a good question I mean I think it's a it's not something that just the Chinese face it's something that we see in a number of countries in Asia where there's a very active event offered often government led not just in systems like China but also in democracies where there really is an effort on creative innovation and trying to push a generation of younger students to think in much more creative rather than rote fashion I think you see it in government subsidization subsidizing innovation and technology programs at schools I think you see it in the active effort particularly among countries like Korea and Indian others to send their students abroad so I think that this is the way a lot of them have addressed it I don't in the Chinese case I think we're starting to see that with this really top down led effort at trying to create innovation but I don't think that is qualitatively that different from what other countries in Asia have been trying to do that are not as closed political systems also if you look at the universities in the US today those are techies like MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Berkeley, in the fields of science and technology you see a lot of people actually come from Asia so I should not become a surprise that that they can actually in the future read the innovators and the creators in science in fact Georgetown I when I teach at in the evening most of the people in my bus are all Asians any other questions yes thank you for your sharing I'm I'm a visiting fellow at CSIs from Taiwan in terms of topic today is growth in Asia when I see the growth in Asia I would like to divide into three sectors the first one is minoturby second one is politics and the third one is economics and in terms of economics as we mentioned earlier like TPP I see TPP is not only a protocol for international trade but also it's kind of like a strategic tool for like countries to compete and cooperate to one another like between the United States and China mainly so my question is if in that sense TPP has been a strategic tool for countries in terms of economic growth in Asia I was wondering whether the United States and Japan would be would support like other countries such as Taiwan to join the TPP in order to balance a little bit about the situation in Asia thank you well I think Taiwan would be a tricky one for the United States government so I don't see I don't see any dramatic move in that direction myself it's always a touchy issue you know for us in terms of our relationship with China so I that my estimation it wouldn't be coming any time in the near term what do you think I think that's probably right I mean you know if I'm speaking very plainly I mean if in terms of rounding out TPP the brass ring is China then it's going to be hard to have a conversation about Taiwan having said that you know you can't rule anything out I mean you know Taiwan has worked very hard to bring itself to the table in all sorts of different international institutions with some degree of success and if in the long term TPP has the sort of effect transformational effect that people hope it will on not just the economic but also the strategic picture and the relationship between across the states continues to improve you know we don't know what's possible in the future that's the immediate problem that's not the political problem that's that's the you have the membership criteria problem yeah yeah yeah can I I mean can I we still have a little bit so I wanted to ask if I could up Chai on on the issue of modernization theory I mean I I thought how you described it was quite interesting in the role you attribute to migrant workers in that but I wanted to ask you if I mean you sort of set Taiwan Korea South Korea in Japan apart as sort of the poster child for modernization theory and then you have all these other cases and then but and then you pointed out how in some cases like Burma for example we don't see things but how much of that is really a factor of it's the time argument right that arguably none of these countries maybe with the exception of Indonesia have reached the same level of democratic maturity as these other three countries and that what we're seeing now we're not looking at it longitudinally what you're talking about are just sort of time series cuts at it and that we still don't know over the long term whether these countries will not in there in the end comport with modernization theory I mean you could have taken a slice of time in the 1980s in Korea when there was just starting to democratize or in Taiwan and said this doesn't really look like modernization theory either and I just wanted to know how you'd respond to one of the interesting thing about this theory of modernization theory is that is that eventually if you wait long enough they will modernize right or democratize any you know all societies so if you just just looking at time for example you know if you just wait for you know for another 100 years you can expect all the societies in the world will probably modernize in a certain way whether to reach democracy is another question um I what I see you know so I completely agree uh with Victor in term of you're looking in term of Taiwan and Korea in 80s this isn't it doesn't seems that the theories may not hold well um and you know so I actually was extremely very skeptical in with the theory in the first place and as I mentioned I don't think that there's a collaboration between the two but I think the movement I think the number of my point is that um the idea for this structural change a change in in you know you must have constitutions you must have competing parties you might have all of these institutions that um that comprise what you could consider as democracy um those are big institution big things it requires a lot of a lot of um a lot of time it's also a lot of resources as well as energy to to bring about and um but you know if you wait long enough you know it may not come so so soon but I think what is you know in my own research I think what is what I'm seeing is that um the smaller change the small uh tinkering institutional tinkering like in political sciences we we call them um institutional tinkering and you just changes by uh bit by bit and even small change in policies will will have a change in maybe decentralization and polarization of of of voices within deliberation process and that that is what actually I'm I'm reading seeing in terms of just examine just certain policies particularly within northeast asias policy and citizenship and immigration you can you know you can just like name those policies and how they came about is actually to move them by NGOs by activists are fighting for those for those um places and they're not necessarily completely democracy yet like even in thailand as as mentioned before Thailand's still under authoritarian military um military control but you also also see movement within the countries on in terms of um pushes towards a more democratic uh policies that be more inclusive toward migrant workers for example it's also how to do with maybe also pressure from outside forces like the US and international organizations trying to prevent uh trafficking or human rights violations so you are I'm seeing I'm seeing that uh the government actually trying to change policies that become much more democratic and much more inclusive and in and under even under military uh rules and so if you just take away the structural component of it the institution the big institutions and so forth so look in terms of just policies specific policies and I actually see this this is a movement toward democratic uh deepening and I think that's one whole point and not to you know support or or what am I either this can I ask you you started out by talking about um um uh uh the world bank in japan and the olympics and so I wanted to ask you so you know when I left the US government I went back to georgetown the last thing I wanted to do was write a book about north korea because I wrote a book about politics and sports in asia and I was right and I was really sort of interested in the role that these olympics have played in the development of asia right whether you're looking at 64 in tokyo 88 and soul 2008 beijing is a little bit of a different story but I wanted to ask you in sort of tokyo in 64 you have these big things like the elevated highway system and the bullet train and the hotels but did did it have any sort of political impact in your view on the politics of the japan japanese foreign policy yeah I think it I think it did because of the extent to which the US was also engaged on a bilateral basis in helping with this olympics they all the United States also saw this as a jumping off thing for japan I must say I personally have a a very deep interest in the olympics I happened to work for the international olympic committee in munich in 1972 and I saw the raw side of politics up front at that time I wonder if I could victor like to say a little bit about the NGO community if I could slide off into that bit because it's I I really believe that based on my experience at the adb that the more active the NGO community is in a given country whatnot it's almost you can almost chart it to the extent to which their democracy is viable and that includes outside players and inside players and sometimes the adb management I'm looking at my friend Sam over here from the adb but they get they can get frustrated with the NGO community quite understandably because they can be quite pushy and whatnot but we in the us mission we are always pushing the adb management to include the NGO community from the get go we think that if you don't you're you're going to you're going to you know invite a huge problem so when when we when the when the adb is developing a project of a railroad system in cambodia or a dam in pakistan we always urge the management to get to make sure the NGO community is involved from the beginning but if you get them and if you talk to them at the end of the day that you think that's it's too late that's when you have a problem so now I just want to say that I certainly support the idea of the NGO's being a sort of thermometer for a democratic development right we have a course in georgia and just just on that really I think we have time for maybe one more yes I'm mark wall most recently with the University of Wyoming but I'd like to toss out a rather broad gauged question and see who wants to pick up on it to invite your reactions but how do any of you see the security tensions in the region having an effect on the economic relationships do the tensions affect or threaten to affect the trade and investment flows that dynamism in the region kind of the integration trends that have prevailed for for so long in asian have been such an important factor in Asia's growth anyone care to comment on that yeah I I think it has a pretty a pretty strong impact on the on the region and you see it in various ways I think when for example when you when you see the tension between the filpings in China on the in the shoals off of you know in the Philippine Sea is what they call it at least and then you see that as well off of Vietnam I think it sends a real warning bell to the rest of the countries in the region and I also think that the I think that one of the main one of the drivers for Burma's opening was indeed their concern about being engulfed by the Chinese economic what they would see as a sort of imperialism if you may recall there was a dam that the Burmese had actually shut down which came was really the first step in that whole opening and we were we were very surprised in the ADB in fact we watched it because for us we have tons of sanctions on Burma and we were getting pressure particularly from the Japanese to move more rapidly to lift those sanctions on Burma and I I couldn't move of course you know Washington couldn't help me move but so I think that's a clear you know example of how that the security issues have affected indeed the one thing though that I often tell my U.S. business colleagues as you know mark I came from the business community for I was doing that too but is that if anyone thinks that by blowing off China that Burma was therefore inviting the Japanese and the Americans to replace them I think they're smoking something I don't think that's the case at all and I think they've been trying to play balance but you know back to your original comment I do think it has had an effect I think if you look at the broad history of the region you know in the early post-war decade or two when most of the trade was going from the region to outside of the region the United States in particular we saw a rapid economic growth and not much interaction between these countries but now more and more this trade is not just going outside the region it's also internal to the region and so in that sense yes the counterfactual would be and it's pretty good enough but how much better could it have been if the political tensions were not what like they are you know in the in the sort of social science Asian politics field this is what's known as the Asian paradox the fact that there is so much even today economic interaction between the countries in spite of the fact that the political tensions still remain quite high but I think I would I agree with chip I mean skip that it really is a question of how much better it could be were not for these tensions okay so to wrap up I let me just remind everybody that the our editors are hard at work on the next issue of the journal as well as future issues and you are more than welcome to contribute submit either shorter pieces or longer pieces to the journal for the long pieces it's a peer reviewed process so so the outlet is a high quality outlet it's just not any old journal and again I want to thank Scott and the rest of the editorial team for all the great work they've done on that I want to thank Daye also for all the supervision she's given to the project and congratulations to the journal really and to our speakers