 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Bill Taylor. I'm the executive vice president here at the United States Institute of Peace. I'm very pleased to welcome you to this building and to this conference today. Some of you may not have been in this building before, and some of you may not be familiar with the Institute of Peace. Let me just remind you that we are an independent national institution that was set up 30 years ago by the Congress to focus on peaceful resolution of disputes. So we focus on conflict and how to resolve conflict. And we believe that peace is possible. We believe that peace is practical. We believe that peace is essential for US and international security. So that's the mission, the vision of a world without violent conflict motivates us. It's a mission that brings us here today because one of the big factors in peace in the world is China. And China can be helped or not. And so one of the ways to understand China is to have conferences like this. So I'm very pleased to be able to welcome you to this discussion. We're very pleased to be partnering with Georgetown University. This is Georgetown's fifth conference to look at the different aspects of China's foreign policy. This is the third year in a row that Georgetown and Institute of Peace are co-hosting, co-sponsoring, working together to put this conference on. But it turns out this is the second time we've done this. So we did this two years ago where we focused on China's role in the world. We were going to do this last year. But some of you may recall that we got snowed out last year. And so we didn't focus on China's role in the Middle East. But here we are, again, this time no snow, but a lot of rain. But at this time, we're going to look at the domestic dynamics of China's policy and how it affects their foreign policy. It turns out that for the Institute of Peace, this focus on China and this conference today comes at a very important time for us. We are re-establishing our China program here. And so I'm very pleased that Jennifer Stats, who is right here, whose hand will go up in a minute, you should see Jennifer sometime today. She is the new director of our China program under Andrew Wilder, the vice president for all of Asia. And so it's a great opportunity for us to introduce Jennifer. Jennifer was going to be the moderator of the first panel. However, lost her voice. And so we will tell you how we are fixing that. You can see that this pivot to China that we are doing here has had some hiccups. It had snowstorm last year. We had rain. You'll hear something about a keynote or Jennifer lost her voice. Other pivots to China have had similar difficulties. But we are moving forward on this and very pleased to be here. Let me finally recognize Emily Horan, who runs Andrew Wilder and I was standing. Emily runs the Center for Asia. And unfortunately, the person who's running the Center for Asia is leaving us this week. This is her last big event. So Emily, thank you. You will have an opportunity to talk to Emily sometime today as well. Finally, thanks to the team at Georgetown. They've been a great partner. We've really enjoyed the opportunity to work with them again. And in particular, I'd like to thank Oriana Mastro, who is right here. Oriana, thank you. Andrea Klebo is Andrea. Andrea is also here. Andrea, excellent. And David Maxwell, whom you're going to hear a lot from very shortly. My last duty here is to welcome Tom Banchoff, who is the vice president for global engagement at Georgetown University and co-sponsor for this event. And Tom, over to you. Thank you, Bill. And good morning, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for those framing remarks and for your generosity and hosting. This conference, we're grateful for this partnership, which has grown, as you said, over the past several years and will continue to flourish into the future. Part of my role is to welcome you all on behalf of Georgetown University to this impressive conference on the domestic dimensions of Chinese foreign policy. And to, again, highlight the hard work, the excellent work, of my colleague, Oriana Mastro, in putting together this program with the colleagues at our Center for Security Studies and here at USIP. I'd also very much like to acknowledge the Philip and Patricia Building Asian Security Studies Fund for its great support in making this conference possible, indeed, in making this whole series of conferences possible over the past several years. Now, I think it's fitting that Georgetown and USIP should collaborate on a venture like this. We're neighbors, of course. We're both in the education business. We're both committed. It's part of our mission to contribute to a more peaceful world. Now, in the case of Georgetown, that commitment comes out of our Catholic and Jesuit identity as an institution open to other religious traditions, open to the wider secular world. It finds its institutional expression first and foremost in our School of Foreign Service, which was founded in 1919 as the first of its kind, coming up on our centennial celebrations. And over the past several decades, really, the school has been an incubator to a range of dynamic programs, including the Center for Security Studies with its flagship security studies program, that really embodies Georgetown's commitment to teaching and research in service to the wider world, to academic excellence and to public dialogue like this event around the most pressing global challenges of the day. Now, as Bill mentioned, among those challenges is, of course, the US-China relationship, probably the most important, I think you'll all agree here, bilateral relationship in the world today and among the most complex and difficult on issues ranging from the balance of trade to security competition, if we can call it that, and the South China Sea to the global environment, Washington and Beijing are engaged in an evolving set of bilateral relationships with increasingly global impact. And here I want to open a short parentheses, as many of you, but not all of you know, Georgetown just announced a new initiative for US-China dialogue on global issues, a university-wide initiative, a multi-year effort to convene leaders from government, the academy and from business to address some of the most pressing issues in that relationship, we look forward to working with the China program here, those of you who represent other institutions around town and beyond, there's plenty of work to be done in this space and we're glad to be ramping up our efforts at Georgetown, close parentheses. Now, of course, and this brings me to the topic of the conference today, the US-China relationship is not simply international, bilateral, multilateral, it does, of course, unfold most visibly at the intergovernmental level, but it has strong domestic foundations. Now in this country, the domestic dynamics of foreign policy are more obvious and in this election campaign, sometimes painfully obvious. But in China, those domestic dynamics, while perhaps less obvious, are certainly no less complex and we know they are less well understood and that's, I think, the importance of this conference and others like it, the importance of the great conversations that will unfold here over the course of the day, we have panels that will move from the domestic political and economic situation to elite politics and then after lunch to security affairs and a panel at the end of the day to pull things together. So in conclusion, I wanna again recommend or commend the organizers for putting together such a great program. Georgetown is delighted to be part of this event. We're very grateful to USIP for hosting it. Thank you all for being here and please join me in welcoming my colleague, David Maxwell and the first panel to the stage. And welcome. Just let me correct one remark from Bill Taylor. I don't intend to be talking too much because we have a very distinguished panel here who I know everyone wants to hear from. But let me just make two comments as way of introduction and make an announcement since that's my job normally to make announcements and give bad news. First, I think in light of the world situation, this panel that's taking place, unfortunately our lunchtime keynote speaker, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia and the Pacific, the honorable Abe Denmark is unable to come. He's been called away for a consultation and so he will not be here. So we will have a good working lunch amongst ourselves to continue the discussions from the morning panels here. And so that bad news. Now, the good news is that we have very distinguished panels all throughout the day and I'd just like to echo my thanks from Bill and Tom to Oriana and Jennifer for bringing together the distinguished scholars that we have today and practitioners to talk about these subjects. We have three very accomplished scholars here to this morning and we're gonna talk about some very important domestic and economic issues in China. Scott Harold is from the RAN Corporation and he also is on the party RAN graduate school faculty and also teaches as an adjunct professor in the security studies program at Georgetown. Dr. Jessica Chen Weiss is from Cornell and she studies the role of domestic politics in foreign policy and international relations focusing on popular sentiment, nationalist protest in China and the Asia Pacific and is the author of powerful patriots, nationalist protest in China's foreign relations. And Dr. Melanie Hart is a senior fellow and director of China Policy at American Progress and she focuses on US foreign policy toward China and works to identify new opportunities for bilateral cooperation, particularly on energy, climate change and cross-border investment, which I think when you hear the remarks of both Bill and Tom, you can see that the work of these three scholars, really all nest together and what we're all trying to do, which is trying to understand the complex relationships and give way together. I'm gonna ask each of the panelists to speak for about 12 minutes or so and then we're gonna have audience Q and A, which is what I know you all want to focus on. Scott's gonna talk about changes in Chinese foreign security policy that stem from the evolution of the Chinese political system. Jennifer, excuse me, Jessica, we'll focus on the question regarding what sources of Chinese nationalism and what are the sources of Chinese nationalism and does it constrain or empower China internationally? And Melanie is gonna cover the climate energy area, which of course is something that is really influenced by China's domestic pressures and growing international ambitions that are dovetailing with US interests. So with that, and I would make one last comment that I am not Jennifer Statz. And unfortunately, but if I say anything wrong, the strings going back to the puppet master must be broken there. So with that, I'll turn it over to Scott. Moment here. So while we're getting this up, let me thank USIP and Georgetown, Oriana and Jennifer for this opportunity and also David for the generous introduction. I'm sure you will find my presentation to be the least informed of all today. So it's good that we'll kind of get better throughout the day. So stick around for the end. It only gets better as we go down the panel. So my remit today to us to talk a little bit about how Chinese domestic politics are influencing Chinese foreign policy. This is a very opaque, difficult, challenging space to work in. Fortunately, you have some very bright people coming who can correct what you're going to hear from me. But I thought I would try and take a whack at it by talking about how the evolution of the Chinese political system, particularly with the advent of Chinese President Xi Jinping is affecting this country's foreign and security policies and also thought I would ask you all to point out my errors and help me further refine my thinking in this space. So first, a disclaimer, this is not Rand research. So please do not quote it as Rand research. It is not nor does it reflect the views of any of Rand's sponsors. I'm gonna be talking about three topics today. First, how does Xi Jinping differ from his predecessors? Second, how does the change from Hu Jintao or previously Jiang Zemin to Xi Jinping represent a change in Chinese foreign and security policies and then what are the implications of that? So first, Xi Jinping's a different kind of leader and I argue he came to power facing some crises that were quite different than any of his predecessors faced and those could be listed as external and internal. There was the Arab Spring, which the Chinese Communist Party was quite worried, could infect China, quote unquote, leading to the collapse of Chinese Communist Party rule. There was also a rapidly slowing economy in China as China has begun to tap out its reserves of labor pool and as the global economy for its exports has dried up. And then of course, there was a sense that the Hu Jintao Wenjiabao decade had been a lost decade. So it was kind of an unusual time for Xi Jinping to come to power. Moreover, he had seen what Hu Jintao had suffered as a consequence of Jiang Zemin's continuation of power from behind the scenes. Hu Jintao never really became a very forceful ruler in his own right and that was widely described at least in part to Hu Jintao's personal characteristics, his personality, but also to Jiang Zemin's persistence in manipulating things from behind the scenes and also leaving in place a cadre of people who were loyal to Jiang Zemin, the leader two back. And then the third factor I'm gonna point to here is Xi Jinping's own personality. He's a very forceful leader, not inclined to step down from a crisis, instead inclined to step up to a crisis. I think this gave him an incentive to be tough on foreign policy, this structure, if you will, of the past, the path dependent portion of this where you can see that he had faced the prospect of becoming another Hu Jintao, combined with the incentives from within the Chinese Communist Party system that would lead a leader who's engaged in international political warfare at the top of that system to wanna make sure he's not perceived as weak on foreign policy. And then the factor of Xi Jinping's own personality. So first, Xi Jinping's two immediate predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao were technocratic leaders. They were often described as gray, uncharismatic, particularly Hu Jintao. But at any rate, neither of them derived their authority from the accomplishments that they had achieved from the time they had served at particularly critical roles within the Chinese Communist Party. That's very, very different for Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping is a child of the Chinese red elite. And so for that reason, I think we have to start this by noting that within this structural situation that Xi Jinping came into, he is a very different kind of actor than his two predecessors. His base lies among the royalists, or so-called Hong Ardai, the red second generation. He also appeals to the neo Maoists and to nationalists. He's achieved a really remarkable consolidation of authority over the last several years by going after corrupt colleagues of former leaders like Hu Jintao and a particular Jiang Zemin, and has purged a large number of those. I'm sure you have, if you've read the Washington Post, the New York Times recently, you've seen this. He's also been very careful to craft an image of himself that differs from any previous Chinese leader since at least Deng Xiaoping possibly back to Mao Zedong. He's got this notion of himself, or the Chinese Communist Party's ideology, has crafted an image of Xi Jinping as Xi Da Da or Uncle Xi, or as I like to refer, Big Poppy Xi, the big guy, the big man on campus. And of course, his wife plays a very different role than any previous Chinese First Lady really ever during the Communist period. She's very public profile, she's very glamorous, she could perhaps be compared to maybe Mao's wife, but it's not as politically influential, but really fills out his personality. He also, in terms of putting his stamp on policy, his China dream is far more nationalistic than the characteristic policy pronouncement of Hu Jintao, who talked about building a harmonious society, which basically meant don't ask for too much, don't rise up, we'll distribute wealth a little bit better. Or Jiang Zemin, whose signature move was talking about the three represents. In other words, we're going to broaden the party to include capitalists and those working in the cultural and arts spheres. And moreover, with this kind of charismatic personal authority, this quest to build himself into the new core, he's also broken a lot of or hypothesized intraparty norms. These were things that a lot of China scholars thought, well, you know, no leader can serve more than two five-year terms, that remains to be seen, I think, and I'll suggest later that it may not hold, but you don't ever go after a former Politburo Standing Committee member, something he has done. There's just a lot of things that Xi Jinping has done that are really different than any previous leader. And you see here these kind of iconic photographs published by the Chinese media, where he is seen at the center almost like Mao Zedong visiting places, giving on-site instructions, things that David as I'm sure quite familiar with, both from his own personal experience at Georgetown, where he does give on-site instruction regularly, but also from his study of North Korea. So Xi Jinping came to power confronting these multiple threats that were potential threats originating from abroad, the Arab Spring, continued weakness in the global economy, including the potential for it to affect China, the rebalance to the Asia Pacific by the U.S., regional actors, including Japan and the Philippines were standing up to China's efforts to lay claim to the East and South China Sea, physical features as well as maritime spaces, and also instability in North Korea. There's another nod to you, David. Xi from the very start confronted very severe intra-party challenges, and including some of those from even before he came into this position as president. And I would just highlight here, I think it's an open question when we should date the period of Xi Jinping's rise from. There are an awful lot of things that you would easily say, well, 2012 and after, because that's when he became the president, the chairman of the party, the chairman of the Central Military Commission. But there are also a number of interesting things that happened before 2012 that look consonant with Xi Jinping's visions and that suggest that he may have been growing his role rapidly and that it was not a clean break in some sense in 2012. And one of those, of course, is the takedown of Bo Xilai, also Zhou Yongkang, the first one there that's exed out. Then he went after Ling Jihua, the ally of former president Hu Jintao. He also took down the two vice chairman of the Central Military Commission who had retired, both Guo Bosiang and Xu Caihao. And he's gone after the ministry of state security. So he's really cleaning out big, big potential adversaries who are loyalists to or former colleagues of his two predecessors. And also remember Xi Jinping is the first Chinese leader ever to take office with two living predecessors. Jiang Zemin had done it because Deng Xiaoping was still alive. Hu Jintao had Jiang Zemin. Never had you had a case where you'd had two living former presidents. So this was a real challenge for Xi and initially my inclination was to say, boy, he's probably gonna be the weakest yet. You know, if they keep playing from behind the scenes, then he's gonna really be torn in two directions. Instead, he's really gone after his predecessors. And I would suggest that that's partly because Xi Jinping is kind of a tough guy. He presents himself this way, right? You remember when he was vice president, he went to Mexico. He talked about all of you probably sitting in the office who hopefully enjoyed a good breakfast this morning and probably now have nothing better to do than sit around and find fault with China. All these foreigners with full bellies and nothing better to do. China doesn't export revolution. It doesn't export poverty. We don't cause problems for anyone. China's neighbors probably don't accept that characterization but China doesn't cause problems for anyone. So what are these foreigners complaining about? And this is a very unusual statement. You don't really have vice presidents of China going around making these kind of statements previously. Since that time, since coming to office, Xi Jinping has talked about why did the Communist Party of the Soviet Union collapse? Well, ultimately it collapsed because the party lost control of the military and nobody was really man enough to step up. And in another version of this, he uses some more graphic language about the physical characteristics of a man who is tough. But at any rate, these kind of are different language, just a different kind of image than we've had. Certainly you could hardly imagine Hu Jintao using this kind of language. I mean, and Jiang Zemin probably wouldn't use it either. Mao Zedong, very earthy peasant, definitely could have used this kind of language. So then what are the implications of all this for Chinese foreign and security policy? First, I think foreign policy has occasionally been something that has really hampered Chinese leaders. You can remember the problems for Xi Jinping back in 1999 when the US bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The initial response was very, very frozen. They didn't really do anything. And then finally, Jiang, in a very clever move, but rather Machiavellian, sent his successor to be Hu Jintao out to give the public statement, which was often, which was widely described at the time, as a way to really put Hu Jintao on the cat seat if this didn't go well, on the cat bird seat. If you screw this up, it's on you. I can distance myself from it. And of course, Hu Jintao himself was not able to stop US arms sales to Taiwan, was not able to block the US rebalance to the Asia Pacific. So there have been times when foreign and security policy have been seen as a weakness. Now, if you wanna make sure that you're not seen as weak, what do you do on foreign policy? You really push it to the hill. You really don't worry about alienating your neighbors so long as you can project this image of strength at home. So he's done a number of things. He's continued to enhance the military and paramilitary capabilities of the Chinese security forces, including, as you see in that top visit there, he's visiting fishermen. Fishermen are a paramilitary force in China. They all carry GPS. They report back intelligence on the high seas that goes up through the chain of command to the Coast Guard and is often distributed out to the PLA. He has consolidated rule within the PLA, something I'll talk about shortly. I've been very assertive on the maritime disputes, both in the East and South China seas. And there you see on the lower photo an image of the artificial island construction down in the Spratlys. Also, Xi Jinping has put his own personal stamp on foreign policy by trying to launch big initiatives that show that China, under Xi Jinping, is prepared to reshape the Asia Pacific. That's everything from launching a new Asian infrastructure investment bank to managing relations with the US by putting forward this idea of a new type of great power relations that's going to shape the way the US and China interact to building out this one-belt, one-road initiative that will create infrastructure all the way along supply routes for Chinese energy inflow and trade exports. Moreover, in 2014, Xi Jinping at one of the conferences on cooperation and reassurance in Asia, which I'm obviously butchering, Sika. Nobody actually, I don't think very many people paid attention to this venue before, which is why I'm now butchering the name. But at any rate, he made a big public speech for solving Asian problems, which has suggested that it's time for Asians to begin welcoming the United States to return back to the Western Hemisphere. And Xi Jinping could definitely imagine maybe China might begin to play a bigger role. Also, during the period of Xi Jinping's rule, we've seen very strong efforts to try to woo Thailand, woo South Korea. Recently, those haven't gone so well. Attempts to marginalize Japan, build closer cooperation with Russia, and expand influence in the Middle East. The same time he's made a very strong play for PLA loyalty, while reforming the military, he's done a number of things like call on the PLA to prepare to fight and win wars, which is another, in essence, a call to get back to focusing on military affairs, get out of business, get out of corruption. He's retired a number of leaders, including going after corrupt ex-leaders of the PLA. He's visited all the military regions. He's visited all the service branches. He's protected the PLA's budget despite the slowing economy. And they've expanded dramatically, both the scale and scope and also the area in which military exercises are undertaken. So the notion you have here is a PLA that's trying to get stronger and trying to get stronger so as to realize this, quote unquote, China dream. And in that course of doing that, he has restructured Chinese national security bodies. So he's set up the National Security Council. He's consolidated China's previously many maritime law enforcement organizations into one centralized Chinese Coast Guard. And then most notably, I think for those of us at Rand or those of us who watch the PLA, he's undertaken the broadest ranging reforms of the military in probably most of the PRC's history. So that includes elevating an Air Force General to the CMC vice chairmanship for the first time, which was previously just a preserve of the Chinese PLA Army. He's cut 300,000 personnel, established headquarters for the Army so as to kind of take the Army's control off of the whole of the PLA and reduce that somewhat. They've consolidated seven former military regions down into five theater war theater commands. It's upgraded and reformed the strategic rocket force, which was previously the second artillery. It's established a support service that will deal with space, cyber electronic warfare and intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance. And he has set up China's first overseas base in Djibouti. So finally, what does this mean for the U.S. and the rest of the countries of the Asia Pacific? Well, I think we need to all be prepared for a greater degree of contention with China, which is under Xi Jinping pushing for much more ambitious goals to shape the region's future than I think we've seen in recent decades. The ultimate goal appears to be consonant with the goals articulated by Jiang Zemin in the late 1990s, which were to ultimately wind down the U.S. alliance system and to hopefully have countries in the region begin to look first and foremost to Beijing to gauge what should their reaction be on any particular policy question, not to cross any red lines that China might have. And as you see in 2010, then foreign minister, now state counselor, state counselor is a much higher position than foreign minister in the Chinese system. Then foreign minister, now state counselor, Yang Jiechi, made this very strong statement in Hanoi at the ASEAN Regional Forum that basically, as he pointed at Singapore, some countries are small countries and China is a big country and that's just a fact. And that kind of arrogance and assertiveness is I think something that is consonant with the fundamental vision that Xi Jinping is hewing to and that is that, look, China is a much, much more consequential player than any of its neighbors. And the rightful approach to the Asia Pacific is for those countries to begin recognizing that there's a big, big dog on the block and they need to begin paying a little bit more attention to its views. And so this assertive foreign policy, this is my final slide, David, this assertive foreign policy I think is probably likely to persist even if Xi Jinping does fully consolidate his authority because I think it also happens to be consonant with his own personal views of both what China's interests are and how he wants to run China. So I would submit that we will expect a ruling on the Philippines submission to the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea about what the nature of the nine-dash line is, is that claim to basically all of the South China Seas an authentic, legitimate claim that should be respected or is it something that should be dismissed under international law? And it seems entirely possible that China might respond to that by announcing an air defense identification zone to be built off of the artificial islands that they've constructed in the South China Sea. If the DPP in Taiwan wins the party presidency and holds the legislative union again in 2020, it seems entirely plausible that Xi Jinping's adversaries might point to this and say, look how you've mismanaged this. We've already got people in Hong Kong calling for independence. Now you've got Taiwan slipping your grasp. That could be a very serious challenge to Xi Jinping's authority. And it seems entirely possible that that might lead Xi Jinping to conclude that, A, there are no good tools left except coercive tools, and B, he has to use them for his own domestic political needs as well as potentially the goal of keeping Taiwan as part of China from the perspective of the Chinese Communist Party. And of course, all of those tensions could potentially lead to a logic that says, well, we're in the middle of these crises or God forbid even a war. You don't change a horse in midstream. Xi Jinping could easily point to these and say, boy, in 2022, well, yes, we're having a party Congress, but we've got a leader who knows the reins of power now is not the right time to bring in some untested sixth generation leader. So thank you for your attention. My apologies for running over and I look forward to trying to answer your questions. Well, first thanks to USIP and Georgetown for having me to escape the snows of Ithaca. Only I see a snow maybe in the forecast for Washington. Nonetheless, it's a delight to be here. I want to speak today about Chinese nationalism. It's a commonly, you'll hear people conjecture that nationalism is putting pressure on and even hijacking a Chinese foreign policy, moving it in a more assertive direction and potentially preventing a greater moderation in Chinese foreign policy. But before we leap to that conclusion, I want to first ask and address what are the sources of Chinese nationalism and to what extent does Chinese nationalism constrain or empower China internationally and how might changing public expectations of the government be shaping Chinese foreign policy? So first, nationalism in China is both a state led and a grassroots phenomenon. It's both bottom up and top down. Part shaped by the legacy of China's so-called humiliation at the hands of foreign powers, stretching from the opium wars to the founding of the People's Republic, but particularly under Japan's brutal occupation during World War II. This history has left a deep reservoir of antipathy and a sense of victimization. And this is not only perpetuated by Chinese textbooks but also by grassroots activists, many of whom persist in their activities despite periodic government repression. Indeed, as I show in my book, over the past three decades, nationalist activists have been repressed and prevented from holding street protests as often as they have been allowed to do so. So from this perspective, we can see that the Chinese government has recognized that unbridled grassroots nationalism could jeopardize not only social stability at home but also diplomatic flexibility. And this is one of the reasons that Chinese authorities prevented anti-American demonstrations after the EP3 crisis in 2001. Now under Xi, we have seen an increase in top down nationalism with three new national holidays dedicated to remembering the wars as well as a major military parade and spectacle. But there has been curiously little tolerance of grassroots nationalism under the Xi administration despite Vietnamese riots that killed several Chinese workers and ongoing tensions in the South China Sea with the Philippines and the United States. So this, I think, suggests that the Chinese government certainly not feeble and nor has popular nationalism forced China to react to every international slight with kind of this knee-jerk aggressive action. Since Xi came to power, the Chinese government has prevented a repeat of the anti-Japanese demonstrations in 2012 that swept over 200 different Chinese cities. And in its territorial disputes with Vietnam and the Philippines, in these cases, China hasn't suffered from a deficit of resolve. If anything, China has been using physical and military means to advance its interests and claims while trying to minimize the diplomatic blowback that more sort of outright displays of popular nationalism might jeopardize. So we have seen increasingly assertive Chinese behavior in the East and South China Sea, but I'm skeptical that this is driven by nationalist forces, many of whom are actually calling upon the Chinese government to take even more assertive and belligerent actions. So despite prominent warnings against impending US patrols in the South China Sea, China did not aggressively harass these patrols. Rather, China has been moving to bolster its physical and military presence while minimizing the risk of conflict. So is there a disjuncture between official nationalist rhetoric and actual foreign policy when senior Chinese leaders claim that if the United States wants China to make concessions in the South China Sea, it will first have to persuade a public opinion? How truthful or truthy are these claims? I think they're unlikely to be pure fabrication since recent surveys that I've done in China suggest that the Chinese government does in fact face public disapproval when the government doesn't take tough action in the face of things like US freedom of navigation patrols. When respondents in these surveys are primed with events that are portrayed as transgressions of Chinese sovereignty and national interest, respondents are more likely to disapprove of the government's inaction when primed with things like the freedom of navigation patrols, but also things like the US flying B-52s through China's newly declared air defense identification zone in the East China Sea, as well as reminders of events like the EP-3 collision and the death of the Chinese pilot, the anniversary of which was recently, again, commemorated in the Chinese media. And so these findings, I think, underscore the danger that actions that the United States and others might take to deter China might in fact have the sort of counterproductive effect of increasing Chinese resolve by being seen as provocation or provocative and putting more pressure on the Chinese government to take tough action. But at the same time, popular sentiment in China is, of course, to some degree malleable. Now, the Chinese government can't hide events and patrols from view when these are made public by the international media, but nonetheless, the Chinese government can use their authority over the propaganda apparatus and many tools of censorship to frame the government's response to shut down critical voices and to portray the government's response as reasonable. And amongst these many justifications that are used, the idea of biding time for a future conflict seems to be particularly effective so long as the Chinese government does not make explicit threats that it then fails to follow through on. So the malleability of public opinion, I think, makes it a little harder, and fortunately for Beijing, for outsiders to give credence to Chinese claims that their hands are tied by nationalist sentiment. As one US official noted in the aftermath of the EP3 crisis, the question is how much of this public pressure is real and how much is induced. So nationalism for the Chinese Communist Party and Xi Jinping is a double-edged sword not only because it can harm the Chinese government as well as China's diplomatic relations, it's also risky because it might actually be dangerous to the government but be discounted or believed to be a bluff by outside observers and foreign decision makers. So managing national really is this challenging problem for the Chinese government. The government can endorse popular patriotism and allow sentiment and protest that could jeopardize and domestic and international stability. It could repress nationalist protests and patriotic sentiment but then be accused of being unpatriotic and hypocritical and not tough enough in defending the nation. Or the government can stage manage these sentiments and be seen as manufacturing or ginning up these forces. So there's no sort of a catch-22 really that the government faces. So ultimately the influence I think that nationalist sentiments and public opinion will have on Chinese foreign policy depends ultimately on how sensitive the Chinese leadership is to popular anger. Now Xi Jinping, while a very strong leader, has also stressed the importance of remaining in step with public opinion, launching a mass-line campaign and telling the Central Committee that quote, winning or losing public support is an issue that concerns the Communist Party's survival or extinction. And the personalization of power under Xi Jinping and the top leadership means that this very top is more likely to feel the brunt of popular anger against the regime. And I think in part aware of these dangers, Xi has gone around exhorting the media to follow the Party's line and instructed propaganda outlets to regain control of the national narrative on the internet as well as on social media. So what we're seeing as the Chinese Communist Party working over time, I think to consolidate and solidify its control over society and the government. So as the economy slows and endemic corruption hollows out the Party's legitimacy, the Party has been trying to refashion its ruling mandate. We've seen tough disciplinary campaigns against lawyers, against NGOs, against labor and the media, all of which I think reflect a lack of confidence in the CCP's ability to retain control over a more active and a more diverse society. So for foreign policy observers, the looming question I think is how these domestic strains and the Xi administration's redoubled efforts to consolidate control will affect China's external behavior. But a troubled economy and the slowing growth of Chinese development could point in two very different directions. On the one hand you could see growing adventurism to divert attention from domestic problems but you could also see a renewed focus on internal progress on things like pollution, rising inequality, more jobs, social services and further international tensions and confrontations could actually backfire by making the Chinese leadership seem weak and incompetent. So a more prudent strategy could hold that mounting domestic problems actually counsel restraint rather than more adventurism. For the United States ultimately there's very little that outsiders I think can do in confronting a troubled and troubling China to change the domestic course of events. But our actions I think do reverberate in China in ways that we need to understand better. Through tools like public opinion surveys and using big data to analyze social media in China I think can help illuminate the domestic dynamics that are affecting Chinese foreign policy and ultimately the trajectory of peace and security in Asia. Thanks so much for your attention and look forward to your questions. Thank you. Thanks very much. So Scott and Jessica gave a great broader overview of some domestic factors in China that are influencing China's foreign policy today and I'll focus more specifically on one critical case which is China's growing ambitions in the area of energy and climate change. During the Obama administration, particularly during President Obama's second term climate has become the most dependable anchor of US-China cooperation that used to be economic and commercial issues but in recent years the US business community has been losing faith in the China dream for American businesses and there's been more negativity than positivity in the commercial sphere and energy and climate has really risen up to replace that as the one issue that you can depend on a good outcome at every single presidential summit. President Obama and President Xi have had a few summits since their first summit was in 2013. Since that first June 2013 Sunnyland summit every presidential summit between the US and China has produced a joint statement on climate change. In some cases that was the only joint statement that our leaders could agree on in other cases that was the only statement that actually contained some new and concrete movements forward. So this is a really important issue to understand and to think about how it might have implications or models for other areas of US-China relations. There are three aspects of the energy and climate bilateral that are really interesting. First, this is an area where China's growing foreign policy ambitions are absolutely fantastic for the United States and absolutely fantastic for the global community. Xi Jinping, as Scott mentioned, is changing tact in Chinese foreign policy. Instead of reacting to the regional environment and the global environment, he wants to shape it. He wants China to step up and play a leadership role and climate is one of those areas where China is proving that it can be a leader in a way that the US could not. China can speak to audiences that don't listen to the United States and help rally other nations around common objectives that the US and China share. In climate change, China was an absolutely invaluable partner with messaging developing countries and getting other developing countries to step up to the plate and put forward ambitious greenhouse gas reduction commitments. China's role with those nations was critical and fundamental to the new global climate agreement that was locked in in December of last year. We've seen China playing a similar role with Iran and this is a great bright spot for the future of US-China relations. China has audiences and friends that we do not share and in issues where we have a common vision with China when we're able to join forces with China to pursue that vision, it can be a really powerful thing and climate is the big example of the moment. Secondly, in climate and energy, there are a couple of domestic trends that are motivating China to really step up and expanding the landscape of what Chinese officials and Chinese leaders believe that they can actually deliver. On climate, there are three things that are new. The first is that with air pollution, Chinese citizens have basically drawn a line in the sand over what type of economic models they're willing to accept. Prior to November, December, 2012, China used a blue skydaze program to communicate to its citizens whether the air quality was good or bad. Around that time, the US also had installed an air quality monitoring device on the roof that was putting forward much more nuanced information about air quality in Beijing and Chinese citizens started looking at the difference between those two, the EPA-based, very specific, sometimes disastrous sounding information coming out of the US embassy and the much more general metrics that the Chinese government was providing and a series of disastrous air pollution incidents really pushed the Chinese people to stand up and say, we're no longer going to accept this squishy blue skydaze system. We absolutely demand scientific specific information about small to particulate air pollution and we also demand that our government do something about it. And what's really interesting is Beijing said, okay, in early 2013, the Chinese leadership completely did a 180 on the way it handles the public monitoring of air pollution. Instead of withholding the detailed information, they began installing thousands of real-time air quality monitoring devices across the nation. So now Chinese citizens can have great apps on their iPhones that tell them exactly what's in the air that they're breathing, sometimes by neighborhood, particularly in bigger cities. And now that there's so much strong citizen oversight, local officials have very little wiggle room to get around the implementation of the air policies. So they basically created an entire new political reality around air pollution in China, which is there are strong promises to the citizens to clean things up. There is a very clear technology-based open information monitoring system to measure government performance and there's really no option but to make sure things keep moving forward in a positive direction. And that created some positive byproducts for what China can do internationally on climate change. Because if you're going to be shutting down coal plants already for domestic reasons, then you can make a commitment internationally to be shutting down coal plants and cleaning up your air and kill two birds with one stone. Not only try to fulfill the demands of your people at home, but also show global leadership and help other nations around the world see how they can do the exact same thing even if they are still developing nations. The third important domestic context that made China's new ambition possible on climate change is the economy is slowing. Many scholars look at China's slowing economy as a potential danger in foreign policy, but on this one, the slowing economy took the edge off of China's energy demand expansions and gave renewable energy a chance to catch up. Before economic growth started coming down, the China was adding the equivalent of North Korea's entire electric grid to their natural national grid every single year. So they were basically running on an energy treadmill. It was all they could do to keep the lights on at all of the new apartments that were being built, much less try to pull down some of the coal plants that were fueling those lights and put up clean energy instead. And then the third factor that really made China's new climate ambitions possible was the commercialization of new clean energy technologies. Prior to around 2008, 2009, clean energy really wasn't considered a viable commercial option in the United States, much less in China, but technological developments and price declines happened rather rapidly and made it possible for both the U.S. and China to look at energy as an area that didn't have to be zero sum anymore and didn't have to be hindered by technology or access to oil and gas resources. So those three domestic factors really opened up new opportunities for China for expanding its ambition on what it could do to turn the economy around from a fossil fuel heavy nation toward a more clean energy nation and in the process make much more ambitious commitments for what it could do for bringing down greenhouse gas emissions so that it could not only address air pollution at home but also global warming around the world. Xi Jinping was also a really critical factor in this shift. You know, I have a lot of conversations with Chinese colleagues about the red lines and opportunities for what the U.S. and China can do together in the near term, in the medium and long term. And around 2014, a lot of friends and officials were still very nervous about what China may or may not be able to commit to and how ambitious China should be at the Paris Climate Conference given that China was still in the middle of a five year planning cycle. And when you're in the middle of a five year planning cycle and changes happening very rapidly, it's really hard to pinpoint exactly how strong you should go in terms of putting as much ambition down as you can but making sure you can live up to those promises. And Xi Jinping was a really interesting, critical factor in 2014 in that he basically came forward and said, no, we're gonna go with the strong plan. We're gonna take a gamble on this one and see if we can do something really big and new with the United States and shock the global community with what we can do together and not only give a big boost to the things that we've promised that we'll deliver to our people at home but also give a big boost to China's image around the world. And this is one sector where his personal willingness to take that risk and personal foreign policy ambition was absolutely critical to the big agreement that the United States and China locked in in 2014 that jump-started the negotiation process through 2015 for the new global climate agreement. Also critical was that the U.S. was able to monitor these factors, recognize that these were openings for a new type of U.S.-China bilateral cooperation and figure out new ways to engage their Chinese partners such that we wouldn't be leaving these great opportunities on the vine. I think this is an area of challenge that all of us should be trying to step up and fulfilling. China's changing very rapidly and so on the foreign policy front and on the bilateral front with the United States, that means we have new challenges but also a lot of new opportunities that may not have existed before. And as China scholars, we have a responsibility to be informing the broader foreign policy community about where new openings might be emerging. We need to be talking to our Chinese friends and colleagues on a regular basis, throwing ideas out there, seeing what sticks and seeing where they might have really ambitious ideas that we think are fantastic but that we weren't even thinking about putting forward. Myself and my colleagues were in Beijing two weeks ago having climate and energy meetings with some of our frequent collaborators there and in this particular issue area we're now in this really interesting space where we go over and throw out some blue sky ideas and we don't get a no, we could do that maybe with some modifications but we could do that and by the way, here's another thing that we're thinking about and it's something that wasn't even on our list but sounds absolutely fantastic. So we really all need to live up to this challenge of staying in very close contact and communication with what's happening on the ground in China and where some new opportunities may be emerging and that's something that I hope that the students at Georgetown will be making their mission to take forward and help contribute to a new area of US-China cooperation. Thank you. Well, I think you'd all agree that we've had three great presentations that have really laid the groundwork I think for the rest of today on foreign policy, on internal dynamics, nationalism and looking ahead for good ideas and of course climate change and the importance of that. At this time, we're gonna open to questions and we've got microphones so if you could raise your hand, we'll call on you, state your name and your affiliation and ask a question. Okay, no one has any questions. Okay, here's one down in front here. I'm gonna go to my five questions. Thank you. Steve Jackson, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. This is for Scott Harold. SICA stands for Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building in Asia. And looking at that particular speech, Xi Jinping's speech, of course, everyone is quoting as Asians determining the business of Asia. The actual translation though is Asian countries determining and the next paragraph in that speech, he says Asia is open to the world while enhancing their own cooperation with each other, countries in Asia must firmly commit themselves to cooperation with countries in other parts of the world, other regions and international organizations. We welcome all parties to play a positive and constructive role in promoting Asia's security and cooperation and work together to achieve win-win outcomes. I'm just wondering which side of the speech do we emphasize in that? My own interpretation of that speech, the second paragraph is China very deliberately trying not to exclude the United States from the region, at least in overt policy realms. And there are many similar kinds of speeches. Typically, there is that sense that China at least is not yet willing to come out and announce its Monroe doctrine there. I was wondering if you'd comment. Thanks, that was an excellent question. And of course, as an analyst, you are always at risk of cherry-picking the data that seems to suit a particular narrative. It's made all the more difficult by the fact that there are tremendous on-stage, off-stage aspects to Chinese policy statements and Chinese interlocutors statements. So for example, Chinese official media is often much more correct, cooperative statements made by Chinese think tank analysts who Melanie will often engage with or bring together who we interact with, people who we talk to when we go to China or come to RAND to talk with us, will often be more blunt and say things like, you know, these Cold War alliances that you've got are outdated, they really need to go away. That is a long-standing trope in Chinese foreign policy. As I noted in my presentation, it does date back to the late 1990s when Jiang Zemin called for the end of the American alliance system. They will often characterize the alliances as either the United States being manipulated by its allies or the United States dangling carrots to its allies to go harass or contain China. I do think that the Xi Jinping speech, which you're right, depending on which portion of it you extract can be read either as a very broad welcoming statement to the world, but let's Asians try and get it right first before we invite in foreign parties or extra regional parties, or as a statement of, look, first and foremost, Asians should be solving this. And then we're not trying to exclude everybody else, but. And I think it's an open argument, which of those it is. However, I think the fact that when you take that speech and you overlay it with the rest of what's happening in terms of Xi Jinping attempting to lay out a vision where China does a lot more to really structure and contribute to the world system, often in ways that, as Melanie noted, may be positive or may be constant with US interests, but at times are actually directly contradictory to those interests. I think then you begin to see that this is a vision of the world that may have elements that are open. Xi Jinping is not talking about closing China off to trade, but may put China in a leading position, and that may be something that regional countries, many of which are US allies, as well as the United States, would find not to necessarily be in our interest. Can I ask that? Yes, please. If I can just add a bit, I completely agree with Scott. And there's something interesting happening these days, which is a bifurcation of Xi Jinping's messages to the world. There seemed to be one message going out internationally and another message for the domestic audience. And so that makes analysts very sensitive to things in the international messaging that seem to dovetail with what's being said at home. And the classic example would be the new model great power relations with the United States on the one hand, but then an entire burgeoning set of party documents on anti-westernization, anti-western ideas on the other. So that makes all of us very sensitive to trying to figure out, well, which is it? How are you going to have a new model great power relations relationship with the United States if you oppose everything that we believe in? What exactly does that relationship look like? And so therefore, all of us are mining the combination of these two things to try to figure out what is the actual middle road? What would be the version that is said when no audience is in the room except for the few key decision makers? And I don't think we've figured that out yet. OK, over here on. Thank you. I'm Harley Balzer from Georgetown University. And I guess my question is for Melanie. It follows the answer you just gave on the contradictions. I do a lot of work comparing Russia and China. And instead of Putin learning about the economy from the Chinese, it seems that she has been learning about closing down civil society in the media from Putin. And yet you've just given us a lovely example of some civil society bottom-up pressure that is having a major effect. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little more about whether this is an exception or whether we can see it in other realms as well. So this is an interesting challenge that's emerging in US-China relations. The areas that are going well are going spectacularly well. The areas that are not going well are going, some could say, spectacularly difficult. So we have simultaneous concerning signs in some areas, such as on some of the human rights areas, including particularly the NGO law, which would impact my think tank. And all of us, I believe, are sitting here at this table. On the other hand, we do see some longer term, strong trends whereby, at least in some sectors of China, Chinese foreign policy, civil society groups and think tank groups are playing a growing role. And it seems to be too early to tell how exactly that's going to wind up under Xi Jinping. It seems to be too early to tell exactly what President Xi's legacy is going to be on this issue of, what role do civil society organizations play in China and in US-China relations? And is that role, is the current crackdown a blip? Or is it a sign of dangerous trends to come? And I personally haven't made up my mind on this. I was extremely concerned about the NGO law, the foreign NGO management law, because that would radically alter the way that I do business in China. And that would radically alter the way that my think tank approaches US-China relations. And I was very, very concerned and personally upset about that law. Yet I was invited to share my opinions in Beijing. I was invited to speak with the National People's Congress about those concerns and to ask questions directly to a National People's Congress legislative official who was working on the law directly. And then the law was, as my understanding is that the law was shelved in response to some of those foreign concerns. So on the one hand, there's this very concerning trend of new policies and new types of legislation that impact the things that we see as bright spots and how policy works in China. On the other hand, there is at least some willingness to listen, to comment, and adjust tact and response to those concerns. And we just haven't yet seen how things will shake out over the longer term. I think a lot of people are waiting until after the next party congress. There's a theory that all of this is needed to rally the political elites around a reform plan that is somewhat contentious internally and that maybe once Xi Jinping is able to appoint the rest of the Politburo Standing Committee, then they can start relaxing a little bit and return toward more openness. I really, really hope that's the case. But who can say? All right, let's go to this side of the back, yes. Jessica, I'd like you to tell us more about what Xi Jinping, I'm Gil Rosman from the Asan Forum, tell us more about what Xi Jinping has in mind for creating this top-down message to the Chinese people, not to the outside world now, but just to the Chinese people. What are the elements of this national identity that he's presenting to the people? And do you think that he has a coherent overall plan as to what this image of China should be? Thanks, if I knew exactly what Xi Jinping were thinking, I think I wouldn't be sitting here. But nonetheless, I would say that he's clearly bent on reshaping Chinese identity and pride in their own nation's accomplishments. And I think part of this crackdown in concern about Westernization is this continual eroding of a Chinese sense of self that is, this is not a new phenomenon entirely, but it's a renewed emphasis on concerns about spiritual pollution. As we see more and more Chinese students studying overseas, including the sons and daughters of the top elite, you might wonder to whom are they most loyal? And I think that there is this renewed emphasis, again, on the pride in the Chinese nation, as well as a convenient way of emphasizing all the good that the Communist Party has done when stacked up against the period prior, which is to say China that was in chaos, that was weak. So this renewed emphasis on victimization, as opposed to just celebrating all of the accomplishments that you might also want to put forward. I think that this balance of China that is still under siege from the outside is consistent with both the Communist parties trying to insulate itself as a party of an ideology that few still subscribe to, and at the same time emphasizing the various party's successes. Not so much anymore in delivering double-digit growth, but rather returning to this sense of patriotism of national identity. But that said, I think that's still quite amorphous. What is the China dream? Let's everybody fill in what that means. I don't think that we've yet seen glimmers of what is in Xi's own mind, but it hasn't been, I think, fully articulated, and perhaps deliberately. We come down here in front, Senator, the hardest to get the microphone. Thank you, Samira Daniels. This is addressed to Jessica. Building on the point that you just made, I'm struck by the fact that some of what you've characterized about Chinese society, and particularly its leader, is a kind of a theme that has impacted other nations like India and United States. And I'm wondering if, in your opinion, this is just the current situation of globalization, the acceleration of globalization, and the cross-cultural. And how would you then constate? Do you think that this is something unique to China, or you think these are broader themes in the acceleration of globalization over the last 25, 30 years? I think to some extent, this is particular to post-communist or authoritarian states who don't themselves feel particularly secure in the popular legitimacy not being derived from other sources. Of course, globalization is a factor influencing nations around the globe. But it is, in particular places like in China, where lip service is still paid to socialism and to communism. But that isn't the same as we elected these leaders, and we can take them out of office if they do a bad job. Instead, there's an appeal to other types of legitimacy that continues to go on. In China, I don't know as much about other, perhaps in Russia, there's a different brand of this going on. But I don't see this as the same thing that is going on in, say, Western democracies like the United States or in Europe. Although we do see, I think, increasing appeals to nationalism even here at home. I would refer you to Evan Osnos' excellent piece on white nationalism in the context of the current political trends. Let's go. Back up. Thank you. Paul and Monsieur Belgium have a question for any of the audience. It's the only question that wasn't tackled. So if you could, there was a question on the concerns about separatist movements, the threat of ISIS. And I would add to that, events like in Paris or in Brussels, what effect do they have on Chinese policy? I'll take a stab at it. So I think if you look back over the last eight years, in particular, China has suffered a number of moments of ethnic unrest. And I think this actually links to a question posed by Professor Rosman earlier, which relates to the notion of what it means to be Chinese and what it means to be a citizen of the People's Republic of China. To the extent to which Chinese Communist Party ideology and Chinese government policy conflate Han nationalism with civic patriotism, you will see policies in parts of China that will have very little appeal, and historically have had very little appeal, to ethnic minority groups. Some of those include Uighurs in Xinjiang and elsewhere across China. Some include Tibetans. There is tremendous frustration across the entirety of China, in many cases, over the absence of feedback mechanisms. Melanie has painted you the most positive image I think you can paint about the ability of the citizenry to have an impact on a particular policy of pollution. I think if you look at Dr. Weiss' presentation, even nationalists are often repressed when they don't serve the image of the party or the policies that they're seeking to pursue at a given time. How much worse off, then, if you are an ethnic minority practicing a minority religion who may or may not have territorial ambitions to have your own state? As a consequence of that, there has been a very tight attempt, an attempt to exercise very tight discipline over areas of China that have also experienced ethnic protests and uprisings, like Tibet, like Xinjiang. And we have seen a number of incidents over the last several years where, at least according to the Chinese media, there have been terrorist incidents. One of the challenges with running a political system like China has is that you don't have independent confirmation of the facts that are put out in the media. So Western journalists, non-Western journalists, Chinese journalists don't ever get a chance to talk to the people who are alleged to have perpetrated these acts of terror. Nonetheless, on social media, you can clearly see things have gone horrifically wrong. And I think it's fair to say that when people bring out swords or blow themselves up in a train station or an airport, that constitutes an act of terrorism. Irrespective of what the origins of that might be, whether it's desperation or ambition or anything, for the people who died and for the people who were survivors of that, that is an act of terrorism. But the question is, what is the most effective way to try to address that? Is it to tighten control further? Or is it to attempt to find out what are the underlying causes of this? And is one of the underlying causes a sense that for numerous ethnic minority groups in China, they don't feel like they have a pathway to participation in the identity of Chinese citizenship? Which itself, I think I would submit, even for ethnic Hans, is a very tenuous question. Because citizens get to have a say in their government and simply being dissatisfied or going on social media and complaining about the quality of the air today would not, I think, for most of us satisfy the definition of true citizenship. Right here in the center, this lady right there, yes. Thank you. Beatrice Camp, former Council General in Shanghai. And I was very heartened to hear the climate change progress. But I wanted to know a little bit more on the grassroots level in terms of Chinese students coming to the United States. Are they studying environmental issues? Are universities setting up environmental programs? Our EPA was working with Shanghai EPA when I was there on AirNow International and the air monitors were going in. But there was still, and you've also addressed the issues of civil society organizations, repression of this kind of information. That film, Under the Dome, a year or two ago, initially got promoted and then got suppressed. So is that kind of activity now more open, particularly on the university level? Are universities getting involved with this? Is this something that a Chinese student up and coming might see as a future? Well, so China is like the United States in that if your aspiration has become quite wealthy in life, you probably don't go into pollution issues. So there is that divide that unites our two nations. And so that is in an area where the people who really wanted to make a lot of money and be a sparkling business people go into. But I'm just continuously humbled and amazed at the quality of people in China who are dedicating themselves to that cause and going to work for international NGOs in China, China startup NGOs, and for the Chinese government on these issues. And I meet with people in all three groups. And this is just the area where the young people are great. I mean, you're getting technical PhDs out of Tsinghua University that are going into NDRC, and they're doing the advanced climate modeling to help Chinese leaders figure out what they can commit to in the 13th five-year plan and in a global climate negotiation process. This is an area that's pretty young, interestingly so. I think because it emerged rather more recently, so you didn't have a really entrenched old guard the old guard that you did have was pretty small. So there are a lot of, I would say, 30s and 40s and maybe low 50s climate and environment experts in China that are very influential. And they have basically a triangle shape. Below them, you see a lot of students that are getting excited about this issue. Because as Scott alluded, if you want to have an area of citizen participation in China and really push the boundaries of how citizens can impact the policy process and maybe change what the Chinese government considers to be acceptable about citizen participation, this is your area. It's really hard to find another like it. And so that is attracting a just amazing group of individuals that are doing great things. And they seem to be, they make me nervous sometimes at what they do, but they seem to be really pushing at the line and trying to try out things that aren't clear that they would be accepted to try to demonstrate that this can be helpful to Beijing and to the local people. And it's something that should be acceptable and considered OK. They're really doing a bit of a dance to expand the boundaries of the possible. It's an amazing thing. Take some political risk, but they're also enacting change. Let's go on this side over here. Right here. Microphone. I'm Mark Wall, now based at the University of Wyoming. As China expands its claims in the South China Sea, it's inducing quite a pushback, not only from the United States with military patrols and the like, but also from its neighbors, increasing security cooperation among them and rising tensions, frankly. How do you see all this playing out in the future? And how is it playing domestically right now? And in the future, do you see it possibly inducing more restraint on Beijing's part, or will it rather lead to increasing claims and rising tensions? I'll start. First, I think if we knew that answer, we would know exactly what to do. So I think that the risk of China reacting badly to what the United States and its security partners in the region are doing is ultimately, I think, unknown. And I think we see decision makers calibrating that risk and finding justifications that are most likely to be amenable to Beijing, or at least justifications under UNCLOS that China should find acceptable. Nonetheless, I think that what we're seeing now is being portrayed by Chinese media and understood in Beijing is really part of the longstanding strategic chess match between the United States and China. I think that the sense that the legal trappings are really just a fig leaf. And so I think we'll see how this plays out, whether or not China sees the value of more strategic patience or getting certain things done while minimizing the risk of an actual armed incident at sea. But frankly, I'm a little bit concerned. We are continuing to see the spiraling of tensions so far managed, I think, pretty well operationally. But nonetheless, ultimately, I think the consequences are really unknown. I'll just make three points in addition to the excellent insights from Dr. Weiss. First, your claim was that China's, if I understood you correctly, I think you said something like China's claims are growing or expanding. And I would just offer the view that I don't think China's claims are growing and expanding, but that's not really a source of reassurance. China's claims have always been enormously expansive in the South China Sea. The nine-dash line encompasses almost all of the South China Sea. And China also lays claim to most of the East China Sea or a large portion of it. So what they're now doing is essentially beginning to put in place the pieces that to improve the pieces of those territory that they already claim and have, building islands where previously they just had a rocky outcropping that they had planted a flag or had a very tiny facility on. And I think then the next question is, where does this go? And as you hinted, is there going to be pushback? There is already enormous pushback, not just from the United States with the freedom of navigation operations, which really shouldn't be considered pushback. That's just clarifying that we do not accept that this claim engenders the kinds of rights that you, China, or in other cases Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, are saying it does. But in terms of pushback, you've had Japan dramatically revise its defense guidelines, put in place new capabilities, increase its defense spending, enhance its alliance relationship with the United States. In terms of the Philippines, you've had a re-welcoming of US forces to be based on a rotational basis moving through five facilities under an enhanced defense cooperation agreement. We now have 2,500 US Marines on a rotational basis moving through Darwin in northern Australia. And there's now discussions about B-1B Lancers and B-52s being based out of northern Australia. With respect to Malaysia, we've got an agreement that looks like it's going forward on a P-8 maritime patrol aircraft. With respect to Indonesia, there is a tightening of that country's working relations with almost all of the countries around the region in an effort to try to gain capabilities and build up relations in the defense realm. Vietnam is buying equipment from Japan, from potentially the United States. The region as a whole is essentially arming in response to China's growing push in terms of what they're actually doing, as well as China's long-running military modernization. And so for that reason, I think there's a real question about where is this all heading and are the Chinese willing to back down. I think you also asked about the domestic. How is it playing domestically? My impression is probably nowhere near as sophisticated as Jessica's or Melanie's, but is that the Chinese Communist Party's ability to control the domestic narrative is fairly good on this one. And it accords pretty closely with how Chinese people feel about the outside world, which is these foreign countries have laid claim to some territory that's China's. We've historically fished there. You can always bring up pictures of Chinese fishing vessels that have been arrested by Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese, Indonesians, and say, look, the Chinese Coast Guard just bumped this fishing vessel near Indonesia and freed it when the Indonesians were trying to arrest it for fishing near the Natuna Islands. I think this narrative plays fairly well domestically. And one of the photos I showed was Xi Jinping visiting Tanmen village in Chonghai down on the southern coast, which is one of the leading areas for China's commercial fishing fleet, and saying, you guys go out there and catch some big fish, and we in the government will protect you and back you to the hilt. I think that image plays quite well. I would just say that in order for it to play well, the Chinese government needs to also be seen as taking quite tough action. So what I think the concern here is that the dynamic is that if the Chinese government showcases these foreign provocations in the domestic media, which they have control over, or to some extent, this is going to ratchet up the pressure on Beijing to do something in ways that we may not find particularly comfortable. We have time for one last question. In the back right here, yes, still his hand up right there. Thank you. My question was to any panelists who could answer it, but it was just surrounding the growing demographic issues going on in China after the implementation of the one child policy and the effects that's having on a grassroots level on policies and the perception of college students and the growing demographic towards the communist government. Yeah, so I think the biggest problem that perhaps eclipses the demographic problem right now is China's economic rebalance. Because if you have a lot of young people that can't find a job, that's much more dangerous than just having a certain skew of your labor force. The biggest challenge that they're facing right now is making sure that as China's Chinese parents raise their only children and send them out into the labor force and put every dime that they have into the best possible college education, that they are actually able to secure the kind of rising middle class job that their parents would consider to be a Chinese dream type of job. And I have personal experiences with friends in China that are really struggling on that front. The job market has been very tight. Particularly with the younger Chinese that are coming out of college these days. And so that's an area that Chinese economic leaders are watching very closely as a monitor for at what stage their softening economy might be likely to trigger some kind of political risks. Right now, they're working on phasing down the old growth drivers, coal, steel, aluminum, the factory jobs that don't bring that higher wage, don't bring that higher quality of life. Bringing in an innovation economy, a service economy, the Chinese apple that everyone's son or daughter would dream at working at. The problem is they're doing pretty good at bringing down the old growth drivers. They just announced a few months ago that they're going to lay off 1.8 million workers from coal and steel during this five-year plan because the demand is down. Those workers just, they aren't needed anymore in the new Chinese economic model. But they're struggling at figuring out how to enable and turn on those new higher value-added economic sectors where these only children are hoping to work in the future. So far, that's been a little bit of a stumble. Service sector growth did, the service sector, the portion of China's GDP did outpace the industrial sector for the first time last year at just over 50% of the Chinese economy, which was a pretty big deal. A lot of folks in Beijing were talking about that. So that signals that perhaps at least the industrial sector is slowing down, not yet clear if those new jobs for the future Chinese labor force how quickly or how strongly that sector is going to develop. But that's something that Xi Jinping and his economic advisors are really hanging their hats on. All right, well, it's now 11 o'clock. And I think you'll all agree that these three panelists have given us some great insights. Of course, for me, there are always more questions. And the biggest insight is just how complex our relationship is with China and, of course, Chinese internal dynamics, foreign policy, and their economy. So we will take a break here from 11 to 11.15. We'll reconvene back in here. And if you would please join me in thanking Dr. Harold, Dr. Weiss, and Dr. Hart for great presentations. Thank you.