 Hello, I'm Mike Guio, editor of Strategic Studies Quarterly, and welcome to another edition of Issues and Answers. Today, the issue, U.S.-China Relations. My guest is Dr. Dawn Murphy, assistant professor of international security at the Air War College. She specializes in Chinese foreign policy, Northeast Asia, and international relations. Her current research analyzes China's interest and behavior as a rising global power. Dr. Murphy holds a BS degree in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University and a master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University. She earned a PhD in political science from the George Washington University. Dawn, welcome, and thanks for being here. Thank you so much for having me here tonight. It's my pleasure. So to begin, I want to ask you if you could, big picture-wise, characterize current U.S.-China relations overall. So Mike, I think the best way to look at the current state of U.S.-China relations is to think about it as both interdependence and competition. So from an interdependence standpoint, if you really think about it, China is the number one source of imports for the U.S. economy and the number three source of exports for the U.S. economy after Mexico and Canada. We also have a lot of investment going back and forth between our economies, and we cooperate on a number of different issues related to peace and security throughout the world. So we cooperate, we're interdependent, but we also have competitive aspects to our relationship with China as a rising power and with different interests between the two states. Well, I'm glad you mentioned economic issues because that's a follow-up question. How would you give us a perspective of the size and power of China's economy versus the U.S., or relative to the U.S. economy? Right. So today, China has an overall gross domestic product of about $11 trillion, compared to the U.S. at $18 trillion or so. So essentially, in absolute terms, you can think of China's economy being about 60 percent the size of the U.S. economy. That said, and over the next, between five and 10 years, that gap will narrow. You also have another metric that you could examine, which is gross domestic product on a purchasing power parity standpoint. And when you look at those numbers, China's economy has actually surpassed the U.S. economy by that metric. Another way you could look at the size of the economies is gross domestic product per capita, which means per person. And when you look at those numbers, China's economy is about $8,000 per person compared to the U.S. at $55,000. So China's a much poorer economy per person than the U.S. at about 15 percent. And finally, when you look at China as a source of foreign direct investment, globally, increasingly, it's becoming a major player in that realm. And over the last 30 years or so from 1978 to today, China's gone from being a minimal autarkic economy to being the second largest economy in the global system. So if you look at any area of economic interaction, manufacturing services, finance, construction, they're becoming a major player across the board. So it has been a stunning rise. And if you look at the beginning of their opening, they were growing at 10 percent a year or so. Now they've slowed down to closer to 6 percent a year. But that's still a very high growth rate compared to many developed economies. Well, it sounds like under the status quo in Asia and most parts of the world, the Chinese economy and the Chinese society writ large is really progressing. So do you think the Chinese are interested in maintaining the status quo, particularly in Asia? Or are they really more interested in changing that status quo that seems to have led to very great success? I think when you ask that question, when you think about that question, you have to look at specific functional areas and specific issue areas. So what is the status quo, for example, from an economic standpoint? You could argue that the current status quo is interacting through the World Trade Organization, free trade agreements, having strong bilateral economic relations with partners throughout Asia. And essentially, I think for the most part, China wants to maintain the status quo from an economic interaction standpoint with the rest of Asia, as it continues to grow in power. But when you start to look at other issue areas, there may be more or less comfort with what the status quo is or disagreements on what the status quo is. So for example, Taiwan, what is the status quo associated with Taiwan? From a Chinese perspective, even though it may be the status quo, they've never agreed with having a separate Taiwan. Or if you look at claims in the East China Sea, South China Sea, China's assertion is that it is making claims that it has historically for a very long time and that it's wanting to preserve the status quo rather than change it. So those are just a few examples. Okay, well, I'm glad you mentioned those because I want to shift focus now to some of those issues, particularly more security related issues. And ask the question, what does China see as its greatest national security threats? I think it's important when you look at China to think about what China's interests are overall from a national security standpoint. And number one is maintaining power of the Chinese Communist Party. So that is a bit different than other systems. Considering the fact that, for example, in the US, that's not the first thing the current administration thinks about when they wake up is preserving their party's dominance over the system in the way that you have in a Leninist authoritarian political system. So number one is that. So what threatens their security the most is any sort of internal stability, any issues with legitimacy associated with the party, those type of issues. Their second most important interest is territorial integrity and sovereignty. So what falls into that bucket would be, as I already said, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, some minority areas within China that they worry about breaking away and having secessionist activities, Hong Kong and Macau. And then increasingly, when you look at territorial claims in the East China Sea and South China Sea, those are included as some of China's more core interests within that realm. So that would be the number two interest and threat. The third would be China being able to continue to grow its economy and provide a better life for its citizens overall. So anything that would threaten that. So if you look at conflict in regions, whether it's the Middle East or in Asia Pacific, that potentially could damage China's ability to continue to grow its economy. That's also a national security threat. And they have other interests as far as a voice in the international system, advocating for developing country causes. But from a national security standpoint, I would say it's maintaining the power of the Chinese Communist Party, territorial integrity and sovereignty. So the ability to defend themselves and to keep their country from breaking apart. So is that the extent of what the Chinese would consider the ideal situation in Asia? Again, I think this is one where you really need to think about how that's framed. So I say big picture, the ideal situation within Asia would be an environment where China could keep its party in power and maintain its territorial integrity and grow its economy. So a peaceful environment within Asia Pacific. But I think there's a lot of disagreement within the scholarly community regarding what that looks like. Because if you think about it from an international relations perspective, they are a growing economy, right? They're a growing power. And together with growing economic power comes other aspects of power, military, political. And as you know, a classic security dilemma is that you never know a state's intentions and that states build up their capability in order to protect themselves at a minimum, right? And that as a result, you need to plan for various contingencies associated with that. So does China want to be a hegemon within Asia? We don't know that. I don't think there's a way to actually know that given the lack of transparency in their system and the fact that they don't claim that as a desire at this point. But you could look at certain behavior that indicates in the longer term they could potentially become a hegemon. Do they want a hierarchical system within Asia? There's nothing tangible that indicates that. But you look historically in the region and China has played a different role at different points in time than it does today. And there's been different relations between states than what you have today. So I think it's very hard to say what China wants other than China wants to protect what it sees as its sovereignty and to continue to grow its economy. Yeah, OK, so the things you mentioned early in an earlier question. You mentioned a key word in my next question and that has to do with the fact that no relationship survives friction, no international relationship among nations survives or exists without some friction. So I would ask you to give us some examples of some of the greatest disagreements between China and the United States. I would say some of the major disagreements, one would be associated with trade. So I think the audience is very familiar with a lot of the critique right now of the trade deficit in relations with China. And as China's economy grows and as it is more incorporated into the international border and trades more with the U.S., as there's domestic dissatisfaction within the U.S. regarding growth rates, regarding unemployment and other aspects. I do think there's growing domestic pressure within the U.S. to have a more level playing field in relations, in economic relations with China. So that's one potential point of friction. Another point of friction, as I've already said, is East China Sea, South China Sea. But an important dynamic to remember in that is for the East China Sea issues and the Senkaku Diaoyu Islands, the other claimant in that is a country, Japan, that the U.S. has a mutual defense treaty with. So we have security obligations associated with that. In the South China Sea, when you look at the various claimants there, whether it's the Philippines or Malaysia, Indonesia, we have strong security relationships and partnerships with those countries as well. So it's more complicated than just those territorial disputes. And especially on the South China Sea, that really brings up a lot of issues associated with freedom of navigation, what is the global commons, what norms are we going to conform to in our behavior? And there are disagreements regarding that as well. So the major points of friction I would say between the U.S. and China right now are some trade issues and economic competition. I do think that as China's economy grows and as it surpasses the U.S. in absolute size, those conflicts will likely increase, right? You've got East China Sea, Senkaku Diao Yu, you have South China Sea, you have Taiwan that's been an enduring point of contention, and in many ways China sees the U.S. as having played a major role in that issue obviously from the beginning during the Cold War, but even today. And that's calmed down a bit in recent years, but that is a potential point of conflict. And then finally, I would say North Korea in, you know, especially I would say over the last year or so as North Korea's capability increases and as it becomes apparent that China and the U.S. have different interests associated. We've known this for a very long time, but obviously it's become a higher priority from a U.S. perspective and China and the U.S. have differing views regarding how to resolve that issue. So I think that could be a potential point of stress. The President just came back from the Far East yesterday, and I'm wondering if you saw some signs in that trip that would lead us to think that China and the U.S. could actually reconcile some of our differences in Asia. Do you think that's possible, or is it already happening? From this trip itself, I think it will take a while to see what the actual results of the trip are. On the surface of it, all that I've seen tangible come out of the meetings in Beijing are announcements regarding a few hundred billion dollars of some trade deal, not trade deals, I'm sorry, a few hundred billion dollars of business deals that have been in the works for quite a while. And I don't, you know, if you think about compared to the overall deficit and compared to the overall relationship, I think that's a minor win, but that could be seen as a positive result of the trip. But, and I don't know what happened behind closed doors, obviously, but if you look at the speech that President Trump gave in China, it was still echoing the same sentiments regarding concerns over the deficit and concern over those trade frictions. And then you look at the speech that he gave a few days later at APEC, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum. In that speech, there continued to be the rhetoric associated with concerns about the international economic order and concerns from a U.S. perspective regarding trade partners that are not providing a level playing field for U.S. companies. So I have not seen any tangible results of the trip yet, but it's still early days, he just returned and most of those discussions occur behind closed doors. So I wanna ask you to look in a crystal ball and give us a couple of examples where the U.S. and China can and should cooperate more, specifically in Asia, or maybe even in other parts of the world. What should we be working to do together? I think the most probable areas of cooperation would be issues on which we have a shared interest that's it's clear cut as a shared interest. So basically, for example, global climate change, that's something that we could cooperate on. We both have an interest in preventing that from occurring in the longer term and that's something in the past we have cooperated on in a certain way. So that would be one, developing green technology. Another potential area of cooperation would be in foreign aid provision or providing assistance to developing economies. In many cases, we play within that realm together from the standpoint of we're both providing foreign aid to individual countries, we're both providing various levels of technical assistance for economic development and I think many countries would be able to learn quite a bit from both of our experiences. So that's something that I think we could do in a non-competitive way. Another example would be antipiracy. We've seen this in the past with the Gulf of Aden we have cooperated on those issues. Another would be United Nations peacekeeping operations which China has been heavily involved with over the years. So those are a few examples. I mean, I think we have opportunities for cooperation but we really need to focus on those areas where we have a shared interest and there's not these debates over territorial integrity or over values that may not be the same between the US and China. Over the last, over the past few years we've seen some instances where things had a potential to escalate and I'm wondering if there are some, you have some specific recommendations that would give us some examples of the kinds of things the US and China should be either doing to sort of eliminate these potential conflict areas should we be doing on things that we should be refraining from doing. I think the best advice to give on that would be that we need to increase communication as much as possible. So we need to have as much military to military cooperation that we can have that still obviously protects US interests and isn't threatening our national security but ultimately more communication is better because where I see the most likely areas of conflict would be for example on the East China Sea a mis, not necessarily a misunderstanding but a miscommunication or a very minor incident that then escalates into a crisis and we don't have the proper communication between our militaries in order to de-escalate that in time. So that would be one example. So I do think we need to increase in that way. That said, many of our tensions are the result of an actual difference of interests, right? So how that's addressed in the longer term I think is difficult in that our US interests in the region gonna change. Are China's interests in the region gonna change? Perhaps, I mean those are strategic decisions we make as a country over time but assuming that those don't change we have a situation where China is an authoritarian communist, politically communist regime that there are sincere differences of opinion regarding how they govern their society and how the US governs ours. So I mean I think that's a fundamental difference and the reason I bring that up is I think one of the discomforts with China as a rising power is not just that it's rising. It's that it's a rising power that doesn't necessarily share the same norms as the US and the West on a number of key issues regarding governance of their population. So that will continue. I don't anticipate that that is going to change in a dramatic way in the future and as China's economic power grows those tensions may escalate and on territorial integrity. I don't think that the US should be backing down from our commitments to allies in the region. I don't think that we should be allowing China to operate in a way that we don't think is a proper interpretation of international law. So I don't think we should back down on that but I also think we need to increase communication so we can avoid a minor dispute turning into something much more serious. That's a very well description of the situation I think, a very helpful description of the situation, the things we should and should not be doing. Last question. Again, I wanna ask you to speculate a little bit. What would you assess is the probability that conflict would erupt between the US and China within the next 20 years? I think it's a relatively low probability and you have to look at different functional areas. So on the military side, for me the most likely areas of conflict again would be East China Sea, South China Sea. There are scenarios under which North Korea could potentially become a conflict scenario between our two countries because China still has a mutual defense treaty with North Korea and has recently re-articulated their commitment to that to specify that if North Korea is aggressive towards another country and initiates conflict, China will essentially restrain itself and not become involved in that conflict but that if North Korea is attacked that China would contribute to the mutual defense of North Korea. So there are scenarios where if the US engaged in a preventive or preemptive action against North Korea that you could have a militarized dispute between China and the US. So there is potential. That's a relatively small probability. I think it's a higher probability today than it was a year ago or two years ago just because of escalating tensions and more because of the US approach to the situation rather than the Chinese approach. So I think that's a growing area. Taiwan as I said before is always there's the potential for that. So the military realm, I think it's unlikely but could happen due to a relatively minor incident escalating. But I think that the more likely tension areas would be more of a Cold War type of environment that potentially could emerge either through China's actions or through US actions. So if the US continues to withdraw itself from the international order and China takes a leadership role and we continue to have these frictions regarding trade and especially if either side takes trade action that then results in a trade war you could have a ruptured US-China economic relationship with China having a sphere of influence economically with certain countries and the US. So basically breaking up into blocks. I think that's much more likely than any sort of militarized dispute. And again, that really depends on both the actions of the US and China. So that could happen. We also I think could have some breakdown of the overall international order due to many factors globally associated with nationalism and the downsides of globalization. So we may be seeing a fraying of the overall international order. So you may have an economic order that China leads in the longer term and one that the US and the West leads and have kind of more similar to the actual Cold War rather than just having regional blocks having full-fledged systems that have different norms that govern them. So we may be at this turning point. So I think that's more likely than any sort of militarized dispute. Okay, so low on the military side and maybe higher in the economic realm, okay? Dr. Murphy, you've given us a lot to think about over this very short period of time. So on behalf of the team SSQ and the entire SSQ audience, I wanna thank you for sharing your experience with us and also sort of leading us to think strategically about this very important relationship between the US and China. Thank you very much. Thank you again for having me. Appreciate it.