Correspond and former beijing bureau chief for the new york times. Im joining today seoul. Its my to introduce susan shirk professor and head of the 21st Century China Center at the university of california, san diego. Were here to celebrate and discuss her new book, overreach how. China derailed its peaceful rise, i have to say, if you want to understand the complexities of whats going on in china today and whats going on between beijing and washington, overreach is the place to start. Susan has been a student of china, a professor teaches about china and a Government Official who made policy about china as Deputy Assistant secretary of at the state department. I can personally attest to her role in government in 1999. We were both passengers on the government plane to china. I was a lawyer in the back of the plane. She was up front advising albright, the secretary of state, on what to do and what to say. When we landed in beijing. She has written over at a particularly important moment and the book is on the money. It lays out the story of the political and economic circumstances in china that enabled jinping to him the most, make himself most powerful leader since eyes at dawn. Over the next susan will walk through the machinations of chinas rise to power and its complex politics. Well have minutes of conversation between the two of us and then. 15 to 20 minutes of q a from you. If you are watching along with us, please put your and questions in the texture on youtube and well be to them later in the. So, susan, lets get started. As they say. We have just seen the most Extraordinary Congress of the communist party of china. These are every five year events. It was the coronation of jinping who can now reign over china as long as he works no constitutional or term. He is basically emperor of everything, the economy the military, Foreign Policy through the lens of overreach. Can you tell us why it was relatively easy for sesion ping to establish himself in such a powerful position. Well thank you, jane. And its really a great privilege to have this conversation with you today. As someone who has yourself studying china and asia a very long time. You know that it was surprisingly easy for xi jinping to consolidate power establish this system of highly centralized personal estate rule. And because don champion had sort to institutionalize the chinese political system to make it more predictable all based more on collect tive leadership than strongmen rule. And he, Deng Xiaoping, of course, was mao successor, who came into power after mao died. And i was. And institutionalize myself. I thought this was really something that was going to forever and that the central committee, the politburo, the standing, they would be adequate at checking the overconcentration of power in the hands of the leader because of course that was done. Champagnes objective to prevent the emergence of another mao zedong who in dozens. Carried out overconcentration of power in a way that led to arbitrary Decision Making and like the great leap forward and the cultural revolution. But in fact those collective institutions of the party pretty much just rolled over. When xi jinping came into power the first of all, he made the case for the need for more constant trade and leadership, because collective leadership under his hu jintao had become so corrupt and it was really the distaste for a corrupt head that gave him the mandate among. The party elite and the public too. And so he carried out this massive Anticorruption Campaign which was also a purge of his potential rivals. Also the fact that darvish peng really had and de mao managed enough so to rely on the collective institutions of the party to check the leader. But without establishing a more authoritative legislature a parliament or a legal system to check the Party Politicians just proved to be inadequate. So its a combination of don shown limitations. And then xi jinpings ability make the case that it would take a more concentrated to get rid of corruption and restore the of party rule but also the campaign was quite popular among among the people. So xi jinping had something to to to go with. Oh, for i mean, it has very popular among the people right up to this day. And in fact, even though the elite, the political elite, the intellectual elite, private business people, xi jinping is popular with them by any means but with lao, by sheng or the masses in china, theyve he was just fine because he was cleaning up corruption and also his nationalist foreign appealed to them because they thought, yes, its for china to stand up in the world. So i think we should maybe you are back to the beginning. And when you first went to china, i have to tell everybody that susan beat Richard Nixon to china. Thats really quite a feat. Us when you went and why it was that the Prime Minister then jo ann lin you met said well i wish susan shirk was president. The United States. Well, that was a pretty exciting for someone 22 years old. I was a graduate student doing my Dissertation Research in hong kong because. Of course, no americans could go to china. So in order to study what was happening, china, you either read the propaganda in daily and other official media or you interviewed refugees who had left china and come to hong kong. So i was there. I along other phd students studying china and we were invited to visit soon after the ping chain. And traveled all over for a month and. As you know, i had the very special express end of four hour meeting with zhou and lyon and the great hall of the people with two of the four gang of four i on either side him. Yeah. Yeah. When you act in china change how checking on him to make sure that he didnt do anything wrong so it was quite an experience. Yes. My luck and the really good. I mean, when i started china, i might never able to go, but things opened up just at the right. But he did say, i wish susan shirk was president of the United States. Thats and thats because his interpreter spent the afternoon with our group and she and i nancy tong had headed off and im from new york she grew up in new york. Her father was a u. N. Diplomat. And so she mustve briefed him and happened to mention my name. And thats how it happened. Yeah. So lets fast forward to 1998. And you were on president clintons trip to beijing and. There was a press conference. What happened . Well it was really a rumor cabal visit, all in all, because it was one of those times in chinese political history when things were really loosening up and there was a lot more open political discussion about all sorts topics and we our side president clinton, the first lady, had really pushed hard to. Have the for us to speak to the chinese public. And so we wanted press conference to televised to the public and also for the press clintons speech to the students at beijing university to be televised live to the public and the chinese side. Both of those things and at the press corps and which is from todays view when nothing like that could occur today, it just makes you realize how things go up and, down. And right now theyve gone down. But in the press conference, president clinton said things in way were urging dialog the dalai lama on the issue. President clintons said you know to president jiang, you know you really should meet with the dalai lama. You would really like him. Hes a remarkable human being. And and and president jiang accepted this, you know, and he had the savoir to kind of joust with president clinton and a very friendly manner. Extraordinary. I mean, one of the extraordinary things about xi jinping is that hes never met with a western journalist. Even putin meets with western journalists. I think on occasion once a year, makes available from time to time. No chance, man had i interviewed the person who, helped, prepared a man for a Television Interview and things like that. So he recognized, just as we wanted to, directly to the chinese. He as chinas slater, should speak directly to american people. So he wanted to learn how to do that. And of course, zemin had been educated in the pre 49 period in at a webster Oriented School so he knew some and had more cosmopolitan perspective than successors did. So maybe you could contrast that with what happened to president obama when he went to china in 2008 and wanted to do a press conference and that sort of fits in with your narrative of how things changed in china. Yes, truth hasnt six, seven, eight, nine. This was the period it was collective leadership a along the lines that Deng Xiaoping had prescribed and yet chinese policy see and Foreign Policy as well as policy really changed during that period and thats what motivated to write the book that puzzle of why did that and. One of the most dramatic events was when president obama, as you say, went to paid a state visit china and the obama administration, every intention of to pursue an engagement policy with china. But it was a very cold visit they did not allow the televised press conference or in televised speech by president obama, in large part according to the people who were involved in negotiate or attempting to. They were afraid that obama with such a figure theyd seen it in egypt when he went and spoke there and in their view had kind of aroused what they would view as Color Revolution against the authoritarian government there so they were kind of afraid then the power of his rhetoric would arouse the chinese in the same way. So they were quite suspicious of him and didnt allow much public view of president. He didnt. He did speak to he spoke students but in a closed circuit, right . Thats right. It was not nationally televised and where the student did the students show. Any signs of wanting to overthrow the government . I mean, without it, without anybody is going to be. No, they were not right to be scared. And, you know, this is, of course, a theme of all of my research on china is the deep of insecurity of chinese leaders, because theyre not elected by the people. Theyre chosen by an internal process and in the communist party. And so their sense of their own legitimate say is shaky. And of course, the fall of the soviet union brought home this important and fearsome lesson to them that no matter how large the party is, no matter how popular it may appear to be it could collapse any moment either because bottom up rebellion or because a public split in the leadership or i want to come back to that but id like to keep a little going little bit if i can on the chronology of you were a Government Official, you went Madeleine Albright to beijing in 1999 and at the time there was a big debate on how to get china into the wto and World Trade Organization. I should now theres lot of there are a lot of recriminations in d. C. About letting china into the wto. Looking back, do you it was the right thing to do. Absolutely because it did stimulate at the time. More marketization of the chinese economy and the United States really everything to gain and nothing to lose our market was already open. And, you know, its true that there was a lot of people have written about the china shop after china joined wto in the sense that barring firms investment china more after china the wto and this could lead to a surge in chinese which certainly did have some impact on american workers. But by and large the Chinese Market opened created all sorts of opportunities. International business and and the industry grew that we oversold chinas accession to the wto because. We needed to get congressional support for permanent normal trade relations. So and you know all trade are very, very difficult to gain the approval of congress. So we oversold the political consequences of that it was going to lead to grad school democratization china which i mean we actually we didnt exactly say that but that was the implication. And that certainly has been true. So that is the a disappointment, not the economic results. I think they were, you know, still a very beneficial deal for the United States. But there is a lot of grumbling about china has able to, quote unquote, steal our secrets because weve given them too much access to market, i suppose you could ask the question. And as a mean and not enforcement of wto rules has time to be able to get away away quote unquote away with what people in washington allege. Well, i think issue is really that World Trade Organization doesnt have rules about foreign investor and about agreements on Technology Transfer all all the issues that were now most concerned about are really not dealt with. Wto rules, you know, the Old Fashioned trade agreement really. So what you need to do, update the wto to deal with these new issues, maybe there needs to be a new body. Its its antiquated and out of step. I just want to remind the audience, if youre watching along with us, please, your questions and comments in the texture on youtube. Wed love to have your questions chinas big topic and you can susan knows a lot and you can ask anything you would like so lets get to hu jintao who you was a leader before jinping and who we saw in a rather sad scene the last recent congress being assisted from the stage, the end. Hes basically your main the guy who you leader who you describe as having set the stage for this achievement of power by seeing ping what was it that he and what is meaning what were the specific aspects of his of his role. Well i believe that child was a wellmeaning girl who who rural but he was first among equals. He wasnt very forceful leader and the standing in a was expanded to nine members including the the security czar who was the head of what i call the control panel meaning internet. We got a sound chair in the background. Yeah okay. The internal Security Police and the propaganda department, the military. So the control coalition hijacked powers they as one of the members of the collective leadership and. And so hu jintao as first term was actually quite impressed it was peak freedom of information in china as you will recall the we had Investigative Journalism we had quite a lot of public on the internet and social media wave law was very popular then and they tried it of course this is after the fall of the soviet union they tried create a form of an authoritarian in governance that was more responsive to the people. But then it was also it by the time of the second term, a time we saw these sharp changes in Foreign Policy in South China Sea, where china started asserting its claims by the other claimants and the United States surveillance that were sailing through the south sea and. That really changed, changed the narrative of the world about was china going to be able to peacefully or it a more assertive, even aggressive rising power and internally as i mentioned earlier, we also saw this tightening up over social life, over the media as well as the state role in the economy got stronger. So its like hu jintao kind of lost control of things he lost control of the military. But, you know, and there were as when the secretary of defense came to visit, there was a test of a new stealth air that the chinese did at that very when the secretary defense was there, the delegation came are leaving before meeting president hu because it seemed of a slap in the face to test your new plane at the time the secretary of defense from the United States was there. He decided not to, but he did raise the issue with president harry. And he said, you know the the press is going to me in the press conference when i leave here was this the chinese trying to send you a message by testing this plane a military jet at this time. And so president who was surprised to learn that the test had occurred and he said he turned his left and said is that true . And it went down the line, up the general and so that was very embarrassing tells a very revealing very revealing that had not just told him but not him because for sure. There was going to be a question about it. So they were basic, clearly undercutting their civilian leadership. And there were a number of similar examples of the of hu jintao control over the military. So its a very messy, decentralized. Kind of administration. And as a result, each one of the bureaucratic Interest Groups went its own way in trying to build up its own budget. So power and nobody questioned they didnt question one another. In fact, they had a kind of log rolling in which they just went along one another. And hu jintao didnt discipline them at all. And that is why you started to see overreach during that period. You mentioned the South China Sea and under the military military started to assert its claims and later on they started to build artificial islands which then put military installations on these artificial islands in one of the most important waterways in the world. And now i just recent pictures taken last week by a photographer who was given a filipino photographer who flew over the islands and they are now just chockablock full of buildings. You can see weapons. You can see. So back then in 2000 and what a nine youre talking about, what could it it seems to me that the United States could have started negotiating patience with the chinese military, which was much weaker at the time and said and started a set of negotiate actions that these are International Order islands in International Waters and not theyre not chinas sole prerogative. Lets work out here. I never understood why they were not in negotiations to try and get the