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. Right now we see china as a linchpin in what might happen with north korea. Two countries with the most biggest economies, a fifth of our exports come from them, a fifth of their exports come from we do not know really we are allies are adversaries. We are fortunate to have with us one of the foremost authorities on u. S. China relations, jeff have. Babb. F he will examine a key 50 years been 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 that started with american involvement in conjunction with the boxer rebellion of 1900. This, of course was before xi , jinping is 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 specialist, and i am sure many of you have been to their presentations before. They do not fail. They are engaging, they are enlightening, and they are entertaining. They are terrific to have here. I think this is geoffs first time here. Hes overdue. Hes taught there since 1991. Hes a retired u. S. Armys special forces officer. He was a lieutenant colonel. He was trained by the army as a china for an area 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. And a doctorate in history from k. U. There is nobody better to walk us through one of the worlds geopolitical relationships. Please welcome geoff babb. [applause] dr. Babb hi, great to be here tonight. I have done work on china since 1979. It has been an adventure. Ill start off by saying anyone 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 own mind whether my take on it is the one that you believe in or not. I started off with john cato don k fairbank who was the , foremost american historian on china. He and his wife both served in china during world war ii ii. World war ii. And he was a professor at harvard. When he basically outlined in this one slide is how he got 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. But 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. Iang xi,the treaty of where we got mostfavorednation and 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 , but 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 ship, 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, it were usually the number one or number two trading partner with china. People tend not to forget that. The end of the day, we did that on the young zero for Yangtze River all the way up until 1949. Very interestingly, young men was the First Chinese graduate, graduated from yale and got american citizenship. It was later taken away from him. But in 1872, there were 120 students who went to connecticut and started to study in the United States. It was part of something called the self strengthening movement. Here, li han over 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 diplomats. 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 holding a modern military. Building a modern military. The foreign militaries were certainly there and were capable of doing it, and some of them wanted to do it. Factoriestures are of that were building weapons that were european factories that the chinese bought. But they also made the problem of dying different guns from the front people at different times, different calibers, and that essentially does not go well. And it didnt and it doesnt. The samerds would do thing. The warlords will buy airplanes, guns from different people at different times, and china has a hard time getting together an arsenal and system of arsenals that will work. Now we are ready to start, we have a bit of a background. In 1900, the empress dowager, 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 that 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 stopped, and are unable to move further on. Its about 110 miles from the coast of china to beijing. Tengion is probably 60, 70 miles. This is where it gets started. A force of 17,000 to 18,000 will forts, moved to tengion, and basically relieve the 3000 that 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 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 power eight power allied force. It wasnt a very happy affair. Within 11 years, the ching dynasty, the last of the chinese dynasties, the manchu dynasty, 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 under one of their generals. So here are the different nations. And the allied chinese troops were essentially troops trained by the british. These are the americans, and general order number one would be the order that you take in to the general so you could get credit on your record for having served in the boxer rebellion. These are the crafts of five of crests of five of the regiments that took part. Artillery regiment, defend the fifth artillery sixth , cavalry, and the ninth, 14th, and 15th infantry regiment. 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 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 it goes someplace, stays. [laughter] dr. Babb and this is a 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. 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. 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. They 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 is essentially writing against full 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 United States and 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 courage desire to look at neoisolationism rightly. Theres another thing that happened though, at the end of that war, the eight powers basically presented a bill to the Chinese Government for the cost of the war. So no President Trump did not , dream up the idea of making iraq pay for it. It is something that happens 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 playing played with or not but it , wasnt on the seven country list at the time. So at the end of the day, theres a social legacy out there of the United States being different than the european powers and different in japan then japan. And there is, and some would say, a myth out there that china and the United States have a special relationship. If that myth is true, a good place to start is here with they are using the indemnity for educational purposes. Soldiers and especially marines in china from 1900 on. We guard that corridor or from so that wethe forts can always evacuate our citizens. Put the912, we will 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 a fired up young captain or fired up young new recruit, you want to go to the 82nd airborne. Jump onto an airplane, beat people up, go everywhere. Well, in 1912 to 1938, this was the regiment to go to. And you can tell here on road marches just like the guys are, at a point in time, one of the onelsernel showed up col showed up and decided that we were getting soft and we needed to do more pt, physical training. Off we go on these 20 mile road marches. Whats interesting is in this regiment, in this time frame, will serve the some of the most famous officers from world were world war ii. Stillwell, marshall, what a mire emyer, and others. This regiment will have many officers. Theres an argument that i tried to make that the United States army understood china, he lived they lived in china. When we began to be advisors to the chinese, which will begin in 1941, we have a cadre of officers and ncos that have been to china and still will personally put the culture Language Program into this regiment. So, like today, when we want our soldiers that are going to iraq or afghanistan to speak sorry or air arabic is a longstanding , tradition of having soldiers understanding the culture of a nation they are going into, will be stationed in. And then there are the airplanes. In 1934, the colonel took airplanes into china. Now Everybody Knows the flying , tigers. Everybody knows claris hall. But before that the united , states was in there working with the chinese on building an air force before the war with japan. Now, the problem was that we sold them these weapons, taught them how to fly them then , changed how to use them against one of his own warlords. One of the warlords of a that was supposedly on his side he kind of went off track. We apparently went up to Chang Kaishek. We chastised him for using these planes for fighting his own folks, at which point he told us to pound sand and leave, which 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 that military academy, Chang Kaishek will begin to build the professional army that should have been built in 1854. His partner in this now, for zhou enlai, which were those of you who studied china at all, is mao zedongs until they both second die in 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 right, zhou being the left. But they were training young officers to build the new chinese army, the chinese republican army. This is how it starts. Chang kaishek has gone to military high school in japan, has visited the soviet union. Enlai has gone to france, studied in france, and picked up his communist probabilities. Here the first two advisors at whampoa are the russians, the soviets. One of Chang Kaisheks sons, he will basically replace him when he dies as the head of taiwan, and is sent to live in the soviet union. You will marry a russian lady he will marry a russian lady wi\l 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. And so, he will 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 mind stop training the chinese . They are Getting Better and they are starting to beat us, and thats not a good thing. So 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 who are in china. They are working with the 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 on a raft. If you are a taiwan fan and think Chang Kaishek is the best thing since sliced bread for what he did on taiwan, you can float another story. The story at the beginning is, he is a far right national socialist, and he is accompanying and working with , until the communist left wing. 1927, there happens to be a guy named roberts who is related to , senator roberts, who in 1937 happens to be on a uss ship catching a ride up the river , with the navy, when the japanese attack. And major roberts, who will become colonel roberts and will become 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 sent the message that we were no longer wanted certainly. , 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 everyone has t