Excited and i want to say for the audience that the podcasts that i did with you the other week, you are brilliant and the amount you know and the grade at what youre able to make it apply to modern america is really remarkable. Ive been looking forward very much to the chance to chat with you. I appreciate that and i have the pleasure of reading through your book. I was very impressed with how quickly the book came out. My last book took me seven years to write. I think i need to take a page from your playbook and be a little bit more diligent. But as you mentioned, my research focuses on china issues i think we will have a pretty interesting discussion about the challenge the United States faces given the rise of china. My ego requires me to ask of you, what do you think has a genuine china scholar, which you are and im not . What did you think overall about the information in the book . To start with the tough questions. I would say a lot of the underlying recommendations in your view about how china is pursuing its goal i would agree with. We could talk about a lot of regional people who have different interpretations but i personally think that it was very problematic is how china is trying to pursue our influence in the world. I might disagree with some characterizations of china which is what i think i might start with and asking you if you dont mind. Sure. Before we get into the nittygritty of the book i was just curious because you mentioned in the insert to the book that the challenge of china this threat of china is something that you have recently come to really focus on. Im curious about what was it exactly that spark your interest in this topic inspired you to write the book . I been looking at China Reading about it thinking about it since 1960 so its not a sudden new thing. I continue to visit china in i will tell you a quick story that was really a turning point for me. On one of our trips i think in 2005 we went to the pro factory and big building downtown beijing designed to sell goodies to tourists. We went up to about the six floor and i had two people accompanying me who were former henational Security Council analysts both of whom had gone to beijing university and were fluent in chinese. I had two young grandchildren at the time and i wanted to buy them pajamas. We found a woman who ran a pajama store and the two people with me said whatever she says, come back with 10 of what her price is. I wouldve said half. Youll see in a minute. Im not the typical american, i go to walmart theres a price can be buy it or you dont buy it but you can negotiate. She wants 200 aand i come back and say, following my advisors, 20. They said she will now tell you you are bankrupting her family that she will be able to feed her children that the abwill go broke and give you a price. She came back at lets say 180. So i went up to 30. This all takes about 40 minutes. We finally settled at 50 and my two advisors were disgusted and said she was gonna make money at 30. What hit me was, her ability to negotiate, her cheerfulness and negotiating, the degree to which that was a part of her day is unlike anything u. S. Trade representatives deal with. Americans go into events to get a deal. The chinese would like to have a deal that they go in the event to negotiate and talk and wait until they get the deal he want. It struck me that there was this mismatch of cultural realities and that as you walk through it he began to see more and more of it so i finally concluded that the chinese, to clearly watching xi jinping, the general secretary of the communist party and his consolidation of power and the degree to which they dramatically increase their Police State Tactics it hit me that we are really diverging from the model of the american elites had built up which was optimistic this was an evolutionary china that wanted to be more like us. In fact thats not the real china. Has we are seeing literally you and i are talking they are intervening in turkey to help prop up the turkish economy against american sanction. Their interbeing in venezuela to help prop up the dictator against american a it hit me that we needed to reset our understanding of this extraordinary country in order to develop strategies that would enable us to survive. That was really why i set out to write the book. I think an accurate characterization of the Chinese Communist party and their role in Chinese Society is absolutely critical. I agree with your assertion in the book that the basis of power in china is the party and that they have no intention of democratizing. That has never been a belief or viewpoint of my own i always thought those kind of Wishful Thinking and i continue to think its Wishful Thinking. I want to explore more about how you characterize the party. In particular the relationship with the people. Throughout the book you refer to the government as a totalitarian government. In my study of china on most of the time we refer to china as the authoritarian government. It seems like a minor distinction but i actually think we were trying to come up with good u. S. Responses the distinction is important. Totalitarianism is a society in which the government controlled every aspect and allows there to be no Political Economic social freedom at all for their people. I think there are pockets of totalitarianism in china, for exactly, but you wouldnt call democratization but there are areas in which the Chinese People have more freedoms and according to authoritarianism the party exercises power i would argue within relatively polluted predictable limits. The average chinese person knows what would get them in trouble and what keeps them out of trouble. Given that, i think in my view could get a lot worse. The repression in china could get a lot worse. We dont have a state like north korea right now operating in china with the communist party. So what is your view of that distinction and why did you decide to the book to characterize it as a totalitarian government even though i think most literature or databases that monitor these types of freedoms characterize it a bit less oppressive in terms of being more authoritarian than totalitarian . Authoritarian governments are in part limited by their capacity to exert total control. If you look at the mussolinis fascism you really couldnt have a totalitarian state because you never had an instrument of power Strong Enough to do that. Stalin, on the other hand, and hitler both had systems of power so enormous that they can actually impose a truly totalitarian society. So i look at china and the first thing i did raise and i love to get your reaction as an expert is the abhere is a grieving society which, by the very speed with which it spread apparently frightened the Central Government into a reaction of such ferocity that they been killing them, locking themselves would argue that ab have been sacrificed in order to harvest organs that are used for people who are sick. Even if you dont believe that more grotesque version its very clear that the absent some kind of enormous signal threat even though they are not particularly an ideological or Political Movement but they are a sociologically deviant movement as seen by the chinese. The second example i would give you we just did a podcast similar to the one you and i did we did a podcast with the gentleman who teaches at Hunter College who was disappeared. The chinese citizen in the government came along and picked him up off the street did not tell his family did not tell his lawyer, kept him as long as they wanted to and then released him back out as a warning. Recently as you know they disappeared the most popular actress in china a woman who some people believe was the highestpaid actress in the world they just took her out of circulation for six months and nobody knew where she was. Thats why its called disappeared. That to me is a totalitarian culture not authoritarian culture. And when they took her off the street what they were saying to everybody was, none of you are safe. If we decide to come after you, we can come after you but its much closer to orwell 1984 then to a classic definition of an authoritarian system. In the book you mentioned the follow aas well there are definitely groups to organize and threaten the party. They are no holds brought crushing dissent. The main question is whether or not they are crushing all this across the board. I think current china compared to methadone china or like north korea there is a little itbit more freedom of maneuver when it comes to economic eifreedoms and even to a degree within the confines obviously not threatening the sovereignty as they put it in the chinese nation of making suggestions to the party as a whole but brings up this other point which i found interesting in your book about the relationship between the Chinese People and the communist party. He brought up this idea of the china dream. The great rejuvenation of the chinese nation. He mentioned this is really the ambition of the party and most of your book is about confronting the threat of the party not the Chinese People. In my experience, the Chinese People many of them are very much against increase repression under xi jinping domestically, the seem to be very supportive of his national agenda. They like to see china stacked on the global stage increase and like to see china stand up to the United States. I was curious about what your viewpoints were about the relations between the chinese enpeople in the communist party because at least, it theres foreignpolicy i see them to be supporting of that ambitious agenda which doesnt negate any of your recommendations of anything it really highlights we are facing an even greater challenge than perhaps we would be if it was just a party. I think thats right. I think the degree to which there is a historic china thats 5000 years old, a deep sense of pride in being chinese. There is a sense that they have a rightful place in the world there is a pretty deep belief that there was a century of humiliation in which the western powers including japan did things to humiliate what had been up to 1800 the richest and most powerful country in the world. I think all those things are real and i think to that degree much abwas able to play on egyptian enationalism or arctic turks who was able to play on turkish nationalism. There is certainly a zone in which xi jinping represents the interest of the Chinese People and they do have abi believe that his gamble was right and that by creating so much wealth they have strengthened the peoples willingness to tolerate the party because in a sense what the party has offered is a contract that says we will give you a strong nation you can be proud of and will give you a Strong Economy in which you have a pretty decent life in return for which you stay out of politics and you let us run the country at a political level. I think that contract is actually work pretty well. Mayor bloomberg and recent interview went so far as to suggest is not dictatorship because they have to maintain the support of the people. I would argue that what you are watching for example in hong kong and what you see with the whole process of disappearances, control censoring of the internet, the concentration camps for the a the party is quite happy to have a contract that is passive and compliance by prosperity but prepared if challenged to use whatever level of force is necessary to impose continuation of party rule on the country. You bring up hong kong. I just got back from china three days ago and i found as i have recently found a lot of my colleagues increasingly inese frustrated and the thing that frustrates me the most that im interested in getting your take on is actually the way that china justifies some of its problematic behavior in the International System is not to say that they are unique or chinese they say they are exactly like us. I dont know if youve heard this argument but usually when china does something they say the United States is it too. The hong kong example with the recent nba flareup i found myself debating, dont frhave complete freedom of speech in the United States either. Iyou cant engage in hate spee that decides violence. I would say theres different limitations. China they are much more limited in what they can say and the fact that the Chinese Government is trying toinfluenc americans ability to freak ab speak freely. Its increasingly difficult not only with the chinese on the International Stage to articulate how the United States is different and how we behave differently. Who would think we havent done a great job at this. Im wondering what are your viewpoints on how ouwe we shoul be presenting u. S. Foreignpolicy as being distinct from china as if were trying to compete with them for influence and power . Let me start in saying to add to your examples two things, i talked with the very senior chinese leader about the concentration camps for the uighurs and western china. Was absolutely straight face he looked at me and said, you shouldnt think of them as concentration camps. Think of them as warden schools. Somebody who can deliver that line without flinching is first of all a master diplomat and second, how are you going to have a awith them because their position is ouinsane. Yet that was the Party Position he was prepared to say it is probably even prepared to some i believe it although i think deep down he doesnt the second example i want to give you is from the soviet era dragon collected abthe first time he met up with gorbachev he wanted to start with a joke because he wanted to remind gorbachev that we actually had moral superiority. The joke he told him was this guy says to the press is free in russia as i am in washington. The reporter says, how can that be . He said look, i can go to washington and stand up in front of the white house and i can say, Ronald Reagan is a warmonger and a fool. The guy said yes. He said i can go to the kremlin stand up in front of the kremlin and say Ronald Reagan is a warmonger and a fool. So i meeklyabso i am equally fr. They take whats happening with the uighurs and over a Million People in camps and compared to guantcpeople in camps and compao warm, no where we bend over of every one of our roprisoners. They are very good at defining a reality they would like to believe in. I think our best challenge is about freedom. We are not afraid, in a way you have to be a pretty frightened government to chase down people who do breathing exercises. You have to be a pretty frightened government to disappear your most famous movie star. I think we should be much more aggressive on the human rights front as we learned with the soviets over time and simply asserting that the Chinese People have every right to have elections. They have every right to speak freely. They have every right to have ryaccess to the internet and th there is an reenormous tgap between the kind of things they accuse us of and the kind of things they actually do. I think wed be better off to have a much more aggressive prohuman rights policy and communicating with the Chinese People in developing Something Like the kind of Communication Program we had during the cold war. You have this great section of the book, to skip to the back of the book. Its one of my favorites Something Like its not chinas fault. In which you list a lot of the t ways United States is not competitive with china but not the fault of the Chinese Government its the fault of bureaucratic politics internal issues with u. S. Education or entitlement or what have you. I have a few questions about that such member along those lines since you just brought up democratic norms and values, do you think the current athat President Trump and his approach to our democracy in many ways being unique in his approach to democratic norms, if i could put it that way, causes difficulties in the United States asserting its high ground in the competition with china . I think maybe to some level it does but theres a really big difference between President Trump style, which is at times clumsy and offputting particularly for elites, and what actually is happening. Just saw this twice in the last few days the president had an idea, which i thought was truly terrible, to put the g7 at his golf resort in doral. And within 23 days the popular reaction was so overwhelming he had to beat a hasty retreat. Compare that with the chinese banning tv shows because they make fun of xi jinping. Or i think they banned abi cant remember which of the comic characters they decided was like xi jinping so they banned the entire character. When you are so abwe had Theodore Roosevelt was enormously popular and saved a baby grizzly bear and cub that became known as teddies bear which became a teddy bear when it was made by a brooklyn manufacturer who produced little teddy bears we are cheerful about making fun of ourselves and i think you can tell the rigidity and insecurity of the regime by that kind of behavior. I will also point out if xi jinping was on the middle of having the communist Party Congress openly investigate him, i dont know what the chairmanship of china would look like but we are a complicated and clumsy and Noisy Society but on balance thats also how we preserve our freedom. I think some of those differences its very important to be projecting those not only to the Chinese People but also opan Foreign Policy and how the interact around the world. Let me give you a primal example. Back after the russians had launched sputnik and we got into a frenzy and then they launched sputnik too. We were really trying to get chubb and we had a rocket that blew up on launchpad on national television. Part of the reaction in russia was the americans are so confident that they can show off their failures because it doesnt frighten them. I think that we need to go back and have that attitude. Yes we are a country with great turmoil. Yes we have Political Leadership equally divided yes Speaker Pelosi doesnt like President Trump but this is a free society and therefore, one of our great strengths is that out of all this turmoil we produce a new synthesis and move forward. The chinese, in fact, i think will find themselves deeply crippled if xi jinping continues to escalate to the degree to which he is trying to control everybody with things like social criticism is going to find in 10 or 15 years much less creative but much less flexible society of people who are mostly frightened. Interesting theres a lot of mirror imaging i see on both sides and sometimes its hard to predict or see things from a chinese perspective and after President Trump was elected there was a womans march with 1 Million People took to the streets. I had a chinese friend call me and ask of the u. S. Government had been overthrown. Because in her mind of a Million People take to the streets that is a violent end of the system type of act in which i had to explain the United States we had right to be peaceful protest. And its not the end of the world type of current but this mirror imaging is very problematic. Imagining your book is one of the recommendations we need to have more americans to understand china. These are a bit old statistics but i looked up how many u. S. Citizens studying in china and harmony chinese studying the United States and wont surprise you that its various skewed. You have maybe 12,000 allaround tens of thousands of americans studying in china any harm over 350,000 chinese studied here in one of the concerns as a professor part of the educational system a lot of students are worried about studying in china. Theres an ongoing debate in the scholarly community. Im wondering if you have recommendations about how we can encourage americans not only to study china and understand china but also if there safe at home and having that reaction with the country. I think part of it is how well they do the vetting process. We have the same experience when the cold war r began and w realized we had far too few people who have studied the soviet union who understood the nature of communism and who were prepared to develop the kind of program we needed. We had to invest a great deal the Central Intelligence agency invested very heavily in education programs. I think we may be in a similar situation where you have to have some level of concern because they are very good at what they do. They are very systematic. They, the chinese, are irvery systematic in trying to recruit people and trying to intimidate people. At the same time, i think understanding china and having enough people around who are fluent in chinese and who are capable of interacting with fluidity in chinese circumstances this may be one of the great keypads to our ability to survive as a country and we have to learn how to do it while at the same time vetting people so we make sure they dont in fact end up being chinese agents. In part two of the book he talked about how china, different tactics china uses to try to fulfill its china dream. The rejuvenation of the chinese nation to be dominant power at least in asia. He mentioned Six Strategies throughout the book that you talk about in detail. Can you for the audiences describe the strategies and why you thought these were the most problematic in terms of what china is doing . Even the chinese strategies . Right, the 5g . First of all, we are very struck. Youll probably find this to be nacve on my part but we are very struck with a point which had trbeen made by Lieutenant Colonel at the Army War College and picked up by Henry Kissinger in his book on china. That is that the most common sophisticated chinese game is at chess, its a go. The go, originally a japanese game is a radically different model of success then chest does. We actually got the national go association here to come and teach us and spend time with us and walk us through how you think in go terms. Part of that is you think very long term and you think about the whole board. You never allow yourself to get sucked in to looking at only one thing. If you start thinking about the longterm and i try to tell people if you want to understand chinese strategies its much more important to reach sun tzu then clausewitz. Sun tzu is writing during the period of warring states about 500 years before christ and is describing a really different system. A system that uses longterm planning and psychological warfare. It uses spies a uses bribery it uses deception. Hes not just writing about cataclysmic what awouldve thought of as a central battle. Hes actually saying if youre really clever you will never fight a central battle because you will outmaneuver your opponent until the collapse. If you think that way one of ce the best examples is the south l china sea. Which actually starts before the current chinese dictatorship. In the 1930s the ab nationalist party issued a map of the South China Sea that charted a series of dashes and basically said, everything inside this line is china. Its an extraordinary claim its about 50 of the size of china itself. Nobody has ever claimed that yyou could actually occupy that kind of sea as a sovereign territory. Long after the Chinese Communist when they gradually start thinking about this and begin to develop it. They go out first in a series ofs damages with the enemies and filipinos and their other neighbors and then they come up with a clever idea that they are going to build artificial islands. They build a series of these artificial islands where they say initially now this is really not going to be militarized its really not a threat. We just want to support our fishing fleet which is peaceful sleep. Its actually the equivalent coast guard or coastal maritime unit mobilize a bowl for a variety of National Security reasons. Then they gradually add an airfield and start bringing in missiles and what they are doing is creating a framework of violence which forces the u. S. Navy hundreds of miles away from the chinese coast in wartime environment. Its a brilliant strategy. Second example would be there whole belton Road Initiative where they have now made it openended. India for example announce their very interested in being part of the belton Road Initiative for the arctic ocean. Because the chinese are building a huge number of icebreakers. The United States has i think one new icebreaker being built i think the chinese are like 15 or 20. Huge disparity. If you look at the map of the world you think why did the chinese need this money icebreakers . Because they are esthinking abo using the optic but if you ship from china to europe to the arctic you save an enormous amount of time and money. Theyre looking out 20 to 30 years and thinking in that kind of titles. There is a belt Road Initiative going into places like africa where it currently 46 different ports being developed by the chinese my wife is the ambassador of the vatican so we spent a lot of time in italy. Italy recently signed contract with china. They recently signed on i remember. So janelle, the biggest port in italy will be run by the chinese. And trieste, the port which leads into austria and south germany will be run by the chinese. I think they have this very longterm very gradual approach doing the same thing in space where they are now the first country to be on the dark side of the moon. Theres all sorts of things happening we dont fully appreciate and i think you have to frankly have a sense of these are very smart people with a very long time horizon who are very patient but working very hard to be the most competent and most capable country in the world. There is a lot in there i think its very interesting especially about the belton road and South China Sea. My viewpoint one of the challenges about dealing with china is they are pursuing power in a way that is different from how the United States is used to doing business. Not only in terms a lot of practices you already mentioned, which are very problematic, but also outside of the region they are relying largely on economic and political power. They see the united tstates having the military footprint getting involved in domestic politics as something thats costly and the reason for a decline. The way when i reuse chinese damages they talk about the military s yes they want to be dominant monetarily in the region but they just want to have an economic and political power beyond that to ensure other countries accommodate their interest. In the book you often talk about china wanting to dominate the world. My own viewpoint i wrote oup in a Foreign Affairs article called the self superpower is i do think they want military usually dominate the region. Under xi jinping it has expanded to include central asia and maybe even south asia. I dont think they want to be able to challenge United States militarily in europe or even in the middle east. It is not also how you see china trying to exercise its power . I would draw two distinctions. I think what you said is largely right. With the caveat that in the age of Cyber Capabilities and in the age of space you can become a global power without rebuilding the American Military. One of our weaknesses that we might be so wedded to the end of the 20th century military system that we dont realize underway. Changes are i would start there. I dont think the chinese have any great planning, certainly in the next 20 to 25 years, to try to take us on militarily in a traditional sense but i think they are trying to build the kind of Cyber Capabilities and i think this is part is where whileabthere also i think to the degree we underestimate gradually extending capabilities. They even begun cooperating on some small military things with the germans. You have both russian and chinese collaboration where they are doing joint patrols in the pacific and you have activity between china and germany and i think the chinese are open to working with virtually any anybody. Their goal was to create an alternative coalition. If you end up with china russia around coalition i think it would be very hard for us to see how the United States would win a conflict in which they were allies. Some of the examples you just mentioned. They have abtheres issues of corruption along the belton road and my son was in djibouti and ethiopia about two years ago and found out i was asking about the Railroad Infrastructure that the United States and other countries had offered a grant to build the road but instead they went with the chinese and the rumor was because some official had been taking bribes to allow that. Do our Democratic Values make it harder for us to compete with china in the International Stage . Or do you see them as an asset. I think in the short run they make it harder just as they made it harder to compete with the nazis and they made it harder to compete with the soviet union. In the long run the problem with corruption is that it leads to a very sick state in which nobody can trust anybody and ed gorbachev discovered when chernobyl occurred that the bureaucracy had been so corrupted that the only Accurate Information he could get was from norwegian and swedish television. One of the reasons you want to glass nose compare one of things happening with the chinese is a number of countries particularly in africa they made promises there keeping and a number of countries they said we will go build a bridge but they didnt say it was going to send 12,000 chinese to do it. Instead of hiring local people and creating local jobs they actually increase the resentment. Its not like the chinese any more than the soviets or nazis are not infallible, then about 12 feet tall, there you have significant weaknesses. The short run bribery is expected. In the long run honestly is more effective. I think its certainly true. To go back to the South China Sea, i been working a lot on this issue and been trying to push the idea of the critical nature of the South China Sea and the u. S. China strategic competition. You mentioned some of the problems associated with United States being pushed further out i think our conventional targets china get severely eroded when you cant hold china at risk. Its difficult for us to protect countries in the region including many allies from chinese coercion. I look at this administration they obviously have recognized the challenge of the rise of china and have rightly articulated we are in a strategic competition with china but for some reason the South China Sea has been at the top of the agenda. The last i checked President Trump has never tweeted about it during his time as president and is terms of Public Record it never came up in discussions with xi jinping. Im curious why given how important it is and given you very clearly outlined its importance in your book why do you think its been an issue mainly among the elites and scholars and has risen to a National Leader level . At one level its an issue with the American Military and they are vividly aware of it. On the other hand, i think strategically what we been doing is wrong. We rely on a model that our ships will go within 12 miles of the chinese island that routinely go through there and we have been organizing so that french and canadian and australian and british and other ships have also been going through there to maintain right of passage. I think in the long run its a dead loser because in a conflict environment you would be able to maintain it. I been arguing, and zero affect what we ought to do is take the chinese model and say its terrific the idea of building islands in International Waters is great and build three islands. When youre in the position to say enough is enough. In turn it over to international body. When i can let you establish de facto dominance in the region and i think the challenge here im guessing. Let me be upfront. Is that there is conversations with the administration. I know a large number of people are aware. There are so many components of whats going on. Do you worry about stealing intellectual property . Do you worry about the degree to which they cheat against American Companies . Do you try to figure out how to offset the National BasketballAssociation Model . Do you worry about belton road . Theres so many different components underway that i think its been hard to get a coherent grand strategy and i really think part of the reason about this book, is to make the argument that we need to isrecognize this is not all of government, its all society. We are in a competition where we need to think about all of Chinese Society as a competitor and think about how we will over match that and its going to take fairly significant amount of time in the cold war it took us from 1946 to 1950. To finally think through what we were doing and thats with the generation that had fought world war ii and we are used to thinking on a huge scale. We are very few people in the care bureaucracy capable of doing that kind of thinking. Along those lines recently was testifying on the hill and one of my colleagues would testifying they mentioned this statistic about the difference between soviet union and china and it went Something Like the soviet economy was half the size of what chinas economy is with respect to the United States but the United States is spending half as much on its military to deal with the challenge. It seems that we were in a better resource position perhaps visiting the soviet union then we are in the competition with china stop given your own experience in congress and in american politics what do you think are some of the changes that we need to make domestically to make sure we do have the resources to compete with china. Thats part of why i wrote the chapter thats in chinas fault because a lot of what has to be done is not china. When you have six schools in baltimore in which last year not a single student in six schools not a a single student could pass the state math and writing exam you have a crisis that would be there whether the chinese existed or not. We need very dramatic deep reforms in our own system. We need to inform the pentagon. This is a tired bureaucratic structure. It was originally built in 1943 so that 23,000 people using carbon paper and manual typewriters could manage a worldwide war. Now we have ipads, smart phones, etc. , we still have 23,000 people. Its maniacal. It slows everything down and makes everything too expensive. So theres huge zones of reform we need the chinese currently are mopping up all sorts of International Organizations by basically brawny abribing countries. They end up either being the leader or pick the leader for amazing range of International Organizations. Not even prepared to start thinking about a campaign on the scale and complexity that we need in places like the food and Agriculture Organization or the world health organization. Go down the list and its astonishingly how methodically successful they been. We have to, if we are serious and determined to over match the chinese, we are going to have to really get our act together we have to go through some very painful and very profound reforms and part of the reason i wrote trump vs. China was to set the stage for people to have this conversation and recognize that if everything the president is doing, which i think is the right general direction is about 10 of what we need to do if we are aponly capable of competing with china. Am happy you wrote about the bureaucratic aat the pentagon. In my own career have experienced that first hand and made a number of suggestions given that are been bit lower on the totem pole they have not been widely accepted but i would say the United States military you pointed out in the china sea situation the high strategic levels they get the threat in the United States military has understood this as a challenge long before President Trump articulated it publicly but the overall bureaucracy is still not focused on asia. I will give you one anecdote theres a professional military education in the air force that was just revamped to allow for regional studies once you get to field grade officer level. Cthey include every region but asia. This is a new revamping. You are kidding . Am not kidding. It just came out they are putting online now. So as a asia specialist i find increasingly frustrated a thats painful. It is painful. The amount of time i spend learning about key leadership engagements with travel leaders that while we are very relevant and point important to the accomplice of the United States abare not relevant for great competition. I think its so amazingly important when you talked about the threat to the United States you mentioned a book that you think is an existential threat. My own interpretation i kind of look at what china is doing and i think they are challenging the United States on a global stage i think they are military threat to the United States and the region and besides maybe harassing a few u. S. Companies or americans who are deeply engaged with china the average american does not feel the influence of china but in your book you talk about how you do think is the next essential threat. I was wondering if you could articulate a little bit more about why you think that it is a depot abdeeper threat than others have characterized it. I think its an x essential threat in the sense that in two different ways, the first is if they work at it and we are dumb enough, they could create a coalition which would have a balance of power against us in a way that we have not experienced in american history. Because for much of the first hundred years we had behind the royal navy and for the second hundred years we had a huge worldwide ugalliance. We dont know what its like to live in a world where there is a hostile dominant force that has a coalition that is capable of over matching us. That would be a next essential threat from the outside. I think this problem with the National Basketball association the problem with winnie the pooh, the problem lewith the cartoon that is now banned from china because it had a show in which xi jinping was ridiculed. We are beginning to move into defining, you saw this the new top gun i think if i remember correctly they got tom cruise to take the taiwanese and the japanese flags off his flight suit. And just in order to release it and it was a fight underway right now where tarantino is refusing to edit his movie to meet the needs of the chinese centers. Its that willingness not just to tell us what happens inside china but to start telling us what ought to happen over here. I think thats why its a genuine x essential threat. I would mention there is a great book by a professor at uva and called hollywood made in china that outlines the various ways that chchina uses its market to compel movies to take one plot line over another plot line. As a china specialist every time i watch a movie in which the chinese come in as the heroes i know to look for who is finance the movie. That definitely does i think a ai think you just gave me a future podcast. We will check the guy down and see if youd like to spend time talking about it. I love movies. This would combine two of my passions into one podcast. She knows a lot about this topic and i have found her presentations on it are quite interesting. I myself focus on the military issues and the prospects of conflict between china and the United States and one of the things that i look at a lot are allies and partners in the region. A lot of people would argue this is a key strength of United States. That we have partners like australia and japan that are supportive of u. S. Goals and working together in our competition with china. In terms of your recommendations, what are some ways that you think we could revamp the alliances or do more with the alliances in this competition that goes beyond the region to broader issues in terms of chinas impact on our society. And chinas impact on world. I think we have to look in a very serious way at what we are going to be doing to knit people together in a more permanent basis. In the South China Sea we probably have a real interest to try to get india to join us because they have a huge interest. The South China Sea has i think one third of the world shipping go through it. Every maritime country in the really big exporting country rose huge interest in the South China Sea. I was just in japan a couple weeks ago and the m 90 that still exists between korea and japan going back to the Japanese Occupation of korea from 19 may 19, 1945 is still very real. It makes it harder to get them to Work Together in alliance because there is still so much friction particularly on the grand side. At some levels you got to be constantly working at opening those up. I think in the case of the australians i think they really turned the corner. I think they discovered from some painful experiences that the chinese are not necessarily good partners and that the weight of china can be very destructive and very uncomfortable. I think we are in good shape there but in the long run we also want to knit together all the smaller countries. Weve done a little bit of that in the past obut i think its got to be more methodical because the chinese are pretty good at institution building. They taken over something we used to do well in the british east to do well and i think weve got to go back and get back to that competition. Who when we do go there we have a huge success. People still have a biased and nebeing afraid of the chinese a wanting to keep the u. S. Actively as a player in the region but then we got to pay our dues and have people, the president , Vice President , secretary of state and others actively engaged with those countries so they have the feeling that we are taking them seriously. In the region i agree the smaller countries have become increasingly important in this competition. In my book the cost of conversation i specifically lay out how china often tries to leverage smaller countries to pressure the United States to constrain our ability to act in contingencies. That process i think as part of the way we have to think about society on society we need to have our charities we need to have our corporations we need to have our military and we need to have our diplomacy. All aligned in the same direction working with these small countries in which case we can have enormous influence because we still have huge advantages in that kind of competition. Being the Security Partner of choice no longer enough for a lot of countries. Even if thats what the United States offers given economic power and political plot of china the United States needs to offer more than attractive partners. All those agencies actually having the whole of government approach the chinese think we have a whole of government approach when i speak to them theyre very worried about it. I wish we were is organized as they think we are. I would go beyond that. We need a whole of society approach. Huawei is a brilliant example of creating a corporation that is competitive on a global basis subsidized by the Chinese Government but nonetheless a corporation. There is no american competitor to huawei and we should feel disgraced by that. We dominated telecommunications. We invented most of modern telecommunications. Yet our big corporations are so loaded down with debt they are so much looking inwardly at the United States. So bureaucratic and lacking in imagination that they basically yield the field to assure these group really should. You couldnt even imagine this 20 years ago. Its been great talking to you about your book. Our time is running out. If you have one last sentence or take away the final say to potential readers about what they need to take away from your book, what would it be . Is very simple. Xi jinping is a general secretary of the communist party the chairman of the military commission and the Peoples Liberation n army is a arm of the party, not the government. President of the peoples republic of china in that order. As long as you always remember you are dealing with the general secretary of the communist party you understand all the negotiations and all the meetings dramatically better and then if you allow them to get away with pretending he is a normal western executive. Thank you for that. It was nice chatting with you. Thanks. This program is available as a podcast all after words programs can be viewed on our website at booktv. Org. For 40 years cspan2 has providing america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court and Public Policy events from washington dc and around the country. So you can make up your own mind created by cable in 1979 cspan is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. The new cspan online store now has booktv products. Go to cspan store. Org to check the fit whats new for ab here is a look at some events booktv will be covering this week. On tuesday at the New York HistoricalSociety Former kennedy and Carter Administration official william vanden hubbell will reflect in his career. Also New York University that day for the abwhat he thinks President Trump should be impeached. On wednesday we will be back in manhattan at the peter j sharp theater where author and feminist activist Gloria Steinem will present a collection of quotes from throughout her life and career. On saturday at the fdr president ial library in hyde park new york blue paper will recount the efforts of joseph grew u. S. Ambassador to japan prior to the american entry into world war ii who attempted to seek a piece