 My name is Chris Johnson. I'm the Freeman Chair in China Studies here at CSIS. And we thank you all for coming this morning to attend this event, entitled Reflections on the Obama Xi Summit, looking at what happened and what we expect to come next. And I'm very honored to be joined by such a distinguished panel today. We have the Honorable Stapleton Roy, Director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States. We have Doug Paul, Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And of course, our colleague Richard McGregor, the Washington Bureau Chief of the Financial Times, and also the author of an excellent book on the Chinese Communist Party, The Secret World of China's Communist Leaders, has graciously agreed to serve as our moderator today. So without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Richard, and we'll get started. Hi, thanks a lot. I'm just going to start straight with Ambassador Roy. First of all, is the meeting itself the very fact that it was held that both sides were willing to do it? Is that of itself a great success? And the other medium matters more than the message, in this case? I think both were important. First, a little background. I think having the meeting when it took place and in the form that it took place is important for two reasons. One, the Obama administration came into office in 2009 with a determination to try to move US-China relations in the right direction. And they deliberately handled that first year of the Obama administration with that purpose in mind. But several things have intruded over the last four and a half years. The financial crisis convinced China that its status in the world has been significantly enhanced, especially after its economy recovered. There was a pervasive view in Asia that the United States had become a declining power. And while Americans may deny it, the fact is we were thrown a bit off of our stride by the fact that our economy was not performing well. Then, beginning around 2010, the territorial disputes heated up in the East China Sea and the South China Sea. And two of the claimants were allies of the United States. The way we reacted created adverse impressions in China and affected public and official attitudes toward the United States. And developments in the Korean Peninsula and the reaction by the United States and South Korea also convinced China that our general approach to Asia, along with the rebalancing strategy, were essentially a containment strategy, whatever we chose to call it. So a combination of factors had created a growing strategic rivalry between the United States. And this was reflected in the behavior of our military establishments in the Western Pacific. Both leaders, in my judgment and based on their statements, recognized this trend and felt it was not in the interests of our country. And so a key element of the meeting was to see if we could begin a process of trying to halt and reverse the drift toward growing strategic rivalry between two countries. But the second factor, I think, that is very important is that communications between top leaders really does matter. Some people, for example, believe that the surprising security agreement between Indonesia and Australia back in 1995 was essentially a product of the good relations between Suharto and Keating, the prime minister of Australia. Whether that's true or not, the fact that they got along very well was a factor in what developed. I have in various capacities sat in on quite a number of presidential meetings between the chief state of China and the United States. And at times, these have been so awkward that nothing of real significance could be discussed in the meetings. They were too short. There were issues that each side had to raise in order to deal with their own publics. And that, together with the consecutive translation, meant the leaders were not able to engage. I think the summit meeting in California was desirable for two reasons. If the United States and China are to be successful in trying to get off to a good start in creating this new type of great power relationship, which is just a code word for, say, in reversing this drift toward strategic rivalry, it is necessary to get that process started early in the administration. While President Xi Jinping may have 10 years ahead of him as the top leader of China, President Obama barely has three and a half years left in his administration. His last year will be tied up with the election campaign that will be going on. There will be distractions. So it really is important to get started. If they had waited until the G20 meeting in St. Petersburg, they might have been able to squeeze in an hour or an hour and a half on the fringes of that meeting. That would not have permitted the broad review of the bilateral relationship that is so essential in order for these two leaders to be comfortable in dealing with each other down the road. OK, so let's look at then the substance such as it is or such as we know of it from the meeting itself. We've got, in theory, the starting to institutionalize military to military talks. We've also got some hardening of the agreement to talk more seriously about cyber, whatever that may be. Dr. Paul, what's your sense of the genuine substance of what came out of the meeting itself? Well, just to start us, I was being pressed by one journalist for historical examples of this kind of meeting. And as many of you would have responded, I thought this reminded me of the field of the cloth of gold when Henry VIII met with Francois Premier in 1520. It springs to mind. Two leaders at the beginning of their terms, trying to get things straight between France and England because there had been a lot of bloodshed. And it eventually worked. They finally, by 1837, had reached a kind of definition. And so I think you should approach these things with realistic expectations, even if you have great hopes. And I'm on the hopeful side for this meeting. I think that when the idea was first broached by the United States late last fall, early winter, from the very beginning, Chinese officials and Chinese senior officials were welcoming and positive about it. They got it. They saw that there was some benefit. The question then became timing, the right setting, not racing off to America by the new leader who had already been to the US a year ago and not having Obama running off to the Chinese. And so they had to find the right moment when both were not making big concessions to the other. And they lighted on this transit from Mexico back to China by Xi Jinping. At the same time, President Obama would have been campaigning and doing, excuse me, raising funds and doing other things in California and picked this headquarters. And then the so-called Western Camp David that was donated by the Annenberg family. In the substance, they, in advance of the meeting, agreed there'd be three big sessions. And the first session would be one dealing with strategic and big regional issues. The major setting that the State of the United States was just framing for us. And the second session would be a long meal and further discussion on those topics in more detail. And the third session would be the Saturday morning for a couple of hours. All together, I believe the total was eight hours. The morning would be on economic issues. And in the Chinese case, they asked to take the lead in the strategic discussions to bring up their points. And then they followed more informally over dinner, obviously. And then on the economic side, the US had a lot to say about some of our concerns, including the highly publicized cyber set of issues. President Xi Jinping started off with really what are reported to be not big new initiatives, not new ideas. Very familiar Chinese positions on the issues ranging from US Chinese competition through the Korean Peninsula, where in recent months in response to North Korea's behavior, China has adjusted its rhetoric and modified its behavior toward North Korean ways that appear to be sending a signal to the North that China is not happy with their recent behavior and would like to change. Very specifically, the Chinese before and then authoritatively after this meeting reordered their priorities on the Korean Peninsula from their longstanding order of stability first and nonproliferation or denuclearization second to denuclearization first and stability second, which means not everything that we might think of as a way of putting pressure on North Korea should be sacrificed in the interest of stability, which suggests there's more room to work with. And we'll have to see. There'll be further talks coming up. The, in many ways, this top-down approach is meant to tee up the coming meetings in July called the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, which has a subset called the Strategic Security Dialogue and which now has another subset on cyber dialogue. And that will involve, as has been the case for the last four years, about 300 senior officials gathering, in this case in the United States. The persons in charge have changed on both sides. Our Treasury Secretary is now Jack Lu, our leader on the other side is John Kerry, a Secretary of State. The Chinese side, Yang Jiechui is replacing Da Binghua. And the economics side is going to be led by Wang Yang, who has a kind of amorphous portfolio for economics in China. And so much of what was said in this meeting was to get positions on the table and to try to listen to the, get the other side to listen to what they wanted to move along in this upcoming set of meetings in July. I think we can go into more specifics on the economic side. I'll just remark that President Xi sort of gave a sense of where he wants to go. And it's an interesting situation now because China had a new leadership in the party in November in the state structure in March. And in May, they've announced their short-term economic objectives through a speech by the Premier. But the big event of the coming year is going to be the third party plenum, which will take place October, November, this fall. And in the advance to that, Mr. Liu He from the Development and Reform Commission, a very powerful position, has assembled seven panels to address the big key issues in China, household registration reforms, state-owned enterprise reform. And these are all supposed to report back to the leadership before this third plenum in the fall. So there's a lot that's in the air, a lot that's pregnant. So it's a good time to put issues on the table. It's not a good time to get answers to what the outcomes are gonna be. You shouldn't be looking for outcomes in the short-term. Nor will we get much, I suspect, in outcomes on the economic side during the S&ED in July because it'll still be awaiting the outcomes. Mr. Liu He was at the meeting, but the speaking was done by Xi Jinping, not his precarious officials who were there. I don't think he was at the table, though, from memory. I didn't see him at one, I think he was involved. Who's there? The one thing that people took away from this was that the overwhelming concern that was expressed by Xi is on China's over-capacity. Dealing with that as a first priority, steel, aluminum, chemicals. And these are sort of obvious to most economists who've been watching the situation. What was also interesting was what was not on the first-year agenda, the short-term reform agenda. Some of these big, difficult issues, and most notably, state-owned enterprises, looks like it's gonna be for the out-years, for any time soon. And a lot of us could have guessed that as well. But I think this is, both sides got to frame the issues and to have a pretty rich exchange. And the president, as you've seen in the press accounts, pressed very hard on the cyber theft of intellectual property rights, which is big in the news. Yeah, well, let me come to that. I mean, some people have said, and Mike and Patriot Kevin Rudd said this is wrongly portrayed as the cyber summit. But then Tom Donilon after the meeting said that cyber was central to the relationship, was central to the economic relationship. We didn't hear anything about currency or anything like that. He was remarkably, I thought, strong on that. So, I mean, is cyber central to the relationship? Is it exaggerated? I think you have to make a distinction between whether cyber is central to the relationship or was the US economic relationship? Right, economic relationship, even that. Or was the US simply trying to get the point across in the most direct and blunt manner possible? And I think to understand that properly, you have to look at, as Doug was pointing out, they spent the first meeting basically exchanging views on their strategic outlook, and in particular, the domestic challenges that they're facing and the components and the things that they're worried about. And I think for President Obama, to have, I'm sure, expressed during that discussion and looking at the US economic challenges and the troubles we're facing here, how to get lift back in our own economy, one of the key ways to do that is innovation and those sort of things. So, I think it gave the President an easy opportunity, then, when they shifted to the subject of cyber to go into that narrow lane, which the US has been trying to do on this issue of cyber theft and theft of intellectual property and the long-term damage that that does to US economic competitiveness. And I would imagine that the discussion was something along the lines of, just spent the first session telling you about these challenges, and this is a direct threat to my ability to answer those challenges and move forward. So, I think it was a bit more about messaging, in particular about what the US side, for example, will expect out of this cyberworking dialogue that we've agreed to. I think by pushing very hard on the issue and emphasizing that it is about IPR and theft of our intellectual property, the message is this working group had better show something practical, pretty quick. It can't devolve into something like the six-party talks where we just talk and talk and talk, and yet denuclearization, the key goal, doesn't advance. So, I think that was the purpose. I don't think they're saying that, you know, somehow this is the sine qua non of their relationship. If they are saying that, I think we're in for trouble because the Chinese will not accept that. The, let's come back to a point that you were making, beyond cyber. And I'm interested in getting the Chinese perspective. We always get a better readout, of course, on the American side than we do from the Chinese side. The Chinese talking a lot about great power relations or as they call it in their media, major power relations, which you said was just code for the strategic rivalry. Other people might go further than that and say what China really wants or really means by that is kind of a condominium effect. You know, you have your area of influence, we have ours. And they would like to, you know, if not in the longer term, supplant or replace the U.S. in Asia. Is that the sort of thing you think that message that Xi Jinping would like to have gotten across in the meeting? No. There undoubtedly are Chinese who think that way. But China has a lot of wise and experienced policy makers who recognize that they cannot create a new type of great power relationship with the United States based on China gradually pushing the United States out of the Western Pacific. That's not going to happen. And I think the Chinese know that. That doesn't mean that they wouldn't like to see it happen. But I think you have to distinguish between what your druthers would be in a world where other great powers didn't exist and what you can actually accomplish. My sense of the discussions in California was that was not a theme that the Chinese even hinted at. Nor was it a discussion of a condominium type of arrangement. The focus was how do two great powers like the United States and China manage their bilateral relationship so that the balance between cooperation and competition in the relationship favors the cooperation side and that's put on a stable long-term basis. This was the thrust of what they were talking about and in the course of that, they had to deal with the difficult issues such as for us, the cyber theft issue is a major issue affecting the viability and the competitiveness of our economy. So that's why it was put front and center not because it's the key issue in the relationship but it's a very important issue from the standpoint of the United States. Just on this point, I think it's worth noting that in the public and private presentations from the Chinese side, they acknowledge the legitimacy of the US involvement in working on the issues on the Korean Peninsula and the other areas around China. So they've already sort of given up the idea of pushing us out. They're not working with us on problems that we confront together. But what about the issue of so-called core interests or sovereign interests that China has and has been speaking more loudly about South China Sea Sengkaku Diao-Yutai issue? What was your understanding of what transpired there or what position China was putting there? Well, there were a couple of reports from Kyoto and the Sahishimbo in which said that sea had specifically referred to the Sengkaku Diao-Yutai Islands as a core interest. And I know that's not true. It's gotten into the media and being circulated but there's no basis for that. However, it wasn't said, let's get that clear. Secondly, China has drawn a picture of what its core interests are, character of the regime, protecting of its territories and preservation of the integrity of the Chinese state. And I'm not getting it precisely right but it's these broad categories, any of which could touch on these disputes. But they're not out there in your face saying this is a core issue, back off. Let me just touch on that issue because there was agreement between the two sides that a goal should be mutual respect for each other but that wasn't put in terms of the narrow question that we have to respect this particular issue, et cetera. In other words, it was carried out on a basis looking for ways that the two sides could agree on the way to develop the relationship. That's just two quick points on that. I think on the one hand, the administration demonstrated I think through the talks and has been for a while that they understand the problematic issue of core interests and they've been telegraphing to the Chinese very clearly we're not signing on to that. They learned the lesson, if you will, of 2009 in the joint statement that was done at that time. On the issue of new style, great power relations, I think that to put across the idea that the Chinese see that as somehow pushing the US out of Asia doesn't give them enough credit for being sophisticated. I think their approach is not that. What I do think they're doing though however with that idea is this concept of pitching to the US side, we're already equals, we are no longer the subordinate party in this relationship and as such we wanna be treated that way and I don't mean in terms of protocol and things like that, I mean in terms of you recognize our power and this is where there is kind of a spheres of influence element to it. Well what does that mean and I know the US has been very sensitive about this, about how US allies in the region would look upon this meeting, particularly obviously Japan. The US has a balancing act with them as well. They must not only obviously remain good allies and perform the obligations of allies but of course the allies expect them to have a good relationship with China as well. What message comes out of this summit do you think for allies in particular Japan? My sense is that this issue was front and center in White House thinking and State Department thinking for that matter in preparing for the summit. They recognized there would be great sensitivity among our friends and allies, indeed among all the countries of Asia over how the United States and China dealt with each other. So both in the talks and in the way that we briefed the allies there was recognition of how important this is to them. So for example, immediately after the summit our allies were briefed by the White House on what had taken place and I think that was an important development. On the issue coming back to the issue of military to military talks, this is obviously something that the U.S. has been seeking for some time. When it's got going in the past, it's often been quickly upended by issues like Taiwan and arms sales to Taiwan. The President, one of the first things he talked about on Friday down in California was the fact that they had agreed to this. The Chinese have been a lot less explicit about that. What's your understanding of what they have agreed to and what form the military to military talks will take? I've been watching this very closely and it's not just the summit. When Xi Jinping came to the United States as Vice President a year and a half ago, the White House proposed and the Chinese took a little time agreeing to a visit by sea to the Pentagon. In the event they agreed, in the event he seems to have had a great time visiting over there. And he came back and put the word out, let's start getting mill to mill going better. And shortly after he assumed power as head of the military commission, I happened to be in Beijing and I was invited to dinner with the new person in charge of this relationship day to day, General Xi Jianguo, and I was blown away. I've been dealing with these guys for 30 years and this was a new kind of approach, a new openness, clearly well bestowed from it on top. And since then others have gone and mixed with him and increasingly higher ranking officials from the US, most authoritatively the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of just a month ago. They've come back and said this is real, they wanna get to talk with us and to start exchanging views about how we operate, even more transparent. Now this is gonna take time to unfold. But why is that, why the change? I think we had a very unproductive cycle going. There were, starting with 1989 we shut off, it was a fairly deep relationship between the two militaries for Tiananmen. Then we had 1998 and the Belgrade bombing and then the EP3 incident in 2001. And it always seemed to be when we were ready to talk, they shut the door on us. And when they were ready to talk, we shut the door on them. And this was getting just more and more suspicion. You know, all these intelligence collections, ships and planes are out there. They get close to each other. We've had incidents in 2009 where they got real too close. And so this needs to be managed better. And finally, very top in China has said, let's take charge of it. I would make an implicit criticism of the weakness of the Hu Jintao period where he never did take charge of it. And Xi Jinping seems to be much more in command. I would agree with that 100%. I think there's a domestic political angle here for Xi Jinping in that, as Doug just pointed out, President Hu Jintao would make these noises with President Obama in particular when they would have their meetings. Yes, this was after the Taiwan arms sales cycle. Yes, we need to get the relationship back going, but he wouldn't go back home and order it within the system. Xi Jinping made the same commitment when he came and visited in 2012, and then he went back and made the changes. I also think that there are, this touches on a series of these areas where there have been at least suspicion or issues related that suggest that the military commanders are doing their own thing in some of these sensitive areas in the South China Sea and East China Sea and so on. So by engaging more deeply with the US and using that as a command order coming out of the top, it not only speaks to Xi's position as the chairman of the military commission internally, but also his status as the chief interlocutor with the United States. So I think it allows him to also improve that internal coordination system by suggesting that they have this better relationship. I think the interesting thing to watch. And perhaps also allows him to set the agenda more. Yes, that's what I was just gonna say. So I think the interesting thing to watch is now that there is this warmer atmosphere, that the challenge for the Pentagon may be, how much of this can we do under the restraint of NDA 2000? And I think that's gonna be the next thing we have to watch very, very carefully. There is this very important policy component though. I mean, it would be empty talk, which President Xi Jinping says harms the country to talk about creating a new type of great power relationship if you don't address the military component. Great point. And I was struck by the fact that State Councilor Yang Jiecher in his post-Summit briefing referred to creating a new type of military to military relationship between them countries. We haven't been talking in quite that term. But that shows clearly that the Chinese relate the military component to the broader strategic goal of creating this new type of relationship that can contain and push in the right direction the strategic rivalry component. And again, I think it's very consistent with what we see domestically Xi doing, which is integrating these various pieces as all part of the strategy. In the case of the domestic strategy with the foreign strategy, likewise you've got to have a military component to your foreign strategy. So all of which adds up in theory, and you can disagree with this, it's early days in Xi Jinping, but he appears to be much more in command than Hu Jintao obviously took over the military much more quickly. He is of course though still part of a collective leadership. What are the last few months in particular some have told you about his position expanding from what Chris said domestically? He is part of a collective leadership. That's probably one reason why he was perhaps more scripted than we would have anticipated for a very informal type of conversation such as was set up in California. But there's a reason for that. If you are representing a collective leadership, you have to be careful that you are reflecting a consensus view within the leadership. And he conducted himself consistent with that, but at the same time he projects the self-confidence that you would expect from somebody who is the first among equals. Well, let me take that one level down. I think the collective leadership element is important, but I think my sense is the scripted, the more scripted nature than we might have expected has a lot more to do with what Doug was speaking about earlier, which is that things are hot in Beijing right now with what they're gonna do at the plenum. It's a very sensitive juncture. It's a serious fight internally, and it's not in his interest to give point-scoring opportunities to people who are opposing what they might be seeking to do with the reform program. So I think it would be incorrect to suggest that he's somehow still mired in this collective leader. I think he's far stronger within the current collective leadership than Hu Jintao was, but we'll see what comes out the other side of the plenum. Of course, Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi had 50 minutes alone together with interpreters. Mr. Donilon didn't tell us after the meeting what they discussed in those 50 minutes. Can you enlighten us all on that? Well... We gotta find the lip-reader with the telescope, who can tell us what happened. I think debriefing the interpreters should be the job, don't ya? It's never worked. I think the interpreters never worked. We were not briefed on the private conversation. Okay. Just wanna ask you one thing about cyber, perhaps, before and soon after that, we'll go back to the questions. You know, I think the... I know we distinguish between cyber-recipionage and, as the administration says, cyber-enabled economic theft. But I think the Chinese have been quite cynical about U.S. complaints about this in the past. We now have the extraordinary spectacle of Edward Snowden in Hong Kong. I don't think that was a part of the summit, but I just... We hope not. I just wanted to get your perspective on that and whether that could become a potentially very difficult bilateral issue. Anybody wanna comment on that? I haven't really reluctant to comment because we know so little about this case. We've had... He's evidently been working with these journalists since January. Layers of things that they have intended to reveal, some maybe harmful, some maybe not. Recent blog said he's been learning Mandarin that raises questions about where has his intention been running all along, maybe explaining why he's in Hong Kong and not some other place where he's been outside the reach of American law for a period of time. I'm reluctant to draw conclusions but I think there's just too much we don't know that will unfold over the time ahead. I would agree with that. I guess I would add, though, that if from the Chinese perspective, and they don't have to do anything, this guy's giving them a gift every day. And it does, I think, make the challenge for the US higher. And I wonder, even though it is compressed time between now and the first meeting of the cyberworking group, would China have been going in with one strategy perhaps slightly more contrite into those discussions and now perhaps maybe less so? Less so. It definitely muddies the waters. When you try to be very clear about theft of intellectual property by internet means and they can come back and say, well, you're stealing people's telephone numbers and all this, it's hard to have a clear debate and so it's useful to those who don't want to take action. Okay, so we'll have questions? Yeah, Chris. That sounds good. So if you, to tell you affiliation, name and affiliation. Right, standard procedure here is please wait for the microphone to come to you and then also please state your name and your affiliation. Feel free to call as you like. So hands up, anybody? Up the back. Hi, everyone. Hi, everyone. My name is Vina Lee. I was a previous intern at the Wilson Center and I just graduated from the George Washington University. Stand up if you like. Okay, thank you for the panel's comment today and I have a question. We talk about a lot about the core interest or the common ground between the US and China and I want the panel to address what specific common ground China and US share because when it comes to, like recently this morning, I heard a news that America is sending weapons to Syria and which is really threatening to, in China's, in Beijing's view, that's the security side and in terms of the economic side, like China has been the biggest import of oil from Afghanistan as well as raw material from Africa and which are really alarming to the United States too. So I would like the panel to address that issue. Thank you very much. Who would like to have a go at that? I'll lead off on the question. You cite Syria, I could cite a hundred other things, areas where we have differences or not identical views with China but there are a host of very important issues in which we and China either find areas for cooperation or have common views. One of the very significant elements that came out of the summit meeting in California was the fact that the United States and China speaking together identified the North Korean nuclear issue as an area for cooperation between the two countries and as a very important issue. That's a very significant factor because in recent years, we in China have had some differences over handling issues on the Korean Peninsula and now that has emerged as a strong factor. The fact that we had an agreement on hydrofluorocarbons was designed to demonstrate as it was clarified in the briefings afterwards that we in China intend to work together on issues of global warming. Again, an important area. The overall tenor of the discussions reflected specifically in State Councilor Young-Jetcher's briefing afterwards which included the statement that the areas of cooperation between the United States and China in East Asia far exceed the areas of difference. That's a Chinese official spokesperson making that statement. So I think it's wrong to think that the fact that we have differences with China on many different areas means that's the dominant factor in the relationship. The point I like to emphasize to illustrate this point is that bilateral trade is a form of cooperation. Our trade with China now is in excess of $500 billion a year. The highest trade that we ever had with the Soviet Union during the Cold War was four and a half billion dollars in 1979. So our trade with China is 100 times greater than it ever was with the Soviet Union. That's why people who think that the competitive, conflictual elements in the bilateral relationship are greater than the cooperative elements and who think that we're in a Cold War posture with each other simply don't understand the historical record and the nature of our current relationship with China. That first. One observation I've not seen made is one I'm gonna make in a moment. We Americans tend not to be very good at conceptual kinds of diplomacy. Henry Kissinger is a big exception, he's great at this sort of thing. The Chinese tend to be intensively conceptual. These important statements, four character phrases, things like that that capture the relationship and then the principles go down and people implement them at the detail level. We like to start with the details and work out pragmatic solutions to problems. And we seldom have kind of a conceptual breakthrough. I think we may be seeing a conceptual breakthrough in the US-China relations. And it is about the phrase that came from the Chinese, the new type of great power relationship. But the content of that, the conceptual content, and this may not be borne out over time something to watch, is that we have agreed to avoid getting into the classic security dilemma of a rising power and the resident power going to war. That's an important concept. It's kind of like the concept we had with the Chinese through the 1980s of working in common against the Soviet Union. Both were negative objectives, but of hugely beneficial negative objectives. So I think this is one place to watch as we go forward. I would just add that one thing I found encouraging along these lines is that I think it's fair to say that in the past couple of years, as there was some drift in the relationship, as Stave talked about, a lot of the emphasis on areas of cooperation were on big global issues, climate change, international finance, G20, these sort of things, all very important issues obviously. One thing that I thought was very helpful about the summit was that there was an effort to drill down on the important bilateral areas of tension. So the Mill-Mill focus, the North Korea focus, I think that really is a signal of China's interest in advancing. They seem to now be coming along, if you will, to what I think the US side has been saying for some time, that those larger issues are obviously important, but if we can't get the bilateral mechanics working properly, it's pretty hard to then expand the cooperation on those more greater global issues. Just to point, yeah, you. Yes, yep, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Right, yes, you, on your fate, yeah. Good, good, that's a moment. Yeah, I'll be honest with you. Okay, thank you very much. I'm Liu Zun-Yi from Shanghai Institute for International Studies. I'm a VC fellow in CSS now. In the, in President Xi and President Obama summits, both sides agreed to increase military to military communication dialogue. I think it's important because I found in the past several years in US policy to rebalance to East Asia, I think the military rule is too important from the United States. But I also think that search issues, for example, China's threat, cyber security, and cyber weapons to Taiwan, all those issues are related to a military, industry complex in the United States. So, I think many, You've got to ask a question. Yeah, many policies in past several years either from Department of Defense, not from other departments. So, if both sides want to establish new type of grid power relations, I would like to know how United States balance your domestic military group, especially the military, industry complex interests. So, I guess the question is, how does the White House rest control of China policy from the Pentagon? If you accept that premise, but seriously, if we have, does the Pentagon have, as the question suggests, a too larger role, or is the military issues having too large a role in setting policy? I would put it this way, I seem to recall there's a Chinese saying that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. In other words, we have a long way to go to get our military relationship where we want it to be. And as I think Doug or Chris referred to earlier, the military to military aspect of our relationship has largely been undeveloped for the last two decades. We are now not just taking a single step, we're taking a whole series of steps designed to get our militaries in closer contact with each other with a view to trying to establish a better military to military communications. So, the Chinese have been invited to take place in the Pacific Rim military exercises, it'll be the first time they've ever participated in a multilateral exercise of this type with the United States. Last week I was down at our National Defense University meeting with a large group of newly minted Chinese generals and admirals who were visiting the United States as part of their orientation program for their new responsibilities as flag rank officers. It's precisely this, and we had a very frank and open discussion about many of the issues that we've been talking about here. So it's precisely these sorts of things it seems to me that are important in trying to move the relationship in the direction we want to go, but it's going to be a long journey. I think it's important to add as well that there was perhaps in the early days of the rebalance rollout too much of a military emphasis. And I think the administration understood that and they recognized it and they subsequently recalibrated to make it a much broader approach with economics and trade and so on. So I think that's important. I don't disagree with anything that's been said. I just note that when you hit the on button at the Pentagon, things start doing, moving, unlike most other bureaucracies. And so suddenly everybody's giving speeches, everyone's got the orders, and it's an institutional bureaucratic reality. You kind of get more noise in one direction from the Pentagon once you start the button than you do from other. And I think the administration did by August last year start to realize that it was too military, not an economic or diplomatic enough initiative, and they've been trying to rebalance the rebalance. Rebalance the rebalance, right. Doug Spellman. Doug Spellman from the Kissinger Institute at the Wilson Center. This has been extremely valuable and informative from my point of view. It's also been very positive. And I wonder if our panelists could comment on anything not so positive. Were there any, were there any worrying things that came out of the summit? Beyond the fact that, of course, we have to see what happens about these positive things, but were there specific things that concern you or point to future difficulties rather than pointing to, and I'm delighted to hear that your assessment is mostly positive, but were there things that worry you? I think it's a good question. It's been a pretty bullish panel. Chris, you're called water on it. Well, I don't know if I'll do that, and maybe lukewarm water, but no, I do think there are some issues. I don't think they're necessarily troubling or worrisome. It's just as I think both Doug and Stapes had in their opening remarks, this is a beginning of a conversation, right? And so we still don't fully, the gears don't fully work smoothly yet at this point. For example, on North Korea, I think, yes, tremendous progress has been made. Xi Jinping, it seems to me, has fundamentally reoriented the prioritization of the so-called three-nose on North Korea, now putting denuclearization ahead of no war and no instability, and that's very significant, and I think it reflects a decision that only he could make within their system, and the bureaucracy will reflect that and understand that and so on. So that's all very positive. The question is, with what aim has he done that? Is it truly to denuclearize the peninsula or is it to get North Korea back in line? And is this part of, you know, the sort of Chinese, that one thing, we've talked a lot about new style, great power relations as it applies to the United States, and I think that's very important. There's another key theme that's been running in Chinese official media, with Xi's various overseas trips that talks about a new style, great power diplomacy, which is different than new style, great power relations. That's reserved for the US. Great power diplomacy is for everybody else. And to some degree, that includes the North Koreans, and I think the message is, lips and teeth and things of this, it's gone. You know, we're dad, you're the child, you will get into line. So I think we just have to have realistic expectations on something like that. So I think there's a danger that the US side will see the Chinese as having turned the ship too much on North Korea and not be realistic about what's really going on there. A second one I think is cyber. You know, this is, some progress was made. I think the Chinese were quite dismissive of the push that was made by the US side. And I think that's problematic because I think the US was attempting to signal very clearly to them that we do expect a monsterable progress in the working group, you know, that will go through, I don't know if there's a number of rounds that they've already decided, but there has to be, they need to see a diminution in these kind of attacks. And I have to say that personally, I do not see the incentive structure for the Chinese at this stage to do that. And so I think there, it's, so there's a lot of uncertainty. I wouldn't say there are negative trends. I just think we're making some progress in some of these lanes, but it could be problematic as we go forward just because we have different views about what we're trying to do here in a lot of these key issues. I'm more optimistic than Chris actually on the cyber issue. I think the reasons for your pessimism are justified, but I think that the reality is that this is the cyber theft issue really matters to the United States and it will have an adverse, I referred earlier to the polling in China. They showed that the odd in disputes and other things had lowered public support for the bilateral relationship. This issue has the potential to lower public support in the United States for what we're trying to do in creating this new type of great power relationship. The Chinese cannot be blind to that. And secondly, I think the United States has retaliatory power in areas that matter to China and we don't want to get into that sort of a tipped, protap thing. But I think you answered Doug's question accurately. It has to do with expectations. If you are disappointed because the Chinese didn't agree with all of our positions at the summit, then you'll think that the event was a failure. But that's not what you look for. All of the neurologic issues in the relationship were thoroughly reviewed, none of them was solved. But in some cases, small steps were taken to create mechanisms for seeing if there's a way to bring them under control. So managing differences and expanding areas of cooperation was what the purpose of the summit was about and it essentially accomplished that purpose, which is why I put a positive spin on the way I saw the talks going. I would just highlight the maritime disputes of being really tough. And while the president took a lot of time to explain the depth of our commitment to our allies and friends and the strength of that commitment in reality, the Chinese took equally strong positions above their assertions of sovereignty over those territories. And so this is not easily gonna get resolved. It's probably not with a whole lot of involvement directly by us, but we certainly play a role and the Chinese would like us to facilitate and we'd like them to be more concessionary. We've got a long way to go on that. But having said that, I think the message you should come away with from my presentation, I suspect the others, is that it is quite positive. This is not just an event that happened on a weekend that we talk of it. In the run up to this, and each of us has had our own experience, we've been exposed to very high levels in China. I've been out of office a long time and they still make time for someone like me because they wanna talk about how do we work our way through this at high level? And I don't get a sense of insincerity about this. I think we've got an opportunity that if we fail to grab it, we're gonna really regret it. Let me just add very briefly to that by saying that I think the challenge is if there's a bumper sticker for the summit, it's now that we understand each other better or if you wanna go as far as saying, now that we're friends, let's get to work. Because this is where the gears are gonna grind. So I think the S&ED process is the first real test of this because they don't have a lot of time. It's a difficult situation in China. There's specific things we wanna get done and it'll be an interesting manifestation of whether we're moving in this new direction. I wanna make a statement that some will maybe see as partisan, it's not meant to be. But I don't see us as well prepared for the S&ED as I see the Chinese. I wouldn't disagree. I see them operating at a level, an up-tempo on dealing with us that I don't see the counterpart for in our senior ranks. I agree. Yep, you. Thank you very much for the discussion. My name's Aina with the Waste of American Mandarin Service. With regard to Snowden case and this guy, I think two days ago gave the interview to a China Morning Post claiming that the United States has been hacking to Chinese computer system for over 10 years, maybe 15 years. And for a couple of days, the Chinese state media has been very quiet and all of a sudden they open their mics. China Daily, official China Daily claim that the incident could be a impediments to US-China relations and the official people's dailies Global Times use very strong language saying that the United States is playing a trick of thief-crying. And given that context, what do you think this incident to the impact of the incident to the future possible cooperation between US and China on cyber security issue? Thank you. I mean, I would just say that I think it highlights how difficult the issue is. That there is mutual recrimination on both sides about these type of activities. On the Chinese media, I think part of the reason why they were quiet for the preceding days was because there's been a holiday in China, so they weren't focused. And it's also important, one thing that always drives me personally crazy and I think my colleagues may agree, Global Times is not an official media organ. It does not reflect the views of the propaganda department necessarily. Sometimes it can, sometimes it doesn't. So it's always inflammatory and we shouldn't take official Chinese sort of viewpoints from outlets like Global Times. But I think what it does do is to the degree that the US side perhaps may have had, if you wanna call it that, the moral high ground or was attempting to demonstrate the moral high ground, this considerably modifies the waters. The facts of the matter aside, I think it does muddy the waters. It's also interesting, I think you have to draw the distinction between what the Chinese media will churn out as part of its own self-fulfilling obligations and what the leaders actually think and how they will approach the issue. Sheldon. Sheldon Ray, Morgan Stanley. On the cyber issue, which is gonna be extremely difficult as you mentioned, assuming China agrees, maybe unlikely to cooperate to China's the wild west of hacking, how could they possibly rein it in even with the desire? I mean, even if they create a anti-hacking gestapo and then fail to rate it in to our satisfaction and then how do they explain that to us? We've tried and failed. What can they do? There's a close correlation to the kind of theft of corporate processes and technologies that are of commercial application to these establishment of the indigenous innovation policy in China. One has to look at that correlation and see a connection, an official connection where official bodies began to collect information and shared it with Chinese firms to make them more competitive. There's a seamlessness about it. Someday we may have all the evidence but it's a correlation right now. That correlation suggests that if they feel the pain enough or anticipate feeling pain early enough, they can take the official aspect of theft out. That will not stop all the high school kids who are down in their parents' basements and doing stuff. Like Doritos. That's, there are three broad categories. One is kinetic activity where one country prepares to do something to another country in time of war. We're not gonna sit down and talk about those things. Second category is collection of intelligence. We're gonna continue to collect anything we can and we're gonna, you know, increasingly are trying to stop people from collecting against us. That's a unilateral thing. You don't do that bilaterally. Someday maybe there'll be a multilateral convention for a long way from that. The third thing is this theft of intellectual property through official means. And this is something where we can establish ways of imposing a cost on China if they keep doing it because it's imposing a cost on our growth strategy. And I think President Obama did a very credible job from what I understand in expressing to the Chinese that if we're gonna move from the recession period, restructuring of our economy to moving into a new source of growth, this is gonna be more and more important to protecting our sources of good ideas, processes, things that give us competitive advantage. And if China's gonna try to steal that from us, this is not gonna be a basis for a good relationship. That's what Donald was reflecting in his post-Summit briefing. And earlier in his speech to the Asian Society in March 11th. Down the front. It's coming, it's coming, hold on. I'm Mitzi Worth, I'm with the Naval Postgraduate School. I'm really impressed with this. And my question is, how are you gonna get this information out? So academics teach this rather than sort of Cold War thinking which is what they were trained in. And I'm really serious about this. I think it's terribly important that the country gets to understand the nuance and the sophistication. That's a hard thing to do, and I recognize it. But I think you ought to have a campaign to educate the rest of us so we're not back into state on state. It's all state on state. Give Chris a show on Fox News to start with. No, no, thank you. No, thank you. Well, I mean, not to plug our own organization, but of course, we will put this event up on the web that'll be available for anyone who wants to see it. People have to know to pull. That's true. And the question is, how do you push these ideas out? I mean, John Stewart's offered a few months making a movie so you can't get it on there. Well, one of the ways I think is precisely to have these kind of events. So as I was thinking about hosting this event before I had even contacted Doug and Stape to graciously join the panel, I was thinking, you know, is there any there there? You know, at the end of the day, did they really achieve anything? Is it worth doing? And the more I thought about it, the more I thought we do need to have a dialogue on this topic because it's important. And I agree especially with Doug's point, which is that this is a critical juncture and we need to get these ideas out there in the best manner we can, at least from our seat here in Washington. Let me add to that, all three of our organizations, I mean CSIS, the Carnegie Endowment, the Kissinger Institute of the Wood-Wilson Center, carry out programs designed to enable intelligent people to think intelligently about the issues in U.S.-China relations. That's an important part of the process. But it's only part of the process. If our leaders believe that having the U.S.-China relationship move toward greater cooperation rather than greater strategic rivalry, they have a responsibility to try to create a public opinion that will be supportive of that policy direction. In both countries, we are not doing an adequate job in that area. We've just been through a presidential campaign in the United States in which the Republican candidates, with the sole exception of John Huntsman, were engaged in China bashing. If they had been elected president, they would in other words have damaged the public opinion attitudes that they needed to support a policy of dealing constructively with China. So I think this is an area where our political leaders need to understand that the way they talk about sensitive issues has to be consistent with the strategic goal of our policies. And if our strategic policies are designed to try to prevent strategic rivalry from becoming the dominant factor in our relationship, they need to talk that way. I would agree with that and just add that, this is an area where rhetoric has to match action. And when the administration comes out, it's not unique to the administration, this is a problem on both sides I think, comes out and says the future of our economic development is in Asia and so on. Those kinds of speeches, those kinds of comments seem to come up when the president is getting ready to go to a trip to Asia, whether to China or for the EAS or so on. All know it's real when he's campaigning in Iowa or Texas or some of these areas and gives a talk about how Chinese investment in the United States is good for growth here in the country and for promoting U.S. jobs, this sort of thing. That's when we're gonna start to see the type of impact you're referring to, I think. And when Cepheus follows through and supports. Right. It doesn't nitpick every deal. Just one final observation. The other end, the receiving end of what you're suggesting. American academic pattern has been to become more and more theoretical and more and more statistical. And finding regional studies people and people who assess policies is getting harder and harder to do because the fields don't get, people who do that kind of work don't get promoted in their fields. And so we have a kind of problem getting to the university world. We'd probably have to go directly to the American people rather than through a university. Going to the blue shirt. You had one, yeah. And then. Thank you very much. My name's John. I'm a student at SICE right now. And thank you for this great discussion. I wanna follow up on that a little bit and talk about in the last several years the term G2 thrown out there a lot. I know this might go back to the whole state and state strategic rivalry thing, but I think it's important. And a lot in the West has been this talk of what a G2 would look like and how that would affect international issues for China to be a responsible stakeholder than they would want to, we would want them at least to be more involved. In several years time for now, will the G2 actually look more like what China seems to be offering? Which is essentially, US continues to lead on issues around the world that they're doing or not doing right now. And China hopefully becomes, I mean continues to be like an economic powerhouse. So, and we stay in our backyard and they essentially stay in their backyard with some of our Navy ships roaming the Asian Pacific. Is this essentially what a G2 would actually look like several years from now? There is no G2 and there won't be a G2. It's the wrong term for trying to convey an idea that needs to be conveyed in a different fashion. The G8 or the G20 are generally viewed as beatings among the key countries whose policies will determine how issues are addressed. In other words they have an executive function almost if you will. Nobody in the world, including China and the United States, think that China and the United States should try to set rules for the rest of the world. I think it's the wrong way of conceptualizing it. It's unfortunate at the moment that Franco-German relations are not particularly good in the EU. But the example of France and Germany in the EU is a much more accurate way of thinking about the issue. In the EU nothing can get done on a major scale if France and Germany are not able to work together on it. And yet the EU has many other very equally powerful countries but it's the Franco-German cooperative factor that has been responsible for the progress in the EU. Think of the world the same way. There are so many issues in the world where if China and the United States don't work together the issues cannot be effectively addressed. But that's very different from the concept that is conveyed by use of the term G2. But that doesn't negate the fact that cooperation between the United States and China is so important. And we need another way of conveying that important. Is this term essentially defeating the term? Yes, in my judgment. The way I respond to this term is to say that US-China cooperation on many issues and not all is the necessary component but never the sufficient component to deal with all of these things. The G2 came from this building first in 1979 and people often forget that without getting particular about whose idea it was. I wasn't here at the time. And the G2 at that time was conceived to be Tokyo and Washington. Tokyo was the ascendant economic power and they were gonna make all the decisions. This is one of those transient notions that you can allow pass by if you'd like. Okay, the woman, yeah, on the side there in the middle. Hi, my name is Mariana Vengua-Cham with McLarty Associates. And my question's regarding Chinese-Latin American relations given that Xi Jinping had just finished his tour of Latin America was Chinese engagement in the region, something at all discussed and the US position on that as well. This is the last part of the talk. Sorry, one more time. Sorry, my question is... That's just the last part. Was Chinese growing engagement in Latin America and the US position on this engagement at all discussed during the summit? Oh, nice. I don't think so. My memory from the briefing is that it was mentioned but not discussed. I mean, I would just add that I think another, this is another one of those areas where some discussion would be it's China trying to demonstrate the Monroe Doctrine no longer applies and they can play in our backyard and these sort of things. I think that's totally ridiculous and overwrought. Okay, that. Thank you. My name is Janet Benini. I manage a bilateral agreement for the US Department of Transportation with China's Ministry of Transport. When I was in China last week, I observed some subtle impacts of President Xi's campaign against corruption. And I wonder if you feel that will be a successful campaign and what the impact will be on US-China relations. My personal measure of this is the price of Bordeaux wine. Because in the rampant corruption of recent years, giving a case of the highest quality Bordeaux wine was a way of getting access to officials. I think Lafite prices collapsed in Hong Kong. They have collapsed since Xi Jinping came in. And so something's happening. Also, the Chinese infatuation with Fancy Swiss Watches, which was at a zenith a couple of months ago, as these stores are now starving for business over China. The short answer to your question is, the China's leaders recognize that corruption has become a potentially destabilizing issue in China. And therefore it requires very strong measures by the government and the party to try to bring the problem under control. They're not going to be able to eliminate it, but it's dangerous for China to have the levels of corruption that now exist continue without strong measures to try to tamp them down. And they've put a strong figure, Wang Qishan, in charge of the Discipline and Inspection Commission. Is he going to be successful in that role? The answer is with the greatest difficulty. But if this is not an issue that has to be solved, it has to be addressed. And if they take vigorous measures consistently to address the corruption issue, they can probably gain some measure of credit from the public that they are at least trying to deal with the question. My understanding is that in laying out his goals for China at the summit that this was specifically mentioned by President Xi Jinping, he recognizes that this is an area which is in danger of getting wildly out of control. I would just add to that that I think at some level the corruption issue is a matter of psychology for Xi Jinping as a son of the party and someone who believes in those revolutionary ideals in some way, perhaps more so than some of his colleagues. I think he has been shocked to understand the depths of it, especially I think in the military. And I think the other points I would just raise are atmospheric, which is that, and I'm sure you guys have had similar experiences when you talk to your colleagues in contacts in China, they all feel this is very real this time. And they don't know how long it's gonna go and they don't know the outcome. And I think the typical part for us as outside observers is I don't think we'll see the kind of traditional, shall we say big cases out of this program. I think this is all gonna be done very artfully behind the scenes by Wang Qishan, a very competent person to try to bring these people into line and to be able to have some demonstrable results as state said to show the public that they're addressing the issue, not trying to solve it. Hop, yes, hop right down, yeah. Very good distinction. Well, my name is Tomoyuki Tono, I'm visiting the Federal Center for New American Security. I think it is not unusual that a declaratory policy and written language expressions are different from true intentions. So true understanding is not an easy task. And second, from a global point of view, what the idea of the separation of power is not a matter of course, I think. So not as a trial to change others, but for the purpose of the better understanding. How about starting that the two countries starting the dialogue, not only between the executive branches, president and businessmen to businessmen, but also by congressmen and jurisprudence, judges and scholars. Do you think it is effective means for a better understanding? We've had actually just this week a delegation from the Chinese National People's Congress visiting our Congress for the Inter-Parliamentary Dialogue, which takes place every year. There are people who are in the lead on the US Congress side, but there are not people who have been long steeped in Asia as some of the predecessors were. Senator Dan Inouye who passed away this past year was always a leader in this. So he really believed in parliamentarian to parliamentarian dialogue. We don't have quite the same energy level yet in Congress on this subject. And there hasn't been the emergence of a natural sort of leader of the pack as the Senate or the House often has, where someone really takes an interest and learns a lot about this part of the world and then brings along the opinion of other members. That's very much at a low level on that right now. But the dialogue continues and the team they brought here this past week, I found really interesting and fascinating. We had a separate session away from the Congress and they have a lot to say about where China is trying to go and if they conveyed the same thing to the members of Congress and if they were heard, it was a valuable exchange. Isn't one of the issues here that the Chinese parliamentarian is very different from the Congress one? Yeah. But I must say just as Stevens of the Supreme Court has been going to China for some years, hasn't he? I think so. But okay, yeah, you in the front. Yep. Thanks. As you put it, China and the US are starting, just starting the process of get a relationship right. But I'm wondering how far could it go and how successful could it be? I mean, for example, is there a strong enough bipartisan kind of ground to support it? And the second part of my question is that as Paul just said, Mr. Paul just said US is not a good at it, produce new concepts. But I'm wondering, will the strategic hedging thinking last forever or are you thinking of some kind of new ideas to replace it? Thank you. No new ideas. The first question is how far can this go? The answer is we can't answer that now. But my experience is that it can go far enough to accomplish its purpose, but it will take time. We don't know how much time. I was serving in Moscow when Dr. Kissinger made his secret trip to Beijing and followed up with the visit by President Nixon and it altered the entire course of relations between China and the United States and altered the whole course of the Cold War. And here was a issue which a leader saw an opportunity to do something that most people thought was impossible, but they were willing to bring in to play the factors necessary. President Nixon needed to be willing personally to go to China in order to show his sincerity in terms of the goal. So based partly on that experience, I believe that strong leadership is capable of accomplishing remarkable things if it is carried out consistently. I think the will is there on the part of both governments and both top leaders. But it's a process that will require sustained commitment by future leaders. And so therefore that's why you can't answer definitively your question how far it can go. But I believe that we should have confidence in the possibility of reaching where we hope to go. I'd like to address two things in your question. The first is, is this policy got bipartisan support? I think the rebalance to Asia and the effort to work with China has had unusually strong bipartisan consensus behind it. And this as in itself is something that should not be sacrificed. It's so rare and important in policy debate in the United States. And the second part raised the question of hedging. Of course the United States and China and the other parties in the region will continue to hedge in their own ways. It's natural, it's acquired by the rules of international behavior that are inherited from our ancestors. However, what we've seen as Ambassador Roy set out at the outset, we've seen competition getting ahead of cooperation in the last couple of years. And the question is, can you have more going positively to outweigh what's going on in terms of hedging? If hedging takes over, we'll have a security dilemma and endless friction potentially leading to conflagration. So you've got to lubricate that with cooperation and keep the sides from getting into too much of competition. And I think that's the thing that the concept of avoiding that conflict that got sort of articulated at this meeting. And I hope will be an important principle going forward. Hedging incidentally is a totally inappropriate term which has taken hold and I'm fighting against its use. It's being used by politicians who don't understand the economic concept. The concept of hedging is you limit the upside gain potential in order to cover yourself against potential loss. That is not a factor in diplomacy. Diplomacy has been around for hundreds of years. Hedging has never been a term in diplomacy until the last 20 years. And when I ask people what term did it replace, they can't answer me. So I would prefer to keep hedging in the economic realm where it has a role. It has no role in diplomacy. But over there, you two can fight it out. Thank you. Eric Altbach from the Albright Stonebridge Group recently of USTR, just to draw from some of the threads of the comments, clearly the success as it's been portrayed of the summit is raising a lot of expectations about the SNED and indeed many of the work streams lead into the SNED. It's very soon, as you pointed out, we have new leadership having had some experience in a small way myself in both the SNED and the SED preparations in years past. It is a very challenging enterprise under any circumstances, particularly when expectations have been raised on very tough issues like cybersecurity. I think given the context, there's always a lot of attention to the economic agenda. As you've rightly pointed out, China is making some very difficult decisions about the reform agenda. And it's a bit early in the cycle for deliverables relating to these core reform initiatives. In many ways, that sounds like a recipe for disappointment in terms of outcomes. I remain very optimistic that through hard work there can be an effort to achieve some deliverables at the meeting. But it won't be easy. Do you have any ideas as to what might be within the realm of the possible that would be credible to publics in both the United States and China? I would feel better about going into the SNED if I had a sense that the administration and the Chinese I could agree to establish some more frequent middle to higher level working groups with big term goals. Economics, for example. We've got, let's set a goal of 15 years from now or so, US and China be able to enter into a Doha-like or a Uruguay around type global free trade agreement that we will then set that as the big objective. And then between now and then, we put in the component parts to put the bricks together of that bilateral investment treaty trade and investment framework agreement, other things of that nature that can be the medium and short term goals on the way to that high level. And then have this at the undersecretary level, meeting every three months or so rather than once a year. And so keep the pressure on for some progress. And do the same in the mill mill. And I talked to the top commanders in the US and said, what would you want 10 years from now with the Chinese leaders? And they said, I'd want to have my counterpart's cell phone number in my pocket. And I'd want to know him or her and be able to talk to them. We can get there step by step. A third package could be regional issues. We don't have a regional security architecture for East Asia. We've had a few false starts. That can be our big goal. And then have our people get together at the undersecretary level on a more frequent basis to work through the specific issues that are there. Of course, in contact with our allies and friends. And then finally, have a grab bag of issues that are the new non-traditional kinds of issues. Climate change, cyber and pandemics, go down the list. I'd have another subgroup in there. If I could see that kind of structure set up, I'd have more confidence that this big event in California will have momentum going forward. Can I just add to that that I think that idea of the working level groups is so important because I think the danger perhaps for this S&ED, aside from the issue of the fact that the Chinese gears are grinding in a way that doesn't lend itself to success. I think in some ways for Secretary Liu and also for Secretary Kerry, there's reason to believe that their respective counterparts in the S&ED process have less influence within the system than their predecessors did in their equivalent positions. Wang Yang, as Doug mentioned, his portfolio is much more diffuse than Wang Qishan certainly was. And likewise, I think there's some reason to believe that Yang Jiechi does not have the same breadth of sort of control over that, his own sort of shih tongue as Daibing Guo did, so. So just the young gentleman in front of Eric, yeah. And then. Hi, my name is Terry. I'm a research intern at the National Defense University at DC here. Thank you for all the panelists. Thanks for coming and a great presentation. My question is we have read recently a lot about new type of relations at strategic level. However, I haven't heard much about at the operational level what are the crucial areas both sides have to adjust in order to make this like, in order to realize this type of, new type of great power relations. Thank you. That can be addressed on a whole number of areas. And I think both governments are at their very early stage of trying to flesh out thinking on this question. I think, and some of these issues were reviewed at the summit. For example, I think it's fair to say that the United States believes that to create this new type of relationship with China, we need to have a rules-based international system in which both China and the United States play by the rules. You can't have exceptions because we're a big power. If there's an agreed way of dealing things, then we have to stay within that framework. So that's a conceptual aspect of it. But clearly over time, we will have to address the sources of mistrust in the bilateral relationship. And that could cover a range of questions. How Taiwan is handled, how the Korean Peninsula is handled, how relations with Japan are handled, how our militaries operate, and how our defense budgets are structured. Are we, in other words, preparing for war with the other side while we're at the same time trying to create this new type of great power relationship? That's why the military component is so important as part of the effort to develop this new type of great power relationship. But I think both governments are at an early stage of trying to flesh out these concepts. I'll give two illustrations of where I think it should go in response to your question. The first is the matter of North Korea. Up until this year, raising the subject with North Korea evoked standard boilerplate responses. There was no sense that there was authority from the top to speak really about what the concerns were. We now have the top saying, go ahead. That's a big step forward, whether we'll get something as good as still to be determined. And the second very pressing area is a kind of informal understanding about how close our ships and airplanes get to each other. And then down the road, a more formal understanding of this sort of thing. And if we can get those going, I think then you'll have concrete implementation of this kind of concept. I'm sorry, we're running out of time. The guy standing up at the back, I think this may have to be the last question. I'm sorry. Thank you so much. My name is Dong Kui Yu with China Review News Agency. And we see a lot of interaction among the United States, China and Taiwan in the past several days. And the chairman of DPP, Mr. Su Zhenchang, is visiting Washington DC. And the honorably chairman of Guamindang, Mr. Wu Bosion, was visiting Beijing and met with President Xi. And I know during the summit in California, both sides just reiterate their position regarding the Taiwan issue. So my question is, what do you expect the cross-trade relations in the next several years, particularly if DPP comes back to power? And how important for the Taiwan issue is for handling appropriately the US-China relations in the next four or five years. Thank you. Mr. Sure. No. Mr. A. I. T., please. To me, I think it's, the Chinese side has been evolving really quite dramatically from where they were in 2000. 2002 was a big turning point. We've had, as each election in Taiwan has occurred, we've seen big recognitions by leaders and experts in China of the realities on Taiwan, understanding of the dynamics in the political life there. And it's led to a much more positive outcome where we have significant reduction in tension, great expansion of cross-trade exchanges, investment in trade. The United States has, at every stage, endorsed these movements and tried to support them where it could. And so I think we're on a good track. Now, you're posing the hypothesis that the DPP might win upcoming elections and then we'll have, perhaps, a different tone. Yesterday, I heard Suzantong talking, and you did too, I guess, and I heard him trying hard within his context to try to send a pragmatic message. Whether it's enough is, I think, probably still to be discussed. But he's trying to send a message. And on the Chinese side, I've seen people in the Taiwan and other official bodies trying to wrap their heads around the possibility that they'll be dealing with something other than the KMT-Daitant-oriented government in Taipei. And what would that be like? And so they've reached out, they've arranged for occasions for DPP personalities to come to Beijing and take part in conferences and the like. Those are all good trends, but they don't pretend a happy outcome. That's gonna take a lot more work on all, I guess, all three sides, KMT, DPP, MPRC. On that happy outcome, I think, one of the things that I think we have to watch, and I found it interesting that, I mean, obviously the Chinese have to make the point on Taiwan, and I think they did in the summit, but I think it was done mutedly, and not with anger and not with histrionics. But there is this possibility that is the second half of the Mod administration winds down and the KMT's numbers seem to be continuing to not do so well, that the Chinese will become increasingly insecure about a possible DPP victory, despite their efforts, I think, to reach out to the DPP side. And then what does that mean in terms of the level of pressure they may be willing to exert on the Mod administration to get something on the core issue of sovereignty? I think that's a low probability, but something we have to watch very carefully. Okay, well, I think we're gonna have to call it there. You guys have been a great audience. Thank you so much. And please join me in thanking the panel. Thank you, Chris. Thank you.