 Hi, good afternoon everyone. My name is Chris Johnson. I'm the Freeman Chair in China Studies here at CSIS. Thank you all for coming today for the rollout of our new report, which we've entitled Decoding China's Emerging Great Power Strategy in Asia. Let me just offer a little background on the project itself, why we chose to do this study this particular time, and then we'll get right into it. In 2013, the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Japan and CSIS established a bilateral commission of distinguished policymakers and scholars to develop a strategic vision for the forward progress of the U.S.-Japan Defense Alliance. The commission, which is co-chaired on the U.S. side by Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State, and our President and CEO, John Hamre, and the Japanese side by former Ambassador to the United States, Ryozo Kato, has convened twice, most recently in January 2014, here in Washington. The Sasakawa Peace Foundation provided the funding that we used to conduct this research, and it is designed to help inform the commission's deliberations, so it is a supplement to those deliberations rather than a specific project related to the commission. The analysis is ours here at CSIS, but we're very, very thankful, of course, to the Sasakawa Peace Foundation for their support of the project, their continuing support of using our Asia team here at CSIS to contribute to the commission's deliberations. Let me just briefly introduce my colleagues. We have Matt Goodman, our Simon Chair in Political Economy, Dr. Victor Chah, our Korea Chair, to his left, Ernie Bauer, our Sumitri Chair in Southeast Asian Studies here, and to his left, Nick Tsuchini, who is our Deputy Director of our Japan Programming here, sitting in for Mike Green, who is today in London. We'd like to just start off with a very quick, almost sort of movie trailer-like video just to kind of give you a sense of what we were trying to accomplish, and then we'll get right into it. President Xi Jinping, born to power as the senator of the People's Republic, is the strongest Chinese leader to emerge in more than a decade. He is consolidating his grasp on the Chinese Communist Party much more quickly than his immediate predecessors. Xi's aggressive efforts to gain control over the People's Liberation Army, the security services and the party bureaucracy speak to his recognition of the notion that the top leader must control the key levers of power to effectively wield authority in a linen system like China's. The establishment of two new high-level policy bodies during last fall's third plenum indicates Xi has the clout to outmaneuver bureaucratic obstacles that could block his bold policy vision. However, it also underscores the resistance he and his reforms are facing. Taking decisive action so quickly after taking office gives Xi the remaining nine years of his term to focus on implementing measures that address China's many economic ailments, among them declining productivity growth and thorny fiscal issues between the central and local governments. Positioning the economy to unlock the next major wave of sustained growth is essential to achieving Xi's Chinese dream that in turn facilitates the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. While Xi may be well on his way to gaining the power necessary to force his peers to embrace this vision at home, there are few clues about what these concepts might mean for the Xi administration's behavior globally. The world is waiting to see how Xi will manage China's desire for good relations with its neighbors while asserting its sovereignty over contested territories nearby. Are Xi's aggressive moves at home a harbinger of a more determined quest for regional dominance? What are the factors shaping China's emerging strategy in Asia and how is the region likely to respond? Okay, well, with that as our overview, let me just kind of give you a sense of some framing remarks for what we're trying to accomplish with the study and also some of the highlights of what we thought about from the China angle and then my colleagues will address each of their respective views in turn. I think it's fair to say that the Corsa charted by China's reemergence as a great power over the next few decades certainly represents the primary strategic challenge for the East Asian security landscape. But to stay on the path that China is hoping to tread toward realizing this new global balance of power, the new leadership team under Xi Jinping will have to successfully navigate several challenges that they face both at home and abroad. They will have to prove that China's political and economic rise will be as sustainable over the next 30 years as it has been over the last third of a century, even though the task they're confronting now is much more complex than that faced by their predecessors. They will have to demonstrate sufficient foresight and flexibility to respond to immediate tactical concerns. A lot of what we've been seeing recently in the South China Sea, for example, while always staying very mindful of their geostrategic long game. They also, of course, will have to craft a workable strategic framework for channeling the country's growing wealth and power in a way that facilitates China's return to the dominant position in East Asia without sparking conflict with their neighbors or, more importantly, with the United States. And more fundamentally, they must answer the nagging question of what type of great power China wants to be in terms of whether or not to adhere to long-established global rules of the game that, of course, they had no hand in shaping. And I think a core element of our study was to take a look at President Xi Jinping's steady accretion of political power domestically. And I think that means that glimpses of the broad sweep of both his domestic and foreign policy strategies are coming into view more quickly and probably more sharply than other previous political power transitions might suggest. But obviously it's still very early in his presumed decade-long tenure in power, and it would be foolish to suggest that we're seeing anything close to a complete picture of exactly where he may ultimately want to take the country. So with that, we just wanted to highlight a few of the key sort of foundational judgments that we came away from. The first, looking at the domestic political side, was a smooth, stable succession that took place in the fall of 2012 at the 18th Party Congress. There's quite some actually very serious turbulence inside the domestic politics of the Chinese system. The Bushilai case, of course, is the most prominent example. But also a situation where this generation of leaders was trying to orchestrate a power transition, the first one that didn't have at least the ghostly touch of revolutionary elders of a previous period. And that was no small challenge. They had to be able to determine how to come up with new accords amongst themselves as to how to do this. And it's important as well to acknowledge that, at least so far, Xi Jinping and his new premier, Li Keqiang, seem to be working very smoothly together thus far. There's a lot of questions about Li Keqiang's standing in the system since Xi Jinping has grabbed a lot of titles for himself and a lot of authority for himself. But it's important, I think, to acknowledge that the two of them come from very different sort of groupings within the leadership. And there's no real reason to suggest that they should necessarily get along, which suggests to us that the sort of strong emphasis in the aftermath of the Tiananmen period on hanging together or hanging separately within the leadership remains very, very strong. But taking out from that smooth political transition to kind of Xi's rapid consolidation of power, we've discovered our key focus has been on sort of three keys that we've identified to Xi's rapid consolidationist domestic political strength. The first is this sort of princeling background of his or his status as a child of one of the founders of the regime. And we assess that that gives him a unique understanding of the nature of power within the CCP system, especially how to wield power in that system. And the heavy emphasis we see coming out of him on the party as the main driver of moving forward with the whole reform program and launching China into this sort of new status is a great power. The second is that Xi Jinping appears to, through his actions, have acknowledged that in a Leninist system like China's, one must grab ahold of the key levers of power if you want to be able to successfully wield authority within the system. This is something that his predecessor, Hu Jintao, never really got around to doing, not for lack of desire, but rather because he was largely constrained by his own predecessor, junks him in. And so it's not, it should be no surprise to us then that Xi Jinping has moved very rapidly to take control of these key levers of power, the military, the security services, and the party bureaucracy. And that is allowing him to move much more quickly and adroitly, certainly than Hu Jintao was able to when he first came to power and arguably through most of his tenure. And then I think the final one is we've seen a very, what we're calling a defined political strategy of intimidation and coercion coming out of Xi Jinping. Having a toolkit that is very coercive, three main prongs to that toolkit. The first one, of course, is the anti-corruption drive that we hear about on a daily basis, coming out of stories, coming out about various people at various levels being detained. Obviously, he's looking to target some officials at a level that hasn't been done before. Certainly he's bending, if not ready to break, depending on how it all comes out. Some longstanding post-cultural revolution rules or norms about how leaders behave. And one of those, of course, was that you don't go after the children of leaders. And the other is that should one make it safely into retirement, all sins are forgiven with regard to corruption and so on. The second factor or tool in this toolkit is the deep ideological retrenchment that we've been seeing going on under Xi Jinping's tenure. And this has most publicly been seen, of course, in the crackdown on the Internet, you know, various forms of the blogosphere, free speech, and so on. But even within the party itself, and some folks, even fairly powerful voices who are Xi Jinping's princely brethren, if you will, but who hold more politically liberal views have become very silent, whereas they were very active in previous years. So even they have gotten the message that one should not deviate to the right or to the left from where the line is coming down on the top. And we can talk more about that in the Q&A, but my sense is, of course, it's because they know how wrenching these changes are going to be that they're trying to pull off, and especially now in a context where the economy is clearly slowing much more quickly than they would have preferred. And then I think the third and final one is the return of these party rectification tools that really haven't been used in quite some time. You'll have to pardon the horrible jargon, but the mass line education campaign that Xi Jinping has been utilizing really is just a thinly veiled traditional party rectification campaign where they're going around trying to dig up dirt on party cadres across the system, especially those who might be inclined to oppose what Xi Jinping is doing. So there's sort of very pervasive and sort of stifling political retrenchment. So that's on the domestic political side. Then, of course, on the economic side, we have the third plenum and this very bold reform vision that came out of the third plenum last fall. And we particularly focused in the study on how this was looking at assigning this decisive role to the market. It's clearly the plenum's chief contribution to China's forward progression economically, but it's also its most controversial outcome because, of course, if they really do move toward assigning the market a decisive role in their economy, real vested interests within the system are going to lose real money. And I think that's what's real challenging now for this round of reform. In the 1980s, when Deng Xiaoping launched reform, once he was able to sweep away the remaining remnant Maoists, which really didn't take too much effort, there wasn't a lot of resistance to the reform program primarily because the country was emerging from the collapse of the Cultural Revolution and not too many people had much to lose. Fast forward to now, there's a lot of people who have a lot to lose in this system and don't want to see change. And so it was very interesting to me in that context, then, that Xi Jinping seemed to feel the need at the plenum last fall to justify this decision to upgrade the market status to a decisive role, from a basic role in the economy as a theoretical achievement that the Central Committee had decided to do. And this is very significant because by suggesting that the reform program and this decision to increase the market's role is the party's line effectively in a theoretical context, it makes it a lot harder for the opponents to oppose. If it's a policy, you can object to it. If you're suggesting that the party's line is somehow wrong, you better win if you're going to make that charge because that's a much more dangerous thing to do. And it also, of course, shows the depth of the opposition that we're seeing. And so how is the leadership responding to this challenge of this decisive role in the market? We're relying primarily on two tools. The first is, of course, the establishment of this new central leading group for comprehensively deepening reform, which, of course, is not just about economic reform, but also social reform, judicial reform, military reform, pretty much every kind of reform you can think of was put together under the context of this leading group. And then the other, I think, really is pilots like the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, but not exclusive to the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, to be able to conduct some experimentation with regard to the goals that are laid out in the Plenum document and then hope to expand those nationwide. But the question, of course, is does Xi Jinping himself, having named himself the chair of no fewer than eight or nine, I believe, of these leading groups, does he have the bandwidth to be able to manage this all on a day-to-day basis while he's also dealing with the foreign policy challenges and so on? And so in future work, we're going to try to take a more serious look, I think, at the people that he's putting in position to actually run these various reforms day-to-day, because obviously he's only one person. So if all of this, the domestic situation and the economic situation, and Xi's rapid consolidation of political power, was not much of a surprise, at least it wasn't to me. I am not surprised to see him move so quickly. What was a surprise to us in the research? And I think it's that he's been doing all that domestically while also managing a very robust and fairly adroit foreign policy thus far. And obviously it's a very different foreign policy program than we've seen under the previous leadership. Gone is pretty much any reference to Deng Xiaoping's longstanding adage that China should, by its time, hide its capabilities, keep a low profile on the international stage. Obviously because of Deng Xiaoping's stature within the system, they'll never formally break with that phraseology. But I think if we look at the new leadership's approach to foreign policy, it's quite clear that that concept has been left behind. One need only look to the press conference that was given by Wang Yi, the foreign minister at the National People's Congress in March, where when he was asked as the first question of the press conference by a CCTV reporter, the foreign policy of the new leadership seems to be very outstanding. Can you tell us how outstanding it is? And he said in response that he described it as active in a word, active. And this is something you would have never seen five years ago, a Chinese foreign minister or anyone else describing their foreign policy as active. And so to kind of get some theoretical underpinnings of why this shift in their foreign policy, we wanted to look at some key conceptual building blocks that we believe contribute to where we're going with this new construction. The first, of course, is the so-called period of strategic opportunity. This is a longstanding external strategic guideline. It's been validated by several party Congresses. It's very authoritative within the Chinese system. And it's the notion that China has a sufficiently benign external security environment that they can focus on their internal development. And that at least through 2020, this will be the case. The new leadership has, just like its predecessors, validated that concept. But as we'll discuss later on, there are a few caveats to their endorsement of the period of strategic opportunity that suggests some of this different foreign policy. The second one we focused on was this concept of peaceful development, or the idea that not only will China's rise be peaceful and neighbors should not be concerned, but also they will emphasize win-win policies that will allow the neighborhood to prosper peacefully together. The third one, which is really, those two are long-established. They've been around for a decade plus, but the third one is new. And it's this emphasis on the so-called two or twin centenary goals. And this emphasizes two very important anniversaries that are coming up for China. And it does also suggest to them, to us as observers, the long view that China takes in terms of how it thinks about these things. One, of course, is 2021, which is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. And the other is 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. And very interestingly, if you look at most of the media commentary and other commentary in China about these two concepts, it has a heavy domestic focus. What this is about, of course, is these are strategic benchmarks that the leadership hopes to meet in order to legitimize itself and justify the Communist Party's continuing rule. And this is very different from a Western context. You know, in a U.S. or European context, parties may come up with a political platform for a particular election knowing full well that they won't implement 85 to 90 percent of it, probably. In this case, when the Chinese list these goals, sometimes they're a bit vague, but they do intend to meet them, again, as part of this legitimization process. So we should pay very close attention to these concepts. Very interestingly as well, it has been explicitly tied to the regime's foreign policy goal, under the foreign policy approach, under the new leadership. Yang Jiechi, the current State Counselor and notionally the highest foreign policy official inside China's system, wrote an article in China's in the Party's Chief Theoretical Magazine last August in which he indicated that promoting healthy and stable relations with the United States and other major diplomatic partners of China is the inherent requirement of the Twin Centenary Goals and also the inevitable demand for our overall strategy of peaceful development. So he's taking several of these categories, weaving them together, and tying them up in this Twin Centenary Goals. And again, within the theoretical lexicon of the system, this is very, very important because what it does is create an unbreakable chain of authoritativeness of these various concepts. And so therefore the Twin Centenary Goals now are as valid in terms of their content as these other much more long-established ones. So those are kind of the key building blocks. Some of them have been around for a while, but what's new? And in our assessment, what's new is Xi Jinping's Chinese Dream. And it's interesting the way in which State Counselor Yang in this article that he wrote tied all these other concepts into the Chinese Dream. And the Chinese Dream is actually an interesting formulation in that. It's very, very flexible. They can do anything they want with it. It's been rolled out sort of in a vague way. So it gives Xi Jinping a lot of maneuvering room as to how to define it. Frankly, it's also a lot more interesting than his predecessor's ideological contributions, such as the scientific development concept and the three represents. So certainly the Chinese Dream has a lot more energy sounding to it, much more popular with folks. And so Xi Jinping has clearly set this out as his main theoretical achievement. And the foreign policy approach that they're going to undertake will, has the goal of achieving this Chinese Dream. So what does this mean for relations with the neighbors and with the United States and everyone else? We looked at two kind of primary developments that seem to be coming out under the new leadership. The first, of course, is this development of a new type of great power relations with the United States. And interestingly, exclusively with the United States. And the official English translation in the system now is a new style of major country relations, but the Chinese hasn't changed. It's still great power relations. I think that was largely an English convenience to make it sound a little more palatable to some of the regional neighbors. It's a concept that is still being developed. Certainly the Chinese have sort of core principles that they've designed around the concept. But the content is something that is still open to question. And I think there's kind of two views in our research that emerged on how to describe this concept. The more benign view of it, I think, is that it's something somewhat akin to detente with the Soviet Union in the 1970s, by which there's something called the U.S.-China relationship, which has to be put on a plane above the frequent friction that we will have in the bilateral relationship that's natural in a situation where you have a rising power meeting an established power on the world stage. And that managing those frictions is important to ensuring that that doesn't tip over into a conflict. I think we've seen some elements of this definition or this assessment of the approach, especially in the much more positive tone in U.S.-China military-to-military relations, since the new leadership has come into power, and especially greater emphasis on strategic stability in that relationship after a period where that was not the case. So what does this mean, though? Oh, excuse me. And so the second variety, I suppose, is a little bit darker picture, which is that the idea that the Chinese are looking through this concept to get Washington to acquiesce on a series of sort of major planks in their platform that they would like to see happen. And of course, this is mutual recognition of the political systems, primarily China's domestic political system, some recognition from the United States of the concept of core interests, which would include territorial concessions, and a role for Chinese in shaping new global regimes and norms. And as I said, I think there's elements of both pieces of this puzzle in what we've seen so far, and I think that's because the leadership is still working its way through exactly how they want to define this, and they're looking for some queuing from the United States as to how to understand it. So what does it mean for everybody else in the region? If the U.S. gets new type of great-power relations, what does everyone else get? And in our research, we've kind of come across the idea that it's this sort of great-power diplomacy is the language that we saw very early in Xi Jinping's tenure, as he embarked on his maiden trip to Russia. There was a People's Daily article, very prominent, describing this concept. And it's an interesting concept because the terminology actually is old, and Jiang Zemin first came up with this concept during his tenure in the late 1990s. The interesting difference is that at that time, the concept was that China should be attempting to assert itself as a great power where it could, but under an acknowledgement of the umbrella of U.S. hyper-power. So the idea that while acknowledging the U.S.'s dominant role, China would try to assert itself as a great power. In the new version that's coming out under Xi Jinping, I think the view is that the U.S. and China are much more equals in the relationship. There's not this willingness to concede to U.S. hyper-power in this great-power diplomacy formulation that's come out. And what does it mean for the regional neighbors? It means basically that China should exercise its new found strength and rise as a traditional great power in the region, which of course means that they are seeking the dominant position in the region. And they want all others to recognize that and to be able to understand that China will, they want the other countries in the region when they're thinking about taking a particular decision to think about what China thinks about it, at least as quickly as they think about what the United States thinks about it, or perhaps before they think about what the United States thinks about it. And this doesn't mean that this concept isn't going to be peaceful, and it's possible for us to work out a very sort of integrated new security structure. President Xi has talked about this in his recent comments at the SICA summit in Shanghai. We'll have to see how this is developed. But of course a lot of the other regional players, as my colleagues will discuss, are concerned about what this sort of great power diplomacy concept might mean. I'm going to go ahead and stop there and ask Matt to chime in, and we'll take it from there. Thank you. OK, thanks, Chris. Let me add my thanks to the Sasakawa Peace Foundation for making this event possible. And thanks to all of you for coming. It's great to see such a large and I'm sure soon lively crowd. So I'm just going to make a couple of points about economic diplomacy and how that fits into this story. Just a couple of points. So first point is that China's foreign economic strategy or its international economic policy has really been a function of its preoccupation with domestic development and growth. And so in a sense, even when they have engaged in international economic affairs, I mean since the reform and opening period launched by Deng Xiaoping, the focus on international economics has been on, you know, bringing foreign direct investment into China to promote internal development or bringing resources into China to support development or to create stable markets for China to sell into. And so I think the key point there is that the lens through which they've pursued international economic and regional economic affairs is through domestic development. And this has sometimes had unintended consequences. For example, when Zhang Zemin pushed out or encouraged SOEs to go out, the Going Out strategy in 2002 and companies went out to in search of resources, this often had both economic and foreign policy consequences for China that weren't what was originally intended, including the fact that they overpaid for resources and had to sell them at a discount or created local problems ranging from concern that China's approach was self-serving to actual concerns about sort of neocolonialism and along the way environmental degradation and so forth. So this focus on domestic development as the driver has sometimes caused them trouble. So that's I think the first set of points. The second is that there have been bursts of more proactive diplomacy along the way. And the one that's often cited is following the Asian financial crisis in 1997 or during the financial crisis in 1997 when China used a combination of policy restraint, not devaluing the RMB, providing financial support and calling for sort of Asian solidarity. Admittedly some of this was driven by other factors like China didn't want to promote inflation at home so it didn't devalue rather than in order to necessarily win friends and influence people, but that was clearly a part of this. And so I think that's an example where they've been more proactive in a kind of more positive way. There are also examples where the proactive diplomacy has been a little bit less positive or more sinister. For example, the case in 2010 when China temporarily cut off supplies of rare earths to Japan in the wake of the nationalization or the purchase of the Senkaku Jiu-Yu Islands and so that's an example or the Philippine banana case where they banned shipments of Philippine bananas in relation to the Scarborough Shoal Challenge. Even when China has done things again in this burst of these bursts of proactive diplomacy that are more positive, they've had unintended consequences. So for example, the support that they gave to Cambodia in 2012 providing financing and so forth ultimately helped to win a tactical victory at the subsequent ASEAN meetings where they got Cambodia to not issue the full communique coming out from that summit. But that ended up having consequences because ASEAN later then issued a statement with six principles about the South China Sea which was a reaction to this. So sometimes this has had a consequence of backfiring. So my third set of points is about looking for sort of signs of more systematic and strategic dimensions to their international economic or regional economic policies. Obviously, economics has been a part of their smile diplomacy in the region for a long time but I would again say post-97 after this sort of more opportunistic period you saw early on Zhu Rongji for example proposing an ASEAN FTA and eventually although again I think it was really Japan that drove the original ASEAN plus three idea, that is ASEAN plus China, Japan, Korea, China eventually latched on to that and saw that as an opportunity to build a more Sino-centric architecture, certainly more Asian-centric without the United States as part of this. The whole story and I told the story from APEC yesterday so I apologize if I keep telling APEC stories but in 2003 when I was working on APEC at the White House and went to Bangkok to help pre-negotiate the communique, I was struck by how effective Chinese diplomats were in working the APEC room including giving the Philippines track changes to one of the communique drafts which the Philippines submitted to Thailand as the host and when I saw that the Philippines comments were identical to the Chinese that was very striking to me that particularly the Philippines of all places. So there's been I think a systematic attempt to try to be more strategic and more engaged in some of these regional economic endeavors but skipping to more recent times and Xi Jinping as Chris said as part of the China dream and some of the other new trends that he mentioned clearly there has been a focus on establishing a kind of Sino-centric economic order in the region and Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang between them for example have been to all 10 of the ASEAN countries already in fact within the first year they had I think been to all of them and offering a lot of economic incentives and trying to work the crowd there and so this sort of as part of this peripheral diplomacy economics has been a very important part of the story they have Xi Jinping himself has endorsed this idea of ASEAN connectivity I think Ernie may be able to talk about some of these themes a little bit later but that's been a central part of the effort to be a little more systematic and strategic about engagement with the rest of the region China's announced the this infrastructure bank which is still the details of which are a little vague but potentially sizable amounts of money behind infrastructure which everyone in the region agrees is needed and valued I think the challenges in sort of there rolling out a more systematic region economic policy are first of all that a lot of these efforts to date have still been somewhat haphazard and and and have reflected to some extent that the broader challenges of coordination of policy in China and you know you have many different actors SOEs and local governments and different ministries all participating in this activity in one way or the other and it isn't always very well coordinated another problem for China is just it's big so the fact that it's so big it sometimes creates a sense of from the perspective of other countries this this sort of large economic force that people are a little reluctant to be fully pulled into even though they are of course for their own economic interest want to be engaged more deeply with China there's also a sense that that somehow China is a threat just by its size and then some of the policies that that China has pursued have been seen I think again as somewhat narrow and self-serving and I think that's been a challenge for China to overcome and then of course the relationship of security and economic issues and and the concerns about China's more assertive posture on on on other issues as it were I think it's hampered their ability to to roll out this this more positive and strategic economic diplomacy so I think I'll just stop there and go on down the line great thank you the so I too want to begin by thanking Sascha Peace Foundation for their support of this project this research no one thank Chris for heading up the team and shepherding us through this project I think the publication you have in front of you is is is quite good from both a from both a policy and also an academic perspective my piece of this was to be one of the looks at the regional picture and in particular the Korean Peninsula and their relationship with China and and so I too want to begin with a with a story which was that when I was in the US government at the White House working on Asia stuff one of my accounts was Korea and and at the time there was a South Korean president who was actually put it slightly to the left of center and he had come up with this term for the Korea's relationships with the big powers in Asia which was something that was known as the balancer principle right then the idea being that Korea would sort of hover and gravitate above the raw balance of power of politics in the region and would would take sides depending on the issue you know between the United States and China this was naturally very disconcerting for us who were the alliance managers because we thought we had a relationship we had an alliance with South Korea but then it was only further confirmed in a couple of meetings that we did with China as part of the US China what was it called in the strategic and ever strategic economic dialogue or the or the senior dialogue one of those state right the state it was a state part one and and and we talk about the region and China would then start talking about Southeast Asia Japan Australia every part of the region except the Korean Peninsula and we thought that was strange why don't they talk about the Korean Peninsula and it was pretty obvious that the reason they didn't was because they thought that was theirs there was this was not in the balance right this was something that eventually would come to them and so you know this has led to a lot of academic writing policy writing about the whole question of where Korea stands and if if you sort of did a bibliographic search of the titles for these sorts of articles they would all say this they would all give the same metaphor sort of something that's on a scale right so is it anchored or is it a drift right where does it is the scale tipping to the east or to the west is it tipping towards the continent or towards the maritime these are always the titles that were used to sort of describe where Korea stood in the bigger grand strategic picture and in a sense you know the implicit suggestion was that you know of this fabled and grand us alliance network in Asia this was the weakest link right many ways that this was the weakest link unlike Japan where things were pretty cut and dry in terms of where Japan and the United States stood on issues with Korea it was less so and so so using that as a template what I really wanted to look at was this question of to what extent Korea really is anchored in the alliance network in the long term or is it eventually a drift and I think in general the answer is at least my personal opinion is that it is anchored it's very much anchored in the west and the US alliance we just did a rollout last week the CSIS survey of strategic elites that had a number of questions but one of them was a question on US leadership in Asia and your support of it with the continued existence of US capabilities or even in the face of declining US capabilities and the country that registered the highest in terms of strongly supporting continued US leadership with or without capabilities was South Korea it was actually even higher than the United States in terms of the in terms of the polling at the SICA meeting that Chris or Matt mentioned Korea was the country that was the one that said they would not sign on to the the effort to create a statement about the the sort of anachronism of the bilateral security alliances in Asia Korea is deeply embedded in the economic architecture of the region it is it is conducting free trade talks with China but at the same time very consciously came out and said it's in support of TPP and wishes to join TPP at some point with less of an enthusiastic response to things like RCEP so and and I think in many ways the current president of South Korea Park and a although she is very interested in growing the strategic relationship with China for reasons I'll talk about in a minute is very clear that the core of US for South Korean foreign policy is the alliance relationship with the United States now having said all that it's undeniable that it is a very it's a much more complex picture for Korea I think much more so than Japan you know the Japan-China relationship is defined as sort of a great power peer-competitor relationship but in Korea I think it's a much more complex relationship and so I spent a good part of the paper explaining why it's complex I think for the purposes of today I'll just focus on sort of three basic dilemmas I mean the first is that you know Korea lives in the neighborhood as a medium-sized power that will always forever and ever have China as a neighbor never going to go away it's a basic geopolitical reality at the same time it is the one country in the region that has China as a neighbor that is sort of an open political so a very different value system right and so that's never going to change so on the one hand they need to get along with their neighbor on the other hand there's clearly a gap in sort of the political values and the belief systems of the two countries second dilemma is Korea when they polled in the CSIS strategic elite survey saw China hands down as the most important economic partner for Korea for the next generation right undeniably but at the same time they they they understand that economic reality with China but at the same time they don't see their strategic future with China again when they're polled in the CSIS strategic elite survey Koreans very strongly said that their most important strategic partner and political partner in the future for the next decade or so 25 years was still the United States so that's another source of tension and then the third of course is something that's very close to Koreans and that is the whole question of unification the dilemma here is that Korea needs China in any possible scenario involving unification but at the same and so it needs to it needs to draw closer to China for that purpose but at the same time there's an understanding that China doesn't want North Korea to collapse right it wants to sort of maintain this buffer there for as long as they can so because of these dilemmas I think the Korea relationship with China looks much more complex is much more complex and maybe there are things that ring true also with with Southeast Asia as well but certainly in Northeast Asia I think it is probably got the most complex relationship let me very quickly just talk about today so China will be coming to South Korea there's a summit coming up between the two leaders Ji Jinping and Park Geun-ae sometime this month it will be the second summit between the between the two leaders Ji Jinping has some sort of high school crush on Park Geun-ae I mean it's very clear that he likes her he gets very nervous around her he starts sweating so it's playing with his tie and I don't know if you say that on TV but it's it's so there's a very good relationship there and the Koreans are really working very hard I think to deepen that strategic relationship they're trying to start an NSEe dialogue with with the new NSEe in Beijing they're trying to deepen defense ties obviously foreign ministry ties they're working very hard at this now the one interpretation that I've heard quite often in Washington is that the reason that the South Koreans are interested in this is because again they're tilting they're tilting back towards the continent away from the traditional maritime alliance coalition in Asia and also because they're pissed off with the Japanese right you hear this quite often and I just don't think that's right I mean it is absolutely right that the Koreans are pissed off with the Japanese that's for sure but what is drawing them to China I think is a feeling is a sense is an instinct that China's position on North Korea is starting to waiver it's not a hundred percent you know North Korea forever ellipse and teeth all this sort of stuff there's clearly disenchanted meant with the leadership in North Korea you don't have the same influential policymakers inside the Chinese system who have traditionally been apologists for North Korea North Korean behavior continues to be very unpredictable including as we all know the execution of Changseng Tech who was very important to the Chinese in North Korea so I think there's a sense not that the Chinese are ready to defect from their relationship with North Korea but it's a little bit wobbly and so for that reason I think the South Koreans are going in leveraging the very good relationship that Pakenna has with Xi Jinping and really wants to try to at least move the needle a little bit and that's why I think we see the deep engagement the Japan thing is a is the Japan thing and that's a separate issue but I I see this more as an opportunity that the South Koreans are trying to take advantage of with China rather than something that is a reflection of a disenchantment with the alliance system or with Japan in particular. Thanks Victor and thanks to to I see Dan Bob out there thank you to the Sasakawa Peace Foundation for their support for this research and thanks to Chris for keeping these cats in the corral not easy. You know Southeast Asia also has a lot of the same concerns that that Victor mentioned about Korea. I think the key thing for them was to see what a China under Xi would look like and as we wrote this report the the outlines of that were starting to take shape after we wrote the report the Chinese toad the oil rig 981 the Haiyang oil rig off of the off the coast of Vietnam and I think we can see that actually I reread the report you know to get ready for this and I thought we sort of nailed it you know. Southeast Asia doesn't know and this drives them crazy what China wants to be what is the new China and they're trying to understand that I think that so they watched very carefully what Xi is about I think they're starting to get the picture as Chris mentioned China is sort of completing its story it's the this is the for me it's the that 2049 date is the one that has Southeast Asia's attention because it looks to Southeast Asia like China has sort of taken off the gloves and is not going to the charm rhetoric is still there the but the the actions speak louder than words and unfortunately the actions are scaring the hell out of Southeast Asia to be honest with you so I think well all 10 members of Ozzie and are asking the same questions no one really believes they have the answers yet or if the answers as the answers start to take shape they wish they weren't the answers that they're seeing so divining Xi Jinping China's foreign policy intentions in general and she's in specific our policy priority within ASEAN and I think it's important for the United States to understand the other side of that coin is a preoccupation in Southeast Asia with understanding what the intentions and capabilities of the United States are this is very important because ASEAN like Korea in some ways but in some ways I think even more so are our balancers they're seeking balance so you know I think when Ozzie understands that the United States is not trying to contain China but they also understand that that China uses the containment argument as code for don't get too close to the United States or we'll use our strategic toolbox against you and and I think we're starting to see some of that come into play I touched on a couple of things I thought I'd talk about a couple things I think ASEAN sees the following points she is in charge like Chris mentioned there's there's no question anymore whether a decisive power or decisive leader in Beijing is aware of what's happening in the South China Sea whether it's the maritime Coast Guard authorities or even sort of a rogue PLA or PLAN that's taking actions in the South China Sea I think Haiyong and Vietnam proved that to ASEAN particularly because the Chinese decided to do this Tota a billion dollar rig into the Vietnamese waters just a week before the ASEAN ministers were meeting at the ASEAN summit in Myanmar so there's no question I think ASEAN believes they see a decisive and powerful leader in Beijing and that's that's something that they're focused on they also see she as a strong nationalist they believe he's a nationalist who put China's interest including its priorities regarding its own definition of its sovereignty above all other considerations so I think we're seeing a China foreign policy in Southeast Asia that basically is focused on China's domestic goals and if the ASEANs are going to have to have a hard time understanding that this is the way it's going to be so be it this is really concerning because rhetoric from China and diplomatic structures are not are not consistent with its actions and that's really rattling Southeast Asia I think the region believes that China intends to aggressively push its advantage in the South China Sea there's an optimistic view there's always optimism in Southeast Asia for those of you who know the region there's always hope and the optimistic view of she is that his leadership is an opportunity that when he consolidates power he used that power to reform and strengthen China's economy enhances personal control over a military that was the the leading edge of the efforts in the South China Sea and that he would focus on working with the neighbors rather than challenging them or controlling them I think we're pretty much done with the optimistic view there I mean I this was I wrote this before Vietnam and I think that's starting to really wither the other view is that that she is a threat I think it's a more realistic and pervasive concern among ASEAN countries a she wielding real power could mean a more assertive Chinese foreign policy especially especially this is really important for American strategy and policymakers especially if Beijing perceives weakness and relative inattention in Washington and guess what folks they do I think that perception of so that the factors facing shaping Southeast Asia security perceptions are very much based on this perception of weakness in Washington and inconsistency I think we've talked a lot about it they see they see an inconsistency here they see a divided a Washington divided by partisan ideology not driving towards national interests they see real questions about the course of history us isolationism after foreign wars and I think what's most important in Asia when you talk about securities economics economics is the very foundation of the concept of security in Southeast Asia and most ASEAN countries are concerned that China will use its growing economic power to drive its sovereign agenda they can understand that while China is not a large investor in ASEAN yet its capital flows from Chinese entities into Southeast Asia are growing as you know it's the number one or number two trading partner with most of the ASEAN countries that's been a good story for Southeast Asia for the most part and it should continue to be a good growth story if China is not going to use that economic leverage to assert its sovereign concerns but as Matt mentioned that's not the story we've seen the the economic levers used in Japan we've seen them used in the Philippines and that is a veiled it's a semi veiled threat that's being used more often as we go forward I think ASEAN is concerned that China may see the benefits of a weak ASEAN they they believe China may not want to see a strong and integrated ASEAN because the Chinese if their goals are as we found in this study to assert their position they would much rather work on work work on the ASEAN countries where there are disputes in a bilateral way rather than with ASEAN and although there's rhetoric towards completing a code of conduct for the South China see in reality that that code of conduct a binding code of conduct keeps getting kicked down the road the sense in Southeast Asia that China tolerates regional architecture but it puts its real eggs in the bilateral basket so very specifically China as you know as I mentioned would rather negotiate bilaterally with the ASEAN countries then then in a code of conduct with ASEAN and in terms of economic integration in Asia China very much would like to see China or the ASEAN plus three format which China has tended to dominate instead of some of the regional economic architecture that we've looked at and such as TPP or APEC and that may change I hope it does but so far it's not good and I think for the US I think we have to understand we've got to get our heads in the game in terms of convincing all of Asia China ASEAN Korea that there's a political foundation for long-term American engagement in Asia and that we have we're going to lead economic with economic engagement and and state clearly that we understand that's the basis for security in Asia thanks thank you I'd also like to thanks I'll call Peace Foundation and Chris for leading this effort I'm going to briefly summarize five points that are made at the end of the report what are listed as possible lessons for the US Japan alliance as we consider the implications of China's rise I think the first based on some of the comments you've heard already is that it's important for the United States in Japan to continually share regional assessments you know not all countries in the region view Chinese power the same way and there may be domestic considerations that that motivate China policy throughout the region and it's very important for the US Japan alliance to move forward to have a solid understanding of what those views are and I think trilateral dialogues with countries such as Australia India and others are really important in reaching a better understanding of how the region as a whole views these developments in China which are extremely complex and automatically invite different views and perspectives so I think having a better understanding of regional assessments of Chinese powers is is extremely important for the US Japan alliance the second which which Chris referenced earlier which is articulated in the report is that we really can't predict whether China is going to be a full cooperative stakeholder in the international system or at the other end of the spectrum a strategic rival so for the US Japan alliance it's important to come up with a strategy that combines deterrence, dissuasion but also reassurance we have very strong bilateral defense coordination mechanisms in place there's a so-called two plus two the US and Japanese governments are currently reviewing bilateral guidelines for defense cooperation the deterrence and dissuasion component is quite clear but there's could be more room to explore reassurance and the reality is that the neighbors of China in the region don't want to have to choose between the United States and China and the US Japan and other countries in the region have a stake in China's economic development and political evolution so as we consider the way forward it's important to look for opportunities for engagement and to encourage China to participate in confidence building and transparency measures third point is coordination at regional forums and multilateral institutions in the region I think the US Japan and other partners in the region have a role in making sure that these forums reinforce international rules and norms and our places where coercive tools are not accepted and I think we'll see this trend going forward fourth area for the alliance is capacity building issues such as maritime domain awareness or disaster response or disaster risk reduction I think the Philippines comes to mind there's great potential for joint training that involves the US Japan in the Philippines in a capacity building context and finally linked to the capacity building issue is perhaps room to better align US and Japanese development strategies in the region particularly in Southeast Asia when Vice President Biden visited Japan last December the two governments issued a long fact sheet on global cooperation of which development was a very key component and earlier this year in February the US and Japan started a senior level development dialogue and Southeast Asia features heavily in that and I think there's potentially a room to better align the development agenda between the US and Japan again to reinforce rules rules and norms and I Victor referenced our survey of regional elites earlier just one parenthetical note and then I'll conclude I found it particularly interesting that China was the only country where a majority of respondents felt that the US rebalance to the region was was too confrontational toward China but we also asked a question about what experts thought was in their country's best interests in terms of future order in Asia and among the Chinese respondents there was no consensus whether it was US leadership or Chinese primacy or US China great power relations or a community of multilateral institutions that manage the economic evolution and the security and stability in the region so my personal view is that you know China might not like the US presence and the US rebalance but I'm not really sure what vision China is articulating for the future and we're just going to have to monitor that very closely so thank you very much okay thanks to all my colleagues and certainly a lot of folks to chew on in there and we'd like to open up the floor to questions as per usual CSIS practice if you would please identify yourself and where you come from and then also please do confine your question to a brief question that is indeed a question first up yeah right here in the front please wait for the microphone should I stand up I'm Andre Silver Joe and I'm the chief representative in Vietnam for a company in Detroit the interstate travel company but I do business for different companies in Vietnam now my question is this go back to Chris a statement of the two views of Chinese foreign policy the benign and the darker and you express them both so well and leads to the question and that is I think leading from Ernie's discussion of the realities of action speaking louder than words and you even use correct language instead of euphemism you talked about dragging the oil rig into Vietnamese territorial waters instead of disputed waters so that's a refreshing start so the question is this what will it take to what does the United States need to do and other countries but basically the United States to change the balance of Ernie or anybody to make it better a better prognosis by maybe speaking more clearly about realities and other things what do they need to do and and and to diminish Beijing's perception that the United States is what in fact it is distracted and and not paying so much attention to this well I think I think first of all we have to I think Nick talked about it I think we should reassure China we can't succeed in Asia without China being secure feeling powerful I don't think any structure in Asia any regional economic or security structure could work if it excludes China and so let's be clear about that we need a safe and secure China one that's productive and feels feels like it's part of making the rules and then implementing those rules but I think to do so we've got to we have to dissuade Asia and China specifically that the United States is somehow distracted that the pivot to Asia or the rebalancing is some sort of a near term Logan or rhetoric a slogan or rhetoric and I think if you look at reality first the first thing is research research shows and I think we've done a lot of it here that the United States is never leaving Asia we are we are deeply invested there we are part of it from an economic point of view from a security point of view Asia is very critical to our country but what we need I think Andre is a leader who is willing to talk to Americans and and this modern political rhetoric be damned somebody's got to talk to Americans about why the United States has got to be involved in Asia why it's our jobs are dependent on Asia our securities dependent on Asia and even if they're foreign policy advisors who get that are not their foreign policy their political domestic political advisors who get them elected say look don't say Asia don't say foreign policy and don't say trade you know these are not things that will get you elected I think it's a real test of leadership to say you know what guys I'm sorry but if I can't get elected telling the truth about what's important to our country I don't want this job and and I think that's what we need to be honest with you I think another key factor there is arresting the the deterioration in Sino-U.S. bilateral ties we've seen some very challenging moments here recently and my sense just coming back from China recently is that to some degree the Chinese are very confused about what the U.S. approach to the relationship is I think President Xi feels that President Obama is not engaged on the relationship that indeed he may not even be in control of his own system from their perspective when cyber indictments these sort of things that seem so contrary to what the two presidents themselves have discussed come out of our system I think the other piece here is Ernie mentioned about economics being security in Asia we're allowing right now it seems those difficult security issues that are natural when a rising power meets an established power the rub if you will in the relationship to dominate the relationship when as President Xi said when he was Vice President he came and visited it's the economic relationship he called it the ballast and the propeller I use a slightly different word I say shock absorber but the idea is the same that's why we don't have a Cold War relationship with China we're three weeks away from the strategic and economic dialogue the Chinese perception is that there's no US agenda for that you know sort of major meeting there's a real opportunity top officials meeting to recalibrate the relationship so I think the Chinese are very confused and as Ernie sort of suggested could use some reassurance from the US side that they are indeed invested in the relationship and want to have that very top level integration between our two leaders gentlemen in the dark suit I don't want to there's a lady in a dark suit here too so I don't want to take the mic away from her but maybe a quick comment and a question David Sedney formally of the State and Defense Departments that the comment Chris is I'm a little concerned about perhaps dismissing the party rectification campaign is just another one because there's a big history of these it could be a hundred flowers kind of thing or it could be a Hu Jintao scientific development kind of thing and I think we have to wait and see just how important that will be in China so I would just urge that as a caution secondly for everybody in the panel really who wants to comment one country that didn't seem to get mentioned very much unless I missed it was was India and we have the election of a new leader in India who seems to be very intent upon reaching out to Japan to create a very strong alliance with Japan how does that play into this decoding of China and how is the this new India potentially new India going to be perceived by China as India is also rising but I but lady here did have a question also I don't know if you want to take both of ours or sorry didn't catch the back part there the lady here did have a question oh yeah sure go ahead you can take both of ours thank you for that I'm Lara Parvin Smith from USAID office of donor engagement and I think it was Mr Goodman who brought up the Chinese infrastructure bank and I was wondering if you had a bit more detail as to the status of the creation and how you and I'd be interested to hear from the other panelists to how it may influence the region thanks great let me just add a let me just start with the India question with just a structural thing you know when we were can constructing the study we had to make some choices and so we had to we sort of decided to to focus on China's front door if you will the maritime side of things and let the because if we had included India then we would have had to include Russia and central it got very complicated very quickly I think but you may as a great point David I mean you know I think that with Modi's election and very interesting stuff going on between the Chinese and Modi so far already very very interesting especially given Modi's my understanding of Modi's past approach toward China it's interesting that the Chinese appear to be trying to reach out to him early on obviously as we mentioned at the beginning we're very fortunate our good friends of the Sasaka peace foundation have agreed to allow us to continue this research going forward as the commission continues its meetings and so I'm sure we'll do something on India at that point I don't know if anybody else wants to throwing any comments on India but I would just say on India you know Modi looks like a really interesting opportunity he's a practical guy a decisive guy a business oriented focus he's got a mandate in India and the Chinese were there a couple days ago and they said we are going to do we're going to invest more in India we want to work more with you economically and we will minimize our our political and security issues so this is an opportunity for the Chinese to sort of change the pattern right they they should engage economically I think Modi will be very interested in that but if if that comes at the same time with you know border crossings in the northeast you know I think we'll see a bad pattern and I think the Indians will will back off because they'll see the same things that the southeast Asians have seen but I let's look at Modi is and leading India as an opportunity for China and I think certainly Southeast Asia and the Americans would hopefully see it that way I just had a brief point I did I'd encourage you to take a look at the event we had earlier this week run by our India chair Rick Rosso on a new book that has come out looking at the experience of Chinese companies in India and Indian companies in China it really gets at a lot of the the questions there let me ask Matt to since the question was addressed to him to jump in on that but I'm sure any has a view on the ASEAN infrastructure bank piece as well. Yeah I mean I'm afraid I don't have a lot of detail I'm not sure there is a lot of detail yet the Chinese I think President Xi mentioned this initiative and one of his trips to Southeast Asia and and it's now been sort of part of the conversation and in a number of forums in in Asia and so but the details and modalities and you know how much money and where it's going to go and what kinds of disciplines might be attached to the money is still unclear the there have been some concerns about whether the so the positive thing is that I think again as I think I said in passing everybody understands that there is a crying need for greater infrastructure across all of Asia and by the way in the United States and other advanced countries who are part of the Asia Pacific region and so I think the the fact that China is willing to use some of its economic and financial power to to help invest and address this challenge is broadly welcome I think the the concerns have been raised are about sort of again what sorts of what the conditions might be applied to that to that money and whether whether the that set of disciplines will be consistent with what the Asian Development Bank and other existing institutions in the region that are engaged in this kind of financing use as as as conditionality for this lending and so I think these questions are out there but it hasn't been as far as I know there hasn't been a master plan or a detailed set of proposals for for this institution yet. Yeah I would just emphasize from my own perspective watching the China piece as well that there's not a lot of detail we're still still waiting I think Ernie's decided to take a pass so we can get some more questions in so next question the gentleman over here in the corner. My name is Kunio Kikuchi and sorry I'm with Washington research and analysis formally of the World Bank I'm glad India was brought up because they just elected the president where he was chosen with 500 million votes if I were to think in terms of China as a huge rock Russia is about one tenth Japan is also a little less than one tenth Korea is only one twentieth the size of this gigantic rock and I'm wondering how firm the rock is in terms of governance and continuity in the sense that if there are cracks and I don't mean cracks by military or ethnicity but the people's demand for more information and transparency in government how long do you think the current form of single-party dictatorship in China is sustainable say going forward 10 years 15 years thank you I'm guessing that one's for me okay you know obviously this is a chief preoccupation of the new leadership team and I think what we're seeing is Xi Jinping's definition of how you go about making those governance changes that you've suggested if you look at the document that was approved by the plenum there's a lot of very interesting developments in there that will over time constrain the role that the party is playing in the system you know if again coming back to this initial point about assigning a decisive role to the market if that is successful then the state of course must step back in terms of its control of the economy interestingly Xi Jinping again in this sort of theoretical space and this is something that's very interesting about him as a leader so far as he seems to have a strong interest if not a need to wrap up a lot of what he's doing in these ideological terms it's a big difference really from some of his predecessors and he's talked very recently as you know when Doug Chopping launched the reform program there were four modernizations and now there's talk of a fifth modernization which is exactly governance and improving the responsiveness of the system improving the way the system reacts to stimulus getting out of the sort of stovepipe nature that they have now because they realize that they have a fairly stovepiped almost rickety Leninist system riding atop a very dynamic society right and that is not a good solution so I think we got to watch very carefully but give them time because this is not going to be easy but I think Xi Jinping is determined to make some serious change that may even look at a fundamental reshaping of the party state the other point I would make is it is abundantly clear that Xi Jinping is not China's Gorba Chop you know this guy has no interest in overturning party rule in fact he wants to strengthen it so that's important to keep in mind as well let's go here thank you my name is Gun Gunmilar I'm from Indonesia I'm a student at Hartford University so my question is right now Indonesia is in the political issue of the general elections which is Prabhu Subhiyanto Joye Hadikusomo and Joko Widodo so I would like to know about the how's your response to economic impact after the elections of two especially to Asia Pacific trade area especially to Indonesia thank you I'm gonna have you answer that but I'd like to throw something in first if I might not specific to your question but I think this is one of those areas you know there's a lot of debate and we confronted this in the study I think about China seemingly with some of these actions doing things that are counterproductive or things that don't seem to be in their interest and in having conversations there I think there is a suggestion that one of the reasons why they feel confident that they can do what they've been doing is that the US as Ernie mentioned with economics being security in the region is not providing an appropriate counterbalance and therefore the the sucking sound if you will of China's rise in economy is so powerful and that they'll the region then will accept this behavior because of that economic leverage when having this discussion I did ask them to think about Indonesia in this context because I think that we are seeing some signs of concern from the Indonesians I'll let Ernie elaborate about what's going on but here's a country in my estimation who should be feeling very good about its relations with China and yet because of some of these recent actions is having some questions and Indonesia because of its size and its growth and so on they can be the ring leader of ASEAN ASEAN needs a ring leader to be effective and and I don't know much about Joko Weeba my sense is he's a bit of a blank slate in terms of foreign policy and so there will be an opportunity there for multiple parties to to shape his views well look I think Indonesia is at an exciting juncture right now with the presidential elections coming up on July 9th and I think if you look at this the survey we did of ASEAN elites that we published last week Indonesia was you know very very much focused on the benefits of China being a strong trading partner but they also didn't want they haven't had a good experience with the ASEAN China FTA and I think Indonesia wishes that it could back out of that agreement in fact Gita Weerwan and and other Indonesian trade ministers under SBY have sort of pushed back hard Marie Pangestu and others on on the ASEAN China FTA and and what they thought was sort of abusive and abusive repercussions on the Indonesian economy so when we looked at the survey I think because of in part because of that experience Indonesians were among the lowest in terms of countries who would be looking forward their interest in TPP for instance not much interest right now and I think that's because Indonesia believes that it's time it's time has come and that you should come to Indonesia and do business in Indonesia but Indonesia is not ready exactly to to trade I think the the Chinese have really alarmed the Indonesians with the nine dash line tipping the Natuna islands and the Natuna sea and we see that Indonesian leaders are now coming out and talking about this very openly including the head of the TNI Moldoko the other thing that the Chinese have done recently is send warships through the straits of the Sunda Straits and oh my gosh the Lumbak thanks sorry it's trying to think of nice places to go and I was thinking Bali but Lumbak is just as nice and I think that really did alarm the Indonesians although they played it off as if they sort of understood that it wasn't a problem but they were very alarmed by it the woman in the green right near the door is there thank you my name is Zhang Hong from China's HACI media so I wonder if the panelists could give us an assessment of how much the the Russian pivot to East Asia increase China's leverage or China's perception of its leverage in having its way in South China Sea and perhaps also in East China Sea in particular in the on the military front when we're seeing Russian-Chinese joint drill in East China Sea recently and actually there was an interesting incident just before the joint drill there was a report that a senior Russian military official saying that the drill was going to be held in South China Sea so that could be a mistake but do you think that's a genuine mistake or is it not something thank you to jump in you know my own view is that even the Chinese have questions about any kind of Russian you know pivot to the east and I think what comes out of the recent summit between Presidents Xi and Putin are several things one it is clear to me that the Chinese feel very comfortable that they are now the dominant partner in that relationship and that I think they probably believe the Russians acknowledge that what is interesting about it however my understanding of the gas deal is that China of course felt to some degree especially the negotiating parties inside China CNPC you know the various ministries that handle that that they had the Russians over a barrel no pun intended with regard to the gas deal and especially on price right which has been the factor that has caused the deal to fall apart now for 10 years and because of Russia's difficulties in Europe etc and you get the feeling that President Putin didn't come away too disappointed so my sense is that in fact there was a political concession made by the Chinese and it's clear in the agreement itself that the Chinese did something that they didn't want to do which was agree to a formula by which the price would be linked to the price of oil that's how it is on the European side Chinese were seeking to avoid that they did make this political concession so it says something about the relationship between two I think unlike what I mentioned a few moments ago about some of the concerns perhaps about the United States President there I do believe Xi Jinping has some sort of a relationship there's some sort of chemistry between the two presidents that's I think very clear from watching them interact and they get something to do with the fact that President Putin also is a decisive person he's someone who's in control of his own system however he's chosen to design it and does what he says and I think Xi Jinping sees himself as a very similar individual that said I don't think the Chinese are blind to the traditional challenges in the Russia-China relationship I do think that what we're seeing with China's evolving approach toward Russia is an effort to maintain what you might call an active Russia card underneath a broader umbrella of Sino-U.S. relations actually and because they recognize still the power disequilibrium between the U.S. and China and Russia can be helpful in that context and I guess I would suggest that if in our own management of our relationship with the Chinese we are foolish enough to allow that to exist that's our own fault any others so the so two points about the Russian so-called pivot to Asia the first is in terms of the relationship which China I would agree with many of the things that Ernie said I would also say that for both Beijing and Moscow this is more of a tactical tilt more than something I think that is deeper and strategic and as Chris said I mean all you have to do is look at the history of this relationship and you I'm not very confident that the cooperation will sort of be deep in long term it's a very challenging relationship the second aspect of the pivot is Russia's pivot to North Korea in the sense of forgiving North Korean debt and trying to do some infrastructure deals there and the only thing I can say is more power to you if you want to consider a part of your pivot the move to North Korea does anyone else in the back of the room there have a question doesn't look like it okay back up front the gentleman right here in the green sweater Steve Winters local researcher it could perhaps because the panel has mentioned confusion suggested there's confusion on the part of China about the US position I remember going back to say the height of the bubble in Japan say 25 years ago the Japanese had a dream of sort of being some leaders there of becoming the leading country in Asia you know leading the development of Asia and so forth that this was quite clear at the time and that as I recall led to some friction with the US for instance arguments over where to put the where to place the Asian Development Bank headquarters and so forth and so on so I think this unclarity has been there for some right it's the US actually have a position to say we don't want you know a regional hegemon to evolve in Asia that's our position or or you know so forth and so on maybe you could address that because I'm sure she's wondering about it it's at least been a stated part of US strategy going back to the last four East Asian strategy reviews that have been done there hasn't been one done in a while but that's certainly been the stated that US position I think would oh yeah go ahead man about the just to clarify I mean I think the Japan situation you've muddled a few different issues there one is about Japan's I think really the period you're talking about is 1997 98 after the Asian financial crisis when there was an effort by Japan to promote the idea of an Asian monetary fund not the Asian Development Bank Asian monetary fund which Washington saw as in competition potentially with the IMF and worried about sort of discipline and so forth and so so I think that was a very specific challenge I don't think there was a broader concern about Japan as a hegemon in Asia so I just want to clarify that's that's a very different story from the one today Thanks very much Linkwalk Brookings today we've been talking about China's emerging great power strategy in Asia did you get a sense of an emerging small power strategy towards China and here I'm talking about the smaller countries of East Asia or Asia or the ASEAN countries in a recent op-ed the ambassador at large of Singapore mentioned that the smaller countries of East Asia are not entirely helpless spectators suggesting of course that they are more or less helpless spectators what are your thoughts on this what can the ASEAN countries do individually or collectively and I mean more than just broadly oh we don't want to be forced to choose between China and the U.S. what are the what are the strategies did you see any emerging from them thank you Ernie I think that's yours thanks Lynn look I think this is the this is a really important moment for ASEAN it it's set itself out for a stronger ASEAN the ASEAN charter says that ASEAN will be integrated economically politically and and socially and they have benchmarks by 2015 I think that that Chinese fire you know the fire of Chinese aggression that these these questions that China is asking ASEAN through its actions not through its words are a real test for whether ASEAN can find some consensus that's the right word for ASEAN a consensus that they need to be stronger and and they can do that in a couple of ways I think you'll you'll have the answer if you see ASEAN decide to do a couple of things one get rid of their old rule that they the only could invest as much as the lowest contributor within ASEAN to the ASEAN secretariat number two I think you're starting to see ASEAN be more willing to talk about commenting on its the internal affairs of its its members because ASEAN has to realize that it's only as strong as its weakest link which is you know sadly now amazingly now happens to be Thailand which is the the interlocutor for China with ASEAN and I think that's being exploited quite frankly if I might say by our friends in Beijing a bit and so ASEAN I think needs to do some work there I think every opportunity is there for ASEAN to sort of strengthen itself and enhance its relations with strategic partners and enhance its relations with China at the same time and I think if it does that and continues on the pace for instance of the ADMM which and ADMM plus which is the ASEAN defense ministers plus I think we'll see a stronger a stronger ASEAN and so this is this is what ASEAN can do I think I could give you a list of other things including you know instead of the ADMM meeting once every two years now it used to meet every once every three years it should meet every year and I think ASEAN should use its architecture the ASEAN ministers meeting to make sure I really encourage its partners to come and participate in those meetings not only the defense ministers and the foreign ministers at the ARF but the health ministers the education ministers the trade ministers this will create a habit of coordination on issues that we all can work on together health, education, infrastructure this is what this is what we want to be sitting at the table with with China and India working on and that's what I mean when I say economics are the foundation of security ASEAN doesn't play that role I think the region will be continue to be plagued by serious existential questions okay I think we've reached time I want to thank everyone for their great participation good questions from the audience again our deep thanks to our friends at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation and thank you all very much and please join me in thanking my colleagues