Transcripts For CSPAN China-Taiwan Relations 20170904

Relationship between china and taiwan. From the Global Taiwan Institute this is just over hour. All right. Okay. Well good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Global Taiwan Institute. My name is russell hsiao, im the executive director here at gti. Gti is a 501 c 3 thinktank dedicated to taiwan policy research and analysis. Our mission is to enhance the u. S. Taiwan relationship through public education. We undertake several major programs that include a weekly publication called the global taiwan with brief, where we invite experts to contribute timely articles. We also have a Seminar Series that you are all participating in today where we invite practitioners as well as scholars to focus on current developments related to policy issues that affect the u. S. Taiwan relationship. Coming up very shortly we will be hosting our inaugural annual symposium on september 14th and this is going to be our flagship event. Were expecting a large turnout of people within government as well as academia and thinktank experts who are interested in taiwan. The purpose of the annual symposium is to establish a baseline on how we assess the u. S. Taiwan relationship. And so if youre not already registered, please do so on our website. Last, but not least we also have a Fellowship Program where we encourage taiwanese as well as American Scholars who are interested to conduct Field Research in taiwan and respectively for taiwanese scholars to come to the United States to do Research Related to the u. S. Taiwan relationship. Before i begin todays program, i also would like to acknowledge some of the important guests that we have in the room. They include our counselors and our advisor, one of our advisors, richard fisher, who is in the audience here today, and last but not least, our very important Staff Members at gti who make all our programs possible and they are. [reading names] and our very important interns, as well. So as the fall semester kicks into gear and if you havent found an internship already i invite you to please apply. If not this semester then the next. So to begin todays program, lets start. So every five years, roughly around 2,000 Party Delegates of the Chinese Communist party convenes in beijing. The purpose of these Party Congresses is to establish or set out a party line, update the constitution, and most importantly to select its senior leaders. Given the opacity of chinese elite politics the prelude to every Party Congress always involves officials falling from grace or rising from obscurity. The leaders who will emerge in the ccp, Standing Committee and the Central Military commission are the products of intense internal jockeying for power in the Worlds Largest party state and army and will have significant consequences on the policies of the peoples republic of china. The highest Party Official and thus the most powerful person in china is the general secretary of the ccp. By convention the general secretary serves two fiveyear terms for a total of 10. General xi jinping took power in 2012. Now, all eyes are set on the 19th Party Congress slated for this fall. The leaders of all the allpowerful Standing Committee and bureau offer material signals into the direction of how the prc policy will be conducted for at least the next five years. And many of the members of the Current Bureau as well as the Central Commission are set to retire. Arguably nowhere could the impact of a shift in the current approach on policy be greater felt than in the case towards taiwan. The general secretary wields enormous power and could theoretically end the state of hostility by deciding to make peace with taiwan. Perhaps more practically, he could and should end the current stalemate in the freeze of high level government dialogue with taipei. On the other hand, he could allow the military brass to dictate an even more heavy handed and belligerent posture against taiwan. Under the ccp, the general secretary chairs an interagency policy setting process through the taiwanese leading small group thats compromised of top level party, state and military officials responsible for taiwan. Membership in this body varied from administration to administration, suggesting that it may reveal the administrations policy towards taiwan. For instance, a veteran of Chinese Military intelligence was once the leading secretary general and served as a member of the leading small group during the third Taiwan Strait crisis in which they lobbed missiles towards taiwan to intimidate taiwanese voters. He was quite successful in securing a greater role for the military in taiwan policy. With the 19th Party Congress occurring this fall, which serves as a report card of the first term and with the annual retreat, what might we glean from how the makeup of the bureau will tell us and affect how the Xi Jinping Administration will approach taiwan in the remainder of his administration . Now, theres intense speculation that they might not be in line and that xi loyalists will get an extraordinary promotion into the Standing Committee. Furthermore, the confirmation that the former commander of the pla ground force will replace a general as chief of the joint Staff Department at the Central Military commission all could have bearings in terms of how china approaches taiwan and offers a kaleidoscope of different possibilities in terms of how the policies of china are Going Forward. Were in for a very special treat today because we have assembled a group of experts who know the ins and outs to help us discern the probable from the possible. Scott is the associate director of the center for asia pacific policy, as well as a member of the party Rand Graduate School faculty. To his left we have richard mcgregor. Richard is a renowned journalist who served as the Washington Bureau chief from 2011 to 2014. He is the author of the party, the secret world of chinas communist rulers. Hes also the author of a book on china, japan and the United States and were really eagerly anticipating the release of that book so we can host him here to have a discussion about it. Last, but not least we have Christopher Johnson who is a Senior Advisor and holds a freeman chair in china studies. Chris is an accomplished Asian Affairs specialist, no stranger to the people in this room. Mr. Johnson spent nearly two decades serving in the u. S. Government in thegence and Foreign Affairs community and has extensive experience in analyzing and working in asia on transnational issues. He has frequently advised senior white house, congressional, military and foreign officials on the chinese leadership and on beijings foreign and security policies. So lets begin. In keeping with our format of our discussions in the past, i have prepared a series of questions that ill ask each of the speakers. I ask that the speakers are free to weigh in on the questions that are directed at the other speakers. And well reserve about 15 minutes at the end of the discussion for audience q and a. So richard, i would like to start with you. You argued in your seminal 2010 book, that the modern Chinese State still runs on soviet hardware. What is the role of the Chinese Communist party and the policy process, particularly as it pertains to taiwan . Thanks, russell and thanks for having me here. If you see me peeking at my mobile phone that was because i got the time wrong for this event and i didnt print out my notes and so im looking at my drop box. And i might even struggle to read that, actually. The role of the party, i dont think theres any much doubt that the role of the party and certainly, the Party Secretary xi jinping has strengthened remarkably since he took over in 2012. With the weakest state council for a long time, a much stronger role for the particular members of the anticorruption bureau, i think weve also seen that tougher line, more Central Control and tougher line extend to taiwan policy, as well. If you look at the statements out of the head of the Taiwan Affairs office, this is where i might read my notes because i wanted to get his words exactly right, hes really stopped talking about or paying lip service even to giving much room for or taking much note of taiwans distinctive quote unquote democratic system. He talks openly now about how the one country two systems idea should be applied to taiwan just as its been applied to hong kong and we also see whats happened there. To use his phrase, he says beijing should seek a spiritual matching between the people of the two sides of the strait to strengthen solidarity and enable cohesion and materialization of longterm stability. There should be a proper handling of the systemic differences between the two sides of the strait after reunification. In other words, it will be the ccp in control in taipei, should there be unification on whatever terms and not even i think the room that hong kong was given after 1997. Part of that i guess might be cyclical change. We have a ddp government in taipei, obviously, the ccps attitude to the kmt is very ddp is very different to that of the kmt. I was remembering or i certainly remembered in the course of the research for my new book about how ping had talked about reunification, the sooner the better. In other words, when people from the ccp and the kmt who not only fought could get together and do a deal and those days are over now. Theres a cyclical change in beijings policy but also a secular change. In other words, a general toughening up and just finally and i wont go into a great deal on the military side, which im not an expert on and i think scott is going to talk more about, but its certainly true and this applies to Chinese Foreign policy, particularly in the asian pacific. Chinas abilities, military abilities are much greater now. Xi jinping took over a much stronger country than 2002 and if your capabilities are stronger, youve got more willingness to take a coercive position rather than an seductive or pseudoseductive one. Thats great and i would like to stick with you because you brought up the distinction between cyclical and secular, differences in terms of how the party has approached its policy making. And so given the obvious importance of taiwan for the ccp, the issue as seen from beijings perspective has always been management at a high level and leadership serves as an indicator of such changes. So what has or hasnt changed in how the Leadership Transitions approach taiwan policy . Is this transition that were approaching right now unprecedented or are there parallels in the past that we can draw from to infer what the future may have in store . Show i dont know that i see distinct parallels. I think that after 96 and what they would have considered to be a humiliation in the wake of the shelling near the Taiwan Straits, that there was an element of the clock ticking on beijings demands for unification. I think tao managed through various devious ways to wind that back. We do have, of course, the first of a number of anniversaries coming up for the ccp, notably 2021, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the party in shanghai. I dont see how it works in beijings interests at all to set a deadline, but if there were to be a nice gift wrapped present for 2021, i think, you know, theres no better one than taking taiwan. I guess in terms of transition, another point as well is that just how quickly beijing could overwhelm taiwan militarily as well and thats a much different calculus now than it was five, 10 or even five years ago. Thanks for that. Chris i would like to move to you. It was expected when it was known that xi jinping was going to take over after tao that given xis experience with businessmen from taiwan, people consider him to sort of be part of the notaiwan faction, suggesting that maybe perhaps he would adopt a softer approach to taiwan than his predecessors. However, this has clearly, not been the case. You have done a lot of thorough analysis on xi. What do you think accounts for the position that xi has taken on taiwan . Great, thanks and let me add my thanks for the invitation to come talk today. I think, you know first and foremost like so many narratives that were around about xi jinping, it was just wrong that he had these mind sets. Just like it was wrong that he was a sexier tao, that he was turning left to turn right. Theres a whole series of these narratives, i dont know where any of them came from, but they were wrong and they are still wrong. So you know, thats a very important point. So taking from that then what does it mean . I dont then consider it a surprise that hes adopted the policy that he has number one. Number two, i think well discuss this a little bit later, but i dont see this as pressure from the pla, pressure from pick your constituency that, you know, if xi were left to his own devices, indeed, he would pursue this softer policy just like tao did, but there are quote invisible hard liners who are pressuring him, no, this is what he believes and thats what you have to take as the jumping off point. Folks that ive spoken to who are very close to his circle say if you want to know what xi jinping thinks about any issue under the sun, look at what he says about it first, thats what he really means, what comes next can be glossing and back tracking and so on. What did he say first on this issue . This cant be passed to another generation. So, and i think, you know does that mean he wants to invade taiwan . No, it doesnt. But i think that hes setting that policy sort of stance very, very clearly, and as richard was pointing out i think were seeing probably the most feckless one that weve seen in a long time. The last time they had any independence was under wang yi. Jiang goes with the party line. My question is like so many things related to xi, once were past all the smoke and mirrors of the Party Congress, and its done and weve all digested the results, whats he going to do next . And having gotten that out of the way, presumably, it will free up bandwidthwidth for these issues. Were going to see a return to the Foreign Policy vision that he set out in 2014 where he sketched out a very interesting framework but then kind of turned it over to the mfa to do something with and they havent done anything with it. I think taiwan policy also, you know, holds a lot of potential for change. And i dont know the answer to which direction hes going to go, but its not a soft approach, that much i can tell you. And on that a little bit, on your assessment that the actions taken by xis administration reflects xis personal belief and approach to taiwan policy, theres been a prominent china analyst in taiwan and i just returned from taiwan from a business trip that we were there to hold a joint conference with the taiwan thinktank there, argued that the risky behavior undertaken by xi in the past few years indicate that he is not necessarily consolidating control but reflects more of a continuous power struggle that has been ongoing since the 18th Party Congress. Can you give us a more deeper dive in terms of whether or not you agree with this assessment, what might either scenario mean in terms of how xi will approach taiwan during his second term . I think the core of it is to look at the relationship with the military, which obviously is very important in this process. And, you know, if we look at the 95, 96 Taiwan Straits crisis, its very clear that senior military officers basically said what they were going to do in response to provocation. And he got out in front of them and complied. Likewise, which was a lot of talk in the china watching community about a rogue pla and out of civilian control. That was all nonsense, but i think what the military did do was to take advantage of certain core lets call it monopolies that they have inside the system to create a nice big gray zone for themselves within which to operate on broad foreign and Security Policy issues. I think some of this is to be expected because the pla is modernizing and professionalizing and professional institutions care about things that touch on their corporate interests so some of that is natural. But i think the difference was that at the end of the day, they have a monopoly on military technical expertise. There is no rand, there is no csis, theres no civilian institution in the chinese system that provides such advice to their leaders. They have a monopoly on intelligence in a lot of ways. Certainly, you mentioned when he was running the show, that was very much happening inside their system. Three, they have a monopoly on forces and, you know, gear right there . Theres no civilian expertise in this space, either. So they created this very comfy gray zone for themselves. What has xi jinping done since hes arrived . Hes been substantially decreasing that gray zone, shrinking it down a lot and you cannot separate anticorruption in the military and force restructuring, which i think are the 12 punch of neutering the pla out of that equation. And so as such, i just dont believe that they are off on their own pressuring him to take a hard line on taiwan. He takes a hard line because he wants a hard line. Thats an excellent segue. Moving to you, scott. What is the role of the pla in the prcs policy making apparatus . First, please allow me to say what a pleasure it is to return to gti and to thank you and your team for the excellent job youve done in informing the world, washington and me least importantly of taiwans importance and role in the world and its also an enormous pleasure to be on the stage with these gentleman. Whats the role of the prc . I think its important to recognize that the pla is one tool among many that the prc has in its ambitions to try to absorb taiwan. Far more consequential i think in everyday terms are the economic, diplomatic and informational tools that china uses to try to cut taiwan off, isolate it, disincentive other countries from cooperating with taiwan, and craft a narrative that removes the legitimacy of taiwan and say it has separated from china, but it will ultimately be resorbed. With that, the pla does have an Important Role in providing psychological warfare angles, united front capabilities, they do obviously have a lot of the cyber intrusion tools that allow taiwan to be penetrated and intimidation and war fighting if the chinese leadership decides that they for whatever reason have to try to attack taiwan. As with many other aspects of how decisions get made in china, decisions on sensitive policy questions with respect to taiwan are something of a black box. Chris is quite good at reading it but my sense is within the small group, the plas pla has a voice together with the Taiwan Affairs office and ultimately remember, xi jinping is a part of the pla. Hes the commanderinchief of the pla so ultimately the pla has the final say, but lets talk about institutional pla as opposed to people who have many hats like xi jinping. In areas of core competency as well as by dint of the fact they have the hardware that would be necessary, the pla has the ability to shape outcomes most in areas where they have responsibility and an informational advantage. I completely agree with the notion that the pla is a complete rogue is nonsense, but i think the consensus analysis on why the xi has pursued reform has highlighted there were portions that were perceived to be operating with too much divergence from the central leaderships ultimate control, corruption being a form of divergence. For several decades, i think the taiwan conflict scenario has been the properly driver for the plas modernization efforts and that is everything from their attempts to engage in what they would term as active defense or local limited wars under conditions of informationallization. The need to defeat their armed forces as well as any intervening forces from the United States or japan and in that sense it might be fair to say that taiwan has played a major role in the plas modern modernization just as much as vice versa. Show less i would like to stick with you here scott and that is taking in contrast with xis trademark anticorruption drive, which has turned the pla on its head, how much influence does and will the pla have in influencing taiwan policy Going Forward . I want to rephrase it if i could just to say how much influence or how has the anticorruption drive affected the plas role, i think its unclear that the anticorruption drive has affected the plas role negatively in terms of their ability to generate military power. In fact, in some sense its cut out some of the dead weight that was much more interested in enriching itself, buying up gold bars, building excess houses, having mistresses. If anything, its probably cleared away some of the opposition to pla reform and so pla reform lets talk about briefly since this is extremely relevant for taiwans security. It has been the case that the pla has eliminated the four general departments that previously were dominated by the Ground Forces and were used to effectively run the pla as an organization. What that means to the rest of you, the army, the least competent at projecting power over distances and in complicated environments, have seen their power reduced. That means correspondingly that forces like the air force, the navy, what used to be the second artillery, upgraded to a service, are having greater ability to influence and shape debates within the Central Commission. The pla reforms have established a new Strategic Support force thats dedicated to the execution of integrated network and Electronic Warfare or Information Operations that include psychological aspirations and united front warfare as well as cyber intrusion. These things help the pla project power. Additionally, theyve reshaped the way in which the pla actually commands and controls its forces by standing up these new theater war commands and then turning the services into force providers for commanders who will then direct the forces. This improves the ability of the pla to generate and command power because previously the services had had an ambiguous relationship where you might have had a military commander receiving orders from a Service Commander in beijing and having to navigate to deal with other Service Commanders and try to figure that out. Now, you have something much closer to the command structure in the United States where you have commanders who command forces, forces being provided by services. The goal of the reforms has been to create a more integrated joint force thats capable of fighting and winning wars to use xi jinpings phrase and to do that under the disciplined and efficient control of the new commanderinchief which is a new title that xi jinping has taken on. I think for taiwan this suggests that the reforms put us in the early to middle stages of a roughly three to fiveyear time frame for china working through the challenges of how these new operational and command and control relationships work. That means its time for taiwan to be very aggressively advancing a form of antiaccess and aerial denial warfare grounded in an all of Society Approach that works with neighboring countries and the United States to generate an approach to Armed Conflict that will make it impossible for the pla to credibly claim to xi jinping they can definitely guarantee victory. Finally in addition to csis, rand and scba and other analysts and institutions have done excellent work on how chinas armed forces could produce a more lethal network survivable and resilient i hope they can move to adjust taiwans defense policy to increase the prospects of effective deterrents or multiple deterrents and resolute defense. Scott mentioned something thats very important, we should touch on it. The other aspect here and you asked about whats different about xi jinping and his approach. The United Front Work Department is playing a bigger role now than it has in many decades. Its budget is way up, its staffing staff is size is way up and this is part and parcel of what richard described as the partyification of the party. But that is huge and its not restricted to taiwan. We see this activity in australia, lots of coverage of that, theyre doing it here, too. They see places like australia or taiwan as more passive environments where they can test out these operational concepts. So thats a whole new piece thats really relevant. You know, its not clear to me whether the decision to make the United Front Work Department a Bureau Member again was convenient personnel maneuvering by xi jinping to open it up at the time or whether we will see that same person be on the bureau next time. My gut is its the latter, but thats a very important development. And since chris called you out richard im going to direct my next question to you is that the ccp has demonstrated a high degree of flexibility on Economic Policy but has been fearless rigid in its political control. You wrote that the system has approved to be flexible and protean enough to absorb everything that has been thrown at it. Why do you think it has been incapable of adapting to perhaps quote objective reality as it concerns taiwan . Thats a very difficult question. As chris said, the United Front Department is more active than ever, but, of course, that means weve got a number of ominous trends, contradictory trends. Its no secret to people in this room that the sentiment for reunification in china is weaker than ever. I think the last polls had it at 10 . It may be even less for the younger people. It was quite striking for me when i was there last year talking to the leaders of the new power party, i think ive got the name right, that they dont even think about reunification. Its not something they discuss. Its not even on their agenda. So in some respects, no matter what sort of political resources china throws at taiwan to seduce it, theres nothing left to seduce. Thats on the one hand. On the other of course, i think taiwan is a it has a strong democratic culture, but its much weaker as an entity. It no longer has a technological advantage over china which it it once did, it no longer has an economic advantage over china, its just another market. I think the one area where china has been successful and this is sort of an offshoot of united front or Party Activities or policy generally is to weaken the government in taipei, no matter, which party is in power. You have a lot of very talented intelligent individuals in the governments and bureaucracy in taiwan like you would have in any country put theyre restricted in what they can even do and what they can think about. Will china let can we observe a status at this institution or that institution and that degrades governing capacity in taiwan. Has china been effective on one level and ineffective on another . It goes to show the communist partys failure is the ability to seduce adversaries. Its much more about coercion. Thats actually a great political success, but a tiny institution. And i think that failure applies to taiwan, and its very hard to know how that has worked out because theres no sense that i can see that the party in power in china will make a fundamental change in policy. You made one comment about a very interesting observation, important observation about the sentiments in taiwan for reunification. What do you think it means in terms of how china will approach taiwan . Does it think that time is on its side . Is time not on its side . And how would in your sense, what do you think, how would this impact there used to be a school of thought that said time was on their side. I think that is a school of thought in china, i think its much smaller now. And the roof is in the pudding because its been a long, long time and taiwan is just, you know, emotionally, psychologically, politically just continuing to drift away. I can remember, you know, talking to the renowned hawk hong about 10 years ago and i said taiwans gone, weve lost it. We should just give up on our current approach and i suspect that was not a majority view then, but its probably a much more popular and well founded view now. Can i make one brief comment . I think its important to disaggregate that along numerous axes. Richard noted that previously, taiwan was more important economically, taiwan had a technological military advantage. In those areas, taiwan is on the wrong side of the time equation. In the future, china will only get probably, this is the future, we cant say for sure, but probably in the future, china will enjoy an even more dominant military advantage over taiwan. Probably in the future, china as an economy will grow even more important than taiwan. But in the emotional, National Identity space, in the global norms space maybe, maybe, but certainly in the interior taiwan identity metric, by that metric, time is certainly running against china. So i just think it helps to disaggregate this and to see what that means i think is china is feeling probably that its pushed more and more into the coercion side and has far fewer attractive or even plausible options on the trick you, fool you, win you over, play the hearts and minds, seduce you side of the equation. S and thats great analysis there, and i think turn to you, chris. Some analysts believe that the Taiwan Strait may be entering another crisis point and like, for instance, the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis. Do you see any parallels in terms of what was leading up to the 1996 crisis to where we are headed to now . Im sure there are some parallels. I guess to me, the stark differences, though, are much more prominent in my mind, especially when you have a look to what both richard and scott have said. I covered the 95, 96 Taiwan Strait crisis when i was in the government and, you know, as concerned as we were about that situation and it was a serious situation, at the end of the day, that was a made for tv movie by the pla, you know, to try to sort of shock taiwan into submission. They have those capabilities now and they dont talk about them because theres no made for tv movie because now, they can execute on those missions. And thats a seminal difference. I think in terms of crisis, whats been interesting to me to come at it from kind of a slightly different perspective is in the same way when thinking about say the South China Sea or the East China Sea we cannot look at those situations in a vacuum. In terms of we have to understand them in terms of chinas broad, very broad and integrated maritime strategy, i think taiwan also cannot be viewed in singularity. If you look at the 9596 crisis, what was one of the major outcomes . It was a decision by the bureau at the time that taiwan is existential for us and we must focus like a laser beam on this problem and South China Sea and the other issues go into the background, right . And well pay a price, but it will be a manageable one. 12 years later when they can finally look around again, they realize they paid a very big price and theyve put their thumb very heavily on the balance scale to try to readdress that. One interesting thing that i find curious as an intellectual exercise is clearly at that time in 95, they decided we cannot have two fronts going on. With modernization, their own sense of their growing power, frankly, their assessment of where were sitting these days, maybe they could walk and chew gum at the same time so thats something to watch very carefully and just to add on, i think the most signaled difference between the two periods, chinas coercive tool kit over taiwan is so much more varied and sophisticated now than it was at that time. All they had then was the military hammer. Now, theyve got the economic piece, information warfare, global positioning, you name it, and its much subtler tool kit but just as bad or worse. To add to that on the military tool piece, and i think ive been in a public forum where scott might have heard this discussed before, as well. I think the general rule of thumb for the Chinese Military taking over taiwan is generally 30 days. I saw an extensive discussion six months ago where some good analysts here said that china could do it in a single day, place the flag over taipei. I dont know whether thats a consensus view or not, but theres no doubt their coercive abilities have come a long way. Show less text chris and richard have both weighed in on this. I want to get your thoughts, scott. What is your assessment in terms of the evolution of the plas approach or the tool kit . Show less text sure, i think that e if you look back 15, 20, lets say 22 years to the mid1990s, back then, taiwan was a problem that the pla could solve with only one option and that was punishment, but not actual conquering taiwan and the only real tool they had was cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. The second artilliary force was the only one. Today, if commanded to do so, the pla would have the means to deliver not only air launched and missile delivered munitions packages against key point targets in taiwan, but could also attack it from the sea, including from the east. Could contest, at least for some period of time until probably achieving dominance the air space over taiwan, could certainly deliver at least tens of thousands of Amphibious Assault forces. The beach front would be a major battle, but its one that taiwan needs to recognize china is working very diligently to try to master including by acquiring Landing Craft that can move very quickly over open water. China would be able to degrade at least taiwans electronic command and control capabilities. It would certainly attack the island from inside using forces in place, saboteurs and probably insert special operations forces. These are all capabilities that have changed dramatically over the last 20 years. Key challenges remain for the pla, those would include sea and air lift to deliver forces, submarine and Antisubmarine Warfare would continue to be a challenge for them, but its one theyre working on very hard and they dont have yet i think confidence in their missile defenses against taiwans own air launched and truck launched antiship cruise missiles. And shortrange surface to surface missiles, but again, these are areas where the pla is trying to improve itself. Theyre working very hard at training and increasingly their training is realistic, unscripted and theyre regularly going into spaces where they would potentially have to fight and thats hugely consequential because on game day, you dont want to show up and say ive never been on this field before, ive never been in the waters east of taiwan before, you want to say we were there two months ago and we may there a week beforehand and we say its an exercise and weve done exercises dozens of times, and so exercises and regular routine transits in International Waters which are legal, no one can object to, but they can serve as an excellent cover for making routine their attack and that can blur or hamper the indicators of an impending attack. I think thats really the challenge for taiwan now is that while taiwan has been modernizing elements of its force, beijing has been modernizing almost all of the elements of its capabilities. Thats an excellent point, and i think just to point out in just todays global taiwan brief, you know, we had when we were in taipei, a senior taiwan Government Official confirmed that the pla has stepped up military exercises around taiwans area to in this year alone there have been 14 aerial exercises, whether in 2015 to 2016 there had only been a total of eight and so this is a very substantial increase in the number of exercises that the air force is undertaking, in conjunction with the number of exercises that have been ongoing for the past decade. The last remaining questions is for the group, and then well move to audience q and a and what i would like to do in the interest of time is combine these questions so that it gives us more time for what im sure will be a very informed and good questions. So there has been and continues to be a common refrain that we often hear in washingtons community that xis action has been constrained due to the sensitivities of the upcoming 19th Party Congress in that he would be able to then focus or focus more on taiwan afterwards. So you know, really sort of if any implications of this sort of change or shift if there is one, will it have in terms of, you know, what might be in store for us after the 19th Party Congress . Whoever would like to take that first. In some ways its easy. I dont know. Look into your crystal ball, please. Yes. Yeah. I mean, i think chris said earlier its first going to be interesting to see what actually happens at the Party Congress and you dont want to make a fool of yourself by making solid predictions about that. Chris had an interesting piece recently about debating whether this issue about whether the communist party really had an evolving set of institutional norms governing leadership change or governing sort of positional change generally within the party at all levels of the party and i dont want to summarize his conclusion, he might disagree with it, but its basically china had norms until it didnt. And certainly whatever will happen, xi jinping has laid the groundwork to do what he wants, if he can, at the Party Congress. It still seems to me afterwards, one of the mysteries, is xi jinping solid meant to be the most powerful chinese leader since dang. He only has in theory and i dont want want to get into a binary analysis, hes only got two loyalists on the seven Member Bureau Standing Committee so if hes already the most powerful person, what does he want to do that he cant already do . And thats not clear to me actually, and i think there will be more focus on taiwan, but no matter how strong their military is, their options are not great. Just a quick comment i think chris said it very well earlier, but the notion that the pla is somehow forcing any of these issues, you know, it applies at least that xi jinping would prefer to go a different path, but i dont think weve ever seen at least since maybe the mid to late 90s if youre really generous anything approaching a liberal or soft line within the top leadership in terms of any single member. Maybe somebody realistically, none of these people are not in their view patriots and something akin to hawkish or strong. So i dont think it behooves us, if you want to understand who is xi jinping, look at his speech in mexico where he groused about foreigners with full bellies with Nothing Better to do than point at us and his comments about the communist party of the soviet union, nobody had the balls to stand up, implying that xi jinping would if it came to it send in the tanks to pursue chinas views aggressively. And i think if you look at the china dream, the Great National rejuvenation of china, this is to use american terms a blood and soil fascist dream. We have those here and its the ultimate forcible if necessary absorption of taiwan. I dont think its a dream that in any way is derived from advice hes getting from the pla in large measure because hes purged most of the people in the pla who could have opposed him. If people in the pla are imposing this on xi jinping how is it theyre not getting purged too . This is an individual who i think is very comfortable wearing the reins of power. It feels that its his mission to preserve the ccp and to expand its influence and feels like he has the political wherewithal to do so and to push forward and that its what the ccp itself wants him to do or needs him to do if its going to survive. Its a return to late 1980s neoauthoritarianism. Its very much a discussion that was in vogue almost 30 years ago and seems to be reaching its realization today. Show less text ill be super brief so wn get to the audience. I think primarily two things. One the point of the piece i wrote that richard referred to was to simply lay out what i believe is xi jinpings personal logic. I made a really serious attempt not to make any predictions, but to lay out heres how hes thinking about things. I think everything thats out there that ive seen is all noise and no signal. So we have to kind of see how that shapes out. But i think the broader issue is xi has definitely created new ecosystem inside this institution and the rest of the Standing Bureau Committee Members dont really matter. Theres two or three people in there that really matter. The rest of them are holdovers. What is lis view on taiwan or on any issue . What is chungs view . We dont know. And maybe its just they have strong views and theyre very influential in these debates, but we just dont know. Thats certainly possible. What it means for taiwan i think is unclear, but what can we see if he has a big victory which it looks very likely he will then whatever his views on the matter are, are going to continue to rule the day. And i think certainly what we see as an impression that he does not trust the administration and he never will and sees them as hard core independence activists and that view is not going to change. We should expect i think more of the same that weve been seeing and maybe an intensified version thereof. Thank you very much. We have 10 minutes for audience q and a. So please state your name as well as your affiliation and please try to keep your questions brief and direct. Michael. Thanks very much for a very rich panel. I was just in taiwan and i want to assure everybody that the sense of urgency that you all talked about is very real. The u. S. Feels concerned that taiwan hasnt developed the kind of determined response and theyre moving very quickly to move in that direction, getting it up to speed is a whole other question, but other thing that happened while i was there was a scenario where the president ial palace was under attack. And i think it brought to tsai the sharp focus. I think the message has been received and i guess the question is we here in our conversations here, this three year urgency period, you have to get it over or else. And i guess could you speak a little bit more to that . Do you see xi jinping, would he move in that direction . Obviously, there are many views on that. Show less text ill just say i dont think so. I dont see him returning to the timeline, if you will, for a series of reasons. Perhaps it the most prominent of which is why tell your enemy what youre going to do . I hate watching panels where people agree with each other, but i agree with that. Ill just say very quickly, mike, im glad that president tsai feels the personal urgency because its an attack that was intended to be directed at her. But frankly, others got shot. There was a truck attack on the president ial palace. And lien, despite being from a Different Party was shot. Political violence inside taiwan is not a new phenomenon. When its directed at you it should focus your mind, but its clear the it administration definitely has no room at all to downplay this and i hope they are pushing as aggressively as they can because the threat is i think as real as it could be. As to whether or not were on a three or fiveyear timeline, i think that one of the real challenges for xi jinping is going to be if he does want to extend beyond 2022, one of the questions that he will face is is there something he can point to, to justify that . Its possible he can say whos the person going to stand up, great run for two cycles, but weve got this rule, 10 years, youve got to go, next persons coming in, that seems completely implausible. He may want to justify it. If the ddp wins again in 2020 and it doesnt appear that in 2024 the kmt could come back, that might be a pressing point that he could say in 2022, weve got to do something because i cant exit with my rivals saying youve lost taiwan in perpetuity. With regard to the military, the chinese idea of a military incursion against taiwan, assuming it happened and assuming they won, has beijing thought about what happens afterwards . If we think about the americans in vietnam where i was as a soldier, the russians in afghanistan, have they really thought that through, what it will be like afterwards . Yeah, i mean, thats so obvious, isnt it . Its loselose. Have an island occupied, even if a lot of people fled from taiwan, occupying an island with 23 million people, people with a great sense of their democratic rights and the like, and people who fought for them. So thats why the military option, no matter how relatively easy or easier it becomes for beijing just seems like a loselose proposition. Yeah, just there is an element of the kind of dog chasing the tail, what are you going to do if you catch it . Lets not forget, china has occupied tibet, macau, certainly not armed, not at the level that taiwan could put up, but that hasnt deterred china from thinking that if it wants it it will go after it and it will find people who will who will collaborate or put people in there physically and weed out those what are opposed to it and the unfortunate reality is sometimes countries do conquer other countries, it doesnt happen often in modern history, but it has happened and countries do annex other Countries Territories so i dont think that we should think well theyve got no plan for it that we know about at the public level and look at how hard it would be, i think north korea is another example of a country that also aspires to forcibly annex its neighbor and i dont think that theyre going to be deterred by the fact that oh, it would be difficult, what would be we do if we absorbed a country twice our size thats gotten used to having democratic freedoms and is in alliance to the United States. I dont mean to suggest that we would feel easy about this, but we need to feel concerned that this is not as much of a deterrent as it would seem to people in this room. Gentleman in the back. This question is to johnson. What would you expect the outcome of the 19th Party Congress, what will be the most unexpected outcome if the Central Military commission is part of the focus, since we know that the chief of staff was recently replaced, the Defense News Network has not announced their piece until figuring out he has been replaced. According to our source, there will be another one less than 67 years old that will be replaced soon and he is from the faction. So if we look at the 10 military commission members, is it going to be a full house reshuffle, seven of the existing members will be replaced, five because they are older than 67, but for those less than 67 years old, two are 66 years old,. [inaudible] so my question is what will be the most unexpected outcome of the Party Congress, anything that you see that should happen . Theres a lot in there. So let me try to find the question. But, you know, i think the biggest Unexpected Development will be to expect the unexpected, you know. I think that xi jinping may do things that are even more radical than weve even considered in terms of structure and design. In interesting example because historically we look at Something Like the recent replacement we would say that is really bizarre. You dont usually do that a month before the Party Conference congress. We have a new structure conveniently. Old norms do not apply to analyzing the current situation. Says is other stuff that hes going to be chairman. That tells you how to we actually know about the situation. Something that could completely come out of left field, there [inaudible] you have been speaking to me as a foreigner and i see this. But i can speak to Chinese Students here who here similar. I am wondering if history could repeat itself. That the fate of the chinese army missed party can follow that of the soviet communist party. I must say that does not fit with what i know. There is respect and there is getting on the winning side. And no matter what you think about the party, i mean i think china is a country that is been a Success Story for 30 years. We dont know what is going to happen in the future. Many students see benefits in joining the party. Very valuable network. So i just dont see that. E is a lot of there is a lot of surveys out there, some i think done in conjunction with you research and the like. I am not an expert but they turn up surprisingly high levels of support. Much higher than you would think. Everything isy to the economy in many respects but fear thes many people party. Maybe they dont respect the party in the way of love and respect but i think the party has been very effective in getting more people than you would have thought on its side. I am going to take to last questions here in the front and then we will have to close for the session. Might first question is about the operation. [indiscernible] former editor of taiwan communique. As far as i can see, most of these scenarios are quite negative. Are there boundary conditions, necessary conditions for a more positive development were china might say, hey it is an hour own rest i guess the first one was directed at me. You know, as do sort of how differ. Ould respond i excellent work on this. Basically adopt that a lot of people up and telling the taiwan government. My own assessment is that the military is a mixed bag culturally and resourcewise. The government has not done what it needs to be done to make that effective so there are a lot of different ways to analyze the problem. On a third term, my own view is it is way too early. He is no reason to make that decision now or signal how he is feeling. I think xi jinping would consider it a failure of ps2 stay on a third term as party chief, but that is just me. I will disagree with chris and we finally get some contention. I will be surprised if shes in pink doesnt stay on. I think after you purge her predecessors does this allies input them on alert, it is a risky situation to try to then hand of power yourself and think that you are safe. Handing out the question where yeltsin handed off power to attend but remember all of the oligarchs around him got rolled up. I think if you build the system, as soon as you turn your back and ive gets planted in it, it is harder to ever stay out of power. I think shes in pain thinks he was born to power. Playing iejiang aink it is more about making prediction and putting your ideas out there. Conditions are for china to be nice, quota, right . I am hoping to see although i guess maybe the alternative is outright war but i suspect the erc could the side that if they could really pry 15 or 20 oftional taiwans countries that extend diplomatic recognition to the republic of china, taiwan, that might be enough to say, look when i inherited it there was still a ninth or a 10th of the countries of the worlds recognizing taiwan. The i have not achieved absorption of taiwan but look, there are three countries let that still recognize taiwan handset is good enough for you xi jinping. Those who like taiwan at banks isshould be recognized better than saying, yes, missiles or raining down and half of the forces are dead. A really terrible situation we can all play games with and in combat. Maybe that is something china might think about it certainly one that should not make anybody else very happy. [indiscernible] that came out the summary and ive not had a chance to read it yet that it is on their website. Do you have any last words . No. We do not know if you will have a third term but he will leave that option open. We do not know what is going to happen in the second fiveyear term in any case. I dont have anything more sensible than that. That brings our session to a close. Please join me in thanking our panelists today. Also as a final note, if you are not already subscribed to receive our updates, please visit our website. Thank you