 Thank you Colin and welcome to the Australian National University and I too acknowledge that we meet on the land of traditional owners and I too pay my respects to Elders past and present. Kevin welcome back. Chancellor I should treat you with respect. Well there's a first for everything isn't there? Now Touche, Bishop 15, Rudd 0. I am delighted to welcome my friend and a former parliamentary colleague and an alumnus of this university and as Chancellor Kevin I'm delighted to be involved in the launch of your book. You of course were a Prime Minister of this country and I think equally important the Foreign Minister during some very challenging times and you knew I'd say that but you most certainly had a distinguished parliamentary career. So I want to pay tribute to you and congratulate you for taking on this challenge of how to manage great power competition that will define our world for many years to come and your primary motivation having read your book and flagged it extensively is one that we all share and that is to avoid a catastrophic conflict between the United States and China. So let me get into it first question. I'll start with obviously a question that's been on my mind and no doubt that of others who have read this book. In your ten scenarios for how this competition could play out five of them involve military action, military conflict. You observed that war is most certainly not inevitable. Are you hopeful? Are you optimistic that conflict can be avoided and which scenario do you regard as most probable? Well thanks Julie and thank you for the kind welcome back to the University. Always be good to be here at the ANU. I tried to sketch out how this could all end because it remains an abstraction that is US-China relations and the emerging conflict between them in many people's minds unless you try and make it concrete. So I've tried to cast ahead a decade through the decade of what I describe as the decade of living dangerously and you're right five of those scenarios arise in and around the Taiwan question and of those I talk about America's Munich moment which would be a crisis arises over Taiwan and America chooses to do nothing. Alternatively I describe America's Waterloo which is a crisis arises over Taiwan and America is defeated because that would become a Waterloo moment for the future of United States as a regional and global power. Thirdly I describe another scenario which I describe as Midway which is again drawing on the analogies of the Second World War. It was the battle of Midway which turned the war against Japan. In other words America prevailed and then I talk about what I call the 38th parallel scenario which is a drawing from the analogy of the Korean War which is it ends up as a bloody divided conflict not dissimilar to the way in which Ukraine is currently emerging and certainly at the case of the Korean War and the Armistice of 53 and the final one which I do hope to be the case is one where deterrence continues to work and that when Xi Jinping or the Chinese leadership more broadly look to roll a dice on the future of the Taiwan question they look hard at the military equation they look hard at the financial and economic cost and at that point they say too difficult. The whole purpose of the book is to push us in that direction to kick the can down the road during the 2020s so that the effective deterrence on the part of the Taiwanese themselves and their American ally and possibly other allies causes our Chinese friends and the Chinese Communist Party to think again. Kevin your framework of managed strategic competition requires both sides to engage in good faith negotiations and for confidence building measures to establish trust but you do note in the book that trust has been in short supply for a long period and that both sides regard the other as dishonest so how could that trust be developed. One of our mutual friends in the past Julie who is head of Indo-Pacific Command prior to that call Pacific Command an American Admiral who will remain nameless here said to me one day after a very very long drink said Prime Minister trust is a much overrated thing and he's right remember Reagan's great aphorism trust but verify the guts of what I actually recommend in this book is more to do with verification than trust because the level of strategic distrust between the two has now reached unprecedented proportions China is now much more powerful under Xi Jinping it's more assertive the Americans are pushing back but when I talk about managed strategic competition Julie I'm not talking about something fanciful if you look at the evolution of the US Soviet relationship and the near-death experience we all had in 1962 and the Cuban Missile Crisis what evolved in the 30 years after that and before the collapse of the Soviet Union effectively were a set of rules of the road guard rails in the ultimate US Soviet relationship and despite the fact the Cold War was fiercely fought it never reached the existential dimensions that it acquired in 1962 and the rest of the Cold War by and large was prosecuted in third countries proxy wars and the rest it was ugly it was difficult it was ideological and divided countries and peoples but de facto what the Americans and the Soviets did in that post-62 period was evolve certain rules of the road at present in the US China relationship those rules of the road have disappeared they've gone up the spout and down the other side literally over the last decade so that if we had an incident at sea tomorrow between a US frigate and Chinese destroyer somewhere in the South China Sea despite the fact that formal protocols now exist since 2014 on managing incidents at sea there is no effective operating hotline now between the two militaries nothing so what I seek to do in this recommendation about managed strategic competition is to begin to outline how this could be filled in and around five sets of strategic red lines between the two countries in order to reduce not eliminate but reduce the risk of crisis escalation conflict and war by accident more broadly one of the challenges you explore in the book is the disconnect in perceptions of how each side views the world their world view and you've written in great depth about Xi Jinping's world view and his ten concentric circles of interest now one of these is rewriting the global rules based order I recall very well when I was foreign minister in 2016 that China rejected the ruling of the permanent court of arbitration under uncloss that China's territorial claims in the South China Sea were illegal or not based on fact so that's just one example what would those global rules look like if China were the dominant power and what implications would that have for Australia yeah what I try to do in the book in the middle part of the book is describe what I call Xi Jinping's world view if you're familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs this is an attempt to give a Chinese Communist Party equivalent in terms of what is most important to that which is less important but they're all important and I see them as a series of concentric circles my framework not the Chinese framework and your question Julie goes to the last of those which is Xi Jinping's plans for the future of the international system how would it differ right now what China is doing as you know from your time as foreign minister is two things within the existing rules-based system through the United Nations through the Bretton Woods institutions is to slowly turn these institutions in the direction of Chinese interests and values through large-scale personnel appointments huge new contributions to the UN budget but also changing this is where it's quite important the normative structure which underpins a number of into her national institutions of course this is most spectacular in the efforts which China now engages in in partnership with the Russian Federation to strip out all the human rights clauses from UN resolutions both in the General Assembly Security Council and elsewhere and you see literally swarms of Chinese officials in global gatherings seeking to strike consensus with supporters from Latin America and Africa and elsewhere to do that so if you ask what a difference is a clear difference is what they're doing there but other arm of China's let's call it international system strategy is to create their own institutions completely independent of those fashioned in 44 45 Belt and Road Initiative Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and others China's various plus one arrangements around the world and the whole idea then is to create Sino-centric systems where China is the anchoring power within them and as China does this it's basically domesticating from its own point of view the existing system creating a new system and calling the lot Xi Jinping's rubric is a community of common destiny for all humankind and then roll the clock along 30 years it would look quite different to what it looks like today now you write that the US political system is reasonably transparent and robustly debated and is studied in great detail by Chinese analysts while China's system is well more secretive opaque and not studied to the same extent in Washington and so here's my Dorothy Dexter which system of decision making has the greater resilience and propensity to produce better policy decisions and I am referring in part to the bitly partisan divide we see in Washington at present well let me answer your question in two ways the first is the US body politic and the rest of us as allies the United States need to spend a whole lot more time understanding the drivers of China's international political behavior by and large the American body politic is institutionally lazy because it's part of the Anglo sphere and for the last 250 years either the British the Americans have kind of ruled the waves and as a result if you're in the capitals of the Anglosphere which of the two countries worst in the world for speaking foreign languages the British and the Americans the British sometimes say they can understand American and the Americans sometimes understand they can understand British but that's about it have ever heard them speak French it's excruciating but and they take pride in not speaking foreign languages well you know this is pretty odd because most of China's rising generation of leaders not Xi Jinping's generation but the one coming out from the vast majority of them understand English and our deep students of the politics economics and decision-making processes of the rest of the world not in reverse it's not just China's opacity which is difficult it's surmountable if you if you have a body of people who put the research effort into understanding China's domestic political drivers that's kind of what we try and do in the think tank I now run in the United States second part of your question is which action which system ultimately affords greatest resilience well like yourself my friend you know I'm a kind of an old-fashioned believer in free association in politics free association in society and also open and free economies and it's not just because it's a universal human craving for freedom from a systemic point of view these systems are usually the most resilient elections for all their failings that were in the midst of one at the moment in this country that kind of the political equivalent of a floating exchange rate they are automatic shock absorbers adjustment mechanisms when the systems lurch too far in one direction as the government of your persuasion has most recently it's a gratuitous comment on the way through we got in 20 minutes without saying anything bad and I broke my duck I'm sorry but what unites us is that we actually look at the system we think for all the faults of the crazy American system which can produce Trump what's happening the Republican Party etc etc ultimately open markets open societies and open politics political systems they self-adjust the rigidity in an authoritarian system be it communist or shall I say it a neo-communist in the case of the Russian Federation these are rigid authoritarian systems which one day crack and then collapse with enormous systemic consequences yet you did warn in your book of a rise in jingoistic nationalism in both the United States and China and nationalism of course has often been exploited by political populace and can lead to conflict so how can the rest of the world or at least the allies encourage the United States to step back from the partisan divide that is plaguing its political system and to re-engage in constructive debate and compromise now I ask that question because I'm assuming that the task of influencing China's leaders to refrain from nationalistic propaganda as a much more challenging task it's interesting you say that because within the Chinese system there are debates about this as well there are two different words in Chinese which relate to what we would often call nationalism this country there's a different word for patriotism I go to eat and nationalism which is going to be the first is a good term and the second is a bad term in the way in which the Chinese can see that and so all Chinese are patriots not all Chinese are nationalists the same in various of our countries as well secondly Chinese being a sophisticated political culture understand for well the political leaders will use and abuse nationalism to advance a particular agenda particularly if your domestic political legitimacy is in difficulty in terms of other changes you're making to the country in question so there is therefore a discourse in China on uber nationalism in fact a friend and colleague of mine is a Chinese academic teaching at Qinghua University he recently made a remarkable observation saying that the under Chinese millennials he uses that term in his classes so in other words kids under the age of 22 now studying international relations at Qinghua University in Beijing he says are utterly different from those who have preceded them because the nationalist diet under which they have grown up in the last eight or nine years effectively causes them instinctively to demonize the United States in the collective West not the case frankly for the previous 30 years or so so there is a discourse within China on this question in terms the United States I think so much of our futures hangs on this future debate within the Republican Party Democrats are not saints but they are less addicted to the drug of nationalism as a tool in domestic politics as as the Republicans and what I fear is whether it's DeSantis or other candidates for the 2024 nomination the ripping forward the nationalist lever in order to secure the nomination nationalist lever of America v China and then somehow mysteriously believing that nationalist rhetoric equals a sophisticated or effective national China strategy that is one of the dangers that we are therefore presented with what can we do about it friends and partners the United States and allies like ourselves there's a responsibility for us to engage our American friends simultaneously our Chinese friends and say this sort of stuff doesn't help solve a problem and by the way if you don't solve the problem the rest of us get sucked into the vortex so I think there is an opportunity for us to engage in that discourse so long as we're not as it were imbibing the nationalist pill ourselves which is a separate question now you've also commented about the concept of comprehensive national power and how China uses that as a benchmark about its relative strengths particularly with regard to the United States now you've written about this and spoken about this before in this book you observe that the confrontation in Anchorage between senior US and Chinese officials back in March of 2021 was confirmation that the relationship was on a radically different course than previously now does that shift in China's attitudes in particular come from growing confidence from measures such as comprehensive national power now can we assume that China now regards itself as at least the equal of the United States because that's the impression I got from those Chinese officials they were treating the United States at least as their equal absolutely and that's what the public theater of that meeting in Anchorage between young teacher and Tony Blinken the US Secretary of State and Wang Yi the Foreign Minister both of whom we know as well as Jay Sullivan have been subjected to his theater before yes you've had a bit of that haven't you the and this was a calculated piece of theater and it was about China's assertion of its moment in international discourse where it now address the United States robustly as a strategic equal there was a there was a prequel to this several years before you remember the Chinese doctrine of a new type of great power relations under Xi Jinping from about 2014 that was actually China's first play at having itself seen domestically internationally as a power equivalent to the United States underpinning it all though what what's it about you correctly point to this term comprehensive national power the Chinese expression is Zonghe Guo Li it's been around for from about the beginning of the Deng period for about 20 years ago for about 20 years until about 2015 the Chinese through various publications produced comprehensive national power tables comparing themselves with other countries including the United States we used to come down sort of toward the end of the list Australia but but we were still up there in the top 12 and then mysteriously about 2014 15 they stopped being published and the reason for that was China was now emerging towards the top of the table and I thought it was actually bad public relations to be seen to be self aggrandizing in that way but if you dig deep in the ideological discourse internally as nerds like me are predisposed to do then underneath that set of comparative tables is a continuing refrain in the Chinese internal political discussion which is as we reach power parity with the United States we can now more robustly articulate our power in the world it's a deeply realist framework of international relations and strategic policy as to whether they've concluded that in all categories of CNP as they call it comprehensive national power that they are now either equal to a great of the United States the matrix they use has multiple components in some they would regard themselves as equal or ahead and others like semiconductors they would see themselves as significantly behind so it's still a variable feast but if you aggregated it they would see themselves now as being in the ballpark Kevin I digress for a moment you will be aware that I was the Henry Kissinger fellow at the McCain Institute in 2021 and I carried out some research projects and interviewed you for one of my papers was I a good interview you were wonderful but it was all Chatham House so I just put your name down I don't exactly say what you said but I think people will know which bits were yours in the research anyway that I use programmatic specificity don't you always so I interviewed a number of former leaders and I found it much more frank and honest as an exchange because they were no longer constrained by being in office so former Prime Minister Abe former Prime Minister Rudd former Prime Minister Cameron and the like specifically in relation to the United States the consistent theme from this research from the Indo-Pacific leaders was the concern about the United States having too much of a focus on the military perspective and those whom I consulted wanted to see more US leadership they wanted more economic engagement in the region and they wanted to see US private sector engagement and that was highly valued do you think that the United States sees that its economic weight is as valuable if not more than its military perspective in its engagement with developing nations in particular and I want you to see this in the context of Solomon Islands in particular you're right you're the point that you raised Julie comes logically out of a discussion of comprehensive national power the Chinese may regard themselves in conventional armory as being a power equivalent the United States within East Asia and the West Pacific but when it comes to every arm of economic power from trade through investment through capital markets and currency markets and technology and innovation they would regard themselves as on balance becoming dominant and you simply have to look at the size of the Chinese economic footprint right across what we now call the Indo-Pacific region and frankly globally against the American footprint China as we now know is the world's largest trading country the world's largest importer the world's largest exporter it's the second largest source of foreign direct investment in the world and if you aggregated capital markets it's certainly huge after both China as after United States and the Europeans so do the Americans get it in terms of what I regard to be the core element of Chinese grand strategy which is to cause China to become in the region and the world the indispensable economic partner and under those circumstances to induce their partners economic partners into a position whereby they yield on questions of foreign policy conflict with China's core national interests that is the universal Chinese strategy so the only way to roll back against that is if the United States rediscovers its centrality in the global economy which if you run by a bunch of dumb protectionists in the United States Congress is really hard and they are seriously dumb like indescribably dumb Republicans and you do a good job of describing them they're not indescribable no no they are just really bad on this stuff but for all of our sins in this country labor and liberal for the last you know 25 years we've both been non-protectioners free traders and that's one of the reasons why this country remains prosperous despite all of our you know economic challengers that divide that division however still exists the United States Congress now within the Republican Party and certainly between free trading Democrats and free trading Democrats as well so the Achilles heel for America's global strategy is the economy the Achilles heel within that is trade protectionism can they turn this corner the recently released into Pacific Economic Framework by the administration is one step in that direction it may point towards the Americans pursuing a digital strategy digital commerce strategy across the Indo-Pacific which is much more open and less closed than the current trade strategy dealing with physical goods and services but we have to crack the protectionist sentiment of the Congress itself because there's votes to be had in them bar heels out of protectionist rhetoric which causes in my view dishonestly constituencies in various parts of regional America to think that if your protection is somehow you're going to save a whole bunch of local jobs in fact you'll undermine America's power in the world but let's look at it this way you rise or you in fact borrow a US political slogan in the book you observe it's the economy stupid and the United States has demonstrated an extraordinary a remarkable capacity for innovation and reinventing itself and its market economy is still the largest and one of the most competitive and efficient in the world and you know you look at issues like the rankings of US universities they still dominate the great universities now I think it's fair to say that under Xi Jinping China has changed direction to some extent its economy is less competitive and more dominated by state-owned enterprises and both nations quite frankly are grappling with large debt burdens so does that give the United States a greater longer term edge to deliver you know sustainable economic growth and to be the preferred model for development globally I reckon there are two fascinating mega trends underway right now on the question which you have just raised one is can America continue to reinvent itself economically and technologically and entrepreneurially despite its protectionist predispositions which I described just before to which the answer is quite possibly quite possibly inherent dynamism of the show is still there so long as they maintain an open immigration policy despite other forces in US domestic politics pushing in the reverse direction and despite their pre and if they can roll back against the protectionist sentiment I described before then their ability to continue to reinvent themselves and to grow is formidable particularly if they see NAFTA and what's now called Mexico Canada USA under Trump that free trade agreement brings together basically half a billion people in an economic entity in North America which has a capacity to become of itself a huge global powerhouse if seen as an integrated economic entity now the parallel mega trend is what you correctly pointed to before Julie which is Xi Jinping's economic script going off to the left in a statist direction state-owned enterprise direction less accommodating of the private sector look at the crackdown on the Chinese mega tech platforms not just Alibaba and Tencent and JD and DD and the rest but also now the assault on the property sector which equals 29% of GDP together with a series of messages about a common prosperity agenda which indicates that private wealth is now to be looked at a scans in China and what I do see and I've been writing about this now for about three years is declining levels of business confidence declining levels of productivity growth and declining levels of private fixed capital investment growth and these are the generators of long-term economic dynamism throw into that the big mega drivers of growth long-term population participation workforce participation and productivity population in China peaks either now or before 2027 it's already aging hugely and the and the women of China are going on strike the birth natural birth rates about 1.43 it sits lower than the Republic of Korea even though capital income in China's case is considerably lower than the ROK so that's what's happening with population workforce participation the workforce size in China peaked in 2014 and productivity has been bumping along at somewhere between zero and 1% for most of the period of Xi Jinping's administration and so add all that to the underpinning shift in let's call it business sentiment then we begin to look at a scenario which was outlined I think in a low e-paper recently but also by a piece of my colleague of mine in the United States Dan Rosen which is are we now looking at peak China in terms of China's growth peaking much earlier than our analytical assumptions in the pre Xi Jinping period had assumed and then the argument then is that the Chinese economy measured measured as GDP at market exchange rates will either just fall short of the US economy by 2032 or maybe just ahead of the US economy in 2032 but not by much no doubling and troubling the size of the Americans and this is happening because of a series of policy missteps within China itself and the long-term legacy of the one child policy now have two final questions before we go to the audience so one's looking forward one's looking back you described Xi Jinping as a master tactician who is willing to take calculated risks a bit of a crash or crash through mentality now we've both seen clever tacticians in political parties but what's usually missing as those with long term strategic views does President Xi have the capacity to drive big picture strategic planning in support of his you know grand vision of rejuvenation of Chinese prestige and power is he the guy I think his statecraft is incomplete if statecraft equals a controlling in a Machiavellian sense your internal politics than the guys I've described before runs his own masterclass he has an ability phenomenally to anticipate where the next level of opposition is going to come from and to take them out six months before they worked out that's what they were going to do like it's quite phenomenal how this guy has consolidated power and such a short period of time so in terms of the dark arts of Machiavellian politics he's right out there with Sussex Street so the see self criticism the and and but as the economic vision I actually believe he doesn't get it because he has no instinct to feel for how a market economy actually works whereas he's predecessors did who Jintao Jung Zemin Deng Xiaoping member Deng Xiaoping's aphorism doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice it's glorious to be rich these were not heavily Marxist-Leninist concepts and so and that's why the basically the economy the Chinese economy just ripped along and wrought along for 35 years so that that's missing and then the third element is there's a question mark which is too far too soon overreach too early and for example with Xi Jinping's belief that his personal and institutional relationship with Putin the Russian Federation represented the enduring and enduring strategic wisdom for China to lock itself into the Russian position on Ukraine whereas I think many in the Chinese system would have said this is going too far because we don't know how it's going to end and we don't want to bury ourselves into divisive positions within Europe because the European Union is a significant long term global partner of the Chinese economy and system but if you as the Chinese through Xi Jinping's relationship with Putin say we're going to back in the Russian position on legitimate territorial interests unspecified and explicitly oppose future NATO expansion in Europe way beyond China's geographical and national security interests in this region then the Chinese system internally is saying this is going beyond what we would describe as sound long-term vision so I'm saying therefore in these three baskets domestic politics the economy and let's call it foreign policy vision and execution it's a mixed bag now my final question is looking back but not too far not in Chinese terms you write of inflection points in the US China relationship and one of them which I found fascinating was the infamous post World War one decision of then US President Woodrow Wilson UK Prime Minister Lloyd George and the French were there too to reject China's key demands including on unfair treaties and the return of the former German possession in Shandong now you and I both being subjected to discussions with Prime Minister Wang Yi when he insists that the United States will be an unreliable partner and will betray Australia and our interests when it needs it the most I've had that conversation with Wang Yi many times you write that had President Wilson stood up to Japan during that meeting at Versailles at the beginning of the 20th century history since that time may well have been different in that China would have responded differently now how did the events from that time affect the subsequent attitudes of Chinese leadership or do you think they're still using that as a cover for their more assertive behavior of late I think the the 1919 question is a genuine intellectual question of alternative history how history could have unfolded differently and it's not therefore an exercise in let's call it the retrospective justification of future Chinese strategic behavior there's an argument that China's being on the receiving end of foreign occupation of one form or another from the First Opium Wars through to the end of the Second World War the so-called hundred years of national humiliation it was not only genuinely experienced but becomes a utilitarian tool in contemporary politics to justify at home and abroad a more assertive Chinese security policy today under the rubric of never I think okay but 1919 I think is worthy of a separate reflection it's kind of along these lines Chinese Empire collapses in 1911 last Qing Emperor you have this untidy period with the birth of the Chinese Republic under Sun Yat-sen and China is searching to find its own way and you have the emergence of Republican parties and nascent Socialist parties in China in this extraordinarily dynamic decade of 1911 1921 and the galvanizing experience within that period in part was China's continued disunity and continued occupation by a range of foreign powers on the one hand and on the other hand you had Woodrow Wilson success in persuading the Chinese to send hundreds of thousands of workers to Europe to dig trenches on the Western front unknown to all of us not part of you know the standard you know Western history of the Great War but the implicit deal between the Chinese president at the time and Woodrow Wilson was that once this war is done then German colonies in China around Qingdao and the greater and large parts of the province of Shandong would therefore be returned to Chinese sovereignty that was the issue at Versailles Woodrow Wilson had made that undertaking and then reneged on it when the Japanese said unless this is given to us then we will not sign the peace treaty or become part of the League of Nations and so because the League of Nations which is so dear to the heart of Woodrow Wilson he yielded because he saw China as the as it were the inferior party to this overall grand strategic bargain in the meantime all these nationalist leaders in China the who later became communists including a very young Mao Zedong Li Dajiao and Chen Duxiu two of the early founders of the Chinese Communist Party were all on the record in 1918-19 shouting Woodrow Wilson's praises for being the great man of democracy of our time who would restore China's dignity when the news finally came out of Versailles that in fact the reverse had happened and that the former German colonies in China had been handed to the Japanese because the Japanese have been allies in the First World War this sentiment was turned 180 degrees and the Chinese Communist Party in the aftermath what was called the May the fourth movement in 1919 was formed and it then became a rallying cry within radical Chinese politics particularly Chinese Communist politics that the United States and its democratic model was unreliable for the future so this was a crucible frankly which set off much of the history of the subsequent hundred years I think this is a genuine missed historical opportunity for China its domestic discourse and its relationship with the rest of the world as it emerged from 2000 years of imperial rule and the Chinese Communist Party 26 years later went on to become the successful revolutionary power in China Kevin just before I hand over I must comment that Henry Kissinger described you as one of the most thoughtful analysts on China and its development and he asked the question can the United States and China avoid sleepwalking into conflict and he describes your book as providing the answers an option and ways for them to avoid precisely that outcome so congratulations on the reviews that the book has received I urge you to buy it and read it all by multiple copies friends and he will personally sign it I can assure you of that but congratulations on this book Kevin and may you continue as a distinguished alumnus of our university make your views and thoughts and analyses and perspectives known on this most important of topics congratulations thanks Julie well you don't get that kind of conversation every day of the week former Prime Minister read Chancellor Julie Bishop thank you both very very much for that stimulating conversation now we we are going to try and cram in some questions I know that we've overrun a little bit but this was definitely a conversation that we didn't want to stop so if people do want to ask questions there are microphones just down here on either side please make your way quite quickly because we don't have much time I can't believe excellent I was going to say I can't believe there are no questions okay you sir and just be mindful of Collins earlier request that you you keep it short and end with a question mark thank you thank you for the talk and congrats on the on the book so you mentioned various instances of nationalism coming out of both the US and China and you've also mentioned how China Russia's being stripping out mentions of human rights embarrassed UN resolutions so I'm just wondering is there much of a rhetoric coming out of China on sort of seeing US-China relationship from an ideological point of view rather than a nationalistic point of view and do you think an ideological conflict could be either less dangerous more dangerous or equivalent to a nationalistic conflict thanks it's a really good question because when we look at let's just say the Chinese perspective I won't talk about the United States the United States is now seen within the Chinese Communist Party through two prisms one is a continuing nationalist prism which is China century of humiliation national humiliation finally achieving its great national rejuvenation and that means becoming once again as they were in the middle Qing period the world's largest power at a parallel track the Chinese Communist Party is also a Marxist-Leninist party and for my sins I've been reading all these dense ideological documents published in the party's theoretical journal Chouchu about how in fact they conceive of the current set of circumstances in the world and the forces of dialectical materialism and historical materialism very much inform a an ideological Marxist-Leninist view that the West the Democratic capitalist West is in inexorable decline and that the rise of China is not just a force of history it's also a factor of global socialism and so you have this intertwining of these two ideological dimensions in the Chinese worldview and therefore these are animating from the party's point of view and not just a nationalist point of view a conclusion that China's time has come final point Marxist-Leninist also have a view of historical determinism which is that this is not just a matter for discourse and debate but that the forces of history are with them Wukha Bhimienda okay and that is China's rise is unavoidable it is written not in the stars but it's written in the dynamics of dialectical and historical materialism and frankly I find that a bit spooky because because when you are encountering folks who believe that their time as a nation has come that's one thing but when you encounter folks a particular set of political leaders or a group within a political party the Chinese Communist Party who believe that it's the equivalent of a dialectical destiny then that becomes deeply concerning at the end of Xi Jinping's speeches he has often used this expression and our view of the world is Jungche correct and that means ideologically we've discerned scientific truth because Marxism-Leninism is a science it's not a social science it's a science with inherent historical laws of development and that China's rise has followed those laws of development and for those reasons China will prevail so it's this double dimension ideological in terms of Marxism-Leninism ideological also in terms of continuing Chinese nationalism do you think that free association deals ending like supposedly in the 2024-2023 period juncture in the Pacific region between countries like the US and the Solomon Islands will influence like China's economic advances in the Pacific region and more specifically do you think that China's emphasis on cultural and soft power elements in terms of like showing respect to political leaders of Pacific regions is equally important in creating these stronger developed relations and countering America's relations with these countries well China's had a long-standing strategy of seeking to identify opportunities in the Pacific Island countries Julie and I both observed these are our respective periods in office China has often seen opportunities to run a bilateral aid programs among Pacific Island countries with no conditionalities often infrastructure related projects and often those with no particular strings attached more importantly also with no conditionality concerning democracy and human rights in those countries for example I think it's fair to say we had a bipartisan position on the military coup in Fiji in Australia until Fiji eventually returned to democratic norms of government the Chinese message to the Pacific Island countries is we don't care what your form of government is there's democratic where it's a military dictatorship etc so for those reasons it represents a formidable challenge in terms of the message which has been put reinforced by aid levels of which have been sustained so I think the Chinese strategy here in the Pacific Island countries will not be limited to the Solomons it extends right across all 13 Pacific Island countries which make up the Pacific Island forum and whoever wins the next Australian election is going to have a massive challenge on their hands in order to restore and I'm trying not to be partisan here Australia's credibility in the region across all the instruments of influence in the region which we together with New Zealanders have traditionally exercised I'm afraid this is going to have to be the last question because I'm very conscious of time so please go ahead I got lucky didn't I thanks to you both for coming to have a conversation here given both of your involvement in Australian politics is for both of you do you see a difference given your experience in both of the parties between the attitudes towards Australia's role in this US-China tension okay Julie over to you well I resigned as foreign minister back in 2018 and since that time the most significant shift I think in Australia's foreign policy was AUKUS I think one of the most significant shifts which was to reaffirm and restate the alliance with the United States and this was at a time when relations with China were probably at the worst that I've certainly seen in my 20 years and so it was obviously a deliberate foreign policy direction to envelop Australia's foreign policy within the US and to a lesser extent UK embrace at a time when our focus was certainly not on reestablishing a relationship with China as Kevin would know there is no diplomatic connection with China at present I believe that the new Chinese ambassador has met with ministers in the government but that would have to be the first connection that's been made in a long time so yeah there has been I think a significant change in the last two years I think yeah well the way I'd conclude our conversation this evening on this one is that whoever was the government of Australia at present would have a challenge on their hands because China has become increasingly assertive and and that is because as we discussed earlier China has become more powerful and the power matrix has been an unfolding one it began if you like when we delivered the defence white paper in 2009 and recommended doubling the submarine fleet increasing the surface fleet the Royal Australian Navy by a third in a range of other measures because we began to identify then from the intelligence that things were changing the military outlays force structure all sorts of things and and our Chinese friends did not welcome that 2009 defence white paper but has been an accentuating trend since then and particularly since 2012 when Xi Jinping became general secretary so that's my first point whoever is in office would find this a big challenge the second is my argument in dealing with the China challenge is that we need to separate constantly what I describe as an effective operational strategy for Australia as opposed to too much volume in our declaratory strategy in dealing with China and often an assumption on the part of certain politicians like the idiot Dutton that remain mum okay the quiet the that the more you shout and the more hair you stitch onto your chest of a morning somehow better the better your overall strategic circumstances with China and the United States might be that's just declaratory bullshit and it's it's it's directed at an Australian domestic political audience it's not directed at the substance of an effective operational strategy of dealing with a real world challenge which we've just spent the last hour discussing and so therefore the attention of an incoming government be it liberal or labor must be on the operational dimensions of an effective strategy which is both military economic technological people the people and the rest rather than thinking that strategy equals pulling out the bullhorn the megaphone every Monday morning at it's you know 9 a.m blasting it off in the front pages of the Murdoch rag and assuming that that equals a strategy which it does not that cannot be the last word on this so let me just say there was a time when both sides of politics would say it is not a choice between the United States and China we don't have to choose and neither will make us choose if we are able to manage the bipartisan relationships effectively and I think over many years both sides of politics did do that the United States was our number one strategic defense and economic partner more broadly and China was and is now by far and away our largest trading partner we have a very different worldview from China yet it was how we manage our differences that countered the United States understood that to a lesser extent China understood it but nevertheless they respected it when we did it and I think that's what's missing now that belief that you can manage these very challenging relationships and you don't have to choose to the extent that it appears we have done now yes China is now a much more powerful nation it is much more able to make demands but nevertheless I think what I found fascinating over the whole Russia-Ukraine conflict is the way China has responded it's been quite insightful that China is looking long term thinking this is not just a black and white we have to manage relationships not only with the United States and the European Union Russia of course but it was a much more thoughtful response than I had anticipated so let me end on a bipartisan note this is my bipartisan point to conclude with and it's two sentences if the Chinese system was trying to send a signal to the Australian political system that post-election whoever wins the election labor or liberal that they were interested in a reset in the bilateral relationship I could not think of a dumber thing to do than what they just did in the Solomons this is a really foolish act in terms of those within the Chinese system who've may have been looking for the opportunity for a circuit breaker a reset so whoever forms the next government of Australia let me say this on a bipartisan basis that actually alters the game yet again you know what we need to see is the detail in that Solomon Islands agreement because my fear is that I know we've seen the draft but my fear is that China absolutely dominated those negotiations and if we were able to view that agreement which I understand hasn't even been to Solomon Islands parliament we would have an understanding a better understanding of China's intentions aspirations and likely behavior in the Pacific and because you're the Chancellor I'm going to shut up and give you the last word you're the boss of this place I'm handing back to yes I'm doing my best to wrangle these two very unsuccessfully so it's my very happy task as Dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific which is a college that is deeply deeply rooted in in all aspects of of this conversation I have the great privilege of offering a vote of thanks both to the author of the book former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd but also to our Chancellor and former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop there are just a couple of things I know we're over time but really a couple of things I'd like to leave you with you know both the Chancellor and the former Prime Minister have demonstrated the the vital importance of one curiosity about other people other places and the extent to which some of us maybe don't have that curiosity because we are too complacent in our own position but there is something inherently important about learning languages about understanding other people's histories and other people's points of view but that goes along with endeavour none of this is easy and none of this is short term and I think what the conversation has demonstrated is both that look what happens if you get an education at the ANU number one I have to say that but it's evident here but also what we lose in public debate and public conversation by the sloganeering by the constant reduction by the appeal to the lowest common denominator these are not easy issues these are issues that demand understanding knowledge respect and engagement and we need to have that but in order to have that we need to have a population of citizenry that understand that it is important to know the language to understand the history whether that's China whether it's Indonesia whether it is in the Pacific so that's the first thing and we know that that's something that is declining in Australia and it's something to be concerned about and the second thing is in order to do some of the things that are in the book in terms of developing new rules and guardrails we need a public service that can do that we need a public service that has that capability and I think there is a very important question which you don't come to directly in the big book but I'm sure you have very clear views on what does it mean for our public service that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is not perhaps as robust as it might be as it could be as it should be so one of the challenges I think for whoever is next in government is what they do about both diplomacy specifically but also about broader public service competence in order that politicians can have the frank and fearless advice that they say they want but very often don't appear to require but that's just my plea for people to be educated keep it being educated and thinking broadly about what's possible in order that we might as former Prime Minister Red suggests you know get to a place where we can avoid war and that we don't end up as a result of our own foolishness if nothing else on a pathway to war that that we should and could be able to avoid and with that I would just like you to invite you again to congratulate both our conversationists.