Debating US and China Policy, Part 2 | Doug Bandow, Cato Institute | Lincoln-Douglas

hello everybody and welcome to tonight’s resolution um defense webinar tonight we’ll be discussing the ncsc’s policy resolution resolved the United States federal government should substantially reform its policies towards the People’s Republic of China um a couple things before we begin tonight um as you all noticed um please try and keep your comments and your chat between one and another in the bottom right hand chat box um that is there for you so that you can discuss with one another and chat uh on the top right hand box that box is for questions that you would like to submit um for tonight’s uh resolution webinar um without no further Ado we are gonna welcome Mr Doug Bondo um he is a senior fellow at the ko ko Institute um he specializes in foreign policy and civil liberties and he has worked as a Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan and an editor the inquiries um he also writes regularly for leading Publications around the nation such as Fortune Magazine national interests The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times he all also appeared regularly on ABC CBS NBC CNN Fox News and MSNBC as a commentator on foreign relations and he holds a jurist doctorate from Stanford University um we’re really excited to have Doug with us here tonight and please give him your attention hopefully he can help you guys prepare really well for your debate competitions and without no further without further Ado um here is Doug on well hello everyone my name is Doug Bondo I work with the KO Institute in Washington I’m a policy nerd I saw somebody say they didn’t really like policy well that’s kind of what I’m into and that’s kind of what this uh I think debate Topic’s really about China is obviously a quite important issue I think a very good issue for discussion and for debate topic you know where Asia has become really the most important region in the world it’s important economically China is the number two economic power Japan’s number three India is moving up countries like South Korea are very important economically so we look in the future we see the economies there growing and there are also a lot of security issues that come out of the Asia and China is involved in most of them you know the territorial disputes throughout the region with Japan Philippines Vietnam

even India North Korea gets a lot of attention this is a country that’s supported by China but it has potential conflicts with the US and with South Korea it’s building nuclear weapons which we don’t like China’s very involved in that and there are a lot of other issues in the region where China plays one role or another Burma Thailand it you know it’s having a bigger role it’s involved elsewhere in the region and US policy is treating Asia as being more important that um basically for know the standpoint of the US the Obama Administration talked about a pivot or a rebalancing towards Asia the idea was we’re going to try to emphasize you Asia more we’re going to try to you know give more attention to Asia and of course the administration’s had some problem with this because if you look around the world the us remain is involved in wars in the Middle East it remains very involved in Europe it’s you know confronting Russia so it’s been hard for the administration where in theory at least you know it’s going to devote more attention to Asia it’s founded in practice that’s that’s kind of hard and this I think is a really fruitful area of discussion you know for the future that in almost all of these issues China is absolutely critical and you know the question for the United United States is how do we deal with China especially in coming years where the us is going to be facing a lot of fiscal problems they’re not being talked a lot about in this election but they really do matter especially for you all that 2016 for the first year in a number of years the deficit went up the Federal deficit Congressional budget office tells us that within 10 years if there aren’t changes we’ll have a trillion dollar deficit every year and you know 10 20 30 years after that we’re looking at debt to GDP ratios that kind of put us where Greece is you know that we we will owe more money Cons considering the size of our economy than we did after World War II so if that’s the economic backdrop for us the question then is how do you deal with Asia as well as the rest of the world this really is the challenge excuse me and this is this is a problem for the US and it’s one which I don’t think polic makers have thought nearly enough about now if you think about Asia you know these days Asia really is kind of China’s the number one country other countries are important but the focus is China so the question for the United States any engagement in Asia almost certainly has some impact or some relevance to engaging China and it’s a tough relationship the Congressional research service recently warned the ties are becoming increasingly complex and often fought with tension so you know there’s a concern about the US relationship you know we want a peaceful

relationship a diplomatic relationship but it’s not easy and if you look at a lot of the issues today you know can you use diplomacy economics politics all of these things get very tough now the People’s Republic of China as it Styles itself is an emerging power you know clearly a great power a lot of people talk about it as a potential hegemonic power they talk about it as a potential equal of the United States you know the only country out there that we kind of perceive that might challenge the US on a global scale you know the benefits of the relationship between the US and China are significant that is economically you know we’re Partners in many ways we Prosper together but we’re also competitors we compete around the world in investment and trade and a lot of security issues we have very different views what to do about North Korea you know what to do about all these territorial disputes you know these things you are very tough the uh us has been interested in China for more than a hundred years you know back in the late 1800s you know there were Americans who figured gee if I could only sell you know some toothpaste to every person in China I’d be rich I mean there’s always been this hope of dealing with China China’s history if you look at it’s very tumultuous it’s very I mean it’s had Wars it’s had conflict Revolution foreign Invasion I mean this is a country that’s gone through quite a bit became a republic early in the 1900s invaded by the Japanese then the Revolution by the Communists so the US relationship with China has gone up and down based upon these other events very pro-china leading up to World War II supporting China against Japan but after the Communist Revolution very little you know work together now that changed in 197 to when Richard Nixon kind of famously opened up to China and a lot of that was geopolitics at the time he wanted China as a counterweight to uh you know the Soviet Soviet Union which luckily is gone now but that was very much a geopolitical move but it’s also become an economic move and what we see today is the US and know China are engaged in a lot of different you know treaties they’re engaged in negotiations they’re engaged in uh you know through the World Trade Organization they have discussions about intellectual property I mean all of these things we have trade disputes us laws applied the uh you know we file suits against them in the World Trade Organization they file suits against us it’s become a presidential election issue this happened four years ago and it’s also an issue this year Donald Trump for example has talked about putting a 45% tariff on any products from China so it’s a politically contentious as well as a an important economic issue us is also pushing very hard the transpacific partnership which

is a a grouping of about 40% of the world’s economic power but it would not bring in China and it’s that’s controversial it would bring in you know countries like Japan others in East Asia you know the question whether you should China come in what are the standards that should be applied it’s another one of these issues you know that the challenge here is that there’s no doubt Americans benefit from lower production costs many of the things we buy we save money on you if we save money that means we spend less it’s particularly good for people of lower incomes means American companies you know spend less you know but then there’s a concern about production that is if Jobs go overseas what happens to American workers how much of that is China versus how much of that is General kind of productivity that is if you look at manufacturing virtually every country on Earth is losing manufacturing jobs by one estimate the uh jobs lost between 2000 and 2010 90% will result basically of increased productivity that is we produce more so we need fewer workers to produce as much stuff trying to separate how much is China you know how much is productivity isn’t easy the other thing is that China has undercut other countries in the third world so you know if you get rid of Chinese products that doesn’t mean you stop buying cheaper products you just may buy them from Vietnam you might buy them from W you might buy them from Burma the US has opened up recently a relationship with Burma so all of these you know are potential challenges in in looking at this relationship the US people focus on the trade deficit in 1990 the you know us ran about A1 billion deficit you know last year the uh deficit was about $366 billion you know that’s the gap between exports and imports we export a bit more services than they do but they export a lot more merchandise products Goods to us you know in one sense the trade deficit is it’s an accounting fiction there’s no I mean it’s not like the US government gets that or doesn’t get it that’s individuals buying and selling and there are artificial aspects to it uh you know an attorney called named Scott delom has pointed out that the uh Apple iPhone you know that’s made in you know China that basically kind of adds about $6 of value to it it comes into the US and it’s a $300 add-on in terms of the deficit that’s really kind of artificial most of those benefits go to Apple which is an American company you know so what does that mean and long term you know China’s potentially a very important growing Market because it doesn’t buy as much from us today because it’s still poor big economy but people there still are much poorer than America it has about four times as many people as us so when you look at their GDP numbers you have to cut them basically by a fourth and

you know one thing the Chinese do is they buy US debt they own about $1.24 trillion do of federal debt that is they help keep the interest rates lower so that’s a benefit to us some people worry does that give them influence but you know if they tried to dump all that debt they’d lose their investment I mean the point is for them it’s pretty hard to use that as an economic weapon you know unless you want to pay higher interest rates it’s nice to have somebody who buys all that stuff there’s also increasing Chinese investment in the US about $30 billion worth this year the challenge for that is we worry about security issues you know do we want them buying computer companies do we want them buying semiconductor companies do we want them you know to run a port so we have a review process so the Chinese get mad because they say well you know you tell us you don’t want this deficit and you won’t let us buy things and some of those get kind of political there was a Chinese Insurance Company this year that wanted to buy Starwood Hotels it’s hotels like Sheran and they gave up because of the criticism well there’s no security implication of that you know frankly who cares who owns the hotel so we have these investment issues where they may invest more but then we worry about security side and there’s current negotiations on this this again is an area where diplomacy matters we’re talking about an investment treaty the Chinese are talking about making promises about making an easier investment climate there they have a lot of restrictions far more restrictions than we do we uh also have an issue of transfer of Technology the Chinese typically want investors to essentially give them their technology transfer it over there’s also a lot of problems in terms of uh inter intellectual property protection you know they have been estimated at different points of up to 80% of the violations of intellectual property you know and they are theoretically are doing better but some people are afraid that really they view this as a way to quickly catch up with the West which is grab you know our uh technology and use it and have it for their own their own benefit the um we also run into the issue of cyber crimes you know a lot of attacks at least in the past in terms of cyber War cyber attacks that come from China now last year the President Obama and president xiin ping of China reached agreement to kind of end any government support for commercial attacks that seems to have had some effect today frankly we worry more I think from Russia cyber attacks and maybe even North Korea nevertheless we all assume they’re probably still mounting some you know government involvement we don’t know this is an area again how do you handle this you don’t want to go to war over this diplomacy has had some impact what’s the future kind of agreements threats sanctions you might apply you know the these are very important issues for us and when you look in overall kind of working together there are a lot of

different potential problems with the the Chinese economy we’ve been worried about the value of their currency and of you know it’s been charged that they lower the value of the currency so they can export more that was true a few years ago it’s not clearly true today because now they’re trying to turn their currency the onean into kind of This Global Currency to challenge America but one of our problems is we don’t really know what the right value of the currency is that uh you know you can use that to try to promote exports but one of the problems is the more you assemble products that is you have intermediate products coming in you know then it’s not so clear it’s good to have a cheap currency because they have to buy things put those into things they manufacture to send abroad so if they have to spend more to import then it costs them more to export the other thing is no one really knows what the right value is last year the international monetary fund declared that the wand was no longer undervalued just a month after the US Treasury Department decided that it was significantly undervalued well who was right I don’t know most economists probably don’t know so the how do you deal with them in terms of their currency I mean we at times have kind of lowered our currency values how do we deal with them if they do that for them you know they’re trying to have an increased role internationally on economics they created their own group called The Asian infrastructure uh Investment Bank which we opposed and have not joined but they moved ahead with a lot of American Allies you know were worried about you know their economy overall still a very statest economy that is the government has a very large role you know back in 2011 it was estimated they had 144,000 State Enterprises many of these we call zombie Enterprises you know they’re essentially walking Deb right they don’t make any money they’re subsidized by the government and people worry about their economy you that you know exactly what’s going on people worry about debt people worry about very uh High property uh bubble that they have kind of like we had in 2008 the New York Times had a story you know today in China and I’ll just show this it we can’t really see it I guess but it’s a front page story uh in China property frenzy fake divorces and a bloating bu I mean these are issues that worry them you know we think their economy is slowing down you know a lot of people doubt they tell us the truth on their statistics you know the the question of the subsidies they give their groups Uber just pulled out in the summer it gave up basically facing a a Chinese company that got you know Chinese government subsidies all of these are issues the US takes up with China because we want them to be fair we want them to have a more kind of growing economy we don’t want them to subsidize their businesses so all of these economic issues are both kind of private in the sense that we have American companies and individuals involved but

they’re also public and they’re diplomatic you know the whole framework for our relationship is diplomatic you know in terms of the Trade Organization trade agreements investment agreement negotiations over cyber warfare all of these bring diplomacy into the area of economics and all of these are going to be really big issues in the future and it it’ll matter a lot in terms of the presidential election I mean either candidates going to have to deal with these Hillary Clinton in the past seen as more hawkish you know and you know Donald Trump has been very critical on trade you know these issues are going to be brought you up with the Chinese beyond that there are a lot of other issues with China I mean that it’s a very complex society and the relationship with the US is very complex as well I mean one issue is human rights you know this is a country that doesn’t treat dissent well you know there’s been a real Crackdown recently the current president xianping have been talked about as the most powerful president since maong who died 40 years ago I mean he’s very pushing going after people for corruption theyve cracked down on universities cooperating with Americans they’ve cracked down on US Consulate officials and others who I’ve talked to who used to work with Chinese they have to be much more careful I go there regularly and you find people much more cautious so there’s a general attack human rights lawyers attacks on churches and things so human rights is an issue that matters to America and this is an issue which we talk about and it comes up in negotiations what happens there politically is also very interesting it has an impact on our relationship president G is expected to get another term next year but all of their politics is secret ours is in the open theirs is all secret they’re going to have a party Congress next year they have to decide who’s up and who’s down so there’s a lot of speculation and thought maybe president X would like to serve another term on top of that which would break with tradition so the politics there really will tell us who we’re dealing with you know do are they reformers are they hardliners all of that matters a lot you know for the US big issue for the US is security concerns and here you get into the question of diplomacy and military action Alliance so it’s a mix of when do you go use diplomacy when do you use Force when do you you know have send in your warships when do you simply pick up the phone and call you know the the the PRC in China is well behind the us but it is number two in the world on military spending and what China is trying to do basically is not attack America but they want to prevent the US from intervening around them we have 10 11 carrier groups they have one carrier but they want to be able to sink our carriers they don’t want us to be able to intervene if they get in a war say with Taiwan or if they get in a war with Japan they wouldn’t want us involved the real action there

is not them threatening us it’s threatening American Allies particularly Japan and the Philippines who have territorial disputes with them they each have Islands everybody claims them China also has these disputes with countries like Vietnam it also has disputes very separate with India you know so these things don’t matter directly with the us but we’re kind of brought in because we’re allies of the Philippines were allies of Japan if suddenly there’ be a war we’d be brought into it so then the question is do we just take a diplomatic stance do we send in our warships do we promise to defend not just these countries that were out aligned to but do we you know promise to defend little pieces of rock here and there you know the scarb reef for the Philippines and Kaku islands for Japan I mean all of these are very difficult questions because they matter a lot more to China than they matter to us so it can be very expensive and very risky you know for us to want to go to war over those kinds of issues especially if our allies you know don’t really spend as much on defense and want to drag Us in and figure better to let you know Uncle Sam over there take care of the problem than themselves and beyond that there are other issues we worry about we worry about you know China throughout the third world its relationships with countries like Burma Sudan Zimbabwe where it helps you know basic governments that that we don’t like and especially its relationship with North Korea this is a very complex issue we’d like them to solve the problem shut the North Koreans down so far they won’t you know they don’t want Chaos on their doorstep and frankly they don’t want a United Korea allied with America and US troops on their border but these are areas that diplomacy at will along with us Force we have troops in Korea we send in you know the aircraft carriers these sorts of things we’re just putting in a missile defense with South Korea so all of these are issues that are out there that you can explore in terms of both you there’s economic relationship most Americans care about but these other things are very very important I mean Security in the years ahead what’s affordable question of uh you know how do you try to get better human rights can you promote democracy there what happens with democracy there could be very nationalistic you we shouldn’t have Illusions so my hope is that I’ve been able to kind of touch on at least you a number of the areas and I’m happy to take any questions from you all and hopefully you explore whatever you might be interested in hearing about yeah I see a couple questions here space um is space cooperation possible between the US and China certainly I mean the US cooperated with Russia I mean we we even

cooperated with them during the Cold War when they were Soviet Union and The Challenge on a lot of these things is we want to work together but then we’re worried about the security side we don’t want them stealing technology so I think that’s the limiting factor but the more you can cooperate the better I mean in terms of having a better relationship just think we’re better off in a world in which the two most important countries work together than are at each other’s throats any historical US policy failures towards China well we can go back a long time uh I mean the US tried to force its way into China back early 1900s we were involved we sent troops during the so-called Boxer Rebellion uh I mean we felt bad about that we got you know you indemnities from them actually turned it into a scholarship fund I’d say our policy you know has not did not work very well early on our policy during the Comm dealing with the Communists probably didn’t we wouldn’t talk to them for almost 30 years that probably didn’t help uh so we’ve had a lot of things that didn’t work well there uh question of tariffs in WTO the answer is yes that there if we imposed 45% tariffs would’ be violating our obligations under the WTO they could come and ask for penalties under the WTO it you know it it makes no sense to sign an international agreement and then immediately violate it so I would hope that you know if they want to respond to China some way you have to find a legal way as opposed to something and that of course would be a tax on Americans that’d be a huge tax uh how how real is the risk of China stealing American Technology um well it’s definitely real uh you know P companies will talk about it you know there are companies that have you know found either Partnerships and know stuff has essentially been stolen it’s clearly some of the cyber attacks again how much was supported by the government we don’t know but gave an advantage to the Chinese companies and the US government basically threatened to put sanctions on those kind of companies and that helped get the agreement with China uh relationship with Taiwan that’s extraordinarily important it’s one of the touchiest uh issues uh for um the the Chinese you know I my view is that taiwan’s been separate from China for essentially it’s more than a century about 125 years other than a few years after World War II they should be viewed as independent but most Chinese including chin ethnic Chinese who don’t live in China View them as part of China and i’ I TR there I find young students college students who don’t like internet controls very liberal in many ways but very nationalistic it’s it’s one of our hard issues are we prepared to go to war over that no one wants War there Taiwan has moved very far away from China most Taiwan don’t view themselves as Chinese the current president is the oppos former opposition party has always been

pro-independence they now control the legislature China’s taken a hard line towards them this is a really hard issue because if you want to maintain a strong relationship with Taiwan provide arms perhaps defend them it’s going to put you at odds with China and it’s not an easy this is not an easy one to resolve diplomatically because both sides are kind of dug in we would be worth it to harm our relationship you know in terms of Taiwan depends on how important you think it is are you prepared to go to war with the nuclear Empower you know how far are you willing to put you know military ships in I mean these are the issues we have to think about what’s important what are we willing to take risks for uh China PO is China poised to replace the US largest economic power well I mean there’s there’s an argument economists use two different measures of GDP one is exchange rate and the other is purchasing power par that is what do we think you can kind of get with the money you make by some measures people think their economy might be as big as ours even now on that measure but we’re still far wealthier far more technologically advanced I think that over the long term they could become bigger than us that that wouldn’t surprise me it’s not clear to me they’ll become more Innovative than us and the real problem is they have a lot of difficulties along the way they are not yet an 800lb gorilla some people talk about them Growing Old Before They Grow Rich you know they had this one child policy they recently got rid of it but not that many people are having more kids well what’s happened there is that it’s has a very old population rapidly aging because you have this system where there’s one person who has to take care of two parents and four grandparents doesn’t work very well there are also too men’s so it creates a problem in terms of marriage uh so they have a you know how that’s going to work out we don’t know we think that they lie about their growth numbers they’re growing but not as fast as they say they have lots of bad Banks they have what they call ghost cities I mean essentially nobody’s there I mean I’ve driven through one of them where it’s kind of empty streets big buildings nobody walking around all of these things could harm them for the future you know they could have a collapse along the way and economic problems give them political problems because the Communist party doesn’t have much legitimacy other than economic growth they stop growing you know why why should the Communist be around uh does China hold undue leverage because of the debt I don’t think so I mean what would they do with the debt they could sell it now number one there are still a lot of people around the world willing to buy it the good news for us is for all of our economic problems everybody else big seems to be worse that is the Europeans have economic problems they have the Euro problem they have people leaving the European Union you know so the dollar in America’s viewed is safer than Europe China No One Believes the numbers there’s no transparency you know so if you’re comparing where to invest you know Japan

has you know hasn’t grown for 20 or 30 years so I actually don’t think they have a lot of Leverage if they tried to dump all the debt and the price drop they’d hurt themselves it’s like you know you have a hand grenade and you keep it you hold on to it it’s I’m going to hurt everybody in the room well it hurts you too I’m not too worried about that how communistic is the current government well it’s not real communism I mean this this is a communism where business people join I mean this is not you know I mean real communism this is not Mar dong I mean his memorial is still in chanan square if you ever go to China you should go to it it’s a really in my view hysterical experience this big marble statue and his body actually we think it’s probably wax kind of laid out in this huge mosum but I mean the they’re very cynic I mean all these people are incredibly corrupt you know I mean the last prime minister’s family I don’t had a billion dollars I mean they you know they cracked down in all these they have 100,000 party members under investigation for corruption this is not kind of ideological communism this is an authoritarian almost fascist kind of dictatorship as opposed to genuine communism uh what should the US do in terms of human rights violations well the problem is you know it’s very we want to change people’s human rights but it’s very hard to reach into other societies and do that because the last thing other governments will do is kind of give up power the last thing they’ll do is give up their Authority so and they also tend to dig in in terms of kind of public you know attacks that is a whole sense of face you know it’s very hard if publicly I’m attacking you your inclination is to say no absolutely not you know the best thing we can do I think on human rights is typically behind the scenes push for specific steps and not make them public but try to get them to do it and recognize it’s going to be a slow process things like religious liberty is better today than it was 20 or 30 years ago churches operate I mean I I was in Beijing and a couple of years ago and the car to my left came to a stop and on the bumper it had the traditional Christian fish I mean I’ve gone to church there I have a good friend there he’s a uh you know Christian his wife is Christian she’s Chinese I’ve gone to him to both chines and international congregations you know there’s progress there’s still people get you know arrested bad things happen but there there is I think greater interest among a lot of the Chinese population for Freedom we want to Foster that we want to encourage that it’s not going to be easy but sanctions you know we have so many issues with them you can’t sanction them for everything we’re mad you know what they do in North Korea we’re mad about Taiwan we’re mad you know you can’t really do everything uh let’s see should be should we be concerned about cyber attacks absolutely again the interesting thing here is that today we’re far more worried about Russia than China that suggests to me that diplomacy backed by threats of sanctions can work uh again we need to have good defenses companies need to be good at defending themselves federal government has to do a better job of

coordination um let’s see it’s hard to keep up with you all I’m sorry uh how let’s see should we stop we don’t really should we stop foreign aid we really don’t give them foreign aid I mean they get they borrow money from some of the international organizations that we’re members of there’s a good argument not to do that you know for for lots of reasons not to do with China you I think it was probably made sense not to join their new bank but they got some political credibility out of it uh how could we Aid their fight against pollution I pollutions really awful there if you go at the wrong time I mean it’s it’s pitiful they have huge traffic jams in the big cities like Beijing the best thing we might be able to do conceivably is to help transfer some technology to them but then again they’re probably wealthy enough to pay for it you know what would be best for them is to have more democracy because you know when people are able to express themselves they typically say I want better air I want better water quality that’s started to have an impact there they know they have a problem um yeah they’re part of international agreements again I think that’s as they grow wealthier that problem gets easier because they have more money they can deal with additional problems uh let’s see how can we promote democracy there um yeah again the best thing we can do frankly is engage that is the more Americans who visit the more we have contact with them the current president over there doesn’t like that to me that’s a good example of that tells us that it’s why we should keep doing it that is the more University contacts I go over and speak at a university there every summer I’ve done that six years in a row meeting students being involved that’s the kind of subversion trying to get literature over there trying to have you know bring Chinese you Chinese students studying in America I think is a good thing you know they see America they meet Americans they gain American friendships a lot of them want to stay here a lot of them would like to go elsewhere in the world you know they bring different ideas back I think that’s one of the things we can do uh how much in debt would we go War you don’t even want to contemplate war with China I mean we we could defeat them and if it’s simply ship to ship and the Pacific but what does it mean to go to war with them it’s a huge country and they have nuclear weapons we have a better nuclear force but you know the last thing you want to do is think about I mean because even if they lost this time they’re going to come back to me consider historically you know Great Britain was the great power and then two Powers arose the United States and Germany Britain decided to accommodate America is you know it kind of accepted okay we we can’t keep a bigger Navy than them we’re going to have to make border concessions they made America their friend Germany they confronted and they had two world wars before everything got sorted out so my view is that in dealing with China we want to figure it out without those world wars it might not be easy but oh yeah you don’t want to even contemplate that let’s see uh you know

Taiwan is completely independent uh his question was what’s the relationship but Taiwan is effectively independent country it has about 23 countries that recognize it as independent what it is is you know International organizations do not it’s not part of the United Nations the US does not formally recognize them we have an American Institute in Taiwan which acts like an embassy but is not and they have a a a legation they have a group excuse me here in Washington which does the same it’s called techro it’s the Taiwan economic cooperation and something or other Council or something whatever so it’s kind of a a lot of countries do that as you can get visas you can go visit them so China has no control but they have a lot of Economics back and forth a lot of Taiwanese investment in China a lot more Chinese are investing in Taiwan and visiting Taiwan so those economic ties are very close and scare some Taiwanese who don’t want to be absorbed by China now tariffs I don’t think are good tariffs excuse me tariffs cost us you know basically a tariff is a tax on you you know so the question is would you like to have you know have to pay more for goods that uh if you get them more cheaply your life is better and if companies buy things more cheaply they can better compete that is a company a car company wants cheaper steel so our challenge here is you put tariffs on steel you help the steel industry but you hurt the uh car industry so tariffs are almost always you know a group is out there saying help us but usually Americans overall are worse off um you know could there be war between ja and China actually yes it’s kind of scary they they’re arguing over the Saku Islands the Chinese call them the Dau Islands they’re like five pieces of rock that nobody lives on these things matter because today under the law of the sea treaty basically if you own a piece of real estate in the water you get the fishing resources around it and you get all the hydrocarbons that is oil and natural gas underneath so suddenly everybody wants to own this stuff for many years they didn’t really care and you know Japan owns them at least has them China claims them they’re both kind of sending in their ships and sending their planes in we’ve seen the same thing with the Philippines and skull Reef which is controlled by the Philippines but then China came in and took some stuff and you know their ships go back and forth so these things you could imagine and we joke about a drunken sea captain right I mean somebody who shows up and Rams another ship and suddenly the other side sends in airships and somebody sends in some planes and somebody decides to go start shooting or it could get really ugly so you know these things are very very dangerous and we’re brought in because we have alliances that is we’re supposed to protect the Philippines in Japan what would specifically would we do you know we haven’t really spelled out but it matters a lot to us uh

freedom of navigation missions you know have those been good well the US cares a lot about navigation the challenge of course is to some degree you know it’s not just us but the other side responds that is the more we send in our ships we kind of send a message to China that they have to be better able to stop us from sending in our ships so it’s you know it’s kind of a yes and no we want them to know that we want freedom of navigation to the extent that they perceive we threatening them militarily yeah they’re much more likely to respond militarily I tell people you got to flip this around imagine if the Chinese were sending ships up the Eastern Sea board and in the Caribbean you know the Chinese were telling us about our relations with Cuba the Chinese and Beijing were talking about war with America Americans probably would not say oh let’s give up we’d say let’s build ships and missiles and make sure these people can’t hurt us I think that’s we have to take that into account when you start thinking about what do we do you know they are going to respond and we may not like the response it may be a very different response than we wanted um let’s see what’s my pin into the South China Sea um yeah the thing about China the South China Sea is the Olive these islands are different they’re parisel Islands they are the spratley islands you know and they’re separate from you know that you go north with Japan there are some disputes even between South Korea and uh Japan you know the brunai and some other countries claim things my general view is that for the most part Chinese claims aren’t very good I mean there’s they’re not stupid but they’re not particularly good I think their best claim may be the Saku Islands you know but their view is frankly they spent a couple hundred years under Western domination you know they were isolated and didn’t have the strongest military under the Communist real communist rule Ma so now is their time to assert themselves so we have to decide to what extent do you try to find ways to accommodate you know maybe shared sovereignty shared resource development and to what extent are you prepared to confront them and say you know absolutely not you don’t get any of this and that is not an easy decision but again to some degree it matters a lot more to them than us and that’s what makes it challenging uh okay ask being on a panel regarding China on North Kore s I’ve written about that a lot look the the problem with to some degree what we do is we go to China and we tell China what we want and you so we want China to help us on North Korea and my reaction if I was sitting in you know Beijing is I’d say are you nuts because again look at it from China’s standpoint China sees the US is trying to basically contain it the US has bases all along China the US is allied with South Korea allied with Japan allied with the Philippines allied with Taiwan allied with Australia allied with you know I mean from their

standpoint it looks like we’re trying to really contain them and not let them do anything so why would they want to give up their one they really is their only military ally of any seriousness North Korea I mean it’s not a nice Ally but it’s kind of the only one and basically have a uh United Korea with American troops there you from this and also to try to stop North Korea they stop providing food and energy which is the the best way thing they could do they don’t want to have that country come apart I mean the worst thing that could happen would be to have basically that system fall apart so you know imagine Chaos on their border the Alli River isn’t that wide it’s really not that hard to get across so if North Korea fell apart millions of refugees Etc so my view is that what we have to do is simply go to North China and say look we understand why you don’t want to help us so how about if we and then we need to offer them something and that means saying we’d help pay the cost of refugees it means saying there’ be no US troops there in United Korea I mean it means that kind of a thing so I think it’s possible but only again diplomacy you have to convince them you can’t tell them you got to convince them um see China’s need for expansion for its populations um well it does its population is stabilizing I mean one of the impact of the the one child policy you know has really created this kind of very weird demographic Cliff that uh you know even though they’ve changed that they dropped the the two the one child policy you haven’t seen much increase so it’s not clearly going to have a massively expanding population the future the place where that probably matters most is Siberia and it really worries the Russians the Russians have I don’t know 2 or three million people living in this vast territory and there are hundreds of millions of Chinese you know just south so that’s an issue actually probably for Russia as opposed to us let’s see um we make our defenses stronger against let see hacking yeah I mean we need a we want good cyber security against anyone and I think I mentioned at the moment Russia’s probably doing more than China I mean the evidence is China’s is down now of course you know they may be doing it more secretively and more effectively but you know the anti anti-hacking organizations that have looked at this generally say evidence is it’s down so it would appear that the Chinese government at least has backed off some so I think the answer is American companies have to do better because they’re the first line of defense and they have to be prepared not only China but North Korea which hacked you Studio that uh in Russia and you also need the US government and one of the things the US government could do is change the law and allow American companies essentially to hack back you know it’s against the law to like hack back and try to take you know the information you know back that was stolen from you or to retaliate but we want to make that legal I mean it makes sense to allow American companies to do that so there are some things that we

definitely could do to help our defenses uh is it economically feasible to punish Chinese companies sanctions for human rights violations hacking well you’ve got to choose your target see the problem here from the our standpoint is China there are a lot of things we want from China we would like China not to start a war over the yosen Kaku Islands we would like China not to start a war over Taiwan we would like China to put pressure on North Korea we would like China to stop stealing intellectual property we would like China to do better on human rights we would like China to treat people in Hong Kong better I mean it’s a long list well you can’t sanction them any everything and the problem is if you don’t choose you know a few targets and emphasize them then essentially you’re not choosing anything and that’s our problem is what’s most important you you do we want to change their currency policy do we want to change their policy in terms of export do we want to change their policy in allowing American Investment well you can’t hit them on everything you’ve got to decide what’s you know what’s your foremost uh you know interest what’s your priority and that I think is the challenge choose your priorities and then come up with a Str strategy if you want to do everything you’re not going to get anything out of them because they’re going to just say oh you go jump I mean you want us to do all that come on I mean we would never do that if they came to us with an agenda like that they’re going to respond much the same way should we allow Chinese companies to invest in US nuclear plants do Chinese citizens own a large portion of americ us property H there are there are a few we’re about I mean there’s you know investment in the United States is you know in the thousands of companies it’s not I mean it’s not huge we’re not talking about anything close to say what the Dutch own or the Japanese own or the Germans own or others you know so the amount of investment in the US is not huge but it’s you know it’s an it’s advantageous certainly going to areas without in any security implications nuclear power plants You could argue we shouldn’t do it that again what’s critical infrastructure what do we worry about them in terms of potentially trying to shut down if there was a conflict I think you’ve got to choose carefully that’s you might want to put on the list now you don’t I don’t think you want to put a hotel on the list but certainly nuclear power plants is a different kind of thing that might make sense then to say look we’re just you that’s just going to be an area off limits let’s see conflict the U but us is recogniz recognition of the one China policy the the pro this is very practical you this is simply the Practical is you know we want to deal with the big China which has you nuclear weapons all the big economic strength and it’s the power player in East Asia so we recognize there’s one China while in practice we act as if they’re two we just don’t call the other China officially a country you it’s not fair to Taiwan I mean taiwan’s a wonderful place much Freer it’s Democratic it’s I mean it’s

really capitalist you know it doesn’t have a lot of the controls that China does but you’ve got to ask yourself are you to go to war over that because for China this is emotional Ian this CH ethnic Chinese outside of China say taiwan’s part of China college students I talk to uniformly tell me Taiwan is part of China so this is not an issue of kind of liberal conservative this is just I mean in China very very common so you’ve got to decide what you’re willing to go to war for you got to decide how much price you’re willing to pay you can decide taiwan’s worth that but don’t have any illusions that it’s going to be a cakewalk that everything will be fine and don’t assume the Chinese will back down the Chinese perspective is America would never risk Los Angeles to protect Taipei and you know there’s an argument we shouldn’t so that’s the problem dealing with Taiwan is how important is it what are you willing to do about it let’s see um bages about us adoption in China uh oh I mean I have a friend who has two CH you know ethnic Chinese kids I mean she adopted in China I mean it’s great for kid I think that’s one of those issues that changes the more Chinese Society changes the wealthier it becomes the more they can take care of people who are poor but it’s certainly been helpful to kids in the past what is Taiwan view of the one China policy typically the kmt the quum tong uh accepted that the DPP the Democratic Progressive Party that’s now in power has not and president shei has not accepted that and that is why China is at the moment refusing to talk to them so it’s a point of very real contention today uh should the US and the aib my view is we don’t have to be a member of everything we throw money at all these things World Bank IMF Asian development Bank African Development Bank interamerican Development Bank European Bank of reconstruction development we really don’t have to join another one uh should we be concerned about strengthening relationship between Russia and China very good question the great kind of P the incredible Nixon initiative in 72 was to split further the split between China and Russia geopolitical was brilliant what we’re doing now is reversing that and we’re pushing China and Russia together that’s very stupid they have a lot of things that don’t they don’t get along in certain ways the Chinese steal Russian technology as well as ours the Russians have sold them arms and the Chinese have reverse engineered them uh Russia’s worried about Siberia I mentioned that China’s doing better investment wise in Central Asia over Russia which Russia has viewed as its own area so we should be accentuating that split encouraging it we shouldn’t be pushing them together should the US require Chinese business to get a license and have that’s trademark products um well certainly is worthwhile trying to protect in intellectual property Americans gain a lot from that China’s been a major offender they are not as bad as they once were again this is one of those issues of you know how much do you spend how does it fit you know what’s more important IP Trade Currency value you

know the how much they subsidize their Industries you know we have to pick our targets you and what’s the best way to achieve them you know the question how do you get IP enforcement we’ve gotten them to agree to things now we have to get them to enforce them and that’s you know somewhat hard let’s see has not agree to well look okay why let’s see about sub why do we sub why do we complain if they subsidize and we don’t oh come on you know you actually you actually think politicians are going to be consistent oh my I mean no of course the US a look the US weakens its currency when it wants the US subsidizes IT industry when it wants yeah the US does all sorts of things and then gets upset if other countries do the same but it’s clearly it’s not in the interest of us to have them subsidizing their industry you in making American companies less competitive it’s really not in their own citizens interest so that’s why we talk about it but you’re right there’s a lot of hypocrisy in any International relationship let’s see uh I mean what we’ve tried to do say with Europe on uh you know with export import bank is to say okay they can we we reduce the amount of subsidies so we might come to that agreement with uh China let’s see why communic in place is working and arm sales well the question of Taiwan again is one way that you can help Taiwan is you might say we’re not going to defend you we don’t want to get in a war but we’ll sell your weapons so if you can make it clear to the Chinese that they would pay a very high price if they tried anything against you so you know I think that’s one way that’s one way to kind of compromise you say we’re going to still sell arms we just don’t want to be involved directly in a war uh should let’s see you substantially okay some of these I’ve seen be let’s see does China meet requirements for most favored nation status I mean got that Rec through the WTO what we’re talking about now is whether we declare them to be a market economy we have refused to do so and frankly for good reason I mean again you know lots of State Enterprises actually greater subsidies today than a few years ago so again this is an area of negotiation we want them to do certain things before we do that us China relations getting better worse uh yeah you probably worse you know recently I mean again what’s your time frame better than 40 years ago worse than three or four years ago uh does China View North Korea’s nuclear Advanced nuclear weapons as a threat I’m I’m just that’s might be our last one uh the answer is not directly but they View North Korea as a problem it’s unstable you know it’s causes trouble it you know they worry about it falling apart so they would prefer not have nuclear weapons and I thank you I think okay two more questions I’m told let’s see uh embargo on Chinese arms needed well it depends on if you think there’s a chance of going to war with China I I I hate to arm them and then have to fight them and we’ve got Europe you know an arms embargo for the same reason I think there’s a good reason for that yeah what sanctions do we have on China now are they working we don’t really have direct sanctions on China we have indirect like sanctions on say

banking with North Korea can affect Chinese Banks we don’t sanction them directly that you taking on the second economic power on Earth that’d be a big deal so you want to think about that carefully so thank you very much I’ve enjoyed being on well it looks like my uh my video isn’t working right now but we appreciate um um Doug for joining today and answering as many questions as he could for you guys um we also hope that you felt and this was a great experience to help you guys with your debate resolution preparation and uh we hope that you would go on and complete our student survey I if you’re a teacher also we have a teacher survey um to let us know what we can do better and uh how we can make this experience better for you in the future and and also we have um a second ncfc webinar next Monday night so please please uh go sign up and join us for that and then if you have any questions we’ll stay on for a minute um and answer what we can we won’t be able to answer any policy questions but we can answer any questions about future webinars and other Bill of Rights Institute programs that we offer and you can also go to our www. billits institute.org engage to find out more information so please take some time to do that as well um again we thank you for your time this night we hope that your school year is going well that you’re having a wonderful year and uh yes please take our surveys and we will talk to you later d

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