 our speaker Dr. Elizabeth Economy. Over to you, Liz. Thank you so much, Steve. It's really a great pleasure to be here with you, as always, and to engage with the broader SOAS community. And thank you just really for that very lovely introduction. So I'm going to talk, as Steve mentioned, primarily on China's foreign policy ambitions. It's great power ambitions. You know, this is a big year 2022 for China and for Xi Jinping in particular. There's the Olympics, which I think Xi Jinping certainly hoped would be a second coming out party for China and for himself, since he was in charge of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which were, I think, in many respects an enormous considered an enormous success. He faces a daunting domestic agenda, including how to continue managing through COVID, making progress on his common prosperity initiative, addressing an over leveraged real estate sector, and dealing with declining birth and marriage rates, among other domestic challenges. And then, of course, there's also the 20th Party Congress, where she will be likely reselected for his third term as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. Finally, there is Xi's international agenda. And again, that is what I'm going to talk about today. But I will say that to the extent that the domestic and the international agendas are related, you should feel free in the Q&A to ask me questions about China at home as well. So five years ago, when Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, a narrative began to emerge fairly quickly that China would replace the United States as the world's leading global power. President Trump very quickly began to unravel decades of U.S. contributions to institution building and organizations and agreements like the Paris Climate Accord, the UN Human Rights Council, the Iran Nuclear Agreement, ultimately even the World Health Organization. In the eyes of many international observers, China was the natural placement. It had the economic and military heft to lead. And Xi Jinping appeared ready and willing to assume the mantle of global leadership. He'd already put in motion new institutions like the Belt and Road Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. And he was delivering major international addresses on China's leadership, on climate change, and on globalization. At the time, I asked myself, I guess really, could China be the replacement? And if it were, what kind of difference might it make on the global stage? So I decided to explore three questions. So first, what are Xi Jinping's ambitions for China on the global stage? Second, how is he pursuing them? And third, is he likely to succeed? I would say that in the United States, while there is some consensus within the policymaking community around these issues, there's not really consensus among China analysts and scholars. All of these questions are still very much under debate in the broader foreign policy community. What my findings suggest, and I'll just give you a sort of a quick lead into my conclusions. What my findings suggest is really that Xi's ambition is not to maintain or to reform on the margins of the international system, but to transform it. So while many people argue, for example, that China has benefited from the current system for the past 40 years, and thus has a stake in maintaining it, I argue that China has changed dramatically over those same decades and believes that the world should change along with it in ways that align with China's values and priorities. Second, the China strategy is long-term multi-level and multi-domain. It marries strong state control with human and financial resources that are really unmatched by any other country, and it is able to persist and direct those resources in ways that other large democratic powers are not able to do so. And then third, will Xi succeed in realizing his ambitions? I will leave that to the end of my remarks. So first let me say a few words about Xi's ambition for China on the global stage. I think it's captured well in his notion of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and his effort to reclaim China's historic centrality on the global stage. Of course, at one level, China already occupies a position of centrality. It is the world's largest trading power and source of international lending. It boasts the world's largest population and military. It is a global center of innovation, and most analysts predict that China's real GDP will surpass that of the United States by 2030 or 2035. In addition, its actions on virtually any global issue from climate change to pandemics to proliferation are determinative for the rest of the world. But Xi's notion of centrality is not simply about ensuring that China's voice is given the weight and influence within the existing international system that its relative power would indicate. It's not even about reforming the international system. I think instead his vision reflects a radical transformation of the international order and China's place within it. And I think this ambition manifests across five dimensions. First, Xi is trying to redraw the very map of China, the very geography of the Indo-Pacific by moving from staking Chinese claims around sovereignty to realizing that. For Xi Jinping, as he has said, there is no rejuvenation of the great Chinese of the Chinese nation without unification. In the first instance, unification means Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the South China Sea. Beijing, as we've seen over the past year, has fully incorporated Hong Kong, of course, with the imposition of the 2020 National Security Law that effectively ended the city's political and economic autonomy under the one country to system governance model that had been in place since 1997 and was supposed to last until 2047. Hong Kong is now just another Chinese city. China's also made progress in asserting its sovereignty in the South China Sea. It claims roughly 80% of the area, but other nations such as Taiwan, Brunei, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia have conflicting claims. And China's claims are not recognized by international law. But since Xi Jinping came to power, Beijing has created and militarized seven artificial features in the South China Sea and laid claim to scores of others. And he's dramatically ratcheted up China's military assertiveness in the region in an effort to intimidate other claimants and to assert dominance in the disputed waters. Taiwan is, I think, the biggest challenge that Beijing confronts, and she has declared reunification with Taiwan as one of the 14 must-do items for China to achieve its great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. I think since the election of Tsai Ing-wen in 19, in 2016 as the president of Taiwan, she has deployed significant political and economic coercion as well as military threats against Taiwan. And I'm happy to talk more about Taiwan in the Q&A if people would like. I think a lot of people assume that the sovereignty issues are all that matter to Xi Jinping. This sort of narrow set of core interests, as they're often termed, are the only ones that matter to Xi. But if you look back to the first six to seven months of the pandemic when other countries were distracted, you saw that Xi Jinping also pressed China's territorial claims around other areas. For example, the Dyaeus and Kaku islands off of Japan, or the Paracels near Vietnam, or pushed assertive military actions in Malaysian and Indonesian waters and airspace. And of course, there was the first deadly conflict on the China-India border in 40 years. China also even reasserted a territorial claim in Bhutan. So I put that out there because many people make the argument that we really only need to be concerned about these core interests that China has expressed. But I think that if we take a step back, we can see that Xi Jinping, while those core interests are his top priority, that there's an entirely sort of a second tier of sovereignty interests and priorities that he's also pursuing, just not necessarily as aggressively as that first group. Although China's made definable progress, I think in realizing its sovereignty claims, its assertiveness has also provoked a strong reaction in the international community. European countries, as I'm sure those of you in the UK recognize, have moved beyond just economic interests in the region to develop their own Indo-Pacific security strategies. They've stepped up military support for freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. Japan and Australia have both indicated that Taiwan's security is tied to their own security. It's a major shift in their policies. And the European Parliament, as well as a number of European countries, are strengthening their economic and diplomatic ties with Taiwan. If you expand out from this consideration of sovereignty, I think Xi's second objective is to become the dominant power in the Asia Pacific. Xi has repeatedly called for Asia to be governed by Asians, has stressed their common historical, cultural and economic ties, and supported regional economic and security arrangements that don't include the United States, such as the regional comprehensive economic partnership. China's also called for the dissolution of the US security alliances, calling them anachronistic, a relative of Cold War, and anti-China. And we've just seen, I should mention, that China has bid to join the comprehensive and progressive agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is the trade agreement that's been led by Japan that the United States had previously pushed, but then withdrew from at the end stage of the negotiations at the outset of Trump administration. But I would say China's success here in advancing itself as a regional leader is mixed. I think Beijing has clearly cemented itself as the dominant economic player in the region, but its military aggression has prompted the establishment, not of the dissolution of the US-led alliance system, but instead an entirely new US, UK, and Australia defense pact known as AUKUS, that strengthens this alliance system in the region. And I think it's important to recognize that public opinion polls throughout Asia indicate record low levels of trust in Xi Jinping and desire for China to be the dominant power in the region. The third dimension of Xi's strategy is to ensure that other countries' policies and choices reflect Chinese values, norms, and interests. And I think this includes a number of different Beijing-directed efforts. Let me just tick off a couple. Most notable certainly is China's Belt and Road Initiative, which Xi Jinping launched in 2013. It began, as I'm sure everyone is aware, as an effort to provide hard infrastructure, connectivity, ports and railroads and highways, connecting China through to the rest of Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. There were six corridors initially, three overland and three maritime. But since its initial conception, it's morphed and evolved to include a digital Silk Road, so that means fiber optic cables and e-commerce and satellite systems, and China's exporting its surveillance technology. There's now a Chinese digital currency, the ECNY, that I think is going to become very important globally as well. We've seen China used to this kind of technology, this digital Silk Road, also to support its soft power ambitions. For example, there is a 10,000 villages program in Africa that provides satellite TV to African communities. But in providing that satellite TV, it also provides program in content. Not just Xinhua, not just the news and propaganda, but also dubbed versions of Chinese imperial dramas and kung fu movies. There's a real effort to use this type of digital and technological outreach to support Chinese cultural ambitions as well. In addition to the digital Silk Road, there's a health Silk Road that really came to fruition during the pandemic, and that's about exporting Chinese medical devices, Chinese traditional medicine, offering to build hospitals, and to send medical support particularly during the pandemic. And there's, of course, a polar Silk Road that is designed to connect China through to Europe more directly and is involved not only a significant increase in China's own research and exploration capabilities on the Arctic, for example, but also significant investments in Arctic countries. I think the thing that's interesting about the evolution of the Belt and Road is that in addition to this sort of infrastructure, whether it's hard or digital or polar Silk Road or the health Silk Road, there's also a political and security component to it. China did establish its first military logistics base in Djibouti. I think clearly there are more to come. I think Cambodia will likely be the next form of some form of a military base, Chinese military base that will appear. Again, this signifies a very significant shift from China's traditional position of never having overseas bases. And now you can find a lot of writings in China that talk about the necessity of China having many bases globally in order to protect Chinese economic interests and also Chinese people who are living and working abroad. And there's a political component as well. And I think this feeds into what we heard come out of Xi Jinping in 2017 when he talked about exporting the Chinese model. He didn't say exporting. That's my term. I should say he talked about the China's political development model as one that was worthy of emulation. And I think the Belt and Road Initiative provides a vehicle by which Xi Jinping is able to export elements of that model. And so you can look and see, for example, that within the Belt and Road framework, China will provide cyber security training seminars. It will teach countries such as Tanzania how to do real-time censorship of the internet. And you have countries like Tanzania or Vietnam modeling their internet governance laws after that of China. So this is not the wholesale export of China's political model. But I think through the Belt and Road, we do see China exporting elements of its model to willing and interested other countries. Is the Belt and Road successful? I think the evidence of the success is certainly clear in the space of the past decade. You can see, for example, that China has gone from providing 2% of the undersea fiber optic cables to of the global market to now 18% or 20%. So it's clear China's influence, its presence, has increased dramatically since 2013 as a result of the Belt and Road. But I think as many analysts have reported, the Belt and Road has become increasingly bumpy. It is essentially the wholesale export of China's development model. Countries get the benefits of rapid infrastructure-led investment and rapid economic development, but with all the same attendant externalities that China has experienced, namely corruption, rising levels of debt, environmental pollution and degradation, labor issues. There are protests around Belt and Road projects in virtually every country. The Chinese government itself has reported that roughly 40% of Belt and Road projects are facing some kind of challenge with host countries. And as we've seen in the past year or two, especially with the pandemic, many countries are now trying to renegotiate terms or even cancel projects. I also think within China there is less enthusiasm for Chinese investment overseas. And it's a popular concern, but also among some economists and even among some leaders in Chinese industry who don't see necessarily an economic return from their Belt and Road investments. And so we've seen a fairly steady decline overall in Chinese investment on an annual basis since 2016. China has also tried to enhance its soft power through different initiatives, for example, like Confucius Institutes, whose primary objective is teaching Chinese language and sharing Chinese culture. I think for many schools and universities globally, these Confucius Institutes offered an extraordinary opportunity to add Chinese language instruction to their curriculum. In many cases, you know, at schools or universities that otherwise couldn't afford to teach Chinese language. And for a while Confucius Institutes proliferated rapidly. But at the same time, the sort of coercive undertone has begun to limit their attractiveness in many countries, especially in democracies. You know, university contracts with these Confucius Institutes were not transparent. So the Chinese government demanded that the contracts not be publicized. Every university, you know, had to keep it secret and they kept it secret even from their own faculty. And the teachers and the curriculum were determined by Beijing. And that is a concession that most universities would never make to outside partners. So in the end, if you look, this initiative began, you know, before Xi Jinping came to power. But over the past decade, you know, China had planned to have a thousand Confucius Institutes by 2020. But if you look, you'll see that they now have about 540 or so. So they've fallen far short of their objective. And I think that has everything to do with, again, that sort of the coercive element of the Confucius Institutes and the sort of insistence by China, by the Chinese government that they manage, you know, who teaches the curriculum and keep those contracts secret. And then of course, there were some Confucius Institutes where actually the heads of them tried to muck around in other decisions or other politics of the university around, for example, you know, if the university tried to invite the Dalai Lama to speak or something like that. So there were some other issues, although those are really, you know, few and far between. Of course, China also deploys more overtly coercive strategies to shape other countries' behavior. And we saw during COVID, its Wolf Warrior diplomats, you know, weaponized the personal protective equipment. They threatened to cut off supplies to countries that criticized China. When Australia called for an investigation into the origins of the virus, Beijing initiated a widespread boycott of some of Australia's most popular goods. You know, this type of behavior is actually not anything new. China has long used the leverage of its market to try to coerce actors to align their positions with those of China. In the United States, you know, one of the most famous cases now has been how Beijing responded to a tweet in October 2019 by the Houston Rockets General Manager, Darryl Morey. So this is the NBA National Basketball Association in support of Hong Kong's democracy protest. And you saw that stores pulled all of the rockets branded merchandise from their shelves. China's Central Television CCTV stopped broadcasting NBA games, 10 cents stopped streaming them. But I think what's really important about all of this, and it took a year before the games came back on. And interestingly, Darryl Morey, after a year, that General Manager who posted the tweet, he left the Houston Rockets and went to the 76ers. And now 76ers games are not broadcast. So they followed, China's government followed Darryl Morey to his new team and is punishing his new team. But I think the broader point here is one that was made by CCTV at the time and actually didn't get very much attention, but I think it's quite important. And CCTV said, we believe that any remarks that challenge national sovereignty and social stability are not within the scope of freedom of speech. And the reason that this is important, again, I think it goes back to that issue of sovereignty to some extent, and that idea that there is some set of narrowly banded issues, that if you just don't talk about those issues, if you just don't poke at China on that particular set of issues, somehow you will avoid being punished. But I think what CCTV indicated, and what we've seen, for example, in the case of Australia and COVID, is that it's not simply about those sovereignty issues. It's not just about Taiwan or Hong Kong or the South China Sea. It can be about virtually anything, because in the Chinese mindset and the Chinese government mindset, almost anything can challenge social stability. And I think what the CCTV remark indicated was it was effectively signaling that any comment made anywhere on any platform, including Twitter, which is not openly available to Chinese citizens, that any citizen can expect to be punished. I think what's important here, too, is that when you look at this type of coercive effort that China makes to using the leverage of its market, what I found in my research is that while China often is successful in pressuring industry and pressuring multinationals to change their positions on issues, whether it's on Taiwan or whatever it might be on Hong Kong, it's not very successful when it comes to pressuring countries. And so when China launches boycotts against countries, and that holds true with Australia, but also with the Philippines a decade ago or South Korea around that defense system, these countries do not back down from China because of the economic leverage that China tries to exert. The fourth priority for Xi's sort of great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is foreign policy ambition. It's his effort to nationalize and insulate the Chinese economy within the context of remaining a superpower in a globalized economy. So in practical terms, this really translates into China reasserting state control over broad swaths of the Chinese economy through policies such as Made in China 2025, which calls for Chinese companies to dominate in the manufacturing of components for 10 critical cutting edge areas of technology by 2025. So that includes things like AI and new materials, autonomous vehicles, medical devices, and then this sort of larger policy that she just announced on dual circulation, which basically argues that China can innovate, manufacture, and consume largely within itself while still selectively importing necessary capital and knowhow and still be exporting powerhouse. So I think that's the experiment that Xi Jinping has underway right now in terms of China's engagement with the global economy. We're in the midst of it, and so I think it's difficult to know how it's going to turn out, but I think there are a couple of early takeaways. First, in exerting greater state control over Chinese companies, I think Xi Jinping has made it difficult for other countries to discern between what is public and what is private, so that many Chinese companies, particularly in the tech space, face greater headwinds in their efforts to go global, for example, Huawei. In addition, after the pandemic and China's weaponization of the personal protective equipment, countries are no longer comfortable with China's control over significant parts of the global supply chain. So we now have efforts like the Quad Emerging Critical Technology Group, or the US EU Trade and Technology Council, or this newly announced Indo-Pacific Economic Framework that's coming out of the Biden administration, all of which have, as at least one focus, reorienting supply chains to ensure resiliency and redundancy with the greatest target of that effort, of course, being China because it has been so central to global supply chains in so many critical areas. And then finally, beginning in 2014, Xi Jinping has called for China to lead in the reform of the global governance system. China believes that the current rules-based order does not reflect adequately its voice or the voice of many other countries in the emerging economies. And instead, that this rules-based order was created and perpetuated for the advantage of a small number of liberal market democracies. And so Xi Jinping wants the values and norms embedded in international institutions to reflect Chinese preferences. I don't think this is anything surprising. It's particularly true in areas like human rights and internet governance, economic development, and technology standards, and in domains where China believes that the rules have yet to be fully established, such as the Arctic or maritime governments or space. So we've seen that China has been successful in advancing its interests in international institutions, for example, in getting Chinese leaders elected to the top positions within the United Nations. So at one point, about two years ago, Chinese officials held four of the top positions of the 15 major UN agencies and programs far more than any other country did. I think the challenge that emerges that we've seen emerge as China has played a larger and larger role in international institutions is that Chinese officials are often tasked with advancing narrower Chinese interests, sometimes at the expense of broader international interests that the institutions are supposed to serve. So on the one hand, yes, China successfully embedded the Belt and Road Initiative in more than two dozen UN programs and agencies. So that just means that various programs support the Belt and Road in some capacity. For example, UNDP might align its development projects with some development projects of China. There might be some money that comes for studies about how to work with China on the Belt and Road. So there are a range of ways or sometimes it could just be a memorandum of understanding. And all of this, I think, on the face of it is fairly innocuous. But just to give you an example of how it can play out in a different way. In 2019, Beijing threatened to block reauthorization of the UN mission to Afghanistan if the Belt and Road Initiative were not included in the language of the reauthorization. We've seen Chinese officials in the International Civil Aviation Organization block people who tweet in support of membership for Taiwan. And of course, there are more egregious cases. So as part of my research, for the book, I interviewed Dolphin Issa, who's one of the world's leading Uyghur activists. And he was physically prevented from speaking before the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2017 after being invited. So he was invited, he was registered, he was supposed to speak. He was physically prevented by security guards. And the Chinese official who was then Undersecretary for the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs at the time publicly claimed responsibility for blocking pieces of parents on Chinese television. And he said, we have to strongly defend the motherland's interests. I think here too, I think China's behavior has provoked a strong back reaction from other countries who now are increasingly coordinating their efforts to push back against China's subversion, really, of global governance institutions. So let me just finish by saying a couple of words about China's strategy and its relative success. As I suggested at the outset, China's strategy is long term, it's multi-level and it's multi-domain. So if you take something like Internet governance, for example, you see that China develops the technology and the laws and the training to support its state-centered approach for the Internet at home, then it exports all of these components, the technology and the training through the Belt and Road Initiative. And then it seeks to codify them in global governance institutions. So to use international institutions like the United Nations to propose something, for example, like new IP, which is basically a new way of conducting Internet governance that would enable governments to control the connection between to any one device, to basically have an off switch to any device in any country. So that's a big new proposal that's come out of China, again, reflects its own domestic priorities, priorities that it's advanced through the Belt and Road Initiative and now seeks to cement in international institutions. And this same strategy holds true across multiple domains. So if you look at what China's done in terms of traditional Chinese medicine or its efforts to enhance its influence in the Arctic Council or to transform norms around maritime governance, they all have this same pattern of a high degree of focus on the homefront export often through the Belt and Road Initiative and then looking for sort of cementing alignment in international institutions. And China, as has been said many, many times, has a long term vision. So it's China Standards 2035 program, which it announced in 2019 or 2020. It has targets for the number of technology standards that it wants to have, Chinese technology standards that it wants to have adopted by international standard setting bodies. It has targets for the number of Chinese officials that it wants in these standard setting bodies. I mean, this is a 15-year strategy. Really don't see any other major country operating in this way with this same degree of ability to mobilize domestic resources and then deploy them at multiple levels. So will China succeed? Let me make three final points. First, I think China's greatest strength is its model. There really is no other country that has the particular mix of interests, of political capabilities, of human and financial resources, and long-term vision that China does. Second point though is that this model is also its greatest weakness. China at home is China abroad. The Belt and Road is the export of the China model. As I mentioned, that debt-led infrastructure growth with all of those externalities, China's efforts to control the global narrative around any issue that it deems threatening to its sovereignty or social stability reflects China's own domestic limits on freedom of speech. But the international community has much greater agency than Chinese citizens, and countries can choose how to respond to this type of coercive pressure. And what we see is that different countries are found differently to China's ambitions. Asia-Pacific countries are much more nervous about China's rapidly developing security ambitions than those in Latin America. Democracies are more concerned about things like Confucius Institutes or Chinese efforts to transform internet governance norms than authoritarian states. Citizens in many Belt and Road countries are more worried about deeper Chinese engagement than officials in those same countries. One interesting thing that I also discovered in my research is that we tend to think of Belt and Road investment as correlating pretty closely with Chinese political influence. We've heard the stories about countries like Greece or Hungary refraining from supporting European Union votes on resolutions having to do with criticizing China, for example, for its policies in Xinjiang. But what I found is that if you look, for example, at the top five countries' support for China in the United Nations on issues like the South China Sea or Xinjiang or Hong Kong, there really is no direct correlation between the amount of Belt and Road investment and the level of individual countries' support for China's political positions on these sensitive issues. And then the third point is that overall I think Xi Jinping continues down the current course. I think he's unlikely to realize his larger ambitions. The more aggressively that Xi attempts to enforce China's model in the context of the current international order, I think the more pushback that he encounters, policies that are designed to enhance Chinese influence and soft power, such as the Belt and Road Initiative and Confucius Institutes, are having the opposite effect. Chinese assertiveness around Hong Kong, the South China Sea, the pandemic have contributed to bolster rather than to weaken the US-level alliance system. And China's behavior at international institutions is now contributing to much greater attention to their actions and efforts. And there are more efforts to build coalitions to ensure that China doesn't assume more leadership positions in the United Nations, doesn't take control of standards and setting bodies. Fundamentally, I think in order for Xi's vision to succeed, he will have to modify it. But I think it will be challenging for him to do that. When I think back to this past summer, and some of you may have seen where he called on Chinese diplomats to present an image that is more credible and lovable and respectable, I think this represents the fundamental disconnect in Xi Jinping's own understanding that after a decade in power now, he's been in power since 2012, fall of 2012, China's image is not going to be created by what Chinese officials say, but by the reality on the ground. And that seems to be something that Xi Jinping, at least to date, is not willing to moderate. So let me stop there, and I will welcome all of your questions and your comments. Steve told me ahead of the talk that he was going to give me the toughest questions. So I'm really looking forward to a robust discussion. Thank you. Well, thank you very much, this is an absolutely fantastic thought-provoking talk. I was going to ask you whether Xi Jinping's policies really was really good for China, but you actually kind of addressed that at the end. So I'll put it in a different way. We know China is committed to its rise, and Xi Jinping is taking a very different approach from his predecessor, Hu Jintao, who was talking a lot about the peaceful rise of China, trying to reassure the rest of the world. Now, China has changed in the last nine years under Xi Jinping's rule. Can China now turn back to the Hu Jintao approach of peaceful rise, reassuring the rest of the world that they don't have to worry about China, rather than following the wolf warrior approach that Xi Jinping is pushing? Can that be done politically? So the first tough question comes from you, right? I mean, can China turn back the clock? There's no turning back the clock per se, but could China modify its foreign policy approach in ways that would resemble previous sort of Chinese foreign policy conduct? It could. I mean, there's no reason that China couldn't take a step back, couldn't reconsider its sort of military assertiveness in the South China Sea, couldn't take a step back from its aggression, greater aggression, military aggression toward Taiwan, couldn't think through a sort of a greater partnership with larger democracies on a wide range of issues. There's no reason to say that it couldn't, but I think that it would require a fairly fundamental shift in also in the way that China's conducting its own domestic policies. And I think, again, because China at home is China abroad, one thing to recognize, if you look toward that end period of the Hu Jintao and Wang Jabao era and that peaceful rise period, you had a much greater freedom on the internet. You had sort of much greater activity with non-governmental organizations. You had over 7,000 NGOs, foreign NGOs active in China. Today, there are roughly 400 since Xi Jinping passed this law in 2017. I mean, things have transformed domestically also in ways that reflect Xi Jinping's thinking about the nature of the Chinese polity and therefore the role that the Chinese polity is going to play globally, because what China does at home is going to be reflected in the multitude of ways in its behavior abroad. And so I think it will require not only just a shift, not only a shift in just foreign policy behavior, but it will actually require a degree of transformation in the way that the Chinese leadership is governing its own people in the way that it manages its relationship with its own companies, its technology companies. So I think there's a broader shift that reflects how China views its engagement with the rest of the world and the rest of the world's influence inside China, which Xi Jinping has been very concerned to control and to close off in ways that previous Chinese leaders have not as much. I think it's a massive rehaul of both domestic and foreign policy that's required. I think anything short of that is just that same kind of language that you hear all the time from Chinese diplomats and from Xi Jinping himself, that we just have to tell the Chinese story better. Somehow, this is all about our narrative. People just don't understand us, and that's why they're worried. Again, that disconnect between what China's doing on the ground, at home, with regard to Xinjiang, with regard to Hong Kong, and how that projects globally. There seems to be just this disconnected understanding. Right. The first question I picked comes from Natasha Marino-Tupolo. She really enjoyed your talk, and she was wondering about your point of China using international institutions for its own purposes. Does the United States not do it? Do they do it differently? Are they not the same? Yeah. I mean, look, certainly countries all seek to advance their interests, both in their bilateral policies and also as they engage in multilateral institutions. I think what is different to some extent in the Chinese case, and for example, I didn't mention some of the other ways in which China has sought to advance its interests. But, for example, there are cases where, as China has been soliciting votes for its officials to become leaders of various UN programs and agencies, that in fact it has either used economic inducements to canceling the debt of one country or economic threats for other countries to encourage those countries to vote for its candidates. You don't find the United States doing that kind of activity. You really don't find US officials in leadership positions preventing people from tweeting things on the websites of international institutions that just are run counter to US interests. There's not the same, I think, degree when Americans and other countries' officials go to serve within the United Nations. As UN officials, there's an understanding that they are now serving those institutions, that they represent those institutions. They're not representing the United States. That's not to say our ambassador doesn't represent the United States or other things, but I don't believe, frankly, that you find the United States and or many other countries behaving in the same way, in that same coercive way that you find Chinese officials. I think Chinese officials are very much tasked to use those positions international institutions to advance Chinese interests. Okay, next question I think comes from a Chinese whose name sounds like a Chinese national, Tran Zhou Song. If China really wants global dominance, why don't China directly occupy as much land and colonize as many people as countries have done in the past two centuries? What must China do to relieve the West's concern that China is doing more than just protecting its own development? So, let me make clear something that I didn't actually make clear at the outset of my remarks, which is that while I think China is looking to reshape the international system and the international order in ways that serve Chinese interests, I actually don't make the claim that China is willing, ready, and able to step into the shoes of the United States as the world's sort of sole superpower. I don't see China at least to date as interested in burying the burdens, for example, of global security or forging international agreements to address various global challenges. You know, China had that opportunity during the Trump years, again, when the United States was withdrawing very aggressively from many international institutions and arrangements to step up and play that kind of leadership role to do what a lot of people thought it would do, but it didn't. And so I don't make the claim, actually, that China seeks global dominance in the way that, and not that the U.S. had ever had global dominance, but in the way that the U.S. has been for many decades the dominant global superpower. But I do think that China is a disruptive power in its assertion of its interests, and I think it's, you know, disruptive militarily within the Asia Pacific, and that's clear. And if China wanted to reassure other countries of its benign intentions, it would stop. That would be an easy one, right? It would just take a step back from Taiwan and from the South China Sea. That would be, in the first instance, what it could do. I think, you know, globally, there are probably sort of coercive elements to China's behavior. Again, the wolf-wear diplomacy, its threats to cut off PPE to countries that didn't thank it enough, its economic boycott of Australia over COVID. In all of these actions, I think are ones that have caused many countries that previously viewed China as a worthy partner, if not successor to the United States, or at least as a potential partner or successor with much greater consternation. I mean, you know, honestly, what we've seen in terms of those record low global public opinion polls, it's not just Asia, it's globally, in terms of trust in Xi Jinping, and in terms of desire for China to be a global leader. Those are all what we call, you know, in the United States' own goals, right? These are things that China inflicted on itself by its behavior. And so I think it wouldn't be that difficult for China to reassure the rest of the world. But I don't think that Xi Jinping is willing to sacrifice China's ambitions to assuage the fears of the rest of the world. I think he's willing to tolerate a significant amount of disequilibrium in the international system in a way that he would view it for the short term to accomplish his longer term goals. Right? So if you look at what happened with Hong Kong, you know, that process of basically, you know, suffocating all democracy out of Hong Kong, you know, really took no longer than six to nine months. It earned enormous, right, a program from from much of the rest of the international community that watched in horror. But it didn't matter, right? This is a priority for Xi Jinping getting Hong Kong under control, you know, does it. And now he looks and thinks, so what's actually the punishment that I faced for this? Right? Maybe nothing that significant. So I think that's, to me, that's the approach that that she takes. I don't think he's that interested, frankly, in worrying about what the rest of the international community is thinking about what China is doing as China is marching toward trying to achieve its objectives. Next question from Dominic Weld in London. It's very appreciative of your very thoughtful walking to talk. If you are, if we are to engage effectively with China, what is the root to a successful mutually beneficial relationship? Yeah, I mean, I think honestly, it's challenging right now. But I think it is, it's a mixture of, you know, what many countries have called that kind of, you know, competition, confrontation and cooperation. And I think that means, you know, pushing back against China where it threatens to undermine sort of the, you know, rules of the road that have kind of served to support the international community over the past 70 years. But it also does mean looking for those areas of cooperation and like climate change, like maybe proliferation, although there are some issues around that right now. You know, can we partner with China on infrastructure development, for example, right? So there's a lot of competition through the Build Back Better World initiative. You know, is there a way that we both compete and cooperate globally with China? So I think, I think it will require a lot of energy and effort, quite frankly, because I don't, I don't sense an enormous amount of interest, again, on the part of Xi Jinping for real partnership. And so I think, but I think it's necessary. And I think it's also important to remember that there are many different views within China. I think one of the challenges that's emerged over the past five to seven years has been that we've forgotten, or many people have forgotten, how many different views and opinions and perspectives still exist in China. And that if we close off entirely, or if we adopt an entirely competitive and confrontational approach, that we will be, to some extent, closing off opportunities to engage with those in China that still want to have a positive and outward engaging relationship with much of the rest of the world. So I do think that's important to remember. It's harder to see now, but there are still many people who would wish for a China that was still more in the peaceful rise, peaceful development mode of the Fujintal and Guangzhou of our era. Okay. Next question from Peter Humphrey. How much of China's strategic reach to global power is rooted solely in Xi Jinping's personal ambition? And if he were gone, would the behavior of Beijing change? So that's a great question, Peter. This is probably one of the biggest areas of debate, at least in the US China field. I don't know whether it's also true in the UK. I'd be interested, Steve, to hear your perspective on this. But there was a really great book that came out by my friend, Rush Doshi, that makes the argument that basically China has been and will continue to be committed to long term strategic dominance, willingness to have confrontation, and that the Xi vision is not really just the Xi vision. It's the vision that's always been there. It's just now you have a moment when you actually have the capabilities aligned with the desires, with the interests. So I'm of a mind that there has always been a thread of Xi Jinping, but that Xi Jinping stands aside, and that what we've seen in the past almost decades since he came to power is markedly different from what came before, and that he is largely responsible for that difference. I think he is the first Chinese leader to step up to the plate in the way that he did. In his very first set of remarks, call for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and then proceed to define it by strengthening the PLA, having a robust Chinese Communist Party at the forefront of the political system. You have an economic target, so really laying out a path for achieving those objectives. Many of the ideas that Xi Jinping has brought to life existed prior to Xi Jinping. Even something like the Belt and Road Initiative builds off of Jiang Zemin's go out strategy. It's not that new. The connectivity element of it, the branding element of it is new, but it's not that new. There was talk about it in the latter stages of the who in one era as well. Not again, branded as the Belt and Road Initiative, but ideas about promoting infrastructure connectivity. But it took Xi Jinping to crystallize ideas and to transform them into actual policies and to push things forward. I think the transformation at home into a much more repressive political system, polity, and the much greater ambition and foreign expansionism, I mean bases. Again, a fundamental shift from everything that's come before in the PRC I think is Xi Jinping. So could it be different with a different set of leaders? Do I personally believe that if Li Keqiang had become General Secretary and President of the country, we would be dealing with a different China? I do tend to believe that. But again, this is a source of much debate in the United States. But Steve, if I can, I'd just be interested in your thoughts. I will keep it very brief. I would agree with your last comments that I think we had a different leader in China than Xi Jinping. We would be seeing a very different approach from the Chinese government. There are a lot of structural forces which would be in place anyway, but the way how China is conducting its relationship with the rest of the world at the moment reflect a lot of that approach and confidence Xi Jinping has in his own approach. So let's move on. And the next question comes from William Knight. He asks, what might be a likely scenario arising from the offer of aggression of Xi Jinping? So Steve and I were talking about this a little bit earlier. I mean, a scenario, I mean, I think we're seeing a scenario emerge right now, in fact, in terms of the response of the international community to Xi's over-aggression, over-reach, however you might want to put it. I think if you look at what's going on with Taiwan, for example, the Taiwan story is two stories. It's a story of Taiwan, which is a nation that is a very successful example of a democratic transition from an authoritarian state, done very well economically. It was a model of COVID response. So there's a lot of reasons why many countries now have become more interested in Taiwan. So you have Lithuania, you've got France sending its senders, you've got people from the Czech Republic, officials from the Czech Republic going to visit Taiwan. Australia and Japan, as I mentioned, indicating that Taiwan security is tied to their own. So there's a lot of reason that Taiwan is attractive to other countries because of what Taiwan is. But Taiwan has also become such a significant focal point because of mainland China's aggression toward Taiwan. And so without that, you wouldn't have Australia and Japan stepping up in the way that you have. I don't know whether you would have, for example, if it were not for Taiwan in the South China Sea, sort of China's military assertiveness in both those respects, you certainly wouldn't, I don't believe, have all these large European countries beginning to develop their own Indo-Pacific strategies that are focused on security issues. Europe was just interested in Asia and China for economic reasons, for trade and investment. That's been transformed. And I think it's been transformed largely because of Xi Jinping's own approach to the region and his willingness to destabilize the region in many respects and a sense, I think, certainly from the United States, which has always been a major military power in the region, but increasingly from other countries that what happens in Asia matters to the rest of the world and they need to become more engaged. So I think to some extent we're already seeing a scenario play out where you're getting many more countries to rally around, to push back against China in ways that you would have anticipated five or seven years ago. And so I think that, to me, is the most significant emergence of a scenario. A longer-term scenario would be if that push back from the international community somehow translated into domestic thinking within the Chinese leadership that they had moved too far, that they were pushing too hard, and that there needed to be some kind of retrenchment in this assertive policy, and that might necessitate some push back against Xi Jinping himself. That would be a longer-term scenario. Since you mentioned Taiwan, there are a few people asking questions about Taiwan. Essentially, it's about will China use military force against Taiwan to take Taiwan? Again, one of the big debates in the United States. I tend to fall on the side that says that when Xi Jinping believes that the Chinese military can successfully launch military action against Taiwan, if he doesn't see a path forward toward peaceful reunification, that it is more than likely that China will launch military action against Taiwan. And I think the reason that I say that is because he has so explicitly linked the success of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation to reunification with Taiwan. If he hadn't done that, and if he hadn't reiterated his willingness to use force, if he didn't see this narrative developing in China about how dangerous the separatist forces are in Taiwan, the separatist forces has been very quiet, actually. And Tsai Ing-wen has indicated that she would like to have talks with the mainland to resume the sort of subnational talks that were ongoing prior to her election that Beijing stopped. So when I listen to the rhetoric coming out of Beijing, and when I look at the military actions, when you see videos being developed and promoted, not only in China, but globally, you can watch them that simulate a mainland Chinese invasion of Taiwan, I think we have to take all of that very seriously. So I'm concerned. And I'll say the last thing is that in the many Zoom conversations that have occurred between scholars in China and outside China, which I participated in, when I asked them, what is the path to peaceful reunification with Taiwan? I don't ever really get a very satisfactory answer. It's not clear to me that many people in the mainland see a path because there are so few people in Taiwan who actually advocate for unification with the mainland. So then what becomes that peaceful path? I don't know. So I am concerned about the possibility of military action. Thank you. Next question. Lithuania, any green, she would like to know whether you think the United States and the rest of the world will help Lithuania now that Lithuania is being punished by China for allowing Taiwan to open a Taiwan representative office? I think the answer is yes. I think the answer is yes. I think certainly in the United States, there is significant admiration of Lithuania's willingness to stand up for democratic principles, being a very small, small country, and taking the initiative in the way that it did. So I think that there is interest, certainly interest in thinking through ways, for example, that Lithuania could benefit through the Build Back Better World Initiative. Yes. So the answer is yes. I do think the international community I know in the United States is quite interested in finding ways to support Lithuania. Next questions come from I think somebody who probably is a Chinese national but would like to stay anonymous. You talk about China's global power ambitions and then you focus mostly on the East Asian region. The questioner would like to ask you about what about MENA, the Middle East and North Africa, where does that stand in terms of China's priority? Is China being proactive or reactive in regions that are not primary in China's geographic of which? So great question. I think in terms of the Middle East or Africa, Latin America, broadly speaking, the Belt and Road Initiative now extends through the entire world. And again, China's interests initially were primarily economic. I think that's true in the Middle East, certainly. But I think gradually we see and will see more interest, again, in possibly establishing some kind of military logistics base in a country in the Middle East. We've heard about that as a possibility, certainly growing political influence. We see China stepping up in some respects at various points over the past few years to offer itself as a negotiator, like a peace negotiator. I don't think anything has actually come of these efforts, but it has stepped up in ways that are somewhat new to try to play a larger role. And Middle East isn't especially interesting place in some respects because Russia has always been the dominant security actor in the Middle East. Aside from the United States, China hasn't played that role. It's mostly been satisfied with its sort of trade and investment efforts. I think it's going to be interesting to see whether, you know, if China does in fact establish some kind of military logistics base, if it does become more active in Middle East security issues, whether or not that in some respects challenges Russia's position or whether they find a way to work together to coordinate. But I see China's role first and foremost in other areas outside of the Indo-Pacific as using the Belt and Road to embed China's economic and political and security interests. And then I think gradually we'll see how those evolve. But I think that is the role of the Belt and Road Initiative. Thank you. I'm aware that at least we have about two minutes or less who would like to put to you this question from somebody in London who would like to stay anonymous. And the question is about where Hong Kong stands in China's relations with the rest of the world. Does Hong Kong still matter is the question. I think Hong Kong has become an incredibly important touchstone for understanding the Xi era. Not only Xi Jinping's ambitions, but the way that China does business. I think it matters also when countries think about Taiwan. Because for any country that believed that China could be trusted to maintain a one country, two systems governance framework. And I think for a lot of countries, they could sort of satisfy themselves that this would be kind of good enough maybe for Taiwan in some different form than what Hong Kong was experiencing. But still that could be. I think there's no longer that trust, right? There's no longer that trust that China would maintain any kind of one country, two systems framework. And so that removes I think from many countries that kind of comfortable position that they could occupy in their mind. So I think Hong Kong has really transformed thinking in many countries for many people about the nature of Xi's governance and what we should expect from China moving forward and how we should be thinking about Taiwan. Well, thank you very much list doctor economy. I'm afraid that the clock has and we have in the box over 50 questions. So I must apologize to most of you whose questions I have not been able to put to doctor economy. Please be reassured that all the questions will be sent to her, including your comments. So she will note what you are interested in to engage with her in conversations. I do apologize that I have to draw this webinar to a close. Doctor economy has another engagement that she will have to go to now. With that, let me say goodbye. And I look forward to seeing some of you again at our event later this term. Thank you and goodbye. Thanks, Steve. Bye everybody. Thank you. This is really great. Thanks, Steve. It was really fun.