 afternoon or good evening depending on where you are. My name is Steve Seng. I am the director of the South China Institute and I am your host for today. Before we start, I'm going to be on this occasion very Japanese. We don't usually in the UK start off any event with any kind of apologies but I am going to do so and I have slightly more apologies than I need to offer you. One is to all the speakers that for all that I try I may well be murdering your name and if I mispronounce your name please do forgive me. It is just that I need a bit more education from your culture and your language than I have so far managed to receive even though I do learn from my colleagues from SOAST. The second apologies I have to offer you is that we had a slight mix up in the arrangement with Professor Adam Habi. He in fact joined the conference a bit earlier thinking that the slot that he has is a bit earlier than we have in the final programme so he regrettably has to speak over to another meeting in another part of London and therefore is not able to join us but he has given me the main points that he would like to raise with you and I will present them as I understand what he intends to say to you. Now let's get to the conference. I wanted to underline that this is a SOAS wide event which just happens to be hosted and organised by the SOAS China Institute but it really is one that involves all the regional studies centres and institutes in SOAS as a whole. And the focus of today's discussions is not so much on China or how China deals with the world or how China approaches the world but how the rest of the world sees China's efforts to reach out to them both via hard power and via soft power. I think it really doesn't require anyone to say that China really does matter a whole lot to the world. And I think one of the great things about today's conference is that we are not focusing so much on the so-called traditional great power politics putting China and the United States at the centre of that relationship. We are looking at the relationship China has with in many different parts of the world which are actually just as important but are not often given quite as much space and attention and recognition in that process. And they also happen to be regions, areas or countries that SOAS study across as many institutes and centres and this will be reflected very much in the range of speakers we have today. My original intention was to be a very clear format that we have the morning sessions on hard power on China's hard power and or rather how the rest of the world will respond to Chinese hard power and the afternoon with Chinese soft power and also grouping countries or regions by their continents. Regrettably I can't do either of them. Partly because of the time difference I think we do need to allow for colleagues who are quite ahead quite a lot ahead in time to be in the morning session rather than in the afternoon session because it gets just very very late for people in East Asia for example to join us in the afternoon. It kind of perhaps also reflects the reality on the ground when we try to distinguish the impact of Chinese hard power and soft power. Where does one end and where does the other start if we focus on Chinese soft power? When does hard powers come in? When we come focus entirely on hard power does it not have its soft power elements to it? So perhaps the reality that we have to mix them up is not necessarily such a bad thing after all. For today's event we are organising them over two sessions each of two hours with polls in between presentations to ascertain how colleagues both speakers and other participants in the audience in many different parts of the world feel about China and the views that have been articulated. The polls are standardised so in every one of the polls we would be asking you the same two sets of questions and then at the end of it we will have all the views articulated being combined together to give us a general sense of how people feel about China's place in the world and how China engages with the world. For the format we are using the picture culture format which essentially means is 20 slides for 20 seconds each. I ascertain that this morning that in fact most of our speakers if not all of our speakers have not used this format before and this is also the first time I am using this format for the Sours China Institute so we are all kind of learning about it. What I would propose to do is that when a speaker is invited to speak I will set my stopwatch up at exactly six minutes 40 seconds and at the end of it there will be a doorbell tone to it and that's I think a reminder to the speaker to wind up and if by seven minutes or so that still has about or seven and a bit that still hasn't happened I might well just jump in and advise a speaker colleagues to do so. We have allowed a little bit of time for a slight overrun but we really don't have a lot of time for that so I would very much appreciate if colleagues will agree to do so. It is the point when I am meant to hand over to the director of Sours Professor Adam Habib for his introductory remarks. Now Adam wanted to highlight that China is important and is important is for the whole world that we all must therefore pay attention to China or if we don't we are just going to be affected by it and the event also showcase the range of expertise that Sours has and the Sours Global Network has and it shows how the different regional institutes and centres do work together. And in terms of how the different parts of the world perceive of China whether we are looking at it from Africa from the Middle East or from the whole of Asia from the West to the East there are many different views being presented and there are many different understanding of the rise of China. It doesn't mean the same thing to everybody. There are countries, regions that will find the rise of China a more positive factor and some may find it as a positive factor but nonetheless bringing in problems others may be a bit rather uncomfortable with it. This being an event how that Sours Adam would like to underline that we like polarity. We like to encourage people to articulate their views whatever those views are. That diversity of views being articulated today is something that we at Sours are very proud of and here Adam is not I don't think referring only to the range of views that will be articulated by you the speakers who come from many different parts of the world but even amongst the colleagues at Sours or indeed even amongst colleagues at Sours who are engaged in the study of any single part of the regions that Sours studies be it China, Japan, Africa or the Middle East or South Asia or anywhere that the expectation we have is that we colleagues at Sours have our different views. We articulate them, we debate them and through that process we expect to push the boundaries of knowledge and the boundary of understanding and the spirit of how this kind of open academic discourse can improve our understanding with each other. I think these are the main points that Professor Habi would particularly like to articulate. Next I will be moving forward to introduce our first speaker and in a sense the first speaker is also slightly unusual from the rest because after the first presentations we are all getting speakers to reflect on how they feel about the rise of China whether in terms of soft or hard power affect them and how their country or the regions perceive that rise of China but to set the scene I am delighted to have a very distinguished colleague Professor Jing Wang who is now based in Beijing. He is a Chinese-American and at the Beijing Language and Culture University at the moment to give us the opening remarks outlining the Chinese perspective of it so that we have a view, a very well informed and authoritative view of how the Chinese government approaches the rest of the world and set us off in a good framework for us to respond by articulating how we in different parts of the world seize China. With that I will hand over to you Jing and when you start speaking I will then put my timer on for six minutes 40 seconds over to you Professor Wang. Thank you I guess I got something screwed up I want to share a screen of my presentation the PowerPoint but I don't know I got this one did you see my or I got something going here okay I will pause the timer Aki or Lisa are you able to help with the PowerPoint presentation no it doesn't matter because I can just talk it's a very simple point I want to make it we said all without it I can do it let me try again I think I want to share this one now did you see it oh yes we are seeing your your PPT if you put it on slideshow then I will resume the timer okay my first point thank you very much for inviting me to this very timely important event and since I'm asking by Steve to present this from China's perspective let me try to do it briefly first from China's perspective I think that China's rise has to be peaceful because there are two fundamental differences between China and the previous rising power like United Kingdom Germany France so on first fundamental difference is China does not have even to this state does not have a global reach military capability and second is that China so far does not challenge the existing international system as the previous rising power did instead China's tried very hard to integrate it to integrate itself through reform and the opening up policies to integrate itself into existing international system so because of that China's peace has to be peaceful and has been peaceful indeed because this is the only way China can rise up given these two conditions my second point is that and because of that China's rise has two most fundamentally important consequences from China's perspective number one China has been deeply interdependent with the outside world especially the advanced economies like United States like UK and second China's become the number one trading power way before it has become number one economy or number one power that's why it is in China's interests to have a peaceful and prosperous world because if you know unstable chaotic or economically you know a bad world is not in China's interests but China has a fundamental dilemma it is a very difficult one that is as China getting bigger and bigger now is the number two in world the China's political system is incompatible with the mainstream of the international system China's try to become part of it has been part of it this is this incompatibility of China's political system and the political mainstream of the international system or international order has become an essential source of China's problem with the outside world especially with the developed countries like United States and now the problem here is is this China realize this this dilemma so China's solution and China offer a solution to the United States and outside world that is let's have a peaceful coexistence you do you make your living your way and I make my living my way let's peacefully coexist but this solution offered by China cannot be or can hardly be accepted by the established world especially in the United States because like we said the way of life matters different political systems reflect a totally different way of life we all know that for a human being a forever dilemma is that our unlimited desire and demand versus our always limited resources so the political system really is the way we distribute this limited resources available to us so that's why it matters and as China becomes more and more confident or even assertive from outside world point of view it tends the outside world sees China tends to become a revisionist power rather than status quo power this is especially serious challenge to United States because this international order is a foundation where the US hegemon or US primacy is based on that's why it has to you know try to if not contain at least to outcompete China as President Biden said and now here is my final point we have the US China computation right now but the most formidable challenges for both the United States and China and other major powers included this most formidable challenges that come from within from their own country rather than from the other side also without the US China computation it's just a facade beneath this is a race between the two countries or two powers to see who gets its own house in order first the uncertainty of internal politics both in China and in the United States makes it very difficult if not entirely impossible for the two countries to make any meaningful compromise in the future that we can see a foreseeable future so that my last point here is for everybody to consider that that's why it is very important imperative to manage the US China computation that is God's word the good news is that both top most leaders President Biden and President Xi has seen this they repeatedly emphasized that we need to manage this relationship so that the computation will not get into unintended conflict but the problem is that neither leaders can afford to appear soft and neither leaders has to be very strong at least appears to be very strong for the consumption of home audience like Robert Putnam said in this two level game if we don't have any compromise internally we cannot have the so-called winning step to make any meaningful compromise so my conclusion to this is that we're going to say this go on for long while largely because essentially because both China and the United States has a very uncertain political situation at home thank you thank you very much your mic is still thank you so I do apologize I had my my mic mute I was simply saying that Professor Wang you have set up an amazingly good record not only in presenting a very complex subject in a very succinct way and done it within the picture picture time frame of six minutes forty seconds which is really wonderful ways to set us up for the rest of the day the second speaker that I would like to introduce invites to speak is Professor Ja Ian Zhong from the National University of Singapore speaking on the subject of promised pressure and the perils of not wanting to choose size Singapore amid China US library which really picks up very well from Professor Wang's presentation over to you Professor Zhong thank you very much Professor Zhang let me share my screen real quick sure let's hope this works brilliant thank you all right wonderful so thank you very much for the invitation Steve I'm not going to waste time going over the presentation because time is limited essentially what I wanted to speak with everyone about today is to sort of look at Singapore's position sort of between the two major powers as US China rivalry heats up right and I suppose some of Singapore's experiences or and what it will face with parallel what other smaller and middle powers might have to grapple with going forward so I'm sure many people have heard ad nauseam this sort of claim about Singapore not wanting to choose size just like ASEAN doesn't want to choose size etc although the sort of actual content of not choosing sites might might differ but essentially what it tries to do right is to have a policy right that hues its way between the United States and China to basically benefit from cooperation with both sides and also to avoid any downsides of friction now this for Singapore is somewhat more complicated than it would seem because on the one hand it has deep and enduring cooperative relationships on security with the United States it has strategic partnership it has you know cooperation on a range of issues and then on the other side you know it's developing it's a political diplomatic ties with the PRC it also has deep economic ties with the PRC so this is I guess some of that pressure that comes in that creates complications for how Singapore might want to find its way forward ideally of course it would want to have its cake and eat it too but this as it turns out is going to be increasingly difficult and more difficult than I suppose what Singapore leaders might let on why why is this the case I think if you look down look at you know opinion in Singapore there's been some opinion poll polling recently elites so this would be the bigger diagram on the right hand side this would be a survey of elites done by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies generally far more skeptical of the PRC and far more reassured right by by the United States however when you look at public polling this is the diagram on the left hand side this is done by Pew you find that the public in general has much more favorable views of the of the PRC and less so of the United States although this is somewhat colored by the experience under of the US under Donald Trump but at any rate you can see how opinion is split this split I suppose is quite representative of how the economic relationship is working out because I suppose for most people in Singapore this is what they see the most I mean a lot of the talk right is on how trade with the US but this is merchandise trade mind you it's outstripping Singapore's trade with the United States so this is the sort of bilateral relationship however if you sort of broaden out and look at Singapore's other major trading relationships you'll find that it's trade with its neighbors ASEAN this is the yellow line China is continues to be the orange line outstripsed it's bilateral trade with China and it's got a number of other major trading partners as well so in this sense China seems to be increasingly important at least on merchandise trade but you know there are other sort of considerations other relationships that Singapore at least needs to think about economically now if we sort of go through you find that even when you look at the sort of bilateral relationship the trade the trading partnership with China it's important but you know it is not as overwhelming as sometimes painted right and things get even more complex if you look at services trading services the the scale is different but Singapore essentially has far greater trading services with the Europe and the United States so on the chart on the left hand side you see this is the export of Singapore services the export to Europe far outstrips right exports to the United States and China you look at the import of services this is the chart on the right hand side import services from the US the blue line is far greater than China which is the orange line so the the trade story is quite complex right and if you then sort of look at you know the how this breaks down essentially much more Singapore's GDP you know it goes into the service sector so while the merchandise trade is important that trading services with all the other countries may actually outweigh that relationship on on trade and merchandise with the PRC and of course if we look at employment too right the service sector takes up a much bigger proportion of Singapore's employment right you know more than three quarters actually so there's a lot of emphasis on that trading in goods with the PRC but I think it needs to be tempered by some of the other economic considerations that are in place and I think this becomes even more stark when you think about FDI so in terms of outbound FDI Singapore invests a lot in Europe this is the gray line invests a lot in ASEAN the yellow line more than China the the orange line even though Singapore is the largest foreign investor in the PRC if you look at inbound FDI though Europe is far far more important than than China the US even Japan right is has a greater weight than than than China so Singapore is sort of buffeted by these sort of different kinds of forces these sort of different kinds of incentives that play out right in terms of how employment works it in terms of how the economy works so this is the stock in FDI it's bilaterally don't have Europe completely but it gives you a sense of what those graphs had shown you and of the sort of kinds of FDI stock right finance and insurance is clearly much bigger in Singapore as you would expect right so I think when we look at the economic relationship the discussion is very much dominated by trading goods but it's far more complex than we would imagine now what does all this tell us actually Singapore can profit and has profited significantly from its ability to bridge Europe the United States China and also ASEAN however fundamentally this rests on an overlap between American and Chinese interests right as long as there's a significant enough overlap Singapore has a wide berth in terms of how it intends to be flexible in its policy without really touching lines that the PRC may not like but as US China competition rivalry becomes more intense that space right the policy space actually decreases and Singapore's flexibility decreases correspondingly that also means that this sort of not choosing side to in the middle become increasingly costly because you know your your options get get more limited it also becomes increasingly risky because a wrong step could potentially get you punished by this one okay so that we might see with with with the sort of punishment with the detention of Singapore's armored vehicles so I think when we talk about choices for Singapore it's actually it's not really about choosing between the US and China it's about developing options for itself to enhance its autonomy in order to be able to develop a stable set of relationships to have a stable environment around it and to have its autonomy and that I think is the sort of key consideration that Singapore should bear in mind and it's not so much US or China although that's going to be very difficult as Singapore goes through its own leadership transition can't really make a decision right now and also the sort of pressures from diaspora nationalism that seems to be coming out from China that further complicates Singapore's domestic scene and also its ability to navigate this increasingly fraught space all right let me end there I'll be happy to take your questions later thank you very much well thank you very much indeed Professor Zhong for this amazing presentation the next speaker also comes from Singapore from the other leading university in Singapore the Nanyang Technological University and he is Professor Hou thank you thank you very much Professor Wenji you have one slice time worth to spare exactly 20 seconds for which I tip my head off to you now we have reached the point of three presentations and our first poll Lisa if you could post the two questions for polling please and we have I think five minutes for the poll so if you could give your answers to them and give us a sense of the initial responses you have for the two questions it will get easier because you will be asked the same questions please try to respond on the basis of what you have heard from the presentation so far um rather than simply on how you feel about about them and at the moment we have a hundred percent believing that the Chinese government itself is a force for good and that is now changing oh sorry that's right we have at the moment 67 percent participation rate and we still have a bit of time to run for the questions so if you have not yet voted please do yes I think times to end the poll please lead Lisa thank you I think we have at the moment 77 percent participation uh this is the very first preliminary uh pollings we have four percent saying that is positive in terms of the use of Chinese hard power generally 30 percent think that on balance it is positive 19 percent on balance not so positive and uh 13 percent no is not that not positive and 33 percent think that is actually too complex for the soft power side of it we have three percent seeing it as very positive 21 percent as positive 21 percent as on balance not so positive 27 not positive and 28 too complicated to be put into pigeonhole at this stage so so let's just at the moment register that and then we will come back to see where we are with where we are I just noticed that there are some people raising some questions now the issue is that in the format we are using we don't necessarily will have times to uh deal with Q and H we are mostly relying on the pollings to get a sense of how people respond but if we do have any time left at the end of the morning sessions then I would be happy to feel one or two of those questions that are in the Q and A box let's now resume the presentation to our next speaker who comes from Thailand and that is professor uh wasana uh Wang Shurao Wang Wang Shurao sorry I do apologize for uh not getting the wrong name right from Chulalong Kong University talking about the Thai Guoshang in the Milch Tea Alliance or in other words the province of Thailand in the Milch Tea Alliance province of Thailand is not her words it is my translation of it if it is not correct she will no doubt correct that for me when your slides are up uh wasana I will start the call over to you thank you very much uh and yes that's the perfect translation here are my slides I have done some practice runs I will try to keep it within uh six minutes 40 seconds okay here I go uh so today I'm going to talk about uh two very interesting phenomenons that are happening at once the first one is this joke that the Thai government wants Thailand to become a province of China uh being that it's very pro-China and the second one is uh that Thailand is seemingly involved in this seemingly anti-Chinese movement known as the Milch Tea Alliance so how that how does that work this is a colonial map of Southeast Asia you might have heard the myth that Thailand is the only country in Southeast Asia not to be colonized uh during the colonial period well I think it is a myth because from what I'll be talking about today you will see that Thailand is actually the only country in Southeast Asia seemingly to still be in the colonial period why do I say that I say that because the ruling class of Thailand mainly the monarchy and the military are very good at manipulating external uh superpowers in supporting its position its dominating position in domestic politics and it did so by forming a very strong alliance with the British empire all through the colonial period there was an attempt to end this with the 1932 revolution which ended the absolute monarchy regime but this government kind of did not work out because they entered the Second World War on the side of the Japanese and when the Japanese were defeated that was the end of this regime as well so after the Second World War the sort of right wing royalist faction returned to the forefront of politics because they claimed to support the allied powers who were in fact the former imperialist powers in Southeast Asia the British the French the the Americans and so they were able to return to power and through the Cold War the the the royalist right wing then switched from the British empire to align themselves with the US throughout the Cold War and Thailand became known as the US's largest aircraft carrier in the Vietnam War and through the Cold War all demands for democratization was branded as communist insurgents including the student movements in in the 1970s this change when the US changed its mind and Nixon said that he was going to go out of Vietnam and show hands with Mao and you have the right wing royalist prime minister Kukri following suit and shaking hands with Mao in 1975 establishing formal diplomatic relations and from then on you see a very clear shift of the royalist ruling class towards the PRC from the post Cold War period onwards image here is on the left is the first publication of princess in cons travel memoirs to China which she has published 13 this one is the first one published in 1981 and after that she traveled to China very frequently and the picture on the right is an image of her receiving the friendship medal from President Xi Jinping in 2019 now after this chip from aligning itself with with the US during the Cold War to aligning itself with with China it was time to end democratization in Thailand and so we see two consecutive coups one happening in 2006 and the other one in 2014 and the the regime that is still ruling Thailand right now under general but you can also as a one that took power after the 2014 coup and then since then we have seen Thailand become more and more under the influence of the people's republic of China at least that the government is this is a painting of a graffiti artist known as hit it stencil which came out in 2020 very strong message here we see increasing PRC influence in the greater Mac home sub region in the water water management of the Mac home and on the right here is the poster of the 2016 film Operation Mac home which is actually based on a true story of the Chinese hijacking the investigation and the prosecution of a crime which occurred in the Mac over between China between Thailand allows so I really see this as a case of 21st century extraterritoriality on the side of China we also see a rift happening within the Asian countries with many of the mainland Asian countries Thailand included trying not to get involved in the South China Sea disputes and and appearing to lean closer towards China than towards its Asian neighbors and 2016 is very interesting the first secretary of the ministry of finance of Thailand suggested that maybe Thailand should try to achieve economic development by becoming the Siamese flea the Siamese flea is going to peg on regional superpowers like China and India and achieve economic takeoff right so you can see this this expectation to rely on on China very clearly and then in 2019 year of the anti extradition law movement in Hong Kong which kind of like took over almost the entire year and this was a very important inspiration for the youth movement the student movement demanding for democracy in Thailand which happened throughout 2020 2020 was also the year in the first year of the COVID-19 lockdown and we see the Thai government insisting on using Sinovac as the main vaccine in Thailand despite overwhelming public outcry for mRNA vaccines and this also made people the general public kind of view the Thai government as trying to hard to please the Chinese government April 2020 you have this outbreak of a Twitter war when a boys love star made the comment that Hong Kong and Taiwan is our countries and you know this spark a Twitter war between Chinese and anti-nitizens which resulted in the rise of this movement known as the Milk Tea Alliance where pro-democracy activists in Thailand Taiwan and Hong Kong come together online and view China as sort of a major obstacle for democratization in in the region and you start seeing Milk Tea Alliance flags Hong Kong and Taiwan flags in pro-democracy demonstrations in Thailand and 2021 you have the coup in Myanmar and so pro-democracy movements in Myanmar come into full force as well and it's it's very clear that people in Thailand see the the government as leaning towards supporting Myanmar and this is a graffiti that showed up in Bangkok recently of general Baiyut and Minong Lai and so in 2021 we end with Myanmar being included in this idea of the Milk Tea Alliance so this is generally how we get to this point of explaining the weird situation with Thailand being very pro-China on one side and at the same time being very against China on the other side okay thank you very much well thank you very much Vasana Professor Bonshu Ranwet amazing presentation there very thought-provoking let me now move on to the next speaker who is Professor Jun Yi Li from the University of Northern Thailand and Jun Yi has lived in Taiwan and knows Taiwan by the back of her hand and her subject is panda or dragon viewing the rise of China from Taiwan when your slides are up I will start the clock thank you Steve let me try to share is it sharing now not yet yeah yes it is it is good thank you Steve I practice but I'm not very good at this but I try so thank you very much I would like to talk from the viewing of Chinese rise from Taiwan either is panda or dragon so in 2008 China sent two pandas to Taipei Zoo their names are Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan the meaning of the Tuan Yuan in Chinese translation the meaning would be reunion that would be very much seeing us pretty much of the Chinese government's hope that Taiwan will be reunite to the mainland and be aware that 2008 that was also Ma Yingzhou government was elected the first time so along with the panda diplomacy as China sent to Taiwan and China and Taiwan started to negotiate with the economic cooperation framework agreement ECFA in 2010 but actually the ECFA negotiation rolls a lot of the controversies and doubt whether that was a negotiation between China and Taiwan or just between the CCP and KMT the student movement in 2014 sunflower movement actually was a very big backfire of the young Taiwanese students expressed the discontent of the they would call secret negotiation between the KMT government and the Chinese government without to gain the legislative yen approval so the sunflower movement was the first actually very significant backfire from the Taiwanese society to against this ECFA negotiation however actually along with the mass government we also see a lot of because wanting to get more of the cross-strait understanding so actually a lot of the mainland tourists also came to Taiwan after 2010-2012 actually mainland tourists brought a lot of the revenue to this little island Taiwan many of the mainland tourists think Taiwan as a treasure island so very popular destination for the mainland tourists would say that apart from the money that the mainland tourists brought into Taiwan actually the Taiwanese society filled some of the mainland tourist attitudes were not left friendly I would only think of they would have money but they do not really respect the Taiwanese society so apart from the societies not really seeing the moving closer to China is a good thing from Taiwan Ma and Xi met in Singapore in late 2015 by then Ma of course was seeing the end of his presidency and the meeting with presidency was trying to secure the KMT to again another presidential election not of himself by the KMT he wished KMT to be in the government and more Ma's wish is to secure the cross-strait stability unfortunately Ma's wish actually was falling because the president Tsai Ing-wen from the democratic progressive party won over in 2016 and are some more of the majority in the society so you could see that Taiwanese society since Ma's government wanted to move closer to the Chinese actually society filled the opposite and expressed in president Tsai's election so here comes after the friendly panda diplomacy after president Tsai was elected more of the dragons like the fighter's jet can cross the street I wouldn't say that fighter's jet didn't visit Taiwan before but I would say they visit Taiwan more often and more regularly after the DPP came into the government so dragons started to stretch in their wings often and actively Taiwan is a diverse society so although that I would say well looked from the poor and also the presidential election president Tsai DPP was winning of the majority but actually they're still a supporter for more of the pan-Chinese supporter that is was represented as the presidential candidate Han Guoyu Mr Han Guoyu was seen as a more of the pro-China candidate represented the KMT to compete with president Tsai's in the presidential election 2020 and this was a picture taken in 2020 January to see the supporters for Mr Han Guoyu well although there were supporters for Mr Han Guoyu but Han Guoyu also was represented and broadcasted lavishly out of proportion by this TV channel CTI TV this TV channel and then to be seen as a red media represented of CCP's argument or perspective and Taiwanese society really do not want the media channel to be manipulated or controlled influenced by the China factor so this was the massive protest from Taiwanese society to ask the red media out of Taiwan so I present the diverse view but then after the president Tsai when reelected in 2020 the war between China and Taiwan continued but not through the dragon or through the panda but actually through pineapple so this year 2021 March China used economic statecraft in a sense to boycott Taiwanese fruit pineapple to import to China actually that was caused a lot of Taiwanese societies anxiety and anger but also Taiwanese friends like American and Japan started to say that we will import Taiwan's pineapple so don't worry Taiwan your pineapple will be consumed by us not by the Chinese having said so Taiwan also has a very powerful if you like I would use the word shielding weapon that is a semiconductor TSMC actually is a provider of the global semiconductor value chain and still is leading and this is important for China to think and for the world to think of Taiwan um Taiwan also suffered from the COVID a lot and actually a part very different from um a Thailand's experience that Taiwanese government would accept any vaccine but not the Chinese so Taiwan received all the donated vaccines from America as you can see from Japan but not the Chinese vaccine so lastly overall what I want to say is Taiwan just doesn't not want to be confused with the people's Republic of China at least it seems as a new version of Taiwan passport which we still have the official country name Republic of China if you see in the circle but Taiwan has been a lot bigger I've been really compressed with my presentation and apologize there are a lot of loopholes but if you would wish we have the online magazine of Taiwan study program so a lot to be said on these short blogs and welcome you to follow thank you well thank you very much Junyi professionally for this wonderful presentation and let's now move on to the next presentation before we have a second round of polling and the next speaker comes from Tehran in Iran and that is Professor Mohsen Suryatini and he is coming from the Shahid Bahiti University and the subject is Iran and the rise of China over to you Mohsen you are muted at the moment Mohsen and your screen sharing has just disappeared sorry just a moment don't worry we won't start until you are actually all up and running is the channel yes okay or if you could put on the slideshow it's on the slides yeah yeah yeah perfect thank you so much for inviting me my pleasure to talk to you and share with you my assessment on Iran and the rise of China or how a regional and revisionist power and close partner of China see the rise of the new great power in world politics I would like to say my assessment in three aspect of the rise of China Iran approach to rising political China Iran and the rise of China as an economic power that is the core of the relationship between the two countries an Iran attitude and cooperation with China in military affairs the political aspect of the relationship between the two countries Iran sees the rise of China as an strategical opportunity because it can redistribute power and ideology in international system in favor of revisionist country like Iran and for this reason, Iran signed first comprehensive strategic partnership after Islamic revolution with China and in this agreement China set the support Iran development plan it means that a strategic partnership is a big program or big plan for the future of the relationship between the two countries and the new agreement between the two countries is Iran full membership in the Shanghai cooperation organization after 15 years and it shows the changing Chinese attitude toward Iran and toward Iran permanent membership in the organization beyond the political aspect in my assessment the rise of China as an economic power is much more important and useful for Iran because 30 percent of Iranian foreign trade is with China Iran is under the United States sanctioned for last 10 years and sanctioned have a dual effect on the relationship between the two sides on the one hand severely restricted trade ties on the other hand reinforce the Chinese position as top trade partner of Iran in recent years particularly after the Trump administration in close sanction and China is the only country that continue to importing oil from Iran after the United States withdraw from the JCPO and Iranian sees the Chinese continue to import oil as a Chinese commitment to the nuclear deal and the Chinese commitment to the strategic partnership another aspect of economic ties between the two countries is Belt and Road Initiative Iran sees Belt and Road Initiative as a strategic opportunity to revive its historical position as a bridge between east and the west and there are important commonality between Iranian and Chinese vision of infrastructure connectivity and the two main projects are Tehran Mashhad Railway that started by the Chinese companies in 2015 or 2016 after the nuclear deal this corridor is part of the China Central Asia West Asia corridor and the second important project is Tehran Asfahan High Speed Railway that is under construction by the Chinese companies sanctioned create some difficulties in implementing this two project but it seems the two project doesn't are ongoing beyond the infrastructure connection World Bank studies shows that Iran could be an important winner of implementation of Belt and Road Initiative because it can improve Iran export capabilities particularly in Iran's neighborhood and also it can improve Iran market access and that would be crucial for Iran economy because of the economy's under sanction and economic diplomacy is a top priority for the new government in Iran. In my assessment economic cooperation is at the core of a strategic partnership agreement between Iran and China as the first agreement that signed between Iran and a foreign country after Islamic Revolution. In this document the two countries agreed to work on more than 50 projects but a symmetric economic ties between the two sides or growing a symmetric economic ties trigger a heated debate within Iranian society on two dependency to China and the nature of win-win cooperation between the two countries. China as a military power is on the sideline of debates and the engagement of Iran with the country mainly because of the Chinese cautious policy in the Middle East and balanced policy in the Middle East and also Iranian also sanctions that imposed against Iran in the last 10 years. If you look at the chart you see that Chinese arms sales to Iran dropped down since 2010 mainly because of UN sanction and the United States sanction. Seems to me that the two countries the military cooperation is on the sideline of the two countries cooperation. Let me conclude that Iran as a revisionist power sees the rise of China as a strategic opportunity. I mean Iranian elite believe that China is a strategic opportunity and trade is at the core of the relationship between the two countries and would remain at the core of the relationship between the two countries. And the United States imposed sanction on Iran on the one hand and also intensifying the United States and China rivalry. It seems to me create more and more room for cooperation between Iran and China. Let me conclude that in the for coming years or for coming decade China would remain on the top of the Iranian strategic radar and it would remain on the core of Iranian foreign policy priorities. Let me stop here thank you so much. Thank you very much Moushan for this really enlightening presentation. I think the point you make about the economic power being at the center of the Iranian child relationship is really important one that we need to take home take account of. Let us now move on to our second poll I'm aware that most of the three previous presentations were on really primarily on the heart power of China but let's also see what you think about the soft power side of it but you want to focus on the heart power that's okay too. Can we have the polls up please? Thank you. We have at the moment 66% participation rate and we still got a bit of time so if you have not yet had the chance to put your input please do so. Right at the moment we are at 70% participation rate and if it stays at 70% and not moving forward then we will end the polling and then move on. It looks like that we are staying at 70% participation rate so about 30% of participants prefer not to vote. Incidentally the result is completely from the participants the speakers are not able to vote. Let's stop the poll now and see where we are. We have in terms of the heart power 3% seeing as very positive 31% positive 15% on balance not so positive and 18% not positive 33% too complex to say which is kind of reflected with the soft power question about 3% very positive 20% positive on balance 30% on balance not so positive 18% not positive and 30% too complex to say. We will be adding all the polling results up at the end of the day's proceeding so that we will see that. I also notice since we had the poll last time that some participants had posed questions and speakers had answered those questions in the Q&A box. It does look like a rather good way of proceeding that way so if participants would like to address a specific speaker about his or her presentation please do feel free to use the Q&A box so that your questions can be responded and I would certainly like to encourage all the speakers to keep an eye on the Q&A box and if there were questions that were directly to you and if you could answer that in the Q&A box that would be very helpful indeed. Thank you. Let's now move on to the next presentation and I think for the next three presentations we are focusing much more on China and Africa relationship and obviously when I say Africa it is a very big and diverse continent that we need to recognize that in full. The next speaker is as I say very from Kenya the from FSD and she is a development economist speaking on the very important subject of the future of Africa-China economic relationships perceptions and reality and as I say had alerted me that she would not actually be using slides but she would nonetheless be following the general framework of the conference and keeps to six minutes 40 seconds or so and when you start speaking then I will set the clock running over to you as I say. Thank you. Thank you very much Professor and thank you so much for inviting me. So the reason I am choosing this topic of looking at Africa-China cooperation perception as reality is because there is a persistent one-dimensional narrative on Africa-China relations that does not send Africa's views and this narrative is often rooted in a global north view that is often seems to be a bit xenophobic and frankly persistently and has inaccurate assumptions about Africa's ability so the result is that we have a real problem of deep misinformation on what's actually happening between Africa and China in the realm of economic cooperation so that's what I'll be focusing so the first perception that I see persistently is that Africa is a passive actor that is acted on by China this narrative which says that China is colonial China is focused on resource extraction China is pushing Africa into trade dependency and a debt trap and the debt trap narrative is a fable that has been proven by African analysts by Chinese analysts even by analysts in the US and Europe and so there's this real perception that Africa is being acted on but the reality is of course far more complex differs on a case-by-case basis because Africa obviously has more than 50 countries and above all Africa does have agency and that agency is can be both constructive and destructive and despite the lack of power African governments do often get what they want from China so the situation on the ground is quite different from simple exploitation what makes this difficult is that African agency comes from different sources it's from government it's from private sectors from civil society there's public opinion and because it comes from a myriad of sources it's not necessarily coordinated it's not in agreement and so it doesn't show up as a force that is united in terms of how it's interacting with China and of course African agency tends to be reticulated within the power structures on the continent but you know the pie and balance between Africa and China is real but frankly this is not unique to China Africa you know I think the South African Institute of international affairs aptly describes Africa as a resilient but marginal play in the international system this is the power and balance issues not new for Africa so it's a real myth that Africa is passive and and the real problem from an African perspective that that that China's acting upon Africa is that it infantilizes African governments and it absolves particularly African governments from being held accountable for decisions that they make on behalf of their electorate so in my view the future China Africa China cooperation from the African side I think will be informed by more attempts particularly by African governments to coordinate their agency within themselves and between themselves but I think what we're also going to be seeing is a more pronounced impact and entry of the agency of African civil society and African private sector the second perception I'd like to deal with is that as other speakers have talked about it that Africa has to choose between the US and China in this great power rivalry and I just want to preface this by saying that this narrative is inaccurate within itself because the US itself is not decoupling from China I think despite all the the political rhetoric the official Chinese data shows that the bilateral trade between the two countries surged this year China shares of exports to the US is is rising and in fact you know when oxidant economics actually interviewed US manufacturers they found no evidence that manufacturers are prepared to retreat from China and that is just not going to happen that said there are specific areas where decoupling pressure is very very deep such as in the technology sphere but again it's not as though that's going to happen with all US companies so the question that Africa asked is that why are we being forced or being asked to choose when the US itself is not decoupling and I think you have to remember that from an African perspective the last time the real cold war happened not too long ago it was at a terrible cost to Africa we became the location of proxy wars and it caused severe underdevelopment of the continent and it did not allow Africa to center our priorities and so to be completely unfair I think to expect Africa to choose once again and frankly also it's not a pragmatic reality as I've said before from an African perspective the capabilities that the United States brings are quite distinct to what China brings to the continent they're often complementary Africa values both we see both so there's really no incentive from an African perspective to choose and I think as we're seeing in the form of China Africa cooperation they just ended and this has been the tone throughout Africa operates in a multilateral world Africa welcomes all countries to engage with the continent and in the future what I think we'll be seeing is a deepening engagement between Africa and China particularly in the private sector and the impetus for multilateralism Africa will only deepen as the interest from other parts of the world particularly the global south is really beginning to get very strong you know countries such as India Brazil Turkey a lot of Arab states having a lot of interest in Africa so from an African view multilateralism I think is a way forward and not really about choice and the third perception that I'll deal with is a very new perception that China is pulling away from Africa so recent data from the China Africa Research Initiative at John Hopkins indicates that Chinese loans to Africa public sector and African government has been declining and that this trend will likely continue and that the narrative there is that Africa sees China's to I mean China sees Africa's to risky to costly their concerns about Africa's debt sustainability and that you know Africa now has too many civil conflicts too many crews the reality is that China is pulling back massively from lending and development finance globally in Asia, Latin America, not Africa and it seems to be informed by a myriad of issues structural policy shifts in China itself interest in consolidating absorbing investments made in the past focusing its own resources more domestically and also China seems to be interested in lending through multilateral bodies rather than bilaterally and so in my view the pullback of lending from African government should not be conflated with a pullback of investment from the African private sector and the African economy in general frankly I think it's tactical for China to pull back from a very two-year 20 decade 20-year period of very deep capital intensive infrastructure led lending to the continent that's very comfy and very difficult to get out of and very complex to manage so it makes sense that there's a need for some of that to settle and and and I think it's interesting that as China is pulling back from infrastructure we're seeing B3W of the US and I see the Europeans now come in with these massive plans to spend in infrastructure so I think what we're seeing rather than a pullback from Africa we're seeing a pivot of China's really trying to focus on private sector engagements in Africa do bear in mind that China is the fourth largest investment in Africa by FDI stock it is above the USA and the China Africa Business Council actually says that by the end of last year the stock of investment in Africa stood at about 47 billion and do bear in mind the just concluded form of China African cooperation there was an expedited statement that China will encourage its businesses to invest no less than 10 billion dollars in Africa in the next three years so I think the future that we're going to see there just there will be a pullback I think from the government but there'll be a deepening engagement on private sector led engagement in Africa and China particularly in the context of the African continent of free trade area the real focus on agriculture the digital economy and the green economy and I think I learned that thank you very much fantastic and say it is exactly why it's so important that we have colleagues from Africa speaking at this forum and the next speaker comes from Nigeria that is Professor Toby Oshati from the Lagos State University speaking on the important subject of ossinations Nigeria-China relations over to you Toby and I won't start the talk until your slides are up and ready to roll thank you Steve I'm really happy to join this conversation you know and I think as it's actually sorry if I'm not pronouncing the name well actually simplifies my presentation I'll be talking about ossination of Nigeria-China relations so the idea of ossilation is simply that rather than a kind of simplistic narrative what China does in Africa in this case Nigeria there is this you know complexities that involves the unpredictability instability across level across state-state relations as well as across the people-to-people relations the presentation will be in four parts a brief introduction you know trying to talk about China-Africa relations locating Nigeria in that context then talking about the ossination and my my my conclusion the presentation actually you know the foundation for my presentation is based on two previous work one a journal article that talks about the oscillation of two giants then the second is you know this idea of asking what happens when parks Nigeria now meets Chinese uh uh Chinese-Africana so but of course to understand Nigeria-China relations you need to locate it within the broader context of China in Africa before it used to be Chazara that used to be the landmark but should be asked to speak the AU secretariat you know is the was built by China in Africa was built by China and the CDC complex is also built by China so but in discussing China my approach is to the actual approach is the tick which looks at what China does within a particular country within the continent but the tick dimension actually looks at China in Africa beyond the specific continent and in the case of Nigeria you know if you if you are new to Nigeria you fly into an airport that is being reconstructed by China you travel on a railway road that is being you know constructed bridges that is being constructed by China at my university for instance China is building one of the biggest uh libraries you know the senior block was built in China so Chinese presence is actually pervasive from hospitals to completely building university the university for technology in the president's uh uh in the aura is being constructed by by China so of course because of this infrastructural finance that China provides there is the win-win smile virtually all presidents in in Nigeria as you know visited China president on the share ground bansando for instance made the memorable you know quote that when China is going to the moon please don't forget Nigeria but my my talk is actually to draw attention to the instabilities in this Nigeria-China relations and I'll be talking touching on just five of these you know talking about the discursive of course talking touching on the the the the covid health diplomacy and the rest of it as we speak today you know Nigeria had a civil war between 1967 and 1960 between this the the successionist bf forces and the federal forces you know led by we make our ducal but officially the elite position has been to actually silence that from their own narrative president official gumball soldier for instance referred to that as a rumor but if you go and do a content analysis of the newspapers that were published within that period you see even military officers talking about this chinese influence then again coming to the you know the oscillation within the covid the chinese covid diplomacy every last year was you know you know probably not a disorder but apocal reality in african-china relations where africans were reportedly maltreated in guanzhou but in Nigeria it was a major newspaper you know it was really in the news to the extent that a recent comparative analysis that i tried to do trying to look at the ghania newspaper that actually reported more of that episode and just opposing it with the nigerian demonstrates that you know you add more nigerian newspapers reporting it but to the question of oscillation at some point the nigerian government the political elite explained it as a failure of public communication poor communication but with pressure from non-state actors as well as a few you know lawmakers the elites who backtracked and they became more critical then another example of this oscillation that i talked about happened in you know under the you know under the president under president russia gumball soldier from the same political party his predecessor you know president of bansanto introduced this oil for an oil for infrastructure but his predecessor changed it within months of getting into power then of course the another instance of that oscillation is in terms of how the nigerian legislature engages with china the apc is the ruling party in nigeria you know the all people's congress but of course the law makers are also one of the most critical of of of china in terms of whether there is going to be a depth budding or you know depth trap and the rest of it let me quickly go to taiwan nigeria recognizes the one china policy but of course in spite of that recognition it's also understand that it's trading with china in fact in the first republic at least four years for four years taiwan bought more oil which is nigeria's main stick from nigeria than than china so even when 2017 nigeria added you know the one you know the foreign affairs minister for china visited nigeria nigeria was forced to push taiwan out of abuja but not out of nigeria so my conclusion is mainly that in understanding nigeria-china relations we need to understand locate it within that dynamism not in terms of its static nature and i've only talked about five of these uh episodes there are several episodes thank you and i hope to get questions uh after this presentation thank you thank you very much uh tobi that is amazing and you time it bang on the dot as well which is also a significant achievement um um important subjects that we need to remember and let's now move on uh to our last speaker for the morning from the home team at soas uh from professor kalos oya speaking on china's contributions to efforts towards economic transformation or structural changes in sub saharan africa i can see that your slides are upped uh kalos so over to you when you start then i will switch the clock on thank you very much can you hear me well yes the perfect thank you um so thank you very much for inviting me to this um um panel it's absolutely fascinating and i've enjoyed every minute of it and and it's also a pleasure to follow the previous two speakers who uh have basically presented a number of key ideas with which i very much agree so it's it's good to see that there is quite substantial coherence and congruence between these different views i'm just going to focus on one aspect of the relationship between china and african countries i mean i i try to avoid this general reference to africa because there's so much variation in this respect and and one of the angles is the imperative of structural transformation of african economies and particularly the deficit of industrialization so i'm going to start with this first contextual premise in order to understand china's contribution of the last 20 years or so to some of the efforts that have been going on in the continent in relation to this issue the historical deficit of structural change through industrialization in much of the continent and this is despite the post-colonial aspirations which were manifested in the 1960s and 70s with substantial efforts to kick off industrialization but which very quickly moved onto a period of neglect and liberalization driven de-industrialization so what's happened pretty much since the 1980s in many economies of the continent is a growth without industrialization at least a growth without structural change changed led by industrialization a sort of morgental plan for sub-saharan africa for those of you who know the morgental plan for germany the second contextual premise is that there are various contributing factors to this situation this told industrialization in the 1970s because of the crisis of that time very weak economic infrastructure that has been inherited from the colonial period and into the post-colonial period the lack of policy prioritization of industrialization especially since the 1980s and very importantly in a continent that is still very dependent on foreign aid the lack of external finance directed towards structural change and productive sector so these have been proven and contextual factors to the lack of industrialization so this this is where the china's engagement in africa comes in and we know there are multiple vectors you know the literature talks about trade investment finance etc and there is an increase in attention to the role of china chinese enterprises in many african countries and i will highlight especially two types of actors infrastructure contractors which happened to be mostly state-owned enterprises and private manufacturing companies which have expanded the presence in several economies to a large extent that there is a lot of variation across countries some countries have seen these much more than other african countries so the current discourse in africa emerged from some of the public pronouncements from the various focus meetings especially since 2018 is encapsulating these sort of efforts again within these win-win umbrella where more and more emphasis is put on the question of industrial cooperation and more specific commitments are made to further the advance of this narrative and this agenda so what are the key channels of china's contribution to african industrialization efforts again where these efforts actually happen there are four main channels one is the finance for infrastructure and the building of infrastructure that is critical for manufacturing investments energy rose industrialism secondly foreign direct investment and particularly private industrial investors that have been invested in a number of countries again not many countries but an increasing number of countries third is the access to suitable and affordable technology especially for low technology manufacturing sectors such as the light industry textile opera government etc and fourth the availability of patient capital patient finance for manufacturing investment something that has been missing for at least three decades in the finance context of most african economies and these have happened more or less across the board but in some countries much more than others so that is then manifested in variation in africa's industrialization efforts in order to understand this process and this evolution of a time especially of the last two decades we need to understand some elements of the china's economic context and there's a few snippets there but basically the movement towards a new normal in the chinese economy and towards basically getting rid of low technology obsolete sectors is providing key opportunities through the globalization of chinese firms which is also encapsulated in public discourse so that we are in a situation where we move from the time where chinese imports were out competing in african manufacturers and badly affecting for example textiles the case of nigeria is is prominent in that respect to chinese investment mostly private investments promoting these kinds of manufacturers so it's an interesting type of evolution former world bank economist justy lin has been talking about these 80 million manufacturing jobs potentially and underline the word potentially going towards africa as long as the efforts to industrialize are there some of this is manifested in the share of the chinese investments by sector so you can see the manufacturing sector assuming a prominent role in that share above other other sectors in terms of the number of enterprises operating across different african economies and we do see also in the creation of manufacturing jobs for example ethiopia is a prominent example of this until 2018-2019 where chinese firms were leading that process of job creation in the manufacturing sector and this is encapsulated in the sort of multiplication of textile and garment factories in a number of countries and not just in ethiopia so let me conclude with a few thoughts does china in relation to the big question does china contribute to industrialization efforts in africa the answer to that is yes that there is still a lot of variation across countries and this is because not all countries and not all african government is actually strongly pursuing in the solidation so agency does matter as one of the previous speakers clearly presented so how so this is basically the combination of vast expansion in economic infrastructure and the arrival of chinese industrial firms investing into those sectors are more likely to be competitive in some african economies are they contributing to job creation absolutely yes and to much more extent that is usually proceeded especially in the manufacturing sectors and finally is this enough no because this will only happen if there is sustained african policy prioritization and efforts that are needed over long periods of time this is a long-term gain and as the ethiopia example clearly suggests anything can be dismantled in a matter of a few months thank you very much let's stop here thank you very much Carlos that was again a fascinating presentation which i think is highly puts a highly complex story through in a beautifully succinct way um with three presentations on africa a subject that i think the china institute is certainly very happy to be working with our african studies colleagues that saw us to promote a lot more let's have our third poll last poll in the morning and then we can have a bit of a wind up for the morning session can yes the poll is up and let's see where we are please start your responses we are at the moment settling at around 67 percent of participation we have previously about 70 percent or so but obviously the level of participation can vary if it stays at 67 percent for oh it's moving thank you 69 okay it looks like that we are having 70 participation rate as we did in the last poll um let's now stop the polling and then have a quick look at where we are we have about four percent who sees china's use of power is very positive 47 percent as on balance positive 10 percent on balance not so positive and 12 percent not positive 27 percent um too complex largely mirror i think with the soft power question which is also six percent very positive 39 percent on balance positive 22 percent on balance not so positive and six percent negative and 27 two complex to be put in individual categories now we have about six or seven minutes before our time is up so i'm not going to try to sum up what we have discussed this morning that i think that would have been quite unrealistic and impossible what does strike me is how the polls worried when we have a session which focus entirely on africa compares to the earlier sessions which are very heavily represented in terms of east asia china's near abroad and clearly the perception there worried a bit not so much that we will say that they can be different but there is a sufficient difference in terms of how that is being preserved and i think it also shows how much the parallel between the hard power polling and the soft power ones actually match each other more than i think one would necessarily have expected before we have this exercise i think people or colleagues probably needs to pay more attention to the actual availability of chinese soft power and we mustn't really just dismiss that of hand and i think also what is so interesting in this morning's presentation is the huge diversities of views being presented and how as i designed this exercise to focus on china's relationship with the asians middle east africa contacts that the u.s china relations come back again and again to whether we're talking about east asia or whether we're talking about africa's relationship with china the united states relationship with china just cannot go away it is affecting everybody and it is very much notice and taken into account by everybody there as well now what i think also interesting is how much our colleagues particularly from africa and working on africa focus on the agency which in fact also was being represented by our colleagues speaking about east asia whether singapore needs to choose that's about singapore's agencies not how africa deals with it it's about africa's agency how iran's deals with it is a lot about what really matters to iran's how taiwan look at it that was also about how the local community um look at the situation but they have to do it within that wider context of what china is actually doing there and also how not only china but china and the united states together making us to feel that we have to make a choice between them and most don't want to make that choice i think what's the case of taiwan was also very illuminating was how that local agency also came out in terms of in in taiwan's case it seems to be a more strong negative response to the extension of chinese inference in taiwan another important part of the new year board when wassana was making that presentation i keep wondering how we would look how these sessions would have looked if we have included colleagues who are based in other parts of southeast asia i mean particularly uh say for example campuchia and how that would have presented a slightly different picture and how indonesia will look at that relationship how melasia would have looked at that relationship and how the changing relationship between the philippines and china would have been reflected so i think this has been an amazingly useful exercise that we have this morning um surprise surprise for this morning sessions we have filled a rather small number of contingents from the solar steam we will have more solar's colleagues in the afternoon sessions um it just happens to be the way how we were organizing it there was no particular designs to that but what it does show is the wider solar's network has brought in so much important views that if this had been a solar china institute operation rather than a solar's operation run by the sci for all the regional centers and institutes we wouldn't have that diversity of views and it's important that we work on that and make the most of that well with this let me thank all of you uh the speakers as well as participants for a really stimulating morning sessions um the afternoon sessions will start at 1 30 which is about one hour and a minute from now now please remember that you will need to use the afternoon sessions link to join the meeting uh you will not be able to join this meeting using the morning uh link that you had used this morning and the reason that we have to do so is for the uh quality of the recording for others so thank you very much i hope to see most of you back in the afternoon and i wish you for those of us in the uh lunchtime in europe wish you a lovely lunchtime for others enjoy the break see you soon