 Good evening, good morning, or good afternoon, depending on where you are. My name is Steve Sand. I am the director of the Service China Institute. Before I introduce the speaker and the subject of this evening's seminar or webinar. Let me just remind you that if you are new to this series of events, we use the Q&A box for you to raise questions. It would be very helpful for you to provide some information about yourself that enables me to provide to assess the range of questions in terms of backgrounds from the people who I'm picking the questions from. But if you would like to remain anonymous, please say so in your question box, and I will not read out your name or your affiliation so that your privacy will be respected, but it is helpful for me to know who you are as I pick the questions. If you are watching this from the Facebook feed, you will still be able to raise questions and the questions will be transferred by Arches to me in your course. For this webinar, I'm delighted to present to you a very distinguished scholar who not only is a leading expert on China, but that of multiple countries who are important in affecting the future of China and China's relations with important parts of the world. And that is of course, Professor Gilbert Rossman of Princeton University. Professor Rossman is at the moment and emeritus professor at Princeton University. He's also the editor in chief at the ASEAN forum. He is an extraordinary scholar for whom I have long standing admiration, not least, not only for his scholarship, but for the range of disciplinary expertise and countries expertise that he holds. He is somebody who is fluent in not only Chinese, but also in Russian and Japanese and is also able to function in Korean, which are the kind of countries that we will be addressing a lot in this evening's discussions on the subject of comparison of a new Cold War with the old Cold War. Now, Professor Rossman has published so extensively I think any attempt to try to pick even a sampling of his publications to illustrate his range of expertise would be somewhat misleading. So I'll only sort of highlight what I know as his one of his more recent single authored major publication. And that is of course thinking strategic thinking about the Korean nuclear crisis for countries caught between North Korea and the United States. And I'll hand over to you, Gil, for the next 45 minutes. Steve, thank you very much for that very generous introduction. I'm delighted to be joining you. I have been thinking a lot about this turning point we're at and what it signifies. So this is a good opportunity to share some of my impressions of where things are heading. I have three big questions right now. It's sort of the starting points for for this thinking. The first is, what should we expect from the Biden administration based on the people he's appointing and their recent writings. I think they're giving us a kind of guideline for a grand strategic vision. And they work together. They've many of them have served together in the Obama administration. And a number of them have co authored pieces. So I think we have a unusually clear impression of what a new administration is seeking to do in the Indo Pacific region. And that's the first effort that I'm exploring. The second question is, what is China's regional strategy and how far back does it go. I think people have paid too much attention to be our eye. The Belt and Road Initiative, which is focused primarily on the South and the West, whereas I regard Northeast Asia as the most important part of China's strategic approach. And I think we need to emphasize what Xi Jinping has in mind as a kind of sinal centric orientation to the surrounding environment. And the third question that I raise before I focus more clearly on the Cold War issue is, what kind of regional architecture is being contemplated for the Indo Pacific. So we start with Japan in the late 80s, early 90s, seeking a kind of Asian regionalism, which Japan could lead jointly with the US. And then we get South Korea at various times trying to present a kind of Northeast Asia centric approach where the Korean Peninsula becomes the driving force. And of course we get the Chinese strategy and various US approaches. But so what is the regional architecture that the Six Party Talks guide us into that is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or Russia and China trying to dock the Eurasian Economic Union and Belt and Road Initiative, a sign of where we're heading. So this is my question about architecture, and particularly with regard to how the Biden administration is reinterpreting the Indo Pacific initiative, the free and open Indo Pacific of Trump, we don't expect the same term to be used as a sense of regional architecture. So I start with those those questions. There's a lot of anxiety in the countries of East Asia of what what's going to happen, both because of Biden's leadership, which they're not certain about, and because of what the final US relationship will bring, as well as what recent changes in Chinese policy may be. So I think that we see some fearing US abandonment, thinking that Obama's so-called strategic patients towards North Korea, which I think was a misnomer, is a sign of further weakness or abandonment, and some are afraid of being entrapped, the entrapment that it could occur if the US has a very pronounced strategy that obliges South Korea to do things it doesn't want, and Japan to do things it doesn't want, and so on. So the question of whether we're entering a Cold War relates very clearly to the anxieties being expressed in many of the countries of the region. So let me turn to the issue of the comparison. First, I'm generally on the side of thinking we are entering a Cold War. I know that one of the architects of the Biden administration, now the advisor to the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Eli Ratner, has argued it's quite different from the old Cold War, he doesn't really seem to want to use the Cold War expression. I think there's a tendency not to jump the gun and call it a Cold War, but that based on the conditions, and based on the likely Chinese responses to US policy, I'm afraid that that's the term that I would find most relevant. A Cold War in my mind has four primary dimensions. The first is a geographical tug of war, where there are areas that are up for grabs. So in the first Cold War, it was primarily Europe. And the Berlin airlift was a sign of that struggle from the late 40s. I think in this Cold War, it's going to be East Asia, Indo-Pacific region broadly. And so the South China Sea, Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula are three of the likely battlegrounds over what spheres of influence, which the US doesn't accept. Types of international or regional order, which the US does regard as the way of phrasing it. So this is the geographical element. And I think that we're going to see tests of this. And I, in a moment, will talk about the Korean Peninsula as I believe the greatest test over the last 20-some years of what kind of Cold War we may be facing. The second dimension is strategic, an arms race, a battle over space technology and cyber technology. I think this is becoming more and more a reality that we're facing. So not only do we have clearly demarked geographical areas where China and the US are more and more competing and more likely to face the potential of conflict, we also have the space, the arms race, heating up very substantially, with Russia having done quite a bit to further China's competitive level versus the United States and its allies. So the third dimension is economics. Of course, that involves what's already being called technological decoupling with 5G in the forefront. The idea that the US is fearful of China's efforts to use intellectual property rights violations and espionage to steal and find ways to get more of the US technology and also to implement types of technology which give them access to secrets in the United States and elsewhere. And Russia is deeply involved in that technological competition as well, although not with having to rely on China for 5G. So how does this, before I go to the fourth dimension, let's ask how does the technological, economic and security dimensions differ from the previous Cold War? Well, in the previous Cold War, we did come up with some treaties, some rules for how the Soviet Union United States would compete. But of course it was an arms race that intensified, and one of the ways the Cold War ended up being resolved was when the US was clearly winning that arms race in the 1980s. This arms race looks like it's going to be a long term process, as was the first one, and with a lot of new elements to it. The economic dimension has changed fundamentally, of course, with China gaining recognition as a number two economic power in the world, and having created a situation where many countries are economically dependent on it. The Soviet Union did not do that, except for the countries that were called satellites, which were restricted in their access to the international markets. China has managed to find a different approach to establish close trade ties with many US allies and partners, and make it more difficult for them to join in a broad decoupling process. So the economics are much more complicated this time. Does that mean we don't face a Cold War? I don't think so. Finally, I want to talk about national identity. As I worked on my teaching over the years, I increasingly became focused on trying to bridge disciplines, sociology, history, political science, by developing an analytical approach to national identities, and to look at internal factors that shape foreign policy, so that Russian national identity, Chinese national identity, Japanese Korean identity became a big part of my investigation. And I broke the subject of national identity down into multiple dimensions, rather than treating it as a loose term the way much of the literature is done. And the first dimension that I focused on was ideology. And so I think one of the reasons why I see a new Cold War emerging is I think we have a real ideological struggle going on. China, I believe, has, despite the fact that it doesn't insist on quoting Marx and Lenin and Mao the way it once did, there is still quite a bit of quotation, and there is an insistence on the socialist element of ideology. And in terms of its domestic policy, it's become much more ideological in its orientation. So I think it's driven the ideological polarization that is occurring. Also, its policies on human rights, anti-democracy. Its policies to ethnic minorities on Hong Kong have raised a sense of ideological struggle in the West. Suddenly people are becoming aware of the difference over ideology. If I had to break ideology down as I've done into three parts for China, I would say the first part is socialism. The second part is Confucianism, Sinocentrism, but it's not traditional Confucianism. It's how China has reinterpreted elements of Chinese tradition and made them so salient that they've become an ideological force, unquestioned in Chinese mainstream writing. And the third, I would say, is anti-imperialism, sometimes called anti-hegemonism, anti-West. And I think that has been a huge part of Chinese ideology since the 1990s. It really never went away. And whether it was calling what the U.S. did ideologically on assisting China is pragmatic. And the U.S. is the only country driven by cold, warm mentality and an old ideology. Nonetheless, they were making it into an ideological struggle, often distorting the thinking from the U.S. So I regard the presence and the strengthening of the ideological dimension on the Chinese side and the awakening to an ideological dimension on the U.S. on the U.S. side as an indicative of a Cold War element. The second element of national identity that I would raise is history, the temporal dimension, how different periods of history are contrasted between two countries. And the identity gap emerges in this setting. And I regard China's interpretation of all periods of history, not just the history of one century of humiliation, but the earlier history contrasting the negative interpretation of Western history, internists and wars and so on, with the positive glowing distorted interpretation of Chinese history, so different from the Maoist era, with its very negative interpretation of parts of Chinese history such as Confucianism. And the treatment of the Korean War, which Xi Jinping, even before he took the top position, spoke about in very ideological terms. North Korea being a socialist country and the significance of this war and in the history of China, very, very important element. And then the treatment of really the Cold War era has changed and the post-Cold War era. So really, whatever period of history you look at, it's the challenge of how do we interpret it has become much greater. And this is similar to the Soviet U.S. difference of interpretation of much of history. It started as a Marxist effort to divide history into periods and to establish a kind of rigid orthodoxy about how each period should be interpreted. The third dimension I cover that suggests this kind of sharp polarization is sort of sectoral elements of identity, political identity, economic identity, do you have a superior economic system is the other side system, faulty and failing. And then third, civilizational identity, a big push to argue that China is a, is a superior civilization historically, and the West is civilization they flawed, however they interpret that. Of course it extends beyond the West, Japan, and Korea, South Korea for being too influenced by Western civilization when they should have stuck with being part of the Confucian traditional Eastern civilization. So this is the third and China has become more insistent since the global financial crisis on its superior economic system. And of course, especially in the past year on its superior political system for handling the COVID-19 pandemic. The fourth dimension is, is state society relations, what I call the vertical dimension, and there too, there's a very sharp difference. The U.S. is now increasingly calling China authoritarian. Of course, that's what distinction was with the Soviet Union authoritarian or totalitarian and and the false China places on the U.S. system, particularly the attacks on democracy that have been intensifying recently. There's also an international or horizontal dimension, looking at the international community and in very different ways. The regional community in different ways. And finally, the, the intensification of dimension, how identities have become much more intensified. And so therefore, I argue that when you look at national identity, you get a particularly good sense of how we are split. And in a, in a book that I published some years ago, based on research I did in Chinese sources in 2010 2011, when I was going to looking at these sources, I argued that the Chinese response in 2008 2009 2010 to some new developments, portended the demonization of the United States and the ideological and identity split that is indicative of a cold war, which is only been born out recently. So I want to focus on one example right now the Korean Peninsula, because I see that as the test case of the relationship between China and the United States. And just as there were various test cases in the first cold war. I think this is showing us what's happening. So in the 1990s China was pretty silent about its position on North Korea. The US finally came up with the agreed framework. The, but China was essentially saying this is your problem. We weren't, we're not deeply involved, but China was enabling North Korea, just as it had done in the 1980s, when and 70s when sign all US relations were improving, that did not change China's approach to North Korea in the 1990s, although it was quieter, it continued to provide the energy and food vital to North Korea's survival during its famine years. So, in the 2000s, we had a different signal US relationship over North Korea. The US really wanted China's cooperation. South Korea now had the sunshine policy to try to bring countries together, all of the relevant countries to have a joint policy on North Korea and engage North Korea. The US appealed to China to really get North Korea back to the talks, and we ended up with six party talks with China in the moderating position. But when you look at the, the interpretations of what they were, they, they brought we only looking carefully could see very sharp differences. George Bush was tended to say it's five versus one, everyone wants to nuclearization in North Korea. China is on the same side as the United States. But when I did my research in 2003 to 2005 or six on the book that Steve just mentioned about the North Korean nuclear crisis, I argued that North China and Russia were absolutely not with the US or Japan. South Korea was somewhat in the middle under a progressive government interpreting how to deal with North Korea and when the US shifted and compromise towards North Korea, that did not went over the Chinese and Russians and their interpretation of what was needed. And then, in the critical period, the end of 2008 in the beginning of the Obama administration, North Korea abandoned the six party talks, tested a nuclear weapon. And before long, took provocative actions against South Korea, and the response in China, as well as Russia was, it's South Korea's fault. It's not North Korea's fault. If the US and South Korea had a different negotiating position. And if the conservatives have not won in South Korea, and change the South Korean policy towards North Korea, we would continue having the six party talks. Their idea was to try to use those talks to create a regional security system in Northeast Asia that would weaken the US alliance system and help change the regional order. Actually, Russia was more aggressive in taking that position China was a little quieter. But when you looked at what Chinese were really writing. It was, there were elements of sinal centrism and how they wanted this issue to be resolved. And whenever South Korea did not rely heavily on China, as in the case of 2018, when South Korea started direct diplomacy with North Korea, the Chinese weren't happy. Sure, South Korea was doing some things China wanted. But basically, China was saying, you're not going through China you're just bringing in the United States that's not a solution to the problem. And they would not be sympathetic and they had five summits between Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping. And we don't know the exact contents of those summits, but we have to assume China was going increasingly favor positive towards towards North Korea. And even though it hasn't openly broken with the intense sanctions that agreed to. And in particularly in this last year, the pandemic curtailed contacts across the border, almost completely because North Korea has tried to isolate itself. The impression is that China is ready to strengthen ties. It's already weakened the sanctions regime. And it will make it difficult for the Biden administration to carry forward a maximum pressure campaign with the possibility of dialogue with North Korea to rally countries behind a joint strategy to North Korea, because China's ambitions on the Korean peninsula become ever more apparent and its pressure on South Korea has become more intense. It's not just North Korea, but South Korea that's faced retaliation, sharp sanctions over its agreement with the US to deploy the THAAD missiles for defense against North Korea. China says no, it's part of a Cold War against China to attack China to weaken China's missile capacity. And it is a, it is a sign that South Korea doesn't have a balanced foreign policy. And Moon Jae-in, when he came president, had to improve relations with all these sanctions operating and China so angry. He gave China a veto on North and South Korean foreign policy with the three no's saying he would not do certain things, military things like a trilateral alliance with Japan or installing missiles, more missiles, he was freezing what he was doing with the THAAD. So in other words, China now feels it has that kind of leverage over South Korea and is ready to pounce if South Korea, for instance, has a conservative president come in who is again trying to emphasize relations with the United States, rather than what China calls is a balanced relationship between between United States and China and South Korean foreign policy. So it's this test over the Korean Peninsula that we see happening and North Korea is likely to return to provocations. It's got to get the attention of the Biden administration. We don't know exactly how long it will wait to get that, but it just sitting around is not in North Korea's interest. The economy is in very great difficulty right now, both because of the sanctions and because of the pandemic. And it is Kim Jong-un had to apologize to his people extremely unusual in his January New Year's speech, because the economy is done so poorly. Meanwhile, there's every reason to think he's counting on China to to stand at least quietly behind him. If he does undertake those provocations and asking the US to come back to the talks and accomplish what the Hanoi summit failed to accomplish, which would be a new agreement that essentially recognizes North Korea as a nuclear power, and puts denuclearization as a vague long term goal, while strengthening, reducing the sanctions and strengthening North Korea's position in the region and the world. So that I see as a particularly keen issue one could go into detail on Taiwan, on how the Chinese are more and more using economic coercion. The case in the last half year has been Australia, going beyond what China did towards South Korea after the fad deployment, because it's angered over Australia on ideological grounds, including Australian statement that there should be an investigation of the origins of the pandemic that China was denying that opportunity. We got China forcefully reducing imports from Australia and taking other measures to counter Australia. So let me conclude, having focused on this one case to some to a great degree, and conclude by saying in all dimensions that I see is important to a Cold War, we have a widening divide between China and the United States. I believe China is the main driver of this Cold War, that the fact that the US has awakened to what is happening is not the sign that the US should be seen as a driver. However, how the US responds is complicated, because especially of the economic dimension, and the fact that this is being fought in the Indo Pacific region, close to China, where China has developed ties with so many countries. And I think the Trump administration handled it very badly. They made it ideological in ways it did not need to be. They made it seem as this is against the Chinese Communist Party, and we've returned to the free world versus communism, a way of thinking about identities that doesn't win much sympathy in the East Asian region. They focus so much on changing the status quo in Taiwan, although that's the tendency right now, and I think it's driven especially by China's more aggressive approach to Taiwan and Hong Kong, that it seemed as if we weren't going to be able to coexist with China and find common ground, the way we had been previously, and the way we were usually able with the Soviet Union. And there were certain rules that were established that how you behave, and when we thought the Soviets broke the rules in Afghanistan in 1979, that turned the Cold War into a much more heated problem. So I would argue that Biden needs to and will adopt a more nuanced approach. There will be not one big coalition on all issues versus China, but a series of coalitions issue by issue, whether it's 5G technology, whether it's dealing with Taiwan, whether it's human rights, whether it's the Korean Peninsula, we will have different countries involved in different ways. It's going to take a complicated foreign policy. And I think right now, I'm hopeful that the people joining the administration are knowledgeable, experienced, and already thinking seriously about the complexities of how to manage this different relationship. I don't think it's in the US interest to start calling this a Cold War. That seemed to me to not serve the purposes of multilateralism and managing the crisis most effectively. And if we think there is a Cold War, I think it's wise to say the US has a mixed strategy. It's eager to work with China on some issues. And after all, US worked with the Soviet Union on some issues. It's going to build first its alliances and partnerships and strengthen ties. Having stressed Korea, I should add that I think India will be the number one country in this struggle over the Indo-Pacific demarcation, geographical demarcation. And already the Russians are saying China is doing a lot of damage with its policy towards India. Russia wants a China-India-Russia relationship and they see China driving India to the United States, particularly with the Himalayan battle that took place in the last year. So I think that one has to talk a lot about India in this context and perhaps the fact that the US Vice President is half of Indian descent will eventually become a factor in the US efforts to strengthen ties with India. At any rate, I'll stop there and look forward to your questions and comments. Well, thanks very much indeed. Professor Robson and I think it is the usual to the force of a presentation that you have made. I think your four criteria for defining a Cold War is culture. But let me sort of, before I open this to the floor and you might questions and let me kick off the webinar by playing the devil's advocate. Say that, yes, it is all very well thought through and culturally put, but then there are also important differences between the old Cold War and what we're dealing with now on there. I mean, one is in terms of the scale of economic integration. In the Cold War period, the world was in some ways bifurcated. There wasn't a globalization process. There was not the kind of economic integration that we see today that the nearly four years of the Trump administration's to advocate the coupling hasn't really got very far. The pandemic perhaps has done a bit more in terms of economic decoupling stand the Trump administration policies ever managed to do reality remains that the two economies became remain very closely integrated, the enormous amount of vested interests, particularly on the American side to want to keep that integration and the global supply chain. We are also talking about a different kind of ideological context that compared to the old Cold War. I take what you say about the ideological dimension of it. The difference here is that last time there was a very clear defined ideology on the impact on both sides. In terms of communism versus democracy capitalism to this time we are talking about more like a contest of which system is better. Life and death struggle, we are not seeing the kinds of cruise chop bang his shoes on the table and say we will bury you type of things. Now is how my system China system is better than your system, or the Americans come because it will actually our system is pretty robust for all the problems we have. So they're not quite the same thing are they, or perhaps they are. We've raised to very clear and significant differences and I do not disagree with either but I would put them in a different context. I think what we have and Biden has stressed more manufacturing in the United States. The US has stressed made in China 2025 creates many problems they're trying to take over the technologies that that that the US and US allies are strong in, and we have to prevent the loss of these political edges by much my much stronger export controls and Chinese investments and foreign companies and telecommunications. So I think it's a bifurcated economic process. Yes, consumer goods and other things. There's no integration going, but the decoupling, I think is only gathering steam. It's going much faster than it used to supply change that aren't dependent on China. Even though things do come from China of great value for consumers, there should not be a dependence on China and also what should the US do to protect its allies like Australia, like South Korea, when China retaliates when China imposes sanctions. The US needs a multilateral strategy economic strategy to prevent these countries from being subject to Chinese economic coercion. So I don't think the economic picture is just primarily integration. I see what's happening as getting more and more decoupling in technologically significant areas. We will see where that goes. The second area and ideology it's absolutely true that there is a different element to the ideological struggle that's why I put ideology as one factor in national identity. And even the ideological struggle with the Soviet Union was toned down for a while in the 60s under Khrushchev's peaceful coexistence. And with the thought that there was US and the Soviet Union were negotiating various agreements. It was thought that we, we could coexist. We didn't have to emphasize their Marxist, Leninist, Stalinist nature. After all, they were in destalinization. And we could find a way to coexist. We called them authoritarian, much more than communist for a while. I do see that there's, there's a difference, but I think both China's shift back towards ideology and the US attentiveness after Trump blurred the picture of human rights in China, and maybe ideological difference with China seem very cloudy. I think that Obama, Biden's summit of the democracies that's being discussed and other efforts will bring these differences much to the fore. The fact that Xinjiang genocide or not genocide, Hong Kong, a denial of the basic rights that were promised, the assertiveness of Xi Jinping about Chinese opposition to democratic values. All of that in my mind means we really do have a significant ideological difference. Okay, let me move the discussion on something that we have not addressed so much so far, which is the goal of Russia. And two questions here, one from Nikolai Sumit and then another one from Jonathan Funela, both dealing with the issue of Russia. What Nikolai would like you to say is, what is the role of Russia in this new version of the Cold War, which also parallels Jonathan's question about the Russian trajectory in this US Chinese context. And Jonathan in particular would also like you to comment on whether the pod Navani protest fit into this or not. Is this a kind of issues that is going to come into play in because of the Russian politics and therefore in the wider geopolitics. I think there's been no issue that has more interested me than the Sino-Russian US strategic triangle since in 1964 as an undergraduate, I wrote my first serious research paper on Sino-Soviet relations. I've been fascinated by this subject ever since and spent time in the Soviet Union and China and then kept keep coming back to this subject over and over. And in the last five years, there's been a lot of think tank interest in Washington about what is the nature of the Sino-Russian relationship. I follow it closely and, for instance, today, I finished what I for my journal the outside forum, the country report Russia, where I read about 25 Russian articles on the Indo-Pacific, many of them on China, and try to analyze what is Russian thinking about China right now. The last 30 years have seen a continuous build up of Sino-Russian relations beginning in 1992. And each stage people have been saying, well, isn't Russia going to be uncomfortable being so dependent on China, and later asymmetrically dependent on a country so much stronger than Russia in so many ways. And it has been a surprise to a lot of observers that Russia has been driven ever closer to China. And last October, for the first time, Putin left open the question of whether Russia would seek an alliance with China. Before that he wasn't acknowledging the quasi-alliance elements of this relationship. So I think the main conclusion in Washington, including among several who are joining the Biden administration, is that the Russian-Chinese relationship is too strong for the US to try to look for a different trajectory where the US could improve relations with Russia. In fact, if Russia had had that intention, it had such a wonderful opportunity under Trump because he was so adoring of Putin. And if Russia hadn't kept doing things like the Navalny poisoning and arrest, they would have seen more chances that the US would say, hey, maybe Russia isn't so beholden to China. Maybe there is room. And of course, Japan tested this for five years. Abe was wooing Putin and saying, oh no, I don't have the US policy. I really want a better relationship with Russia. And Putin turned him down. Japan got nothing out of it. So I don't really think there's a lot of promise. And yet, in this recent batch of Russian articles, there was more nervousness about the future of Russia-China relations than I've seen at any time in at least the last decade. And that was particularly over the issue of India. The sense that if Russia sticks so close to China, it loses India. And that's the, they had no one else. They kept talking about multi polarity and Russia has all these other partners. And now it looks like they just treat Japan and South Korea as satellites of the United States. They cannot be taken seriously except for some economic issues. But if they lose India, they have no one left. And in the Pacific, it's all China. And that's causing a lot of nervousness. And they also say China's aspirations in the Arctic Ocean are to deny Russia its total exclusive control and sovereignty. China wants freedom of navigation in that area. So that's another big issue that Russians are worried about with regard to China. So there are tensions. Some of them came out last year over the city of Vladivostok's anniversary, which China took exception to as located in an area which had been seized by the Imperial Russia 150 years ago. So, I don't deny the tensions, and it's not a close alliance in the way US alliances are with Japan and other countries, but still given Putin's overall orientation and Russian national identity, which I haven't said much about. I don't see any alternative to China and the foreseeable future. The next set of questions I'm picking comes from two people. One is from Duncan's ballot in London. And Duncan would like to raise for discussion with you that you talk about the Americans describing China as authoritarian. And of course, in the Western media when the term is being used is being used in a negative and somewhat derogative way. Do you see the Chinese government seeing this as an insult, or perhaps not. And in parallel to also likes to bring in the question from David Gao. And the question is about how do you think the Chinese people, in contrast to the Chinese government, how do you see the Chinese people view the Chinese government's actions on Hong Kong, Taiwan, and in Xinjiang. In parallel that are they happy with the authoritarianism or not, and repression. Well, I think we're getting more and more to the point where there's talk of the Beijing consensus in the Washington consensus, the China model, and the Western model. And in those terms, China is more comfortable discussing the nature of its political system in a positive way. And I think it's more familiar of the US system in particular. So, I don't think they they they're using the word authoritarian specifically in the late 80s, there was talk of neo authoritarianism as China's new approach. I don't think there's any doubt that they contrast what they have to democracy in the West, and speak very positively about Xi Jinping's control over the country that's at the national official level. Are there a lot of people in China, who have been exposed to the West and greater information, who are very uncomfortable with things that Xi Jinping has done. Did we see some of that in February and late January February, when the Wuhan lockdown occurred, and people online were saying the fault was in the system. That's been crushed the censorship has become much more intensive. So, it's hard to determine the degree to which there is popular opposition. I think the claims of success in dealing with the pandemic and economic signs that they were successful. And the shortcomings that the US so vividly exposed, most recently in the insurrection at the Capitol, give more people in China pause to think that they're not in such a bad system compared to the alternative. But nonetheless, because of a lot of problems in China over the environment, lack of opportunity to speak out the growing crackdowns by Xi Jinping in some areas. My guess is there are a lot of people who are unhappy that Xi Jinping doesn't have that great popularity, although he's trying to develop national identity arguments in each dimension that will bolster his support. And we saw after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when some people said, oh, people are naturally democratic. And now that they've gotten rid of the communist leadership, they will become much more similar to those in the west, who value their individual freedoms. And then we got to see that that wasn't the case in Russia, that so many elements of national identity do not work consistently with support for democracy. And so I would again say, we shouldn't draw assumptions about China that they have that hasn't been effectiveness in appealing to national identity which is distinct and from and critical of the West. The next lot of questions again I'm pairing tools together the first one comes from Graham Hutchings at Oxford, and he would like to ask you about where do you see the trajectory of cold war 2.0 ending. You see us the trajectory. These parallel question to this is from a Chinese PhD students at Princeton who would like to ask you whether there is a possibility for China and the United States to compete constructively and avoid the extreme tension of the old Cold War. And if so, what should both sides do to achieve this. Okay, really challenging questions. I think we'll see ups and downs in this cold war as we saw in the first cold war. There were periods of relative optimism in the first cold war they talked under Nixon and Brezhnev. There was optimism under who shove. There were periods where things got a little bit better. And although I think the basic conditions of the Cold War will prevail. There will be efforts on both sides to try to keep things peaceful to work out arrangements for the problems that are most serious. And then 2000 and 2000s, particularly in George Bush's second term, there was an understanding reached on Taiwan. There was cooperation on the six party talks for a while. We thought we were able to work better together. So I can see possibilities for that again. But the problem right now is that both sides see the beginnings of the Cold War as reason to intensify the positions that the other side doesn't want. China's new rules on civil on the Coast Guard, being able to fire to use live ammunition in areas where China claims sovereignty. That is a worrisome development. The US moves on Taiwan, such as inviting the de facto Chinese ambassador to the Taiwan Ambassador United States to the inauguration. That angers the Chinese. So they're going to be steps right now that are more likely to deepen the Cold War. Where does it end. I would not rule out some military conflicts. Perhaps brought about by third parties, such as North Korea. I would not rule out a conflict over Taiwan. The differences are so intense and China's timetable is pretty short. There's also the possibility in the East China Sea with Senkaku or Jiao you islands with China becoming more aggressive and the US standing firmly behind Japan and Japan expecting the US to be involved. If China tries, for instance, to take physical control over these islands or to force Japanese ships to stay away from the islands. So there are a whole series of issues that are dangerous right now, and maybe more dangerous than any issues we had during the first Cold War. So how does it end. I think it has to end with an understanding of the limitations of what China can do and what the US can do. And that'll be worked out in stages as we come close to conflict as tensions rise. Can we work out certain understandings. But my expectation right now is that the US would like to work those out, but that China is the driver in trying to expand from the first island chain to the second island chain to take over Taiwan to solidify control over the South China Sea to do other things. It would be very difficult under those circumstances to resolve these issues, unless China decides as the Soviet Union did that it can be more of a status quo power. Now as for the question from the Princeton student. Can we control this. I mean, I would like to see proposals for how to reemphasize cooperation, the spheres of cooperation. And I think after the US solidifies its alliance ties. China has devoted China with some proposals of cooperation on issues like climate change, certainly on non proliferation, and on handling some types of arms control, which China so far is not interested in. If those types of initiatives can get some positive response, then we may be able to stabilize things for a while. After all, China is gaining China just had a year when it did so much better than the United States. As the rising power that's gaining China doesn't need to be in a hurry. I don't know if there's a sense in China that more greater patients, and the sense of the United States that it's counter hegemony strategy, which I think is the big best term to use for the US strategy and the Indo Pacific that that strategy can be strengthened. And besides accept the limits of the time, we may have a period of years where things don't really get out of control that that's my hope right now. The next pair of questions focus on Southeast Asia and the South China Sea. I have William Knight in London who would like to ask you about. Where do you think Vietnam fit into the Russian thinking in this general scheme of thing. Okay, go ahead. This other question is from a student in Vietnam, Con Le Le. And the question is about how the Biden administration will respond to Chinese territorial ambitions and perhaps a question in the South China Sea. From a Russian point of view, Vietnam is their number one partner in Southeast Asia. And the only free trade agreement between the Eurasian Economic Union and Southeast Asia, or any car in any other country Russia doesn't have free trade agreements is with Vietnam. They signed the agreement and trade only increased $1 billion in a year, and then of course it fell during the pandemic. So there's really little to speak of Russia also counts on Vietnam as a purchaser of its weapons, and so on. But Vietnam will like to keep Russia as a partner. But it becomes more difficult if Russia is drawing closer to China, and China is seeking more support for assertive behavior in the South China Sea. So far Russia has tried to stay out of the South China Sea issue. It is not stood for Vietnam's position, and it is not criticized China, but it just tries to be quiet on that issue. But I don't see those kinds of edges as working for very long now as issues get more intense. So my guess is that the Vietnam Russia relationship will weaken, much as the Russia India relationship has been weakening. But Russia will try very hard not to let that happen. Vietnam is too important for Russia right now. But nonetheless, it not nearly as important as China. And if China and the US struggle in the South China Sea and Vietnam is involved, Russia's not going to stand up for Vietnam. Now, in terms of what the Biden administration position will be in South China Sea, I think it will be in a further intensification of freedom of navigation operations, which increase substantially from the Obama period to the Trump period. That basically the US is now supporting the Quad, seeking to expand the Quad into a Quad Plus, seeking consensus on dealing with issues in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, trying to get India more deeply involved, and fighting for multilateral military exercises that would show China the limits of what it's doing in these areas. I don't think the US, if China is assertive in this area, I think the US will be similarly assertive. So that's why this is a hotspot right now. I don't know what the new decision by China to let its coast guard fire on other countries, whether Philippines or Vietnam, or anyone else who has territorial claims in the South China Sea, what that will do. But I only see the United States is standing firm in this area. The next question comes from Nick Tapp in London, and it is really broadening the range of issues we are discussing today. And he would like to ask you this. China has been a big buyer of food commodities in the second half of 2020, in particular wheat, corn, soybeans, milk and meat at volumes higher than expected by the market. And with exhortation by Xi Jinping to increase domestic food production. Is the Chinese air force in entering Taiwanese airspace in huge force in the last two days. Is there any connection between the two. Is the Chinese economic muscle and is political muscle related or military muscle here. I suppose the effort to create a more self sufficient China. To prepare for an emergency by building up supplies. Could could be significant. I, I don't know if there is some plan to meet the Biden administration with a show of force, particularly over Taiwan. China may think that Trump and now Biden have crossed a red line on Taiwan. They may think that now they've resolved to their satisfaction the Hong Kong situation, Hong Kong Taiwan is next. So there may be a degree of impatience on those issues. And it may be that they've decided that already the situation has turned bad enough that China has to be more assertive. I think people were quite surprised in 2008 2009 that China in the global financial crisis shifted its thinking, maybe accelerated his timeline, much more than people had anticipated. Many people were saying, China is looking at for a win-win situation. China is cautious, and then took advantage of the global financial crisis, changed its thinking that also was when Xi Jinping was newly installed on the political standing committee and may have exerted more influence. But now we have to ask, did the pandemic and the US turmoil and misfunction and China's success have a similar impact in accelerating the timeline for China to act more aggressively? I don't think we know the answer yet. The next question I picked comes from a student at the LSE who is currently in Hong Kong, Lopping Lai. And the questions the student would like to put to you is about the road of Hong Kong in Cold War 2.0 since Hong Kong played a very important role in the first Cold War. And the question is, how can Hong Kong take advantage of the changing relationship between China and the United States to survive? Can it be done? I don't think the US has leverage over China and Hong Kong. I mean, if China wants to improve relations with China and with the US, if their goal in 2020 is to try to take issues off the table that are burdensome to this relationship, then they might say, Hong Kong can be treated differently, less aggressively. So if that were the case, if we're now talking about reaching some broader understanding to calm tensions between China and the United States, Hong Kong could enter the picture, but only under those conditions. If the situation worsens, if we have Cold War 2.0 as I assume, then I don't see how Hong Kong becomes an issue that the US can influence in any significant way. And certainly other countries in the region, no matter how much they think about Hong Kong, such as Japan, will use Hong Kong as a lever to try to change Chinese policy in other areas. There are too many other priorities that countries have, and they feel they have too little of leverage on Hong Kong. So I'm doubtful about promise there. Okay. Next question I picked comes from Norman Stockman in Scotland. And this goes more back to your core presentation. The question is, another possible difference comes about through the development of communications. In the first Cold War, there was very little communication between the population of the superpowers and considerable mutual ignorance. With the internet, it is less possible for such mutual ignorance and that of communications to be maintained. Is it significant? Well, there was talk for quite a number of years from the 1990s that the information revolution would mean that barriers to countries would diminish, and it would be easier to get mutual understanding. But in fact, mutual perceptions have become more negative. So even though we've had so many Chinese students studying abroad, so many Americans interested in China and admiring China for many things it's done, our communications haven't led us to greater trust. They haven't been able to reduce security tensions between the two. And now that when you talk about communications people are saying the Chinese have a firewall. They don't they want to control what information comes into the country it's getting worse. America has had reporters expelled from China. American access to Chinese information is getting worse. It doesn't look promising right now in the area of communications were perhaps moving to two systems of information technology, a Chinese web and a Western web. And this could bring back a kind of bamboo curtain. We're not allowed to the iron curtain where information isn't so easily moved from one place to another. Russia has just announced new controls on Radio Free Europe. So it's likely that communication the United States and Russia will be diminished as well. We are finding some ways to get around these barriers, but I'm afraid we have a negative streak right now going on in the communications arena. Next questions comes from Thomas Klaven in Boston, Massachusetts. Do you think the Chinese Communist Party autocratic rule reflects Maxism, or is it more a reflection of 3000 years of Chinese culture with his top down rule by an emperor. That's a difficult question to answer, but it's when I think about a lot. So I should be able to say something coherent. I think we've underestimated the legacy of socialism of communism, and how much it endures in China and Russia. That legacy established forms of control in China Communist Party that's still functioning. A vertical way of organizing society, and many other things. So I would say, I think that's the dominant factor. I also think that it's not Marxism and really isn't the term I would use. I would say just as Confucianism is reinterpreted to reflect the the thinking of the socialist system in China. Marxism was reinterpreted by Lenin, and then by Stalin, and Stalin established the foundation for the systems that have existed in the Soviet Union, and then China. And I believe those systems were largely intact in the 1980s. So, I don't think that I would say that this is primarily Confucianism Confucianism actually had two contrasting strains. There was what the Berry called liberal Confucianism. And in the late 80s and 90s people were saying, maybe Confucianism can be blended with with modern development and post communism and create a kind of community in East Asia, where they all share some of the traditions. And then West, the authoritarianism. And then there was the what Fritz moat, and his book on Imperial China, called the transformation of Confucianism, mainly by alien dynasties or by the peasant mean controlled dynasty, and that really made Confucianism much more authoritarian by its final periods. So, yes, there are certainly elements of Confucianism that have been consistent with China's socialist authoritarianism, but I think I'd wait the socialist side more. The question is a bit slightly unusual, but I think it should be put to you. And this is from Sam Chen. In a way that the Chinese often accused the United States of having a mad Cold War mentality, no matter what the justification for the Cold War measures may be, that's your lecture, not exactly prove the Chinese porn. The Chinese began stressing more the Cold War mentality when Obama and Hillary Clinton and Kurt Campbell came up with the pivot or the rebalanced Asia, which was far from a Cold War mentality. In other words, they took a policy, which was eager for working more with China but restricting the US position in the Indo Pacific, and they distorted it as Cold War mentality. I would argue that the US in moving towards a recognition that a Cold War is occurring is responding to the driving force of China. For me, the last 30 years in this region have been much more about China. That's the country we should be watching than the United States. And I take fault, find fault with so many people concentrating on US thinking US policy, and ignoring the thinking in the region, and particularly Chinese thinking, Chinese. There's this media obsession with what the US is doing and of course Trump only added to that greatly, when we should be paying so much more attention to what the Chinese are writing and saying. And therefore, I think it's a defensive reaction, recognition of a Cold War is not saying it's a desirable thing. It's saying this is the reality that we observe. The next question and it may well have to be the last question that I can pick is from Laura Alvarado. What road, if any, will you expect the EU to played in a second Cold War. The last 30 years, particularly since 2016, has seen a more independent minded and united Europe. So could China challenge US-European cooperation? I think China will try very hard, and it's made inroads in parts of Europe, particularly Central Europe. And it, when the US calls for a summit of the democracies, it's not clear that the EU will be uniformly supportive. I think with 5G, we're already seeing US-EU relations tested, but recently both Great Britain and France have indicated a stronger interest in becoming part of the Indo-Pacific sort of coalition of countries in sending ships to the region and working with Japan and working with India. So, and of course there is the proposal for the D10 that the summit in Great Britain would be of the G7 would combine with the Quad and create a new kind of organization, the D10. So I see the EU not easily working as a unit, but some of the major countries of the EU trying to figure out how they can cooperate with the United States. It's been difficult because of the Trump period, the legacy has created a lot of distrust. I'm sure though that a number of people in the Biden administration, beginning with Iran policy and Russia policy, will try to find more cooperation with the EU on China as well. Great Britain becoming separate from the EU, it'll be probably the leader in finding common ground with the United States. Well, thank you very much, Guild Professor Rosment, it's been a really fantastic and thought-provoking occasion. I do apologize to many of you who have raised questions that I have not been able to select and put to Professor Rosment, but please be reassured that your questions will actually be forwarded to him after the event so that he knows at least what are the questions that have been raised. That would be wonderful and maybe I can answer some of them directly. Well, thank you all very much. I look forward to seeing some of you at our webinar next week. Thank you. Bye. And thank you, Guild.