 So, it is my great pleasure now to call Mr. Kevin Rudd, whom I think many of you know. There are many reasons for him to be known because he is a very famous man. He is, Kevin, I am telling good things about you. So you should listen to them. So, he is a former prime minister of Australia and he has become, he is now recognized as one of the best experts on China worldwide. Mr. Kevin Rudd speaks Mandarin fluently with a slight Australian accent. But this we can check, you know, during the Q&A session. And I have asked him to give us his assessment on the Chinese situation today, both from an internal viewpoint, that is economic, social, political situation, and external, that is foreign policy in a large sense, the grand strategy if there is any and so forth and so on. So, Kevin, please come. More importantly, we've been following the rugby score. So, if you follow rugby, the cherry blossoms of Japan are now 28 against Scotland 21. And so, for those of you who follow this cane sport, as I do, and some around the table do, this is what we call a global upset. Well done, Japan. But the Scottish are still coming back, so we'll see. Thank you, Thierry, for having me back at the World Policy Conference. Can you hear me at the back up there? Good, this is a big room. So, and I've got to keep you awake now that you've just eaten, and it's a warm afternoon. And you can already hear the calls of prayer outside. So, it should be a challenge. I'm going to spend 10 minutes talking to you about what I think Xi Jinping's worldview is. And then I'm going to spend the following 10 minutes talking about what I think the American strategy is in response to that. Including thought on where that leaves the rest of us, in Europe and the rest of Asia, in Africa, as well as in Latin America. So, the first one is Xi Jinping's worldview. I always think the beginning of wisdom in international relations is to understand how the other side thinks and why they think that way. And so, we should adopt, for the next 10 minutes at least, a view that we are sitting around a large table of the Standing Committee of the Politburo. There's only seven of them. They're all men. And they meet every week, like a cabinet in a democratic state. They have formal cabinet documents and papers. And it's important to probe how they see the world under Xi Jinping's leadership. So, in 10 minutes, here are what I see as their 10 core priorities, if it was to be described as Masloff's hierarchy of needs. Starting from the biggest priority down to number 10, which is still important, but not as important as number one. Priority number one in Xi Jinping's mind and the Standing Committee is keeping the Party in power long-term. Not short-term, not as a transition to democracy, but long-term as the permanent government of China. And within that, Xi Jinping's priority is for himself to be a long-term leader. As you know, he has changed the Chinese constitution to allow for there to be unlimited terms for the Chinese presidency. That will come up for final vote in 2022. And some of us think that if he gets his political way, we could see Xi Jinping in power until the mid-2030s, by which stage he would be in his early 80s, almost young enough to become a candidate for the presidency of the United States. Priority number one, therefore, is keep the Party in power. And within that, Xi Jinping staying in power. Priority number two, again, in this series of concentric circles I'll try and construct here, is national unity. Sounds easy, but when you look at the practicalities, the razor-sharp focus of the leadership is always on Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan. And now more recently, events in Hong Kong. Taiwan represents unfinished business for the Chinese Revolution. And whereas we would think it is irrational for China to throw so much of its strategic and political assets about regaining what it sees to be the renegade province from 1949, for this Chinese Party leadership and for Xi Jinping in particular, it is core business. And if anything is likely to trigger a conflict in the wider region, that looms still as a big candidate. Number three, sustaining economic growth, hard in the current circumstances. The magical number in the Chinese leadership is 6%. Why? Because the Party calculates internally they need that level of growth to sustain social and economic stability and to provide enough jobs for university graduates each year. Of course, Xi Jinping, since he's taken over six years or so ago, has applied a different political economy model to his predecessors. And it's one of the reasons that we're beginning to see a slowing in that growth. In part, what Xi Jinping has tried to do is reinsert the Party as a central factor in China's day-to-day market governance. And Chinese entrepreneurs, the Jack Ma's of this world have looked at this and said, I don't like that. And as a result, what we've seen in the last several years is the beginnings of a private fixed capital investment strike within the country, uncertain about the future of its own private sector. Related to that task, however, of sustaining growth at 6%, is not just keeping people happy with rising living standards, manageable unemployment and poverty elimination to keep the Party in power, but the second element of it is to grow the capacity of the Chinese state globally. And that is where discussions earlier today, particularly from John Soar and others, about the centrality of the tech revolution in the economic strategy and grand strategy of the Chinese leadership. It is front and center, so that China wins the future global economic competition. Priority number four, and it comes in part as a reflection of the excellent discussion we had earlier today between Laurent and Patrick about global climate policy. In China's domestic governance, that means sustainability. And their reason for concern about it is because Chinese people want clean air, they want clean water, and they want food that won't poison them. And if ever there is a lightning rod, which takes those concerns back to the question of the Communist Party's legitimacy, it's a failure to deliver clean air. And when you see spontaneous protests across the whole country, because the air isn't clean anymore, they're not protesting per se about climate change, they're protesting about particular matter concentrations in the air, which has and is having a massive impact on public health. So this has gone in the last 10 years from being a concern out there for the Chinese Communist Party leadership to a central concern. It's the mirror image to priority number three, which is of course sustained economic growth. Number five in Maslow's hierarchy of needs is this, modernize the People's Liberation Army. And this means turning it into not an agent for domestic political control, because the technologies of the surveillance state now mean that the Chinese police and intelligence services are confident they can maintain domestic control, historically part of the mission of the army. Xi Jinping's mission is to turn the PLA into a body which can fight and win wars, quote unquote. That's his doctrine. And so you see this huge investment in the PLA in capital, huge investment in the transformation of personnel and the removal of most of the previous leadership of the PLA, and their replacement with a new rising professional leadership. And on top of that, a reorganization of China's military districts with principal focus being Taiwan and the United States. Priority number six in Maslow's hierarchy is as follows, China's neighboring states. This is where we flip, if you like, from the domestic priorities to those which we would classify as foreign priorities. The neighboring states for China are 14 in number, the largest number in the world for any country apart from Russia, which also has 14. And in Chinese historical strategy, it has been always a deep learning principle over many centuries that China's security domestically is threatened by one or other of its neighboring states. And in fact, in China's history, a number of foreign invasions have resulted in those foreigners becoming the reigning dynasty for some several hundred years. Therefore, the priority in turning China's neighboring states into benign neighbors and if possible, compliant neighbors, all 14 of them, is a central organizing principle in the way in which this leadership looks at the world. The principal objective there has been Russia. Russia shares a very long border with China. And if you look at the transformation of the Russia relationship in Xi Jinping's period, it has gone from what I would describe as strategic ambiguity five or six years ago to strategic condominium, which is about where it is today. Obviously, there are still resident reservations in Moscow about Beijing and the reverse applies as well. But I personally am surprised by the rapid nature of the convergence, not just of economic interest between the two, but also a strategic view of the world. Priority number six. Seven, China looks at its continental periphery to its west as one huge zone of long-term market opportunity for itself. It's called Eurasia. And therefore, when you hear the Belt and Road Initiative, that's part of a much wider Eurasian initiative. Partly China's attraction to this wider region is the Americans are not there. And with the Russians now part of a wider strategic condominium, there is no fundamental strategic objection to China developing this vast land mass comprising so many states extending all the way to Western Europe and the Gulf as being a future massive market for China's domestic surplus capacity. On top of that also finding the opportunity through economic cooperation to turn this into a wider region of let's call it broader political compliance with China's own world view. Seven, eight I should say, and we're just about finished this list, is turning to the east, China's maritime periphery where number one problem is of course the United States from Beijing's perspective. And when China looks east it sees threat, threat and threat. It sees an array of American military alliances from Tokyo through Seoul. The de facto arrangements with Taiwan down to the Philippines despite recent changes in the Philippines presidency. Traditional line structures also with Thailand and with Australia. And as a consequence, China's strategy is over time to push the United States back. First to the first island chain, but then to what's called the second island chain. If in your mind you think of the Japanese archipelago, draw a line through the American territory of Guam, down to the Philippines archipelago and then south. And the reason for that is essentially Taiwan related. But China to ultimately execute its military strategy in relation to Taiwan, if it ever needed to, it must have the Americans behind the second island chain. China's military modernization is designed around that organizing principle as well. Second last, China's strategy for the rest of the world, Latin America, Africa, the rest of Asia, and of course Europe, which I partly touched on before. It is again to extend China's massive market opportunities to find places where China's excess domestic capacity can be sold to the world at large, but also through that in Africa and Latin America to make as many political friends and foreign policy friends as possible. And you don't have to be a keen PhD in international relations to studying voting behaviors in the United Nations to know that China has succeeded in creating a massive voting constituency for itself out of Africa alone before you add a large slice of the rest of Asia and Latin America before you get to Europe or anywhere else. And finally, the tenth, and what I describe as Xi Jinping's Maslovian hierarchy of needs, is the future of the global rules-based order itself. China at this stage has this as a work in progress within its own think tanks. It's not fully or finally conceptualized. But if there are elements to it, I would describe it as this. One, with the existing institutions of global governance, which we've all described today in various presentations as being in decline, China is actively investing finance and personnel as well as beginning to influence the regulatory and operational behavior of those institutions over time. But secondly, the parallel track is to build the institutions of its own outside of the UN framework and the Bretton Woods framework. I've mentioned the Belt and Road Initiative, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security organization called SICA, and others in various parts of the world as well. China's strategy for the future of the rules-based system therefore is a bigger voice and more persuasive voice in institutions that exist while simultaneously developing institutions which are more sino-centric, which is the way which China views the existing institutions as being America-centric. But over time, the think tanks are working around the Xi Jinping notion of what he describes as a global community of common destiny for all mankind. There are a thousand think tanks at work on this at the moment. They would see it as the antecedents of the next Atlantic Charter. Let's wait and see. So I conclude, Thierry, with that, and because I've now spoken for just under 20 minutes, I'll conclude on the question of the United States and then let's take up the rest in Q&A. The United States in observing all of this has had a number of different reactions. For the last 30 years, really since the fall of the Berlin Wall, through and until the Trump administration, if I could characterize U.S. strategy, it's with three words. Engage, shape, and hedge. Engage China, hence what you've seen bilaterally and multilaterally through the WTO and other institutions. Shape, that is, by that engagement, try and shape China into becoming, to use Bob Zellick's term of 15 years ago, from the American perspective, a responsible global stakeholder, that is, a country which would accept the existing liberal international rules-based system and that China would simply slide into it. And hedge, which has continued to, however, have a military capability about yourself if A and B above fail. That was the hedge bit. Now we've moved to a different zone. As of December 2017, President Trump and his national security team announced the formal end of strategic engagement. Read the U.S. National Security Strategy of November, December, 2017. That's the formal turning point. And what we see emerging, again, to quote John Soares this morning, is the new bipolar world that we are now facing. This administration calls it strategic competition. But it's not just the trade war. It is also the unfolding tech war, not just in terms of technologies in themselves, but the regulation of technology as well, and tech standards as well. And beyond that, open questions now about not just decoupling in technology, but decoupling in finance and debates now in Washington about the future of the existing New York Stock Exchange listing of Chinese listed firms, and open debates in Washington now about whether future U.S. administrations will allow U.S. pension funds to invest in Chinese corporations which are deemed to be of a strategic threat to the United States. And then you end up to the final stage of decoupling. If this was to unfold in this direction with the future of the currency war itself, China fears that continued dollarization of the entire global financial and economic system through its trading system and now seats to avoid as much as possible the intermediation of the dollar and to do it through bilateral currency exchanges. But China has looked long and hard at where all this might go, which is the use of financial sanctions by the United States, with Venezuela, with Iran and with other countries, and therefore concerned that where this decoupling will end up is one form or another of U.S. financial sanctions with its allies of China itself. And what then does China do? China, on the other hand, does not wish to take the bold step of floating its own currency, the Renminbi, for reasons of lack of loss of political control. But it also faces the unfolding reality in the economy that it will soon face a current account deficit as well. This looms, therefore, as a major strategic challenge for our Chinese friends. I'll leave my comments there. We'll talk about Europe and the rest of the world. I hope in the discussion we'll now have with Captain Moderator. Thank you, Thierry. Okay, so now we are going to have Q&A's session. And I will ask you two or three questions to start, and then we will take questions and comments from the audience. My first question is about could we go a little deeper in the internal domestic economic situation, because there is a debate. You say yourself that 6% growth rate is what would be necessary to keep the good social conditions without unrest and turmoil. But yesterday, I think it was, now Kitanaka told us that the real growth rate might be closer to 2%. And you told me half an hour ago that the reality is probably 3%. But 3% is half of the 6% which are needed. So is this a serious issue that could threaten the legitimacy of the party? Well, thank you, Thierry. I mentioned that 3% figure to you on a Chatham House basis, but now the room knows that's good. But the bottom line is this, that if you speak to enough Chinese corporates who measure things like their export sales, imports as well as electricity demand, these become different measures of where growth actually stands in an economy. And therefore, if you aggregate those unofficial, as it were, calculations of where substantive growth actually stands, it is some ways, a long ways less than six, as the current Chinese government indicates. The second point, I think, is what's causing that. I mentioned part of it before. Xi Jinping, because he is at heart a Leninist, does not inherently trust markets. And therefore, if there's a defining characteristic of the last several years of Xi Jinping's economic reign, it has been the deleveraging campaign, which has been designed for good macroeconomic reasons to reduce the overall level of corporate debt in the economy. But in the implementation of it, the deleveraging campaign has preference to state-owned enterprises and been, as it were, discriminatory against private firms. Secondly, you also see some language from the Chinese Communist Party leadership not wanting private companies in China to get too big so that they actually dominate the party. And there's something of that story, I think, alive in the Alibaba tale. And then finally, you have smaller things, but still significant, the enhanced role of the Communist Party secretaries within the individual firm hierarchy of a private firm. Put those together, and you see, really through 17 and 18, a radical decline in private business confidence in China, and that's what's translated its way through to the overall Chinese growth numbers. Remember, the private sector now represents 60% of China's GDP, 6-0. So therefore, it's been the engine room for the growth of jobs, of technology, of exports, of the rest. And so when that sector is unhappy, it translates through into real numbers. The final point is what's the system done about it? From November last year, you begin to see Xi Jinping realising he has a problem. There have been a rapid series of measures involving levels of fiscal stimulus, level of monetary policy relaxation, a change in the administrative use of credit to put more of it in the direction of small and medium private enterprises. But so far, the data is fairly thin about these private sector players bouncing back as quickly as China wanted. And the final piece in this jigsaw is the US-China trade war. It hasn't been the cause of China's slowing growth, but it is added to it both objectively because the traders sector of the Chinese economy is about 36% of GDP. And if you look at the sheer volume of the US-China trade, it flows through to the real economy. But also it dovetails with the problem with declining business confidence caused by other factors which have been more domestic. Does it represent a legitimacy threat to the party? Xi Jinping would not have acted unless it represented a problem to him. And so it is the one issue domestically on which I think Xi Jinping remains politically vulnerable. Thank you very much. The second question is about Hong Kong. You said elegantly that it was the unfinished business for the revolution. So how can this business be finished? What is the worst case hypothesis? My reference before was to Taiwan being unfinished business for the Chinese Revolution. I think it's important for us to understand how Beijing looks at developments in Hong Kong now. And when they look at Hong Kong, they see something which is troublesome, difficult, but of a vastly smaller order of magnitude compared with the US-China trade war. That is up here for China to resolve as a top priority. Managing Hong Kong is in the middle of the field. It doesn't mean it's unimportant. I just wanted to give folks here a sense of proportional reality to it. I think we're on the question which we see often debated about whether our Chinese friends will resort to military force in Hong Kong. I do not believe that is probable at all. And the reason I say that is, one, logistically it is a massive task. Think about the military paramilitary occupation of Hong Kong. Seven million people over a vast number of islands. This would make Tiananmen in 1989 look like a cakewalk. This is a very difficult logistical exercise. Number two, it would inevitably involve a lot of bloodshed. And because of that, because of the bloodshed, you're going to have therefore a huge international reaction, not just to the physicality of the occupation, but what will be very violent. You've seen the number of hardcore protesters now in Hong Kong who are now quite well-trained on how to deal with things. And then finally, with Carrie Lam still in control, if you're Xi Jinping, as soon as you militarily intervene, Hong Kong becomes 100% Xi Jinping's problem. Right now, it's 90% Carrie Lam's problem. So for those basic political realities I regard as improbable. There's a separate question about how this thing can be managed appropriately over the next several months. We can go to that later if you'd like. But on the headline question of would they do that, I think on balance, no. Unless the protest movement became mega-violent, which I mean blowing up public infrastructure, killing lots of people, all those sorts of things, that would cross some threshold. But under present circumstances and known behaviors, I do not see that happening. And just to end on this Hong Kong question, you know, we are 22 years after the retrocession and 28 years before the final integration with mainland China. How do you see the possibility of Hong Kong becoming a Chinese province like the others even in 28 years because it is one generation? Do you think the mentalities in Hong Kong will change so much in 28 years that it is possible to get to that point without major upheavals? I've lived in China quite a lot over the years, but I've also lived in Hong Kong. My kids were born in Hong Kong, have any friends there, and I know the place reasonably well. Although I don't speak a word of Cantonese, I only speak Mandarin. But it has about it a quite a different political and social consciousness to anything you find on the mainland, even in the rest of Guangdong in the south of the country. There's quite a different psychology. And so if the Brits were there for 150 years, they actually left or had an impact on the place of psychology in quite a profound way. So I am not sure how this will evolve, but in my own engagements with my friends in China, I've left a few radical ideas, which is if you wanted to calm things down with Hong Kong and whoever the future chief executive of Hong Kong might be, once Carrie Lam does go, and I think she will sooner or later, because the Chinese and the Hong Kong administration will need a circuit breaker in this current cycle. But if a new chief executive, whoever she or he might be, was to throw out some conciliatory lines to the protest movement, conduct one or two of the public inquiries which the protest movement want, for example, into the proper deployment of the police, undertake a radical investment in social housing and the underlying difficulties in Hong Kong for poorer lower middle class people to live comfortably in Hong Kong. Then there's an argument you can begin to present to our Chinese friends along these lines, which is unlike Taiwan, the PRC has already won in Hong Kong. You got sovereignty in 1997. That's what that agreement was all about. And guess what? On the economic measures of things, if you go to the future, if we look at Shenzhen's economy just across the border now, as of two years ago, Shenzhen as a municipal area had a bigger GDP than Hong Kong. Play that out to 2049. That is a very, very big gap which is going to open up. And that's before you look at this mega-development in the Greater Bay Area, which is linking Shenzhen with the rest of the Pearl River Delta in a massive project of development. As I say to our Chinese friends, by the time we get to mid-century, Hong Kong will be as important to China domestically in its size as Macau is today. So why worry about it in the scheme of things? And this is a radical thought for our Chinese friends. Once we get to the 25-year point of the 50 years of one-country-two systems, why not roll it over again for another 50? When I've written this to my Chinese friends, there was as much silence in that room as there has been here. In other words, zero response. Thank you very much. So now we can take two or three questions from the IC handlers, Enrico Letta. Thank you. Thank you, Kevin. It was terrific. I would like to ask you to elaborate a little bit more about the divisions of European countries in the relationship with China. How do you see these divisions? What is the future on that point? Well, what I didn't get around to saying before, Enrico, was that if China's strategy is, as I described it before, if I'm accurate on that, and if the U.S.-China divide is, as I described as well, into an increasingly bipolar world, for Europe, Europe becomes increasingly the swing state for the future. That is, which way does it go? The Chinese, when they look at Europe, they see this very large integrated economic entity. They know that in political and foreign policy and security policy terms, it's relatively weak in terms of a single voice in Brussels. But China, given the reality of, let's call it, unfolding, decoupling with the United States, however far it goes in trade and technology and in finance, let alone currency questions, the Chinese thinking is that in Europe, if we are cut off from American technology, if we are cut off from American finance, even if we are cut off from a goods and services market, there's only one other entity in the world currently big enough to actually fill up that gap. And that's Europe. Now, I'm describing, I think, very early stages of China's thinking because this decoupling process really has only unfolded in the last 12 months in one form or another. Therefore, that is going to present Europeans with certain binary decisions for the future. Whereas all of us as American allies love a world where we can be friends of both, China and the United States. This will prospectively become harder and harder for which the 5G demand by the current US administration is just the first example of many others still to come. Chinese perceptions of Europe itself, I think, as you can see what they've done in Eastern Europe, or the former Eastern Europe with 16 plus one or is it 17 plus one now, I always lose count. They are reasonably happy with success there. They're delighted that Italy joined as the first G7 state to Belt and Road Initiative. They've always, they've had for 10 years now, big investments in Greece and seeing Greece as a country which will reflect Chinese realities and internal European deliberations. I think the Chinese are following carefully their analysis of the reformation line, which is, they will be targeting a whole bunch of countries in Southern Europe but elsewhere as well, Eastern Europe, parts of Northern Europe. But the binary nature of our future which is uncomfortable for all of us, including US allies in Asia, including Australia, is going to be one of the characteristics of this difficult period we're about to enter. So I am asked to take only one question, so I will take two. And because it is easy for me, I will take, well, I see so many. Well, Brian Callagher and yes, because we need a British citizen. Okay, so please, let us start with America and Britain. After all, this was, Hong Kong was British not so long ago. So thank you, I'm Brian Gallagher, the CEO of United Way Worldwide, two of the most confused countries in the world, apparently. Prime Minister, so I presume you believe the decoupling in the strategic competitive path now that US and China are on is not a good thing, is a negative thing. Besides Europe, who are the other mitigating players to avoid what would be catastrophic decoupling? So other state actors, multilateral players, even civil society players, what will keep China and the US from coming, when we do come back together again, to come back in a military conflict or an all-out cyber conflict or something that would be destructive globally? Thank you. On the trade war, let's be clear about our American friends, this is not just a Trump initiative, it has widespread Democrats support in the United States. There's a change administration today. The Democrats would be pursuing a strategy towards China about as hard-line as the current one, but more systematic than we have seen under President Trump. So the second point is that, remember the trade war exists for a purpose, and that is China has been dragging its feet on trade liberalization, market access, forced technology transfer, IP protection, state subsidy for its firms. And these are alive in WTO disputes with China over a long period of time. So these are necessary frictions to resolve. Thirdly, however, it is a vast ocean between that, on the one hand, and a decoupling of tech and finance, little and the currency on the other. That's where you're into economic war. Or let me call it economic cold war. And there is a view within the White House, sorry, within parts of the White House, that that in fact is the direction in which we should go, that to decouple is necessary to contain, and that is in fact part of an integrated strategy to do that. For me, it is unclear how much the United States will actually proceed down the decoupling road. What I fear is that China is concluded internally that there's a big enough risk for it that China must take its own preparatory actions, which then, once they're prepared, tend to be implemented rather than simply remain on the shelf. We have mutually reinforcing, as it were, concerns, which therefore produce a more adverse reality. On the final point about off-ramps for this, how do you exit it? I think countries which have an ability to talk to the United States about where to go in the future on this, who would be listened to in Washington, would be Japan, Germany, which the United States identify as the new core of Europe, given Britain's decision, and less so India, possibly countries like Australia. In other words, close allies, but those who are able to say to Uncle Sam, be careful what you wish for. Lord Lutian. And that's the last question. Thank you very much. I might make it the last two questions, very brief. The first is really seeking your advice, Kevin. As you know, Britain still has guarantor status in relation to Hong Kong. We've been fairly cautious in the light of what's been happening in Hong Kong. What would your advice to us be as to what we should be doing at this moment? And secondly, you referred to the Belt and Road as advancing trading opportunities for China. It has been described by certain military figures in Europe as neocolonialism, building a colonial empire on behalf of China. Would you agree with that? Let me take the second question first, and then let me allow me to duck and weave and try and avoid a direct answer on the first question that you asked. And then I'll speak to you privately about it later on, which is on Hong Kong. On Belt and Road, what is the big distinguishing feature about China's global strategy? Is it against what, frankly, for 500 years was a relatively appalling Western colonial history in the rest of the world, whether it's Asia, Africa or Latin America, China has no interest in occupying anybody else's territory. It's just not there. China's territorial boundaries were largely settled in the Qing dynasty, between, let's call it 1600 and 1900, and achieved their maximum shape, but that's kind of where they are today. And there will be debates with the Russians, primarily about the long-term durability of that border. So therefore, an interest in foreign acquisition of territory is just not on the agenda. That's not the way in which China views the world. China's ultimate view, though, of, let's call it, Eurasia, is that they would want it to be as strategically benign and ultimately as compliant as possible to China's core strategic interests. And finally, on the question of markets, China is in the hunt for global markets. In Africa, as all of our American friends and colleagues at this important conference will know, but also in Latin America and the rest of Asia, look at the recent changes in Chinese economic diplomacy and political diplomacy towards India, because of its anticipation of where decoupling might go. So I do not see Belt and Road as such as a military strategy. There is a separate Chinese reach through the Indian Ocean, evidenced most recently by the acquisition of a 99-year lease in Djibouti for a Chinese effectively naval base there. China will have a range of justifications for that, including protecting its own sea lines of communications out of the Gulf if they can't in the future rely upon the United States. But that will also generate its own other strategic consequences as well. But when I've spoken to people at the core of the Belt and Road Initiative business in Beijing and queried those who are frank enough to explain what they're on about, I think that's a misread of what it is. And that is not me saying that China has no interest in extending its military presence in various parts of the world for other reasons, it does. And watch closely what China is doing in terms of the increased pace and locality of its joint exercising with the Russians in the Baltic, in the Mediterranean, and certainly in the Pacific. On Hong Kong, it's a highly sensitive matter that you raise, which is what should Britain's diplomacy be towards Hong Kong right now. Let me just say this, and I've just come from London, so I've been chatting to a few of our friends there about these questions. Is uniquely, as you say, under international law, the UK has a responsibility. None of the rest of us do, other than international human rights law and the UN Charter and the provisions there. But the UN Charter is about states, and Hong Kong is not a state. International human rights law is valid for all peoples, but as we know, it's a soft international instrument. So you uniquely have the treaty power. But to be frank, if I was Whitehall and Westminster, I would be rarely, but clearly articulating where in the United Kingdom's view the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law contained in the 97 Treaty arrangement were being violated at a particular time. These are not occasions to use lightly. Thank you very much. We could spend hours with you talking about China. Thank you very much.