 Global Connections. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. We have Carl Baker, who was with Pacific Farm for a long time and who is well familiar with foreign policy of the United States. And we're going to talk to him about China, about America's relationship with China. It may not be as immediate as the burning of America in so many cities, but it is very important to America going forward. Carl, the relationship of China and America has been changing. That dynamic is visible, especially in moving with such speed one way, the other, and backward and forward under the Trump administration. How is it doing right now? I think it's incredibly bad at this point because everything is focused on a competition between the United States and China. You have the coronavirus, which we've turned into a competition between the US and China. We have Hong Kong, which is becoming a competition between US and China. We have the South China Sea, which there's accusations by the United States that China is trying to take advantage of the reduced capacity during the coronavirus to further consolidate its position in South China Sea. We have the Belt and Road Initiative, which the United States sees as a ploy by China to take advantage of other countries in the world. We have this whole range of issues. We have Taiwan that is considered a problem for the United States and China because of what the United States has done in terms of recognizing Taiwan. Of course, China refusing to let Taiwan participate in the World Health Assembly recently. There's a whole range of problems that are going on. We're not doing anything at this point the way it seems to make things better. That's pretty serious. I guess the question is, what are we going to do with all of these things going on? I guess you could unpack that into about 10 issues. I made notes that probably more than 10 issues is everything. It sounds like we're in a degrade mode. Some commentators have said we're in a cold war. We will be. Some commentators have said this keeps going on. We'll be in a hot war. It may not be a shooting war, but it could be a technology war. Gosh, who knows what? That's very sad because both countries would do better if they could collaborate. Is collaboration possible, Carl? I think it has to be possible. It's hard to see where we can collaborate right now because of all the disconnects. You're right. I mentioned all the political aspects and diplomatic aspects, but I didn't mention the trade and economic aspect because they're important to this whole trade war and denial of technology trying to keep Huawei out of the 5G development in the world, all that stuff. I think that we've got to figure out where we can collaborate. I think at this point, that's where we start because right now, we haven't done anything. We still have the trade agreement, which both sides have been reluctant to give up. Trump hasn't said that he's walking away from it. China hasn't said they're walking away from it, although China has not fulfilled its obligations based on the amount of agriculture goods that they were supposed to purchase. That's still a thread that's there, that there's still the opportunity for collaboration, but there's no visible progress that's being made. I think collaboration is still possible. We have to recognize that China is a strategic competitor, and yes, it's not going to be China accepting its role as number two. I think that's where the problem started for the United States, not just the Trump administration, but this is something that's been festering probably for the last couple of decades. The United States always said, well, China can be a part of the system as long as they don't try to get ahead of us. Now the sense is that China is trying to get ahead of us. It's now becoming a very nationalistic sort of thing on both sides. Of course, the Trump administration, America first policy, exacerbates that because everything is seen through national security and national promotion lens rather than the United States taking the high roads, showing what's better for the greater good of the world through international organizations and things like that. It's becoming very difficult, I think, to find areas of collaboration, largely because both sides are seeing this through a nationalist lens. Yeah, and Trump has exacerbated the arguments with China. I mean, I always thought that the tariffs were going to have an effect on the man in the street in China and the woman would say, why is the US so aggressive with us? Why is the US attacking us this way? Why is the US taking these aggressive steps against us? That's one thing, but then there's this distraction of COVID. COVID is a wrench. COVID stops everything, or at least a lot of things. China was preoccupied with COVID for at least 60 days, maybe 90. It probably still is, and COVID is changing China. And then in the middle of that, Trump begins blaming China for COVID, and China begins blaming the US for COVID. These things do not make for a rational, reasonable, civilized discourse. It seems to me that things are happening that drive a wedge even in an optimistic view of collaboration. Don't you agree? I agree. I mean, when this started, I said, well, there has to be collaboration. If you could find a way to collaborate on COVID-19, it would be so much better. In fact, it was really an imperative, and we haven't done it. We simply haven't done it. We've turned it into a diplomatic football almost that we're trying to get across our own goal here. So China has now taken the narrative and said, look, we're helping the rest of the world with all our assistance. Even locally here, there was the Chinese community in Honolulu actually delivered medical goods, masks, and PPE to people as a gesture of goodwill. And this is what China is doing. They're trying to use it as a tool for their marketing of themselves as becoming the world leader. And the United States has basically done nothing other than accuse China of starting the virus and demanding that they reveal the source of the virus, which of course, at one point, the Secretary of State Pompeo said, we have irrefutable or very hard evidence that it started in the Wuhan laboratory. Well, of course, we haven't seen that evidence. And those kinds of words certainly don't help us in any effort at collaboration. So China has taken it, and they've shown how they can collaborate with the other countries where the United States has been left with their politics and grievance on the international scene. Yeah, one footnote to that is that we live in a time where foreign policy is handled over tweets. And so in the old days, you can save face by making a statement directly to your counterparts in the other guys, foreign ministry or state department. Now you broadcast it to the world and that has an echo effect in a population of over a billion people. They all know what these machinations are both ways. So it's like you're playing to this huge public and you try to get residents with the public to support you. It's a passion play. But I wanted to ask you about the opportunistic thing here. There's an opportunistic thing. Just as some people in Honolulu sent masks to China, China has sent masks to the United States. And in each case, it's a play. It's almost theatrical. At the same time, when Trump has been dumping on World Health Organization, China has been approaching and getting close to it. Likewise, the United Nations and various committees in the United Nations, all of which seems to be very positive. China seems to be stepping into the breach where the US wants to be isolationist and turn inward and avoid contact outside, close its borders. China has reached out. China has done ostensibly altruistic things. And of course, the issue to me, and I would really like your thoughts on it, is this true altruism? Is this true reaching out? Or is this just a masquerade of opportunism? Yeah. And of course, it depends on your perspective on how you see it. Certainly, there's a competition in the rest of the world. And yeah, there's some people that really do see it as altruistic. There's Hansen in Cambodia. He would certainly say, yes, it's altruistic, and we really appreciate it. Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines would say the same thing. I think Prime Minister Morrison in Australia would probably give you a little different story. And of course, the European Union countries will give you, some European Union countries will give you a different story also, that they see it as China trying to take advantage of a diminished United States effort to be a leader and China trying to take that role for very nationalistic, very, very China-centric reasons, and that there isn't really this greater good, because China ultimately serves the Communist Party of China, and ultimately serves Chinese national interests. And they haven't been able to demonstrate, like the United States did for 70 years, that there really is a greater good, that all countries benefit from an international system that's free and free market and promotes individual freedoms and liberties. But that's where China is always going to have a problem, that they can't deliver that sort of thing. What they can deliver is what it looks like to be strong and what it looks like to have central leadership and central planning in a single message. And that's why it becomes so difficult for a free and open society like the United States to send consistent messages. When you look at what the United States government is producing in terms of strategic documents, in terms of strategic plans, they talk about collaboration with allies. They talk about benefiting society through their development assistance and through their foreign aid. And China does the same thing. But the problem for the United States is that you get this cacophony of messages, like you said, through the populist media, which China recognizes social media. They believe in social media because that's one way that they communicate. And so to communicate with them through social media by tweet or by Facebook post is a very important way that they hear these messages from the United States. And it becomes messy for the United States, where China, of course, doesn't have that problem because those Weibo tweets don't leave China. They stay in China. And so the rest of the world sees a single message from a centrally planned Communist Party of China delivering to the world. This is what China is doing for you. And so it's easy for some people in the world, I think, to be persuaded by what China is doing. And they look at the United States and they say, what a mess. The cities are burning. They can't control the coronavirus. Maybe that system that China has is better than the United States because the United States seems to be failing. And if people around the world come to believe that, A, you have this at least token altruism and you have a system that works that can solve problems fairly quickly because of the single message and the single leadership, then maybe that has an effect on the world order because people have fallen, as you said, for the last 70 years, the U.S. with all its, you know, tumultuousness, they follow the U.S. and like the U.S. for establishing a world order with a big heart and morality. So this what's happening in China is with all of their economic aspirations, you know, to be the number one power in what, five years or something, really quick time, and their ability to control people using power, control countries using power, you know, the Belt Road debt traps and all those things. That's an example of power. So the question is, how does this all affect the world order? Is the old liberal world order established by the presence of the United States around the world in 70 years? Is that gone now? Will the new world order be the Chinese world order? I think we're at a real risk of that happening because the United States now looks a lot like China because it's America first. You know, when you think about the implications of this theme of America first, oh, so it really is just your national interest that's making you do anything in foreign relations. And so there isn't this better good. There isn't this global aspiration that we're trying to make the world a better place. We're simply trying to make the United States a better place. And if that means that we have to break an alliance because you won't pay for keeping U.S. troops in a country, then so be it. You know, and we're gone and we're leaving because you don't want to foot the bill. And we don't want to foot the bill because it's not in our national interest in a very narrow sense of us maintaining that military alliance. And our foreign aid isn't going to be given to people just without any obligation back to us. So yeah, I think that that is the real bottom line risk that we're facing is that the world sees the America first policies, which are very narrowly American nationalist oriented, and you see China doing the same thing. And yet China is willing to provide assistance, you know, and the whole idea that you bring up about debt trap diplomacy, you know, that's very much an American trope that's being put out there. Not all the countries that are receiving Belt and Road Initiative money see that as a debt trap. In fact, there's a growing bit of literature in Southeast Asia and South Asia that says, you know, the United States is picking on that port in Sri Lanka every time, you know, and they keep using that same story about how this is debt trap diplomacy. But the fact is, is that that port is actually serving Sri Lanka. They have actually developed some infrastructure around that port and China isn't taking it over that it actually is benefiting Sri Lanka. You know, and so I think that we need to be careful and that gets back to our whole strategic competition issue. You know, I think that we need to the United States needs to recognize that, yes, China does have infrastructure and yes, China does build infrastructure. The United States is never going to build infrastructure for countries. It never has. It's not it's not what the United States does, but what United States can do. And what again, what some of the planning documents talk about in their Indo-Pacific strategy is exactly that is talking about how can we facilitate real investment in these countries. And that's sort of my hope of how we prevent this thing deteriorating into a competition of of narrowly self-interested states, United States and China competing with each other and into something that is actually beneficial for the world that the United States actually finds a way to to build on what the what the Chinese are doing with their infrastructure development and and help these societies actually build industries and and economies around this infrastructure so that everybody does benefit and we get back to the notion of of being interested in the greater good in development for the sake of development and for rising raising people out of poverty and into a better life. You know, but to do that these days, you have to have mostly American business people, mostly American representatives traveling around the world, meeting people, vetting possibilities and projects, making loans, stimulating relationships and all that, and in the wake of COVID with the notion and I think this is inherent in the reopening notion. When the government, when the federal government talks about reopening, it's not talking about reopening of the global economy, it's talking about reopening of the national economy and I think if we're going to do reopening, we should what do you think we should do opening reopening of the global economy to do exactly what you were saying, right? Yeah, I mean that's right. I mean and you're right. I mean, I don't even sure we're talking about a national economy. We're pushing it on the states and on the local communities to open. So it's hardly even a national opening. It's almost everybody for themselves. You know, much like it was when it came time to try to find masks and personal protective equipment, go ahead, states, you're on your own because we're not interested in your problems. We'll be there if you ask us, but otherwise you're on your own. So in some ways it's so inward looking that we aren't even thinking at the national level. We don't really even really have a national plan for reopening. We have these vague guidelines which were reduced from supposedly from a 90-page document to a 10-page document or something because well we can't be bothered with the details. So yeah, so you're trying to take that next step and say let's think about how do we restart the world and first of all we need to probably think about how do we restart the United States' role in the world and stop trying to figure out how to get ourselves out because you mentioned earlier the fact that China has taken on so much of the UN's participation and in fact they are now, they control more UN departments and agencies than any other country. And we've sort of let them do that. We've sort of let them and for whatever reason, they almost got the intellectual property office from the UN and the United States fought back and we prevented that. But the fact is, is that China has been very aggressive because they see this as their opportunity, a weak America based on a very narrowly defined national interest by the United States and they've taken advantage of it. And I think this is, if you want to talk about the new Cold War, the new Cold War is not about military competition. That's just a distraction. What's the real competition is can the United States regain its role as a leader and a promoter of the greater good based on individual liberties, based on market economies, based on democracy. And I think that that has become, as you said at the beginning, a very huge challenge because of what we've done. The documents are there. If you look at what the Trump administration and really it was Congress that passed the legislation to talk about how we fuse economic development and foreign assistance. And talked about how do we promote economic development through loans and through helping people access private capital. And those are the kinds of things that we need to think about, is how do we actually engage all that money that's floating in the system that's been pumped into the system after COVID-19? How do we move that money into, as you say, a true international global effort to raise the economic well-being of the world, not just of the United States, not just of Honolulu, but of the whole world? How do we do that? And I think that there's an opportunity, but it's going to take collaboration. It's going to take a recognition that China does have a place in this world and that we have to acknowledge that China is not going to become number two and a handmaiden of the United States. It's going to be its own entity and that there are problems with China that you do have to deal with intellectual property and you do have to deal with technology, but you can't hide from it. You can't build a wall to keep that out. You've got to deal with it as it is, not for what you want it to be. And what that takes is a better idea to provide cybersecurity, to provide access to technology. And you can't deny a company like Huawei from trying to get people to buy their equipment. The world is too connected. You can't do that anymore. That's something that might have worked in 1914, but it's not going to work in 2021. And so I think that's where we need to go, but it's going to take a recognition. And even if you have a new administration in the fall, the United States has certainly fallen into this mindset that it's a strategic competition between China and the United States. And I think what has to happen to be successful is the United States has to go back and think about what it means to have allies, not military allies, but allies who actually are committed to a free and open society in the world. And that means you have to collaborate with the Europeans. You have to collaborate with the Japanese and the Koreans and the Australians and the rest of the democratic world, India, and build this better alternative to this nationalistic mindset. And then you'll see the poverty of the Chinese system. But you're not going to see the poverty of the Chinese system if you continue to try to compete at a global level between the United States' national interests and China's national interests. Yeah. Why does the name Joseph S. Nye Jr. come to mind when you talk like that about soft power and smart power? Is what you're talking about an extension of that idea? Yeah, I think it is. I think Joe Nye has a tremendous ability to articulate in fairly simple language, complex ideas about power, I think. And really, I think what we're seeing in today's information society is we need to think about what information really represents today. And that's what I think he recognized a long time to his credit, a long time ago, that the American capacity to lead was always based on this idea of power in a much more refined sense. I think if you think about the implications of a global war or a strategic war between major powers, what are you going to use nuclear weapons and destroy the world? Imagine how we reacted to COVID-19. What would we do with a nuclear blast somewhere of all the fallout that you would have to deal with? And the absolute destruction of the environment if you look at a massive military campaign. So I think that we really need to start thinking about how you fight a war in information society and the information age. And that war becomes a war of influence, getting back to Joe Nye's idea. It's a war of influence. And it doesn't have to be bloody. And it doesn't have to involve killing machines, but it involves winning people's hearts and minds in a serious way. And that, I think, is the future of competition between the United States and China. And it can be very productive. It can be very, very helpful in the way that that competition is helpful. But if you continue to focus on this narrowly defined national interests and concerns about military dominance and all that sort of 19th century, 20th century mindset, then I think everybody loses. And it has to be nuanced. It has to be subtle sometimes. It has to have a consistent, thoughtful pattern to it. I mean, for example, in the case of Hong Kong, the administration recently punished Hong Kong for the trouble it has had with China. And I wondered if that was a good idea. That was not, seemed to me, that was not thoughtful. And that an appropriate soft power, smart power approach would have been something way different from that. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, you're right. I mean, I, you know, what we're trying to do by taking away the special status of Hong Kong is ultimately going to hurt Hong Kong. It's going to hurt the people in Hong Kong. It's not going to hurt China. China can live without without Hong Kong as a financial center. It was important for China as it was developing. But as the Yuan has made some inroads into a currency that can be used for trade, the dollar has become less important, which was really what Hong Kong represented to China was a source of capital for development in China. And so, yeah, there certainly is a way. Now, I haven't really thought about what that better way is to answer your question. I mean, and you're exactly right. That's the area. These are the areas where we need to think and we need to think deeply about how do we really win the influence? How do we really show that we support the people of Hong Kong in their drive for democracy and in their drive for maintaining and independence from the central, the central planning of the Chinese government? And that, I think, is where better minds than mine should be at work thinking about how do we do that? How do we show the rest of the world? And I think there was some news pieces that said that we were on the cusp of being able to do that with the G7. And now, of course, that's all been thrown into disarray because we decided we wanted to invite Russia. Well, Russia is not going to support anything like that. But I think those are the areas where we find like-minded countries that make statements to China, that make statements about what we can, what we should expect from Hong Kong and what we will not accept in Hong Kong. And it doesn't have to involve threatening, cutting off special measures. It doesn't have to involve the threat of military force. Military force is a very blunt tool and ultimately is a very difficult tool to use because it's so blunt. And so I think those are the kinds of things we should do is we should be looking at, again, those countries that I just mentioned, and think about how do we articulate our demands to China? And if China faces that sort of global resistance, then it backs away. It has to back away because it recognizes that it can't do that because there has to be consequences. But if the consequences are only consequences that are rooted and based in American interests, then China can look the other way and say, look at Minneapolis, which is exactly what they did. They said, what are you guys talking about? You guys double standards. All this stuff that plays so well in the rest of the world. This whole China as the sort of avant-garde of the third world is still there. They can still use that as part of their toolkit when it comes to information promotion. And that's where the United States has always been weak because it doesn't do that. And it doesn't even less nowadays. And that's where I think we have to really think about collaboration. And we have to think about if you're going to combat a significant power, and China is a significant power, then you have to think about how do you really use your old alliances and build them into something that is based on information society and not based on industrial oil guzzling machines. And I think that's the area that is ripe for fresh thought and fresh thinking once we move past the whole mindset of America first. Oh gosh, Carl, what I get out of this whole discussion is this is really, really, really important to the future of every one of us, to the future of the country, to the future of the world. It must be addressed. And if it's not going to be addressed in this administration, let's hope for an administration that will address it. And we'll have these thoughts and take these steps. Thank you so much, Carl Baker. Really appreciate it. I hope we can revisit with you as time goes by. Because it's one thing I can guarantee. There will be more. There will be more. And I think it's not it's not over yet, but we certainly need to move smartly. Thank you so much, Carl.