 Hello, and welcome to the Low Institute Live. This is the first event of the Long Distance Low Institute, and this is the way that we're going to be operating while the COVID-19 social distancing measures are affecting every aspect of our lives. One consequence of the virus is that we're unable to welcome events to our premises at 31 Bly Street in Sydney. So we're going to be live streaming all of our events until we're able to return there. We've been very gratified to see so many of our subscribers and audience registered for this event, not just from Sydney, but from around Australia and even from around the world. A warm welcome to you all. My name is Alex Oliver, and I'm the Director of Research for the Low Institute. Joining me today are Executive Director, Dr. Michael Fullerlove and Richard McGregor, our Senior Fellow and Leading China Expert to discuss the impact of the virus on the great geopolitical rivalry of our time, that between the two competing superpowers, the United States and China. Some quick housekeeping, as this is the first Low Institute live event. On the base of your screens, you'll see a Q&A button, and that's where you can submit questions to the panelists. We'll be reviewing and moderating those questions through our proceedings and during the Q&A session later in the event. We've also received questions submitted during the registration process, but please put your questions through and we'll gather them and respond to as many as we can later in the event. I'll ask you please to include the name of your organisation or any other affiliation when you send through your questions. But first to our panelists, hello, Michael and Richard. Remind them. Michael, first to you. The global upheaval caused by this COVID-19 pandemic has jolted what was already the greatest geopolitical rivalry of the 21st century into a new period of uncertainty. You've been critical, it's fair to say, of the Trump administration and its American first foreign policy, which has been highly transactional in the conduct of its foreign affairs. Where has this left the US in terms of global leadership and how is it going to come off in this latest round of the US-China battle? Thank you, Alex. Well, the United States was already self-isolating under President Trump before coronavirus. We know that President Trump came to office in 2017, oblivious to the advantages of global leadership. We saw that with the Iran deal, the TPP, the Paris Accord, his approach to alliances. What he had in his favor was that in that period, President Trump didn't face an externally generated serious crisis. He had plenty of problems and crises, but he brought most of those on himself. Now he faces an external crisis and it's a doozy. And America is facing a health crisis, an economic crisis, and Americans' last line of defense is the Donald. So I think this is a sobering moment for Americans and for American profiles and for observers of America. Washington's approach to coronavirus has not been impressive. The President himself, I feel, has flailed around. He started out sort of denying the significance of corona, comparing it to the common flu, calling it a hoax, spreading misinformation. He has sharpened up that performance a little bit, but the testing performance in the United States is still dreadful. His press conferences still seem to be remarkably self-absorbed for a world leader. And certainly you look at the footage out of New York and other cities, and these are very arresting sites for the world. I mean, we're used to thinking of America as the epicenter of global power, not the epicenter of global disease. There's a long way to run and hopefully America can improve its performance. It's obviously President Trump is not the only element of the performance. There've been other elements that have probably slowed down America's response, the individualistic nature of American culture, the hyper-partisanship of the country, but so far it has not been impressive. America looks feverish, it looks a bit disoriented, it looks weak. So friends of America really hope that it can turn its performance around because I think inevitably this is affecting the way the world thinks of America, and probably it will also have implications for how America thinks about the world. And speaking of the epicenter of global disease, Richard, China's been a rising power for decades now since its opening up, and I noticed Kishore Mubabani published a new book last week provocatively titled, Has China Won? No doubt that was written entirely before the COVID crisis, but it's a potent question to ask right now. Has China Won, do you think, or is it too soon to say? Well, Kishore, he's a former Singaporean public servant and academic. Three months ago, a book titled Has China Won would have looked spectacularly ill-timed. Maybe it looks a little bit better now. The idea, though, that China has won, and this is an idea, I think, that China is putting out around the world these days, really it holds up in some respects, not in others. But let me go through it for you. I mean, Kishore, for example, has been writing about more about Asia than China. It's almost like, if it had a series of books, it would have been, Is China Winning? Will China Win? And now has China Won. He used to write about the Asian descendancy. Now it's the China ascendancy. But if you look at the course of COVID-19 in the region, there are many different ways to tackle this virus and there are many different ways to bring down infections, not just the Chinese way. We have, look at South Korea, look at most prominently of all, Taiwan. You might have looked at Japan and Singapore a few weeks ago, but they're having the struggles of their own now. Look at Touchwood, Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand was described today not just as flattening the curve, but crushing the curve. So the Chinese, there's no doubt that China had success. The current quarantine worked as far as it went. And if we look at where we are right now, yesterday, China for the first time since January 21 recorded no deaths. The US in the last 24 hours has recorded 2,000 deaths. Now you'll get many people saying, of course, we can't believe the Chinese figures and I understand that, but I think we can believe the Chinese trend. In other words, you can't really hide a virus like this to the point where you wipe out any knowledge of it at all. So I basically believe that the number of new infections is low in China and the number of deaths, new deaths is right down. So that does bring us to an important point that Kishore is making that we must confront that this is not just about US and China. That's what we're talking about today. But when we look at US and China, it's not just a contest of economies. It's not just a contest of militaries. It's not just about trade wars. It's a contest of systems. And if China does come out of this much more strongly, then the ruling Communist Party, including Xi Jinping, they will feel bulletproof because they've gone through many crises over the past couple of decades and they've always come out of them. And if they come out of this one, while the US flounders, they'll be confident. They'll be more emboldened in their foreign policy. They'll be more assertive. They'll want a bigger role in international institutions and they'll be willing to take greater risks. So I don't think China was one, but incredibly as it seems from just a few months ago, China might come out of this looking better than the United States. You raise an interesting point about the context of systems there and China's assertiveness, but Michael, there's been quite an esoteric aspect of this war between the US and China and that's the War of Words, specifically the War of Words about the virus. President Trump and some of his White House officials have insisted on calling the coronavirus the Chinese virus or the Wuhan virus. And China's responded with its own propaganda at home and abroad calling it the USA virus. Is this War of Words significant? Do you think? Well, the timing of it is not ideal. I mean, in the middle of the pandemic, you would prefer to think that leaders in the White House and Zhongnan High were cooperating to beat the bug rather than competing to throw the blame. Having said that, this is coming, whether it comes now or it comes in a month, the battle for responsibility of this virus is coming. It will be significant because there's a lot of geopolitics in this virus. It's a bit like, 100 years later, we're still arguing who was responsible for World War I, who was responsible, we still argue about Vietnam and other issues. So who was responsible for bringing this blight to the world and how different countries dealt with it will be an important part of the ideological and national competition over the next few years. Now, I think in terms of that point, I would come at it slightly differently from Richard. I think that China has been impressive in the way that it has arrested the spread, obviously, within China. But Beijing is up on its hind legs at the moment. It feels it's got a good story to tell. It's trying to put the virus to work for the Chinese Communist Party. But I'm not sure this will work out the way China thinks it will because ultimately the same authoritarian system that allowed it to clamp down on the virus was also responsible for covering it up for months and allowing it to disperse from Wuhan to the world. And so if in six months or a year, there are armies of debt around the world and the global economy has been batted or shattered by this virus, the idea that China will go blameless and the Chinese system will be praised, doesn't quite seem right to me. I mean, I think that as I say, there are elements of their system that have worked, but in the end, I think we are all gonna squint our eyes and say, China allowed that thing to get out of the box and that has changed the world for the rest of us. And I don't see how that can fail to drain some of the confidence and belief we have in China. I mean, for the last few decades, China has been a source of capital and labor and innovation and now it's a source of disease. And I think that has to affect Beijing's soft power in the future. So there's some repudational damage for sure. Richard speaking of that, there've been some wild conspiracy theories going literally viral on social media channels in the past two months on both sides of this rivalry. There are stories that China sowed the disease deliberately to weaken the United States and enhance China's own position. There are stories that the US military launched this as a biological weapon against China to bring it metaphorically to its knees. How have these stories caught hold in China? I think they've probably caught deep hold. Just let me go back to what Michael said. I think he's right in this respect is that if we're writing a book about COVID-19, China would like you to read just the end of the book as it stands now. They don't want you to look the first few chapters and what happened with the initial coverup and mismanagement of the virus. And that's where most of the conspiracy theories or accusations being traded by the US and China are focused on. First of all, President Trump and Secretary Pompeo were talking about the Wuhan virus and the Chinese virus. This angered the Chinese, of course, because that pinpoints the origin quite starkly. And the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman then in retaliation for that. In fact, that's exactly what he said yesterday. He said he was speaking in retaliation. He started to spread from the podium at the foreign ministry in Beijing wild conspiracy theories about how this virus may have been bought to Wuhan by a US service woman some months before when there were international military games in Wuhan. I mean, this is an absolutely crazy unfounded theory. It comes from a sort of conspiracy website in Canada helped on by some sort of people in their living rooms in Virginia in the United States. But I think if you ask me whether do people believe this in China, it's hard to do a quick survey of this sort of thing. But I think that it's very fertile soil to take on a conspiracy like this. The other side of it, which I think hasn't really been promoted from the top of the US government and tops of other governments. But I certainly hear it on talkback radio in Australia all the time and I suspect you hear it overseas as well is that China deliberately engineered this virus deliberately let it out to hobble the world economy to accelerate its takeover of the world. I'm sorry, it's not more sophisticated than that. And this conspiracy theory holds that, you know China that unvalued life so much they can lose a few thousand here, a few thousand there it doesn't really matter. If the end game is global domination, you know it sounds like a bad James Bond film. So they've been competing against each other. It is noteworthy as of about a week that Washington and Beijing seem to have both agreed to step back from this to not hit each other from the respective podiums of each government. But as Michael says, we'll be debating the origins for a long time and that is a debate that China is extremely uncomfortable with. Speaking of podiums, Richard, Michael I wanted to ask you about the podium contest that's going to go on in November of this year. You've studied the Trump presidency's right since the beginning of his administration in late 2016 you've been very critical of the administration's response to the crisis. And yet on average, US opinion polls in the past few weeks show that Trump's approval rating is actually at an all-time high of around 50% of the population. What do you think this crisis means for the election in November this year and President Trump's prospects? Well, first of all, it seems that Americans aren't listening to me and some experts. But let's see, look, the Americans have a choice in how the country goes forward. That's one of the advantages of being a democracy. And in November, Americans can either decide to course correct or they can continue. They can say that we want a more orthodox form of president, probably in the form of Joe Biden who's likely to be the Democratic nominee, although that is not formalized yet and Bernie Sanders is still in the race. Or they can look at the last four months and the last four years and they can say, we want more of that, more please. And I think on that decision rests a great deal of significance. So I think it really behoves us all to watch it very closely. Now, before coronavirus, I felt that President Trump had the advantage in re-election, not withstanding the maladministration that had taken place under his presidency. And the reasons are, first of all, that incumbents usually get re-elected in the American system. It's unusual for incumbents not to get re-elected for a second term. And secondly, they almost always get re-elected when the economy is going well and the economy was going strongly. Coronavirus scrambles that. The economy is now tanking. The US economy is in for a very grave period as is indeed the global economy and developed economies and developing economies around the world. But on the other hand, the value of incumbency increases in a crisis and American pollsters for many decades have pointed to the rally around the flag effect in the United, in US politics. And you've seen that. You alluded to the Gallup poll which has increased, improved for President Trump. So I think I would say that it all depends really, most of it comes down to now President Trump's performance on coronavirus and his perceived performance. If he is perceived to do well, we see now he's trying to adopt a new tone and more sober tone in his press conferences. If the curve starts to flatten, if Americans start to get over it, then they may feel they don't want to change horses midstream, we'll have to see. The other party of course in this is the opponent who as I mentioned is we think it'll be Joe Biden. I know Richard covered Joe Biden on the campaign trail at the Institute we hosted Joe Biden a few years ago. He has some strengths. He has the strengths of experience and some wisdom. He's been around a long time. He's an empathetic character. He's sort of the anti-Trump in many ways but he has vulnerabilities too. One of them is his age. He's not a young man. He looks his age and old age I think is a vulnerability at this moment because of coronavirus but also because he doesn't have the value of incumbency. He's an opposition leader I guess in our terms. He's a challenger and I think around the world you're seeing that governments that are doing okay are getting a boost at the moment. Their people want them to do well. That's only natural. In Australia, in France, in the UK and in the United States. And so I think in the United States the advantage is probably at the moment with Trump but it depends on his performance in battling coronavirus. Richard I might bring you in here since you have a lot of familiarity with Joe Biden from covering his earlier campaign with Trump as a wartime president. What options do the Democrats have and Joe Biden in particular in inserting themselves into this or is it just not worth it? Is it better for them to stand back? Well, I mean, Trump is a self-styled wartime president. We're not actually in a war but he's probably getting a little bit of the boost that a leader in a crisis gets as Michael said. At any time like that, particularly when you're in the US you don't have a formal system of opposition and Joe Biden is still running in the primaries. Biden is not going to get much oxygen if you like. But I've always thought that Trump is very beatable depending on who the candidate against him is. If you look at the turnout in the midterms a couple of years ago, if you look at the turnout in the Democratic primaries, it's way up and there are a lot of people who want to get out and vote against Trump. If you look at Biden in particular, I followed him in 2012 when he was the vice president for Mr. Obama and he was campaigning in states like Wisconsin, in Michigan, in Pennsylvania and he was specifically sent there by the Obama campaign to give a strong anti-trade message actually and he's always been very effective at that. But of course, I mean, Mr. Biden is about as old as Mr. Trump, but he seems to have some sort of lack of cognitive fluency at times to put it generously. Trump is a very effective campaigner. It's impossible to say who will win but I think Biden would have a very good chance. Michael raised earlier the question of the economic impact and the economy scrambling in this health crisis but also very important economic crisis. But going back a bit in relation to the US-China rival where one of the first major moves Richard of the Trump administration against China was to initiate a trade war that followed and there followed a tip-a-tap round of tariffs from mid-2018 and a truce of sorts was reached in January of this year. One side or both would have been weakened by that trade war. What happens to the trade war now? Well, the trade war for one of a better way of putting it is on the back burner. In theory, of course, there's a whole series of commitments coming out of the trade war going over a period of two years. Most prominently in Mr. Trump's mind is the issue of purchases of American goods including agricultural goods. Mr. Trump said the other day he wasn't too pleased at the rate at which that had started but a lot of those purchases are back loaded in other words until next year. So the jury is out on that. But China, we're all pretty familiar with what's happening in the US economy but the Chinese economy is still reeling from the effects of COVID-19. You saw some estimates that they had I think the worst few months and we're gonna get the worst quarter since 1976, the end of the Cultural Revolution. A very prominent Chinese economist the other day said, China was gonna have its worst few months economically since the Tang Dynasty. And by the way, the Tang Dynasty is from the 7th century to the 10th century. So it's pretty tough there. So China is getting back on its feet in terms of people being out and about, cities coming back to life, people that get workers are getting back to their factories but there's little demand inside China because people have taken a big hit economically and of course demand outside of China for their exports is taken a massive hit as well. So China's got its own big economic issues and when we think about China as a winner from this, Western countries have been through recessions, depressions in their time and continued as democracies and recovered. China has not had a real recession for a long, long time. Certainly not since in the way we measure it since the 70s. So they're gonna go through a very testing period. Xi Jinping will go through a very testing period unless they can get a snap back in their economy right now. It's not on the horizon. Looking further across the horizon and perhaps back home in Australia. Michael, how's this crisis affected Australia's position given its economic reliance on China, the weakened state of the global economy in general, the weakened state of the US, our alliance partner. How do you look at say for example, Scott Morrison's response to the crisis vis-a-vis China? Well, I think it has the risk of weakening our regard for and our relationship with both countries actually. I mean, you had seen in Lowy Institute polling in recent years that for example, Australia's trust in China dropped by 20% last year and Australians were uncomfortable with many aspects of President Trump's leadership of the United States and that was troubling them about the United States. And I think Corona will raise questions in Australians' minds about both countries on the United States side. As I mentioned, the United States is our great ally. It is our security guarantor. It is one of the pillars of our foreign policy. We don't really have a plan B apart from the United States and yet the United States response to Corona has not been impressive and it's not what one would want to see from your great ally and the most important country in the world. On the China side, similarly, as I alluded to earlier, I think this will, you're already starting to see some elements of the Australian debate wondering about whether we have put too many of our eggs in our basket with China and wondering whether we should put some distance between ourselves and China. You're certainly seeing that debate in other Western countries really breaking out. You're seeing some Western commentators really saying we should set our face against the PRC. I'm not sure if Australia has that option for some of the reasons that Richard mentioned. Our economy is going to be severely weakened, notwithstanding the good measures that the government has introduced. We are going to need China to continue purchasing our exports, to provide us with imports, to be a source of growth. So I don't think China is an optional extra for Australia. And so that's why I think you've seen, to come to your question, you've seen Scott Morrison be very careful in his comments on China. But I think given the importance of both the United States and China having our worldview and in our foreign policy, it's a troubling fact that neither of them are having an impressive coronavirus crisis. If I can make one positive point, the countries, if both the superpowers have been a bit lackluster so far in different ways, middle power, some of our middle powers have provided leadership and a path forward, perhaps. And if you look at different elements of the crisis, Singapore, South Korea, Germany to some extent, obviously, that's a big power. But you're seeing that middle, some of the most impressive national responses have come from middle powers with which we can compare ourselves with, competent states with rational politicians, with effective bureaucracies. So maybe we will see, maybe as Australians will take some inspiration from that, maybe we'll see more coalitions of the competent where because we're a bit troubled by the performance of the Americans and the Chinese, we thicken our connections with other fellow middle powers, including those in our own region. Thickening of connections and speaking of that, Richard, is this going to see some sort of distancing between ourselves and China, some sort of diversification away from China, a degree of decoupling. I'm thinking about education, Australia's tourism industry. Is that likely as the Australian economy tries to emerge from the economic impact of this crisis? Well, Australia went into this crisis with a strong economic relationship with China and very poor political relationship. I don't think much has changed in that respect. At the start of this crisis in January when Australia closed its borders to China, China accused us of overreacting. I don't think anybody would say that now, particularly as China has done the same in reverse. But as Michael said, all countries are going to come out of this crisis with weaker economies. Is that the time when any leader looking for economic growth, looking for a strong budget, looking at tax receipts and the like, is going to take on a sort of a generational shift in the economic direction of a country? In the case of Australia and China, of course, there's a lot of talk about how we need to diversify. Intellectually, that's absolutely right. How do you diversify? Given what we're offering, can we go off and sell our mineral resources in such bulk to other countries? It's not so easy. Having said that, there are some parts of the economy which I think will take a semi-permanent hit. Tourism and international students, which are an important part of the relationship with China. We had about 90 direct flights, I think from China to Sydney every week. People in the business expect that to be reset at about 60, in other words, about a third lower. That's many, many thousands fewer in tourists. The same goes for the other airports around the country. If you look at international students, I think we'd probably reach the peak of Chinese international students from China, but there's no doubt that this is going to leave a sour taste in many people's mouths who came here. Not necessarily the fault in the short term of Australia, but our universities have become far too dependent on fee-paying students from China. I get the sense that there are many people in the federal government, including in the federal government, who think this is a perfect time for a reset. So the university is going to take a massive hit in income, but as to sort of looking for a complete reset of our economic relationship, we might want to bring some manufacturing onshore and pharmaceuticals in medical protective equipment, but realistically, will Scott Morrison come out of this in six months and say, okay, let's reset our economy now, just when he's looking for growth? I think that would be pretty risky. And I think the Vice Chancellor of ANU this morning made very similar points about having reached perhaps peak international students at our universities. Richard, just staying with you, what happens if COVID-19 actually doesn't change the US-China contest that much? Say both of them come out of this economically weaker, as Michael said, politically weaker, diplomatically diminished. Will they just simply resume the geopolitical contest for influence? Yes, I think they resume hostilities in one form or another. I think, as I mentioned earlier, it's multifaceted, it's geopolitics, it's military, it's about trade, it's regional, it's hearts and minds, it's a contest of systems of ideologies, if you like, and both sides increasingly see it in a zero-sum fashion. You know, there are fewer and fewer parts of the systems in both countries that want to take a step back. And I think you were asking earlier about whether it was important to look at the way each side was talking about each other now, you know, the conspiracy theories and the like. And I think that's very important because they were trading bombs at each other, but in reality, their audiences were basically internal, particularly in China, propaganda to their own people to make sure that they knew their own government was doing a good job and it could all be blamed on somewhere else. Now that's a pretty sour part, you know, position to start or to improve a relationship from. Michael, you know, we're turning from China now back to America. I get the sense that you are somewhat disillusioned about American-American leadership. Has the response to COVID changed your mind about anything as you've watched it unfold? Well, I would say the Trump presidency has shaken my faith in America and the Trump's response to the coronavirus is part of that. I wrote a piece in The Atlantic about this a couple of months ago just saying how, you know, I've been American afar my whole life and I'm really dismayed to see what has happened in the United States in the past couple of months and there are certainly elements of the corona response that add to that. On the other hand, I intended that article as a call to arms, if anything, a modest call to arms, let me put it that way because I still think the United States has huge strengths. Its demography is much better than China's. The economic potential, the innovation in the United States, the appeal of the United States to the world is still enormous. So I think the world still wants to believe in America. America has a lot to work with, but Americans need to help us believe. I think if Americans take a good hard look at the last four years and say, yes, that's exactly what we ordered last time, we'll have another serving of that please, then I think a lot of people around the world will start to wonder whether America, whether they've got America wrong or whether America had changed. But if America course corrects in November, then I still think it has enormous potential and it has enormous strengths that many other countries would like to have. Xi Jinping would like to have a lot of America's strengths. So all eyes turned to November, I think. Course correction, I'm sure many of us will be looking forward to that. Richard, I want to ask you about reading material, actually. There's been so much of it to read in the last few months as people have been self-isolating, having a bit of time on their hands, desperate for information about what's going on, trying to interpret this new world, the COVID world that we're living in. What's your advice to non-experts about how to understand China during this crisis? So there are interesting people that we should be reading or following on our social media accounts? Well, there's a whole host of people to be following on Twitter, I guess. That's where I get most of my information from or by following people there. In terms of Xi Jinping, China, there's a very good... Xi Jinping's China, there's a very good website. Reading the China Dream, that is very good. I think the Western press, much maligned, both in the US and in China, of course, has been doing a terrific job in covering this crisis, even as a few of their members have been thrown out of the country. I should say, though, that one of the best sources throughout this period has been Chinese journalists. You know, Chinese journalists instinctively understand their country, frankly, much better than we do. They, you know, they grew up there. They can talk to people, I think, in a much more intimate fashion when they're able to. And in the early stages of this crisis, we got some really truly fantastic Chinese journalism. The magazine, Tsai Xing and Tsai Jing, both long-standing publications, which have always tried to push the boundaries, did pioneering or pathbreaking work on what happened in Wuhan, what happened between Wuhan and the central government, what happened in the particular instrumentalities of the Wuhan government and the Health Commission and the like, the debate there, the delay in getting the information out, the suppression of the information. So that's been some of those Chinese journalists, particularly Chinese citizen journalists who worked at that time have now been either detained or, you know, kept at home and not allowed to report. But the magazine's mostly still going strong. And I really commend people following them because then you get the authentic Chinese take on it, which has been great to see. Well, that should keep Google Translate busy for a bit. Michael, one last question to you before I turn to the audience for their questions. The crisis has had obviously broader implications than for the rivalry between the United States and China. It's a global health crisis, an economic crisis on a scale rarely, if ever seen before. It doesn't discriminate between rich or poor nations, powerful or weak. And then, of course, the latest evidence of that is clear with the hospitalisation of the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Now, we've hosted Boris Johnson a couple of times at the Institute. I thought you might like to reflect on that. Yeah, thank you. It shows that neither... How insidious the virus is, really, that neither status nor power is a defence against it. And one of the issues I've wondered about that will be focusing the minds of the Secret Service and the Shin Bet and the AFP and other police forces, security services around the world, how do you protect your leaders from an invisible enemy like this? How do you maintain the functions of government and how do you maintain confidence in government, which requires keeping your leaders and your decision-makers healthy? It's a sort of a challenge that they're not used to and we're not used to. In terms of Boris, you're quite right. We hosted Mr Johnson twice, once when he was Mayor of London, once when he was Foreign Secretary and he gave the Lowy Lecture a couple of years ago. He has been one of my very favourite guests. I mean, he's a complete, original, highly intelligent, very funny, very charming, but someone with a seriously well-developed world view, somebody very impressive person. Also, somebody with enormous personal energy and vigor. So I have every confidence that Boris will be back on his feet soon. I back Boris, as I say, on Twitter and I look forward to seeing him back at 10 Downing Street. I think we all do. Thank you both. It's time now to go to the audience for questions. Now, this is the technical trick. As I mentioned earlier, we've been receiving questions throughout the event. If you haven't done so already and you'd like to put a question to the panel, please do so now. I'll try and get to as many of them as we can in the remaining 15 or 20 minutes that we've got. Now, I wanted to go, firstly, to a question from Margaret Stone, actually, one of our great supporters in Inspector General of Intelligence and Security, and Margaret has asked the question about what this pandemic has revealed about the relative competence of democratic versus authoritarian societies. Which one of those systems, if you like, has got the upper hand and what are the implications for the Australian government? One or either of you like to jump in there and ask that answer? Well, I'll say something first. I mean, I think the Chinese system initially covered this up and mismanaged. But since then, we've got an example of incredible state capacity in China, whether you like it or not, whether you think it's used for good or bad, that they are able to lock down as many at one count as 760 million people in home quarantine at one form or another and regulate that right down to the last street and every mobile phone is kind of, you might think it's scary, but that's genuine state capacity. You look at the US, which much more fractured. I think the state has been run down in the US, relentless attacks on governments for decades. I think in Australia, for example, we're seeing we've got pretty great state capacity, actually, relatively speaking. The health system in particular, the public health system, shown to be of great value at the moment. But the Chinese state capacity, the ability of the Communist Party to leverage it, has been another profound reminder of just how big a challenge China is. Margaret... Yeah, go on. Well, thank you to Margaret Stone for the question. I think both... I think the virus reveals that both the authoritarian and democratic systems have the faults of their qualities in a way. The authoritarian systems, as Richard alludes to, can be good at the controlling of the population, the draconian measures that are good at stopping the outbreak, but they're less good as they've demonstrated at the transparency that is required to admit error and to share lessons with others. And the democracies, on the other hand, tend to be good at the transparency and not so good at the draconian measures. But ultimately, it doesn't feel to me like the real divide in the world on coronaviruses between authoritarians and Democrats. It seems to be between competent countries and incompetent countries, because some authoritarian states have done well, and I would agree, I'd associate myself with Richard's remarks about China's impressive state capacity, which is as impressive as it is worrying. Vietnam also seems to have done quite well in our region, but then a number of democracies like South Korea and Germany are doing well, and quasi-democracies like, or controlled democracies like Singapore. So it's not so much authoritarian and versus Democrats. I think it's more competent states with state capacity versus less competent states. And at the moment, I agree with Richard. Australia, the deep state in Australia has performed pretty well, whereas the deep state in the United States, for example, doesn't look very deep at the moment. And then, of course, there's a performance of those democracies, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, I guess proving that this is not about authoritarian and democratic responses, but about competencies. So good point there. I have a question from Mark Sawers, who is from the office of the opposition leader, Anthony Albanese. And he asked whether the analysts are making much of some assistance with personal protective equipment gear and offers of technical assistance, but is that a long bow to suggest that this swings China into a new dominant position? He says surely there's work still needs to be done for China to get there. Will it step up on the substantial financial assistance that recovery will require? And I note that some shipments of personal protective equipment from China have been rejected for being defective. Richard, do you want to have a go at answering that question from Mark Sawers? Well, China sucked all the personal protective equipment out of the world in January and February. Now it's spending it all around the world now. Was their infections go down? And they're doing it in such a sort of high-profile fashion like we save the world-type fashion. You know, there's no doubt that the equipment is welcome, but it sort of becomes, you know, is delivered in a very sort of politically heavy-handed fashion. You know, you have to be sort of photographed at the airport thanking China for this gift, whereas I think most of it has been bought on commercial terms and the like. So will it help China? It's very hard to say, actually. In some countries, people will be grateful. Others will resent the fact that it's being, it's sort of charity being given to them for which China is expecting great thanks. But certainly it's another example of the Chinese system that they can turn around from disaster to triumph in just about two seconds and manage the flow of gear at the same time. Will it help them in the end? It depends on what people think about the origins of the crisis compared to the end. Speaking of the origins, with you, Richard, again, Bonnie Glazer, who's one of our non-resident fellows and also a senior China analyst at CSIS in Washington, D.C., one of our fellow think tanks over there. She said that China watches are divided over whether the COVID-19 crisis will strengthen or weaken Xi Jinping's control and legitimacy of the CCP. And, Richard, you've written on that in a piece which we're shortly to publish, actually, in which Bonnie has also made a contribution to in a few days. What's your assessment, Richard, of how this affects Xi's control and his position with the CCP, particularly since he's made himself president for life? Well, everything seems to entrench him further. Nothing seems to knock him off his perch. So you'd be a brave person, as I might have been in the past, to suggest that this might diminish his power at all. Xi Jinping's impulse at any different time is more control, not less control. I think in the case of this crisis, there should have been greater transparency, whether in fact he takes that lesson out of it. I'm not so sure. There's been a couple of people arrested in China in the past week. One, a prominent member of the party, sort of a semi-printering who's now been suspended from the party for a year after he wrote an absolute die-tribe against Xi Jinping on his social media account. So Xi's critics and Xi's enemies are all still there and extremely sort of angry at him still for all manner of things, particularly the president for life manoeuvre that he pulled off a few years ago. But at the moment, there's nowhere for them to go. It's simply too dangerous to oppose him in any real fashion. So there's no new news to report on that front. I have a question about trust from Anaheid from our audience. And this is an interesting question. You mentioned earlier the low-institute polls results on trust in China, which have dropped significantly. Trust in the United States and particularly in President Donald Trump has also dropped dramatically in the last couple of years in low-institute polling. There's a question of trust now in the World Health Organization and how it has responded to the crisis. Michael, how do you think this issue of trust is going to emerge as a result of the COVID-19 crisis and those institutions that have formally been reliable to the citizens of the world, not to Australia? Well, it is striking, isn't it, that we're facing a global challenge and yet we're looking to the nation to deliver us from the challenge. We're not looking to multilateral institutions. No one is saying all eyes are turning to New York tonight to see what the Security Council is going to agree or to listen to a speech from the Secretary General. So it is interesting that when the rubber hits the road, we look to the nation. We listen to speeches from our national leaders. We look to the state capacity that Richard has spoken about. The World Health Organization has not covered itself in glory. I mean, its approach to Taiwan, to China, has compromised it, I think, to a significant extent. I don't know if Australians in general have really grappled with that, but what will be interesting is to see, in this year's Lowy Institute poll, whether the general good feeling that Australians have towards free trade, towards globalization, towards some of these factors continues. When America went down the America first route, Australia really stuck in a different groove where we understood that globalization basically delivered for us that these things were good for Australia. It'll be interesting to see whether some of that sentiment changes. I might add there, Alex, if I could, there's no doubt many people are going to have lots of questions about the WHO in coming weeks and months and the like. It's not just the U.S. that's being critical of the WHO. I think certainly Japan has been, some European countries, Australia as well. Mr. Trump overnight, I think, has talked about how the U.S. it might pull funds out of the WHO. And of course, that's the great dilemma with international organizations like this. Do you stay in them and try to make them work better? Or Mr. Trump's instinct is to get out. And of course, if you get out to the WHO and take your money with you, then China will be stronger inside them. But there will obviously be a big debate on that topic. An interesting debate, which has sort of risen in the last couple of weeks, has been about compensation. And there has been some movement for China to actually pay, and I think there have been numbers around about six and a half billion in compensation due to the outbreak of COVID-19. And Natasha Tovo in our audience has asked, if you think, Richard, that this is a possible route for the United States or even other powers to push for after the pandemic has come under control, some sort of massive compensation claim against China. I doubt it very much. Let me just give you the background of this. I think one of the figures was calculated by the Henry Jackson Society in the UK, which is a highly critical of China in a principled way, I might say. That's where they start from, though. Of course, there's also been an influential article by a US academic who went through in great detail making the case for this in that China, he said, had intentionally misled people about the virus. This was in breach of its regulations under global treaties governing health and the exchange of health information, and other countries therefore had a basis to take action against them. But of course, as we've seen with many international treaties and obligations, most importantly, recently in the South China Sea, it doesn't matter what ruling you get, you can't enforce it. This US professor said if you can't enforce it, then perhaps you can punish China by refusing to go along with obligations to them under the same treaties. I think there's an interesting intellectual argument to be had. I doubt the UK as a country with its colonial history would want to go down that road of asking other countries for compensation. The US has also played a great global role. It doesn't want its hands tied in any respect. Look at its attitude to the International Criminal Court. So I think these are interesting debates, but I really don't see it gaining any traction. I've got a question for Michael here from Michael Bracher, one of our audience members, and it's an interesting one about the frailties of the United States public health system. We've seen images of temporary hospitals going up in Central Park, discussions of the possibility of in fact burying some of the dead in parks until proper funerals and cremations can be held. They're fairly horrific images. Are the frailties of the health system going to work against President Trump's re-election prospects? Do you think, Michael? Well, I think anybody who's travelled in the United States has a sort of visceral feel for the inconsistencies in the US health system. It's both the best and the worst. If you have a lot of money, then they have the best, some of the best doctors and the best hospitals in the world, but of course, millions and millions of Americans that have no health insurance whatsoever. And for most of the developed world and for Australia, that is totally unthinkable. We are as a country that is very proud to have universal health insurance. We would never go back to that sort of system. I think it might help Biden. It might help Biden in the sense that I think this will expose to Americans the weaknesses or the frailties, as Michael put it, of their own system. It might be the kind of shock that draws Americans' attention to the underinvestment in the system. Whether even if that assisted Vice President Biden to be elected president, whether that would assist in wholesale change to the health system, though, is a much more difficult question. You remember when President Obama was elected, if he had a mandate to do anything, it was to change the health system. And yet that was an enormous lift for him and the changes, many of the changes that he instituted were not as great as he had hoped they would be and many of them have been unpicked by the Trump administration. It reinforces how hard it is to change a country that is as big and diverse and loud as the United States. It's a heavily decentralized country. It's a federation that cedes a lot of power to the states. It's a country that's infected, unfortunately, with the virus of hyperpartisanship. It's a system that divides authority between the executive and the legislature and therefore allows special interests to dilute any changes that affect their narrow sectional interests. So will it have an effect on the election? I think it might. And you are seeing in many countries that people are tuning into the fact that the real heroes in our countries are not necessarily the tech zillionaires or the politicians indeed, but they're the frontline workers, whether they're nurses, whether they're doctors, but also whether they're people doing sort of frontline, essential, poorly paid jobs in checkout as truck drivers, as delivery people. And maybe not only in the United States, but around the world maybe that will have a little change in our understanding of what's important in society and what should be rewarded. So maybe in the U.S. that will have an impact, especially on the health side, whether that will lead to significant change to the U.S. health system I'm less sure of. Richard, one last quick question for you before we wrap up. We've got a couple of minutes left. The question of Taiwan is quite interesting. Taiwan's management of the coronavirus has been impressive. Ann Cain asked the question, do you think that will lead to greater support for Taiwan from other states, which is reversing the trend that we've seen in the last few years that in the distance that states have been putting between themselves and Taiwan and the pressure that China has been putting on other countries to remove Taiwan from all references. Do you think that's going to happen? Well, it may have an impact in the margins in something like the WHO, where Taiwan, of course, is excluded from that and therefore didn't have easy access to perhaps vital information about the pandemic. Now, Taiwan was blessed by two things here. First, they managed the issue very well. They managed it as a democracy. They also have an excellent health system at the same time. They're also actually blessed by one thing, which most people have forgotten about, China took economic sanctions against Taiwan last year and stopped many Chinese tourists from going to Taiwan to punish them. And of course, once COVID-19 broke out, that turned out to be a very major blessing rather than a curse. It's hard to see Taiwan getting much more international space because China makes it a make-or-break issue. And if you want to break ranks on Taiwan, you can do that, but you can be sure there'll be a big punishment of waiting around the corner. So the way for it to happen is that countries have to bind together and act in unity on an issue like Taiwan to get a greater international space because if that doesn't happen, then China just picks off the countries one by one. Now I'm going to ask you both one last question very quickly. This event has been about US-China rivalry in one sentence for you each. Who's winning? Who's winning? Michael, you should have gone first with that rather than leaving it to me. I would say, I hate to say this, China with a nose in front, but we're barely coming into the straight. I would say neither is winning, Alex. And in fact, you're seeing the middle powers emerge. We're seeing leadership and inspiration come not from the superpowers, but from the middle powers. And that's maybe there's a little bit of good news in that for Australia. Always a silver lining at the Low Institute. I want to thank you both, Michael and Richard, for this fascinating conversation today. Thank you all in the audience out there on the ether at the Long Distance Low Institute for joining us for our first Low Institute live event for the time being, as I said earlier, we'll be live streaming all our Low Institute events. So please keep an eye out on our website for the next event. If you're not yet a subscriber and you'd like to receive notifications about our events program, you can sign up on our website. We hope to see you all soon. In the meantime, from all of us at the Low Institute, thank you for joining us today and please stay well.