 Hello and welcome to today's symposium panel on China and international institutions. My name is Gwen Maxis and I'm a senior and epic studying international relations at Tufts. Hi everyone, my name is Carlos here sorry, and I'm also a senior at Tufts. I've been helping when put this panel together, and it's my third time in epic this year so I'm really excited to be part of yet another great symposium. This year I'll be helping out more backstage for the sake of focusing on the content of this discussion we're not going to have two moderators I'm going to let Gwen take the speaking roles. But it's a pleasure to meet all of you. China's increasing role in international institutions reflects the country's reemergence as a major player on the global stage in China's increasingly assertive behavior reflects that the nation seeks to increase its influence in global governance. President Xi Jinping has stated that China should quote, lead the reform of the global governance system, demonstrating that the state has the intention of shaping international institutions to reflect their values and priorities. Throughout today's panel we will be discussing China's growing role in a variety of international institutions from peacekeeping in the UN to economic institutions like the World Trade Organization. In some of these spaces, China has conformed to global norms, and in others the country has pushed against them, a contrast that we will explore more in today's discussion. Before I introduce our panelists, I want to explain how our panel will run. For purposes of encouraging as much discussion as possible, each panelist has been asked to give opening remarks of about five minutes. Then we will open the panel to discussion and conversation among our speakers before opening it up to the audience for questions and answers. We have a distinguished group of panelists with us today, joining us are Dr. James Bacchus and Mr. Richard Gowen. I will give a brief introduction about some of the work they have done in context of our panel, prior to their opening remarks. In the chat you'll find a link to the symposium program with their full bios. Our first panelist will be Dr. James Bacchus. Dr. Bacchus is the distinguished university professor of global affairs and the director of the Center for Global Economic and Environmental Opportunity at the University of Central Florida. He was the founding judge and twice the chairman, the chief judge of the highest court of the World Trade Organization, the pellet body of the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. He was also a congressional representative for the state of Florida. Dr. Bacchus, over to you. Thank you so much and let me begin, first of all, by saying hello to Richard, and by also congratulating the students, Tufts, on organizing this great program. Yours is an outstanding university in all kinds of ways. Briefly let me explain where things stand with respect to China in the WTO. The Bertelsman Foundation conducted a study last year about the benefits to all 164 member countries of the World Trade Organization from being members of the organization. The study concluded that every single member of the WTO has benefited economically by being a member of the WTO. Number one on the list of beneficiaries, despite what we often hear in our own politics from both parties here in the United States, is the United States of America. We benefited more than anyone else, but number two on the list and not far behind us is China. China spent 13 years negotiating its entry into the WTO and finally was successful in exceeding to membership in 2001. China wanted very much to secure the benefits that come from being a member in terms of lower barriers to trading goods and services worldwide. China also wanted the safeguards against trade discrimination that WTO rules provide. In its early years as a member of the WTO, China was rather quiet and exercising its role of membership. In the first decade of this century, China spent a great deal of time learning how to be a WTO member. In the past decade, China has profited from its earlier approach and has increasingly become much more of a leader within the councils of the WTO. In the past five years, China has become even more of a presence in the WTO because of the absence in many respects of the United States from its previous role of WTO leader. During the administration of our previous president, Donald Trump, the United States turned away from multilateralism and trade, turned away from the rules of trade and turned toward a much more confrontational attitude on a bilateral basis with a number of countries, including especially China. This has magnified the Chinese presence in the WTO. The Chinese have been for the most part a productive and constructive member of the WTO. One thing that may surprise Americans, given what they've been told, is that when the Chinese had been brought to the bar of legal justice in WTO dispute settlement by other countries and found not to have complied with their treaty obligations, they have a better record of complying with rulings against them than we Americans do. Where the Chinese have fallen short, however, is in their overall compliance with many of the thousands of pages of the WTO treaty. In many respects, in their vast country they have tried to comply. In many respects they have. There's been a great transformation of the Chinese economy in the past generation sparked in no small part by the need to comply with China's treaty obligations as a member of the WTO. Yet in many areas, intellectual property, for example, technology transfer requirements, for example, and others, China has not had to consistently with his WTO obligations. So we are looking at a class that is proverbially half full. Where we go now in the WTO will depend to a great extent on the participation and the attitude of China, just as it will on the participation and attitude of the new administration in the United States and President Joe Biden. The WTO is in many respects in need of modernization. Just to cite one example, while there are WTO rules that apply to digital trade, there are no WTO rules that are written specifically for digital trade. This makes no sense in the economy of the 21st century. This is just one of many examples of where WTO rules need to be updated, revised, modernized, and improved and reimagined to advance global sustainable development. China can play an important role here. China must play an important role here if we are going to be able to achieve sustainable development worldwide, including through lowering barriers to trade. But as I said, equally important is that the United States reassert its role as a leader in the WTO in working alongside like minded countries. I will stop there for now, and look forward to any questions you may have. There are, as I'm sure you imagine, endless nuances to all that I've just said. Thank you Dr. Bacchus for your comments. I'm sure we'll expand on them later in the Q&A and the discussion. Our next panelist is Mr. Richard Gowen. Mr. Gowen is the UN director for the International Crisis Group. He oversees the crisis groups advocacy work at the United Nations, liaisoning with diplomats and UN officials in New York. He has worked with the European Council on Foreign Relations, the New York University Center on International Cooperation, and the Foreign Policy Center in London. He is also taught at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia in Stanford in New York. Mr. Gowen, over to you. Thank you very much, Gwen. It's a pleasure to join you. As you, as you said, I used to teach at Columbia, and I think at Columbia we like to think of, you know, that we live in a bipolar world. There's the Fletcher School, and then the SIPA, and we're the great, the two great rivals of the Northeast in foreign policy affairs, but I've had a number of chances to come to Tufts and it's a great university. And I'm only sad I'm not there physically with you today. I'm going to talk about China's role in the UN system. And in many ways the the story of China in the UN tracks with the story that James was describing in the WTO. China has become significantly more heavily invested in the UN over the last 10 years. There was a real turning point I think in 2015 when Xi Jinping made to date is only visit to the UN General Assembly, and that clearly launched a new focus in the Chinese system on the UN covering issues like development and peacekeeping. China has been lobbying very hard to get more senior jobs in the organization. It's being hard to get language endorsing the Belt and Road Initiative into UN resolutions. And in Geneva, China has been working hard to establish some of its norms of domestic and international affairs in the Human Rights Council, pushing back on Western liberal norms, which have tended to be dominant in UN discussions since the end of the Cold War. When I first started working on the UN in 2005, China was hardly even an afterthought. Its views on the organization only really came into focus in situations such as the Darfur crisis, where one of China's close allies was involved. Today, China is only present in UN discussions. And it is a, you know, it is obviously challenging the way the system works. But I want to make a couple of points. And I think sometimes we treat China, perhaps even a little too seriously in the UN system and we overstate how greatest influences become. Firstly, China's investment in the UN remains hugely variable. It certainly is a very significant player now in development discussions. On issues in the Security Council, although more assertive than in the past, China is actually still quite cautious and still looks for compromise with the US and other Western powers where it can. In the humanitarian space, China is still hardly an actor. The budgets of the World Food Program or UNHCR, the Refugees Agency, you know, the US gives enormous sums every single year. China gives to both agencies one or two million dollars each. Nothing. Peanuts, much less than even private donors give to both those organizations. China has not invested in the humanitarian space and is still not a player in that space. Even though China certainly is filling more senior jobs in the UN, that is actually also still something which is sometimes overestimated. The Nordic countries combined still hold far more senior UN posts than China does. And that's in part because Nordic diplomats, European diplomats and indeed US officials have a quite well established understanding of how the UN system works. Whereas Chinese officials do not really have great depth on issues like peacekeeping and are still learning how the organization operates. Coming last peacekeeping, which is the issue that I focused on most with regards to China. Here again we see quite a large divergence between rhetoric and reality. In 2015, as I say Xi Jinping came to New York. And while he was here he promised 8,000 new peacekeepers, 8,000 Chinese blue helmets to reinforce peacekeeping operations in places like Sudan's. And that really sees the imagination of many diplomats and UN officials. And if you talk to many ambassadors in New York today, they will tell you that this is remarkable that China has deployed 8,000 new peacekeepers and China is dominating UN peacekeeping. There's only one problem with this narrative. China hasn't deployed any of those peacekeepers. In 2015 there were about 3000 PLA troops on UN missions today there are actually slightly fewer under 3000 China has trained more peacekeepers it probably will deploy more in future. But in part because it lost a couple of troops very sadly in Mali and South Sudan in 2015. It's actually been very cautious about deploying its personnel. The reality is that China is not actually dominating UN peacekeeping. Now, it deploys more peacekeepers than any other of the P5. Sure. But it is still not actually anything like the giant giant player in peacekeeping that it's sometimes described as. So what I'm driving at is that I think, you know, China is obviously a rising force in multilateralism, and it will rise further. And just as in the WTO, the Trump administration created a lot of political space for China. We've seen that a lot in the UN over the last four years. Chinese diplomats really enjoyed telling their European counterparts for example that while Trump was a unilateralist China was a guardian of the existing multilateral system. The reality is not quite on a par with the rhetoric in so many areas. China is still learning the ropes. It's got a good narrative. And frankly, a lot of US observers who want to see China as being 10 feet high actually, to some extent, contributes to that narrative by talking up China's influence. But time and again when you look at the realities, Beijing is still a bit further down the multilateral learning curve than we sometimes have seen. Thank you Mr. Gowen for your remarks and before we engage with questions from the audience I want to invite the our panelists to pose questions to one another and give them the opportunity to respond to one another's comments if they have anything they want to respond to. I'll just say I learned from listening to Richard and I'm eager to hear more. I won't learn anything today from listening to myself. James I would like to ask you a question about the WTO which is during the Trump period, the European Union played a sort of a significant part trying to keep the WTO going, and the EU tended to frame China as a partner as I understand it in that process. Do you think that more generally in trade affairs, the Chinese take the EU seriously as a global player? Or is the focus really always on the balance with the US? I think the Chinese focus more on the United States for geopolitical and commercial reasons. The Europeans increasingly focus on China as well as the United States for both geopolitical and commercial reasons. The two-way trade between the EU and China as I'm sure you know has increased significantly. You're right in your impression that the EU has tried very hard to hold things together within the WTO. The European Union is very much committed to multilateralism in trade. The member states have different views on the extent to which they want to free trade. This is true of different sectors and different states in the United States as well, but the Europeans have been adamant in supporting the multilateral system. One of the issues we're facing in trade because of the general turning away from trade liberalization and because of the Trump-led turning away from the WTO is retaining the centrality of the WTO in world trade. This is something that I think is essential. So do the Europeans. The Chinese say they agree with this and I think they do. For example, in the absence of WTO rules against non-discrimination, the Chinese would be facing trade discrimination in every other country on the planet. The United States is more ambivalent here. The Trump administration refused to say that the WTO was central to trade, despite both parties dating back 75 years, saying that routinely in the past, it's unclear the extent to which the Biden administration will truly embrace multilateralism and trade once again. Likewise, it's even more unclear the extent to which the Biden administration will endorse freer trade, which both parties have traditionally endorsed in the past, despite some backsliding along the way. I think the Europeans are going to play a key role going forward, along with the US and the EU, and half a dozen other major countries. Alright, with that, I guess we'll get started with questions from the audience. I'll remind our audience if you have any questions, please submit it through the Q&A function at the bottom of the screen. And again to our panelists, if at any point you want to respond to a comment made by a fellow panelists, please let us know and we'll make sure to give you the floor to do that. The next question is from an EPIC student, Arjen. With the rise in regional cooperative economic and military agreements, like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has the power of the UN Security Council dwindled. And what about the WTO? Have they lost their monopoly over international norms in the rule of law? And either of you can take the floor and then we can switch to the other person. I'll let Richard go first, since I just spoke. I mean look, firstly, has the Security Council dwindled over the last decade? Yes, clearly. And you know on issues such as Syria or Ukraine, the Council has been either tortured or just irrelevant. I would say that if you talk to Council diplomats, the role of China is still secondary by some distance to the role of Russia. The story of the Security Council since really the Libya conflict exactly 10 years ago has been that Russia has become increasingly willing to obstruct US positions or European positions. China has often been supportive of Russia, although not consistently so, but it's definitely the Russians who are at the sort of the great disruptor in New York. What's interesting is that the Chinese do still recognize that they have some interest in cooperating with the Western countries in the Council. I'll give you two examples of that. One from a few years ago, actually I would say one of the few notable UN successes of the Trump administration was that Nikki Haley was able to negotiate some very serious sanctions on DPRK North Korea in 2017. And the Chinese evidently saw that they needed to work with the US at the UN to stop the DPRK crisis escalating out of control in Trump's first year in office, and that diplomatic cooperation was pretty good. Right now we have the crisis in Myanmar, and what's fascinating is that again the Chinese are trying to keep working with the US and the UK to put some pressure through the Security Council on the generals in Myanmar after the coup. Now the Chinese are profoundly skeptical of UN sanctions, and they're certainly not going to support military intervention, I don't think anyone is, but behind the scenes cooperation has actually been quite good between the UK, the US and China on Myanmar recently. And so I don't think that China is ever going to be an easy partner in the Council. And you know there's been a lot of tensions in the Council in the last year over COVID-19 over Hong Kong over the Uighurs, but it is still a channel where some cooperation remains possible. In response to the question which is a very good one, the WTO has for the past 20 years found it difficult to revise its current rules or write any new rules. I referred to this earlier. I certainly need to modernize rules on many fronts. This is largely because of a WTO rule in practice of not agreeing on anything until everyone's agreed on everything, requirement for consensus. This has kept the WTO, for the most part, from negotiating new global trade agreements with one or two exceptions. Yet the members of the WTO have needed to move forward with improving the rules frameworks that encourage trade. So increasingly they have done so on the basis of bilateral and regional trade and other economic arrangements. There's been a proliferation of hundreds of these agreements. Some of them are well known. The new NAP that we call in the United States, the USMCA, it's one of them. The Trans-Pacific Partnership which is now the comprehensive and progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership in the absence of the United States. The new cooperation and economic partnership that includes China is yet another example, but there are hundreds more. These regional agreements all take away from the centrality of the overall global trading system that is based in the WTO. Now, why does this matter? To some extent these agreements can help well trade overall by improving grounds for new ideas and new approaches in lowering barriers to trade. This has happened in digital trade, for example. But recall what I said about the importance of the basic WTO rules against discrimination. A free trade agreement from between two countries, any two, is in effect in an agreement to lower barriers to trade between those two without lowering them on anyone else. So it is by definition an act of trade discrimination. The fundamental rule and rule much misunderstood, even by members of Congress in the WTO treaty, preventing discrimination is the rule of most paper nation treatment. This is a rule that says that you cannot discriminate and trade between and among the traded products, the imports from any other country. That's a member of the WTO. This is a very important rule in part because when you are agreeing to lower barriers to trade on any one product with any one other country under the WTO legal framework, you must also lower those barriers to trade on the same terms to any other member of the WTO. This is the reason why we tried to have multilateral, fully global trade agreements because the bang for the buck economically is so much more. If any two countries that are in the WTO agree to lower their barriers to trade on any one product, they have to do it worldwide. This multiplies the potential trade benefits from WTO agreements. In contrast, these regional bilateral agreements pose the risk of undermining this global non discriminatory obligation, as well as highlighting the WTO as an institution. Now, I'm all in favor of many of these regional agreements. I was one of those people when I certain that Congress who helped pass the NAFTA, but the centrality of the WTO is always something that should be uppermost in the minds of all trade policy makers, wherever they may be. Thank you for those answers to that question. And we have a question I think for Mr. Gowan from one of the students joining us from Russia. Do you mean an increase in military exercises and activities in just in general, an increase in collaboration between China and Russia? To what extent do you think this will continue in the diplomatic circle, namely the Security Council or in any other specific multilateral institutions? Will we see an increasing amount of collaboration to offset the P3 in the West in the US? And what will this mean for the efficiency of the Security Council? To my previous remarks, which is firstly to highlight that in the Council, it is Russia that remains the most regular and most assertive opponent of the P3. And China, some would say hides behind Russia on many occasions, often casting vetoes on questions like Syria with the Russians, but not so often really taking a prominent role. You know, I would also pick up on my earlier remark, which is that we do still see the Chinese looking for some space to work with Western countries on issues like DPRK and Myanmar. That actually makes the Russians quite uncomfortable during the period where the Trump administration and the Chinese were talking quite constructively on DPRK in 2017-2018. The Russians made it very clear that they were worried about being cut out of discussions of DPRK, which is after all so in their eastern neighborhood. And I think it's pretty clear that the Russians have never implemented any of the sanctions that the US and China agreed upon. I mean, China's own implementation has been mixed, but Russia has just tended to ignore the restrictions as far as we can tell. I mean, on other issues like Iran, you increasingly hear Western diplomats say that they think that although the Russians do a lot of the talking, the Chinese are actually increasingly setting the agenda behind the scenes. And that to some extent the Russians are fronting for the Chinese in discussions of issues like Iran. So I think there's a sense of a shifting balance between the two with, you know, the old big brother little brother relationship, which the Russians were very comfortable with being replaced by something more like more like parity. What I would say is that, you know, over the last 10 years, at various different times, Western diplomats have sort of said to me, you know, the great goal is to split the Chinese from the Russians. You know, the Chinese and Russians don't really have the same interests we can, you know, we really can sort of pull the two apart. I think that's unrealistic. Just as the P3 France UK us stick together in the Council, Russia and China will, I think always gravitate back towards one another as natural partners and efforts to split the Chinese away from the Russians have typically yielded very, very little in the end. I think that's a really valuable insight. Thank you. I also just before we continue with questions. I want to acknowledge that we did have a third panelist was planning on joining us today. He do again but he's unable to be here just because something came up with a conflicting conflict of scheduling so we'll continue with the two of you guys and thank you again for joining us. So, our next question comes from an epic student. China has a better record of complying in WT rulings than Americans and why do you think Americans tend to think otherwise. And then for Mr gallon you mentioned that China's sort of has an overstated influence in the UN right now. And why do you think that is and for both of you. What do you think the consequences of these narratives are. Mr Bacchus, let's start with you. Quite simply. Americans tend to think otherwise because they have a president who lied to them. Donald Trump told Americans over and over again, we have lost all the cases in the WTO. And the truth of the matter is the United States has won the vast majority of the cases. It is brought against other countries in the WTO, including its cases against China. The United States has lost a number of cases because the United States has refused in any number of instances to comply with the WTO rules that the United States itself largely wrote in negotiations that established the WTO on the trade remedies that are often applied by the government. These remedies are trade restrictions at the border against alleged unfair trade practices. There are rules in which the United States has agreed about how these measures can be applied and the United States has tended to ignore them whenever it wished to do so. This was a long standing practice, but it was exacerbated greatly in the Trump administration. And I think, since I'm talking to many students here, I'll indulge myself by explaining a little of why I think this is the case in the United States. The United States has always been ambivalent about international engagement, and one aspect of that ambivalence has been an American ambivalence about international law, including compliance with international law. On the one hand, we have probably done more than any other country to help create international law, including through the establishment and the workings of the WTO dispute system, which has produced more international law than any other international tribunal in the past quarter of a century. But at the same time, there's always this don't tread on me mentality in the American psyche. Who were these people from other countries to second guess us? We are perfectly happy in the United States for international tribunals to rule in our favor and against other countries. But whenever those tribunals rule against us, well, they must be wrong and on what basis do they have a right to do that. This is a continuing problem in American public life. It's not getting much better. I think we'll see a better approach in the Biden administration. In meetings with the Chinese in Alaska yesterday, our new Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, was telling the United States that was telling the Chinese that they need to support the, and I quote him, rule based order. And what I would say to the Secretary of State, with whom I agree, and everything he said to the Chinese is that the best way for us to get others to support the rule based order is to do so ourselves, including in international trade at the WTO. Thank you for for those comments. I think that's an interesting perspective. Mr. Gavin, do you have a response. I think, you know, why, why do we sometimes overestimate or overstate China's degree of influence? I mean, firstly, I would say that the Chinese themselves have, you know, they do have a strategy of sort of trying to change the narrative or the discourse around the UN. And this is something that I think Xi Jinping has said quite explicitly, that he feels that it's necessary to sort of change, you know, change the concepts and ideas that are being discussed in in the organization. So there is an ideological element, and after basically quarter of a century where Western ideas predominated in UN discussions, you know, China is successfully pushing back on that. And so, if you focus on, if you focus on the discourse, if you spend your time reading general assembly resolutions, which I wouldn't necessarily do. I do see the language to language change changing. And, you know, it's easy to see that but then that sometimes distracts us from the realities of, you know, China's relatively small budgetary contributions, for example. On the other hand, I think that the Trump administration. The Trump administration, because it distrusted multilateral institutions per se, was always really strongly on the lookout for evidence of China's influence in them. And for domestic political reasons last year, in particular, the Trump administration took, you know, real allegations, for example, of China manipulating the WHO and then blew them out of all proportion, because that's the reason why we serve Trump's domestic agenda. So there are actually people on the US side who have an equal interest to blowing up the sort of bubble of Chinese influence of the UN. I think, I mean, I don't think this will change completely with the, the Biden administration. I actually sense, you know, talking to friends and colleagues in Washington that there's pretty much a bipartisan consensus in DC, the China has gained too much influence in the UN. And of course, for many Democrats and many liberal voices in US politics. China is pushing back against exactly the sort of progressive norms that liberal value. Across the US spectrum, I think you have people who, who naturally tend to to focus on what China is doing, and naturally tend to sort of perhaps overinterpret some of its behavior. And for your insights on that topic, I think that was a really helpful framework to help us decipher between what we might be hearing that's falsified or exaggerated and what what we actually see China doing in these spaces. I want to transition the conversation to a little bit more of a historical question, a question from Ben and Epic student. In the early 90s, we saw the United States help integrate China into these global organizations has China taken any similar role with any other nations now that it's in a position of power. And if so, why has it chosen to do so with those particular nations. And I'll open this to either of you. Let me start with the trade. This is a little personal background. When I was a young trade negotiator for the US government and not much older than the students who are asking these questions. I was one of those who was tasked with helping implement the first bilateral trade agreement between the United States and China. Later in the Congress, I was one of those who led the way and granting permanent normal trade relations with China. And then I was of course an advocate for bringing China into the WTO and when I was the chief judge, the chairman of the appellate body WTO I had the, the task of ruling in China's first appeal as a member of the WTO. In a case that China, the European Union and others had brought against the United States, relating to restrictions on imports of steel into the United States and I had the responsibility there of ruling against the United States in favor of China and the other countries. So I very much someone who has been in favor of bringing China into the trading system. And other countries have also come into the system. Since the WTO was created, we had about 100 countries who are members of the WTO when we created it. And while I was still in the Congress through the Uruguay route, the multilateral trade negotiations. And we've added dozens of members there are 164 members now countries and other customs territories around the world so my point is we're getting a little short on countries that are still not members. I don't want to remember some others, but it's getting harder and harder to find countries to help become members. China has participated in assisting other countries in the as it's called accession process, since it became a member through the institutions that do that within the WTO but I don't know that China has singled out any other country to try to help. And the negotiations on China's entry into the WTO at a time when China had relatively little technical knowledge about trade law. US negotiators were in fact a big help to the Chinese. Then educating them about what was needed. But now China has some of the best legal experts on international trade law on the planet. This is still something that stands in the way of a number of countries getting into the WTO they just don't have the domestic intellectual expertise to do so so much that the WTO has been trying to do is outreach into a lot of these countries largely poor countries that are in need of the kind of technical assistance and capacity building an expertise that's necessary to become a member of the WTO based multilateral trading system. I'm going I would looking at the UN scene. I mean I don't think that the Chinese would say that the US did help integrate them into the UN. I mean the, you know, the great drama in the 1960s and 1970s was Well I was speaking of the WTO. Oh no sorry no I'm thinking now back in the UN, the UN space where there's a different, a different history, you know much more than I do about the UN history. And it is a different story because you know there was a great, you know there was a long battle between Beijing and Taiwan over who should hold the Chinese seat in the UN and in the early 1970s. Beijing finally managed to take the seat from Taiwan, but very much with the support of developing countries, the G77 and the non aligned movement. And really from the 70s until about 10 years ago, the Chinese stayed very close to the G77 and the man in the UN. And there was, you know, quite a strong feeling that on most issues the Chinese would take a lead from other developing countries in the UN unless they had very specific interests of their own. Now that has really changed in the last 10 years. There's a sense that China is increasingly less beholden to its old friends from the G77 man. And on issues like climate change that actually the Chinese are trying to exploit the group to promote their positions. But we know quite a lot of the time you feel that there's actually growing friction between some of China's old friends in the developing world and and Beijing. And so it's just quite it's just a very different history I think in the two organizations. But I would emphasize this point that whereas China used to be seen very much as a champion of the global south of the UN. It's now got a much less easy relationship with the global south which may may actually create some political space for the US and others to to maneuver around the Chinese and UN diplomacy. Part of this difference I think, and I think Richard would agree is that these things happen 30 years apart. So moving the conversation forward a little bit. Another question from an epic student. Do you believe that if there's an increase in Chinese influence in international institutions. It will lead to a decrease in global confidence when it comes to these institutions and more specifically what is the best pathway for international institutions to renew faith and information sharing between China and the world, especially given what happened recently with the WHO and coronavirus and Mr Gow and I'll have you jump in first because I know you have something after and I want to make sure you have time to speak on the matter. Thank you. Yes, unfortunately, I, I have to switch over to the UN commemoration of 10 years of the UN failing in Syria, which is a rather rather miserable milestone that we've just reached. You know, I think, I think that that question puts its finger on something that I have been worrying about in recent years. But unfortunately, all my worrying hasn't led me to a sort of a really strong idea about how to deal with the problem. The strength is that, you know, most of most multilateral organizations, WHO. A lot of the technical agencies in Geneva, you know that their strength is that they're impartial and they handle specific policy areas in a largely a political way. You know, the Security Council is political inevitably mediation is political but a body like the WHO, you know, prior to COVID was normally seen as doing good work on malaria and no one is in favor of malaria. So, you know, that was fine. I think that we increasingly see though in competition between the US and China. It's getting harder and harder for multilateral agencies to keep on playing that impartial role. Whether it's in terms of delivering services a politically or providing data and policy guidance. The tensions between the big powers are politicizing a lot of areas of UN activity that were previously below the radar. And I do worry that over time, that will just decrease the credibility of a lot of multilateral agencies. I mean, I think that the real onus here is to some extent on the Europeans on middle powers career and so on, who have invested quite a bit in multilateral agencies in the last 30 years, and who I think need to sort of use their combined political way to try and protect bits of the UN system from these political pressures but I think it will be extremely hard. And on that note, I'm afraid I have to drop off, but it's been a pleasure to join you and really fascinating to hear from James as well because I've never been smart enough to do trade. I've learned a huge amount in the last 15 minutes. Thank you, Mr. Gavin for joining us. It was wonderful to hear you and hear your remarks today so thank you again. Thank you. Go ahead. Well, I thought I would try to answer the question first of all I agree with what he just said but I'm concerned about my fellow Americans and our leaders in both parties that they somehow have talked themselves into believing that Chinese participation and international organizations is per se dangerous. I worry more about what the world would be like if China did not participate in these organizations. People believe that the rest of the world benefits more if China succeeds economically than if China does not succeed economically. The world would truly be at risk. China was imploding from economic disarray. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those people who believes in win-lose proposition philosophically for the economy. I think that we all can benefit if you don't believe me go reread Adam Smith. Also, I think we have to, as a last point, separate the Chinese government from Chinese people, even when those people may have been associated or affiliated with their government before they joined international institutions. I think the pellet body of the WTO, for example, which thanks to Trump is not currently functioning, but I think will be soon again, there are seven judges who serve the entire system. They have to be from somewhere. So they're going to have a nationality, but in the 25 years in which this system has existed, these judges have all shed their nationality as soon as they across the threshold of the judicial door. I did that. And I had two Chinese colleagues over the course of time who had significant relationships with their government previously, but as soon as they became judges on the appellate body, they shed their nationality. Because the belief shared by all members of the appellate body is that their own countries will benefit the most if the world trading system benefits the most. Absolutely. And we have one more question, Dr. Bacchus, for you. And we'd love just to end on a more lighter note. So if you have any stories to tell us on this matter, please feel free to share them. But again, it's fine if you don't. This question is coming from a Tufts alumni who is now a PhD student in Hong Kong. One pillar of the so-called English School of International Relations is the idea of an international society in which the diplomats have a lot of agency. They socialize with their counterparts from other countries and the interaction can influence the thinking and behavior of their parent country. Can you describe your experience working with Chinese diplomats who were based in Geneva? How much socialization do they have with Western diplomats? And how much agency do they possess to craft China's foreign policy, as opposed to just simply being microphones of the CCP leadership in Beijing? There are a few diplomats, whether they're from China or anywhere else, have much discretion in shaping policy on the ground in these institutions. They answer to their capitals. There is a great deal of socialization, and there is a great deal of socializing among these diplomats. Now, when I was a judge, I didn't socialize with any of them. I socialized only with the other judges because we had to maintain not only our independence and impartiality, but also the appearance of it. But it's been some time now since I served on the appellate body. The Chinese ambassador, the WTO, is a friend of mine, and I have quite a few other friends in China. And in addition to my professorship at the University of Central Florida, I have a university chair, professorship at Zhejiang University in Hongzhou in China, although I haven't been able to get back there in the past year. I think it's important for people to get to know each other on a personal basis, whether they're from, supplies to diplomats, supplies to members of Congress, especially these days. The personal relationships can often make a real difference in muting differences. As someone who has gone back and forth to and from China and the United States, many times over the years. What strikes me the most is the misunderstandings that Chinese people have about the United States and the equal misunderstandings that Americans have about China. Their assumptions are often completely wrong on each side of the Pacific. And we can only benefit from spending more time together, talking together, working together. And lastly, I'd like to say that the two countries are going to have to work together for going to solve a lot of the global challenges we face. Including foremost, this pandemic now, and also climate change. Thank you for those comments. Do you have time for one more question? We had another one come in. I do. I have time, if you have time. All right, wonderful. So this question I think really extends on the conversation that you were just talking on about the importance of working together. So as a former congressman, how do you see the ability of the US Congress, which obviously right now is incredibly partisan to work together to develop a coherent plan to address China. Well, one of the few areas of singing by partisan similar in the Congress now is on China. What I worry about is that much of this sentiment doesn't have a lot of true economic understanding underlying it. I'm worried now that the Democrats, who are in charge in Washington, and by the way, I am a Democrat, will make the same mistake that the Trump administration made in indulging in protectionism in trade. The tariffs that Trump imposed on imports of Chinese products, which by the way are illegal under WTO rules for the most part, should be repealed. The Democrats see these tariffs as leverage. Whatever economic damage they did to China has now been internalized by the Chinese government and economy. They're continuing to do much damage to the American economy to our own production. And we can only gain from removing those tariffs. If we don't, once dispute settlement is humming again in Geneva, we're going to lose a lot of pending cases and we're going to face lawful economic sanctions from China and other countries if we don't comply by removing the tariffs. I'm also concerned that in looking at what's happening in China and putting together a China policy, the Democrats with the support of the Republicans are going to be instituting a very mistaken industrial policy. I find this ironic. We have quite rightly been criticizing the Chinese for engaging in protectionist industrial policies that violate WTO rules and that are far too much engagement by the Chinese government in the market and far too much direction by the Chinese government of market forces. We are quite right to criticize that. So what are we doing now in response instead of doing more under WTO rules to try to discipline the Chinese and keep them from engaging in these kinds of policies, we've decided that we're going to emulate them. We're going to have our government get involved in dictating more of what happens in the marketplace through subsidies and other dimensions of what is called an industrial policy, but is what Adam Smith would simply call mercantilism. It's a misguided state direction of the economy that was wrong in the 18th century didn't work then is wrong now and won't work now. I have a hard time understanding how we can be distressed that the Chinese are violating these basic economic principles in which we Americans have long believed in and have decided to respond by doing what the Chinese have been doing, instead of what we've done that's made America the greatest economy in the world. Do we continue to believe in what we've long believed in as Democrats and Republicans of like in America or don't we? Thank you Dr. Bacchus we truly appreciate you sharing your time and experience with us today I think the points you made were fascinating and leave much to be considered as we continue our conversations throughout the weekend and I think as our epic class continues to study China throughout the remainder of the year so so thank you. Thank you so much. Absolutely and up next for our symposium is our small group expert led discussions on Taiwan, Hong Kong and China and the global south starting at 130. Information on each has been put in the chat. We encourage you to choose the topic that you are most interested in. These panels will have a speaker but will also include a lot of interaction between the speaker and the audience over zoom allowing for more discussion. We then begin our panels again tomorrow morning at 9am Eastern daylight time with a look at China and nationalism and human rights. Once again you can find the information on the chat on that and on the IGL website. And thank you again Dr. Bacchus it was wonderful to have you join us today. My great pleasure my best to all the tops. Thank you.