Im sick and tired of not getting anything done. My full name, your listeners, please record this. My full name is martin hufford. My number is 717562 host you can continue watching washington journal if you go to our website, cspan. Org. We leave this to join the discussion on the Chinese Communist party, on u. S. Competition with china. This event hosted by the council on foreign relations. Wait for one of these microphones can introduce yourself, and then ask your question. For those joining virtually, click on the raisedhand icon at any point. If you hear your name called out, click on the unmute prompt. Your video will remain off but your microphone will be unmuted. Thank you, everyone. Well, good afternoon, and welcome to the council on foreign relations. Im mike froman, president of the council, and we are delighted to have this is our First Official program of the school year, so to speak. I see a lot of friends out there, members of congress as well. For me its a particular honor because the council prides itself on being nonpartisan. What better way to demonstrate nonpartisanship then having this fully Bipartisan Commission here working out of the council for a couple of days, and the chair man and Ranking Member of the commission here with us . Congressman Mike Gallagher from wisconsin and congressman roger krishnamurthy from illinois Raja Krishnamoorthi from illinois, thank you for agreeing to do this program today. There is very few topics that get as much attention as the ones you are working on. You are traveling around the country talking to businesses, a wide range of stakeholders about this. We would love to get your perspective on, first and foremost, chinas role in the global economy. China has traditionally driven about one third of global growth. We benefit from that, in terms of being able to export there. Trading Partners Benefit from it. Germany slows down because china slows down, europe slows down, japan slows down. It affects us back here. When you look at the china challenges the commission is working on, do you want china to slow down . Do you want chinas gross to slow down . Do you feel there is a role for china to continue to play role . First of all, thank you for your hospitality. For those who dont know, we have about 10 members of our committee here. We started the day off by going to the 9 11 ceremony at ground zero, which is very powerful. We will have a series of engagements today with people from your world, the financial and economic leaders, a lot of wall street leaders. And we will do a tabletop exercise, all with the goal of trying to better inform us and the members of our committee as we attempt to fulfill the mandate we have been given by the speaker of the house as well as the minority leader, which as i interpret it is to identify the Bipartisan Center of gravity, identify a set of policy and legislative proposals that can put us on a better pastor competing effectively with china and things that can pass even in divided government. In that endeavor ive been very lucky to be partnered with Raja Krishnamoorthi. He hails from some state to the south of mine. Just an absolute pleasure to work with, and has set the tone for bipartisanship, seriousness. Its been great to work with him. One thing that makes me nervous, i see people i went to college with in the audience. A lot of blackmail sitting in the audience on me. Im lucky that facebook didnt exist until i was a junior in college. I was least likely to be a member of congress in princeton and jamaican tell all the dirt joey can tell all the dirt on me. I would like the chinese, and his party Chinese Communist party to stop what i perceived to be its totalitarian ambitions. It wants to be a regional hegemon, which means cutting of our alliance and partnership structure. It necessarily entails taking over taiwan at some point. I think that is xi jinpings lifelong ambition, and i dont think his ambitions stop there. If chinese Economic Growth is a means toward that end, or just a way to fill the partys coffers the largest sustained peace time buildup since the second world war, and if you think about the numbers, they are daunting, they are overwhelming. We have been twiddling our thumbs thinking about how to grow the size of the american navy. China has the biggest navy in the world. For those who say it is not a big deal, our ships are more capable, quantity has a quality all of its own. When you add in the other fact that china has the three biggest navies in the world. To say nothing about what is most problematic for our navy, their antinavy, designing a force exclusively over the last 20 or so as to push us out of region. That to me is a problem. What they are doing engine shank in xinjiang is a problem. The fact that they are leveraging economic power to coerce american companies, foreign companies, thats a problem. It is the behavior they are trying to stop. I would love to see a world in which china and the Chinese People continue to benefit from exposure to the global economy. But if the chinese, and pretty continues on its current course, we will not have an option but to selectively decouple and the risk and diversify in certain areas. I have not yet met a member of Congress Wants to suppress the legitimate aspirations of any chineseorigin person or anyone living in the prc. I think what we are very much concerned about is Economic Growth that comes from, in part, economic aggression. What are we talking about . Theft of intellect or poverty. We are talking about theft of intellectual property. We are talking about dumping products to put industries in a business. We are talking about cyber hacking. We are talking about all the types of unfortunate moves that the Chinese Communist party has undertaken to basically get a leg up on other countries economically and industries outside the country. We were in wisconsin. Bears fans need a diplomatic visa to visit that part of america. But the serious point here is that the trailers were on the verge of bankruptcy because chinese competitors had dumped so much product on the market that they couldnt survive. But certain countermeasures were put in place to enable them to stand up their operations again and be able to survive and thrive. Unfortunately, that is kind of the competitive posture that we are in with them. They take moves, we are going to have to counter them, and work with our partners, allies, and friends and multilaterally put pressure on the ccp to cease further economic aggression. Rep. Gallagher can i make one followup point . The president made a comment that as chinas economy slows, it is less likely they can make a move on taiwan. I dont know if that is true. Dont mean that you criticize the administration. I just think it is equally plausible that xi jinping could be more riskacceptant and less predictable and do something stupid. It is the nature of these regimes that because there are not robust feedback mechanisms, they are insulated from certain types of information. That is one of the questions we will be digging into, what is the systemic risk. What is the risk to the Global Financial system if xi jinping invaded taiwan or did a blockade or some lowerend scenario . That is a question we must approach with humility. I dont pretend i have answered. Michael building on that, what do you view as the goal here . What is the new equilibrium we should be seeking in the u. S. China relationship . Yesterday President Biden in vietnam said we do not seek to contain china. Is the new equilibrium a new cold war . Is it containment . Is it detente . Is it peaceful coexistence . Is it something that has no analogue to the u. S. Soviet relationship . What do you think we are heading towards . Rep. Gallagher the near goal is obvious, preventing war. A conflict with china over taiwan would be catastrophically destructive. The scale one Aircraft Carrier gets sucked, that equals the losses of 20 years of war in iraq and afghanistan. It is crazy to wrap your head around that. Making a determined strategy work, preventing world war iii, is the nearterm objective that needs to animate what we do washington, d. C. The midterm objective, i think it is in our interest to have allies controlling Critical Technology. We can argue about what falls not definition, but some things are obvious, Quantum Nuclear technology. The longterm goal, i would argue, is maybe this is where we disagree i think we should maintain our primacy internationally. A world in which americas dominant superpower is a more peaceful and just world. That is not america alone. Part of the reason we are in such a position, or were, is we have this fantastic network of allies and partners. Quickly on the cold war i think we have a different view on this i find the analogy helpful. I call it a new cold war as far as the differences and similarities, and the differences are obvious. Weve never had to contemplate selective decoupling from the soviet union because our economies didnt interact. Grass with china, we are conjoined whereas with china, we are conjoined twins in so many areas. It makes it so difficult to untangle. Rep. Krishnamoorthi i think it has got to be a situation where we have kind of a rulesbased International Order in the indo pacific region, where as President Biden mentioned yesterday, they are playing by the rules. There are some rules of the road that neither side or no one in the region is violating. What does that mean . First of all, it means from a security and military perspective, we dont resolve our differences anywhere except at the negotiating table. There cannot be coercion or military means of resolving these differences. And unfortunately, our ccp competitors, you could say, dont necessarily abide by that fundamental principle. You see that in the South China Sea, where they basically lay claim to the entirety of the South China Sea and im not just talking about the barbie movie depiction of the ninedash line, but throwing their elbows in the himalayas. This has got to be off the table. Previous generations of ccp diplomats and american diplomats and taiwanese folks decided were going to leave that question for the future. Future generations will be able to resolve that. We cant do so at this moment. I think thats in fact what henry kissinger, along with his counterparts in the 1970s decided. If we dont get to that point, we need to get a some point where military aggression is off the table for that purpose. Secondly, there have to be economic rules of the road we can all agree to. What we are seeing right now are practices which my constituents, mikes constituents, i think the majority of the American People will not tolerate. Those will continue to destabilize this relationship. I think that is what it feels so fragile right now, because of Something Like 80 of americans view china not as a friend, not as a competitor, but sometimes as an adversary. And when you see that, you kind of are on a road to a bad place. Road to a bad place. We had to change that fundamental. That was the theory they begin to abide by the International Rules and norms and it is a disappointment along that path. You think we are compelled to see that through economic sanctions . Or is it through some overwhelming change in the balance of power . Rep. Krishnamoorthi on the military side, mike and i are in agreement. We have not done enough. We have not done enough in deterring military force. We kind of know what needs to be done, but it is not being done fast enough. There are those who want to move faster, but it has not moved yet. We could getting that is one issue that i think we are in alignment on. The second is a tougher issue. How do you get xi jinping who is a rather ideological person, to change his worldview and began to comply with the rules of the road . I do not know. Im not sure if it is possible. On the one hand, if it is not possible, then we are going to have to protect our values, protect commerce and industry and we will have to work with allies, partners in bilateral trade agreements that enable our friends who are collaborating with us to share in the gains of being part of that partnership. Secondly, i think that on the other hand, it is possible that these multilateral alliances and partnerships could potentially pressure and adjustment. That is one thing that they fear more than anything else, which is us getting together with our friends and allies to put in place certain principles or guardrails that would prevent the ccp from playing them against each other. We have done wonderfully regarding ukraine. That is something that we should probably implement with regards to taiwan as well. There is no success that does not involve a closer partnership. Some countries will never get to that space. Partnerships with india, indonesia is an area where there is a focus. What we see against us is increasingly looking like an axis of authoritarian powers. There is a gallery. The obvious thing is that we need to build a Stronger Team to counter that axis. A more obvious point, we have to go back to that strategy. I think it will continue to fail. My view and this might be part of my inexperience, but i believe a component of the strategy our best chance of deterrence is robust and smart investment. It proves the point that soft power, disconnected from hard power deters. Youre not going to deter the had the vague threat of sanctions. If your adversary does not believe you have a credible military deterrent. In the things that weve seen, it is so important to moderate modern where fair. Warfare. It can be less expensive as opposed to platforms. The point i would make, i do believe that we have to selectively and strategically decouple. There are debates about the terminology and what these things mean, but a few things are obvious. I do not think we should be financing our destruction. People probably disagree but i think at the lowest level, we should not be allowing them to invest. That is an obvious step, going forward. How do you incentivize . The on shoring of tea manufacturing. Where do you draw that line . I do not have a problem. I do not think either of us have a problem. Figuring out that line will be difficult. It implies a bunch of things that we need to do to get our house in order to function. But we are going to solve all of that. Lets dig into that a little further, if we can. The Biden Administration has proposed some ideas about restricting investment in various sectors. You said it does not go far enough. You want to look at funding, any purpose of Public Company stocks. That seems to me a decoupling of the markets. Any pros or cons for that . How do you think about it . Is the goal to deny china the money or the expertise and technology to be used against us in a military way . Rep. Gallagher i do not want to be like the people, critical republican on this. They kind of conceded the principle that there should be some restrictions on outbound capital flow. I do not think it went far enough. By putting them in the lead with off ramps, even the past behavior, i think under the trump administration, it was the same way. It had a more dovish position. It depends on who we are talking about. I would expect that there would not be a robust, further restriction. Even though it was sector specific, it makes sense. I do not think you comply laughable. We have all these government list. There are like four other lists. The lists are not routinely updated in a way that makes. Do not account for a lot of companies that change names, subcomponent companies, stuff like that. But you are left playing lacrimal. Based on my experience in government, i do not think that is a workable strategy, going forward. It seems that there is less of a sector specific approach. They are talking about ai, quantum and microelectronics. If we are just talking about private investment, that is at most 17 of the profit. What do we do about the rest of the money flowing to china . We heard some constructive pushback and feedback this morning in our meetings, initially. We are doing this to interrogate the issue because regardless of where you fall on the issue, whether you think the idea was to leak or to strong, whether you think we should go more aggressive i think Congress Needs to step up and legislate the issues. We do not want to be bouncing backandforth. The biggest thing i think i have heard so far is that even those in the financial community, what they want above all other things is predictability and clarity. We legislated thoughtfully and that is what we can provide. People contradict can transition and i think that would alleviate a lot. Rep. Krishnamoorthi i think some people think, well, we are advocating for taking all money out of all chinese investments. But there are certain areas that are problematic for us. I think they specified some of them. Quantum computing, artificial intelligence. Why those areas and not others . In part because some of those areas have been used for generating Surveillance Systems and the persecution of leaders and persecution. Many of you are aware of this, that there is a genocide happening in northwest china today. There are 22 million in the province. 2 million, upwards of 2 million of them are in concentration camps, as we speak. 80,000 women have been forcibly sterilized. 6000 children have been removed from their families. This is unspeakable evil that is happening today. We should not participate in any type of endeavors that further that genocide. It is that simple. That is the first thing. The second is, we should not be funding the build up. We have index funds today in the thrift savings plan. Im sure you remember that. I remember. There are index funds. They build the fighter jet that would be used in the invasion of taiwan. There are so Many Companies being funded by us. The third issue, there are a number of Surveillance Companies that we could not possibly by because it provides backdoors, but we have funding through our investments. It makes no sense. So, i think that we want to be in the situation where we are able to invest, just as they invest in our country, but we do not want to be investing in problematic sectors. That is where we are focused. Last week, we heard news that while they huawei came out with a new phone. The chinese are claiming it shows the lack of utility. How do you assess that product . How do you assess the regime . A lot of these efforts, whether it is capital or technology, that was one of the more robust efforts. Rep. Gallagher i have not used the new product. But maybe i will see if i can buy one on tiktok. [laughter] listen, i think it is nice. It was a good piece of work. It was a big lift but it was interim rule. If you finalize with an eye toward shoring up the loopholes that allows china to get access, the same functionality of the chips that we are trying to deny. That is one of the things that you heard. October 7, all good. But there are some efficiencies that want to think about working. I think our export control is included is incredibly powerful. Provided it is actually enforced. We grant Something Like 75 of licenses to huawei. There are restrictions that are on the books right now. If we are capable of enforcing them, i think it would have a more powerful impact. To the point of your question, anyway, they can deny Critical Technology to an adversary that would use that technology for a dystopian purpose, down the line. That is in general, a good thing to do. If you can combat genocide, it is a noble effort. But in terms of economic competition, we can help in any and compete. That is our winning strategy. To harness our unique system of freedom and the fact that we traditionally have drawn upon the best and brightest. That is our winning strategy. They cannot just all be fixed, china bad, american good. Rep. Krishnamoorthi you sound like a democrat. [laughter] here is my thing. One interesting thing and, we had a briefing before she left and she has been very open with us, telling us what she is running to do. I have to believe this controls hurt because that is the number one issue that they want us to change right now. Xi jinping hates it that we are able to target the semi conductors that he needs to help power their natural language model, there ai model, to get faster, better and more ident. So i think it is having some effect. But mike is absolutely right. We have to up our game. We have to invest. There is a huge section for funding basic research and development. That part of the bill has not received any information. It is a weird thing in congress rarely authorized staff only to have a die in appropriations because it does not get any money. That is crazy. It is important for nanoscale manufacturing. The export control will slow people down, potentially, but we need to be much further ahead than where we are vague now. The government will never do the appraisal or commercialization to make the product. Companies will actually take advantage of the research and development once it blossoms at our universities and the like. The second thing, this was the main topic of our lunch before we came down here. Our immigration system needs to be fixed right now, like yesterday. [applause] immigration is the key to winning this competition, this global competition. We can do all we can to prevent them from using our technology to compete with us in ways that we do not want, but unless we have the people to do innovation here, we have no chance. Our system is so messed up. One of the few naturalized citizens, it is a personal issue for me. If we do not get this right, we might as well go home right now. I think that is a bipartisan issue that we should get behind. It should be part of our generals ill development package, where we both stand up for an indigenous the best and brightest from around the world. Rep. Gallagher do not save order. Do not say anything about the border. [laughter] rep. Krishnamoorthi Ranking Member is pretty good. Rep. Gallagher the principal is obvious to me. We should make it difficult but not impossible to make it easy for people to get here legally. We have to solve both issues. You cannot get to you and immigration fix, if you do not solve the border issue. I get that the politics are terrible here, that they are linked. We are in a global war for talent. We should want the most talented and hardworking people to come here. Specifically in green bay, wisconsin. The challenge so, how do you have Adequate Security protocols in place . There was a ban in place. It is based on the assumption that the Intelligence Community can accurately assess who is affiliated, who is not, who is the member of connected organizations. It is a difficult to do. You are left contemplating, due to the status quo, which allows Research Enterprise to shed intellectual property all the time . Knowing full well you will deny a lot of wellmeaning chinese citizens from potentially one day coming to america and becoming an american citizen one day. Rep. Krishnamoorthi i know where i stand on this. I think our chineseamerican scientists, scholars, innovators, Industry Leaders and so forth they are some of our most talented people and i want to say that our community will stand against any prejudice, bigotry or hate directed towards anybody, including one of the things that we found out in committee was very sobering. The ccp, unfortunately it uses this against chinese origin people here. Do you think they want to aid their enterprise in a way that is deeply disturbing . Im sure you folks read about it. A ccp police station. They go after people who are dissident, to go after students at various universities. And this is a very troublesome problem because we want to attract the best and brightest from china, but we need to protect them at the same time. We will open it up for questions and one minute. Were just getting to it right now. Where do you two disagree . We have more members of your commission upstairs. Where are the major divisions in the commission . Rep. Gallagher most of our divisions are sports related. Rep. Krishnamoorthi i have an issue with wealth he wealthy people from illinois. They come in and buy up our land. Rep. Gallagher he is going to put that into the ccp. Some of the biggest differences are not democrat and republican. There is a view on wall street that is different than the bipartisan view. Is why were here. I find it interesting and i want to understand the different views. The biggest difference, i doubt we are going to get around to that, but hope springs eternal. I have been critical of the Biden Administrations recent push for diplomatic engagement. I think we would agree that it would be wise for us to have a crisis communication channel in place. We disagree about the utility of that push. The prioritization of Climate Change and Energy Policy more broadly are huge differences between the parties. That sort of explains why a lot of republicans voted against the act and recent legislation about Energy Policy. There are concerns with a push to evs. There is meaningful disagreements. I will stop here. Both parties parties are hostile towards trade right now. I am blaming you. But if we just accepted the reality that a multilateral trade agreement is not in the cards i think you could have a pretty robust set of bilateral agreements. If we had some alacrity, some urgency. A freetrade or dream a freetrade agreement with taiwan, with u. K. I get that it is not as big. But it would still have a big impact. It is weird. There is no clear partisan divide. I think mike is right about those differences. Another industrial policy i am a big proponent of the chips act. Did you rep. Gallagher vote against it . Did you vote against it . Rep. Gallagher i voted against it. You knew that. Rep. Krishnamoorthi there is a disagreement and it is a principal disagreement about, should the u. S. Government choose Certain Industries . Should they choose Certain Companies to end up getting a leg up either on their competitors or for industries to get a leg up in industries . I think there is a disagreement, fundamentally on that. I think it will make a big difference in regards to microelectronics. I think there is a disagreement with regards to the way in which we talk about it. We have not talked about this in depth, but it might relate to the engagement piece. When gino, john and others go to china and meet with their counterparts, i think that is really good thing. I think it is a great thing. You have to have a dialogue. Words are nothing compared to actions. Actions speak louder than words. You know that. But we are not able to establish a regular line of communication where we can explore those areas , where on the venn diagram, there is some overlap. Where we can jointly tackle other issues of common concern. Sometime not like for us to even talk about in this way because they fear that we are making concessions before we talk to the ccp, and i disagree. I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Hello, everybody. As a longtime member, i want to say how delighted i am that you are now the president. It is a great thing for the country. And a comment about Mike Gallagher. He is one of three mics. Mike turner and michael mccaul, and Mike Gallagher chair major committees in the house and do it extremely well. As a lifelong democrat, i admire you. I chair the commission on National Defense strategy and also the board of freedom house. I asked this question on their behalf, but also online. If you are xi jinping right now, looking at the house of representatives and looking at all the threads of closure, some of the ideas that are floating around, not commenting on whether they are good or bad, just that they are floating around. With this make you more likely to be risk ready and stay the u. S. Is falling apart, so i might as well move on taiwan, or not . Rep. Gallagher thank you for not only your remarkable record of public service, but you have always been incredibly you have always been kind to me. I appreciate that very much. My working hypothesis is the window now is the window of maximum danger. The reason has less to do with the house at this moment and more to do with the demographic and economic challenges xi jinping faces. If xi jinping wants to take taiwan, and i know people disagree about whether he wants to do it, one of the lessons of ukraine is when dictators tell you they want to do a thing, you should not discount that thing. You should plan around it. He keeps telling us he wants to take it by force if necessary. I think this is the window. The window will kick off in earnest after the taiwanese election. The other variable or set of variables, because we have a bunch of big defense bills coming due, the current plan will bottom out at 280 ships in 2027, the year he has set for his military to take taiwan, so i think now is the most dangerous time. If we can make it work in the next decade, the decisive decade, the Playing Field gets more favorable for us. Government dysfunction does not help anything. I have more radical views about how to fix it that would anger a lot of my colleagues. It is hard to plan. As a defense guy, i will shut up after this. The pentagon has operated under c. R. s for an absurd amount of time in the last decade. It is the dumbest way to operate. We will have another sequester if we have not passed all 12 regular appropriation bills by january. We dont learn our lesson. That would be a bad outcome for sure, for defense. Thank you for your service. I think we had lunch with your son upstairs. Thank you again. Mike and i sit on the intelligence committee. I believe you are the chair for that in the past, so thank you so much. Yes, the answer is yes. Government dysfunction, a government shutdown, would absolutely give signals to the ccp that we do not have our house in order. Would it lead to them more likely moving on taiwan . Im not sure about that because they have other problems, one of which is xi jinping does not think his own military is ready to move on taiwan. That is in part why he routinely exhorts them to get out of what he calls having the peacetime disease. He has used them currently as an inferior fighting force in a lot of ways. Whether they are or not is a different issue, but they are very insecure about their own capabilities to move on taiwan right now. That might change over time. We should be prepared. We have to make sure taiwan is able to deter that type of move. The other point i would make is more broadly, i view this as kind of like a sputnik moment. This issue of the competition with the ccp has united republicans and democrats in a way i have seen few other issues do in washington, d. C. I think we have to use this moment to get our own house in order, whether that is starting to deal with the longterm deficits and debt which i think everyone in this room is concerned about. As mike mentioned upstairs, the way to make sure we have dollar dominance is we have to start paying down the debt and avoid the longterm debt. Another issue is we have got to make sure that on the most pressing issues, whether it is immigration or other similar seemingly intractable issues of Climate Change and so forth, that we have a situation where we are not just driven to action in crisis. We cannot just be a crisis driven organization in congress. I am hoping what is going on with the ccp will help us to fix some of our small d democratic problems at the same time we are dealing with tactics and strategies regarding taiwan or other issues. We are going to go to our virtual members listening in to see if there are any questions. We will take our next question from james. Good afternoon. Thank you for your presentation. I am with the stimson center. I wanted to ask you both. You have spoken about restrictions on outbound investments, index funds, pension funds, etc. , preventing those from being invested in chinese companies, especially those involved in military fusion, etc. I wanted to ask you if this is an instrumental approach to countering chinas military modernization or if you see this as a principled approach to ensuring American Investments do not support human rights abuses in countries around the world . Rep. Gallagher i have always thought of it as a principled approach. The principal is not expediting or supporting our own destruction. If you believe the ccp has benign intentions, maybe you are less concerned about American Capital flowing into china. They are doing things we find morally and politically objectionable. Maybe there are times when you have to make difficult choices between moral concerns and strategic concerns on the world stage. History suggests that is the case. Now is not one of those times. Our values and power politics align. I think given everything the ccp talks about in terms of severing our alliance structure, displacing us from the region, taking taiwan, given the ongoing genocide, there is a principled argument for putting in place restrictions on outbound capital flows. Rep. Krishnamoorthi again, im not exactly sure what instrumental means, but i think it may be a way of [no audio] is this dealing with the modernization issues and the military civil fusion issues . I think so. But it is probably not going to be enough. The amount of money we put into these programs can easily be replaced. Middle Eastern Countries or others could replace our capital with their own, or the chinese could put their own money into it replacing our own, so they could continue with their modernization from a financial standpoint without many bumps. However, i think what we do need to do is just like we did with the highend semiconductors, we have got to engage our partners, allies, and friends on a multilateral basis with regards to whatever endeavors we are tackling because if we do not, they will just play us off against each other and disadvantage our companies and industries, with a friend or someone else gaining an advantage the french or someone else gaining an advantage. We have to do what we are talking about with outbound restrictions. Rep. Gallagher there is a massive opportunity right now. Theres a ton of bipartisan support for australia, u. K. , america, sharing nuclear technology, it is more than that. I have been supportive of it. It came from australia. We risk screwing it up if we do not do a few key things beyond figuring out the longterm way in which we allow australia to have access to our Nuclear SubmarineIndustrial Base without going further south in terms of our own submarine requirements. There is a shortterm opportunity to turbocharge cooperation in the free world. We have no closer alliances than that which we have with australia and u. K. We have regulations that make it difficult for us to share human beings and knowledge and Technology Even with allies with whom we share sensitive intelligence. Breaking down those barriers strikes me as an obvious thing we could do this congress. Rep. Krishnamoorthi it is crazy because there is a large aukus caucus, and yet people cannot act. Yes. Michael, congratulations on a terrific First Program of the season. Beijing has launched what some have categorized as a type of peacekeeping effort. A peace plan for ukraine. The saudiiran deal. What is your perspective . Do we ignore it . Do we counter it . Do we engage in it in some way . What is the commissions word on this . What about tibet . On tibet, we did have an event outside the Chinese Embassy in d. C. With a bunch of tibetans. As we talk about the actual genocide, there is a comparable genocide underway in tibet. What is happening is horrific. It is a story not enough americans know about. It is a story we could tell on the committee. I appreciate your work on that. More probably on the peacekeeping effort, accepting peacekeeping advice from xi jinping would be like accepting Investment Advice from bernie madoff. That may hit a little too close to home. [laughter] rep. Krishnamoorthi be careful. Rep. Gallagher that references outdated. Too soon, i dont know. He is putins no limits partner. He is funding putins war machine. If you read the partnership agreement, it is clear a lot of people underestimated the depths of the partnership. I would argue both countries are waging a war against us. Any attempt to separate what is happening in Eastern Ukraine from the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait would be myopic. I think we have to engage. Rajas key point about building allies and partners systematically is even more critical. Rep. Krishnamoorthi two points. One, i am not worried about the peacekeeping efforts. If they want to play a substantive role on peacekeeping, like they really want to use their leverage with putin to do something significant in ukraine, i think that is great because we do not have a lot of leverage with them ourselves. And we want to see a just end to the war. However, is it 13 or 14 point plan . 12. I always get it wrong. Anyway, there is a 12point plan that did not anywhere mention that russia would have to pull out of ukraine. What kind of Peace Agreement would that be . That is one thing. On the other issue you brought up, playing a role with iran and saudi arabia. Again, i think that is great. Anything they do to help to mend fences is fine. It is not really effective based on what i can tell because they are not willing to put their oomph into trying to play the role of mediator. Obviously, what we are trying to do with the Biden Administration right now is much more powerful. We have a grand bargain involving israel, saudi arabia, and do something with regards to the palestinian question all at the same time, that would be a real coup. All of this was an eye towards what is happening in iraq all of this with an eye towards what is happening in iran. Wherever we can work with the ccp, we should. I question whether they are doing it for appearances to show macron and his colleagues in europe that they are actually playing a constructive role as he tries to drive a wedge between the europeans and americans, or whether they are doing it sincerely. I think it is the former. Im going to violate Council Policy asking for two questions and then we will give our panelists the final word. Daniel and then one from our virtual audience. Thanks, dan rozen. Year to date, global, Corporate Investment into china has collapsed to a threedecade low. Back to pretiananmen square doubles of investment. This is happening without draconian controls from anybody on outbound capital flows. If we were to pass that now, we would hand the communist party the perfect explanation for why people in free markets around the world are not going long china anymore. That could gum up what would otherwise be a great teaching moment, it seems to me. The sort of cost of ill liberalism we have long expected would come to pass in china is happening now and we need to put a light on that rather than letting them draw the foul and blame it on us. Comment . From above, online . Lets take our next question from bryce lee. Mr. Lee, please unmute. It seems we are having difficulties, so i will turn it back over to you. All right. Rep. Gallagher you have the recent analysis of a blockade scenario. Even examining scenario less than war, i forget the overall costs but they were incredible. 3 trillion. These are at the low ends of conflicts. Think about the steaks at the high ends of conflicts. Theres never a better time to put in place guardrails that will last regardless of what investment looks like over two or three years or what administration is in player who has an player who has control of congress. The risks range from having assets seized to the risks for which there are no shareholder protections. These are two real securities what real football is to fantasy football. There are risks the average american does not understand. I still think there is sensible legislation that could be done. One more point to wrap this up and then i will set up because i talk too much. It seems to me xi jinping is preparing for war. That may seem absurd to this audience. I may seem like an unsophisticated rube from the midwest for saying that. We tend to underestimate the probability of these things. Think about the time we are in. We had just won world war ii. Massive victory. The economy was going gangbusters. All of a sudden, we had to deal with the new threat in the form of the soviet union. Because of a few diplomatic missteps, because we civilian eyes our military, we stumbled civilianized our military, we stumbled into a conflict for which we were not prepared and lost 30,000 americans in a war that has largely been forgotten. That is a bad outcome. We should avoid something similar happen in the present day. There is a cult of the korean war right now in china. Xi jinping talks about it in his speeches. Chinese are forced to study the korean conflict. The lessons are different from the ones we draw in the west. This was a time when they stood up to the technologically superior americans and won on the battlefield. The highest grossing chinese movie of all time is about the korean war which shows it in a slightly different way than we learned as marine corps officers. There something going on that we need to take seriously. That is what the purpose of this trip is about. A war between our countries would be horrific. Preventing that outcome i view as one of my missions on this committee and in congress. Rep. Krishnamoorthi i echo that. Perhaps a lot of you already know this. Xi jinpings role model is mao. Maos famous saying around the korean war is one punch saves 100 punches. He was talking about a preemptive attack on the americans and the korean war. That is the outcome we cannot have here. Lets be very clear. If we go to conflict over taiwan, there is a nontrivial chance of a preemptive attack on american interests or targets by the ccp. It is not like this would be over there. It could be right on our doorsteps. It could be our american servicemen and women that would be attacked, or it could be an attack on our Critical Infrastructure in america as a brush back pitch to keep us out of the conflict over taiwan. There is severe potential for miscalculation. He does not get it, i respectfully submit. That is in part why i so strongly support the diplomatic outreach right now. They do not understand americans would not ignore an attack on our interests or people. We would fight. And it would be catastrophic. We cannot go there. That is why, in response to your question, i absolutely think we have to put the guardrails in place right now. Make it super clear to xi jinping exactly where and where we will not go with our investments and send a powerful signal to the private sector not to do the same. We must do that. Furthermore, i have to say that what is happening within china is a tremendous economic slide. I think all of you probably know this already. The one statistic that jumps out to me is as someone put it artfully today, 25 of people the age of 25 are unemployed. Their youth Unemployment Rate is off the charts. Why does that matter . With the onechild policy, one child was supposed to take care of his or her, usually his, parents, and four grandparents. There is no social safety net. There is no Social Security in china. They are relying on their children to take care of them or help take care of them in old age. When you have one child, it means you invested all of your hopes, dreams, money, everything to get educated. And then they come out of college and cannot get a job. Guess what . There are a lot of people that are upset. That is what is happening within china right now. There are a lot of people that are upset. Consumer confidence is at an alltime low. They do not want to buy stuff. That is xi jinpings fundamental problem. I would respectfully submit he should turn inward and cease with the aggression and fix your own house. If he can play by the rules of the road, other countries might be willing to engage more. But until he does that, it is going to be a tough slog for them. It has been a real privilege having you here. Not just for the quality of the conversation but to see the bipartisanship in action and see you traveling here and around the country to gather ideas and listen and incorporate that into the commissions views is very inspiring. Thank you very much for being here. [applause] since 1979, in partnership with the cable industry, cspan has provided complete coverage of the halls of congress, from house and senate floors, two congressional hearings, party briefings, and community meetings. Cspan gives you a front row seat to how issues are debated and decided with no commentary, no interruptions, and completely unfiltered. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. President biden traveling overseas held a press conference in hanoi, vietnam, after meeting with the vietnamese general secretary