 Welcome, everyone. This is the Paul Chung Memorial Lecture on U.S.-China Relations Dual or Duet. Today, we're pleased to welcome Shirley Daniel, Director of the Pacific Asian Management Institute, or PAMI. Every year, PAMI presents a lecture, and it's our pleasure to welcome you all to the 2020 Paul Chung Memorial Webinar Lecture, celebrating the life and work of Dr. Paul Chung, the founder of PAMI. Shirley? Thank you, analogies, and everyone. The Pacific Asian Management Institute was founded over 40 years ago in 1977 by Dr. Paul Chung, who was an economics professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa-Shidler College of Business. Dr. Chung was born in Korea and became, and he came to the U.S. for his education. He earned a PhD from Michigan State University. After becoming a professor at the University of Hawaii, Dr. Chung developed the early PAMI summer programs around the concept of organized interaction between students, managers, and faculty from throughout the world who were interested in learning about international business, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. Dr. Chung envisioned more cooperation between academics in the U.S. and Asia. So the Pacific Asian Management Institute formed a consortium called the Pacific Asian Consortium for International Business Education and Research, or PESIBER. It was created in 1988 as a consortium of leading universities in North America, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania to promote international business education research and the exchange of information among faculty and students. The PESIBER 2019 annual meeting was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on July 7th through 11th, co-hosted by member school University of Kibongsan, Malaysia. It focused on the theme of international entrepreneurship, innovations in practice, education, and research. This year, the PESIBER met virtually to discuss how the COVID pandemic has impacted all our member universities. Next year, we hope to hold the PESIBER meeting in Lima, Peru at our member school Asan Business School. This Paul Chung Memorial Lecture is made possible by the generosity of Mrs. K Chung, who established the Dr. N.H. Paul Chung Memorial Lecture Fund. Over the past 30 years, in addition to this lecture, Mrs. Chung has endowed scholarships and programs at the William S. Richardson School of Law, the Center for Korean Studies, and the Scheidler College of Business. Thank you, Mrs. Chung, for your continued generous support of PAMI and the University of Hawaii. I'd also like to thank you, Jay, and ThinkTech for helping us keep the tradition of our annual lecture through the ThinkTech platform. Thank you for your support to the University and to PAMI. This year, since the topic focuses on China, the University of Hawaii Center for Chinese Studies is also co-sponsoring the event. We welcome their participation. There are many other professional organizations, businesses, faculty scholars and alumni, and of course the legislature, who have faithfully supported PAMI and the University over the years. Thank you all for your continued support of our programs. We greatly appreciate your participation in the webinar today as we celebrate the life and the work of Dr. Chung. So at this time, I'll turn it back to Jay to introduce our speakers. Thank you, Shirley. Okay, here are our panelists for today. First, Chris McNally of Shamanard University and the East West Center. His research focuses on comparative capitalism, especially the nature and logic of Sino-capitalism. He is at present working on a research project that studies the implications of China's international reemergence on the global order. He has done a lot of writing on China and its politics and economy. Thanks for being here, Professor McNally. Then we have Ji Chen of the University, Professor Ji Chen of the University of Colorado at Denver. He's a senior instructor of finance at the business school and director of China Initiatives, Institute of International Business, University of Colorado at Denver. He has taught corporate finance, investments, and portfolio management, financial markets and institutions, and international financial management since 1990. His research focuses on the development of financial infrastructures, including banking, capital markets, and insurance services in China. He has likewise done a lot of writing on China. Thank you for being here, Professor Chen. Next, Stephen Thomas of the University of Colorado at Denver. He's an associate professor of political science and has been a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins Nanjing University Joint Center in China. He teaches courses on international relations, human rights, Chinese politics, Chinese development, and comparative politics. His research focuses on post-Mao, Chinese financial sector reforms, Chinese human rights, Chinese historical and current political development, including China's Belt and Road Initiative. Thank you for being here, Professor Thomas. And we have Charles Booth of the William S. Richardson School of Law at UH Manoa. He's a leading expert on comparative and cross-border insolvency and commercial law, and is especially well known for his work on Asian law. His current research examines Hong Kong and Chinese insolvency law and reform, and the development of insolvency and commercial law infrastructures in Asia in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. He publishes extensively on these topics. Thank you for being here, Professor Booth. Now we'll hear from each of our panelists, and we'll take your attendee questions after all the panelists are done, but throughout, you can click on the Zoom Q&A panel and type your questions into that panel. Please indicate if you want your question directed to a specific panel. Let's start with Chris McNally. Professor McNally, you first. Since we are all here to learn more about what is going on today in China, perhaps you can provide an overview of where you think China is in the world and vis-à-vis the United States. How fast it is moving and where it will be going forward. Mr. McNally. Yes, thanks Jay, as well, and also thanks to Shirley and Pammy, the child of the College of Business and CCS for putting this all together. The Chinese government has already over the past, has already over the past two to three years started to try and change its development model quite substantially. But COVID-19 has put these efforts on steroids and then the Trump administration's various measures to restrict Chinese access to markets, as well as to restrict exports, high-tech exports to China, have further accentuated what has been a move towards more self-sufficiency in China. So back in May, Chinese President Xi Jinping put forward a new principle called dual circulation. This is basically an idea that the Chinese government and the Chinese economy as a whole will put much more emphasis on domestic circulation. That means an integrated system of domestic production, distribution and consumption that relies a lot less on exports and also foreign imports, especially of high-tech goods. So this domestic circulation should take the principal role in driving China's economic development moving forward. The second part of circulation continues to be the international economy, and the Chinese government has made very clear that they do not want to shut themselves off from international commerce, from international trade, from international investment. So it's basically a rebalancing of the Chinese economy, and that is something that has been going on for over a decade already. Consumption has gradually become the driver of Chinese economic growth. It accounted for roughly 40% of Chinese GDP about 10 years ago, and now accounts for roughly 55%. This is still low in international comparison. Advanced industrial countries tend to be around 60% to 70%, with the United States around 70%. So China is still lagging in terms of how much domestic consumption contributes to economic growth. However, it is moving in the right direction, and the Chinese government right now for the next five years, and this will go into the next five-year plan, is really aiming to strengthen domestic consumption, to strengthen internal circulation, and at the same time also strengthen indigenous innovation. So the second plank of the domestic circulation part is increasing technological innovation within China, putting huge amounts of money into establishing tech infrastructure, such as 5G base stations. But also trying to leapfrog certain technologies, especially the manufacturing of chips. So the Chinese government has decided that there's no way they can do without the United States, with the present technologies for making chips. So the only move forward is to leapfrog into new technologies that use different basic components, so silicon carbide instead of just pure silicon and so on. Oh, some questions come to mind, Chris. So in the year of COVID, they haven't done too badly at all, have they? They've done pretty well. As a matter of fact, the basic trends of moving so quickly in science and technology, in medicine and infrastructure, in financial development, all those things that still, I don't want to say on track, but they're still moving. And even if they're not number one yet today, all the elements of jumping over us and becoming number one, they're all there. I mean, one of the things you talked about was 5G. Well, I understand they're working on 6G right now, that leapfrog idea. And, you know, furthermore, they're into AI. They've made their minds up to do AI and arguably they're ahead of us. So query, even if you measure it as a GEP metric, they're doing things that will help them move faster yet. And soon enough, by 2030 anyway, they'll be ahead of us. Am I right? Well, whether they're going to be ahead of us by 2030 is very difficult to judge because there's certain areas of technology where the United States clearly continues to lead, including in various aspects of artificial intelligence of AI. So how much China is able to leapfrog us, that is still really a question for the future. So I can still doubt that the Chinese have fared a lot better economically during this COVID-19 pandemic than most other large economies. They basically had a hiatus of roughly six to eight weeks, which overlapped with the Chinese New Year, which shuts down the economy for two weeks or more anyway. So they lost roughly a month. And now in terms of manufacturing, the economy has recovered very rapidly in terms of infrastructure investment as well. But in terms of consumption, the Chinese economy is still lagging. So consumption is not back to where it was a year ago. And that basically pretends some rather dire futures for us because you look at the Chinese of having recovered much more rapidly than other economies, yet their consumption power is still lacking compared to a year ago. So for the United States and Europe, this means we will have real difficulties getting our consumption fully back up within even a year. Now, what the Chinese have cleverly done is invest massive amounts of money into new technologies. They have a clear game plan and they have various industrial policy tools that have become increasingly effective over time. Not all of them work. There's still a lot of wasted money in China, but so there is everywhere. Even if you totally rely on the free market as we've seen back in 2008 and with the Enron scandal and many other things, there is a lot of potential waste. What is clear about the Chinese is that they do have a system of industrial policy that unfortunately is sorely lacking in the United States, except for some areas such as defense where the United States has been able to implement successful industrial policy. But from the broader economy, if you look at the various efforts coming out of both the administration and Congress, it doesn't look very encouraging. It's basically throwing money at old enterprises, declining industries, or otherwise doing things as the Trump administration has done with banning exports to China that ultimately could really, really hurt us in the long term because it's not just the Chinese. It's many other countries and industries that are looking at U.S. supplies and saying, can we really trust them into the future? Shouldn't we diversify? So the whole idea of decoupling is not so much the U.S. decoupling from China. It's the rest of the world decoupling from the United States. And that is not something you want to happen. You don't even want to put that idea in people's heads. You don't want to sow that type of doubt because the United States is so central. It enjoys a monopoly on the reserve currency, the dollar. It enjoys a monopoly on various key technologies. And all you're doing is basically incentivizing the rest of the world of trying to become less dependent on the United States. So decoupling, deglobalization, increased resilience instead of efficiency ultimately becomes something very negative for the United States if we continue down this path. One thing I really do need to ask you, it seems to change from time to time, but the question is whether China would support Trump in this election coming up or support Biden. What is in its interest and what, if anything, is it doing about it? Well, it's one of the big questions. And if you look at the intelligence reports, it becomes clear that the Chinese are quite schizophrenic. So they're not like the Russians. It's clear whom the Russians support. For the Chinese, another four years of Trump would mean another four years of chaos, another four years of delegitimizing the United States internationally, which in the long term would help China. But the Chinese are not like the Russians. They like stability. They would like to have a stable international order in which they can prosper and their trading partners, including in Africa and Southeast Asia and the Middle East can prosper. So for the Chinese, often internally and externally, stability is above all else. And Biden administration would mean certainly a lot more stability. There would be clear counterparts the Chinese would talk to, there would be negotiations, but a Biden administration is likely to rally our allies to his help and try and create a united front to use a Chinese term here, communist term, to face the Chinese. So a cooperation with the Japanese, the Europeans in particular, that would basically tell the Chinese, look, you need to play by certain rules of the game, and we will together negotiate these rules. And very interestingly, I have to put this in here because you asked us before this started whether nothing, anything new came out of China. Well, two, three days ago, the Chinese proposed a new roadmap for governing the international internet. The internet basically are the cyberspace. And while there is not much flesh on the ideas the Chinese put forward, they do make a lot more sense than what the Trump administration has been pursuing. The Trump administration has basically been pursuing a policy of exclude the Chinese, all of us get together, exclude them, basically try and destroy the technological capacity. The Chinese are basically arguing we need a multilateral agreement, so that we do not put back doors into hardware equipment, so that we do not use apps to spy on each other's citizens that we transfer data across borders. Yes, the Chinese want to keep sovereignty over the internet intact. But the roadmap does make a lot more sense for some sort of future multilateral agreement that I'm sure will look different from what the Chinese have proposed, but nonetheless will make a lot more sense than these kind of knee jerk reactions of shutting down something like TikTok. We chat is a bit of a different story, but TikTok, please. Yes, the Chinese could transfer data. And there's ways of regulating this. I mean, it's not that you have to, you know, basically, you know, take the pleasures of 50 million teenagers away from them. Okay, we're going to move on. There's so many questions. This is this. It's just robust with a million questions. G Chen, Professor Chen, you're next. The development model that Dr. McNally describes indicates that China intends to expand its influence in world trade, particularly in Asia and Europe, but not limited to Asia and Europe either there's other places that Africa, for example, South America. So, query, what is the China Belt and Road Initiative these days? How well is it doing? Has it been affected in the time of COVID? Is it meeting China's expectations? What should we think about the Belt and Road Initiative? All right. First of all, this is a big subject. We can spend days and days talk about Belt and Road. And first one, let me give you some kind of snapshot of Belt and Road program. Definitely, this one is a Chinese endeavor to the international trade and international development. So, several things we need to keep in mind. Number one is this Belt and Road Initiative is starting in the year 2013. So, basically roughly it's about seven years old program and proposed by President Xi Jinping in Kazakhstan in the year 2013. At that time it's called One Belt, One Road. So, the One Belt is the old Silk Road from China to Europe. And then along the ancient Silk Road, the country, they want to develop an economic belt. Okay, so that's the One Belt. One Road, they called it the 21st century maritime Silk Road, which is linked to Southeast Asia and also Africa. And those two combined together, they called One Belt, One Road. And after that, their more country and region joined this program. So, in the year 2017, they changed the name. Inside China, we are talking about China still called One Belt, One Road, because in the Chinese language, it's very easy to comprehend and easy to remember. But outside, they banned One Belt, One Road, they called it Belt Road initiatives. So that's, today, outside of China, all called the Belt Road initiatives. And so this is the initial setting, second one, what is the goal? So this is a China-led international endeavor when the China developed, so they want to go international. So the ultimate goal of this one is to link all those Belt Road countries together. And from the Chinese language, first one is politically, mutual trust, economically, development of all those Belt Road countries because all the most of the countries are developing countries. There are some developed economies, but majority of the countries are developing economies. So, the available Belt Road countries economy was a mutual benefit. So that's, again, Chinese word. The third element is culturally. So they want to culturally tolerant each other. So basically, it's respect to each other's culture. So that's the purpose of this one. You know, the question, I suppose, is whether they've been successful in that. Obviously, COVID has had an effect, but the other thing that's had an effect is the reputational aspect of how they do their debt arrangements. Yeah, yeah. So if you're looking for... I'd like you to talk about the debt trap. Yeah, yeah. After three years, the result is kind of mixture. There are some successful cases and some of the issues of this one. So you talk about the debt trap. There are some issues dealing with debt. If you're looking for all this investment project and the loan they granted, according to the international standard, all the loans they gave to the country, 70 countries, is below the international standard, no standard, the level. So basically, it's a subside loan. The reason the Chinese said, you know, we give you a low interest loan and we can mutually benefit. But even that, you need to have a due diligence study. Some of the loans can get bad. You know, you talk about, I don't think it's a trap, but you need to do a good due diligence study and to study the capability in the future to pay back the loan. There are some of the project is getting some trouble. That's from from outsiders. That's what I think is pretty normal. And also in the future, they will take this one as a license. They learned from a previous investment project and then they wanted to continue to improve. And also, those ones that stimulate the receiving countries when they receive the loan, they need to understand what is their future capacity. One other thing I'd like you to mention, if you don't mind, Dr. Chen, and that is investment. You know, I guess it was about a year ago, maybe a little more a year and a half ago, there was a conference here in Honolulu which attracted investors from all over the world. And all these people really wanted to invest in Belt Road Initiative. They had their checkbooks out and they thought they could make some big money by investing in the various infrastructure projects. Is that still the case? Is that successful? Is the world investing in BRI? The BRI from their statement from Chinese government statement is open to everybody. It's a competitive beating system. And they want to make the beating system number one is transparent. Number two is environmental friendly. Number three is sustainability of the project. So this one's open to everybody. But so far, you're looking for the project in the BRI, I think the Chinese beating is pretty competitive. If they're competitive, why not? You know, all the receiving countries are happy. They can get money. And in the meantime, I haven't mentioned this one. The fall part of investment of BRI is estimated from anywhere from $1 trillion to $10 trillion. That's a huge investment. How do we finance that one? Still a big question mark. Number three is a lot of people have a more country signed up for MOU for BRI than the people anticipated. Because everybody want to join this one. Particularly developing countries, why not? If we have money coming in, in the future we can pay back. Why not? We need to borrow this money and develop our infrastructure. And then we can further develop. This is all the marks of a huge, historic success if they play it right. Okay, we're going to move on to Dr. Steven Thomas. Professor Thomas, how about you? You've been a scholar of China for several decades. And the Chinese have made tremendous economic strides in that, in that time. President Trump said he doesn't think China should continue to be considered a developing country for World Trade Organization purposes, or that it should have a favored nation status. What do you think of Trump's position on that, especially in light of the remarks that we've heard so far? Thank you, Jay, and thank you Shirley, and enjoyed the presentation so far. Obviously this is a very broad topic and there's lots to put into this. I guess as the social sciences, along with Chris and others I'm sure, I would add a little history. Just to remind us where China's come from and where they, this might help us to understand where they're going, and that might help provide a context to better understand this. Just to go back a little bit, in 1820, China was the largest single economy in the world, with around 33%. By 1949, when the revolution started, they were down to 5%. So one thing that China has tried to do since 49, and particularly since 1980, is to regain some of this traditional position that China had as recently as 1820. China is the largest economy in the world in terms of population, and in terms of their own perspective, and I'm giving a foreign perspective of a Chinese perspective. So I may not be right, but my view on this is that they would like to have some version of where they were in 1820. So, but they did start, as I said, in 1949 from a very poor situation. Per capita income, maybe $50, maybe $100. As recently as 1980, China was had an income, per capita income of $200 per capita. It's now up to $10,000. So in order to answer this question of whether China should be considered a developing country or a developed country to have the benefits, I think you can look at it either way. It is now the second largest in PPP, first largest, but at the same time, there are 1.3 trillion people. So one of the kind of challenges that I think we have and China has is to understand that they both want to be more developed, but they still are poor, or at least middle income. So their current current per capita income is around 10,000. Middle income. We're, what, 60 or something in the most of China's Asian neighbors are three or four or five times what they are. So they are a middle income country, hoping to be a more developed country. So I don't think that answers the question totally, but they, I think that they would like to benefit from the things that middle income countries still have as opportunities. And at the same time, one of the problems in understanding this is that China, China is, so Japan is, was second now third is as Chen Ji says as Ji Chen has pointed out, but China is 10 times bigger than Japan. So if China gets ahead and continues to grow, which they appear to be as Chris has mentioned, then they, we were, we are going to have a fellow member of the world economy that is huge, largest in the world. So, well, I think it's good policy for this administration to cut off Chinese companies to, you know, take aggressive foreign trade steps against them, tariffs and the like. All the names and blame them for COVID and all that is a good policy in terms of sharing the limelight economically. Well, it isn't, it isn't. I mean, we have reasons to compete economically. The problems we that we have, and I'm not, I don't mean President Trump so much at this point, but all of us, I know if you've been reading literature on China, you have, you know, the coming war with China, and, and the people who are saying, no, we shouldn't be doing that. We should do everything we can to prevent that. So there's a range of views and Trump is just taking advantage, I think, in my opinion, of this, this situation, which is unclear to us, I think, and unclear to. And I think really unclear to the Chinese. I'm not quite sure that they all agree on where to go from here. Well, you're one of your areas is human rights, of course, and there's a huge issue about human rights. It keeps popping its head up. It pops its head up on, you know, Tibet in Mongolia recently on the Uighurs, of course, intersection of draconian technology and the Uighurs is really sad right on Hong Kong, and to some extent on on Taiwan, and and other incidents along the way. So China has a really bad black eye reputation about human rights and yet it gets to be the chair of the United Nations Human Rights Commission I find that extraordinary. What does that mean for China? What does that mean for human rights in China? What does that mean for the United Nations? Again, this is a really complicated question. First of all, human rights. In the US, we talk about civil and political, because the Bill of Rights is the basis of civil and political. And when Eleanor Roosevelt did all this in 1948. We all agreed the world agreed that we needed to be more respectful of civil and political rights as to treat people equally fairly. And with with justice and so on and not have genocide and all those horrible things. The other part of human rights is social and economic. And in this is something that we're less familiar with and we don't really value economic rights in this country. We have relatively few of them. We don't have national healthcare. We don't have good policies on on kids and so on. So there's a whole bunch of areas that we don't. And just to help us broaden this a little bit more, China has been the most successful go country in the world in achieving the millennium goals of the billion people who've been pulled out of poverty in the millennium goals. 700 million of them are Chinese. From the Chinese, they have been amazingly successful at social and economic rights. And for a poor country member, 550 per cap. Life expectancy in 1949 no one knows for sure but you know in the in the 40s, perhaps. Now it's the longest living people in the world are women in Shanghai, and in Tokyo. So China has made tremendous social and economic progress. Then we have the civil and political Chinese are divided themselves on this issue, I think. I think we're going to have to hold this until the Q&A someone leave time for Charles Booth. Professor Booth now you following up on some of the issues that Dr. Thomas just covered. I know you spent many years of your academic career teaching at the University of Hong Kong, and you still return there frequently. Many of us here are concerned about what's happening in Hong Kong. So what about Hong Kong will Hong Kong be able to maintain its status as an international financial center will capital fly away from the Chinese mainland and from Hong Kong how are things going to change. First of all, thank you, Jane. Thank you, Shirley, for putting this together. The Hong Kong people are going through a very difficult time. And even before the recent development even through last fall. There were many protests on the street, then COVID-19 hit now we have the new law that has been enacted in Hong Kong. But I think it's too early to write off Hong Kong as a financial center. This has happened before this lot of doom and gloom, but Hong Kong is very adaptable. I think certainly even if there are problems in the future, you're looking well beyond five years, you just don't lose your status international financial center. And I think a lot of it has to do with how Hong Kong response to the challenges ahead of it in terms of its strengths. They have excellent people on the ground, and you cannot underestimate the expertise and the importance of that expertise for Hong Kong. If one looks for 10 years from now, and that expertise is not replenished with people coming to Hong Kong, then you might have some problems. Secondly, right now with the markets, there's also been some benefits for for Hong Kong as well with the problems that Chinese companies have had in the states. You'll see many more secondary listings in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong will benefit already has benefited and will continue to benefit from from those listings. Thirdly, there's been talk for for many, many years about Shanghai or Shenzhen taking Hong Kong's place, but but I just don't see that happening. I'm certainly not in the near future, just because those systems are very, very different. And for operating international companies and interacting with the rest of the world, even though the law makes it more difficult to navigate Hong Kong Hong Kong still has advantages over those other cities in China. Well, you have you have the possible restriction, the actual restrictions by the United States on Chinese technology companies. Does that have an effect on Hong Kong. Do those companies have an effect on Hong Kong. Well, but that is serious and that's this when it comes to the trade issues, and that's going to take some time to play out. Because under the WTO, Hong Kong has been considered a separate entity. So to the extent that if Hong Kong is just part of China, if it is China, then that's going to cause some problems. So I think we're going to have to see over the next year or two how things work through some of these problems. No Hong Kong is in the process of major disagreements with the states over the status, and we're going to see what happens there. So if there are problems in that area with trade, that will definitely hurt Hong Kong. But I think you can, and this gets back to Hong Kong as an international city. You might have to bifurcate some of the trade issues from the finance issues in terms of going forward what Hong Kong status is going to be. Hong Kong would like to retain strengths in both, but that's going to be hard to predict in the short term. Let me ask you about the Belt and Road that Professor Chen was talking about. How does the Belt and Road affect Hong Kong? Is Hong Kong involved either in the organization of the projects or the financing of the projects? Hong Kong itself in that way is not. That's coming out of China. When I look at the Belt and Road, I look at it, if I could answer the question a little bit differently. Maybe it's my insolvency background looking at it from the finance area. So within Asia, the money that China is putting into the Belt and Road is not money it's raising in Hong Kong. China is subsidizing loans, they're doing that within China itself. One of the difficulties that we see is that at the outset, when the projects are announced, there's often optimism both the Chinese side and the other country side. But if you fast forward a year or two into some of these projects or even longer, there's often unhappiness in many countries if the projects haven't worked out properly. It's been mentioned that some of the due diligence was perhaps not done as well as it could have been. And some of those loans are underwater. In some countries we see almost lending to own where basically the countries can't pay back the debts. In other countries, I think Laos is a good example right now. The infrastructure project that went up is just a huge percentage of the loud GDP. And that really worries a lot of people in terms of the amount of money going to some of these projects. So I think you have to look jurisdiction by jurisdiction in terms of what effect you're going to have with the Belt and Road. But this also ties into what's happening in the Middle East right now. Now there's an argument that with the recent recognition of Israel by some of its neighbors, that ties into also these issues with trade. Because perhaps that helps the U.S. perhaps getting more control of some of the shipping lanes in the Middle East. So there's so many different parts to what's happening with the Belt and Road that we have to look at. One last thing, Professor Booth, and that is the whole thing about American policy, American foreign policy and American business relationships with the Hong Kong diplomatic relationships and so forth. What should American policy be? And has American policy been cogent? What do we need to do to make it cogent? When you say in terms of Hong Kong or generally? Hong Kong. I think the problem is right now that under the Trump administration it's not policy vis-a-vis Hong Kong. It's part of the bigger picture with China. And that's causing a lot of difficulties right now. Because some of the steps that are being taken, if it occurs, and let's even take a look at the arguments that the U.S. is taking regarding the WTO. If you do delink Hong Kong from China, then in that regard long-term that's going to hurt China. That's going to hurt Hong Kong status. So if I was in Hong Kong in the fall when there were big protests going on and students were flying holding up U.S. flags. Thinking that at that time there were statements being made from the U.S. government that the U.S. government had Hong Kong's back. But now a lot of the steps being taken are seeming to have the opposite effect in terms of what the ramifications will be. And I think this ties into the problem that we have in the States right now is that we do not seem to have a unified policy towards China and towards Hong Kong. So every day there seems to be another headline. Every day there's another statement. And then immediately what happens is that rather than focusing on a policy, the newspin is just focusing on what do those words mean. And that's exactly what we've seen this last week with Trump talks about the coupling with the discussion of the WTO and it causes lots of problems in terms of what we can do. Yeah, it makes it harder for Hong Kong to survive all these crises around it. Okay, let's take a few minutes and look at the Q&A that has come in so far. I have so many other questions myself. Okay, Professor Chen, how does the respect for cultures in the Belt and Road Initiative Square with China's treatment of Tibetans, Uyghurs, and most recently Mongols and Inner Mongolia. Well, that's a little bit different issue. Uyghurs and Tibetans and Mongols, this is an internal China. And I don't know, this is a long time issues internally in China. But the Belt Road basically what they say is we can go there. We are not going to use our culture to influence you, change your culture. Instead, all those countries around the Belt and Road, you just keep your own culture. So that's not only China because among the cultures, even take China out, the Belt Road community, all the countries should mutually respect each other's culture. So that's the Belt Road statement. So far, it's only seven years. The culture is a long term deal. Seven years, you cannot see any substantial change in culture or each country's treated the other's cultures. So I don't have any kind of cases. The only thing I saw is some of the remote country used to be no Chinese at all. But now they're open to tourism. So a lot of Chinese go their country and to enjoy their local cultures. And that's the initially, but culture is a long term issue. You know, only seven years you cannot tell. Okay, we have a question for Professor Thomas. By the way, you guys would be amazed at the level of the questioners here. I won't treat them as an anonymous but it's remarkable who is asking these questions. How do you square non develop country in quotes with the huge Belt Road initiative investments abroad. That's a good question. So China has three, three, three trillion dollars in foreign exchange reserves, the largest single reserves, publicly held government held in the world. So they have a lot of money to put out there. And in that sense, they are much, they are really different than many poor developing countries. So you could say they're a rich developing country, perhaps, or a richer developing country. So, it's a very interesting case of how China has accumulated that money and how what they're doing with it, but you didn't ask that. It is a that's part of the way that they're able to do both the Belt Road and what's called the Asia Infrastructure Bank. The Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, both of those are Chinese funded largely and, and partly, I mean, they're Chinese initiatives one policy bank and the other commercial bank. Anything further on that, Professor McNally. No, I agree basically with Steve and it's, it's a very unique case. You have 1.4 billion people. Average income is that of a middle income country just around 10,000 US dollars per, you know, per capita GDP. The government is very rich. There is a lot of capital, a very high savings rate in China, which means that the country can deploy these savings abroad. On the other hand, a lot of Chinese are still very poor and China itself still requires a lot of development. Then one of the things we seldom hear in the Western press is that there are actually quite a few misgivings within China about the Belt and Road Initiative because a lot of Chinese are saying why you're spending this money abroad in places like Laos and Pakistan and Africa when we actually need this money here at home. And to some extent, I would argue there's been a bit of a recalibration of the Belt and Road Initiative over the past six months with COVID-19 but also with the US China trade war with the Chinese government taking a more domestic approach to developing infrastructure and alleviating poverty. So it's more a matter of emphasis but there's clearly the Belt and Road Initiative doesn't seem to be quite a central anymore in Chinese foreign policy. And this might just because of COVID-19 that it might be longer term. Now we have another question about it. Okay, this, this, this attendee asks, Professor Debra Broutigam has seriously questioned the evidence for debt trap diplomacy. So has information found from Sri Lanka researchers on how the Hambotata port issue has been handled? How can this, I guess that's the big port that people claim is a debt trap. How can this idea of debt diplomacy still be justified through evidence? Anybody want to handle that? Yeah, I think that this is a wide discussed issue in the Belt and Road. And actually, I didn't mention that one is without the Belt Road Initiative, a BRI, China still go outside because the Belt Road is just like a platform to bring all this one into one umbrella. Even before year 2013, my view, I talked about my view before is China general strategies after year 2010 when the China catch up Japan in the GDP and also you will look at the Chinese reality is in the east seaboard. All the cities and areas is developed. So the only thing is they go to the west. So the government encourage the domestic company go to the China's west and I will go there and they find out even farther west, we have a more business opportunity. So there are a lot of companies go there. So the Sri Lanka cases, there are a lot of discussions and there may be some political issues. And I don't know what is the solution. The solution is now they gave 100 years using rice of the port. Yeah, the Chinese. And also what does Chinese come to people speculating using the sport, but currently they don't, they don't have a lot of cargo. Let me let me move on to one question for Professor Booth. Of course it's about Hong Kong. What what is the canary in the mine shaft for Hong Kong as an international finance center, judicial freedoms, judiciary freedoms, free flow of information, national security restrictions on discourse. What is the canary in the mind. That's that's the problem. All the factors that you mentioned so basically any one of those factors you could say is key over the last couple weeks, but a lot of discussion about know the independence of the Hong Kong judiciary. And a lot of it going forward is going to depend on what role history plays in Hong Kong, when one of the pillars of Hong Kong has been the role of the court. And if that is undone very quickly, that's going to cause very, very serious problems. Secondly, with the news flow, and that that is, I think I would put that second, because even if things get worse in Hong Kong with with with the flow of information is still better than the flow is in China. So I think there you still have I think advantages to Hong Kong and same way with the judiciary, even if there are problems there, still with the judge operate I think there's still advantages for for Hong Kong. Certainly, if there were a death knell for Hong Kong, I think it would be cutting the Hong Kong banks off in the international financial system in a way to if they got caught up in that that would be I think game over. And that's why I think what you see right now is a bit of a dance going around where Hong Kong is trying to put push back and make its views known. But there's been talking to Hong Kong newspapers they don't want to pick too much of a fight with with the US over some of these issues is this going to unleash a hornet's nest and you don't know what's going to happen with the Trump administration. If before we just if I could just make a couple points on on the the previous question if I could. Sure. On the Belt and Road there was a couple of points and one of them I appreciate the point about going back before Belt and Road even came in. And I think we have to look back to the history and in some ways that the US helped create the opportunities for China. Because the US really was cutting back on the amount of its foreign assistance, you know for for for many many years, and that actually created an entree for China and some of these countries and even before the formal policy was announced. The Chinese government was no making money in largesse available to lots of other countries with the Chinese view to natural resources in Africa to food in the South Pacific and I think China. I took advantage took advantage of that. The other point I just want to make is there's been a lot of talk about how much capital China has and they do, but we also have to keep in mind that a lot of that capital is very inefficiently deployed in China. And you have high rates of non performing loans. No officially the rate for the for the big banks is a little under 2%, but some of the unofficial estimates right now take it back to as even as high as about 20%. If you look at the Chinese banks over the first six months of this year, they lost money, and a lot of that was exacerbated by covered 19. So China does have a lot of money, but but there are problems they're confronting internally with with their with their finances that way I think we have to take into account. Professor McNally we have one for you. How do you view the US China relationship in the immediate and longer term, which I guess is, you know the title question here are current problems just a short term blip, or is there irreparable harm with negative trends, continuing and getting worse, even if Joe Biden is elected. Well, the big question is whether Joe Biden is elected or not basically who wins this American presidential election will be extremely significant, not just for foreign policy but also for domestic policy. I do not feel it is an overstatement to say this is one of the most consequential US presidential elections in American history. So having said that China US relations will be on a bumpy road, regardless. So, yes, irreparable damage has been done. The Chinese will never again trust the Americans to the extent that they did they never really trusted us, let's be honest, due to a whole lot of historical reasons. But that trust has become much lower than before and even a Biden administration is not going to change that. As I mentioned before one of the greatest fears in China is that the Biden administration will first go around and rally various allies to its side, perhaps take a less confrontational stance vis-a-vis China, but then taking a much more powerful stance because it will have many other countries, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, even South Korea as well as the Europeans on its side. So that could be very tough for the Chinese in some sense tougher than navigating the Trump administration. So I would argue that regardless of who is in power and you shouldn't forget the role that Congress plays. I mean, the law, the Hong Kong Autonomy Act was a law that was passed by Congress. It's just the administration that is implementing this. So regardless of who comes to power in the U.S., relations with China will be much worse than they were four years ago. Having said that, though, I do feel that under Biden administration at least some calm and some more regularity will appear. There will be less chaos in the administration. It will be clear to whom the Chinese can talk to, to negotiate potentially. Some of the ideas that the Chinese have put forward for multilateral arrangements such as WTO reform such as Cyberspace could actually find welcoming years in Washington, D.C. and especially in Brussels. So that could then actually create maybe, and I'm being very optimistic here, a potential for large-scale multilateral negotiations globally that include both China and the United States not in a totally adversarial nature, but still in a tough negotiation nature that at least tries to tackle some of these problems. Because our president administration, they don't have a long-term game plan. There's no strategy whatsoever associated with the various moves they've been doing, including Hong Kong as well. I mean, it's just shooting from the hip. And in some sense, as Charles mentioned, it actually is hurting the cause of democracy in Hong Kong because it's undermining the legitimacy of those arguing for this and their faultness, let's say, of the United States. Okay, we're almost out of time, so let's go to our summaries. One minute of summary and maybe a word, a single word or phrase from each of you to best characterize the message you'd like to leave with our viewers today. Professor Booth, let's start with you. Can you give us a minute summarizing this whole discussion, if that's possible, humanly possible? And maybe a word or phrase. I think what's coming out from the discussion really among all the speakers is that how crucial this coming election is for the U.S. in terms of the policy towards China. And the one word that's being mentioned is multilateral. Basically, the U.S. has been acting on its own and going forward, the U.S. needs to work more closely with its allies. I think multilateral approaches is very important. And secondly, tone. I think even though in many ways with the changes in the states and you have to keep in mind that the left wing of the Democratic Party shares a lot of views that the right wing has as well. So on TPP and certain issues, it's not as if you just have Democrats versus Republican, but their tone is so, so important. And I think someone like if Biden were elected president, a president Biden would approach these issues very, very differently. And with a different tone and the multilateral engagement, perhaps we could take things forward on a better track than we've had for the last few years. Amen. Professor Thomas, what would be your minute and your word or phrase to leave without viewers? I'm hopeful that eventually we'll have common agreement with China on the basis of how, as was mentioned, the international system as we've set up, the WTO and so on, has been really important to them. I hope that part of the world becomes more important to China and more, more something that they want to respect and nurture and work with because it's been so beneficial to them, and it will be beneficial to us to have them participate more so supportedly to that system. Your word or phrase? Wow. Okay. What would be your summarization and your word or phrase? Well, you can tell that the US-China relation is the most important bilateral relations in the current world. And I think this, I agree with the speakers. In the future the road is bumpy. But decoupling is not a solution. It needed to be a contact, understand each other's intention. I don't believe from, you know, original from China too. And I think Chinese cannot be enemy with the United States. There's no reason. And also historically or presently, China's not enemy. The only thing the Chinese want to do is they want a better life, very simple. They don't want, they don't want to challenge the United States as a leading role in the world of the older. They still like to under the leadership of the United States. So I will say important relations, bumpy road, and understand each other is a key solution. Okay. Professor McNally, your last on this, what's your summarization and your word or phrase? I don't build a bit on what he changes mentioned, but my phrase is quite simple. China is not Russia. This is the big problem. We just don't get it. We are confusing the two and we're treating China as if they were a pure spoiler, which the Russians are. The Russian strategy is to destroy the rules based international order with any means at their disposal. China is very different. China is a massive challenge to the United States. No doubt, geopolitically, technologically, economically, politically, and in terms of its cultural value systems. But the Chinese have an enormous stake in keeping the international order intact, at least the parts. They like the trade, the economics, the financial side of things. The Chinese are one of the biggest users of the dollar. They've been the biggest consumer of American technology abroad. They would like to keep the system running, perhaps change it a bit in their favor, but they are not intent on destroying it as the Russians are, clearly. And we just seem to have quite deliberately, in my opinion, confused that and made China the enemy that is trying to destroy the American way of life. And that, as Xi Jinping has mentioned, is not the case. Yes, China is a challenge. And the United States needs to face up to this challenge. Maybe that's the good thing about the Trump administration. We've woken up to this. But the way they've been handling it is absolutely backwards. And your word or phrase? China is not Russia. Okay, got it. Okay, we have, we have a lot more questions. And if you guys don't mind where I like to do is, and they're good questions. I'd like to send them to you and you can take a whack at them and respond to us and we'll circulate your answers to the remaining questions. Now for the polling questions, we're going to activate them. Right now I'm going to activate them and let everybody including the panelists answer them real quick and take as quick as you can. And we will have a little feedback about, you know, people how they feel about this program. Okay, do it now. There it is. Okay, I'll assume that when the panelists are done, everyone's done. So, okay, this is generally very positive. Yes, I'm going to end the polling now. And I want to thank you all. Thank you for coming. Thank, of course, thanks to the panelists for speaking today. Thank you, Shirley, for putting this all together. Thanks to every attendee and every viewer. And of course, thanks to Mrs. Kate Chung who makes it possible. We hope to see you all again next year at the next annual Paul Chung Memorial lecture. Aloha. Stay safe in your home, your office and geopolitically of course now and next year. I hope it's still okay to say that. Aloha you guys. Thanks again.