 Could you tell us why the South China Sea and the—who are the players and why should this matter to Americans? Sure. Well, the South China Sea is on the southeastern coast of China, and it's an area where there are a lot of maritime disputes as well. So there's disputes over the sovereignty of the islands, there's dispute over the jurisdiction in the waters, and that really gets to who gets to have the resources in the waters. And there's also disputes between the United States and China in this region that center on who gets to control the access of the international community to the waters in that region. It's important, this region is important for a lot of reasons, frankly. Obviously a lot of the world's trade goes through that region as it's a good east-west corridor between the Middle East where the oil is and the eastern Asia where a lot of the economic engines of the world are. So in addition to all of the economic reasons for which it's important, it's also important because China has a continental power growing in power, both in terms of its military power and its economic power and its ability to extend them around its periphery, is encroaching on an area that has for many decades been an area where the United States and particularly the United States Navy has had the privilege of operating with a fair amount of freedom. And so now that there's kind of a friction point there in the South China Sea between the American thinking about how to establish not only national security but security for the global system that enables this functioning of the economic aspects of the global economy. How do the Chinese think about the South China Sea? What are their interests there? What do they want? Well, the Chinese think about the South China Sea, well, it's complex, I should say, to start. The Chinese have articulated a nine-dash line that sort of is U-shaped and extends all the way almost to the coastline of Malaysia and the South. Many hundreds, really it's about 1200 miles, if I remember correctly, from the Chinese mainland to their furthest extent of where they actually make a claim. So this really reflects not only a Chinese claim to the actual islands in the South China Sea but also a sense of a national entitlement to this region that is based on China's sense of its historical rights and its traditional centrality in East Asia over the many centuries before China's challenging period over the last 150 years. So do you think we're seeing a new era where the South China Sea will sort of be a symbol for a challenge to American power in Asia? And how would that affect, in your view, American strategy as we think about the Yeah, well, some big questions there. The first question concerning a challenge to American power, in a sense it is actually, in a sense it is. The Chinese see American presence, which has been there since, particularly in the naval form but also in air forces and ground forces that have been stationed in the region for those decades. That presence, as I said, kind of encroaches on Chinese interests, both their interests in the South China Sea itself and in their interests in being able to exercise leadership within Southeast Asian region. The Chinese express these interests in terms of a right to essentially lead the political organization of Southeast Asia and also a right to control the access to the resources in the South China Sea as well, both the hydrocarbons, the gas and oil underneath the seabed, but also the fish in the water space there. And bearing in mind that this is a long way from the Chinese shoreline, some of their claims are not well accepted, quite frankly, not only in the region but by the international community. So when you ask, does it present a kind of a challenge to American power, there is a direct sense in which it does. It's that military friction that I've alluded to, but also in a sort of indirect sense it does as well. That is that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is a convention that established a framework of how the oceans should be divided up. And China's U-shaped line claim in the South China Sea that extends so far south, there's no sense in which that line actually complies with the provisions of the United Nations Convention. And so that's a problem, right? That's a problem in the first instance in that all the neighbor states are attempting to articulate their claims in the South China Sea based on this rule set that Unclossed United Nations Convention provides. China is taking a fundamentally different approach based on sort of their long sense of history there. And that's an indirect challenge to American authority in the sense that it challenges the rule sets, right? It challenges the basis for stability at sea. Looking ahead, what should people who are interested in this issue look for as sort of next benchmarks, next steps, signals that either things are going well or they're not going well? So I'd say first what we'd like to see is for all of the coastal states to do two things. The first is to be careful to move forward in ways that strengthen the rule-based approach to dividing up territory at sea so that there's a movement forward towards stability by following the rules, right? That's the first step forward and the best step forward that can happen. The other side of what we'd also like to see is this confidence-building measures now be put to actual progress, right? There are various ways that confidence-building measures can be undertaken, including just very limited things like conferences and discussions, but also bigger things like operating together, like working together to build sustainable fisheries in the region. Something that everyone has in common that would be, frankly, a good and easy approach and would reduce a lot of the frictions because a lot of the frictions have to do with states disagreeing over who has fishing rights in the various approaches, various areas of that region. I want to thank you, Peter Dutton, for joining us here at CSIS. Your expertise is very much appreciated and I know you're in high demand here in Washington and around Asia these days. So thank you for joining us. It's a pleasure. Thank you, Peter.