You have a hard act to follow. Believe me, this is the guy to follow it. Because what we have done is now we are following it up with maybe our favorite programming partners, the u. S. Army command and general Staff College in fort leavenworth. For the better part of the past century, it seems, we have been trying to figure out our relationship with china. Are we allies, adversaries . Sometimes it seems we are both at the same time. Worlds two biggest economies. Right now, we see china as a linchpin in what might happen with north korea. We are fortunate to have with us one of the foremost authorities on u. S. China relations. He will examine a key 50 years in the relationship of the two countries, in this case from 1900 and 1950 that really set the stage for a lot of what was to come, including south korea, the korean war and the vietnam war. Its a period hes looking at the started with american involvement in conjunction with the boxer rebellion of 1900. This of course was before xi jinping was even a twinkle in Donald Trumps eye, or maybe its vice versa, im not sure. As i said before, the event continues. I think our favorite and most successful Programming Partnership with the command and general Staff College, they are specialists. I am sure many of you have been to their presentations before. They do not fail. They are engaging, they are enlightening, and th are entertaining. They are terrific to have here. I think this is geoffs first time here. He is long overdue. Hes taught there since 1991. He is a retired u. S. Army special forces officer. He was a lieutenant colonel. He was trained by the army as a China Foreign area officer, which is one of the Military Branch experts of the region he served on the joint staff. He was in the Defense Intelligence agency, so he has an intelligence background. He was a senior china analyst and Deputy Director of current intelligence with the u. S. Civic pacific command, he served with the army pacific command. He is steeped in asian and china relations. He has a masters degree in east asian languages and cultures and a doctorate in history from k. U. Theres nobody better to walk us through one of the worlds thorniest political relationships. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome geoff babb. [applause] geoff hi, great to be here tonight. I have been working china since 1979. It has been an adventure. I will start off by saying anybody who says they are an expert on china is a fool. Im going to run you through the history and then you can make up your mind whether my take on it is the one that you believe in or not. I started off with john k. Fairbank who was the foremost , american historian on china. He and his wife both served in china during worldar ii. He was a professor at harvard. What he basically outlined in this one slight is how we get started. Believe it or not, there was a pivot to asia before november of 2011, when the soon not to be president clinton announced it during the obama administration. As you can see, we are a pacific power. Manifest destiny did not stop in San Francisco, it kept going. With alaska, the opening up of japan, and 10 years before the opening up of japan, the United States made their first treaty with china. And that is the treaty where we andmost favored nation extraterritoriality for american businessman that were in china. And you can see this next slide, the United States navy was in china for a long time. We were patrolling the internal rivers of china in 1854. Now i wanted to do this prelude because i did not want to start with the boxer rebellion like we just arrived that day. For all intents and purposes, we actually start trading with china with this shift, the empress of china in 1784. And with those ships, the trade with china begins, and it is still out there. As a matter of fact, we are usually the number one or number two trading partner with china. The end of the day, we did that all the way up until 1949. Minginterestingly, young was the First Chinese graduate, graduated from yale. It was later taken away from him. But in 1872, there were 120 students that went to connecticut and started to study in the United States. It was part of something called the selfstrengthening movement. The gentleman over here is essentially the foreignpolicy advisor for the ching dynasty. You will see his name in a lot of different places doing a lot of different things, because he was basically their key diplomat. He also helped form one of their armies during the taiping rebellion. The chinese actually should have done better than the japanese, in building a modern military. But somewhere down the road, somebody needs to come in and talk to you about the restoration and what the japanese did so you can compare and contrast the japanese to the chinese. Because the chinese leadership in beijing under the emperor empress dowager didnt exactly want to follow the westernization model. So there was a lot of trouble in china in terms of building a modern military. The foreign militaries were certainly there and capable of doing it, and some of them wanted to do it. So the pictures are of factories that were building weapons that were european factories of the chinese thought. That the chinese bought. But they also made the problem of finding different guns from different people at different times, different calibers, and that essentially doesnt go ll. And it didnt and it doesnt. The warlords will do the same thing. The warlords will buy airplanes, guns from different people at different times, and so china has a hard time getting its stuff, getting together and arsenal and a system of arsenals that will work. Now we are ready to start. We have a little bit of a background. In 1900, the emperor, based on the success of an indigenous religious movement called the boxers, decided that she would declare war on the west and japan and the United States. And in doing that, began the seeds of the legations in beijing. Because of that siege, the western powers plus japan plus the United States mounted an expedition which today we would call a noncombative evacuation, to send a force in to relieve an embassy and to get the americans out is what we were going to do. So, there are about 500 or 600 foreigners that are besieged in beijing. A small group of about 3000 leave and try to go up, and are unable to move further on. Its about 110 miles from the coast of china to beijing. It is probably 60 or 70 miles. And so, a force of 17,000 to , move in, andnd eventually relieve the 3000 that are trapped. Are trapped. They will form this larger group that will make it to beijing. If you like, the movie 55 days might just go watch that, you it will be more fun. At the end of the day, the chinese dont call it the boxer rebellion. This is a picture i took at the pla museum in beijing and this is what they call it, the war against the invasion of the eightpower allied force. It wasnt a very happy affair. Within 11 years, the ching dynasty, the last of the chinese dynasties, will fall. One could argue that the major blow was the sinojapanese war of 1894, 1895. In the boxer rebellion, the two largest groups of allies will be the russians and the japanese. The United States will have a little over 2000 people that will be part of this. Here are the different nations. And the allied chinese troops were essentially troops trained by the british. These are the americans. Would, order number would be the order that you take listthe aging general the adjutant general so you could get credit on your record for having served in the boxer rebellion. These are the crafts of five of the regiments that took part. Artillery regiment, defend artillery, sixth cavalry, and the ninth, 14th, and 15th infantry regiments. We will not leave china, militarily, for the next 49 years. So, i got it. We have been in iraq for a long time. My son is serving there right now. We have been in afghanistan for a long time. We have been in germany for a long time. We have been in japan for a long time. One can argue the United States military when itoes someplace, stays. This is as good example as any. We wouldnt have left when we did if it hadnt been for mao and the winning of the chinese civil war. So, if you are over there, you can get your china ribbon. These regiments still exist. They are very famous regiments of the United States army. Since i mentioned those places and everybody doesnt have a map of china in their head like i came to have right now, these are the forts down here. You have to come ashore. These are terrible mud flaps. You can see this meandering river, you can see the road, and railroad. We tried them all. This is the 55 days to peking, and we will eventually get to peking and relieve the delegation. The new york times, in terms of fake news, had reported the chinese had overrun the legation and had massacred them all. And the relief formation under a british general went, well, is there still a reason to go . The answer was, its not verified. We need to go. So, they still mounted it even though there was news it was too late. It was not a popular thing to do back home. Anybody here from connecticut . Hartford . Been to mark twains house . Mark twain isnt from missouri. Hes a yankee. Well, if you go to his house, you can see some of the different writings that he had as essentially running against u. S. Imperialism. So, as far as the boxers were concerned, from mark twains perspective, they were the patriots and we had no right to be there. One can argue the people of the United States were split right down the middle on whether or not to do the imperialist thing globally or whether to stay home. So, one can argue that we have come by our current desire to look at neoisolationism rightly. Theres another thing that happened though, at the end of shat war, the eight power i basically presented a bill to the Chinese Government for the cost of the war. No, President Trump did not dream of the idea of making iraq pay for it. It is something that had happened before. We actually cut in half the indemnity that was going to come to the United States, and then used the indemnity to provide scholarships to chinese students. I dont know whether their immigrant visas were played with or not but it wasnt on the sevencountry list at the time. At the end of the day, theres a social legacy out there of the United States being different than the european powers and different than japan. There is, and some would say, a myth out there that china and the United States have a special relationship. But if that myth is true, a good place to start is here. They are using the indemnity for educational purposes. We will have soldiers and especially marines in ina from 1900 on. We guard that corridor from beijing to the fort so we can always evacuate our citizens. 15th infantry regiment in permanently. Permanently means until 1938. And we probably wouldnt have left in 1938 but for the Second World War beginning in china in 1937. So, this is the regiment to be in. Today if you are in the United States army and you are a fired up young captain or fired up young new recruit, you want to go to the 82nd airborne. You want to jump out of airplanes, go everywhere. Well, in 1912 to 1938, this was the regiment to go to. And you can tell they were on road marches just like the guys bragg. At any point in time, one of the new colonels showed up and decided that we were getting soft and we needed to do more pt, physical training. Off we go on these 20mile road marches. Whats interesting is in this regiment, in this time frame, will serve the some of the most famous officers from world war ii. So this regiment will have many officers. Theres an argument that i tried to make that the United States army understood china, it lived in china. When we began to be advisors to the chinese which will begin in we have a cadre of Office Errors and in cosicers that have been to china and still ll personally puthe culture Language Program into this regiment. So, like today, when we want our soldiers that are going to iraq or afghanistan to speak arabic, there is a longstanding tradition of having soldiers understanding the culture of a nation they are going into, will be stationed in. Then there is the airplanes. In 1934, the colonel took airplanes into china. Everybody knows the flying tigers. Before claris and all, the United States was in there working with the chinese on building an air force before the war with japan. Now, the problem was we sold them these weapons, taught them how to fly them, and then shane kaishek used them against one of his own warlords. One of the warlords supposedly on his side. Kind of went off track. We apparently went up to Chang Kaishek. And chastised him for using these planes fighting his own folks. I wish point he told us to pound sand and we left. We will be replaced by the italians. Name a good italian plane. So, the curtis planes we were selling them eventually died for lack of parts and lack of maintenance. And the italians came in, the planes were not very good, the training of the pilots was worse. And what you see is a disaster in 1937 in terms of the Chinese Air Force. The chinese in the early 1920s, 1924, established the military academy. At the military academy, Chang Kaishek will begin to build the professional army that should have been built in 1854. Is a guyer in this named zhou enial. Tongue mao se tongs until they both die in second 1976. He is the deputy to Chang Kaishek. Because at that time, the nationalist party that had grown basically the same party. It was the left wing and the right wing of the party. Chang being the right, joe being the left. But they were training young officers to build the new chinese army, the chinese republican army. This is how it starts. Tone kaishek had gone military high school in japan, had visited the soviet union. The other had gone to france, studied in france, and picked up communist or committees communist proclivities there. The First Advisor to shanker scheck are the soviets the best shanghaischeck schecks advisors are the russians. One of Chang Kaisheks sons, will basically replace him when he dies as the head of taiwan, is sent to live in the soviet union. Will marry a russian lady and stay there more than a decade. He will eventually come back, not particularly friendly with his father until later. So, Chang Kaishek will eventually kick the soviet advisers out because he does not appreciate the way they want to do the political training among the troops. D so, he wl kick them out. And then he will bring in the germans. The germans will promise to build 60 divisions. They get about 20 of them built when the japanese attack. As you know, the japanese and germans will be allies during world war ii. The japanese will basically call up the germans and say, would you might stop training the chinese . They are Getting Better and they are starting to beat us, and thats not a good thing. Most of the german advisors will leave. There are several german advisers who dont like hitler who will stay. So, you will see these stories of these strange colonels and Lieutenant Colonels from the german army in china working and training. But the germans built and equipped 20 divisions before 1937, and they were Chang Kaisheks best divisions. One of Chang Kaisheks sons goes to germany. Now, im going to make the case down the road. Chang kaishek was no great democrat. He was our friend, sort of. If you are a stilwell fan, he is a peanut on a raft. If youre a taiwan fan and using think the mesh and you think Chang Kaishek is the best thing since sliced bread for what he did on taiwan, you can float another story. But the story at the beginning is he is a far right National Socialist and he is accompanying , and working with until 1927 the communist left wing. There happens to be a guy named roberts who is related to senator roberts, who in 1937 thhappens to be a guy named happens to be catching a ride up the river with the navy, when the japanese attack it. And major roberts, who will become colonel roberts and be Chang Kaisheks Intelligence Officer in the chinaburmaindia theater is awarded a distinguished Service Cross for his actions as the senior officer on this ship when this tragedy happens. The japanese will apologize, pay reparations, but they certainly sent us the message that we were no longer wanted. And later that year in beijing, the Second World War will begin in asia. This is a picture of what is known as the marco polo bridge, and it doesnt take long for the japanese to take that. Now, i dont have the slides on manchuria. But the chinese were fighting the japanese that were encroaching from the puppet state they had set up in manchuria. The head of that puppet state was the last emperor. At the end of this time, the japanese will move to shanghai and will begin to move inland. And so in 1937, the war for shanghai. They will move upriver to nanjing, and the nanjing massacre everybody has heard about. In that process, Chang Kaishek will lose most of his 20 divisions. Chang kaisheks diaries were released se