 When we get to the question and answer sessions, if you would prefer your identity not to be reviewed, please say so in the Q&A box, which is what you should use for raising questions or comments. But please do try to provide the information in the box about yourself so that I and Andrew are able to know and understand better where the questions is coming from and contextualize it better when he tries to answer your questions. With that, let me get started properly with the seminar. And for this evening, we have one of the world's leading authorities on China's military developments to speak to us. And that is, of course, Andrew Erickson, who is a professor of strategy in the United States Naval War College. He's also a founder member of the China Marine Time Studies Institute at the War College. He earned his PhD from Princeton University. Apart from being at the Naval War College, he is also attached to the Joint King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard. He comes from on foreign relations and also the Haifa Marine Time Center in Israel. Andrew has published very, very extensively. And if I only restrict to mentioning his books, it will take much too long. Because even on my account, I am familiar with at least 19 volumes to his name. And there may well be more than I might have overlooked. But I would mention two in particular. One is his most recent book, which is a co-author book on the PLA Air Force Campaign for a Bigger Marine Time Row, which came out last year in 2019. And he's also the author of Chinese Entership Ballistic Missile Development, which was published in 2013. Now Andrew is a distinguished scholar, but he's also somebody who had in fact spent a bit of time on a very small boat called the USS Nimist, one of the world's most powerful aircraft carriers. With that, I'll hand over to Andrew to speak to us on the subject of China as a rising military power, developments, dynamics, downsides and dangers. Over to you, Professor Erikson. Well, thank you so very much, Steve, for that very kind introduction. It is truly my great honor to be speaking with you today and your colleagues and everybody who is joining us online. And I greatly appreciate everybody's patience. It seems that some of the connectivity can be more complicated than expected, despite the Institute doing everything perfectly. I'm sorry that I didn't have a chance to troubleshoot perfectly from my end. What I'd like to share with you today are some big picture thoughts clicking through a number of slides to show you what I think are some of the key dynamics in China's rise as a military power and what are the issues that come from that. And of course, there are so many aspects that we could discuss, but I trust that whatever we don't cover in the slides, we can cover in the Q&A to the extent that people are interested. These are of course just my personal views representing only myself as a civilian academic scholar. And they do draw on my personal experiences. Steve has noted some of them. And this photograph on the bottom right of the slide shows me with the former head of China's Navy, Admiral Wu Xiangli at Harvard University several years ago, when I had the honor to help show him around. Next slide, please. So just to offer a brief overview, there are always so many new happenings and developments with China's military, with China's armed forces. It's always a struggle to distill and encapsulate what it really means in the most important sense. But here's how I would propose to sum it up for you. Please understand, of course, this is more of an American perspective, you might say, perhaps a U.S. government type of perspective, but nevertheless, it's my personal analytical perspective. I think over the last several decades, China has pursued military developments of its highest assigned priority very rapidly, to great effect. These tend to be associated with the outstanding disputed issues along China's borders and its immediate maritime periphery. Of course, different governments and different people have different perspectives on the nature of these disputes and what should or should not be done about them. I certainly understand that. But speaking from a military, a physics, a technical perspective, what's very clear is that China is able to marshal great advantages close to home in trying to advance its military power, but these very same advantages drop off rapidly with distance from China. Additionally, I would argue that if you look at economic and demographic trends, there's a great chance that China is already starting to slow down in its rate of economic growth, national power growth, and this will sooner or later have implications for military development. Next slide, please. But if we look at where China's arrived already today in terms of developments, it's achieved some pretty amazing things. Now, already China's the world's second largest economy, even by the conservative measure of market exchange rates, it has the world's second largest defense budget by any measure. So one would expect perhaps tremendous military progress. And I've listed some of these superlatives here. If this were an American high school yearbook, China would have many of the so-called senior superlatives. But I'll just go into detail in the next few slides in the maritime dimension. China has three major sea forces already, each is the largest by number of ships. And that in itself is quite significant, as I'll explain. Additionally, as I've also underlined here, for the last 20 years, the U.S. Department of Defense has been producing an annual report to Congress on China's military power development. I highly recommend it. I'm one of the few people, perhaps, who's sweated through reading them all. And I think this year's is the best yet. It's packed with detail, which is based on released U.S. government analysis. And so I think it's quite significant that this official report states that in terms of shipbuilding, land-based ballistic and cruise missiles, and integrated air defense systems, China has reached a level equal to or exceeding that of the U.S. Now, that can be measured in many ways, but these are very serious developments. Next slide, please. Now, China has been engaging in a sweeping series of military reforms under Xi Jinping's leadership. Next slide, please. But to simplify it, you can really think of China as having three armed forces, three different armed forces, and each of these armed forces has its own subordinate maritime force. So pretty much everybody knows about the People's Liberation Army, China's military services, which contain the People's Liberation Army Navy. Quite a few specialists are also familiar with the People's Armed Police, which now controls China's Coast Guard. Not so many people are familiar with the People's Armed Forces militia, which has its own maritime component, the People's Armed Forces maritime militia or China's maritime militia. So this is another way of at least simplifying that organizational chart that I showed you. Next slide, please. Now, here's a very significant set of statistics from the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence. Of course, I'm sharing with you a number of charts. It's all publicly, many of them are based on U.S. government information. And in that case, of course, it's publicly released. But look at the figures for 2020. Already this year, China has a significantly more so-called battle force ships in its navy than does the U.S. Navy. Now, the ships aren't all equal. There are many ways to measure this. You might say it's an apples to mandarin oranges comparison. But still, ship numbers matter for a variety of aspects. And this is quite significant. China's navy is increasingly modern. It's not just, doesn't just have large numbers. Next slide, please. And then China, of course, has its second sea force, which we just mentioned, China's Coast Guard. China's Coast Guard is far larger in numbers than any other Coast Guard in the world. And it contains, among other things, two hulls of the vessel pictured here, which is the world's largest Coast Guard ship. Now, there are some ongoing weaknesses, limitations in aviation capabilities, for example. And we can discuss this all in the Q&A. But these ship numbers have their own merits and strength and significance. It's not easy for any country to achieve anything remotely like this. So, this is a big development from China. Next slide, please. And for those who are truly interested in details, you can access this via the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence. And you're really going to need high resolution on your computer to see all the different hulls listed for all the different types of ships among China's Navy Coast Guard and Maritime Militia. But I just want to show you one example. I've put a box around just one subset of Chinese Coast Guard ships. And if we click on the next slide, please, just look at the sheer number of ships in this category alone. Multiply that out across that very detailed chart we just displayed. And you'll start to get a sense of just how many ships China's armed forces has out there, out there in the seas near China and in some cases beyond. That is really quite significant. Next slide, please. China's Maritime Militia is rather complex an organization. I'd be happy to discuss this further in the Q&A. But what I'd like to emphasize is that it is part of China's armed forces and it is subordinate to China's Central Military Commission, which is headed by Paramount Leader Xi Jinping himself. Next slide, please. And China's Maritime Militia draws on the world's largest fishing fleet. Potentially thousands of vessels are registered therein. And here in this chart, just in coastal Zhejiang province alone, opposite Taiwan, we can see some of the units. This shows a whole other aspect of China's armed forces development that few are aware of. Next slide, please. And China's Maritime Militia perhaps plays an even greater role in the South China Sea. And here we can see some of the units associated with Hainan province, which is administratively in charge of South China Sea issues for China. Next slide, please. So now let's go to the next subcategory. We talked about some recent developments. Now let's talk about dynamics. Some of the key factors that I think are playing out that can help us make sense of this very impressive and somewhat overwhelming mass of detail that keeps developing and developing, frankly, in an exhausting way if you're trying to follow it on a daily basis. First of all, I would say to the extent that any country has a systematic plan and is executing it in a disciplined fashion, definitely China is doing so. According to a hierarchy of national security priorities, or you could say party, state, military priorities, which I'll get into in just a minute. This is informed by the most ambitious and clearly defined grand strategy of any great power today. Major goals and milestones for 2035 and 2049, including the assertion of control over China's many disputed claims, first and foremost, the most important of all from the Chinese Communist Party's perspective, namely Taiwan. This has already produced a very rapid build out of hardware or weapons systems and supporting infrastructure. The quantity is impressive. The quality is increasingly very impressive too. The so-called, you might say, software or human supporting factors, organizational factors are more difficult. They're lagging behind, but here too under Xi Jinping, China has ambitious goals and is working quickly to make progress there. However, on the other hand, I described in terms of the larger factors, China is facing what I would describe as an S-curve-shaped slowdown and I'll get to that in a minute. If we get to the next slide, let me lay out for you what I see as China's hierarchy of security priorities under party leadership, which comes before everything else. Next is party, state, administration, governance of what might be termed the historically core Han Chinese homeland and then beyond that stability and ethno-religious minority borderlands. You could describe, for example, Xinjiang and Tibet in that category, integrity of land borders coming next and then moving out to upholding and furthering near-seas claims. Now, I would submit to you that from the party's very founding and that of its party army, it focused on party leadership, party state administration. By 1949, it had achieved some ability to declare governance over the core Han homeland by 1951, moving into Tibet, the borderland areas throughout the Cold War, working to secure land borders and then moving on to focus on the current area, these near-seas claims. Now, of course, China is doing multiple things, including out overseas and to the far seas, but I want to suggest that the area of intense focus now is what China calls the near-seas and I'll get to that in a minute. Next slide, please. So, here's a map for you. Chinese strategist's term, the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea, the near-seas. This is the location of all China's outstanding island and maritime claims and so it's no accident that China's focus is there. Now, China has already arrived as a great power. I reviewed some of those superlatives with you. It is acting militarily on a global basis, but the intensity of the China's actions and prioritization by area of geography in no way should be conflated. So, I've tried to shade it a bit here to reflect a high intensity in the near-seas and then some intensity beyond that, but it drops off rapidly. My colleague Peter Dutton, our former director at the China Maritime Studies Institute, describes this as control, influence, and reach. And so, again, a very strong geographical gradient, even though China is already a global power and a global military power, the geographic nature of the focus is really quite significant. Next slide, please. Now, the next few slides, we're just going to see how various weapon systems that China's developed and deployed very much reflect this geographic focus. If somehow we could make a master chart that overlapped this hierarchy of interests together with the concentric circles of these weapons systems and their performance parameters and their range, we would see very dark or intense circles or gradations close to China and an ever a rippling of ever less intense focus and capability farther away from China. So, let's just click through these next few slides. We can look at, for example, China's impressive missile development. Next slide, please. This is a major area for Chinese development, both nuclear, but especially conventional missile development, which by some estimates outnumbers nuclear missiles for China by a 7 to 1 ratio. That's something I would really call to your attention. Of course, China does what it needs to do to feel it has the nuclear deterrent once, I believe. But the real numerical action is with conventional missiles, which I think China believes have a far greater impact regarding deterrence and the operational scenarios that are prioritized. I just wanted to also suggest I am happy to stay until 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time U.S. and I believe that that is so basically I can stay half an hour later until just to give us extra time. I'm sorry that we had to start late here. And if Steve would like to come in with a message on that just to clarify for all the relevant audiences, I'm just happy to clarify that. So please, I hope that can give us plenty of time for the Q&A. Next slide, please. So, again, this shows some of China's very sophisticated and advanced nuclear capable ballistic missiles. Next slide, please, with the range rings, the ranges. But it's the conventional missile and other types of capabilities that are by far the most numerous. And these cover many range parameters that focus and overlap on the near seas and their immediate approaches, which China is concerned about. Next slide, please, most. And these next two slides from a random report from several years ago show just in recent years how rapidly some of the performance parameters of China's missiles and supporting systems have expanded and improved. These are, these are, for example, surface to air missiles. Next slide, please. And this back when Rand published this chart, the PLA rocket force was still known as the second artillery. But you can see that over the over the last two and a half decades, China has rapidly improved its ability to threaten various US and foreign bases in the region with a whole range of missiles. And of course, China is trying to do this from a deterrence perspective. I think the official PRC position is if you would just honor and acknowledge our territorial claims, there'd be no need to have tension or conflict. But since you won't agree to that, we're going to work to deter you. I don't think any side is anxious to have a war here. I'll get to that later. But just to acknowledge that, of course, whether a weapon system is, quote, offensive or defensive, those can be two sides of the same coin, depending on one's perspective. I think it's important to acknowledge perspective and not get wrapped around the axle, so to speak, based on different terminology and different perspectives. I think we can all acknowledge that those differences certainly exist and they're important to understand. Next slide, please. So I mentioned before at the final broader dynamic that I see in play is what I would describe as an S-curve slowdown. I've done some work with my former Naval War College, Gabriel Collins, that's available through his current place of employment, Rice University's Baker Institute. There's a URL at the bottom here. I haven't told this to Steve and his group yet, but I am happy to share these slides and have them be available via a link if Steve would like that. So these are all things that will be available to people after the presentation to see and explore further as they wish. So in this report, there's a detailed explanation for why my co-author and I come to this analytical judgment. But if we're right, if we're onto something here, this has significant implications for China's military development over time. What it suggests is China's made great progress in recent years, but it's going to be a lot harder for China to make a similar rate of progress moving forward. Next slide, please. Now I call this category downsides. There are probably different words that one could use depending on perspective, but I believe that we've already entered a difficult and dangerous decade. China's already facing mounting challenges, growing challenges. I believe this economic slowdown is already occurring. There are any number of demographic challenges for China, environmental challenges. We could debate analytically where the trend lines go in terms of domestic stability. There are surely different perspectives on that, but I think from the perspective of China's own leadership, there are great challenges. That explains a lot of, I think a lot of the world's largest domestic surveillance system that they've invested very heavily in, the various policies and messaging that they engage in, China's state media engages in. So I don't think it's just my opinion or analytical judgment that China's leadership sees that feels that it's facing great challenges. I think if you look at their own statements and behavior, their own actions and policies, it's richly reflected there. At the same time, you'll find no greater proponent of intelligent US policy and values than me, but despite my great love and undying love for my country, I think I'd be analytically incorrect if I didn't acknowledge that we from an American perspective and a US allied perspective have some regrouping, some adjustment, and some work to do to figure out how best to manage relations with China, how to maximize US and allied capabilities. Really, China's development in actions and policies, among other things, have led to a very new situation, and it's not surprising that it should take some time to adjust to that. What's concerning is that China's leadership may see a closing window of opportunity. Because of these dynamics I mentioned, China's leadership may feel that right now or within the next 10 years, it has some of the best opportunities to try to advance its claims before the US and allies coordinate even more strongly and before China starts to slow down more thoroughly. And of course, the scenarios that are frequently discussed involve the East China Sea, both the Senkaku Islands with Japan, but also especially with Taiwan, the biggest prize, so to speak, in terms of China's the PRC's unresolved territorial claims. Then there's also the South China Sea, and there are remaining uncertainties. So before we go to the next slide, let me just acknowledge, people often want to know, well, what are the probabilities in a given scenario or how would it turn out if it, unfortunately, were to happen today? And in some, I can just say, it's my belief that all of these things are based on a very complex multivariate equation that hinges on a great degree of information that is not public in nature, but also based on things that can't be fully known to even the most sophisticated government organizations. I hope this, of course, is never tested in practice, but the point is there's no cut and dried easy summary slide. Next slide, please. One of the best things that's been publicly produced to date is the RAND Corporation's assessment from several years ago. And what this boils down to is nobody can know for sure how certain scenarios, the probabilities in certain scenarios, if God forbid they were to occur. However, what is analytically unmistakable is China's growing strength in a variety of key areas that would potentially inform how key scenarios might play out in the real world. I think really that's about the best summary that we could offer here. Next slide, please. Just looking at the East China Sea and Taiwan, we can see a number of areas of dispute for China of unresolved claims. Next slide, please. And in talking about cross-strait issues, perhaps the most important scenario in the sense that the PLA has long planned for and trained for this scenario as the biggest, most important one, it's informed China's force development. China's the mainland, China's made a lot of progress here. This slide can be easily summed up. Taiwan used to enjoy both very strong qualitative advantages and a good numerical position and thus had great deterrence vis-à-vis the mainland. The numerical issues have almost completely flipped greatly in the PRC's favor. So Taiwan is in a much more difficult position. But fortunately for Taiwan, it still benefits from tremendous natural geographic defenses related to the island of Taiwan itself, the surrounding mud flats, the distance from the mainland. These still are things that Taiwan and its armed forces can build on to great effect. And so there is still a strong deterrent capability in part through the support and the strong relations with the United States and some other militaries. Next slide, please. But make no mistake, this is a fast evolving picture and these many overlapping PLA, PRC systems are going out in range and performance parameters further and farther from mainland China's coast and creating more and more challenges for Taiwan. So this is not something to minimize. It's an extremely serious situation. Next slide, please. Now moving on to the South China Sea, there are many disputed claims here. We illustrate these in our CMSI co-edited volume on China's maritime gray zone operations. One type of South China Sea scenario is that China might seek to seize more of the features than it currently occupies. And in the case of the Philippines, for example, this is a U.S. treaty ally and so that has significant dynamics. Then as I'll get to soon, the South China Sea is also a very significant international body of water through which a tremendous amount of global commerce and energy supplies flow. So whether it's a continued peacetime, however problematic or God forbid an actual wartime scenario, the South China Sea is another very sensitive, very important and potentially dangerous area. Next slide, please. This from the latest Pentagon report shows of the many features in the South China Sea, which ones are occupied by various countries, including with the triangles, the PRC itself, some of the most strategic features. And as I'll show you shortly, some of the most fortified and transformed features. Next slide, please. For example, on the one hand on the left, we can see from the Pentagon's report some of the many mainland China-based or continental China-based forces that could well be brought to bear on the South China Sea for various scenarios. On the other hand, on the right-hand side, we can see a number of facilities that have been rapidly erected on fiery cross reef alone, one of roughly eight PRC-occupied and fortified features in the Spratly Islands in the southern South China Sea. And this is based on tremendous Chinese geo-engineering of a reef. And on top of that, these many very relevant facilities that can facilitate all different types of military operations, both in peacetime and at least until as long as such features were to survive in their present form in the unfortunate event of conflict. Next slide, please. Now, this is more from an American audience perspective, but I just want to emphasize how large the South China Sea is, including the Spratly Islands area in the southern part. For European audiences, you can think of the South China Sea as being roughly twice the size of the Mediterranean in area. I think that's very significant. And those familiar with Washington DC can see the size of the features in the Spratly Islands that China has dredged and augmented, built upon above the high tide mark and fortified. And then in the bottom right, we can see how these features are networked in some very sophisticated ways that facilitate various types of military communications and operations. If you're interested in exhaustive analysis in this area, these graphics come from an excellent set of studies done by Mike Dom, former assistant US Naval Attache in Beijing, and posted on the website of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. It is a fantastic set of analyses. And here you're just seeing a few of the many, many graphics from that. Next slide, please. And finally, wrapping up with the South China Sea, I want to share one last graphic on the left from that excellent JHU APL report. What this shows in a nutshell is that China's many radars based on both existing and potentially in development on these features can provide very sophisticated overlapping coverage of virtually the entire South China Sea. And this could greatly enhance China's ability to target various weapons systems with great precision to include on the top right, its anti-ship ballistic missiles, a notional trajectory of which is shown here. And some of those missiles were displayed earlier when I showed you the conventional missile range rings. And then on the bottom right, China's many cruise missiles, some of the most advanced of which in the middle, in the middle we can see the YJ-12 and the bottom we can see the YJ-18. So all of this has great significance. And finally, even if as is to be hoped this all just stays in a peacetime sense, there are many things that China can continue to do from these features. One concerning thing in peacetime would be to try to declare some sort of set of zones to include an air defense identification zone and claim that certain types of operations or foreign vessels were not welcome in those zones in certain contingencies or in certain contexts that would restrict access to a very vital set of sea lanes and a very vital part of the global commons. That would be of tremendous concern. So I hope that the the U.S. and other like-minded countries can successfully deter China from actually doing that. I think that would be quite regrettable. Next slide, please. So let's wrap up with dangers here and what this all means and what might be done about it and move on to the Q&A so we can discuss the issues that are of greatest interest to the various audience members who have so kindly joined us today. As I mentioned before, the future is now in the sense that the most concerning period for U.S.-China relations, U.S.-China military relations, regional security, issues that I think are of interest and of concern to really potentially everybody, we may already be facing this because of the convergence of the dynamics that I've already described. Now I personally believe that conflict is avoidable. It's not because I'm a starry-eyed optimist. It's because I believe that while the U.S. and China have many differences, including unfortunately in political system and some fundamental interests, on the other hand, they do have some shared interests and they do have shared interests in avoiding war. With all due respect, I personally don't believe in the theory of a so-called Thucydides trap or the idea that we're likely to stumble into a new great war akin to 1917. I think it's just a very different world. None of those previous analogies or historical scenarios occurred under the deterrent power of nuclear weapons under the current system of very sophisticated international financial markets and complex transnational supply chains and production networks. I really think we are living in a different world, even though much different from say Thucydides, not to mention as well as World War I, I do acknowledge that it is still a world of risk and challenges, and I think that's why we need to maintain deterrence. That gets me to the next point, which is I do firmly believe that the U.S. and China do need to maintain dialogues and military dialogues included. It is not a panacea. It is not going to take on a life of its own that transforms everything for the good, transcends all the differences in national interests and goals and priorities, but it's better than nothing. It's the least worst thing that both sides can do, I believe. The important focus in my view is communications protocols and risk reduction measures. It's not going to be ideal. It's not going to be fully satisfying. It can be very frustrating at times, but I think it will be good enough to maintain some sort of contact deterrence and prevent an actual conflict through this window of vulnerability that we need to weather for the next decade. Again, my co-author Gabe Collins and I offer further ideas on this out to the 2035 timeframe in our new report through Rice University's Baker Institute. Hold the line through 2035, which you can access via this URL here. Again, that's going to be available in the slides that I hope can be made available to all. Next slide, please. My final, my parting thoughts, so amid all these challenges, what can the U.S. do? What should the U.S. do? What can the U.S. and China do? How might we conceptualize the larger set of realities and solutions under the circumstances? I've published over the years using the term or the phrase competitive coexistence. That's a term that I like to use. I think like any term that attempts some sort of a balance therein, it attracts controversy. In the past, many people felt that the competitive part sounded too competitive. That's less and fewer and fewer people seem to have that concern. Recently, there's concern about the coexistence part. What I mean by coexistence is for the next 10 years and beyond in this window of vulnerability, from a U.S. policy perspective, in my personal view, the U.S. is going to have to work with the reality of a people's republic of China or a China in some form that has already arrived as a great power. It's very existence as a reality. When I use the term coexistence, at least, it is in no way an endorsement of the Chinese Communist Party or any of its policies. It is an acknowledgement of the reality of the existence of China as a big country in the world with already having achieved all those superlatives that I described. It doesn't mean that the U.S. has to embrace or be happy about those things. Anyway, happy to talk about this later, but just a little context since I think people can read it in their own thoughts and maybe there could be some confusion as to what my own thoughts are. But I've attempted to distill this concept into four different sub-bullets which I share here. I believe that the U.S. needs to prioritize its concerns about the PRCs, the parties, policies, and really tailor and target its pushback, its focus, its pushback, its deterrent efforts to those specific behaviors that are of greatest concern. I hope this could get us beyond what's been consistently a type of PRC or party propaganda saying that the U.S. has a Cold War and is attempting to contain China. That is not my perspective. First of all, if you really want to use the Cold War analogy as in with the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the U.S. and China would be engaging in robust arms control discussions that actually constrain China's weapons development and behaviors in ways that China doesn't yet show any sign of being interested or willing to do. Second of all, I think the term contain China is not helpful, at least in this context, because my emphasis is not on attempting to suppress a huge country like China wholesale, but again, to target a pushback and deterrence against those most concerning behaviors. I understand there are different perspectives. I don't expect everyone to agree with me or to be happy with my argument. I just at least want to define that argument more clearly to avoid more of a sort of talking past each other as all too often happens. And I think whether we're policy focused folks or scholars or folks who are interested in the public interest and the public good, I think we can all agree that defining terms accurately and focusing is a valuable thing and an important thing in and of itself. Understanding starts there and understanding is itself important. From a U.S. policy perspective, I describe more fully in this article to the right in the national interest where I've laid this all out. I do think the U.S. and its allies will need to accept some more risk and friction and work to hold ground in some contested air and sea areas, potentially also in space, cyber and across the electromagnetic spectrum, all these different domains where China is advancing rapidly with its military. And the reason is because China is advancing rapidly and trying to achieve certain things. And I think the U.S. needs to mean deterrence through this dangerous period. That's what that's all about in my personal view. Finally, perhaps on a more optimistic note or at least to try to focus on where I think constructive approaches might be directed, I do think that the U.S. should make an effort to be attuned to areas of potential tension reduction and pursuit of shared interests. But the key to me is reciprocity. As with so many areas between the U.S. and China and among the U.S. and China and U.S. allies and partners and other key stakeholders, nations around the world, key organizations, everyone who's involved, it's really about reciprocity. The U.S., its allies, its partners can't be expected to make the first move, pay a disproportionate price. In the last 20-plus years, 30-plus years of robust engagement with China, there were many such efforts to really make the first move to help China out, to subordinate concerns about China to other issues. That dynamic has run its course. Across the political spectrum in the U.S., the willingness to do that has run out. And in my personal view, with all due respect, rightly so. So moving forward, for example, when it comes to climate change cooperation, that's a big area, for example. I think China will have some interest in doing something in this area. But I don't think that, I think China will do what's in its own interest. I do not believe that the U.S. should make its own move in, say, sacrificing support of allies and partners vis-a-vis the Near Seas in furtherance of some sort of hypothetical goal. That's a recipe for trouble because China, with its very firm resolve and its very capable diplomacy, would pocket any such concessions. And for those who like American comics, comic strips like peanuts, unfortunately, I think it might end up looking like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, if I may try to summarize what is indeed a very serious issue. So anyway, those are some thoughts that I'm sure have provided food for discussion. And if we'll just flip to the next slide, I am happy and ready to take your questions. And I have another briefing that I have to pop on in just under 50 minutes at 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. But until then, I am available to everybody who's interested in continuing the discussion. So I'd like to thank Stephen, thanks Stephen as colleagues once more for generously hosting me. I extend my sincere appreciation for everybody's patience. And I look forward to our discussion. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much, Andrew, for this absolutely fantastic to the force of a talk. There are already over 35 questions in the Q&A box. So we can see the kind of interest there. But nonetheless, let me kick off by asking you, you mentioned something very important in my mind. One is that you talk about the mindset in Beijing of this closing window of opportunity. You also mentioned, at the beginning of your talk, that Xi Jinping had introduced major shakeups of the military, significant reforms, which are meant to substantially increase China's combat capabilities. And in Xi Jinping's language, is to make sure that the PLA is properly trained, organized, and indoctrinated, and equipped to win wars. That's not necessarily means he's going to be made anybody and not saying that. But the question that I would like to put to you is, how far and how effective has those reforms to the PLA, including the reorganization of the combat commands being, is the PLA now ready to take advantage of the window of opportunities if it is instructed to do so? Well, thank you, Steve, for that excellent question. And I'm glad you've used your director's prerogative to ask a very intelligent and on point question. There is no question that Xi Jinping is a paramount leader of China, in some ways, in a way that has not been fully approached, even by Deng Xiaoping, who took some time to fully consolidate his power over the military and to guide it through certain types of military reforms. Deng had other priorities, most fundamentally recovery from several decades of Maoist malpractice, and to build the economy and develop China overall. So, so much of this depends on Xi Jinping's personal initiative and his determination to have a strong legacy for himself and the party. And on the one hand, I think that informs the great ambition of what has been underway with these reforms. I think it also informs the timing. If you look at the many different publications describing both the top-down policies imposed on China's military, China's armed forces by Xi Jinping, and if you look at the bottom up reports from China's military services and armed forces on how they're implementing, we can see that it is a very sweeping, very difficult process. Much progress has been made. It is difficult to say exactly the status of that progress, but I think that we can take very seriously the Pentagon's 2020 China report, which I commend greatly to all interested, and which has a very handy executive summary. The Pentagon report assesses that these reforms have had great effect already. They are progressing well and effectively. That alone cannot answer what exactly China might be able to achieve in what types of circumstances that we hope may never materialize. It can also not tell us exactly the calculus of China's leadership about such scenarios, which must be among the very closely guarded secrets by a regime that is one of the best at guarding secrets in the entire world. Nevertheless, what is clear is rapid progress to become a much more capable military, to have much more credibility in potentially being able to address those scenarios of concern, including in a worst case scenario way, actually, for example, going to war over Taiwan. Now it's the hope of China's leadership that various parties involved, including Taiwan and the US, will see this tremendous PRC progress and be deterred, so there never has to be a war. But that is not in accordance with the policies that Washington and Taipei are determined to pursue. So here's where I see this playing out in terms of the timescale that you mentioned, Steve. By the latter part of this decade, I worry that we will be in a period of heightened concern. I think the reform of China's military remains very significant and ongoing. And before it is completed to a certain level, I think there's a reduced risk of China's military being employed because it's not fully ready and up to the new standard of capability. But I think there is a goal of making that happen quickly. Xi Jinping is demanding rapid results. And I think some goals will are at least to be achieved symbolically by the end of the five-year plan. And in time for the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, which will surely be celebrated with tremendous fanfare next summer. So these are various ways in which I think that we are very rapidly going to see just about the best capabilities that China's armed forces can muster to support their commander-in-chief's demands to be able to meet those objectives should they be called to do so. And that alone is very significant cause for concern. Thank you, Steve, for an excellent question. Well, thank you, Andrew. For everybody, I am, because we started late and Andrews currently agrees to stay on for a bit longer. So I'm intending to run this until London times 645 or a maximum of 650, which will allow Andrew a little bit of briefing space before his next meeting. It also means that in fairness to all, even though some of you very distinguished individuals have asked multiple questions, I will only pick one question from each individual and spread the questions from other people. The first question I pick is from Dr. Casey Lin at Cambridge. And he would like to ask you in terms of which branch of the PLA or which elements within the party or elsewhere within the government that will have the strongest influence on Xi Jinping and the military affairs council in terms of the defining of the doctrines, priorities and budget allocations for the PLA. Thank you. That is an excellent question. It is a very difficult question to answer. Among the greatest honors in my scholarly experience has been to publish two articles in China quarterly. One of them concerned China's defense budget. And I am humbled by the fact that if I were asked to revise the article today, I'm not sure how much I could actually revise and improve it. It is so difficult to get information on that subject. China does not even publish a reliable detail breakdown by service in terms of which service commands what share of resources. The closest Chinese official sources have come is to just show an even split which is really not plausible. Surely it is not exactly like that. What I can offer are just a few thoughts about key dynamics. We can certainly see a relative shift away in resources and prioritization of China's ground forces toward the technology intensive services of China's Navy, Coast Guard and rocket force. Among those high tech forces which have been better resourced and better prioritized of late one could surmise that China's Navy has even within that group certain advantages for several reasons. It's because it's relevant to the widest range of scenarios that are of importance to China's leadership. China's Navy is of great importance to all of the near sea scenarios of concern that I've described to you. It is also at the core of China's global presence. In between it is surely of increasing importance regarding another key policy initiative of Xi Jinping, namely the so-called Belt and Road Initiative, which some have described as a unifying principle, an organizing principle for China's foreign policy under Xi Jinping. I'll leave it to other experts such as Steve to determine that, but I would say from a military focused perspective it certainly suggests that China's naval support to the Belt and Road Initiative is going to be very important across the Indian Ocean and even beyond, even throughout the world to some extent. China's Navy in a way that the Air Force and the Rocket Force cannot has both a very important peacetime role and a very important role in the unfortunate event of conflict. For all those reasons I would surmise that by some measures and for some perspectives if you had to pick one Chinese service that has been particularly aided by the developments in Chinese leadership decision strategy and decisions, surely the PLA Navy should be counted there. Thank you. Well thank you very much. Next I'll move from the UK to India and the question is in light of the current tension between India and China and Sir Heath would like to ask you about whether there is any way for India to effectively deter China, whether you're talking about on land or in his thinking on sea, whether there's something perhaps that the Indians can do in the Indian Ocean that could have a certain deterrent effect on China. Thank you very much for that question and here I would like to underscore that I believe the U.S. concept, U.S. I should say it's not just a U.S. concept, U.S. Allied and partner concept of a free and open Indo-Pacific is a very valuable term, a very valuable concept, a very valuable theme, not the least of which because it emphasizes the importance of India. I am not an expert on India but as someone who personally supports American policies I cannot but have the greatest respect and desire to work effectively with India and to my non-specialist understanding that will be a partnership with many advantages that is never formally called an alliance. I must also acknowledge that my analytical focus is much more on the high tech maritime and aerospace forces development along China's near seas, excuse me, the near seas approximate to China and their immediate periphery as opposed to some of the other types of security issues along China's land borders which have much more of a role for the ground forces to play and in the case of China and India involve some very exotic types of high altitude, low intensity warfare that really have a special nature all their own. They're replicated almost nowhere else. So I find it difficult to provide the specificity of the answer that this question merits but let me briefly come back to the demographics and that I described in conjunction with what I believe to be China's impending S-curve shaped slowdown in national power growth. If one were to trace a an analogous curve for India it would be very very different. Demographics are among the most important drivers of national power trajectory in my view. China is already starting to suffer from declining demographics in various parameters. India is virtually unique among the great powers and having extremely favorable demographics. I am not a demographer but it is my basic understanding that simply put India can look forward to roughly three decades more of very favorable demographics during which point its population will exceed that of China. Now of course that comes with its own attendant challenges but this growth trajectory is going to be significant for India its ability to afford a continued set of military developments to include naval developments and some of the demographic tailwinds that propelled China are going to turn into headwinds in a very difficult way. So that is going to help India over time and I hope in the best possible partnership with the US. Thank you. Well next question I picked comes from Jonathan Fenby in London and let me also explain to people who have put questions. I will not be reading out all your questions. What I will do is I will somewhat paraphrase it to make it easier and clearer for Andrew. The question that I'm paraphrasing Jonathan Fenby is that what are the effective counter measures that the United States has taken in so far as China's built up in the China Seas are concerned and what are they? Thank you for that excellent question. China has achieved very rapid military growth over the last few decades. China has achieved great progress in the South China Sea specifically. The balance of forces has shifted very much in a better toward a better position for China both across the Taiwan Strait and vis-à-vis the US and some of its other allies than was the case in years past. All of these trends are very significant and regardless of how one exactly calculates they cannot be denied. However, just as there is a flip side to the coin of perspectives, there is a flip side of the coin to physics and larger technical realities. There is a flip side to the strategic operational and tactical options available to various participants in these military competitions. China has achieved such meteoric progress in part because it has focused with great discipline on its hierarchy of priorities. It has pursued weapons systems that are unusually suited to furthering those priorities. These are systems that Chinese sources broadly describe in ways that add up to the concept of counter intervention. The idea is to increase the ability to threaten US and allied forces to the degree to which either ideally they're deterred from getting involved in a conflict over disputed territory or issues with China or should God forbid that conflict erupt and should US forces get involved, then China would want to have a way of rendering US forces as ineffective as possible from its perspective. Again, of course, the idea is to show the ability to do that and have that feedback into the loop of deterrence. This has taken the shape of a wide range of land based systems in China that some of my colleagues at the Naval War College call an anti-navy, namely land-based mobile missile systems, aircraft with a wide range of missiles, submarines, and surface ships, especially with a wide range of missiles. The sheer number of missiles, as I've tried to show in some of the early slides is truly, truly staggering. However, the US too can play at this game, so to speak, and the US has its own options in this regard. Of course, it's much easier to state what policy should be than to go through all the difficult efforts to do the homework to enable it. I fully recognize that, but simply put, I do not believe here to fore the US has placed sufficient emphasis on its own missile developments, among other systems. Now, finally, the US is placing more emphasis on that and none too soon. That is very hard for China to counter because certain types of missile missiles are really hard for even the most sophisticated military to counter. Now, to inject a little bit of controversial academic analysis into this, one of the things that was holding the US back from doing this and enabling China was the fact that, since 1987, Moscow and Washington were constrained by the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, which barred a wide range of ballistic and cruise missile development. In the ensuing several decades, China developed the world's most sophisticated and numerous force within precisely those performance parameters. Since Russia was already failing to honor that treaty, and since China clearly has no willingness or interest to join that treaty and thereby constrain itself, I personally advocated that the US should leave that treaty, which it is now done. For the record, I generally think treaties can be a wonderful thing when they're not unequal treaties and when the key parties adhere to them. Unfortunately, this was not one of those treaties. So it's tragic in a way, the way that the US is getting down this road, but I think it had to happen. And now finally, the US is doing more with missiles, which was one of the very best things at the high end, the sophisticated, the high impact weapons development. At the low end, in terms of peacetime deterrence and so-called gray zone operations, I think the single best thing that the US has done, needed to do, has started to do, and still needs to do more, is to show that it is knowledgeable about the operations of China's maritime militia. It is, as we might say, wise to the game, and that it will not be stymied by this shadowy third sea force of China, which is undeniably part of China's armed forces. So I noticed that the link to my website has kindly been shared by Aki here, and I invite people to go there for further publications. You can easily search and text in the archive for any subject of interest, but those are two things I would highlight that were long overdue for the US to do. Finally, the US is starting to do something on and is already realizing significant benefits from doing so, however limited and late the start is. Thank you. Okay. The next question I take is from a student in London. I just cannot resist putting a student's questions to a professor, and it is from Alex McDougal who would like to ask you whether there are conflicts between the party apparatus, the party leadership and the state apparatus over security priorities. Well, it's always a great joy to connect with students. That's one of the best things, and frankly, it's one of the best hopes for achieving a greater understanding to have more intelligent policies and ultimately a better world, one that I hope is better than the one that we're grappling with at the moment. I think that it is very hard to know authoritatively what exactly is going on within China's decision-making apparatus. The decisions at the end of the day are truly made by the Chinese Communist Party itself with Xi Jinping very much large and in charge, as we might say in the United States, an implementation occurring through the parallel state and military apparatus. It is the party state and it is the party army that execute the will of the party. Of course, going through the world's largest bureaucracy, that doesn't mean it's always smooth or simple. It doesn't mean that there aren't some different opinions. I mean, just in terms of operationalizing some of the policy directives, the party style in some cases tends to be very abstract. Sometimes the policy is laid out in excruciating detail, but I don't think that's the case in every instance, especially when things are evolving quickly or there's a new situation or there's a disconnect between different actors. There might be a lack of technical expertise. We hear rumors about differences and sometimes maybe even well-founded documentation of some differences. The bottom line is a lot of this is case-specific and in many instances, I think it's really hard to be sure what exactly the reality is. But as with so many other areas of China military analysis, even if the specifics of decision-making aren't always clear, I think the larger dynamics usually can be known. Here are a couple of broad answers I would like to give to that question. As I said, I think a lot of the confusion and a lot of the challenges come in terms of when there's a challenge of definition and implementation. I think there's often a question from the key authorities in China's civilian and military bureaucracy. What is the leadership intention? What is the intention of the leadership? I think this is a question that gets asked all the time. I think that intention, sometimes that's a question and sometimes there's just a disconnect and a lack of understanding. To put this in concrete terms, there have been some international incidents in which the People's Liberation Army played a role that some have argued were based on even not just a policy disconnect but the PLA trying to do its own thing. I tend to be very skeptical of this kind of rogue PLA argument. I think it is very much the party's army under very, very tight control. It doesn't mean there's not sometimes a slip-up, but let me give you one concrete example where I see a plausible explanation for disconnect as opposed to any kind of disobeying or self-policy formulation. The anti-satellite test by China, I believe this was January 7th, 2011, if I have the date right. This is a case where as this sometimes happens in crises or bad PR situations, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was left clueless as to what was going on, at least in terms of what the spokespeople could say publicly. It was an awkward situation for China because China had used a ballistic missile to destroy an aging weather satellite and in the process created the single, it was the largest single creation of human creation of space debris in actual world history. Terrible situation for causing orbital pollution that could endanger satellites. Very bad practice. This looked very bad for China. I can tell you how bad it looked. This was January 2007. I was at the International Astronautical Congress in Hyderabad, India. Normally, there's a huge large set of panels on orbital debris. Every single Chinese participant did not deliver a paper that year. It was ascribed to some difficulty in getting vaccinations. I can tell you there was no such difficulty from my perspective. What actually happened? Well, I don't know for sure, but the plausible analysis that I've seen is what might have happened was the Central Military Commission was consulted and signed off on this test by the General Armaments Department. But whoever was making the decision, signing off on the decisions, probably had no way of knowing exactly what this was going to cause. Perhaps it was even raised, oh, there'll be a 1% increase in space debris from this test. Well, if you're not a specialist on space debris, that might not sound that bad. Anyway, that's the type of thing that I think can actually happen. I think almost never is there a real rogue PLA situation. The devil's in the details, so to speak, but I do believe, generally speaking, the party is very much in charge. Thank you. Okay. The next question that I picked, I believe, is from someone outside of the United Kingdom, is from Assyria Fernando. And the question is about how does China consolidate its basing options, for example, in Djibouti and in more generally in the Indian Ocean moving forward? Thank you very much. An excellent question. You can see rapid developments in Djibouti, of China's overseas access points. And my colleagues at the Naval War College have published a great study on this, which you can access through the China Maritime Studies Institute's website. So I would commend that. That is truly China's first overseas location. And this is already greatly helping the People's Liberation Army Navy project influence overseas across the maritime component of the Belt and Road, enhance its ability and enhance its ability to further China's interest there. That being said, I think really there's no other access point, no other basing approach that comes close for China at this point. In a distant second for now, I would keep a close eye on Cambodia. I think the way in which China and Cambodia have been denying what appear to be some very in-depth media analysis, for example, by Jeremy Page at the Wall Street Journal, it just sounds a little bit like protesting too much for me. So I believe there will be some increased Chinese access to those collection of facilities in Cambodia moving forward. As my colleague Peter Dutton has done good analysis on this subject, I think for China to really have a stronger Indian Ocean capability, it will need at least one additional access point to provide more of a connection between those two extremes or between China's facilities in the South China Sea. Now where exactly that will be will depend in part on the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean where India, for instance, has great influence in many areas and also in terms of China's hierarchy of security priorities. If China went all out right now, of course it could achieve overseas facilities access at a more rapid rate, but when you look at those many stronger Chinese priorities and greater emphasized Chinese capabilities closer to China's immediate periphery, I think this will cause a limit in how quickly China actively pursues that sort of thing even if it does it to some degree by increasing port access and port visits and doing what it can to bolster its relations with various countries in the region. Thank you. Okay, I think we are looking at the last very last question and it will have to come from a SOAS student and that is Lucy Skolfinn. I will not without Lucy your very long question, I will summarize it and ask Andrew and this is about Taiwan and you talk about the balance having been flipped of course the Taiwan Strait in favor of China and the question really is that given that China will not be able to conquer Taiwan without dominating the air and the sea and it doesn't look like that China is able to do it so yet. Will you agree with that or do you think that is much correct? Thank you very much for that question. It's a true SOAS caliber question and I think it's a great question to end on because it's such an important topic. I don't want to use the phrase, I don't support the idea that the PRC has flipped the cross-strait balance. I think it's greatly shifted the cross-strait balance from a position of great Taiwanese security to a point of much greater challenge for Taiwan and its various supporters such as the United States. But if you look at the sum total of cross-strait balance, each side of the Strait has its own advantages. China clearly has numerical superiority of a wide range of weapons systems, great determination and an increasingly capable military as I've detailed in this presentation. But as I mentioned Taiwan nevertheless has its great natural geographic defenses upon which it can and fortunately is building with its armed forces. It can take advantage of these fundamental natural defenses which I've had the privilege to observe up close to make it very difficult to ever actually successfully seize Taiwan. The concept that I like is Taiwan as an indigestible porcupine. My colleague William Murray at the Naval War College has done some excellent writing on this in Naval War College review and on my website I have a bookshelf compilation of his writings and presentations that elaborates on this. He explains how Taiwan can build on these great natural strengths, how it can do so even more. There are very effective ways to do so even more than Taiwan has done already and this can have a great effect and bringing it back to the larger dynamics that I've sought to outline for everyone's consideration here. I think what will be ultimately best for all concerned is to deter war through this decade of concern. I have great hopes that eventually the larger dynamics of China's development will cause a reprioritization of national resources and policies that will be more focused on the individual welfare, well-being, and rights of individual PRC citizens causing a reprioritization that will help everybody live together in peace more effectively and collaborate and cooperate even more deeply across a wider range of areas than is currently the case that we can do today. So that is the note of hope, of peace, of deterrent stability that I would like to end on. I will leave my slides and my website links for any of those who are interested. I would like to thank the audience and most of all for Steve and his team for kindly hosting me and I hope to be in touch with everyone in the future and I hope we're all able to observe that it is a peaceful future. Thank you very much. Well thank you very much, Andrew, Professor Erickson, for a most engaging and thoughtful conversation with many of us. I have to draw this webinar to a close but before I say good night, goodbye. Let me apologize to those of you who have waited very patiently for the start of the event. We will try to take other measures to try to minimize the same situations happening again. With that, let me thank you all for your participation and for joining this webinar. Thank you and goodbye. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew.