 Good morning, and welcome to the United States Institute of Peace. Thank you so much for joining us this morning for the launch of our senior study group report on China's impact on conflict dynamics in South Asia, which is available now on the USIP website. As many of you know, the United States Institute of Peace is founded by Congress in 1984 as a national, nonpartisan, independent institute dedicated to the pursuit of a world without violent conflict. We do this work from our headquarters in Washington, D.C., as well as in our field offices around the world, where our amazing country teams work closely with local partners to prevent mitigate and resolve 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 South Asia and provides recommendations for ways the US government and other stakeholders might take these factors into account when devising their own policies and strategies to prevent and manage conflict in the region. 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 or region. The first study group looked at China's role in Myanmar's internal conflicts. The second looked at China's role in North Korea, and the third looked at China's influence in the Red Sea arena. This is our fourth report in the series, and was a joint effort between several programs at USIP, including the China program, the South Asia and Pakistan programs, and the Afghanistan program. We were incredibly fortunate to have an amazing group of experts participating in this project. First and foremost, of course, are our two extraordinary co-chairs, Randy Shriver and Rick Olson. As most of you know, Randy Shriver is the chairman of the board at the Project 2049 Institute and recently served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs. He also serves at a number of boards, was a founding partner of Armitage International and served as an active duty naval intelligence officer. Our second co-chair, Rick Olson, had a long and distinguished career as a foreign service officer, including recent posts as U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, as well as U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Most importantly, of course, he is currently a Senior Advisor with the Asia Center at USIP. We benefited from the expertise of other outstanding group members, all of whom provided thoughtful contributions at our meetings over the last six months and throughout the report writing process. Several of them will be speaking later on on the panel, but I wanted to read the names of all of our members to make sure their contributions are recognized. Our senior study group participants included Cara Abercrombie, Alyssa Ayers, Dan Blumenthal, Patrick Cronin, Jacqueline Deal, Evan Feigenbaum, Sajit Gandhi, Sheena Greitens, Shazie Khan, Samir Lalwani, Kandhi Madan, Anu Emmanuel, Dan Markey, Peter Mattis, Dave Rank, Danny Russell, Tamana Salikadeen, Malanthi Samaranayaka, Vikram Singh, Andrew Small, Ashley Telus, Dustin Walker, and Andrew Wilder. We thank all of them for their time and their commitment over the last six months and extend our appreciation to many others who provided additional support along the way. Special thanks has to go to Jacob Stokes, who will be leading the discussion later today, who did a terrific job leading and coordinating this effort. So this morning we'll hear a brief overview of the report from our co-chairs, followed by a conversation among several of the members of the senior study group themselves about some of the main themes, findings, and recommendations in the report. So without further ado, thank you again for joining us, and I'm happy to turn things over to our co-chairs, Randy Schreiber and Rick Olson. Great. Well, thank you, Jennifer. And let me just start by thanking the team at the U.S. Institute of Peace. It was really a terrific effort, and Jennifer, thank you, and Vikram, and Jacob, and Lucy Stephenson Young also, just a tremendous job organizing the group and our meetings, and of course drafting the report and all the editing and getting us across the finish line. Let me also thank the members of this study group team. You know, I'm actually a Portland Trailblazers fan, and we passed up Michael Jordan in the draft, but I felt like every time we met I was taking the court with the 1990 bulls. This is just all stars everywhere, people making tremendous contributions and really just producing outstanding products. And third, let me thank my co-chair, Ambassador Olson, who was just a great colleague throughout this and somebody from whom I learned a lot as well, which is when you do a project like this, when you take away more than you think you contribute, it's always a good thing for you personally, and I learned an awful lot from Rick, so thank you. So I came to this project as a national security professional who's really been a China watcher all the way back to the late 80s when I joined the Navy as an intelligence officer. So I'll start the briefing today on this report by focusing on China's activities, China's interests, China's activities and approaches to South Asia, the impact that that has on U.S. interests and how that informs U.S.-China strategic competition. I think Ambassador Olson will speak a little bit more directly on the impact and interest of South Asian states and their receptivity to China's approaches and potential U.S. policy adjustments given his very deep background in South Asia. So beginning with China, China's ties to the region are of course longstanding and given its size and geography, that's been the case for a long time, that their efforts to deepen ties and expand activities really expanded and accelerated in the first part of the century and probably accelerated even further under the leadership of General Secretary Xi Jinping. They have a number of interests that serve as drivers. Some of them are very core interests to them, sovereignty interests. So one thing that informs their approach to South Asia is of course their interest in protecting their western non-Han territories, the areas of Xinjiang and Tibet, so really a core interest of theirs. They also seek to manage their growing rivalry with India, which involves both confrontation and engagement. They do seek to manage India-Pakistan tensions even as they lean more in the direction of Pakistan, their long-term partner. They seek to increase access opportunities for the PLA, particularly their naval forces, with the intent of not only promoting their own economic interests and security interests, but preventing India or some combination of India, the U.S., or others from dominating the Indian Ocean region. But I think in the broadest sense, as our discussions in this group often highlighted, in the broadest sense, the PRC and the CCP leadership are really trying to construct a more China-centric order and to minimize the role of others, including the United States, from shaping and influencing the region in ways that would impact their interests in negative ways from their perspective. Now not surprisingly, they are increasing activities and these activities cut across a number of domains. Their approach is cut across the diplomatic, economic, and military domains. Now regarding diplomacy, the PRC is investing more heavily in its long-term partner, Pakistan, as I mentioned. Some of this has been opportunistic of late, as they've seen the souring of U.S.-Pakistan relations, but they've also, in many ways, seen this as a way to complicate India's interests and divert their resources and attention as China seeks to gain advantage in their rivalry with India. On the economic front, this report talks a great deal about the land-based and maritime aspects of the Belt and Road Initiative. These are, of course, tools that are designed to increase Beijing's influence in standing throughout the region, not just development assistance programs. Much more can be said about this, and much more will be said about this by subsequent speakers. And on the military front, we see the PLA, particularly the Navy, the PLA Navy, being much more active in areas of the so-called Far Seas, as they refer to them. And this would include, of course, the Indian Ocean. This report contains a terrific timeline of Chinese military activities in the Indian Ocean region that I would commend to the audience and any readers that gives a very good overview of how they've been increasing their presence in their activities. Now, with respect to U.S.-China strategic competition, I think Washington is and should be increasingly concerned that the PRC does aspire to create a region that is more deferential to Beijing's ambitions, as I said. So our report focuses on a number of ways Washington can counter and thwart those activities that are malign and inimical to our interests, while also attempting to preserve space for cooperation where interests do align, for example, in helping to manage tensions in places like the India-Pakistan border and Afghanistan. This will obviously be increasingly difficult in an environment of U.S.-China competition, so we spent some time thinking about those issues. The report discusses ways the U.S. can set priorities for engagement in South Asia, recognizing that we'll be resource constrained. And so we talked about approaches to the smaller states of South Asia. We say a little bit can go a long way, but of course you got to have a little bit as the minimum price of entry, so how to do that in smart ways that really are oriented toward the interests of those states and not seen as solely a means by which we're trying to compete with China. We talk about the broadening of U.S. engagement with South Asia to fully integrate it into the free and open Indo-Pacific vision. Now I'm sure the incoming Biden administration will rebrand or attempt to articulate its own view for the Indo-Pacific, but surely the key pillars that have been formulated in the Trump administration and in the rebalance and pivot to Asia in the Obama administration, surely those key pillars will be sustained in some form, so we think it's important that South Asia be fully brought into that and integrated into that. We talk about some very specific and concrete ways to deepen ties with India. People often talk about the need to strengthen ties with India. We had a lot of specificity to it across domains. We talk about the need to rebalance relations with Pakistan, to not solely be focused on the military-to-military relationship and the security issues such as counterterrorism, but how to introduce the economic issues that will help support good governance and countercorruption. Finally, we do recognize that while we compete with China and the areas of contestation are in fact expanding beyond East Asia and into South Asia, we want to compete in a way that's benign. We looked at how to enhance crisis management modalities that account for the need to do so, have crisis management modalities in an environment of increasing competition and how that can work more effectively where we need it. So that's a very brief introduction of some aspects of the report and I'm happy at this point to turn it over to Ambassador Olson to continue with the briefing. Thanks very much, Randy, and let me also express my appreciation to all the people who made this report possible, starting with you, Randy, and you mentioned learning during the course of this exercise and I would certainly say for myself that I learned a great deal from you and the others about China. My career had not taken me to China, but I think all practitioners of foreign policy these days need to know something about China, so it was a great learning experience for me. I also want to thank the distinguished members of the study group and the USIP staff, especially Jake Stokes, who pulled it all together and delivered this product. So let me just say that in addition to Randy's excellent summary, I'll make a few points and then I'm sure our experts are going to discuss many of these ideas in much greater depth. But to set the stage a little bit, let's say that for the last 20, for much of the last 20 years, US policy toward South Asia has largely been framed by our war in Afghanistan and counterterrorism policy more generally. This is shifting for several reasons. The first, we are entering the end game in Afghanistan, but then I think more importantly there's a bipartisan consensus on the need to deal with an increasingly assertive China, which as Randy mentioned often pursues policies contrary to our interests. And while this consensus is probably something of still a work in progress, it is reflected in our strategy for a free and open Indo-Pacific region. As a result of this shift, there may be a temptation for the United States to frame all its relationships in South Asia purely in terms of competition with China and countering malign Chinese behavior. But the SSG believed that a more nuanced approach may be called for. The SSG believes that our engagement with South Asia should be focused on problem-solving and addressing the region's concerns. And it has to be said that for many of the countries in the region and our potential South Asian partners, these concerns center around economic development. So just a few specific thoughts on some of our thinking, and again the experts will be coming in and developing these ideas much more broadly. We do believe that we need to strengthen the concept of a free Indo-Pacific, which probably means potentially expanding the Quad, which understanding that it will not harden into a military alliance, but still broadening the scope of our engagement across the South Asian region and making use of some existing tools like the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the Blue Dot Network. We need to, as Randy mentioned, continue to grow our partnership with India, especially in strategic areas, and facilitate cooperation across the whole spectrum of diplomatic, economic, technological, and military engagement. We need to right-size our relationship with Pakistan, which means principally focusing on trade and people-to-people relationships where we have great strains, but not necessarily competing directly with China in the area of economic development and recognizing that we may share some common objectives with China in regard to the economic development of Pakistan. And but with regard to Pakistan that we should have less of an emphasis on the military and security dimensions of the relationship and focus more on business relationship and people-to-people. For the smaller South Asian states, and I would note that one of the themes that came out in our talks is that many of these states can only be considered smaller in comparison to the demographic behemoths of China and India. Many of them are quite substantial states, but nonetheless the smaller states do not necessarily want to choose between being in Chinese camp or the Indian camp, and they would not want their relationship with the U.S. to be subcontracted, say, to India. And so the U.S. needs to pursue a policy of engagement with the smaller countries as well in addressing their concerns. Finally, we do need to continue to pursue a political settlement in Afghanistan and encourage China to play a constructive role in that regard, up until now they have been rather reticent in any kind of engagement in China. And then just a few other thoughts to hit on before I turn it over to Jake. He mentioned the importance of crisis management, and of course one of the interesting things about this study was that we got to watch the Ladakh crisis in real time, actually, as we're touching on some of these topics. And we recognize that the increasing alignment of the United States with India and the increasing alignment of China with Pakistan makes it more difficult for there to be an honest broker engaged in crisis management, a role that the United States has played in the past. This is an easier problem to diagnose than to come up with solutions for, but we do have some ideas in the report for how to do it, including, I think, the important one that we need to do more quiet diplomacy ahead of time before crises actually erupt so that we can be better positioned when things happen to actually make preparation, to actually intervene. And then finally, I just want to put something that Randy mentioned, which is that while we are recognizing the competition with China makes cooperation difficult across the board, we did not neglect potential areas of cooperation with China and probably these areas that we would want to fence off in the context of South Asia from our competition, which would include countering the coronavirus, the question of countering violent extremism in Afghanistan, but important to note not at the expense of our associating ourselves with Chinese counter violence, countering violent extremism, if that's what it is, in Xinjiang, the dealing with questions of natural resources, especially water, climate change, countering narcotics, and dealing humanely with refugee flows. Again, but again, we have to temper our expectation that there will be huge, that there will be huge areas where huge accomplishments in these areas given the overall level of competition. So why don't I stop there and turn it over to Jake, but thanks for your attention, and again, congratulations to the group. Thank you, Ambassador Olsen. For those who don't know me, my name is Jacob Stokes. I'm a senior policy analyst in the China program here at the US Institute of Peace. I have the honor of serving as the project director for this group. Now that we've heard from our distinguished project co-chairs, I want to turn to some of the esteemed members of our study group to get their perspectives on a few specific topics the group discussed. We're lucky to have several members with us here today. So for the sake of clarity, I'll introduce each of them as I call on them. They all have very long and impressive resumes, but to maximize the amount of time we have to hear from each of them directly, I'll just say their name, title and affiliation, but I would encourage you to go look at their credentials online. We'll also take questions from the audience after their remarks if we have some time. So please start sending those questions to us in the chat box. To ask a question, please use the chat box function located just below the video player on USIP's event page. If I can now, I'd like to start with Dr. Patrick Cronin, who is the Asia Pacific Security Chair at the Hudson Institute. Patrick, as we've heard, the study group focused on China's influence on South Asia. To understand how China approaches the region, though, we first need to understand a little bit more about the view from Beijing. Could you talk a little bit about how the group saw Beijing's assessment of South Asia and where the region fits in China's foreign policy agenda? Randy talked a little bit about it earlier, but I wonder if you could add a little more detail along the way. Patrick? I will do that, Jake. First, let me thank the Institute of Peace, our co-chairs, the scholars for this great report. I hope it really guides US policy it deserves to. So let me embroider on five points in answering your question about Beijing's view of South Asia. The report captures the nuance. I'm going to gloss over some of the nuance and give you my sort of personal take on some of these points. First is that China's rapid expansion in South Asia over the past two decades is a byproduct of regional trends as well as Beijing's policy design. So the fact that South Asian trade with China grew by more than 500% in the last decade is as much a testament to the region's progress as it is to Beijing's ambitions. But with the Belt and Road Initiative and a Blue Water Navy now second only to the US Navy, China's pushing into South Asia and the Indian Ocean with quite a bit of zeal. Xi Jinping aims to put China back on top after a century of repulsing imperial powers. For him, on the cusp of a third five-year term at the helm, Xi sees China's great rejuvenation requiring three things, internal security and unity at home, primacy over the periphery, and control over an integrated Eurasian continent in its adjacent maritime transit routes. All of these goals intersect South Asia. Point two is the importance of South Asia because China's primary concern is actually still East Asia. Power remains concentrated in Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia continues to be the most pliable and accessible subregion, yet China is increasingly looking west to achieve the level of security and prosperity it desires. Third, Beijing asserts that its expanding political, economic, and military footprint in South Asia is inherently defensive. Sovereignty is at stake. The rugged frontier separating the two powers is long-standing, but a more confident Beijing wants to solidify its territorial claims and certainly does not wish to seed any ground as the deadly Skirmish and Ladakh this past summer suggests. Now, countering the evils of terrorism, separatism, and extremism as China sees it, requires more than a crackdown in Xinjiang and tighter control over Tibet. Western neighbors, including Afghanistan, must be stable to protect China's investments and friends. Managing a future India-Pakistan crisis that could escalate into a nuclear exchange is as important, I believe, to Beijing as preventing conflict on the Korean peninsula. Geopolitically, moving into South Asia is necessary to avoid encirclement with America's allies to the east. China wants to thwart reinforcements that could come from the west, say, over a Taiwan scenario. Fourth, China's expanding influence in South Asia helps build a more sino-centric Eurasian order, as Randy was suggesting. So, while relatively conflict averse, China uses trade, investment, infrastructure, and other tools to establish greater connectivity on land, at sea, and digitally. Beijing expects that over time, South Asian countries will adopt China-friendly rules and standards rather than jeopardize such a critical relationship. Connectivity will put China in a position to influence the affairs of South Asian states better and help make South Asia both a bridge and a barrier to Africa and Europe. And finally, China wants to bring the Indian Ocean closer into range, to make it an intermediate rather than a far sea. Randy Shriver pointed out that the graphic in the report is excellent, depicts PLA Navy milestones in the Indian Ocean over the last 15 years. Beginning with one naval exercise with Pakistan, China has pursued an ascending progression of deployments, activities, partners, and military capabilities. These culminated a year ago in a four-day China-Russia-Iran trilateral naval drill. Beijing's answer to the US-India-Japan Malabar exercise. Consolidating maritime control in the South China Sea is a springboard for projecting seaward and sea power westward. So, Jake, I hope that sheds a little more light on where South Asia fits into China's plan. Yeah, that was fantastic. Thank you, Patrick. And I want to move now to Vikram Singh, who is a senior advisor in the Asia Center at the US Institute of Peace. Vikram, this year has seen a dramatic escalation in tensions on the China-India border. Could you characterize for us what the group saw in this year's events, perhaps on two levels. First, on the level of the prospects for peaceful management and eventual resolution of the border disputes. And second, on how Indian policymakers view the security implications of a stronger and more assertive China. Vikram? Yeah, great. And thank you, Jake, and everyone. So great to see everybody. This was a tremendous group and a fantastic project. Jake and Randy and Rick, thank you for your leadership of this dynamic crew. We all learned a lot. Talk about fascinating to have this project underway when the first deaths between opposing Indian and Chinese forces up in the high Himalayas happens as we're looking at this issue. And it's an understatement to call it a shock. This was not something the Indians expected. I actually don't believe it was something the Chinese expected, even though they were the ones sort of pushing the envelope and escalating the skirmishes and confrontations. I don't think they expected it to escalate to the level that you would have 20 Indian soldiers die and see India pushed into having a fairly dramatic reaction. So to your first question, I think the fact is that India and China have a long standing set of mechanisms in place to manage disputes and both seem interested in not having any more loss of life on their border. So you have everything from commander level talks all the way up to a channel of special representatives between the two countries that are designed to manage this this tense border from escalating into a crisis. And I think for the most part we think they're probably going to be able to control escalation. But what this episode has exposed is that while the Indians have generally hoped that eventually this is a path to a final resolution, the Chinese have viewed these mechanisms and this engagement with India much more like they view the South China Sea and code of conduct discussions there or even Taiwan where it's an instrument for biding their time until they can get a disposition that's in their favor. So to Patrick's point about primacy and the periphery for China, this is one of the critical regions in which they want to establish that they have forces and capabilities such that India would be deterred from any kind of actions of aggression be that backing up foreign powers in some future war with China by causing trouble on their western flank or be that any kind of cross border attacks like the Chinese saw the Indians doing with Pakistan. So for the Chinese it really is like we're going to get to the point that the Indians are totally deterred from any hostile activity across this frontier. And in just the last couple of weeks we've seen the Chinese and the Pakistanis do joint air exercises. We've seen the head of the PLA visit not just Pakistan but Nepal on his way to Pakistan. So the Chinese are continuing to signal to India we're on your doorstep and they believe they can sort of do a constant position strategy on the Indians at this point too especially in the wake of COVID when Indian resources to invest in bolster against defense capabilities are going to be at odds with India's needs to take care of its population and its economy recovering from the from the pandemic. For Indian policymakers I think it's been a it's it's been a really you know this has been an unfortunate shock and they feel a sense of betrayal. They have tried to have a spirit of win-win cooperation with the Chinese through the Modi administration. The Doklam crisis the Indians chose to view as in 2017 thought that they sort of came out okay on that front. But what we've seen in the ensuing years is that the Chinese have consolidated their positions in Bhutan and actually just recently have built villages inside Bhutan and they've taken it a step further with the actions on the LAC. So while the Indians saw that as a as establishing an equilibrium the Chinese saw it as a predicate for further aggressive action on that frontier. India has responded with cutting off access to technology platforms for China. They've banned a lot of apps over a hundred. They've instituted reviews of Chinese investments in Indian technology and strategic sectors even power even roads and those sorts of areas. And there's a real chill in India-Chinese relations that we haven't seen since they were at war decades ago. So I think the fact is that that's the new reality that a US administration faces is actually a lot more alignment in terms of concern between Delhi and Washington and therefore a lot of potential for greater strategic cooperation which I think the SSG highlights very well. Thank you victim. That was that was really useful and to understand the trajectory of events on the border. I want to turn now to Dr. Alyssa Ayers who's Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. Alyssa one of the issues that growing Chinese influence in South Asia has really brought to the fore in one of these areas of competition in a way is these are the different governing models between Asia's two most populous powers. India of course is the world's largest democracy but the Modi government has been criticized for a number of illiberal actions. I wonder if you could contextualize for us the governance concerns against the backdrop of India-China relations. Thank you. Thanks Jake and let me just associate myself with all the previous things. I really thought this was a tremendous group and the discussions that we had over all these months I think really served to hone a set of findings and put together some deeply detailed information and recommendations for US foreign policy on the region. I also think by the way that this report and the deep dive that the senior study group embarked upon really served to highlight how important South Asia is as a region for really fully understanding China's approach. It's approach in the Belt and Road certainly. It's approach to promoting its own model and so I hope that others who read this fine report will come away with that same sense of how important South Asia is as a region in this global competition. So the governance piece is really important. I think one of the things that was quite clear throughout the course of our discussion was the sense of how important India is not just in South Asia but really as a country that has done so much when you think about the model of democracy and what India has done over the course of decades. It's economic progress in recent decades. You know India has lifted more than 270 million people out of extreme poverty in the decade from 2006 to 2016. That really has shown that the China model of denying political freedoms while emphasizing economic prosperity just wasn't the only pathway for large emerging economies to increase their own prosperity and lift citizens out of poverty. So in so many ways India's accomplishments as a democracy despite the well known and well documented problems that India has had over the decades have really served as an inspiration and a counterpoint to the China model. With China's deepened engagement around the world and certainly across South Asia as our group discussed India's importance as the world's largest democracy and one of the world's largest economies as an emerging global power and one with a commitment to upholding international rule of law and freedom of navigation has really increased. And as this report notes a consensus has really emerged in the United States that the US needs to enhance its strategic partnership with India for all of these reasons. The report recommends that Washington should deepen ties with India across diplomatic economic technology and military areas and that Washington also facilitate New Delhi's deepened cooperation with US allies and partners in Asia and Europe. But over the past year and a half in particular as our group discussed over the months concerns about Indian democracy have deepened particularly following a pretty severe security crackdown in Kashmir that was part of the abrogation of the region's traditional autonomy. Then a new law that for the first time introduced religion as a test for access to citizenship for refugees. Additional questions about prospects for a national citizenship exercise that could potentially leave many stateless. So our senior study group discussed these concerns too because these developments have raised questions about the health of India's institutions of democracy. Institutions like protection of minorities, freedom of expression and freedom of religion and these are important components of any pluralist democracy. So while India does remain a robust electoral democracy I would note here that India is the only country in South Asia that Freedom House gauges as free. But Freedom House also noted in their report this year about Indian democracy that recent developments threatened the democratic future of a country that is long seen as a potential bulwark of freedom in Asia and the world. That's why this is important and I'm quoting from that Freedom House report. So what we did in our report while emphasizing the importance of really broad gauged a deepened partnership with India we also noted the importance for India's own interests and its global soft power appeal of upholding democratic traditions. I'm going to quote a little bit from our report because I mean I don't know who's watching and people may not be reading the report as we're talking now so I'm just going to quote a little bit from it because I think it's really important. In addition to our recommendation that the United States really deepen its partnership with India across the board we also said that it's important for US policymakers to note to leaders in New Delhi the view that India's democratic system including its respect for pluralism and human rights is a strategic asset. That strategic asset facilitates India's natural alignment with the United States and other democratic states around the world and this system also refutes arguments made by Chinese leaders among others that democracy is inconsistent with Asian political culture. It allows India's vibrant and diverse society to be a strength rather than a weakness and it enhances India's soft power throughout the region. Last quote from this section similarly American officials should underscore that recent illiberal steps in Kashmir and against India's Muslim population erode all those benefits meaning the benefits of the soft power appeal and that India's strategic importance cannot alone sustain the positive relations with other democracies that New Delhi will need to ensure its security so I think the report is is quite balanced in its emphasis while also noting that these are really important considerations as we look at the method that China is employing in its promotion of its own system across the region in the world and the real power that India's pluralist democracy has held as a form of appeal and so we've emphasized that that is something that Indian leaders should want to uphold as a strategic asset themselves. Thank you. Well thank you Alyssa. This is a really important nuance on the balance that both Indian and US policymakers will have to strike on governance issues. On a sort of related topic I want to turn to Anya Manuel who's co-founder and partner at Rice, Hadley, Gates, and Manuel LLC. Anya, technology is becoming a bigger factor in global affairs generally including of course in South Asia. Can you explain how the group thought about the role of technology in the region and as it relates to China across commercial, strategic, and normative dimensions? Thanks Jake and I agree with my colleagues. This was a wonderful working group. It's a really meaty substantive report so with lots of new recommendations so to our friends and colleagues and press out there watching I do recommend that you read it. On the technology side this of course is where the competition with China will be joined both between the US and China and China in the South Asia region especially technology powers like India. Technology impacts everything from our military preparedness to economic strength so it's important. On tech India and China were quite connected until this year. In 2019 China invested $3.9 billion in Indian startups. A lot of the biggest Chinese tech companies had an active presence in India. 70% of smartphones sold in India were Chinese mostly Xiaomi and BBK. This all changed drastically after the Chinese incursions in Ladakh this summer. There were deepening concerns in India about how much engagement there had been with China and really a determination to become less dependent on Beijing and this took several forms. There were strikes and protests against Chinese technology. The Indian IT ministry as of today has blocked 200 Chinese apps saying that they're insecure. Alibaba, TikTok and others are cutting jobs in India. There was also some talk this fall of banning the telecom equipment from Huawei and 5G networks but just two weeks ago in early December the Indian government actually reversed course and has now included Huawei and working groups for rolling out 5G especially in the healthcare and fintech sector so that's a big reversal from where we were just a couple weeks ago. It's not clear to me that the Indian government has a very clear security rationale here. It seems more designed to punish China rather than think through carefully what parts of Chinese technology are safe to cooperate with and which ones are probably more of a threat to India's long-term cyber security. So let's get to what can the US, India, the rest of the region do together on this front and the report here had a lot of really thoughtful discussions. I'll just highlight some of them here. One, with some strategic cooperation India has the potential to become one of the real AI superpowers. It has a treasure trove of data which of course is critical to this effort through ADHAR and other government programs. Incredible skills in programming and in artificial intelligence so there could be a lot more cooperation between the US universities and the IITs for example on AI than there have been. That's one. Two, we always talk about visas in India-US relations but it's time we've got to restore the H1B visas that were cut a lot under the Trump administration. Make it easier for Indian students to study here and vice versa because it helps the US to attract the best talent from South Asia to develop our own cutting-edge technology and to continue the important cooperation that it already exists. Three, there's been a lot of talk in Washington about creating a tech 10 group of countries. It's in different forms. I've written about it. I know Martin Rasser at CNAS has Richard Fontaine and some others. The idea that technology companies would cooperate technology powers would cooperate on things like standards ensuring that the West remains in the lead on semiconductors a whole host of things and India of course should be a part of that. Four, India can play a very important role in collaborating on ethical standards for technology. It took a very important step in that direction by joining the global partnership on artificial intelligence this summer along with a lot of our friends, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK, Germany to really think through what should the norms be for AI. That's a very important first step. Then a lot more can be done from there. For example, coordinating with India on ethical standards for digital surveillance of which China is doing a whole lot and a lot of soft power things to start countering China's digital silk roads. Finally, and this is I think the most important, there needs to be some quiet coordination and dialogue between the countries in South Asia, the US and East Asian countries to address Chinese disinformation and some gray zone tactics. For example, there could be a lot more done to share best practices for countering foreign influence in domestic politics and elections. Taiwan and Japan have a whole lot of expertise in this area. They've done really well and they could lend some of that expertise frankly to us here in the US, but also to India, Sri Lanka, lots of other folks in the region were struggling with that. That highlights just some of the things we talked about in the report and I'll pass it back to you, Jake. Thank you, Anya. That was really helpful and lays out a pretty robust agenda for diplomacy not just between ministries of foreign affairs, but also ministries that cover other technical issues. So a lot for US policymakers and regional policymakers to dig into I'd like to move now to Dan Markey, who's a senior research professor in international relations at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. Dan, the study group devoted a good portion of its work to looking at China-Pakistan relations and the implications of closer alignment between Beijing and Islamabad. Could you tell us a little bit about where the relationship stands today and share how the group assessed China's influence specifically on domestic politics and political economy in Pakistan? Sure. Thanks, Jake. First, of course, like the others, I'd like to commend you and the co-chairs and USIP not just for putting together a great report, but for running a fantastic process. It really was first rate and having tried to do similar things in the past myself, I can say it's not easy and you made it look easy. So thank you. Three points on the China-Pakistan relationship. Point one, the report correctly observes that the military to military relationship is at the core, the defining feature of China-Pakistan relations. And this extends into nuclear missile technologies as well as conventional arms. So this is the core of the relationship. Point two, what is really new and has been new over about the past decade or so has been China's intensified and high-profile attention to Pakistan's economy. And it's more ambitious role in Pakistan's economic development. So we've seen the dramatic launch in 2015 of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. And even while the most ambitious forecasts for CPEC, this China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, haven't been lived up to, this hasn't been the so-called fate changer that some suggested it might be, even so the economic links between China and Pakistan are quite significant in terms of investment, bilateral trade, and continuing loans. So this is also becoming more central to the relationship. Point three, both the military ties and the economic ties have clear political consequences that we cannot overlook. As the most powerful actor in Pakistan state, the army not only sees China as a guarantor on the security front, but also sees it as a guarantor in domestic political terms as well. And in addition to that, Pakistan's entrenched elite establishment power brokers are, it seems, along with the army, best positioned to extract the greatest benefit from these increasing economic ties between China and Pakistan. And so we have reasons to be concerned that the benefits of CPEC and these other features of the economic ties will principally accrue to a thin minority of Pakistanis rather than a broad majority of the population. Now, this is partly because China itself doesn't seem to have any kind of a deep interest in promoting any kind of a democratic or more liberal practice in Pakistan. And it may not necessarily want to impose its own model, but it's certainly not going to place the types of pressures for what we might consider to be healthy reforms, either either economic or political reforms that would encourage, among other things, greater foreign direct investment by non-Chinese sources, including the United States, because these types of pressures are more now more easily brushed off due to China's backing of Pakistan. And there is nothing about China's involvement in Pakistan that's likely to help alienated minorities, progressive-minded politicians, or others in Pakistan who tend to oppose what seems to be an increasingly illiberal and army-dominated state. And this is worrisome. So all told, the report adds up these pieces, and I'll quote it. It concludes that, quote, the China-Pakistan access is strengthening, which has a detrimental effect on governance and economic reform efforts in Pakistan, given the concomitant lack of transparency and accountability. And I think that's quite right and well placed. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. That was really useful to understand the domestic political economy of the relationship. I want to turn now to Sumir Lalwani, who's a senior fellow and director of the South Asia program at the Stimson Center. Sumir, the deepening China-Pakistan partnership has major foreign policy implications. In addition to the domestic policy implications, Dan just noted, would you walk us through a little bit how the group considered China's impacts on India-Pakistan dynamics generally and crisis management specifically? Great. Thanks, Jake, for the question, and also to you, Randy, Rick, and Jennifer, for leading this very eliminating study group where I learned a lot and benefited a lot from the process. So I think you're right. Your question picks up from Dan's point about the deepening military economic ties having political consequences. In this case, certainly each of your political consequences. So if I was to use a word to describe the effect, I realize it wasn't in the report, but I think it's in that term, which is I think China is driving a rehyphenization of the region, whether by design or by accident, by making the region more competitive in peacetime and possibly more dangerous in crisis time. So let me impact those two points. So I think China's impact certainly makes the region more competitive in peacetime through these economic and diplomatic military investments. The economic investments and diplomatic support for Islamabad certainly helps to bolster Pakistan's confidence. That can be a good thing in some ways, but it can also elicit some security dilemma dynamics where New Delhi may fear more in bold than Pakistan or may assertively knowing it has Chinese hacking either diplomatic or politically. It also has a material effect enhancing Pakistan's military capabilities. This is through the sales and co-production of advanced weaponry, tanks, frigates, new submarines, missiles, radar systems, and even the co-production of fighter aircraft. It's incurring through deeper intelligence cooperation and more complex military exercises and even access to Chinese reconnaissance surveillance targeting acquisition assets, like satellites for better missile targeting. And so with the enhancement of Pakistan's military, it also facilitates the third condition of potentially allowing for Chinese power projection through Pakistan if it seeks it in the future. And because their equipment systems and logistics will be shared or in the future there will be a greater overlap than possible interoperability. So all these features may not necessarily be guided by some grand design, but we can't help but observe how they create a real simultaneously Navy dilemma or problem for India. It complicates India's military planning as Randy lived earlier and can constrain New Delhi with the report describes. And it may even neutralize some critical components of the US Indo-Pacific strategy as we have been envisioned from Washington. So another way in which China may impact region is by making it more dangerous when India and Pakistan crises inevitably arise. And we've seen sort of an uptick of them in recent years. So in the past, the report notes that previously China was actually quite constructive in backstopping US crisis management efforts. And a lot of this crisis management theory that we've come to know over the last couple decades, you know, whether it's described as broken bargaining of pivotal deterrence, it operates under a systemic condition of unipolarity. So obviously that condition has changed, whether we want to describe this bipolarity or multi polarity. And this just makes crisis management more difficult. China is undoubtedly a major patron and player that can alter the structure of the game. And without easy great power cooperation or structures are guided by the Unipole, crisis management can break down and crises can accelerate or spiral through several avenues. So even with the best of intentions, they can file accidentally where you have multiple actors struggling to coordinate and share information during crisis crises, especially in their communication with different actors. Inadvertently, you could have two states operating with different theories of de-escalation and crisis management that may be working across purposes. And we might have seen a little bit of that playing out during the Balakau crisis in 2019. But you could also envision a world in the future where there might be deliberate efforts to accelerate our intensified crises. Some scholars suggest that China may simply view South Asia as a zero sum game where any win for India is a loss for Beijing. So it will do whatever it takes to prevent that. And it's not a given, but it's a possibility that we have to start to consider in crisis management planning. So I guess to sum up, whether it's intentional or not, China's impact on the region, principally through this deepened relationship with Pakistan, has undoubtedly created peacetime and crisis time dilemmas for India, and in turn has created challenges for US interests and strategy in the region. And with that, I'll turn it back to you. Great. Thanks, Samir. As you noted, it's an extremely complex set of dynamics there. So that was very helpful in helping us unpack them. Well, I'm going to turn to Nolanti here in a second, but I want to remind everyone watching that if you have a question, please go ahead and put it in the chat box. And we will turn to those questions shortly. So with that, let me introduce Nolanti Samaranyika, who is the director of the strategy and policy analysis program at CNA. Nolanti, the group also explored China's ties with the other relatively, as Rick said, smaller states in South Asia, namely Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. It noted the China story is a little bit different for each case in each country, depending on a lot of factors. But can you talk about some of the general trends we identified for this set of countries? How is China changing the landscape for them? Sure. Well, thanks, Drake. And I'd also like to express my thanks to my SSG colleagues, including Randy, Rick, and Jennifer for their leadership of the group. We heard from Randy and Rick their comments about those smaller South Asian countries. So I'll add on to those. Yes, we did note the variation among smaller South Asian countries, ranging from Bangladesh, which has been a longstanding recipient of Chinese arms sales, and then contrasting that to Bhutan, which has no formal diplomatic ties with China and a close relationship with India. We also included Afghanistan, which has a very unique set of circumstances due to the past 20 years of US military presence. But despite this variation, we did find some general themes among the smaller South Asian countries, namely economics and domestic politics. So we discussed how China is the largest source of bilateral imports for many of the smaller South Asian countries. And this can be attributed to China's role as a global manufacturing hub. But we did note that the exports from these countries going to China, they're often much smaller. And more frequently, these countries' largest export markets are actually the United States or India or European countries. So this is something that is not as well understood. And these countries, of course, are seeking to boost exports for their growing economies. Now, beyond trade, Chinese tourism before the pandemic was an important source of income to these countries, especially Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. So this is, of course, lacking now during the COVID period. We talked about financing and how China is one of the largest bilateral investors in the region, notably through infrastructure projects. And this is especially the case in the maritime countries, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Maldives. We've seen this through seaport projects and airport projects. And we found both a problem and a prospect here. So on the one hand, there's been a lot of attention to mounting debt burdens from China for some of the smaller South Asian countries that are already struggling with wider debt issues. But then on the other hand, China does provide an option when smaller South Asian countries cannot get support elsewhere from Japan or the World Bank. Also, China's financing and construction can help aid connectivity in one of the least integrated regions in the world, South Asia. So this can be a public good, but we were in agreement that there needs to be a way to get there to that end state with infrastructure projects on balance being a sustainable endeavor for these countries. We also talked about domestic politics and some of the smaller South Asian country leaders, essentially the role of Chinese cash and Chinese involvement in local politics. And this has often been discussed in Sri Lanka and Maldives, but the group observed this issue in the case of Nepal as well. So really the bottom line takeaway for this is we think that attention to the smaller South Asian countries is likely to increase as strategic competition between China and the US also increases. And it really suggests an opportunity for the United States to deepen its engagement across the smaller South Asian countries on a variety of issues, especially economics. Great. Thank you, Noamthi. That was really useful in illuminating the number of factors we have to consider in assessing China's role in the smaller South Asian states. We're getting some questions in from the audience, but while we go through those, I wonder if I could turn back to Alyssa and ask if you could talk for a minute just briefly about India's response to China's diplomatic forays into South Asia, specifically with the smaller South Asian states. And what is New Delhi's assessment and how is their policy changing as a response? Well, I think India's been pretty active diplomatically around the region, particularly with Bangladesh, with Sri Lanka, with Maldives, and with Nepal more recently. You know, for India, it's important to ensure that it does have solid working relationships with the countries that are on its border. And during the period for some of some of the relationships and some of the tensions that India has had with countries in the region, like Maldives and Sri Lanka, has had more to do with the government's empower in those other countries than it has had to do, I believe, with India's foreign policy approach to those countries. So you can see, for example, that from 2015 forward, you saw a real pendulum swing in India's relationship with Sri Lanka once a new government that was not the Rajapaksas was elected to power. Now, you're seeing a possible pendulum shifting back to a real emphasis on ties with China. And New Delhi is really picking up its engagement with Colombo to make sure that it can retain a really strong relationship there of the country that is really geopolitically quite important. You saw, you know, the national security advisors trilateral meeting just what, 10 days ago between India, Sri Lanka and Maldives. The same pattern actually has been the case with Maldives. Once there was a shift in power with the government in Maldives, you saw a much more of a tilt back towards a deepened engagement with India. Nillanthi has done so much work on this, but you can really see for Maldives in particular, they've been trying to really assess the extent of their economic, their debt exposure to China. That's been something that's been a real preoccupation of the current government there. And of course, they have a strong and are continuing to build a stronger security relationship with India. And that has been a high priority for New Delhi. With Bangladesh as well, Bangladesh is just a vitally important country for Indian security. And India has had a strong relationship with the current government in Bangladesh, particularly given that government's emphasis on counter terrorism and ensuring that Bangladesh cannot be used as a staging ground or planning ground for terrorist attacks that could target India. But things have become a little bit more tense, I'd say over the course of the last nearly one year as a result of some of the domestic developments in India that have occurred, particularly in light of the issues involving India's national register of citizens in the state of Assam and some of the public comments that have been made by some senior Indian politicians about Bangladeshis. So there has been some tension introduced in that relationship where the foreign policy has been quite robust in strengthening ties, but some of India's domestic developments have added a new tension to that relationship. Great. Well, thank you, Alyssa. That was really illuminating. Next, I want to talk a little bit about, there's been a lot of media coverage related to the Belt and Road Initiative and more broadly, and specifically the Port of Guadar in Pakistan. I wonder if I could turn to Dan to talk a little bit about your view on that project, because it seems to really encapsulate a lot of the fears about Chinese influence in the region, but also it's influenced in some ways on domestic politics, but also the risk for Beijing in having an expanded role in a sometimes volatile region. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how the group saw that project in the context of China's larger strategy. Of course, yeah. So Guadar port, for anybody who's unfamiliar, is this deep sea port project along the Arabian seacoast of Pakistan. And it's relevant in many ways strategically. I think a lot of folks in the United States and India and elsewhere have placed it in the context of this potential string of pearls of bases and places of Chinese military access along the so the the rimlins of Asia and have raised all kinds of concerns about what that means for the projection of Chinese military power, particularly naval power throughout the region. And if you think about it over the long term, there is a broad strategic concern that Guadar, among other things, offers China the unusual potential for overland access through Pakistan down to the Arabian Sea. And so this can create headaches, strategic headaches for the United States in the long term. Having said that, there are a number of important things to appreciate about the challenges associated with Guadar. This isn't a simple project and it's not an easy part of Pakistan. And China has learned this, in part because it's in Balochistan, which is the site of an active insurgency inside of Pakistan, which has at times targeted Chinese workers and Pakistani workers associated with this project. So there's there's a lot of unrest in Pakistan, not just driven by Guadar, but exacerbated by projects like this. So there's no clear evidence that this will necessarily work as a large scale project, certainly not one that's going to inspire economic or commercial growth in that part of Pakistan. Last point, though, this isn't just a Chinese plan, a grand strategy, sort of to place China's flag inside of Pakistan. This was initially a Pakistani project for Pakistani, developed for Pakistani strategic and to some degree economic, to meet economic needs, delivered or initially brought to Beijing by then President Musharraf, who implored the Chinese to invest there. And so what this reflects here is also the, I think, something we see across the region, the kind of the push and pull. It's not just a matter of China asserting itself on the region as if the region is a passive recipient of Chinese power. It's also the region pulling China in, framing, constraining and having a clear effect on China's potential ambitions, short, medium and long term. And I think that's something that we talked about a fair amount in the group and worth recalling as we think about how these dynamics are likely to evolve over the over the long term. Yeah, thanks, Dan. We have a question from the audience, sort of related to your the push, pull point about China's influence in building ties with political parties within certain states in the region. Nalanti, I wonder if I could turn back to you to talk about a little bit about how that's playing out. I know there's been a lot of coverage, especially related to the Sri Lanka and Maldives case, but maybe share with us a little bit about the dynamics of China's ties with political parties in the region, if you can. Sure, Jake. Yeah, I think in terms of the most high profile case has been the Sri Lanka case and the Rajapaksa leaderships, relationships with China. It's been reported in the New York Times about how close that that relationship has been. And then I'll also echo Dan's point about Guadar. We also saw a similar situation with Hambanthoda port with the Sri Lankans really trying to push that and develop that as opposed to Sri Lanka being a passive recipient about Chinese interest in trying to develop that port. So the Rajapaksa leadership at the time certainly reached out to India for support on that and also to the United States for investment in that project. So definitely that's the case in the Hambanthoda project in Sri Lanka. But to your point, Jake, I think the Rajapaksa leadership has been probably the most prominent example of China's relationship with leaders or at least regime level relationships. We also saw that in Maldives with President Yameen as well. But it was interesting to me in our discussions among the SSG is we also talked about observing that trend in Nepal most recently with the Chinese ambassador being quite vocal in Nepal discussions with regard to the party there. So it's certainly a trend that we have seen across multiple countries in South Asia, particularly the smaller South Asian countries. But to me a question remains is to what extent will that be effective? We're starting to see the new Rajapaksa leadership under Gotabaya in Sri Lanka. There's been news coming out of Sri Lanka about they may actually be receptive to the East Container Terminal Project, which would be a partnership with India and Japan on the ground essentially in Colombo port where there is already a Chinese terminal project there. So to me a question in my mind is how will these leaders of smaller South Asian countries reflect back? Because there has been a lot of learning taking place in looking at the previous experience of the earlier Rajapaksa administration, the Yameen administration in Maldives and what we're seeing now in Nepal taking place. Yeah great that's fascinating. And Alyssa you have a two finger. Just really quickly you know I've observed over the last really since the pandemic and since so much has moved to virtual. It strikes me that we are also seeing a kind of new or more engaged type of diplomatic outreach from China to these countries and that's through the diplomatic engagement of the Chinese Communist Party itself. In addition to all the activity that comes from of course the foreign ministry which is normally in charge of foreign policy but they've done you know video engagements party to party with a lot of these countries. So I don't know what that will suggest for the future but to me that seems like a kind of new dimension over the course of the last nearly one year. Yeah that's a great point we've seen a lot more work from the international department of the CCP around the region and those ties are often as you suggested fly under the radar. In these general topics we hear a lot about the quad grouping as sort of a response to China's growing role in the region. I wonder if I could turn just to Patrick really quick and and to give us your sort of take on on whether the quad but also should that be should that be the main venue for US policy in the Indo-Pacific region as a counterbalance to China's growing role. No is the short answer Jake. It should be one of many possible groupings on which to build or which to hold this with the four countries. We saw with China's naval push in the Indian Ocean not just back to Malabar but it's also a response in part China flexing muscle in the Indian Ocean is partly a response to the quad drill lateral security dialogue that comprises India Japan United States and Australia so when the United States uses closer security relations with India you can expect China to push back in different ways either tightening cooperation with Pakistan we heard about providing missile sort of accuracy data that Samir talked about to Pakistan or seeking military exercises sending submarines to the region China has many ways to respond it's important for the United States to expand the strategic partnership with India and to engage more deeply in the region but at the same time to understand there's a cost to any kind of grouping specific grouping that looks like it's coming at China's expense so when we do that if we do that it needs to be very specific it needs to be differentiated we need to be clear about what we're trying to achieve it needs to be realistic in terms of its objectives and at the same time not jettison the many things that rick was talking about at the beginning that are in the report that we want to try to fence off and hope to build cooperation with China because every country in South Asia wants a degree of cooperation with with China yeah that's fascinating Patrick thank you very much I want to move now and sorry to move topics so quickly but there was a question about sort of reengaging Pakistan and the extent to which China should be kind of the frame for assumption approach I wonder if I could turn to Samir for any thoughts he might have on that as an idea thanks Jake yeah I mean I think that you know one of the central points of the report is how we need to deepen relationship our relations with New Delhi and with India on a whole host of fronts but I think a point that the report also makes is that we shouldn't simply feed our relationship with Pakistan to China there's definitely we can see potential camps emerging but there's no reason we have to submit to that entirely we can still remain competitive in that I think in some ways the current administration has kind of reset the game or the relationship with Pakistan which allows for a future where we engage with new tools as opposed to relying on sort of the previous predominantly military assistance tools there are other ones in the report that we described that are similar to how we'd engage the rest of the region economic trade visa regimes also you know intelligence encounter terrorism cooperation they're shared interests and new tools that we could use to work with Pakistan so that they're not simply boxed into being a Chinese junior partner but instead have have options and I think there are there are indications of fissures that you know may deepen over time so there may be you know great rocker in the future between China and Pakistan and certainly they've done a very good job of covering or tamping down on concerns about the Uighurs but periodically here ministers or you know religious figures raise that issue in Xinjiang and just generally how China engages with Muslim population there's there's bound to be friction points that's come up with Chinese workers with in Pakistan itself but also in some ways China might be assuming some of the challenges the United States had for the last 20 years which was there was a whole host of augmented expectations that when they go unmet create some some frustration disillusionment so whether that's on the military side with some disappointments about the effectiveness of the JF-17 as a platform or on the economic side with shortfalls and CPAC delivery relative to the promises and expectations that they described I described those will be opportunity points for us to re-engage and we should we should take this opportunity when they come to us yeah thanks Samir that's a great points and I wonder if I can ask investor Olson to come in on this because he has some very personal experience and deep knowledge in this area of engaging Pakistan yeah thanks thanks Jake and I agree totally with Samir's take on the nature of the relationship I don't think there's any question that over time our perception of our relationship with Pakistan may may very well be shaped by Pakistan's relationship with China but I don't think that means that we shouldn't agree with with with Samir and simply walk away from our long-standing relationship with China a couple of points in that regard you know as we get into an afghan end game and as we are really approach a political settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan I think there will be some temptation on the part of Washington to walk away from what has been frankly a very dysfunctional relationship with with Pakistan for the past the past 20 years Pakistanis might say it has been for the past 30 years but it's important that we not totally seed I think some of the strains in our relationship and and those include potentially areas of opportunities for US business opportunities for trade between Pakistan and the United States and especially in the people to people area where we have a fairly important legacy that I think we'd want to maintain and one of the reasons we'd want to do it in addition to first of all we do have we do need Pakistan for the Afghanistan end game it will be important to arriving at a political settlement to have Pakistan's influence used in productive ways with the Taliban but then I think also one of the themes that we developed in this report is the day the potential dangers of having inner inner Asia sort of hardened into two alliance camps and and the implications for crisis management I mean the United States has played a very important role along the in conflicts along the line of control and it would be a mistake for the United States to I think entirely seed that role especially when we perceive that China may be not prepared to step up and play as responsible a role as we would like so we need to maintain influence with both sides with both India and Pakistan for the sake of preventing helping to prevent what is potentially the crossing of the nuclear threshold a very sobering point to end on certainly I want to pose one more question to the group and get several of the members inputs on the idea one of the big themes I think that any work on China and deals with grapples with these days is which Chinese behavior to oppose and which Chinese behavior to accept or even facilitate and this of course applies in South Asia I wonder if I could turn to Randy and then maybe Anya or others to talk about how we how we thought about those questions and a little bit about where we came down I'm not sure there was absolute agreement on it between every member of the group but I think there were some general principles yeah and I think it's challenging because you know areas where you would say are more sort of benign or or Chinese contributions can lift all boats you still suspect there are motives there about increasing leverage and influence and ultimately wanting to use that for malign intent in other circumstances but yeah I think our group basically discussed our position as being resource constrained and there are some areas where we just aren't going to be able to maybe make substantial enough investment to be competitive with China dollar for dollar and so to really look at their activities that could more directly impact our interest particularly security interests so where their development assistance for example is is more directly related to opening opportunities for access for the PLA and maybe have a more direct security impacts we need to pay more attention to that but again as Rick and others have said you know keeping an open mind to cooperating where our interests do potentially align and I think the new administration will have opportunities whether that's climate change or sort of recasting the whole discussion about response to COVID and cooperation in those areas so I think the it's a difficult task to disaggregate these different activities in your right our group didn't necessarily reach a final view of it but I think as I said where where our security interests and those of our partners are most directly impacted I think that's where our attention would be just to double down on what Randy said on 2.1 countering China and the region especially with BRI and other things we're not going to compete with the Chinese loan for loan and we don't need to I think what the the west needs to do is BRI and and some of the digital Silk Road in particular has within it the seed of its own downfall you can already see countries pushing back in a lot they mentioned Sri Lanka but you see it all over Africa as well where actually people are turning away from money that isn't no longer even so cheap and and surveillance technology and saying well actually maybe good governance does help us and and just emphasizing the values that the west stands for and continuing to be a good partner to these countries I think will in the long run serve us better than trying to compete with the Chinese dollar for dollar and to the second point that Randy made about where can you actually cooperate with China you know everyone keeps tossing including President-elect Biden keeps saying climate change and the pandemic and I hope we can find that and many other places to cooperate with China but I worry that very quickly even on those two big issues you run into trouble because when you hear the folks coming into a Biden administration saying let's cooperate with China on climate change what they mean is let's get China to do more than they committed to in Paris the US will rejoin Paris and then let's push China to make real concessions so very quickly that becomes a more complicated negotiation and same with COVID we can say we're going to cooperate but are the Chinese really going to now open up and say where did it come from there's a little bit of cooperation since we got the sequencing of the virus immediately but I worry that we'll talk a big game about cooperation and actually they'll be it'll be harder than we think Vikram you were shaking your head I wonder if you want to get in on this point um you know I mean Randy and Ania covered it really well I would just one point is on the on the on BRI investment there is this sort of self-correcting mechanism and you know one of the questions is going to be will the Chinese be constrained in what they're the demands of them so when they want to make investments are countries learning to impose standards and requirements and things like that that would actually make BRI investments relatively innocuous now the pandemic has upset that a little bit because I think BRI investment's going to drop just as a function of economic of the economic downturn and I think that you know we might find ourselves thinking that's a little bit even unfortunate because some of the investments that could have come out of China would be generally positive if they're in water and some basic transportation infrastructure we could all benefit from as Nalanti was talking about you know but the the fundamental question is going to be does China also expect concessions in exchange for cooperation on these areas that we see as critically important so if if climate change is the existential threat that I think many people view it as and cooperation with China and other countries is is a necessary condition for for progress that's adequate to meeting that challenge what is China going to ask for explicitly or implicitly demand in exchange for that kind of accelerated cooperation is there some sort of deal they're going to want to put on the table we'll we'll go you know many miles on climate in exchange for basically more tolerance of the of the Chinese of the Chinese view about how this region should be ordered and things like that I think those are actually real questions that we're going to face and there will be choices I think it's going to be very hard as Anya says to find much grounds for greater collaboration even though there's areas where we should be able to collaborate you know as we did with the Soviet Union on things like you know the ozone hole in the 1980s. Alyssa you you've served in government as well I wonder if you want to come in on on how US policy makers might be thinking about those trade-offs I don't have anything more substantial to add to Vikram's smart comments there I do think that when it comes to these big questions of you know essentially the global commons these big problems that we can't solve on our own and that we really do need to be working with other countries that have a major global impact to solve you know India becomes all the more important as well for that same reason for the same reason that China's footprint on climate change is important well India is also important not to the same extent there per capita emissions are much lower obviously but we need to be thinking about how we can advance these global commons goals for the good of the earth for the good of the planet great well I think that's a really important point to end on and so let me wrap it up there and let me just end also with expressing my thanks both to the co-chairs and to all the members of this group it's been a hectic year for everybody and there was a very large investment of time and energy and and sort of intellectual or not sort of lots of intellectual capital that we were able to channel at the staff level so thank you very much for that it truly was as Randy suggested a little bit like working with the dream team on this particular issue set so with that I have to plug the report one more time we hope everyone will go and read it on the USIP website happy holidays to everyone stay safe and thanks again happy holidays thank you