 Earlier this week, Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden held a virtual summit. There was a lot at stake. Relations between these two countries have not really been great over the past few months or for years for that matter. And there was a lot of hope that there might be some amount of breakthroughs made that the discussions could have some positive outcomes. However, it's still not clear what these outcomes are. We'll be talking about this as well as more on mapping fault lines. We're joined by Prabir Prakash sir. Prabir, so like I said, the meeting, the much anticipated meeting took place. Of course, there was no joint declaration. There were statements released by both the sides. Media coverage, of course, focusing on some of the flashpoint issues, the western media talking about human rights, about Taiwan, about all these kind of issues. Two days later, Biden says that the U.S. is considering a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Games. So keeping all this in mind, how do you really see this summit and what came out of it? Well, the first thing is that two presidents have started talking. Now, given the kind of relationship that has been there for quite some time, as you said, with Trump, it had reached a certain point, it appeared that Biden might bring down the temperature, but that didn't happen. So we saw, as you remember, tense meetings between the two sides and that has continued till now. So does it mean a return to normalcy? Normalcy means that we'll have the usual competition, we'll shout at each other, we'll use each, you know, any instance that that we can bring up to bash the other. But nevertheless, there will be certain things which will be business as usual. Now, is that going to happen? We don't know. It really depends on two major issues. One is, of course, the Taiwan issue. Now, in Taiwan, there has been a certain tension, because Biden has been, to put it diplomatically, a little loose with his understanding of what the relationship between Taiwan and the United States is. As we know, for a long period, the U.S. considered the mainland China to be a part of Taiwan, because at that time, Chiang Kai-shek is who they recognize as they called the Republic of China, and they said that he represents the whole of China, but he was in Taiwan. So their position from the beginning has also been that Taiwan is a part of China, and of course that's been the Chinese position as well. So both sides are at least united on this common understanding that Taiwan is a part of, Taiwan is a part of China. Nevertheless, that there are two different systems is what the very can say, and how do they handle it? They handle it by creating a gray zone, about not talking about it, and maintaining, yes, military relationship with China, with Taiwan that we know, but creating a kind of gray, and deniability kind of atmosphere around the issue of Taiwan, which they now seem to want to break, particularly the lot of military opinion in the United States, what would we call with the strategic companies to strategic retired officers who are saying in very open terms that we should recognize Taiwan, have a military relationship, and defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression if it takes place. But again, this is a very dangerous strategy to get into, and that's what China has been warning them, as long as it is gray, you don't spell it out, okay, that's one thing. But if you want to say no, Taiwan is independent of China, and you recognize it, then it changes the ballgame altogether. So that is the issue that Taiwan is bringing up both the sides. And of course, the United States is a key problem that Taiwan today holds the whip hand with respect to number of chips, at least what is called the less than 10 nanometer chip production, they are the biggest supplies in the world, almost 90% of world's production. So given that strategically, particularly with the tech war they're having with China, this becomes even more important. So I think that issue still remains unresolved, because two days after it, Biden talked about Taiwan is independence again. And what you said, yes, they've also been talking about boycott, but that's really not a significant issue. More rhetorical than anything. More rhetorical, and it has public implications, but really no strategic implications. The important part is there seems to be certain talks which have restarted, including military discussions between Russia, Britain, China and the United States. And I think we'll have to wait and watch that can they have certain normal relationships while maintaining their contested relationships? Is it possible? Normal in some things, but contesting in certain other spheres that we'll have to see. But I don't see a waning of the economic war that is going on, what we call really the sanctions war, trade war, tech war, sanctions war, which the US has really launched against China, because China is economically emerging as the more powerful country. And over a long period, say 20, 30 years, the US does seem to acknowledge that China will become the preeminent economic power and considering it's a much bigger population than the United States. So given all of this, I think the US and China are in for a long, long-term contestation, political and economic space. And that can have dangerous flash points. Hopefully this discussion will manage to temper some of that. Staying with the East Asia and Southeast Asia region. So with every number of instance, we'll talk about all of them. So the most recent incident, of course, was the fact that South Korea raised alarm when they said that Chinese and Russian fighter jets had passed through what is called the Air Defense Identification Zone. Now the ADIZ has become a big term in journalism into the strategy community these days, especially with respect to Taiwan. But this was seen as yet another incident of tensions building in that area, etc., etc. So could you maybe take us through exactly what the ADIZ is and what happened? Well, the ADIZ is a concept which was introduced in 1950 or so by the United States and Canada and saying anybody coming across a line that we define as our Air Defense Identification Zone, not our Air Defense Zone or our airspace, which is what the legal position is, that X country's airspace. Not that, but outside of it. So this was started, as I said by US and Canada, a number of countries have adopted. I think there are 20 or 30 odd countries which have also proclaimed ADIZ, including India, for instance, as well as China. But all of it is voluntary, that these are not agreements reached with any country or any understanding of what an Air Defense Identification Zone could be. These are unilateral declarations. And the US itself says that if it does not accept any country's ADIZ, they will not inform any country if they are going just passing through the ADIZ and not intending to enter the airspace of that country. They have no obligation to inform that country. So this is the US position. And it is the US newspapers, the media organizations who are really creating this ruckus about China violating the ADIZ of various countries. In this case, Korea earlier of Taiwan, again, Taiwan ADIZ, if you take a look or you take the Korean ADIZ look or you take a look at the Japanese ADIZ look, you will find that they are very expansive. In fact, the Japanese Air Defense Identification Zone intersects with the Korean Air Defense Identification Zone. You can see that they are crossing each other. So they themselves may be allies, but does it mean that Air Defense Identification Zones are therefore negotiated between the two of them. They overlap. And this is also common in many various other areas where the Air Defense Identification Zones unilateral declared are then overlapping. It's interesting the way the western media plays this up. It's not they don't know what an ADIZ means. In fact, they quite often label it in the headline as Air Defense Zone. And only in the body of the article, in small letters, you will find Air Defense Identification Zone. So you get this feeling that China is violating the airspace of different countries, but these are not airspace. And there is no sovereign claims regarding Air Defense Identification Zone. And that is something not, as I said, not what I'm saying or what anybody else is saying. This is what the United States itself is saying. So given this fact, this kind of noise that is created, I think there is a political message being given here that this is a this is today a stage of strategic competition with China. And any stick is good enough to beat the Chinese with. And if the Russians also get battered in this process, even more to the good, even better. The same thing happened with Taiwan also recently. There was Chinese aircraft entering the ADIZ continuously. Lot of ruckus created around that. Well, as you know, the ADIZ of Taiwan goes over the mainland of China as well. So Chinese are supposed to inform the Taiwanese if a flight takes off from those parts of China, which would be quite absurd. So this absurdity aside, if you take the ADIZ issue that came up with between Taiwan and China, you will see that those overflights, which went at that point of time, was really going over the ADIZ, which projects quite a distance away from Taiwan towards its south. And if you see the direction they were going, they were really going towards South China Sea because there were essentially naval exercises being carried out by the United States Navy in that area. So this was not directed at Taiwan. It was really directed at looking at what the naval ships of the United States were doing in an area which is for China sensitive. South China Sea, as you know, is contested by various countries in terms of economic resources, exclusive economic zones. So there are territorial claims over this island patches as I was talking about, who owns what reefs, shores, islands and so on. So all of these have been issues that have been something highly contested between all the neighbors of the South China Sea. And the US was conducting military naval exercises over there. And that's why the overflights were taking place. They were really going to observe what the Americans were doing. And that is what I was going to ask as well as about the US naval submarine, the USS Connecticut, which in October apparently collided with an underwater mount. And this was a nuclear power submarine. People were a bit worried about what would happen. Apparently the US sent a craft which can sniff out traces of nuclear material to see if there anything had gone wrong. Apparently nothing did thankfully. But what does this for instance say about this area and this crisis, considering that people are very upset when Chinese aircraft travel a bit away from China, but there's a US nuclear submarine loose in this region, so to speak, which is actually getting into accidents. Now the issue I think is relatively more sensitive than just a question of US naval submarine being near China or near Philippines or near Vietnam and so on. I think the issue really is that you have a nuclear submarine. Now nuclear submarines of course going through South China Sea has dangers. Dangers why? Because this is not completely charted. The bottom of the sea has not been completely charted. Accuracy of that degree is not there in the maps that we have. And as you know it has been an ex-volcanic region. And therefore there has been a lot of volcanic mounds. And in fact the Connecticut description that the US Navy gives calls it collision with sea mount, which means an extinct volcano. So given all of this, the question arises that how did this collision take place? Because after all these naval submarines, particularly this but vintage that we are talking about, these are expensive toys of the US Navy and they have a lot of equipment to see that these things don't happen. You have the active sonar which maps out what are the directions, are their obstructions in the way and so on. So the argument that naval experts have given and not naval experts from here but from the US, that the naval experts have given is that possibly they have switched off their active sonar and they're traveling by passive sonar. Why do they do that? Because then you cannot be detected easily that you're passing through these area, this particular area. So it is done when you want to do stealth missions and you want to really sniff out things what's happening over here but you don't want to announce your presence. That is the possible reason why they were probably not, they had not activated their sonar. So active sonar was not on, they were doing what's called passive sonar. You can detect other ships who are on you know we have the sonar signal on but unfortunately the sea mount doesn't. So therefore you have this problem that you could hit it. Now in this case as you said it looks like luckily that it did not cause any leakage of nuclear materials because as you know it's a nuclear submarine of course it's a nuclear reactor in it. Now this also brings out why a lot of the countries including India as well as the other countries in the region it's not only China but also the other ASEAN countries in that area have also said that under UNCLOS that if you are going to bring ships which have nuclear weapons or a nuclear power you should inform the littoral states that this should not be something that it constitutes bringing hazardous material in our exclusive economic zone. We are not saying you can't do it but you should inform us. Now that is something the US does not agree but having done what it has done which is run a ground over there damage it's one of its naval submarines I think they have just really increased the strength of the argument that it is the duty of any country using its naval submarines ships in that area carrying hazardous material including either nuclear weapons or nuclear powered reactors they should inform the countries. I think that's a new position that all of them would agree. So the freedom of navigation the US claims is an unfettered right to navigation including the right to run a ground of you know extinct volcanoes that is a very difficult take and I unfortunately while we hear so much about ADIZ and so on nobody has asked this question in western media where exactly did this submarine run a ground where is it that it ran a ground where it could have created a much larger disaster than it did and that unfortunately no answer has been forthcoming on this from the United States they have remained silent they have just said South China Sea that's it nothing more that also after really it became public that the accident happened in South China Sea and the Chinese raised it as well. Chinese have been raising it as well but as you know the Chinese voice does not carry in global media it's really the western voice and particularly the US voice that is sort of relayed by a number of other support structures that the US has been able to build. Thank you so much for being. Will better sense prevail in nuclear submarines not be deployed in sensitive zones such as the South China Sea one can only hope meanwhile we'll be covering such topics in mapping fault lines until then keep watching NewsClick.