 Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the United States Institute of Peace. Thank you for joining us this morning for the launch of our senior study group report on China's impact on conflict dynamics in the Red Sea arena, which is available now on the USIP website. As many of you know, the US Institute of Peace was founded by Congress in 1984 as a national, nonpartisan, independent institute dedicated to the pursuit of a world without violent conflict. My name is Jennifer Statz, and I'm the director for East and Southeast Asia programs at USIP, where our China program focuses on China's impact on conflict dynamics around the world. This report examines China's interests, activities and influence in the Red Sea arena, and provides recommendations for ways the US government and other stakeholders might take these factors into account when devising their own policies and strategies toward the region to prevent and manage conflict in the Horn of Africa and the Gulf. This report is part of a broader series of USIP senior study group reports, examining China's influence in different conflicts around the world. For each SSG, we convene a bipartisan group of senior experts over a period of five to six months to examine China's role in a specific conflict. The first study group looked at China's role in Myanmar's internal conflicts, and the second looked at China's role in North Korea. This is our third report in the series, and we were incredibly fortunate to have an amazing group of experts participating in this project. First and foremost, of course, were our extraordinary co-chairs, Susan Thornton and Patricia Haslow. We also benefited from the experience and expertise of other outstanding group members. Several of them will be speaking later on the panel, but I wanted to read the names of all of our members now just to make sure that their contributions are recognized. Our senior study group participants included Deborah Braudigam, Johnny Carson, Tom Kelly, Barbara Leaf, Tom Mancinelli, Michael Phelan, Maria Repnikova, Tom Sheehy, David Shin, Yun Sun, Zach Fertin, Bruce Wharton, and Joel Withnow. And we thank all of them for their time and commitment over the last six months and extend our appreciation to the many others who provided additional support along the way, especially Patty Kim, who did a terrific job coordinating this entire effort. So without further ado, we'll turn to the substance of today's event. We have a terrific panel lined up for the discussion today, but before we dive into the report, we've asked Ambassador Johnny Carson to say a few words about why the Red Sea arena is so important for US national interests. Ambassador Carson served as Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, as well as Ambassador to Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Uganda. But most importantly, he is currently a senior advisor here at USIP, and we are honored to have him participate in this project. Ambassador Carson, over to you. Jennifer, Jennifer, thank you. Thanks. I will try to be brief. Over the past three years, USIP has focused increased attention on both the Arab and African states that reside along the Red Sea, from Egypt in the north down to Djibouti and Yemen in the south. USIP has turned its attention to the Red Sea region to better understand the cross-cutting bilateral regional and global issues that intersect and impact the region's politics, economics, and security. Issues that have stirred conflict and competition among both the Arab and African states, and which have drawn others from further afield into the concerns of the Red Sea. USIP believes that a deeper and richer understanding of the issues in the Red Sea arena can help resolve some of the region's festering political, humanitarian, and security problems. The Red Sea region is not very large, but it is one of the world's most important economic and commercial zones. 13% of the world's trade, 21,000 ships, and over 4 million barrels of oil go through the Red Sea every year. It is commercially and strategically important to the region, as well as the global community. It is also a region of great fragility, conflict, and humanitarian need. It features an array of different individual and regional actors, some extraordinarily wealthy, globally connected, and sharply focused on achieving short-term economic and strategic goals. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar fall into this category and are increasingly active in the Horn of Africa. Some of the other players are economically weak, politically fragile, and beset by recurring humanitarian and security crises. Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, and Yemen fall easily into this category. Two of the region's largest African states, Sudan and Ethiopia, are also going through delicate political transitions that could lead to greater democratic progress or unleash another wave of instability, outward migration, and humanitarian suffering. The region's bilateral and regional problems are complicated further by tensions among the Gulf Arab states, competition between Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, the presence of international terrorist groups in Yemen and Somalia, and a constant concern about the threat to international shipping in the Red Sea. And finally, there is increasing concern about China's expansive efforts in the region and the growing number of foreign military bases in the area. American policymakers have never looked at the Red Sea region through a single common geography or policy lens. Officials focused on the region have been siloed in different offices and regional bureaus in the Department of State and DOD. But by focusing with a broader lens on the entire region and its overlapping problems, we hope USIP's work on the Red Sea arena will help not only draw attention to the region, but will contribute to an improvement in US understanding, policy formulation, and cross bureau collaboration in addressing the problems in the Red Sea arena. Thanks. It's now my pleasure to introduce Susan Thornton, former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and the co-chair of the Senior Working Group on China and the Red Sea. I'm Susan Thornton. And let me just say it's such a pleasure and an honor to be here today and to have been able to co-chair this fantastic team of colleagues in this senior study group effort on to look into China's activities in the Red Sea region and its impact on potential conflict there. The team has incredible experience and expertise and it's been a special privilege, I would say, to do this, oversee this senior study group with my co-chair, Pat Haslack, a very close colleague from my time at the Department of State, and former ambassador herself to India. And she could not be with us today but I'm sure she is with us in spirit and she had contributed a great deal to our deliberations over the past several months. I also want to thank, add to Jennifer's thanks to the terrific USIP support team that has been with us throughout this effort. They have really brought a lot of dedication and commitment to this effort. I wanted to point out that, of course, our original plan was to have a live launch a bit earlier of our report, and the COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted and we have felt its effects on our efforts here. I'm very happy that we're able to do this virtual launch, but of course the outbreak of this global pandemic and the crisis that not only the health aspects represent but the devastating economic blow that's coming from this crisis make the issues that we explore in this report even more urgent and more compelling. I'm very happy to be able to launch the report, which went live yesterday on the USIP website, and I hope you'll all take a look at the report. We did think that it was very important to see what was really going on with China's efforts in the Red Sea arena amid a lot of popular narratives that didn't seem sufficiently deep and nuanced to us. So we wanted to get views directly from the region. We did as part of our senior study group send a team of experts out to the region to do live interviews in the affected countries that we're talking about here. We thought it was important to explore the issues of in the popular narrative such as debt trap diplomacy, major power competition in the region, and to see what local officials and others on the ground in the region thought about those issues. The report makes a number of observations about on the ground truths in the region clarifies what US interests are at stake and makes recommendation for US policy responses. So if I might say I think the report is a very sober, nuanced and detailed serious effort to look at the very complicated issues of stability and transition in this region. And I think that that kind of treatment is what these issues certainly demand of us. So I like to thank all of our listeners today for tuning in to this very timely exploration of China in the Red Sea arena. And with that I'd like to introduce our five panelists that we have to discuss the issues that were raised in the report. First we have Patricia Kim, who is a senior policy analyst the China program at the US Institute of peace and has been our rock throughout this process as the project director for this senior study group. I'm Deborah Bradigam the Bernard L. Schwartz professor of political economy and the director of the China Africa research initiative at Johns Hopkins University for school of advanced international studies in Washington DC. We have Shin, the former ambassador to Ethiopia and to Burkina Faso, and who is currently an adjunct professor at the Elliott School for international affairs at the George Washington University also in Washington DC. We have Joel with now who is a research fellow at the Center for the study of Chinese military affairs at the US National Defense University, also in Washington. And we have Maria Repnikova, who is an assistant professor at the Georgia State University looking at Chinese political economy and issues related to China's internal development. So with no further ado, I would like to turn to our panelists and have them give some initial thoughts on various issues that were treated in the report, and I'd like to start. First with you, Patty, if we can, since you were the overseer of the project and made the trip to the region it would be very helpful I think for the listeners if you could give a synopsis of China's economic diplomatic and military footprint in the Red Sea arena. Thank you Susan. It's a pleasure to finally be able to launch this report and to have this excellent panel with us this morning. So what we found through this study is that China over the last two decades has rapidly expanded its economic and diplomatic footprint and to a lesser extent its military footprint in the Red Sea arena and has become a significant player in the region as a result. Our study found that Beijing sees economic engagement as its primary way to win friends and influence in the Red Sea arena, and to protect its core interests in the arena which include supporting its economy and national security by advancing the regional and road initiative and securing a stable flow of trade and energy resources, to protecting Chinese citizens and investments in the region, and three building ties in the region through various bilateral and multilateral mechanisms that create support for China in the broader international arena. Now China's growing economic presence has been accompanied by expanding diplomatic and cultural engagement as well, and China has made great investments to grow its soft power and to build a stronger base of support for its activities in the region and beyond. We also found that China has indeed expanded its military presence in the Red Sea arena over the last 10 years, starting first with participation in counter piracy operations and sending peacekeepers to the region. And then by opening its first overseas base in Djibouti in 2017, joining four other states who also have bases in this country, including the United States, France, Italy and Japan. But what the study group found is that while an expanded military presence is certainly part of China's general approach to this region. China has shown little to no interest to date in stepping in as the region's primary security provider, or overtaking the United States in this particular theater as the premier military power. And we say that there aren't short or long term concerns and implications of China's presence in Djibouti, and Joel Wuthna will be covering this in greater detail in the panel. But the major point of our report is that the primary pillar of China's strategy toward the Red Sea arena is economic. In our conversations with officials and experts out in the region is that while there are certainly concerns about China's growing footprint, states in the region have largely welcomed Beijing's economic engagement. And they are particularly keen on partnering with China on the financing and construction construction of infrastructure projects, despite the fact that of course there are concerns about the quality and sustainability of Chinese projects, as well as growing public debt. But what we heard, especially in our conversations with experts out in the Horn of Africa is that they viewed China's economic offerings as critical for their country's continued economic economic development. And without economic development long term stability and peace in the region would be difficult to achieve. We also found in the report that although China has a strong interest in seeing a stable region free of failed states, and with strategic waterways open and protected from harassment, given given the fact that a large proportion of its trade with Europe, and a lot of its natural resources that it secures from the region flows right through the Red Sea arena. China has generally refrained from intervening in or actively mediating regional conflicts, based on the pragmatic assessment that detachment can better protect its interest. And I believe Ambassador Shin maybe covering some of this more in greater detail later in the panel. But what our study found is that China essentially chooses not to intervene in various rivalries that are playing out in this region because it doesn't want to dominate any camp and it wants to be able to continue to do business with everyone. And our assessment is, is that shorter situations in which Chinese economic or security interests are severely threatened. Beijing is unlikely to use its influence to prevent regional rivalries from exacerbating conflicts in this arena. To wrap up our study notes that the United States faces a balancing act when it comes to calibrating its policy towards China in this region. China's growing presence makes it a key after and a potential partner to work with to help prevent mitigate and resolve violent conflicts in peace in the neighborhood. At the same time cooperation and attempts to shape China's policies may not always be easy or yield constructive outcomes. Having said that we recommend that addressing fragility in the region will require China's cooperation and its contributions and the United States in partnership with like minded friends and allies in the region should work together on coordination efforts. Finally, our study ultimately advances three broad categories of recommendations on how Washington should account for China's growing presence in the Red Sea arena. And I encourage folks to go out and read the report we have lots of details there, but in a nutshell they include one helping Red Sea states better manage China's growing presence and engagement in the region by strengthening civil society and democratic norms, building institutional capacity and investing investing in next generation leaders in the region and increasing our own economic engagement as well. The second category includes mitigating the risk of military conflict with China in Djibouti and in the broader region by working with our allies to engage China in multilateral dialogues and exchanges to reduce the chance of incidents and prevent conflict in the region. And finally, the third category is looking for ways to cooperate with Beijing and areas of mutual interests like pandemics and public health crises, the security of slacks and supporting regional mechanisms for mitigating resolving various conflicts that are ongoing in the arena. I'll conclude with one last note on a question that is probably looming on many people's minds and that is whether China's general approach to the region that I just outlined will change post COVID-19. And while it's still too early to say anything definitively our groups preliminary assessment is that while China's BRI engagement in the Red Sea arena and elsewhere is likely to shrink in the near term, given that it's facing a sharp economic downturn at home and a looming global recession and the fact that its image has suffered sharply, especially in Africa following reports of coronavirus related discrimination against Africans living in Guangzhou. And I think that we don't think China is likely to completely retrench or abandon BRI given that this strategy underpins its strategy for economic growth and global influence and China will likely remain economically politically and militarily engaged in the Red Sea arena for the foreseeable future as we outlined in the report. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Patty. That's a very thorough overview of sort of what we found in the report. Also of our recommendations and indeed what effects we expect or not COVID-19 outbreak to have on China's plans in the region. But I think you mentioned that, you know, China's main thrust in the region is comes from its economic interest. And so I'd like to turn to Deborah Braugam from Johns Hopkins size who has been spending an awful lot of time looking at China's activities in Africa to walk us through a little bit of China's economic involvement in this Red Sea arena. And what can you tell us with some more specificity has been the receptivity in the region to China's economic investments through the BRI or otherwise. And how do we see the effectiveness of China's investments in terms of economic sustainability and other potential concerns about this economic investment, Deborah. Thank you, Susan. And I'd like to thank the USIP for inviting me to be part of this group. It was a great pleasure and I learned a great deal myself. When we follow the money, we see that China's engagement in this region is very focused on Ethiopia and to a lesser extent on Djibouti and my remarks will focus on those two countries in particular. So when we see that the United States has seen Ethiopia and Djibouti as security partners in fight against terrorism, or as humanitarian aid recipients. But China has really seen them as economic partners and economic development partners, both for China's economic development and for those two countries. So that Ethiopian Djibouti really need to be analyzed as a unit because Ethiopia is landlocked and Djibouti is essentially the exit to the sea for Ethiopia so it's a really important country for Ethiopia. And so Chinese lending and Chinese engagement in that area is a kind of a package deal Ethiopia and Djibouti together. So, and we also see that both Ethiopian Djibouti have a long term perspective on where their economies are going to go they're very strategic about how they engage with China. So Djibouti sees that it's long it's location on this long stretch of African coastway is strategic for economic purposes. It's an entry point into this whole region, and it wants to capture the economic activity that comes from being a major port into a whole surrounding region of the Horn. And Ethiopia is dependent on Djibouti so for its exit and entry into the country. So they see themselves as kind of a Singapore and Malaysia or having the potential but this is going to take a long time to get there. So Chinese lending to Djibouti has been mainly to develop the economic infrastructure that can make that vision possible. So it's been into the ports, it's been into the railway and it's been into bringing water into Djibouti which is a desert area. So for Ethiopia Chinese lending has also been in economic infrastructure it's been for electric power, been for transport and then the railway that links Addis Ababa to Djibouti. So the outcome of Chinese lending now focus on that a little bit because that's been a really important part of I think the understanding the critique of debt trap diplomacy and so on. So these are two countries where we see Chinese lending as being a big part of debt distress. It's different in the two places Djibouti is a very tiny place their GDP is only $3 billion. So if you lend in for a railway or a port you can't have a sort of mini port or mini railway it has to be a substantial size. And so the lending is about 70% of Djibouti's GDP. In Ethiopia the lending is much smaller percent it's about 17% of Ethiopia's GDP. So both of these are substantial. And they're an issue for these countries, but I think it's a little different than this idea of a debt trap or a deliberate debt trap by China. And then we also see that Djibouti and Ethiopia are two places where China has already restructured lending so the railway for example, they restructured the repayment terms to make it easier for both Ethiopia and Djibouti to shoulder that debt burden. There are other things about Chinese economic engagement in the area. For example, both Djibouti and Ethiopia would like to be manufacturing hubs, and so the free trade zone in Djibouti and then there are a number of manufacturing areas in Ethiopia where the Chinese have invested. In research we talked to 74 different Chinese manufacturing firms that are trying to make Ethiopia into an export manufacturing hub for Africa. And I'll say one last point about that which is that our research and also research that's been conducted at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London have punctured one of the myths about Chinese engagement that the labor on these Chinese infrastructure projects and also in the manufacturing is over 90% Ethiopian and for unskilled labor it's 100%. So as these countries recover from COVID US engagement can address the Chinese head start in this region by channeling more resources toward restarting these economies. Thank you Susan. That's great Deborah thank you so much for that overview and if I could just have one follow up question on the issue of the labor component. Is that a high level of local labor content, something that is agreed to in advance by China or does that just happen naturally and how did that, if it was agreed to how does it come into being. It's not something that's agreed to in advance it's something that we see across Africa. That is certainly in manufacturing Chinese companies move to Africa because the labor is cheaper and manufacturing than it is in China. And so that's an attraction there. The infrastructure for unskilled labor it's very expensive to bring workers from China. So we tend to find that the skilled labor and the 10% that's working on these infrastructure projects would be managers or electricians or people that are highly skilled. So that is the area where Africans need to break in further but it's also having a pool skill labor in that area in Africa, in general, is already being it is already in high demand, because it's scarce and so it's costly and so in that area still is more cost effective for Chinese to bring in people from China so that's the area that needs to improve on both sides. Thank you. Let me now turn to Ambassador David Shin. I would love for you to speak a bit, David, if you could about what we see as the key areas of fragility in the region and how is China's activity, either exacerbating or exacerbating those fragilities I mean what attitude or actions does China take with respect to fragility or instability in the region. Thank you very much, Susan. I will focus on China's response to fragility and the region. Rather than the actual instances of instability. And I think it's important to say at the outset that China's fallback position is development. Everything seems to focus around development this is true and fragile and unstable states, as it is elsewhere. And it certainly is true in the Red Sea arena, as it is in other parts of the world. When it comes to security issues, China makes every effort to avoid risk. It tends to be low risk. This is less true in the case of economic engagement. It supports mediation and dialogue as a matter of practice. It tends to talk a somewhat better line on this than it actually practices. And it says constantly that it's willing to serve as a mediator. And in fact, it was helpful in terms of the conflict and Darfur in Sudan was helpful to some extent in South Sudan serving as a mediator. In 2017, China offered to mediate the Djibouti Eritrea border dispute did not follow up on it. It did the same in 2018 in terms of trying to normalize relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea but again others filled that void. It tends to take a narrow view of interpretation and in terms of its interpretation of what mediation is, if you compare it to say the American view of mediation. And in fact it's reluctant to use its leverage, even in places where it has leverage. In Africa, it has mostly left mediation to others such as the Intergovernmental Authority for Development, the African Union, even Western powers. Today it's approach and the developing situation in Sudan is basically wait and see not to jump in. Nor is it playing a particularly prominent role in mediating any of the ongoing ethnic issues in Ethiopia. Some scholars describe China's efforts at conflict resolution as quasi mediation and say Yemen and Somalia fit this definition, where they are China exercises, either limited or indirect engagement. In Middle Eastern issues, China's mediation efforts look more like conflict management rather than conflict resolution. It also sells arms to parties in conflict zones. Sudan, during the Darfur conflict, South Sudan during civil war in South Sudan to both Iran and Iraq during their war, and to Ethiopian Eritrea during their conflict. On the other hand, China has made positive troop and financial contributions to UN peacekeeping operations in the region. The mission in Darfur in Sudan and the mission in South Sudan where it has oil interest. It's also been an active participant in the anti piracy operation in the Gulf of Asian where it has shipping interest. China almost always opposed the sanctions, a few exceptions to that, and China carefully avoids kinetic military activity in the Red Sea region. Thank you for listening and back to you Susan. Thank you David that's very interesting and very thorough and pointing out the difference between the talk and the walk I think is something that is important for us to understand about what China is doing in the region and where the potential for further collaboration may lie. We can now turn to Joel with now our expert at the National Defense University, because a lot of discussion about China's involvement in the Red Sea arena has focused on potential strategic ambitions and military presence and exactly what China intends or is trying to get from its military presence in the region. And I would love it Joel if you could talk to us about China's strategic military ambitions. What are the concerns and how, how worried are we about China's military presence, impinging on the sovereignty of states in the region and what concern should we be and you know what do we think China should and should not be legitimately doing in this area. Okay, well thank you very much Susan and delighted to be here this morning. The last part of your question first concerns about potential infringements on sovereignty from China's military forces I think are can be overblown. I don't think they're very significant right now. I think there's a useful contrast between China's presence in the Red Sea and its role and activities in East Asia. Certainly China's forces in the Red Sea are very, very modest, marginal even compared to those in the Far East. And the more important difference is that unlike in East Asia China doesn't have any particular territorial disputes or claims that it's trying to enforce in the Red Sea, or any other kind of regional antagonist so both the opportunities and the impulses to intervene I think right now for China are very low. And if you look at different aspects of its military presence most of this is very much status quo oriented. Certainly the peacekeeping mission takes place in a UN framework the anti-piracy patrols came about as a result of the US urging China to be more active in non-traditional security and to be a responsible stakeholder. The base in Djibouti as was mentioned is something that many countries have considered some have done and have been negotiated with the host government. So none of that is really interventionist in a revisionist kind of sense. I think there are a couple of long term problems that we have to keep an eye on. However, one is whether China will use its growing influence in the Red Sea to try to prevent or frustrate US interventions and military operations in the region. Certainly with more leverage over some of these governments, China is at a stronger position to potentially deny or complicate US access to important infrastructure or places where they might want to operate. Djibouti is just one of those in the future China might be in a better position with others as well. And then secondly is whether China might be right now laying the groundwork for a more traditional military role in the region which right now has been quite marginal and modest and narrowly focused. And so, you know, some examples of that China is gaining experience in conducting expeditionary operations both through peacekeeping and through the anti-piracy patrols. It has now been deploying certain assets that are combat focused like submarines to the anti-piracy operations for reasons that aren't very clear from a non-traditional perspective. And it's also been deploying combat troops to the UN peacekeeping operations. And so all of that I think in the future could give China a stronger capacity to intervene if it wanted to pending a policy decision that it was in China's interest to intervene. So it could be laying the groundwork to play a more traditional role. So those I think are some of the questions that we need to consider to continue to ponder. The near term issue and challenge I think for the US is not those. However, I think the near term issue is how can we safely interact with Chinese forces, especially in the area of Djibouti where we have a base that's very, very close in proximity to the Chinese base. And there have been a couple of few incidents over the last few years of unsafe practices, one of them being the lazing of US pilots and things like this. And so I think that puts a very strong premium on negotiating and talking about ways to reduce risks between forces when they come into contact and managing crises or conflicts if they happen to occur. And I think the report did a good job in laying out some options and some strategies for the US and China to continue to build on existing progress and talk about how we can reduce some of those risks in the near term while also keeping an eye on China's ambitions over the long term. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks so much, Joel for that very helpful overview and very realistic look at the short term medium term and long term potential concerns out there and I, I certainly want to echo your call for working to try to avoid crisis and work on crisis management systems in the near term I, we certainly don't need in this region that's quite fragile already to have an unexpected crisis that arises from some kind of accident so we'll definitely look at the reports detailed recommendations in that vein. So let me turn now to last but not least bring up the end of our panel, Maria Remkova for her view on sort of what has been the effectiveness we know that China has stepped up a lot of its public diplomacy efforts in the region. You've handed a lot of its people to people programs educational programs. Can you give us a walk through what you consider to be the kind of highlights and effectiveness of China's sort of efforts in this area to expand its influence through public diplomacy programs and and how you see the question which has been raised frequently in the popular narrative about China's efforts to export authoritarianism through its Belt and Road and other kinds of programs that it's pursuing over to you Maria to unmute Okay, sorry about that. So it's a pleasure to be part of this group and an honor and I've learned a lot I wanted to briefly discuss some of the key initiatives in China's public diplomacy in the region that I find especially, you know potentially influential the first one that strikes me as important is the decision of educational training opportunities for elites but also for young people from the region. And we've seen this the rise of this opportunities, quite exponential in particular when it comes to students in 2003 is our report mentions. There were only 2000 students from the African continent in 2018 they're over 80,000 students. So the numbers are rising extremely fast and from my own research in the region in particular in Ethiopia. China has become the most accessible destination for higher education I think that's quite significant because other alternatives including the US are becoming rare and almost impossible to access. When it comes to elite trainings we also see thousands of officials coming to China for various programs lasting from weeks to months, sometimes translating into further exchanges and even PhD programs. These are very important because China creates long term linkages with elites and as a result, these elite networks can sustain a more positive image of China, of course economic relations as well but also, for example media coverage of China in the region. In Ethiopia in particular is very, very positive and in large part because this journalists have traveled to China for training so we see this kind of narratives translating and transmitting themselves and becoming more and more positive about China-Ethiopian relations but also I suspect the same dynamics that we found in other countries. We also paid attention in the report to Confucius institutes there are now nine of them in the Red Sea region. The success kind of the efficacy of this institute really varies across different countries and within countries, but one important thing I wanted to note from Ethiopia case is that many students now get jobs if they speak Chinese and their primary focus on Chinese language is because they can get employment in Chinese companies. Chinese language is now the second most popular foreign language at Ethiopian universities. After English, I think that's quite significant statistic here and I expect that it's going to continue to grow as long as there are going to be job opportunities linked to this Confucius institutes. We also briefly note the media. The media is primarily centered in Kenya but in other countries as well we see China transmitting its voice through state-owned media. In Ethiopia, Sinkuan news agency has a mid-sized presence and it shares content with Ethiopian news agency so there's kind of arrangements there. And again, journalists are frequently traveling to China and Chinese journalists are coming to Ethiopia to report and to create various documentaries that are then transmitted in both countries. You mentioned the question of authoritarian diffusion. This is something that we treat with caution in the report and I also treated with caution in my own research noting that China's engagements not just the public diplomacy but also economic engagement in the region could exacerbate some of the existing authoritarian dynamics in the region especially because so many of these countries as mentioned earlier are quite fragile and they rank very low when it comes to indexes of transparency or press freedom. In particular China's preference for often for less transparency when it comes to economic deals but also its promotion of successes of its political and economic model as well as the increasing exports of surveillance technology to the region and more broadly to the African continent is something that may contribute to more non-democratic dynamics in the region. We also note that China is not the only player that's exporting this technology but it's one of the dominant players and its influence is bound to rise. We do have a few recommendations that we promote in the report. Personally, I think it's really important to continue to invest in higher education and in access or opportunities for access to especially the youth and civil society leaders from the continent and from the region in particular. Many of them are striving to come to the United States but they have a really hard time reaching it and programs like Fulbright Peace Corps and Yali Initiative are especially popular and maintaining them at least not getting rid of them but hopefully expanding them is something that is really important. Great. Thank you very much Maria and maybe if I could just linger a moment because there's been a lot of press attention recently to an issue that Patty raised, which is some incidents in southern China with respect to some Africans that were living in that region amidst all of the measures being taken to stem the outbreak of the COVID pandemic. Apparently there were some incidents of discrimination and racism against Africans living in China recently. And I wonder if from your sort of vast experience and background, Maria, if you could give us some inkling of how this is playing or might play in the Red Sea arena among local populations or are they, I mean, how exposed would they be to these incidents and how would it play? There's been a lot of play in Western media that this will damage China's relations in the region but I wonder if you have anything, any observations you've picked up on that? Yeah, thank you for this question. I mean this crisis is still unfolding and I'm observing it closely in the new research project as well but what I'm finding is that there's kind of a big distinction between elite level and societal level when it comes to the critique of China. So the elites have also critiqued, by elites I mean ambassadors and officials have critiqued China when it comes to discrimination issues in Guangzhou but more recently many of them have claimed that the issue has been resolved and Chinese official approach has been to blame local officials and also to quickly resort to resolving the crisis to make all sorts of speeches that speak to the friendship between China and Africa and to kind of make certain demands but no formal apologies of any kind and no sort of bigger kind of or acceptance of any sort of blame or recognition of its fault. So mostly it's the Guangzhou officials that have been kind of in the limelight of this framing when it comes to Chinese media but there has been a lot of discussion of broader issues concerning racism and not just the Guangzhou incident, many student groups in China are discussing this broadly about how and what kind of treatment they face at university campuses so I think this is something that's going to be reckoned with for quite some time but I think in the elite media or even in Ethiopia we won't see many negative stories about this peering through the headlines because it's a very sensitive issue to report on. Okay well fantastic. Gosh thank you all for really rousing and deep look at the report and all of the issues that it raises and a lot of questions remain of course and for at the moment we would like to turn to some of our listeners who have been enthusiastically submitting questions during the time that you all have been giving your thoughts about China's activities in the Red Sea region. So what I will try to do because we've gotten quite a few questions I will try to bunch together by theme some of the issues and and see if we can cover a few questions at a time because we only have about 15 minutes left and I'd ask if our panelists could respond briefly. First, I would like to pose a question for David and then Joel if you could both sort of take give your take on this. Jennifer and Johnny Carson mentioned at the top of our program that you know the Red Sea arena has become an area of interest for many outside powers other than China including variously the Gulf States Turkey Iran and others. And there has been a question about how does China's involvement dovetail or conflict with or affect the involvement of these other states or and how how much does China pay attention to this or get involved in it and I think there have been a couple of other questions that sort of along these lines if you have views on these issues. One person wanted to know about China's involvement in China, if any, and someone else asked about Ambassador Shin's comment about China's participation in mediation in particular in South Sudan, how much leverage does China get from posing as the mediator. And the, I think, questioners seem to think that China gets quite a lot of mileage out of posing as a mediator without actually, you know, putting up money or following through on on some of the more difficult issues involved in mediation and I think, in a way, Ambassador Shin that's what you were getting at but if you could go first, Ambassador Shin and give your thoughts on sort of the multiplicity of powers being involved in vying in the region. I'm happy to do that. And there are many powers that are engaged in the region, particularly with all of these military bases in Djibouti. But you have others that you alluded to Turkey, for example, been active in the anti piracy operation Russia has been in the anti piracy operation has been trying to establish some kind of facility in the Red Sea area so far with out of parent success. So it's kind of overlap. For the moment, these have mainly been benign activities by all of these players in that they want to maintain freedom of navigation in the Red Sea Suez Canal Bobbleman dev area. They all have that same interest and therefore can work together on that, hence the anti piracy cooperation and trying to prevent any interruption of shipping in that region. So as long as it's benign. This is all manageable it's when it becomes something other than benign that it will become troubling. And we just so far we haven't seen that but that could happen. If I could just address the South Sudan mediation question. China has leverage in South Sudan it has a 40% interest in the oil activities the oil fields in South Sudan. It is the major large largest major importer of oil from South Sudan it's dropped enormously because of reduced production in South Sudan but it still constitutes about 1% of China's imported oil. It has leverage if it wished to use it. It has tried at a very low level to mediate the internal conflict in South Sudan, but this is an area where I think it has not lived up to its expectations. It could do a great deal more if it wished to. It has just chosen not to do so. Great, thank you. And Joel, maybe you could give your take on the issue as well of multiple powers vying for influence in the region and also the. What are the dynamics of the protection of shipping in the world as as it regards all of these various powers and what they're doing there. I think at a macro level to China and the US certainly have a common interest in maintaining the safety of navigation and shipping in the Red Sea. It's a very important lifeline, especially for China, especially because a lot of its trade with Europe goes by that route. And China has played a certain role, certainly an anti piracy anti piracy though is not really a major problem. Now in the Horn of Africa I think China maintains this present in part to gain operational experience and in part to be able to broadcast that is interested in providing public goods. The United States I think has much greater capacity in the region to the source of operations. In the past there has been some level of coordination between China and the US in this arena. That is dissipated recently, in part because of the rise of competition in part because of distrust between the two countries and so I think you know this is an area where the two sides can probably work more productively in the future. Also, I think you know with respect to other countries. It's just important to realize that China is developing strategic partnerships but those are not the same things as alliances. And so China has different obligations to those states in the United States does under some of its treaties and China, you know, I think the report makes a good point which is that it's balancing its relations between a lot of different countries not getting overly involved on any one side. And that's an opportunity for China but it's also a bit of a weakness in a sense because it's less of a security provider, if you will, then the United States and that's, I think a real US advantage is having those deep security commitments in the region. Just to pick up on that last point Joel and not to put you on the spot but but there is a tension in China's involvement in this issue between what the US had traditionally seen as a desire to have China step up and do more as a responsible stakeholder given that the interest in protecting shipping are overwhelmingly probably I mean the US also has an interest in this but China's it's a lifeline for a lot of China's commerce to Europe. You know what is your thinking about a long term. You know, sharing of the burden of protecting shipping in this region and is it something that you see as as changing or is this something that the US is going to want to maintain a major role in overtime. I think the reality is that the US will maintain a very strong role in this and you know part of the problem is that China historically has been free riding on the US which has been willing to pay a lot of the expense of doing this to maintain a forward presence is very very expensive and China just simply hasn't been going to a burden so I think it kind of gets more involved one of the reasons would be if the US somehow backs off I don't see that as likely that being said I think China is trying to hedge to a certain degree it doesn't want to be overly reliant on the United States and so it's playing a bit of a role to protect its own ships. I think there's some kind of a co active cooperation between the two. I think it's a good idea but I think in the current climate it's very very hard to do that because both will see this in zero some terms and who benefits more in this kind of thing and so getting to that. I think we take a lot of work at a very high level of the two government. Thank you very much for that for that. I think it's a really interesting point and look down the road at how this issue will develop. I'd like to turn now to both Deborah and Patty and and also Maria if you want to weigh in on this question, because we've gotten several questions about the possibility for US China cooperation on the epidemic that COVID-19 outbreak and several listeners have pointed out that the US and China cooperated productively in the in the context of the Ebola outbreak in Africa several years ago and work together to stand up the Africa CDC which is headquartered in Ethiopia in Addis Ababa. Is there some prospect and can we try to use the desire and the need really to stem the outbreak of the COVID-19 in this very fragile region. Is there prospect for US China cooperation on that and what kind of recommendations would you have for both the US and China going forward on that. Deborah could we turn to you first for any thoughts on health cooperation in the region and then Patty and then Maria health cooperation health cooperation would be extremely useful and I think under the last administration, the US and China had moved forward to cooperate on the founding of the African CDC. So it was a joint effort. More recently, the current administration has been more negative toward the Chinese and US cooperation on the African CDC, but that could be reversed. It is possible to see that as a benefit again, so that both parties could work together to build up the ability of the African continent to analyze these pandemic to analyze the responses and the recovery from the pandemic and to support the different countries in the region and the continent to recover from this pandemic. Thank you. I hope it's possible. Patty and Maria, do you have any thoughts on this and then we'll wrap. I'll just say briefly that I would echo Debra's comments that it is possible and it's certainly necessary so we have a brief section on this in the report on sort of COVID-19 potential impact on the region and they're already the region is already very fragile it's very important. There are tenuous political transitions ongoing. A lot of states out there are struggling with high levels of unemployment and debt, weak health systems, poor sanitation and on and on and so even though COVID-19 may not have peaked in the region or come as strongly yet, as we've seen in the US or elsewhere, certainly there could be grave implications and so I think it calls for the United States, China and as well as other partners to look at and assist in the region, whether it's debt relief or on pandemic preparedness and so on. Great. Maria, you have the last word here on the potential for cooperation and also how that might help, you know, US influence in the region to be strengthened. But also to note that from my research I found that the medical field is one of the most promising fields of cooperation between China and the US that was noted to me by both Chinese experts and American experts on the ground. So it seems that that's one sphere that's still very much, you know, has potential for collaboration but the other thing is that there has already been collaboration in the case of the US for instance with Chinese scientists and American scientists coming together and analyzing the pandemic, the results, the new trends. So there's been quite a bit of scientific collaboration outside of the official kind of sphere. And part of it was also done through the platform launched by Alibaba. So which is interesting how, you know, Alibaba was also very involved in donating masks and equipment to Africa as well as all over the world. So there's kind of this interesting fusion of tech companies now participating in some of this public diplomacy but also encouraging facilitating some of this US-China collaboration. So I wouldn't be surprised if some of that travels into the African context as well. Great. Well, I would, I'm so happy that we were able to end on this very positive and hopeful note, encouraging note and the advocacy for some collaboration around the pandemic I think is obvious to anybody who's worked in the region and anybody who's done diplomacy in the region. So thank you to the listeners for submitting your questions. We tried to cover as many as we could. But I'd like to say thank you to all of our panelists and we do want to end with a teaser, which is I'd like to turn to Peyton Knopf for a couple of words about the upcoming additional senior study group report on the Red Sea arena itself and its strategic importance. So Peyton, would you like to preview that for us? Thank you, Susan and congratulations on the release of the report. Just briefly, as Ambassador Carson mentioned from the outset, USIP has been building a multi-track initiative looking at the changing geopolitics of the Red Sea for the last three years. And as Susan just mentioned, one plank of that has been the convening of a senior study group on peace and security in the Red Sea composed of about a dozen former US officials, senior US officials with backgrounds not just in the Middle East and but in diplomacy, security, and development and humanitarian affairs to develop a new strategic framework for US policy more broadly in this transformed and transforming region, taking a number of the strategic points that have come out in this conversation, including some of the historic changes that are underway in Sudan and Ethiopia, and more broadly the integration of the Horn of Africa into the security systems of the Middle East and the Indian Ocean in a way that wasn't true, let's say 25, 30 years ago or even really five or six years ago. And over the last year, we've been convening a number of discussions of this group. It will ultimately also release a public report in the next few months, offering tailored recommendations for a new strategic framework, as I mentioned, with recommendations on on US interventions to ensure stability in this rather volatile space. And I think building on one of the themes that has come out in this discussion, which is that in the, because of the region's inherent fragility. The lesson of the last number of years is that while there's obviously a significant amount of African agency on the Horn of Africa side, there is a significant power imbalance between the states of the Horn and a number of the other external actors either in the immediate region or broadly. And to the extent that competition exists among any of these external actors that usually contributes to instability as opposed to stability and so this report and this group will look at what interventions, the United States can make diplomatically on security and other assistance metrics to promote stability and how to align that with a set of priorities in the US national interest. So we look forward to to convening an discussion around that in the next few months and again congratulations on on this work. Great, thank you and again it's been my incredible pleasure and great learning experience to be able to co chair this senior study group and we definitely look forward to the upcoming one on the Red Sea arena so thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in and look forward to seeing you again next time.