 Our next conversation is an India-China snapshot. Daniel Kurtz-Falen, a fellow at New America, will be moderating the conversation. And we're joined also by Anish Ghol, a senior fellow in the international security program at New America. And Hao Wu, a fellow at New America. This is another trifecta of New America talent. I'm going to let Dan introduce the whole panel. But I do want to say really quickly, we're really lucky to have Dan with us. He was in the Department of Policy Planning at the State Department with Ann Marie and with Secretary Clinton. And before that, spent six years as a senior editor for Foreign Affairs. He's writing a fascinating book right now about China and Churchill. But he brings a wealth of experience across the region and a breadth of expertise. So please welcome them all and enjoy the conversation. Thank you. Thank you, Rachel. And thanks to all of you for being here. We have about 35 minutes to get through 40% of the world's population. So we'll get to it pretty quickly. There's obviously no need to belabor the importance of these two countries to all of you here, both to the global story as neighbors that occasionally go to war with one another over contested territory and to US foreign policy. The big questions were at a really interesting moment in that the big questions for both of these societies are really in the headlines day to day. And these will also be familiar. But you're seeing in India's election right now this question of whether this big, chaotic, multi-ethnic democracy can overcome some of the really deep dysfunction that has been around for a long time, but is coming to the surface at the moment. And then in China, you have a very different set of questions but that are also being confronted very directly by the Chinese leadership. I had the rather strange experience over the past several weeks of being in China watching the Indian election following it from there. And in one very strange moment, I was sitting with a fairly senior Communist Party official and a business executive who was hosting one of these dinners for Communist Party officials that they're not supposed to be hosting at the moment. But we were looking at images of the Indian election and what is, to us, I think this kind of beautiful spectacle of democracy in action they talked about with a sort of disgust and seeing that kind of contrast which was self-interest there, but it's still quite interesting. So we have two speakers who are very well-positioned to both answer those questions and go much deeper. How is a documentary filmmaker who has a really wonderful film called The Road to Fame that will be on PBS quite soon, he can tell you in, and is also writing a really fascinating book about his experience in Chinese detention. So he has a very unique view on these questions. Anish Goyal was the senior director for South Asia at the White House for the first part of the Obama administration when relations with India were much better than they are now. So we owe some gratitude to you. It now works for Boeing in Seattle. So two wonderful panelists. Anish, since it's in the headlines now, why don't we start with the question of who Narendra Modi is and what he means for India? It looks like tomorrow he will be announced as the next prime minister. There are one million people counting votes in India at this very moment. It's just the vote counters, not the voters. But Anish, what's your brief take on what Modi's election means and can he channel this very deep dysfunction not just with slowing growth but with corruption and environmental degradation and inequality into a new kind of dynamism in India? Sure. First, thank you for having me on this panel. I'm really delighted to be here. And before I answer that question directly, I just want to say it's not a foregone conclusion yet that Modi is going to win. Fair, fair. Everyone is predicting a Modi victory. All the exit polls are pointing that way. But this being Indian politics, you never know until the results are announced. And each of the past two elections, the BJP was, Modi's party was forecast to do amazingly well and fell short of expectations. So, but given that, if Modi does come to power, I think the answer to your question on whether he can channel new dynamism and capture the hopes of a broad swath, I think he's actually already done that. And that's what's powering his campaign and powering his election. I think there's widespread throughout India sort of disaffection for the current government, particularly in the last three years. And Modi has been able to take advantage of that saying that him and his party represent a new breed, that they're going to be strong, they're going to take action, and they're going to provide jobs for young people, they're going to provide economic growth back up into the dead double digits. I don't have any doubt that Modi is sincere in that regard. And he's a very practical individual and I believe that he wants to go forward. I think the bigger question mark is whether he will be able to do so. Undoubtedly he's likely gonna have to build a coalition to become prime minister and coalition politics in India are very, very difficult to manage. Modi doesn't have experience in this regard. As chief minister of one state, he's not had to really deal with this. And if he's in a coalition where his coalition partners are opposed to what he wants to do on economic restructuring, he could find his agenda being stymied. Another obstacle that he faces is that in India, the economic well-being is actually more largely controlled by the states, which is why he's had such great success in his state of Gujarat is because they exercise enormous control over foreign investment inflows and markets and things like that. The central government does not have as much control. And so it'll be a balancing act for him to sort of balance all of the different regional players. So I think he really wants to. I think he's sincere. I'm just not sure if he'll be able to. How in China were a little over a year into a new leadership and the slogan for President Xi and the current leadership is the Chinese dream. And you looked very closely at one version of this Chinese dream in your film. It's something you've thought a lot about and looked at not just on a political level, but by talking to a very, very broad swath of people in China filming them following their lives. So how would you characterize the Chinese dream? What does this mean? Is it different from the American dream? And do you think that the Chinese leadership is getting it right? I think for the Chinese dream right now is the official slogan, but the government really tried to push this concept through the state control media. But at the same time, I think for the common people, they don't necessarily buy into that vision or a lot of them don't even understand what the government is saying. But I think Chinese people are definitely having a dreaming right now at this point. But at the same time, China is such a big country. Like very few people there, it's very diverse. So like 20% of the people, if they have a different vision, that's the entire population of California. So when we look at talking about this concept of Chinese dream, we really need to be looking at for such a diverse country. And each segment might have a different vision. For example, for my film, I follow like the post-80s generation, what their dreams are. This post-80s generation, they grew up after the Cultural Revolution, has no memory of the political upheavals in China. So their dream is more individualistic. They have high expectations for the future. Whereas the generation before them, the people who were born in the 70s and before, their dream is really about making money, making some quick money. But nowadays, even for the post-90s generation, these young kids are even more, it's kind of fabbish for them. People consider them to be very self-involved at this point. But I think overall, the Chinese dream, I think it's a good thing that right now, it's so hard to define this Chinese dream. Every generation has a different definition. And it showcases that the society is really diverging and the government right now, by using this concept of Chinese dream, try to rally the entire country to support the government. But I think right now it's kind of failing. Anish, when you talk to officials in Delhi, you sense this profound envy of the authoritarianism that they see among their counterparts in Beijing. And if you stand in the airport and see people coming off the flights from Beijing and comparing the infrastructure in the two countries, it really seems to put people's commitments to democracy to the test. When you look at India's development model, do you see a viable model of democratic development? Do you see advantages to democracy that might not really be evident in the short term, but that might emerge over time? I do. And I take your point that it's difficult to see it in the short run when China's economy is growing a lot faster and infrastructure is a lot better. But what I see in the long term is that the development that takes place in India will take place in an environment where everyone's interests will be represented. And for those who feel aggrieved, they will have some sort of a channel of redress because it's a country of a rule of law. And if people feel that their rights are being trampled, they can take some sort of action to write those. What comes to mind is India recently passed a Right to Information Act, which meant even the poorest of the poor people can demand greater transparency from the government. And this has actually really helped clean up corruption in the Indian government. And those are the differences that I see between the Chinese system of development where government does what it wants by authoritarian rule and whoever's interests get trampled, those interests get trampled in the name of making money. And I think that the Indian development system is much more focused on all of the people. How you've experienced political oppression in China, you've thought about it in a variety of ways over time. Do you agree with Anish's assessment? Do you see the current attempt by the leadership to control political dissent while encouraging economic reform to be viable or is this kind of doomed? And then bringing in the United States for a second, what role do you see us having in pushing human rights within China and advocating greater civil liberties and greater openness? Yeah, that's a big question. I think in the short term, the government's tactics or strategy is gonna work because right now in China, there's a consensus, not just the government, but including the vast majority of the population that economic development is still the number one priority. And also, China right now, the population, even in the intellectual circle, the consensus that they want a stable evolution rather than revolution to dramatically change the existing system because right now the system is still delivering. But in the long term, like I just said, China and the Chinese society has become more and more diverse and there's a lot of, because due to the very fast-paced development, there have been a lot of conflict. The current system is very difficult, you know, having great difficulty in handling. I do see in the future, there's gonna be a major push for rule of law. That's one of the big things, big discussion right now being happening and also market-driven economy rather than state control. Having the state control and the resources, a lot of the state enterprises. In terms of what US can do, personally, I believe in a lot of the, because China's really bad, US right now is having less and less leverage in terms of pushing for changes with the Chinese government. A lot of the current changes right now are being driven by the population in China, are being driven by a population that's having accumulated more and more property, more and more confidence in their dealings with the government. Even though in China right now, you know you're gonna, if you sue the government, you're gonna lose, but still more and more people are suing the government. So I think everything right now is going through a very, it might be a very healthy development cycle, even though from the outside, you see China's become more and more, there's more unrest happening, there's more unstable. But I think that's a natural evolution path for the different interest group in the society to really battle it out and push it in the government for changes. So in terms of what US can help with this kind of development, my personal feeling is that US can really continue to push on economic engagement, even though there has been more and more criticism of the US policy of we, China has opened up for 30 years now, there has been very little political reform to show for, but based on my personal experience and talking to people in China, I do feel in China right now, even though the political system hasn't changed, but there has been a lot of grassroots changes in terms of people's mindset changes. The notion, I think the notion of rule of law, of human rights right now are deep rooted in people's consciousness, people talk about this, even though they might not get it. So I think as like I said before, I think more and more people are gonna be championing, asking for it and push government to get it. So I think the US job is really continue to push the Chinese government to open up this economy, to really give more economic opportunity to the population. Why is that? And shut up about human rights or what's the right way to talk about that? No, I don't believe a US government should continue to champion human rights, but I just personally believe we need to talk because US needs to talk for moral reasons, but I don't think US talking is gonna have any effected changes. And one more question to Anish before we'll go to the audience for questions. We're facing a similar kind of dilemma with the presumed next Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, who as most of you probably know, was seen to be involved in some terrible communal riots in 2002 and hasn't in our view adequately apologized or reckoned with that legacy. How should the US react if he is the Prime Minister? Do you see that becoming an impediment to the relationship? And just as a follow on, the relationship has gotten quite bad, quite chilly in the past year or so. How do we revive what was supposed to be in President Obama's words, one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century? Sure. To answer the first question first on Narendra Modi specifically, I don't think there's any question that if he becomes Prime Minister, the US is gonna have to repeal their ban on his visa and it's just untenable for the US not to allow a sitting Prime Minister of India into the country. And the way the United States I think should deal with it is just move on. Not to say that these issues aren't important but the Indian courts have cleared Modi of any wrongdoing. And you can argue whether the courts were right or whether they fair or not, but India's a democracy and India has rule of law and the United States has a strong democracy as well should respect that ruling and say, the courts have cleared Modi, that takes care of the issue for us. And there's gonna be some awkwardness in the beginning. I think the answer is to just move forward with that and overcome that awkwardness. In terms of the overall relationship, it has gotten frosty in the last few years. I don't think you'll find anyone arguing otherwise. And I think there's enough blame to go around on both sides. I think on the Indian side, the government just simply kind of ran out of steam. It's been limping along for a couple of years now, no real bold initiatives, no aggression, no strong policies. And on the US side, I think honestly back in 2009, 2010, when I was in the White House that there was a lot of heightened expectations. And I think the expectations got a little bit ahead of reality. And when they came crashing back down to earth, I think there was a significant amount of disappointment in the US system. But a new government presents a new opportunity and I'm hopeful. But does that mean we should not be thinking of this as one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century from a US perspective? I won't ask you if you wrote that line or not. Is that just not an expectation we should have? No, I think it is an expectation, but I think we need to take the long view on it. That it may not be the defining partnership of the next five years or the next 10 years, but if you look at the 21st century, I think it undoubtedly will. And in that context, then I still think it is one of the defining partnerships. With that, let's go to questions. I will start with this side of the room and go back and forth. I have to start with Ann Marie, actually. So thanks much. It's a wonderful discussion. Anisha, I want to just ask you a little bit about the role of the private sector. And I want to just make a comment. You said the Indian government ran out of steam. One of the things, we were all in government together, but one of the things we all noticed is that the Indian government had very little capacity. For a country that size, dealing with us, dealing with us means dealing with multiple different parts of the government, huge prep work, advanced work, and in between the meetings of high officials, ongoing work. And we found, somewhat surprisingly, if you think of a large bureaucracy in India, they really didn't have the bandwidth to do what we expected. But my question is more than how do we integrate the private sector? Because you're working for Boeing now, we always found that the US India business roundtable, the CEO exchanges, those were always really strong. And even when government relations were frosty, those tended to be strong. So now that you're out of government, I'd be interested in your reflections on how we could make more of those private sector ties to improve the relationship between governments. Yeah, I think you've hit an important point, Mr. Anne-Marie, that the private sector really can drive this relationship forward, even if the governments are not, you know, having the best of relations. And because India's economy is so big that it presents enormous opportunities for all sorts of multinational companies. The private sector involvement has fallen off in the past couple of years because of policies that the Indian government has put on that have been, frankly, protectionist. And the way to integrate the private sector is, right now I think that's the best foot forward that the United States can show is that, you know, businesses are very interested in investing in India. And we need to have the private sector make the case to the government directly that, listen, we would love to invest in your country more. We wanna bring more jobs here. We wanna, you know, set up production and research. We just need you guys to welcome us in. And I think that could be a real spark plug for the relationship. Questions over here. And that's it. Yes. Mike. How does India and China, respectively, view the infringement on sovereignty in the Ukraine? Do they presumably both feel very nervous as well about areas on their borders? How? The question was... How do they view the situation in Ukraine and the sovereignty questions that are raised by it? That's a tough one. I think, you know, the Ukraine, quite me a question is definitely on the Chinese news. Based on social media, I don't feel like a lot of people are really discussing it. In China, there's a lot more pressing issues with the East China Sea, South China Sea, that kind of territorial dispute with Vietnam. So people are paying more attention on that rather than... I haven't seen any direct people drawing correlations between these two issues. I was, I can, if I can just interject, as the moderator, I was in China talking to people in the foreign policy community there about this exact question in April. And they really have two minds about it. It's kind of a tough dilemma for a Chinese foreign policymaker because on the one hand, they put sovereignty really at the center of their vision of the world and rhetorically that's something they invoke quite frequently and prominently. And so on the one hand, that violation of sovereignty is quite troubling to them. On the other hand, they don't mind reminding U.S. allies in East Asia that, you know, if a big country should try to take a bit of your territory, the U.S. might not stand up to you. So there was a bit of fanning that kind of anxiety as well. Yeah, I'll just wait for the mic. If you're going to have a territory of a referendum, by that I mean do China and India feel nervous that there are parts of their associations which may want to have a referendum on independence? Oh, that's a big no-no in China. You just don't touch it. Territory integrity. That's one of the key things that China uses to rally the population. I would say the same thing about the Indian government. They do not want to go anywhere near this issue. They do have extreme sovereignty views but they're always very sensitive to anyone drawing any parallels to the situation in Kashmir because many view that as international territory and the Indians viewed as theirs and so it kind of resonates for them. And so if this were to come up for a referendum, I don't think the Indians would take a strong position on it. More questions, yes, right there. Hi, I'm Meredith Wadman. I'm a fellow with the New America Foundation. I am curious for your take on how the terrible rape incident and killing on that bus about 18 months ago, I think, has changed or not changed the bigger political culture or social political culture around that issue in India? For those who don't have the background, there was an incident about 18 months ago where a woman was very brutally gang raped on a bus in New Delhi and then there was a huge outcry in legal court case and how it's changed the political culture is I think it's really brought this issue to the forefront and gotten people talking about it. Before this incident, rapes were happening in India but no one talked about them, no one tried to address the injustices, no one tried to provide justice for the victims. In this case, because the nature of it was so revolting to so many people, it brought the issue out into the open. And I don't, as of now, I don't think it has really changed the political culture but it's made people more sensitive to the issue. And it's, I think it's actually allowed for increased prosecution of perpetrators which I think is a step in the right direction. But for wholesale change, I think that's gonna take a little bit more time. Can I press you on that, Anish? Because I think just last week, there was another court case that allowed marital rape in India and this has been taken by a lot of people as just one more example of Indian institutions failing to be responsive to the needs of their people despite what's a democratic system. What will it really take to make institutions be responsive on this kind of issue but also on environmental crimes and a much broader range of issues that the population is quite focused on but institutions do not seem to be able to respond to in a meaningful way. Yeah, these sorts of controversial issues are always hard to change in a country like India but it takes sustained public pressure and sustained focus by those who are not in power and maybe not part of the judicial system to continue pointing out these inconsistencies. And it also takes a strong press to continue asking these questions. Unfortunately, India has these elements but like a lot of other issues in India, they're slow moving. And so I think they're moving in the right direction. I won't disagree with you that they're nowhere near complete yet but it's gonna take some time. So patience is really the slogan to take away from all of your answers here. And it's hard to say that as recommendation for something like rape but I think that's reality in India right now. Yes, I get to bump my own time. So one common theme that underlies, what's interesting is that the lives of ordinary people seem really governed much more by corruption than it is necessarily by ordinary definitions of state power. My father comes from a rural village in India and when I talk to my cousins, that's what they talk about. So for example, one of my cousins who wanted to become a teacher had to pay five years of salary to government officials in order to get the job. Which means that in order to get the job that they are then forcing their students to pay under the table which is a deeply corrupting influence. But you see this as well in different versions in China too. And I'm curious about the problem of corruption, how you think it's overcome, two very different government systems and yet this problem of corruption probably goes deep into whether these societies can rise economically, can function and meet people's dreams and become the places that we are looking for as the partners. Good question. How are you minister? Yeah, I think in China right now that a lot of people probably have heard in the news media, right now the government's really cracking down on corruption and different levels of the government. Some very senior officials are right now being detained and investigated. So the government definitely appears in addition to political goals and government seems determined to battle corruption. But China has a long history of government corruption mostly because how to manage a vast bureaucracy as well as the central versus regional taxation problem. The regional government always running short on funding. So a lot of the, you know, many people are kind of pessimistic about government being able to correct this problem in China just because it's very endemic in the culture almost. But in the meantime, I think right now with the rising middle class, rising information online media, I think more and more young people and middle class people are calling for rule of law online. They are voicing their grievances against the injustice and corruptions in the society. So in that regard, I think right now without the democratic system, but if we can have more and more implementation of the rule of law, and with the media being pushed more and more open, I think Emily Parker wrote in her book as well how Chinese medicines are using online media to really help push for political changes. So I'm kind of cautiously optimistic. Anish? In India, I'm not very optimistic about their ability to tackle corruption. I mean, this government that's about to end, it's dogged them for five years and corruption from the very top all the way down to the very bottom. And like Hao said, it's endemic in China. It's endemic in India, almost up and down. And honestly, I don't know how to tackle it, right? If I did, I would be saying it all over the place. But I do think it'll take strong leadership and to hold these people to account and I think it'll take increased transparency. I've heard statistics cited that when money is allocated for social development projects in India, that only 10% of that money actually gets spent on that project and everyone takes a cut on its way down. And just exposing that to light, bringing that to light, I think is one of the keys to helping root it out because it's one thing that I've seen about corrupt officials is once they're exposed, it helps to mitigate their corrupt behavior. Can I quickly add one more point? I think the challenge of corruption right now in China a lot of times because the state controls a lot of resources, they have all this economic power. So in the internet industry, in which I worked in Beijing, there was very little corruption because there's a lot of competition, a lot of foreign captives in it. But in the traditional industry or state monopolized industries, in the energy sector, for example, there's a lot of corruption. So that's why I'm hoping for, with the new government right now they're pushing for more market-driven reforms in the economy. Once we really get government out of the way into the economic resource allocation, there will be less and less corruption as well. I'm happy. Do we have time for two more? We'll go here first. Do you have a mic there? This is Jeff Leonard. I'm a board member at New America. India just passed a new law in December which was geared towards anti-corruption and disclosure. And I wanted your comment on this. What we've seen in the audits for this year, come in the 2013 audits that have just come through is that because of the disclosure requirements, Indian companies are starting to put it on their balance sheet or on their financial statements. So we've had on several of our companies 10, 15, 20% of budget is it basically says payments to government officials. As an American company, we had to walk away from a $50 million investment just in the last few weeks. I hope this isn't streaming. Because our lawyers said to us, if you make this investment, you are subject to the Foreign Corruption Practices Act. So we have a paradox in the sense that the governments are in effort to halt corruption. Nobody's paying attention to an India. Honest to God, they don't care that the entrepreneur, in this case, just sat right in front of our due diligence people and said, yes, we have to, everything we do, we have to set aside. Our lawyer, some lawyers, Washington DC or New York lawyers said, well, you can structure around this. Of course, you can have them set up a separate company to do the business with the government, but corruption doesn't go away. I just wanted, as a one, Boeing person, and two, as a former government person, if you had any thoughts on that, I won't put you on the direct spot about what Boeing's doing about this. That's right. Thank you, I appreciate that, because I'm not authorized to talk for Boeing in any way. Can you give the percentage for Boeing? It's 20%? But what you mentioned, it's a big problem. I've heard a number of stories where companies have had to turn down deals because they don't want to run a fowl of American laws. And this gets back to what I said in response to Ann Marie's question was that to get this changed, American and other foreign companies really need to go to the Indian government at the top, whoever's in charge, and say this is what's causing us to not invest in your country. Because I believe that to this day, a lot of Indian officials believe that, well, if they really want to invest, they'll find some way. It's not that big a problem. And so what if we make a small cut on the side? Our government salaries are too low anyways. But if they hear the message again and again that we're not coming in because we can't pay this administrative fee or whatever, then the government will start to get the message when they start to see actual investments in dollars being lost. Did Modi focus on this in Gujarat? You know, I don't know. Sorry. So we'll see, yeah. 60 seconds for a final question. Luisa, back there. A mic coming, just one second. How you mentioned that young people are particularly fed up with corruption. And I was wondering if you could both speak a little bit about the political engagement of young people and are there issues in which you notice a kind of more profound generational divide? How? I think right now in China, a lot of young people use social media to voice their grievances. I think we can definitely talk to Emily Parker Moore who studied this at Greater Left. But I think young people in China today are still, I can't speak for the entire China, because China is very big. But I think the majority of the young people are still kind of apolitical. They are more engaged in this sort of civil discussions and nonprofit sector, not learning how to do everything. But I think politically they're not asking for dramatic changes in this point. In India, it all comes down to jobs for the young people. India has enormously young population and they have a lot of very young, highly educated individuals. And for them, it all comes down to can they find employment to use those skills? And if they can't find jobs in India, they're more than happy to go abroad and take their skills abroad. So in India, I think you have a young generation that is not as politically active, but voting more with where they apply their skills. Well, thank you so much to Anishin Howe and look for Howe's film, The Road to Fame, on your local PBS networks. You got copies over there, if you want to get a copy. Thank you guys.