 and their policy priorities over the coming year. And both of these things are visible in Li Keqiang's government work report, the reports put forward on the economy, the budget and the law, comments from the leaders over the 10 days, and then Li Keqiang's press conference, which he held yesterday at 10.30 in the morning in Beijing, just after the NPC ended. The NPC sessions also useful, although imperfect measure of gauging popular opinion, because you have 6,000 deputies there in Beijing talking to the press, talking to each other, putting forward proposals. So it's some way to kind of engage what are Chinese people thinking about. Now, so today we have two pulse takers to talk about the sessions, who will speak about China's body politic. The first is Dali Yang, who is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. He previously served as the chair of the political science department, I believe so willingly. And he also currently is the director of the Committee on International Relations, also served as the director of the Confucius Institute, and the Center for East Asian Studies, and he's the executive director of the University of Chicago's Beijing office. He's the author of several widely read books on China including Calamity and Reform in China, which is about the Great Leap Forward, and Remaking the Chinese Leviathan, which is about governance reform. He's also editor of a number of other widely read and cited books on China's both domestic and international political economy. Chris Johnson, our second speaker today, needs no introduction to a CSIS audience. Chris joined CSIS almost three years ago, and he's the Freeman chair of China Studies here at CSIS. He's one of the country's leading experts on Chinese politics and foreign policy. He's a sought after advisor and speaker, proven by the fact that last year he traveled to China 16 times, not to mention his travel to Europe, Australia, and other parts. And in fact, he starts another marathon later today. We'll first hear from Dali, and then we'll turn things over to Chris as well, and then we'll turn things over to you all for a discussion. And at CSIS we have a long tradition of having open discussion and conversations on all sorts of topics that I'll moderate. But let's first please join me in welcoming Yang Dali. Well, thank you, Scott. It's a great pleasure to be here on such a wonderful afternoon, in particular back in D.C. Actually, I want to start, I'm not going to go over all the broad agenda that has happened at the National People's Congress, but I will be very selective in presenting, or certainly sort of highlighting some of the developments at the National People's Congress. First, some very basic information for some of you I know are very keen observers of Chinese politics and institutions, but for those who may not be following this, the National People's Congress has delegates that are elected to five-year terms, and this is the 12th MTC, which served from 2013 to 2018. It has a membership of just under 3,072% of them are Communist Party members. So this is important and it's designed, obviously to ensure that the Communist Party controls the agenda in that regard. But let's keep in mind also, none of the delegates is directly or popularly elected. They come as provincial delegations, they are more like the American senators in terms of being appointed in some way and elected officially by the provincial level legislatures, in fact. So the current meetings, for example, the MPC meets for about 10 days. This is shorter than before. So under CDNP, there has been this austerity drive, including short-term meetings. And so the MPC now only gets to meet for 10 days, no car, okay, no parking outside, in fact. But normally, and the National People's Congress, only meets once nationally just for the 10 days. Most of the members are not paid, they don't get any compensation except for coverage of expenses, actually. They do, the MPC does have a standing committee of about 155 members. This particular membership meets for about two, about actually it's a sort of one week each every two months. So this is important because the standing committee decides on a lot of other things too during the year. So normally any legislation has typically to go through reviews and there are rules governing their review. But the most important legislation, especially new ones, usually has to come up to the MPC for the kind of sort of a more like a sense of gravitas in terms of national approval. Typically however, a lot of other legislation are already approved or revised during the national, the standing committee meetings, in fact. Now, for when you have 3,000 members meeting, this is the kind of meeting space you get, right? It's a sort of, it gives you a sense of how the meeting is conducted and we all know that there's a lot of talk about how the MPC is a rubber stamp in that regard. But it's very important though as far as I'm concerned because this is the only venue each year that the entire country comes together in some ways represented by the 35 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions and also the military. So in that sense actually, this is significant in a ritualized sense that the whole country comes together. The Central Committee of the Communist Party also has provincial representation to some extent but it's very different, it meets in secret. This one is in public. It's also joined by the CPPCC where it's in full session, in fact. So in that case, obviously, again, it brings in the advisory board and also the advisory committee and also others to observe including the diplomatic community, in fact. And the most signature event of the MPC is the premier makes the state of the country report. So sort of by premier Li Keqiang, the official report is known as the government work report. So again, this indicates, but there is some difference. When the president of the United States reports to Congress, he does not get a vote, right? It's shown only in the applause on TV. You see this side applauding, that other side of applause. The government work report of the premiers in China actually gets voted on. And in fact, during the sessions, the provincial delegations have to discuss them. The work report suggests revisions. The work report actually does get amended here and there and then gets voted down towards the very end of the Congress. So that vote is very important because no premier wants a very low vote, right? So sort of even though we all know it's going to pass, but passing by 80% versus 99% is a big difference. Right, so sort of. So in that sense, as Scott had mentioned, actually this really measures the powers of the country. And also because this is about the central government, the National People's Congress, and also the local authorities who are represented in the provincial delegations. So it speaks a lot about not only the relationship between the national legislature and the executive branch, but also, in fact, the relationship between the central government and the provinces as well. Now, for Xi, and especially for Premier Li Keqiang during the session, he reports and he reports the numbers. I see Nick Ladi sitting in the audience. He's truly the preeminent scholar on China's economy. But in this case, of course, I'm sure he'll come back to comment on this. What's interesting is Premier Li presents those numbers. Economic growth, there are doubts on whether how high it is, 7.4% below target, slightly. Of course, the Premier was very careful in guiding expectations. He indicated that it's going to be either slightly above or slightly below the official target. So they came here slightly below, but he spoke truthfully in terms of, at least in terms of relative to the official target. Most interestingly, unlike in the past, personal disposable income for China actually came above the official GDP growth rate. This indicates, again, the official government line has been restructuring the economy, boosting incomes, boosting consumption, and he delivers certain numbers in terms of disposable income growth. 13 million new urban jobs, that's above target actually. And what's interesting is more than 100 million Chinese made overseas trips. That's significant because this is one of the good reasons for us to offer long-term visas for the Chinese to come to the US. We want to earn some of those dollars. Equally interestingly, consumption contributed to more than 51% of the new growth for the economy. And this has been about the same for the last few years. It just shows that actually in this case, at least by official numbers, consumption's contribution to economic growth has been fairly robust. Although consumption growth in itself actually is slowing down. In that similarly, service value added as a percentage of GDP also increased. Those are the numbers. But most importantly, I think also is what the tone of the conference and also the premier's press conference indicated. He's been tireless in championing for entrepreneurship. He came in a little bit emphasizing, we still need to boost investments. This is some change from initially when he was saying that we can let the economy slow down some to help with the restructuring. But he's been tirelessly emphasizing reducing the number of government approvals by one third. And this was the official target and he announced that China has already achieved the number. Now he's saying that maybe that's not all fully effective because some of the reductions were only central government reductions, but some of them have already been shifted downward to the local governments. But if the local authorities still had control over approvals, approvals still exist. So now he's on to saying that, oh, we need to eliminate more of the approval items. He's also been promoting the conversion of the business tax to value added taxes to make it easier for new businesses, in particular the businesses that don't really make money. And what's striking, and this is again something that's very interesting is new enterprise registrations in 2014 was up by 46%. Now we don't fully know what is in this number, but it just show that actually the Chinese are registering new private and individual businesses and other businesses at faster clip than any time before. So for a premier that's emphasizing entrepreneurship, this is very important. No doubt many of those enterprises may already existed, they didn't fully register, but now they fully register. Others may not pan out down the road, but for any government that's more, I mean sort of trying to engineer and stimulate economic growth, you need businesses wanting to start off. And this is a very good indicator in this regard. Official target for 2015 however is only 7%. Officially the government wants to create 10 million jobs. They don't want to raise the number, but when we look at historically speaking, 7%, this is going back to the 1990s. It used to be the government always was proposing something like 6%, 7%, 8%. So sort of basically, in many years the official targets were exceeded by large margins during the early 2000s. That's the situation. The government numbers actually have been fairly stable going back to the 1990s. Essentially now it's scaling down the expectations a little bit. However, what's interesting is during the press conference, primarily emphasize even the 7%, it's going to be hard to achieve this year. So again, he's not saying that, oh, let's try to aim for full throttle growth. He's emphasizing that even if we can't even reach 7%, we may have to settle with it. But I'm willing however to emphasize to do more though, sort of in this. And this kind of attitude happens to be much more popular today in China. It's not about lofty goals, it's about being realistic. And in this particular case, his work report was very popular. Or certainly in your parliament that's widely publicly observed. 2,852 votes were in favor at the end. 18 were against probably a minor jump from probably 15 last year. But this is one of the highest approvals again ever. This last year and this year, those were the two highest approvals for the government work report in many years. So again, he's doing something right and also overall the tone of government is such in fact. It appears that somehow despite all the efforts to crack down on corruption and so on, disciplining the party, which actually makes a lot of government officials nervous and many of those government officials from the local government sitting in the audience during the NPC, yet they continue to vote in favor of the government work report. And I think that's actually very interesting in this regard. But in the reality, I think something is going on. Well, I think we can live with this. So sort of a, in reality, of course we do know the economy is, growth is slowing down. One of the key problems for the economy, land sales, property sales are going down as credit growth has slowed down. The TMI Purchasing Managers Index has been near the brick even line for several years now really. So sort of in this case. And most ominously the total of the debt and this is wine version, the Bloomberg numbers actually. Some other numbers are higher than this is actually at around 200% of GDP. Even though as the economy grows, the percentage that's needed to finance the debt as a percentage of GDP actually is coming down slightly. So this actually means that the Chinese economy is fairly heavily leveraged. And to de-leveraged and to, so that requires that corporations moderate a little bit. And so on. So this is actually, I didn't fully translate this, but in the press conference, Lee Keqiang was very specific to emphasize that it's not only it won't be easy to realize the 7%, but at the same time, he also offered some very interesting comments. He emphasized that the government still has, the central government still has a variety of tools in the toolbox that we have, in fact, over the last several years, deliberately tried not to overstimulate the economy. And as, but at the same time, I think there's a typo there, but local governments actually are already being given the right to refinance some of the bonds. Shandong just set up a so-called bad bank to deal with the non-performing deaths. So in that sense, actually, it's interesting that Lee emphasizes there are major problems facing the economy, but at the same time, he's still got tools. This message has been very welcome. The Chinese stock market went up by more than 2% today. In fact, it's very well received. The, so sort of basically not to try to over-promise, being realistic is actually something that's very popular at this point. Now I think actually many people say this is probably the most important, but for me, there are a number of other things that are equally important at the National People's Congress. First of all, after 15 years, the National People's Congress voted on the new legislation, revised legislation law. This governs how laws are going to be discussed and enacted. It regulates how the National People's Congress conduct its business and also regulates how the local legislatures conduct its business, actually, so sort of in many places. There are a variety of things because in recent months, there have been a lot of complaints. For example, as oil prices came down, the Chinese government decided to drop the prices but then at the same time, very quickly raised gasoline taxes without any public debate because of course they know that if you get a debate going, there's no end, right? They simply quickly imposed those taxes, very technocratic, but it's very unpopular with drivers who wanted the lower prices, actually. Similarly, many local authorities imposed restrictions on property purchases, on car sales and so on in recent years, actually. So now, suddenly, there are a lot of discussion that legislation law actually tries to govern this. For example, one of the articles, article eight now, requires the legislature to determine what kind of taxes can be collected, what are they going to be, the tax rates, how the collection management system will be set up. The legislature now is in the process of gaining more power than before. This has been a process that's ongoing and that means that the Ministry of Finance has to be more careful in the future. Some of the taxes or fees that are being collected, we're not exactly sure to what extent whether they can continue actually down the road and again, it needs to be clarified over time but this is a constitutional moment as far as China is concerned. Likewise, the legislation law requires hearings to be held, public hearings on laws that are being actually debated within the NPC and also for the state council regulations that we can pass, for example. Local laws and regulations in article 80, for example, and this is something really interesting if you arise consent, says it must not reduce the rise of citizens, legal persons and other organizations, all increase their duties. For example, how do you say you can buy cars and then I can only allow you to use them three days a week? It's a sort of a lot of debate in China are concerning. That's a limit on property rights that should not be capriciously applied. I think actually down the road in China, local authorities will find it harder to do so because now there is such a law that we have to follow in this regard actually. It's a sort of a... Now, there are some striking revelations, not entirely striking about the Chinese leadership. This is the Chinese leadership two years ago. The leadership that came into the National People's Congress walking side by side together, a sign of collective leadership. This is the current leadership. Right, it's a sort of a... They come in in single file. You know who is in charge, who is the leader? At least they're not bowing in the back. Very interesting in that regard, actually, it's a sort of a... And of course, this is the picture we get now. And within the documents also show President Xi Jinping's doctrines are fully enshrined now already and at the 19th party congress, they'll probably be further enshrined. And that means emphasizing the four comprehensives in terms of prosperity, reform, law, and governing the party. All of those are going to be there, in fact. So I want to come back to the law because for more than a decade now, the Supreme T-Post Court and the Supreme T-Post Procuterates is a full mouthful, I can assure you, have had difficulty convincing the delegates to vote for their reports. In fact, in some years, they almost worried that we couldn't get the reports passed. Now that's different this year. Partly because despite all the, I know there are human rights reports that's just being released overnight and so on, emphasizing how China continues to have crackdowns on certain rights defenders in the environment and other areas. But overall though, you look at the developments over the last year, the Supreme T-Post Court has been promoting a variety of reforms and those reforms are beginning to win parties. Most importantly, they also publicly announced the reversal of a variety of verdicts in cases that were widely known to be run for convictions and so on, more than about 800 of them actually. So sort of a very significant in this regard, very popular. A lot of the other indicators used to be emphasizing efficiency rather than judicial process procedures have been eliminated. And as a result, actually what we find is that for the first time in 15 years or so, the SPC, the Supreme T-Post Court work report, got more than 90% approval. This is really significant, I think actually. I think over the years we are going to see that this is going to be a watershed movement despite all the complaints about the relationship between the party and the law. It's not the rule of law, it's still a rule by law, but at least you have to obey the law most of the times. In China, I do think actually there is a serious commitment in this regard, in fact. Used to be centralized activists would be arrested or taken to detention without any justification. Today, actually you have to go to court. Together, actually it's sort of detained, generally. And also there is the reeducation through labor regulation which was removed in the last couple of years, in fact. So it's very interesting overall. Now, having mentioned the change in the leadership, I have to show this picture because the president is simultaneously the chairman of the Central Military Commission and he doesn't miss a beat certainly in visiting the military's delegation. He meets with the rank and file on the military sort of delegation to the NPC. What's interesting is every member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo visits several systems with several provincial delegations but the military delegation is the president's preserver at this moment. But what a coincidence. A former vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, General Xu Zihou, who is actually a military strongman. In fact, during the meetings, there was a revelation by a general, a former general in an interview. He indicated that Xu Zihou and his colleagues were able to essentially control the Central Military Commission while President Hu Jintao was the chairman of the Central Military Commission. So that's as open as a public indication why President Xi Jinping, the chairman of the Central Military Commission has really to fight hard against corruption in the military. Xu, despite being, he died actually on March 15th during the last day of the actually Congress. But even in death, he's actually sort of being announced that there's no formal persecution but according to the investigation, still his assets would be confiscated actually for corruption. He's well known now, and in fact there are documents now going through the party, going through the military to explain the situation in this case. And of course, over the last 24 hours, again it showed that despite the National People's Congress, the anti-corruption campaign, there's no let up. In fact, it's convenient that you brought most of these senior officials from around the country together to Beijing. You only need to find them in Beijing. So Qiu He, a deputy party secretary of Yunnan, one of the most forceful local leaders in fact, he returned to his hotel and then was taken away there to sort of apparently for investigation. And then the Central Discipline Inspection Commission has announced a couple of months ago that they are going to focus, especially give them more attention to investigation of corruption in the state-owned enterprises. Now we find some results. The general manager of the CNTC, the parent of Petro-China was being taken in for investigation overnight. And also chairman of the first auto works, Xu Jianyi was also taken in. Quite striking in fact. Those are not simply state-owned enterprises. Those are powerful enterprises in the Chinese system who have very strong, powerful connections within the political system. It just shows that actually the anti-corruption campaign in China continues and we are just still seeing the beginning of another wave in some way, you know, unending wave practically since Xi Jinping has taken power. So those are some of the updates and I'll pause here and I look forward to the discussion. Terrific. I think that you've done a very good job of pointing to sort of general trends and also identifying key winners and several losers of the sessions. Why don't we turn things over now to Chris Johnson and here we have to say about the meeting. Thanks, Scott. And Dali, thank you very much for that very comprehensive presentation. I think I will try to out-detail you because there's a lot of great details in there and especially the stuff on the work reports. Thank you for highlighting that. I think that's very important for us to keep in mind. So I thought I'd focus my remarks just sort of thinking about what are the broader implications of what we've just seen for the politics of the system and what does this mean for them going forward and how should we be thinking about, you know, what we've just seen. I think I want to focus very heavily on the atmospherics, right, around the session. As Dali pointed out, you know, definitely a more somber mood I think than last year, especially on the economy. And I think this is for several reasons. I mean, one, the numbers are just very poor. And I think that there's a sense that those numbers are less likely to be explained away now maybe than they would have been three, six months ago, whatever your target, as being completely exogenous to China in terms of the motivations for why those numbers are in difficulty. So it's Europe, it's the Middle East, it's oil, there was a lot of that sort of thing. And this theme very strongly coming from Li Kutang, but also from a lot of other people in the system of, you know, the center, may I remind you for the, you know, obtained millions of time, but the center has tremendous capacity to deliver resources to spark the engine of growth and so on. And while that's true, I think it does represent what we've seen now a continuing evolution of this debate really since the Third Plenum and the reforms that were tabled is at what point do they hit the panic button with regard to growth and start to stimulate again very heavily? Because while the Premier mentioned the toolkit, you know, my own view is they're already exercising the toolkit quite a bit. You know, they've had interest rate cuts, they've had triple R cuts, they are stimulating the economy, maybe not on 2009 levels, but they certainly are stimulating the economy. And it's not working, or at least it's not working to the degree that they would like. The slowdown is more pronounced. I think the pace of deceleration is they're uncomfortable with. The fact of deceleration, my sense is, is welcome. As you mentioned, they're looking to do that to have sort of more sustainable growth. But the pace, I think, unnerves them. And then secondly, I think there's this sort of broader notion similar to what I just mentioned, which is that the playbook that they've been using now for many years only has a very few pages. And so when you turn to the next page and it's blank, it's very concerning. I think to the government. So there's a real debate now about which way forward, and is it using the capacity that the center has, or is it trying to hold tight and see if you can continue to push forward the reforms? And while the numbers are very negative, I do think the upside, if there is one here, is that it is, in my estimation, causing a camp within the sort of more ardent reform oriented people around Xi Jinping, around Li Kutang, to argue that the whole crossing the river by feeling the stones thing, it's worked very well for us in the past. The challenge is different now. And so we are increasingly facing a point at which we either jump into the river or we're gonna be drowned in the process. And I think the challenge for these advisors around Xi is trying to convince him that the situation is indeed dire enough, if you will, that they do need to dive in, and sort of in that manner go against his own tendencies toward authoritarianism, toward revolutionary idealism. I think there's an effort to try to convince the boss, hey, the situation is very, very serious. And I think this is the challenge as Dali pointed out of this new sort of leadership style that we see with Xi Jinping, where it is less consultative. He is sort of more, not just primus inner paris, but just plain primus. And so the people who are advising him don't have the bureaucratic clout to be able to tell him no. The message is really more about convincing and bring him around to their point of view. And I think even those advisors who are extremely close to him, whether it be Feng Xinghai or these others who are rumored to have close connections to the president, they themselves don't really know what's on his mind or what direction he might be going in or what he's holding or not holding onto. And so my sense is then that that kind of breeds this caution. So one example I think that's very clear is there does seem to be an increasing effort across the system to convince President Xi that the anti-corruption campaign, well, fantastic, is in fact having some unintended consequences. One of which is breeding this sort of however you wanna frame it, near paralysis, whatever you wanna say in the system in terms of getting approvals and projects and other things moving forward. And I think the narrative that's coming out now largely I think from Xi's detractors in the leadership is this notion that that is shaving off pick your number between 0.5 and 1.5 or whatever number you wanna use, percent off of GDP growth. And that this in fact represents ultimately a challenge to the party's justification for a continued one-party rule. My own sense is that this narrative is far more effective than earlier narratives that these sort of opponents had put out that Xi Jinping was a power mad megalomaniac who was trying to destroy the system. My sense is this one has far more traction for a couple of reasons. One, it's sort of more evidence-based. Two, it's out of Xi Jinping's control largely. They have the ability to manipulate the economy obviously but to some degree this is exogenous to his ability to control. Whereas the former narrative by doing things like make the fourth plenum about the rule of law and so on I think he was able to counter some of this speculation that he was accreting power to himself solely for that sake. So a lot of concern about how do we convince folks in the top leadership levels that the situation is as dire as it may appear to be. That said, my own sense is that there's no reason for him to do pessimism. I've been really struck in the last couple of weeks at how the coming collapse theory seems to have found its way back into the Washington discourse in a very strong way very suddenly it seems to me. And my own sense is that's quite premature and we can go into that in a question and answer if folks would like to. So that's one piece. Second piece, it's the Premier's work report. You're right, Lika Chung was front and center but Xi was the one in the backdrop. So the four comprehensives and all of this very unusual really for a national people's congress session that's supposed to be the Premier's time to shine and I think it is very emblematic of what we're seeing. And on the other hand though I think it's encouraging in that while it does sort of build this notion of Xi as the one and only leader it also shows that he is the one who's responsible. Ultimately he's responsible and if this goes south he's going to take the blame. And it's very similar frankly to the collective decision and I think that was made in earlier leaderships last time when we were in sort of a sort of similarly economic dysfunctional time to kind of put Zhu Rong Ji in that role. And have him be the one who was going to take the responsibility for what happens with the economy and I think Xi Jinping to some degree is at least burden sharing with Lika Chung if not taking full responsibility for what's happening there. On anti-corruption that was another very strong theme it seemed to me I was particularly struck by the amount of time that Yu Zhengsheng the CPPCC chair spent on this of course they were dragging away several people in the standing committee of the CPPCC in recent months. So it was hard for him not to address the situation but very much across the board reverberation from the different senior leaders that anti-corruption is important. It is here to stay and it will continue with the sort of ferocity if you will that it has been. And what's been interesting I think about what we've seen in recent days is exactly the point you made a moment ago that clearly the focus this year will be SOEs I would argue will be financial institutions and other areas that they're trying to reform and the SOEs obviously a key target I think for several reasons one there's resistance to what the leadership is trying to do with SOE reform it seems to me that we've been about to see the SOE reform plan about three times now I presume it will come out before the end of the month but clearly there's some resistance to what they're trying to do there. Secondly I think they've discovered through these investigations that in fact the SOEs are a tremendously important sort of social watering network within the system. There's a lot of revenue there to be handled and to some degree the reforms that the leadership is trying to pursue are as much about deciding new winners and losers in the system as they are about the pure economics of what they're trying to do with those reforms. I think the key thing for us to watch in the anti-corruption space this year obviously it looks like they're moving pretty aggressively to wrap up the three big cases one has just solved itself. Jo-Yong Hong has been announced that it will be a public trial and I assume Lin Chi-Hua is not far behind. So the sense that had been out there several months back well it's gonna take them a good long time to digest these very important cases it appears that they're gonna move pretty quickly actually. So we'll have to watch and see how that goes. And that does suggest then that well what's next in terms of the sort of tiger element of the campaign and here I think there's a lot of speculation probably not much knowledge but I think the thing to watch for is do we see a pattern that started to some degree with Lin Chi-Hua in an effort to shift the target set of the tiger hunt away from very senior but still retired officials toward active duty senior officials and that seems the likely course especially as politicking begins in earnest for the 19th party congress. And I think that's the other issue that was interesting to watch not only in the context of the MPC but more broadly is that we now are at that kind of tipping point where we start to go into the political cycle. My sense is obviously they have the rest of this year and somewhat into next year but there's no doubt that the game is already afoot for thinking about the 19th party congress and all sorts of theories are being spun. Most interestingly I think about will we see the tryouts if you will for the sixth generation leadership at the 19th party congress or will we instead see something more of a fifth and a half turnover which I think seems to look more likely now but we'll see what happens in the coming weeks and months. And then finally I think the sort of other key issue here is to look at the 13th five year plan and how the MPC is addressed reversal this year if you will for some of the themes that they're gonna be striking. What was very interesting to me and Premier Lee's work report was the heavy emphasis on innovation and on building a sort of high tech economy. It's very clear to me it seems that this is gonna be a key theme of the 13th five year plan in the same way that consumption was the key theme of the 12th five year plan. And so I would expect we would see a lot of the things that came up in Premier Lee's report to be informing that process and clearly the process is informing him so that it all comes along and attract. So to some degree these NPCs at the third sort of year or cycle in a five year Lee cycle are the most born to some degree. But I do think you've done a great job of highlighting some interesting elements that are sort of below the sort of macro level but that are very, very significant. So I don't know if you have any comments Scott. Sure, thank you very much Chris. Both of you touched on a large number of issues. I think using the host prerogative I get to ask the first question rather than dig in deep runs things that you've already touched upon which we'll let the audience do. Let me ask about something that you didn't touch upon but which received a lot of attention. The night before the NPC opened a documentary was put out on the Chinese internet called Under the Dome made by a very well-known Chinese commentator, Chai Jing. The documentary was compared to Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth an hour and a half, very long documentary on the environment and the problems that China faces received 200 million downloads. But within a day and a half or so it was removed from the Chinese internet. And not only me but others who used to would have been able to see it, couldn't see it anymore. But 200 million is a lot of views. I don't know if we've got 200 million people watching today live but even if we had 10% of that, we'd be pretty happy. And so it didn't become a part of the discussion which is what Chai Jing wanted to during the NPC although the environment was discussed but it did come up yesterday at Li Keqiang's press conference when one of the reporters asked about the environmental policy in the context of the documentary. How do you read the documentary, the way Li Keqiang and the leaders handled its treatment in terms of taking it out of the discussion and what does this mean about the importance of the environment in Chinese policy? Well, this is actually a striking development in many ways but also it's a very natural development. Chai Jing was a very popular host on CCTV so she's done some great interviews in many ways over the years, has a real following. She also writes beautiful essays that are very poignant and really she's Barbara Waters but more than Barbara Waters was in the Chinese context to some extent. Then she quit from CCTV. She had a child apparently. She actually had the child born in the US but she actually happened. The child also had a burst defect that required operation right after birth. So it's a very poignant story and she actually ties the personal story to the speculation. She didn't say that she believes there's a real connection to the environment, the pollution but she, as a mother, she was very concerned to what extent the pollution, the smog in Beijing might be related. She asked questions, she begins, in fact as a mother she began to do the purportation. She began to dig into a lot of the materials regarding pollution. Of course, eventually she marshals her forces, her own resources, even while she's not formally employed to develop this textile documentary which was released on Friday, on a Friday. On a Friday, even the propaganda censors go on leave sometimes a little more because they may be doing other things and they don't respond as quickly but in this case actually, it's not simply a personal documentary. She apparently had support enough that the People's Daily began by promoting the documentary from the very beginning of the People's Daily website. And it appears that she had a lot of good will. There was, there's some speculation she may even have top level support but she was able to conduct a lot of interviews with officials and academics and others all over the place. It appears that she was able, she had simply a lot of social capital that she could draw on in this case. She also decided, however, not to seek funding from elsewhere, she only used her own funding from the sale of a book that she did write. And of course, as Scott just mentioned, the documentary was extraordinarily popular, so popular that eventually the documentary was censored. But the censorship happened was delayed because the new minister of the environment praised officially, actually personally sent a message thanking Chen Jing for making the documentary actually. But even then, because it became so popular, it began to overshadow the NPC. So that's essentially the story. But it also showed there are several things. First of all, the environment is such a major issue now in China. Others, however, have made documentaries in the past. Some who are more technically proficient than Chen Jing herself, so to say. They made more beautiful, more striking documentaries, but none had the power that she packed into her TED-style talks, in fact. So in that sense, she had the draw, she was able to get a national conversation going. This was truly a national conversation because you think about it, if there are two million people who watched the documentary, how many people also indirectly saw it and how many people were watching together? And suddenly we are talking about maybe half of the population in China, either directly or indirectly, at least actually, no new of the documentary, actually. And only in a small number of days. I think it's probably three or four days in the end, as I said before, it finally sort of censored. Even a censorship happened gradually. It didn't happen all right away because originally the censors actually simply emphasized, let's tone down the discussion online, not censor it formally yet. Not until it actually turned out. But it also shows, because why was it welcome? The MEP, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, which got a new minister right before, who happens to be the former president of Tsinghua University, where Xi Jinping graduated. The national leadership knew they had to do something about quality of life issues. They wanted their own person to have the Ministry of Environmental Protection, which used to be a minnow bureaucratically. Remains not as powerful, especially when you think that central government ministry requires a lot of resources, but in the case of the environment, you really need to reach out to other partners, other players in the system. So in that sense, the Ministry of Environmental Protection of course would welcome a message simply even criticizing the bureaucracy for not being able to do it. Because then the Ministry of Environmental Protection could go around and ask, I need more resources, I need more power for the new minister. For the new minister, everything is clean. So in that regard. Secondly, it also allows the national leadership to also say that actually this is something important, but this is also precisely why we need the economic normal. We don't need as high economic growth. What is high economic growth if we can't breathe anymore? This is great, great prop for the message that economically we have to slow down somewhat as well. So it's a connection, I'm going on for too long, but it's a connection of all different forces that allow the privately financed and then privately produced documentary to become the year, the sensation of the year and probably for a long time to come in terms of the audiences that you could get within China. It's truly a remarkable phenomenon. Terrific, terrific. I just would add very briefly that I think, we had an event here last week on this new book about Confucius Michael Schumann who was the author came and it was very interesting discussion we had about how the regime is trying to use Confucius as sort of a spokesman and legitimizer and so on and so on. And so this episode sort of also per the comments you just made struck me as an effort to kind of control the message and then it quickly got out of control and then this, to me it represents not just the environmental issue, but the broader issue they have with the internet. They know they need it, but it also is their worst enemy. And so then you see the sort of clunkier elements of the system kicking in to manage the situation perhaps to their detriment. Sure, sure. May I add, if you want to watch under the dome, you can watch it on YouTube. It's also with English subtitles too now. I believe no royalty payments go to Dolly for that. And okay, we both made terrific presentations, gave us an overall view of the NPC and its broader significance. Why don't we turn things over to the audience now? If you just want to raise your hand to ask a question, just identify yourself and your organization and just as Lee Ko-chang asked yesterday, limit yourself to just one question. So, yes, right here. Yes, sir. And someone will bring you a mic. Hi, Chen Wei-hua, China Daily. Yeah, thank you very much for the conversation. I want to go back to what Chris said earlier. You are, you think there is no reason for pessimism, I think you really mean you disagree with David Shambo, his article at Wall Street Journal. I want to both of your panelists take on why you agree or disagree. And now, more specifically, I want you to comment, I think Dolly mentioned sort of the actions taken even after the conclusion of the NPC for the arrest of a corrupt official for instant investigation. What you see as how hopeful you are for the campaign to continue in the years come to sustain and what do you think is the way forward, I mean, compared with today? Thank you. Can we start? Sure, yeah. On the latter question, I'm not sure hopeful is the right term for the anti-corruption campaign but I do think it will be sustained, as I mentioned earlier, and has sort of a life of its own. I'm often asked the question, when will the leadership exit the destructive phase, AKA anti-corruption and enter a constructive phase of reform? And my sense is Xi Jinping feels they're inextricably linked. You can't have one without the other. And I think that the, and the rest of the leadership feels is it's not unique to Xi. And I think they have several reasons for believing that but one of them I think it's very core for them. We're seeing over time that there are certain things they want to avoid. One of them is the Soviet style collapse which we'll talk about in a minute. The other is Japan-like economic stagnation which I think is actually a far greater threat to them than the collapse scenario. And a third is related to, and that is what happened in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the pillaging of state assets by kleptocratic oligarchs and so on. And I think there's a sense that if you don't, if you will prepare the battle space with the strong clove of anti-corruption before you start getting serious on some of these reforms, there's a risk that the same thing could happen. I'm not gonna discuss particular content of a given article. I just think there's a broader trend that is worrisome for a couple of reasons. One, my own feeling is that there appears to be a certain sense of anger at the Communist Party for an effect in my assessment being itself that they haven't in fact, through steady engagement and so on, decided to do the right thing and open the political system and so on. I think there's some frustration perhaps with that fact. And my own view is that it's just not appropriate to approach the situation with anger or emotion. Secondly, I think there's a broader discussion or dialogue that has to occur among those of us who are China watchers about, is the analytic construct with which we're approaching Chinese leadership politics still apropos? I think there's a sense that I get sometimes that we're still looking to some degree at the previous style of leadership and the collective and therefore the way in which certain bureaucracies were able to become very powerful. Dalvi mentioned in his commentary, the effects that Xi Jinping's sort of changes have had on just the Zheng Fawei system, for example. And it's much less powerful clearly now than it was before. Does that mean that it's a reform and they're headed toward rule of law or is it more political? We don't know, but the point is that decision-making inside the system is changing and the sort of rules of the road are changing and I think we need to spend our time focusing on those elements because those have far greater policy implications than sort of throwing our hands up and saying, well, they're doomed anyway, so we can sort of sit back and wait for them to collapse. Yeah, let me also add to what Chris said about the, first of all, about the inter-corruption campaign. What's different? I wrote on inter-corruption previously and what's interesting about previous inter-corruption work was usually it's very much focused on certain projects, land deals and all of those kind of issues in particular. And in many of those areas, there are also continuing institutional reforms that close the loop holes, introduce auctions and so on, for example. And sometimes also when market prices arrive, then again, the rationale for that kind of corruption may disappear, the so-called profiteering, for example. But things that I also mentioned at that point that there is growing corruption, especially in terms of promotions, but we just simply didn't have enough information about what was happening. I think what's interesting about the current stage or its current wave of inter-corruption is very often it's related to political linkages and political promotions. And when you happen to do that, for example, with General Shizhai Ho, you find that he's accepting millions and millions of dollars in bribes for the promotion of generals. Of course, you can't keep the general. And of course, you know, where does the general get the millions of dollars to pay for his position? He gets his money from others who are willing to pay to him. And suddenly you realize this process has to go further. In fact, this is what's happening within the military, for example, because simply that you can't trust the link, the chain of people that were involved in this chain. And let me also emphasize what's interesting is the lower ranks actually, there are many people who are also very happy with the process. Because in the existing, the previous procedures, many people who didn't want to go by bribing and contributing a lot of money to superiors had no hope of getting promoted. So now they are jubilant because they can wait for opportunities to open up for them. And that's beginning to happen in local authorities and so on. There are certain countries in Shanxi, for example, 200-some positions were opened. No people to fill them up actually, and things like that. So it's a very interesting process. And the people who get new positions, who stay in their positions, are going to be the ones who actually are beneficiaries of the current campaign, who are going also to support the system. So we are going to see a very dynamic process as a result. I think the key down the road is, this is a process, and emerging and developing system tends to go through these processes. And this is a tough act, but at the same time, a lot will depend on what other institutions are being viewed. Within the NPC and CPPCC meetings already, there are some members who actually argue that, well, yes, it's fine to crack down on corruption, but you can't simply let people disappear for investigation without a formal procedure. So already there are concerns, especially corporate executives apparently. So I think over time, as things slow down somewhat, then there would have to be positions. But now everyone is behaving very carefully. It takes time, though, to change a culture. So this process will go on for quite a while before the cultures truly reset. It happened in Hong Kong in the 1970s, for example. China is on a much faster scale and requires much more for that matter. So going back to the question also regarding the China, it's actually not China collapse. It's much more about the collapse of the Communist Party, just like Gordon Chan's earlier argument, to some extent, in some way. But Professor David Shambo, whom I have a lot of respect for, also was very careful to predict a crack-up, but no timeline, so that it cannot easily be tested because he'll always be somehow proven right over time because, first of all, the timeline can continue for indefinite time in many ways. And also things could change over time. And so really I don't have a lot of comments specifically about this particular prediction. I think actually it stimulated a lot of interest, partly because David has been such a, has been a very steady commentator in discussing the Communist Party's adaptation and atrophy. And people thought he was more emphasizing the adaptation aspect. As we have emphasized, this party continues to adapt. China is going to continue to adapt. Countries actually going through this developmental process is finding it very difficult. There are always going to be some political upheavals and so on, but at the same time is, I think actually this is sort of, I see there are a lot of things that are also happening that actually contribute to the resilience of the system. But when we see the system, the system itself is also evolving, right? So if this emphasis on law becomes much more established over time, a lot of the conflicts and so on can be better resolved through the process of the law rather than through the kind of political struggles that we witness that are extremely painful in fact. It just shows that the Chinese political system remains immature system in many ways because when we talk about the democratic leadership succession process, we say we can't predict who is going to be the leader. We know the process. At this point in China, none of these, so far you cannot say a single leadership succession has been as very tightly, everything has been well predicted to some extent. And that says a lot about how much China still needs to change. But at the same time, you look around, many countries have gone through these processes. It's a tough process. So they're all going to bound to be some challenges, including politically. And of course the economic challenges would also reverberate politically to some extent. But at the same time, there are a lot of resources within the system to deal with some of the challenges. Again, complex systems, however, not fully predictable. But I do think though that you look at the record it's amazing how every time there's a crisis somehow, over the last 35 years, China's leaders have been able to rise to the occasion. And somehow sort of introduce new things to keep the system adapting. And let me just add, thank you both for those comments on the very good question. I'll just add two small points. The first, Tsai-Shin counted up the number of deputies from the NPC and the CPPCC come under investigation over the last two years at the national level. They believe 13 from the CPPCC and about 30 some from the NPC. As far as I know, if you look at their jobs and the reasons for investigation, none of the investigations has anything to do with them being a member of the NPC or the CPPCC. That shows you that I think it's a good measure of how powerful or unpowerful these institutions are that the corruption has nothing to do with their jobs serving in this post. But the more serious point is that until the four comprehensive become the three comprehensive, rule of law is gonna be hard to implement because the third is, as you listed, rule of law, the fourth was controlling the party until the controlling the party comes under rule of law and those things are the same, then it's always gonna feel like a campaign, a political campaign as opposed to a systematic new normal. Any case, this is just a two point. All right, let's come over here. Yes, sir. Hi, Mike Masetti, PBS Online NewsHour. Could you discuss more the role of plutocrats in the Congress? Cause I was very taken by Michael Forsythe's piece a couple of weeks ago, that their proportion of billionaires in that Congress is far higher than the proportion of millionaires in the American Congress. And he had the most stunning statistic of all that the combined net worth of the top 16 billionaires in the Congress was more than the gross domestic product of Austria. And what kind of influence do these people have in terms of policy? And I guess also, do you wonder if these people came by their money honestly? Over to you. I'll be glad. But let's keep in mind again, those are delegates to the National People's Congress in particular. Really they are not paid members, generally speaking, unless they sit on the standing committee. So really they are designed typically under the three represents of the previous leaders, especially Jiang Zemin. The party was especially encouraged to think about the Communist Party representing advanced productive forces. And that's the third aspect of the three represents. Well, actually the second, I think, the key is who represents the most advanced productive forces. So that's where they found that entrepreneurs are truly, they can join the Communist Party. They could also be on the MTC as well. And local authorities also love to do that. And of course it does give them a greater cloud. There is a study by a political scientist emphasizing, if you are a private business group, your head, the chief executive joining the MTC, the stock price for the private company immediately increases following the announcement actually. It has no effect on the state-owned enterprises. So it's especially useful because they get better connections, they get closer to policy. And of course, it also, by the way, typically a member of the standing of the National People's Congress, or a member of People's Congress, generally speaking, is not subject to arrest or detention without prior approval. So it cannot be arbitrarily taken away. It has to be with the party's approval usually. So in essence, it actually does give some measure of protection, especially because those members get closer to the local authorities. Sometimes there is discussion that local authorities very often like to cozy up to the private entrepreneurs because there are several aspects. Number one, local authorities need growth. They need investments. They want people who can bring those to them. Number two, keep in mind, as we just discussed, very often you need resources to finance whatever dealings you are doing. And very often some officials are, some of them are more careful than others. Some of them actually don't want to touch the money, but it would be nice to have other friends who are willing to help you again. So there are all those kind of factors at play. But let's do keep in mind, as a percentage of the total membership is a relatively small membership. But they have resources because they have underlings and others who can help them write policy briefs and so on. So it gives them substantial sort of impact overall. And I think actually that's very interesting. It just shows, again, the effort by the Communist Party to co-opt the newly rising economic forces in China. Some of you may have read, and including in the chamber's article, emphasized how the newly wealthy in China have, some of them have emigrated. But this is one way to make sure that some of them actually do stay and contribute to the development of the country. Thank you, Siyang from the Voice of America. I have a question. Both of the speakers mentioned that she is actually the man behind Lee. And also she's the real person behind the work report. So I wonder the higher approving rate of this year's work report is really because the work report is really good or because fewer people there to say no to President Xi. Thank you. Well, if there are enough local authorities and local officials who are really unhappy, the vote actually is an electronic vote. It's actually, so you can essentially vote no very easily. Of course, you can, if you're really afraid, you might wonder as some people are observing. But really for those kind of votes it's possible certainly easily to vote no. My sense is generally there is greater consensus about the need to slow down the growth and there is really, the Chinese Communist Party does one thing very well. Through the party school system, through their propaganda system and so on. Generally if they have a central policy they can disseminate it throughout the rank and file very quickly. And especially for these authorities, the people who are, for example, international people's congress. So my sense is it does reflect broad national consensus that this has to be done, this is a realistic argument in terms of it's not something that there are just a lot of lofty goals and so on. So I think actually in that sense, and also let's also compare that it's sort of higher than in previous NPC votes. So there are times when the negative votes were significantly higher. But overall though I cannot discount the possibility that with the anti-corruption campaign, local leaders are also becoming more careful. What's the point of voting no when you can vote no, vote yes. So to some extent actually one cannot fully discount such a possibility even when you have 3,000 people voting together. I'll just note that there were, the negative votes or yes votes vary across the four or five things that they write, vote on and they change over time. So there is one of the, it is not, we don't get to see the votes. One of the great things about studying American politics, a lot of Dali's colleagues at University of Chicago look at voting records of members of Congress and can do research for decades. We can't do that when we study Chinese politics because we don't know how anyone votes. But I bet you the leadership knows how everybody votes. So we're gonna come right up here. Yes sir, yes sir. Wait for the microphone please. Good afternoon, Bill Westman, North American Meat Institute. Interested in your perspective on the role of trade in the next five year plan? We hear reports about the reinvestment in the silk road going west and also rumors of China's interest in TPP type negotiations. So how does that, how do you see that playing out in the next five years? Thank you. Sounds like a Scott question. I'm just a moderator. I'm happy to answer. Yeah, go ahead. I would just say that yeah, this is obviously a key focus. I don't think we can underestimate the emphasis that's being placed on the one built one road policy. It's very clear from my last visit. I just happened to luckily coincide with when they stood up the leading group that's overseeing this. And it's very obvious that every element of the government has the message that this is extremely important and everybody's aiming for a slice of the $40 billion pie that's included. And I think it's actually much larger than that when you look at other funds. But this is a serious issue in that it does seem like one of the themes, and this goes back to Xi Jinping's policy speech to the foreign affairs work conference the last late November as well, that a key message of China's sort of approach to the international, the region and the globe is we're about trade, we're about investment, we're about growth. You saw this coming out of the APEC meeting where they signed FTAs with Australia and with South Korea and so on. And that's an implicit commentary on our failure to advance TPP. And so clearly they believe that message resonates I think with people in the region, largely I think the common view is that security is economics in the region and therefore if you're not playing on the economic piece, the security starts to look very unbalanced and so on. And so there's no doubt in my mind it's part of their strategy as to whether they wanna be part of TPP or something like that. I think their attitudes are changing, that's very clear. They used to sort of giggle about it because they didn't think it was gonna go anywhere. Then when Japan got in, they seemed to be more serious because they realized that was a geo-strategic decision, not necessarily an economic decision. And so, and obviously there are people inside the Chinese system who see TPP-like vehicles as very akin to how they use WTO in the 90s to force the system to do difficult things by being able to blame an external sort of factor. So I think that's all in the mix but the trade issue clearly is front and center for the leadership and they do want to leverage it as part of building the notion of China's peaceful rise both in the region and globally. Yeah, let me add the trade, sort of the new number for 2015 is for trade to grow by 6% but of course China has signally failed to reach those targets for the last, I think I don't know how many years so it's been several years. So you have to discount any number regarding trade because it depends on so many other factors. Although in the Chinese case actually what's interesting is it's not simply about trade, it's also about currency exchange rates and they also recognize that it doesn't make sense for the Chinese currency to drop because that drop would precipitate other drops but so they are stuck a little bit if they don't allow the Chinese currency to fall then given that all the other currencies are falling at this point, the Chinese competitiveness will be impacted to some extent. This is a very interesting situation at this moment. I do want to second Chris's comment on the one-belt, one-road argument and I think actually there does seem, you look at, I think it's what impressive is when we look at the maps, the logic there is more sort of significant in thinking about how China is reaching out to the neighboring regions in a way that grows out of the growing interactions China already has as the world's largest trader in volume at this point in terms of trading and importing whether it's natural gas and oil or other things and it's just natural for them to try to enhance that. I think actually it's really interesting and of course with AIIB or the recent development it also shows that we should be becoming more confident in pursuing some of those initiatives over time. I'll just add just one thing since this is something that I asked a lot about during my recent trip over the last 12 days in Beijing. The Silk Road has a chance to become the largest Christmas tree ever in China with hanging many gifts for many people on this and it has the potential to be a way to compensate those industries which aren't doing well, which where there's a lot of oversupply which in some ways would boost trade and investment abroad but may not have a reformist bent to it. On the other hand, there's great attention from many people I talked to about the US-China bilateral investment treaty and other initiatives that the Chinese are negotiating or observing others negotiate to perform that effect that Chris mentioned as a new discipline on reforms that they're having that are as Chris described also getting stuck and having difficulty with. So you have both of these types of things going on at the same time. The Silk Road is still just a strewn of pebbles that goes out so what it's really gonna look like what its shape is like whether it becomes a compensation package for losing industries or a part of a way to upgrade the economy overall and be a part of the reformist package I think that we still have a long ways to go on that. Yes. Bruce Reynolds retired. I wonder, Xi Jinping is going to be here in five months or so. I wonder whether any of you three would like to nominate an issue in the bilateral relationship that might be most likely to erupt and derail that visit or perhaps might be accelerated and resolved as a showpiece for the visit or both. This is really for the Washington. I'll take a stab at that. I think it's interesting, obviously we're gonna be at an interesting moment when the summit occurs because obviously by then presumably the US presidential election cycle will be well on its way to being deeply engaged and so one of the challenges for President Obama is to show he's still active. He's not entered lame duck status because Xi Jinping has seven years to go by this point. So that will be a challenge. I think one of the things that's interesting to see about the summit is how will we find areas where the two can engage where we haven't already discussed it. It's been sort of difficult. Xi Jinping is a very different leader in this regard than his predecessors, whereas they, when hearing messages they didn't like from US interlocutors, including presidents, they just wouldn't say anything. They sort of clearly disagreed but they wouldn't say anything. Xi Jinping appears to have no problem telling his US counterpart the issues he disagrees with him on, the issues that are to some degree non-negotiable. Maritime security, I think cyber unfortunately is creeping into this space and so that makes it very challenging for the US side to be able to design a policy agenda for the summit. So my own sense is that what we'll expect to see are more of sort of the soft issues that we've been seeing. So climate change, some sort of notion on bilateral investment treaty, although I think we're way too far away for them to say anything serious. But the advantage of this type of summitry is only that it is a forcing function for the two bureaucracies, to have to move on certain things and to be able to leverage that visit to attain goals. So we'll see in particular what the strategic and economic dialogue talks forthcoming have to say about setting the trajectory for the summit because if that doesn't set the table in a very direct way, then I think we should expect a fairly middling outcome from the summit. Could I add, if we look at American public opinion regarding China, so what's remarkable is over the past year, American public opinion towards China has significantly improved. First of all, how? So North Korea is regarded as the worst potential enemy. I think there is another country, probably Russia, that's number two. China doesn't even appear as one of the, so sort of is looms less as a prominent threat in that regard. And that opens up potentially, so certainly some room for the two sides to maneuver perhaps, but of course a lot of the atmosphere would have to be also created to some extent. I want to add, I do think actually the BIT could be significant in this regard, especially as we see the potential for increased trade to China and so on. I think the other issues is really cyber and all that, but there seems to be agreement that at least we need to be talking. So in that sense, it's not going to derail something unless there is another grand indictment or something. I don't think that's going to work very well anyway. So I think actually on those issues, it's fine. And this is, for the Chinese actually, this is a pragmatic leadership despite some of the ideological issues that have cropped up in China. So I think there is a serious commitment to making this relationship work. Yes, this will be our last question. My name is Robert Morrow. I'm with the Libya Policy Group, but I have a son working in China. And every time we try to discuss this particular issue, our Skype connection gets cut off. So I hope that won't happen here. With the rise of Daesh, the so-called or self-styled Islamic state, it's raising concerns in countries that have any kind of a significant Muslim minority from the United States all the way to Indonesia and Malaysia, et cetera, with the large Uyghur population that often feels itself in perceived repression and not being represented. Are minority groups like that represented in the NPC? And is there a concern among the NPC or the government that this could be a problem for China in the coming years? Well, every nationality in China, there are 56 altogether. Although the Jewish population, our old formerly Jewish population has been trying to apply for separate status. So the 56, including the Han, all of them are represented, minorities actually are represented in terms of membership on the NPC. There are more nationalities population than there are real population as a percentage. In fact, the reason is because there are some smaller minority groups, they all get representation. So therefore, as a result, actually overall, there is a greater representation. Xi, as a national leader, has been conscious, especially in bringing national minority members into the, he's actually into the central government. The latest energy, the chief of the energy administration of the state is actually, comes from Xinjiang. He used to be in Xinjiang. He was brought into Beijing. So there are a number of other officials as well. And this is actually different than in the past. Used to be the closest would be probably some Huigua, some Korean, and to have someone from the Huigua ethnic minority to join the national government is, appears to be a significant development. I did read, however, and this is not fully confirmed. I think that recently, there have been some crackdowns certain people were trying to escape China from near Guangdong, I think, actually. Basically, those are people who apparently were trying to leave China to join ISIS or something like that. And of course, in those particular cases, the Chinese government in the beginning, or especially when you read the English version of the Global Times, they were ambivalent about ISIS in the past. But there's no mistaking nowadays that they'd be very worried about ISIS. Well, that brings us to the close of the program. I think the work report in China's NPC shows that it's a work in progress and we'll hopefully be able to come back next year and see where things stand. All of you, please join me in thanking Chris Johnson and Dali Yang.