Hey, everyone. Thank you for joining us this evening. I realize it's past 5 p.m. on a Thursday, and we're all here. So thank you again for that. So today we are here to share our journey about customer centric observability and how at Intuit, we've been able to successfully detect customer impact in under three minutes. I'm sure most of you are familiar with Intuit and what it does. Our mission is to power prosperity around the world with our products like TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, and MailChimp. And behind these products are five major platforms that enable and accelerate innovation and enable consistency across all of these products. And as you can see looking at these numbers, the scale that we work with is enormous. The organization that I and Naga are part of is DevX. And our job is to build the platforms and tools that enable our developers to deliver products faster and operate them excellently. I'm Vinit Samhel, Group Dev Manager at Intuit, and I'm here with Naga, our principal engineer. As you may be familiar, we have received the CNCF award this year again, and we are grateful for that. And we are both active contributors as well as maintainers of open-source projects. So let's take a step back on our journey. So when we started our journey, we were largely focused on system-centric monitoring. What that means is across the thousands of services and the hundreds of web apps, plugins, and widgets that we have across Intuit, each one of these components had their own way of monitoring and measuring their availability. But when any of these components had an outage, we lacked an understanding of customer impact. Our time to detect these problems was also extremely high. After detecting the problem, isolating this problem to the specific experiences that have gone down, the experiences that are unavailable, and how do you actually recover from this problem, how do you root cause, how do you repair, took even longer. All in all, at our scale, we were spending a ton of dollars, but not necessarily getting the best ROI on observability. And most importantly, we realized that we were not leveraging our own data. So we took a step back, and we anchored around one of our core values at Intuit, which is customer obsession. What that means is we fall in love with our customers' problems, and then we sweat every detail of the experience to deliver excellence. Now, when you look at observability, we see it's no different. So while focusing on our systems is very important, focusing on what customers are experiencing is even more important. The technology that powers our products evolves in time, the solutions change in time. But the end user value that you're delivering is durable. That stays in time. So while measuring service availability is very important, what is even more important is measuring your customer experience availability. And that's what we're focused on. Obviously, experience availability has a direct correlation to your business revenue as well, which is very measurable. So when we measure experience availability, we established a most basic premise, which is customer interaction. Now, our customer interaction is defined as a value-driven action that the customer performs with the product experience. Seems very simple. Some examples are a user signs into the product, a user e-files taxes. A user makes a payment. Now, it's important to clarify that we are not focused on the micro-events and micro-interactions like clicks and scrolls. But what we are focused on is, what value does the customer get when they actually click on that button? That's the value that we're focused on. That is the customer interaction that we're talking about. Now, we measure these interactions in three states. One is a successful interaction where the customer was able to proceed further and do what they were seeking out to do. Second, a degraded interaction where a suboptimal experience was delivered to the customer. And finally, a failed customer interaction where the customer actually had unavailability with that experience and couldn't proceed further. Now, by measuring failed customer interactions, we can exactly quantify what is the experience availability. And we'll shortly talk about how we do that. So to solve this problem, we built a platform for failed customer interactions. It's part of our real user monitoring offering. And what we did was we built a library which is integrated in all our products, integrated in our web products, integrated in our mobile products. And this library enables our developers to add instrumentation. We'll shortly talk about the nature of this instrumentation that emits specific telemetry. We have a scalable back-end that ingests and reaches processes, this telemetry, at massive scale. It persists this in our operational data lake. And then the millions and billions of interactions that are going on at any given point of time, how do we make sense of it? We make sense of this with NUMAPROJ, our open-source project, which sniffs out anomalies, which sniffs out issues from these interactions. It identifies patterns. It identifies issues and outages that our customers are experiencing. When we identify an anomaly, when we identify an alert-worthy problem, our developers are alerted with very contextual alerts. What they get is an alert that talks about the specific asset or the component that's failing, the exact number of users that are experiencing that impact at that point of time. And we also give them a deep link into a curated UX, which starts their journey or kickstarts their journey from detection of the problem to root cause. I'm going to hand over to Naga now. Who's going to walk us through the details of the implementation? Thank you, Vinay. Is it clear? Let's now dive into the detail. So the first step is the instrumentation. This is where we ask the product team to actually identify the key interactions in their applications. And the developers from their product team go about instrumenting it using the simple interface as shown here. This is where they can provide a user-friendly interaction name and supply it with additional key value tags. Next, the developer go about writing the business logic, as usual. This is where you may perform a few back-end API calls, get past the response, render it in the UI. After that, you can end the interaction. When you end it, you can either mark it as success or failure. This is very specific to that interaction and the business logic related to that interaction. When the interaction fails, you can also supply it with additional reason for the failure. Now, this interface behind the scene actually uses the OpenTelemetry.js library. So when the interaction is created, a trace context is generated behind the scene. And as back-end API calls happen throughout the lifecycle of that interaction, this trace context is propagated to the back-end. So this is how we join the front-end with the back-end and provide that end-to-end view. This library is actually embedded in all the products, both in the web and the mobile of Intuit products. Let's look at the high-level design. So as customers use our products, FCIs are generated in the background. And then they are sent to our OpenTelemetry collector in the back-end. We have written a custom processor to extract FCI metrics from these spans. It's a page-in-duty alert right there. Yeah. So we extract FCI metrics from these spans. So things like success count, error, degraded count, latencies of the interaction across multiple dimensions. This is then aggregated over a minute window using a stream processing pipeline based off of beam and fling. And then sent to a Kafka topic, which is part of our operational data lake. Using this operational data lake, we not only solve observability use cases, but use cases in the other domain like security and development velocity as well. The aggregated FCI metrics is then persisted in Druid. It is an OLAP data store providing subsequent query performance. And also sent to Wavefront for all our alerting needs. The aggregated metric is also analyzed by our AI op system, the NUMA approach, which generates this anomaly score for each of these interactions. So using this FCI metrics, we are able to detect any issue pretty quickly. But to enable the isolation, we also want the raw spans. So to that, from the open telemetry collector, we use the S3 exporter to send that traces into Grafana tempo, which is our trace to. This is how the data collection and analytics pipeline look like. Now as an on-call engineer, you can use the UX of the GraphQL-based API that we have on top of this data lake to extract these metrics and traces from the data store. I'd like to highlight a couple of important use cases that Minit had mentioned earlier. The first thing is the quantifying of the impact. So whenever there is an issue or an incident that happened, the first question the leadership asks is how many unique users are impacted. So when we want to do these kind of operations on the number of events that we are collecting, where in the range of millions of events over a short period of time, running count-distinct queries is computationally intensive and takes a lot of time. Since we deal with operational metrics, approximate value with fixed error boundary is acceptable. So to that end, there is a library of streaming algorithms provided by Apache Data Sketch. So they have algorithm for each type of use cases. So specifically on this case, we use something called as the hyperlog log algorithm. It is able to estimate fields with billions of cardinality with an error rate of just plus or minus 2% and about 1.5 kB of memory. So Apache Druid actually supports this and many other sketches using the data sketch extension. The other problem is how do we identify or how do we provide quality signals and rule out all the noise that's happening? So what happened was, as we started collecting these FCI metrics, we observed that errors are inevitable in the front end. There are a lot of client-related dimensions that come in in terms of the client device, the network, the browsers that the users are using, making it very difficult to separate out all the noise that's happening versus the actual signal. So one thing is we could not go with the fixed error rate for all the... We could not set up alert based on fixed error rate because these error rates used to vary throughout the day for each interaction as well as throughout the season. It had its own seasonality and trends. So for that purpose, we used the AI ML over here. It's the NUMAPROG, which is an open source project. It provides real-time analytics and AI ops on Kubernetes. Specifically for the FCI use case, it generates anomaly score for each and every interaction, considering its seasonality, its trend, or a period of time. So the closer to zero means the interaction is being fine. As it trends towards 10, it means that the customers are really facing issue using the experience that is provided by the system. What this enabled us to do is, as a platform, set up a very generic alert out of the box using the... Provide generic alert out of the box using the anomaly score. Thereby, making the dream of getting the empty TD under five minutes possible. With that, I'll just dive into the demo. In this demo, what I would like to show is a journey that an on-call engineer takes, usually where whenever there is an issue, how they use the tool that we have built to debug that. So this is a demo web application, and you can see there is a login feature that is provided. I, as a customer, and I'm trying to log in here and say, for example, in this case, the sign-in functionality is not working as expected. So, thing to note is, this error that you see is not... We don't mark the FCI as failed for cases where users have supplied an invalid username or a password. So the reason for that is the system worked as expected. This, we mark this interaction as failed only when the system is really having a problem. Now, as more and more customers start facing this problem of signing in, the anomalous code starts increasing for this specific interaction, eventually resulting in a Slack alert for an on-call engineer. So this is an example of a Slack alert that our on-call engineer receives. There's a lot of information here, so let me just go one by one. So the first one that you see here is the plugin name. So plugin name, think of it as a microservice, but for frontend. So it has all the UI functionality features provided. It has the business logic that is making the business, back-end API calls, so on and so forth, packaged as a feature, and then it is embedded into web applications like TTO, QuickBooks, et cetera. So if a feature is needed, we write it once and then kind of use it in multiple places. So the sign-in feature is actually part of this plugin. After that, we show the unique user impacted using the HyperLog algorithm that I mentioned earlier, and it says that around 9% of them were impacted. Also, it provides other numbers like the total failed count as well as the total interaction. It also calls out which specific interaction that is failing, that is the sign-in in this case, and it is impacting this specific web application. So now as an on-call engineer, I clearly know there is some issue going on. I have already know how many unique users are impacted because of that problem. As next step, I would like to isolate where this problem is coming from. So there is a deep link available right in that Slack which takes the user to a dev portal. It's an internal tool and takes it to that asset that is the plugin asset that is there. At a quick glance, the on-call engineer can find out that over a period of two hours, the plugin has been doing fine. It's only in the last 10 minutes where the issue is propping up. You see the same kind of information that you saw in Slack over here, but it also provides a link to the interaction that is having the problem. Let me click on that. Here you see that the plugin as such has multiple interactions provided. It's only the sign-in functionality is what is having the problem. So let's look into that one. So we provide the same level of breakdown, but at a minute level and for this specific interaction. And the first thing as a plugin on-call engineer, what I would like to do is, hey, is this issue happening just in the front end? So to kind of rule that out, we provide multiple dimensions on which the on-call engineer can slice and dice the data and determine if the issue is localized to the UI itself or not. So in this specific example, you see that in production, there are a couple of plugin versions running and the errors are happening consistently across the board. Similarly, you can look at, let's say, a browser and you can see that if the issue is happening specifically on a single browser. So by looking at this data as an on-call engineer, I'm fairly certain that the plugin as such is doing okay. Most likely the problem is in the back end. So to that end, we provide exemplar traces and you see that all the metadata from the metrics is used here to filter down the traces that is of interest for the on-call engineer. As I click on this, this provides a sample for that specific interaction and it provides this end-to-end view. So thing to note is that in this specific part, it is, there is five or four services and then in the fifth service, there is a database call, right? And as an on-call engineer, I don't know anything about this back end, but I'm now fairly certain that the issue most likely is going on in the bottom most span in here where the database call is going on. I can look at few more examples in here and kind of narrow down or get an intuition that most likely the problem is happening in that space. So this is where then I can paste the on-call engineer of who owns this service and take his or her to troubleshoot this issue further. So as you saw in the demo, using the FCI metrics, we were able to kind of isolate as well as quantify the unique user impact and then use the power of the open telemetry tracing to actually isolate where the issue is surfacing from. With that, I'll now hand it over to Vinith to wrap it up. Thanks, Anga. All right, so the blueprint that you just saw, with that specific blueprint, every experience that has been instrumented with these FCIs, we are able to detect a problem in under three minutes. And as you see, we have AI-driven contextual alerts that exactly quantify the number of users impacted. This is the state that we are in today. And isolation of these experiences is very obvious. We know exactly the sign-in flow is broken or the payment flow is broken. And across the billions and millions of flows that we have across multiple product experiences, we know exactly where the problem is. And most importantly, we have end-to-end triageability. So we've established a path where we detect the problem, then we quantify the blast radius, then we isolate the problem, and finally, we lead the engineers to the root cause. With this platform, some numbers that I'd like to share, so these numbers are from our last tax season and specifically for TurboTax, we served over 30 billion interactions and we delivered over four nines of experience availability with this platform. And not only that, we've been able to save more than $2 million of vendor observability that we have just by using open-source technologies and some of our open-source contributions as well. Now, what's next? So we have been able to establish an end-to-end dependency graph if I may, because we are able to connect all the dots in our ecosystem. We know exactly where the problem is. Is it the front-end problem? Is it a back-end problem? And we can isolate and whatnot as you just saw. Clearly, we've nailed the detection problem. Now, we wanna reduce the mean time to recover, mean time to repair, right? So our focus next is how do we recover from these problems as fast as we can? And that's where we are getting into API-level granularity where can we pinpoint to the exact API operation that's failing using AI insights again? We also wanna manage costs with the scale that we have. We are looking into adaptive sampling as well. And obviously, these signals will inform our rollouts and enable automatic rollbacks as well. And lastly, there is a ton of meta information that we are gathering as well. As you saw, browsers, platforms, these are just some meta tags that we have. But there is tons more meta information that we still have to parse out. And with all these meta information, we can build deeper insights. And those are some of the problems that we're working on right now. With that, we'll open up to any questions. Yes, go ahead, yeah. Yeah, let me repeat the question. So is the Dev portal that we looked at, is that a custom portal or is it open source? So yes, that is a custom portal. We are, that UX is built in-house. And today it does, it is not open source, but the platform in itself is built on open source technologies, yeah. Just to get it right, so you inject the open telemetry code even to, so in the browser context already and all the way down to all the backend calls, so we have a complete overview. How do you gather this? Do you use the standard endpoint or was this really just what you implemented on your own that you gathered this from the front end from the backend services? Did you do that on your own or do you use something out of the box? So yeah, we use the open telemetry tracing code here. So there is a standard way to, where you generate this span and then it creates trace context like trace ID, parent span ID, and then you pass it on as the header whenever you are performing that backend API call. And the important part is the backend API call should all backend service also should play along with the, in the trace journey. Otherwise the trace gets dropped. So it's an open telemetry tracing platform. It's classic open telemetry. It's added to those standards. But the call out here is we've simplified the entire implementation with just those three lines of code. So as a developer, you don't have to worry about open telemetry and open tracing and what are the complexities of it. You're just saying, hey, this interaction is important for me and if this experience is unavailable, I want to know about that, yeah. And the collection part, so do you collect that with open telemetry or how do you? Yeah, we use the open telemetry collector to collect all the FCI spans. Thank you, great question. So just to repeat, do we present this to external developers on our platform? So we are working on externalization. That is an initiative that Intuit is working on. But as it stands today, this is not presented externally, but external FCI is definitely a possibility that we're looking at in the future, yeah. So you're probably not ingesting all the failed FCI's. So what kind of sampling rate do you decide for the failed interactions? And do you do any sampling for the successful one as well? Yeah, so right now it is 100% sampling, but we are also looking into adaptive sampling. One thing to note is that even though we are planning to do the sampling, mainly for the backend API call, but for the front end for this FCI, we still want to collect that information because that's the only place where we get real information on how the customer is getting that experience, right? And then we use that information to actually quantify the impact as well. So even though we are gonna do the adaptive sampling, but for the front end we will continue to collect these fans at 100%. Yeah, and just to underscore, right, so the metrics we will ensure that is 100% accurate. So the unique user impact, the FCI failures, that will be 100% accurate based on 100% sampling. But beyond it, the persistence will be posted. So we won't actually retain the trace with sampling after that. So the trace propagation will be cut down, yeah. What are you using Kafka for? What are you using Kafka for? Oh, Kafka is our, it's a place to stitch together multiple data streams together. So the FCI metrics is then stored in Kafka, which Druid and other systems can easily read and persist the data for. So it's a place for us to stage the data. Yeah, so there is enrichment processing going on within the Kafka pipeline, and then it goes to our audio. Multiple partitions, yeah. Hey, great presentation. Now I was wondering how you mark the result of the span on the trace. Is that just metadata on the span? Sorry, could you please repeat that? How do you mark it via the interaction as completed or failed on the trace? Yeah, so as I was showing earlier, when you mark an interaction as success or failure, that's additional tag that is passed as an attribute in the span. Yes, and then in the open telemetry collector, we specifically sniff out that specific tag to mark that interaction as success or failure. Hi, this sounds a lot like HTTP status codes. I was thinking about this in that direction. Can you guys talk about the difference between what you would see with the status code versus what you see from this customer interaction style? Yeah, so here's the thing, right? So when you have the customer interaction, you have multiple backend API calls that you may have, right? But not necessarily a backend, let's say a service results in 500, you may have multiple retries behind the scene. So it's not always mapped directly to the status code of the service that is returning the response. So that is why we are not using the status code assays, like how in open telemetry it gets used, versus introducing a custom tag so that it gives the power to the developer even though the API may respond with 500, but it still gives the power for the front-end developer to mark it as success or failure. Yeah, and let me take a specific example as well. So for example, add into it, we work with different payment providers, right? So say our primary payment gateway is down, right? And if the customer is trying to make a payment, obviously the first post goes out, we get an error there, right? So now if you just rely on the status code, that would be marked as an error. But if you fail over, abstract it to the customer to a secondary gateway, we wanna know about that problem because that's a degraded interaction. But for the customer, it was successful, right? So that is why there is a certain level of abstraction on it. Good question, we are working towards that goal. So the library is not public yet, but yeah, we're working on that. So one question, you know, especially when we're trying to build these kind of tools, right? You know, to log the errors, definitely we tend to get a lot of data because we want to use that data for analytics purpose, right? To generate all these views. But that also gets into the anti-pattern of like when the issue is happening, right? And you tend to log too much of data and create a lot of side effects for the application. So what are the things you guys did to make sure you don't get into that kind of anti-pattern? Yeah, so all of this data is sent to a separate endpoint. And then internally, we have our own retries, for example. And so this is operational data. So think of it as fire and forget for the application perspective and not inducing overhead for the app in itself. So when you say fire and forget, like is the async threads that you're running? Yeah, we send it to a separate endpoint while the application flow can continue making those same backend API calls. And even if our endpoint is unavailable, these trace finds will simply be dropped. Thank you. And thank you for passing the microphone. Yeah.


Good morning, and welcome to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I'm Andrew Schwartz, Senior Vice President for External Relations, and I'm proud to welcome you all here for our briefing on the visit of Hu Jintao. We have a great panel, as you know. Charles Freeman, our China Studies Chair, will be showing up shortly. Unfortunately, the snow has delayed him and some of our other colleagues, but we'll get started anyway because I know everybody's busy. My main objective here today, as you know, is to not spill things on Dr. Greenson. As some of you have seen in our briefings before, that isn't, you know, it's happened and we're going to try to make sure that it doesn't happen here today. Again, welcome to CSIS and I'd like to turn it over to my colleague, Dr. Green. Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for braving the snow. I'm going to provide a brief overview on what this summit means in historical context. I was in the NSC staff for five years in the Bush administration and was sucked into the mechanics and politics and diplomacy of some of these visits in the past. This is the eighth meeting between Presidents Obama and Hu. It's only the second summit, state visit. There's a big difference between whether you're meeting on the margins of a G20 or a multilateral session where you have with interpreters roughly half an hour of discussion. Big difference between that and what President Hu will do, which is full ruffles and flourishes and honors a dinner by laterals, meetings with CEOs, and complete focus for 48, 72 hours on U.S.-China relations. And it's only the second one of those. The last one, of course, was in November 2009 when President Obama visited China. And my impression was that the Obama administration intended to basically continue the general trajectory of the Bush administration's China policy, strong alliance relations and then build a cooperation where you can with Beijing, and wanted to frame that during the President's visit to Beijing. It did so in a joint statement, which talked about respecting each other's core interests and other things. But I think most administration officials would acknowledge that the next year, 2010, was a bit of a disappointment in U.S.-China relations at the Copenhagen summit on climate change, in China's surprisingly assertive stance on territorial disputes in the East China Sea with Japan and the South China Sea with certain ASEAN states. China's passive, almost enabling stance towards North Korea in the wake of the North's attack on the Cheonan and so forth. And so the second half of 2010, the administration, I think, quite visibly reasserted and redemonstrated, if you will, to Beijing the depth of American strategic influence in Asia. Secretary Clinton at the ASEAN Regional Forum in June said the U.S. has a national interest in freedom of navigation and inserted the U.S. in the South China Sea dispute in a way we had not done before. When Japan and China came into controversy over the Senkaku or Jiao-Yutai islands and Japan arrested a Chinese fishing captain and China embargoed Japan, the administration, you know, quite visibly reaffirmed our defense commitment to Japan as it pertains to those islands. And we go into this summit now, I think, with both sides, eager to add a little more stability to the relationship. I think that the U.S. has made its point. I think the Chinese side recognizes that it overstepped somewhat this last year and both want out of this a more stable relationship for 2011 and arguably 2012 because this will be President Hu's last summit before the leadership transition presumably to Xi Jinping in China. So this, I think, both sides hope will set the tone for at least two years. Can it? I think in some ways, yes, it can. First because these bilateral summits matter a lot, especially to the Chinese leadership. Bonnie is going to talk more about the optics and the protocol and how important that is. But Hu Jintao is essentially a Dengist, which is to say follows Deng Xiaoping's maximum of 30-some years ago to lay low, buy your time, build your strength. And the relationship with the U.S. is foundational for China. You have to get that right as a Chinese leader. So it's important to the Chinese side and this will really focus the mind. And you can see evidence that China has at least tactically adjusted its position in a range of areas. The Renminbi has appreciated 3.9 percent since June. China's rhetoric and diplomatic actions on the North Korea problem are somewhat more helpful, somewhat more helpful. Secretary Gates had a reasonably positive visit to Beijing and reopened military to military ties. Beijing has agreed to engage the ASEAN countries in the code of conduct on a multilateral diplomatic discussion on the South China Sea has softened the tone towards Japan. So across the board on almost all these issues, China has somewhat softened its stance. And finally, summits in the U.S. are particularly important because Beijing can't control the, can't control all of you, the way they can script and control a summit in China. On the other hand, I think there are some real limitations and this will likely not be a sort of historic summit or a transformational summit in U.S.-China relations. First, because as the two leaders work on a joint statement, which is being prepared, it is very hard for me to imagine how they can come up with a verbiage to satisfy the multiple audiences they have to satisfy, China's domestic audience, the U.S., and then, of course, our allies. Very hard to do. I think the joint statement will probably be fairly workman-like descriptions of where we cooperate. Secondly, I think most of these adjustments in Chinese behavior on the Renminbi, on the South China Sea, on Mill to Mill, we've seen before, in many cases, not all. The Joint Committee on Commerce and Trade, JCCT, there were some important incremental moves forward, but almost all of these, in one way or another, are reversible, particularly the military dialogue that Secretary Gates has opened. It's quite clear that the PLA will cut this off in an instant if we sell arms to Taiwan, for example. And the Renminbi has appreciated and then been repag to the dollar before. So it's reversible. And ultimately, the summit is not going to be able to fix the structural problem in U.S.-China relations and in Chinese politics, and particularly the fact that Hu Jintao is essentially a lame duck. And there's a quite intense competition for the leadership succession in 2012. And some real questions about whether the PLA is playing along with this script. And you've all heard about the test of China's new stealth fighter. There are questions about whether Hu Jintao knew it was coming, whether it was coincidental or not. My own discussions with administration officials suggest to me that, indeed, Hu was surprised by this. And there's real worry that it was a spoiler move by the PLA, although we don't know. So those structural problems are not going to get fixed by this summit. But it will put a floor under the relationship and in terms of relationship maintenance be important and, in fact, indispensable because the leaders' relationship really is at the core of U.S.-China ties. Good morning. We'll pick up on a few things that my colleague Mike Green has not yet touched on. And then Victor Chow will be talking primarily about North Korea. I will leave that to him. The Obama administration came in wanting to have a closer partnership, more cooperation with China, particularly on global issues. So there was a desire to really elevate this relationship and find new areas of cooperation, expand what had been done in previous administrations. The agenda was particularly focused on climate change and countering proliferation and cooperating in the effort of global economic rebalancing. There were, I think, early disappointments in this administration. And the Chinese have not stepped up in the way that the Obama administration had hoped. This summit does, to some extent, provide an opportunity to reinvigorate that agenda. We've seen a little bit of progress on climate change and the proliferation front. The administration believes that particularly on Iran, that's an area that is on the positive side of the ledger of the relationship, and North Korea has been a very mixed bag. But again, I'll leave that to Victor. So I think the administration is looking for some tough statements on China, on Iran in particular. The Chinese did support the beefing up the sanctions last year, though probably not as much as the U.S. and others have wanted. But most importantly, they have so far not backfilled companies that are divesting in Iran. And there will be an important meeting coming up in Ankara. I think it's January 21, 22, if I'm not mistaken. And the administration is very keen to ensure that there is good P5-plus-1 unity. So we want China to stay on board with keeping pressure on Iran. That, again, is probably the single most among the security issues, the area in which there is most cooperation. I would also mention briefly on human rights that I think that President Obama is going to want to say something fairly firm on this issue as well, particularly in the aftermath of the award to Chinese dissident, Leo Xiaobo, and the Chinese reaction to that, in which the Chinese essentially discouraged countries from attending the award ceremony. But even beyond that, suggested that there was some U.S. interference in the award of the decision that was made. The Chinese are looking mostly for symbols, optics, face in the Chinese context. The protocol is very, very important to the Chinese. They did not get a state visit for Hu Jintao in 2006. They got sort of a mixed visit. It was official. He got the White House lawn ceremony. But he did not get the state dinner. Instead, he had a lunch. This time, China is getting, I think, everything that it wants in terms of the symbols of a visit. I think for the Chinese, the most important thing is to avoid the snafus that took place in 2006, where there was a proponent of Falun Gong, the sect on the White House lawn, unfurling a banner. There was the announcement of the national anthem incorrectly saying that it was the Republic of China's national anthem. So the Chinese want to avoid all of this. But if there's anything substantive that the Chinese want to accomplish here in the US, I think it is improving China's image in the United States, the attitude of the US public toward China. That will be on the agenda when Hu Jintao is in Chicago, for example, visiting a Chinese and auto parts factory in which there is Chinese investment, sending the message that China is contributing to creating jobs in the United States, visiting a, I think, it's a middle school or a high school in which they teach Chinese demonstrating, again, cooperation between the US and China on the educational front. President Hu Jintao wants to show that he has been a good steward, a responsible steward of the US-China relationship. Again, as Mike said, this is his last visit. He's going to want to turn over this relationship, the most critical relationship for China to his successor, Xi Jinping, in good shape. Let me finally just say something about the military side of things. I agree that Defense Secretary Gates achieved some useful things during his visit to China last week, particularly the agreement by the Chinese to send their head of the Second Artillery, which is in charge of these strategic rocket forces, both conventional and nuclear, to our strategic command. The Chinese have in the past suggested that they would do that, and the Bush administration didn't happen. We will see whether it happens this time. I think that President Obama might seek to reinforce some of the things and messages that Defense Secretary Gates was trying to get across. One is that we want to have a sustained and reliable military relationship with China that will survive the shifting political wins, as Secretary Gates said. But I do agree with Mike that if we do go ahead with a major arms sale to Taiwan, that probably all bets are off. I don't think that necessarily the Chinese would suspend the relationship for all arms sales, but we could talk about that in the Q&A. And then finally, Secretary Gates tried to tee up an agreement on a new security dialogue, which would be a joint civilian military dialogue that would focus on nuclear space, cyber, and missile defense issues. The Chinese side said that they would study this, though Secretary Gates met with Hu Jintao and said in a discussion with the media afterwards for the press that he believes that Hu Jintao and the Chinese side are really seriously considering this. So this is something that maybe the president will seek to reinforce, that this kind of dialogue would be important toward beginning to allay some of the mutual suspicions that have built up over the last few years and begin to establish a modicum of strategic trust in the relationship. Thank you. Well, good morning, everyone. What I will say does not overlap at all with anything that my two prior colleagues have talked about. The one thing I'll say more broadly about the US-China relationship in this summit is, to me, the US-China relationship is just, in many ways, it's too big, and it's too important, just to be left to the two governments. In other words, this is a relationship that you need to have a good personal connection between the top leaders. I think it's very important. And I think, and I think Mike would agree, that President Bush worked hard to cultivate that with Jiang Zemin and with Hu Jintao to the point where they could both call on each other and also challenge each other to do things. And that, I think, is very important. It's particularly important in the Chinese system because that's the only way things really register. And it's sometimes difficult to create that sort of personal relationship when you're dealing solely with bilateral issues. Because in bilateral issues, whether it's currency, whether it's transparency of the Chinese military budget, many of these issues can be often seen as zero sum, so it's very hard to do. But one of the ways that leaders can build personal relationships is when they work together on an external issue. And clearly the issue that these two hopefully will and have been working hard on trying to correct is the North Korea problem. I think this issue will probably be one of the most important issues, if not issue number one, maybe number two in this summit. It'll be important in the sense that we won't see a lot publicly on North Korea coming out of this summit, but I think there'll be a lot of discussion behind the scenes. In many ways, this is a change from the past. Because in the past, I think it's fair to say that for the Obama administration, when it was dealing with China, North Korea was not a top priority issue. There were lots of other things that were on the agenda.  But because of the events over the past year, because of the events over the past three weeks even, this has really become a front burner issue. And I think it's fair to say that there has been a gap in the way both the United States and China have dealt with the North Korea issue over the past year, if not over the past two years. We know that the United States wants China to use more of its material leverage on the North to try to get them to come back to negotiations or to stop provocations. And the Chinese in return want the United States to meet North Korean provocations with the willingness to come back to negotiations, come back to the six-party talks as a way to try to bring stability back to the situation. I think our response to most of that is every time the North Koreans provoke and the Chinese call for a return to six-party talks or an emergency six-party talk session, the way we interpret it, and I think the way the administration interprets it, is China's basically just trying to move the pressure off of themselves, right? If there's no dialogue, all the pressure's on China to try to calm the North down, but if we can move this back to six-party talks, then the pressure comes off of China and once negotiations start, the pressure all comes on to the United States. So I think this is the dynamic we were in in U.S.-China relations when it came to North Korea, and I think it was a real gap. I mean, I think it was a real serious and substantive gap. And my hope and my expectation, reading the tea leaves, is that this summit may actually represent more of a coming together of Washington and Beijing's positions on North Korea, more of a closing of the gap, coming closer, getting closer to a common front on North Korea, and I think there are two reasons for this. The first reason is, ironically, the South Korean artillery exercises on Yongpyeong Island whenever it was, a week, two weeks ago. I think it was really at that point, as you all know, the North Koreans shelled the South Korean island in November, and there was exercising between the U.S. and the ROK, the U.S. and Japan, but South Koreans wanted to conduct their own live fire exercises on the very islands that were shelled. And there was a lot of concern on the part of the Chinese that this could elicit some sort of North Korean action or retaliation to which everybody believed the South would respond militarily, would not just sit still. And I think the Chinese became very concerned that the whole situation was gonna spin out of control when it was clear that the United States was not going to stop South Korea from doing these live fire artillery exercises. I think the Chinese came to the U.S. and said, can you stop this? And the United States says, they're a sovereign country, they're our ally, it's their territory, it's their exercise. And I think it was at that point that the Chinese really got a sense that this thing could start to spin out of control. The dynamics that we're talking about now surrounding the Korean Peninsula are quite concerning. And as you've all written and has been spoken about in the papers and in the policy expert circles, the Chinese worked hard to prevent the North Koreans from responding to this live fire artillery exercise. So I think, again, one reason, a proximate cause for more of a common front is that the Chinese do see the situation deteriorating rapidly. And the live fire artillery exercises really an important point in their thinking. The second reason I think that there may be more of a common front between these two countries is I think the United States is increasingly seeing and increasingly conveying that the North Korean threat is no longer simply a threat to U.S. allies in the region. It's not, it's not, I shouldn't say simply, but it's not just a proliferation threat, potential hypothetical proliferation threat in the future. It is now more of a direct threat to U.S. security. And I think the first sign of this was, of course, Secretary Gates's statement 48 hours ago in which he talked about how he was concerned about North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles within five years of posing a direct threat to the United States. This is a change, I think this is a change in the way the United States has talked about the North Korea problem. And I think it's very important, it's a change that I think one is dictated justifiably by the circumstances. But it's also a change that conveys to China how serious this issue is for the United States now. It also conveys to the North, I think, that we may be entering a new period in terms of the way the United States is looking at this problem. And I think these two things in particular, I think our drawing or hopefully we'll draw the United States and China closer together. If they do come closer together, what is it that we would want China to do? And these are my own views, these aren't the administration's views. Well, I think the first and obvious thing is that you would want the Chinese to do more to stop any more conventional North Korean armed provocations. Things that are a violation of the 1953 armistice, the armistice of which China is a signatory. Second, I think you would want the Chinese to work very hard to use whatever offices and leverage they can to pre-position North Korea if we eventually see a return to negotiations. And the three issues on which you need to pre-position North Korea is, first they have to be willing to engage in serious North-South dialogue because I think the administration has said very clearly it is not interested in coming back to a broader negotiation unless there is some North-South interaction first. And then the North Koreans coming back ready and willing to affirm the 2005 and 2007 denuclearization agreements from the six-party talks. And then thirdly, of course, a willingness to freeze and begin a negotiation on their uranium enrichment program. I think these are the things that we want the Chinese to work hard on pre-positioning the North. And then finally, the third thing is to gain better, and there has been good cooperation with Iran, but to gain even better cooperation with China on counter-proliferation issues as it comes to North Korea either in terms of the UN Security Council sanctions, the financial sanctions, or PSI, the Proliferation Security Initiative. So as an observer of this meeting, I have high hopes and high expectations that we will see good things between the two coming out, North Korea coming out of the summit, but you're gonna have to look really closely because it's not gonna come out in the form of a very clear statement. You're gonna have to look really closely and try to read the tea leaves to see if there is more of a meeting of minds on this problem. We're gonna open it up to questions when our colleague Charles gets here, we'll have an opening statement from Charles, but so if you wanna reserve most of your economic questions for when Charles gets here, that would be great. Let's start it out with Elise. Here's Charles. No, no, you're on, but Dr. Labbot is gonna ask her question first. Okay, thank you. One for Mike and Bonnie, and then one for Victor. Some prominent people that follow China have said that there's been too much kind of, the Chinese have been given too much upfront in terms of the protocol, Bonnie, that for instance, you discussed that they were promised everything so much upfront, and then there's little in the way of trying to extract some of these more difficult things that they're looking for in China, particularly on the economic front, but also on some of these other issues. And I was wondering if you think that the administration has done enough to prepare for this visit in how that might affect the deliverables. And Victor, we've been hearing a little bit about whether the United States is considering just kind of scrapping the six-party talks, considering that they're not going anywhere. What do you think of that idea, and how would that play into your relations with China considering China's the kind of host of these talks and considers its role so large, and that gives it the kind of hand that the US can encourage. Thanks. On the protocol point, as a tactical matter, I would agree with some of that criticism. I mean, when we were preparing, I left, I prepared in 2005 for Hu Jintao's visit, and then I got out of government, and then was in the audience when the Falun Gong demonstrator started protesting.  And right at that moment, the woman from Falun Gong started screaming, she said, no, you don't. And it was not my successors fault, by the way. It was very bad luck. But I would have held out a little more on protocol. I think the main area where it's potentially a problem is Lu Xiaobo and the foreign and human rights. The administration's hoping out of this summit to have some human rights dialogue restart, but they're not sure they have it. And in any case, Lu Xiaobo and numerous other prominent dissidents are obviously in jail. And this is the first time an American president has had, I think, has had a state visit with a head of state who is imprisoning a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. So that's an extremely awkward juxtaposition to say the least. And the administration made a very hard effort to deal with this. Secretary Clinton in particular tried very hard on a number of occasions. And there's some risk in that for them. On the other hand, in terms of strength and weakness and real politic, I think the administration in the past six months has been, and I say this as a member of the loyal opposition, really masterful at demonstrating to the region and to Beijing the resilience and depth of American power in Asia. I mean, there is almost no capital in Asia now. Maybe Pyongyang and Napodal, Burma, maybe, that does not want a closer relationship with the US to deal with this much more assertive China. And the administration with TPP on trade, with the Korea FTA, with trilotos with US, Japan, Korea, engaging Ozzie. And across the board has taken advantage of this without overdoing it, without sort of propelling the paranoia within China about conspiracy and containment. So in that sense, I think they've handled the sort of power politics at some quite well. But tactically, I think they've left open some risk for themselves because of Lu Xiaobo and human rights issue. Just finally, I'm sorry. Oh, I would just add briefly that I think that there are, some of the issues involved in preparation for the visit were used as levers on the Chinese on particularly the North Korea issue. Though I don't think that had to do with the, whether or not it would be a state visit that was obviously determined a long time ago. But getting the Chinese to put the pressure, as Victor said, basically use their good offices to tell the North Koreans to knock it off and not be provocative in response to South Korea's exercises. That was, I think, an area where the administration did try to use some leverage and may explain part why President Obama sat in on Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi's meeting with Donald and the other day. But that's just speculation. My point being that there was some leverage, I think it was used on that issue. But the decision was made quite some time ago to do the full out state visit, 21 gun salute, and have the state dinner. I think it was just the timing of the announcement that was used perhaps as just tactical leverage over China, whether we could have gotten more forward, hard to say. On the six party talks, you know, I think people grumble about the six party talks about whether it's the right format, whether it still has any relevance. I mean, it hasn't met in, what, three years now.  But at the same time, I think many people who are involved in this and involved in negotiations have looked at the negotiation record carefully and have essentially realized that in the end, it's a combination, right? In the end, it's gonna be a combination, if you have a negotiation of bilaterals, and it's gonna be a six party. And the six party part is important in one sense because the standing agreements come out of this, come out of this multilateral negotiation. And you have five other members, right? Three of whom are security council members that have signed on to this. So it's a good thing that it's very handy to have that. And also, as your question intimated, it puts China in a sense in the hot seat because China does care about process, they care about optics, and the last thing they wanna see when a negotiation starts is an inconclusive round of six party talks. I mean, when we used to have bad rounds of six party talks, the Chinese just got absolutely apoplectic, because they wanted to get a joint statement, and then they said, impossible, then a statement, you know, some statement, then anything basically, and they usually, anything meant the chairman's statement which nobody had to sign off on, just the Chinese. So, and I think we all realize that that's useful to have when these negotiations are, because in the end, it sometimes makes the Chinese push us harder, but it also makes the Chinese push the North Koreans harder. And then the other reason I think six party still has some sort of future is, and I've heard it, you know, high level administration officials say this, despite all its flaws, we have to recognize that it is the only multilateral security institution that has ever been created in Northeast Asia that involves the major powers, and that's important, and it's not so easy to simply chuck that to the side. So, I still think it has a future, even though we don't have a negotiation going on, and I think in that sense, the administration still values it to some degree. We're gonna go to Charles for some opening remarks in just a minute, but I just wanna clarify, when Mike says that he's part of the loyal opposition, that's to Brookings. Well, first let me thank Montgomery County for their infinite wisdom in letting my kids sleep for two hours later than usual. Just, I've been asked a lot this week, particularly by Chinese members of the press, is the economic relationship still a primary source of stability in the US-China relationship? And it should be. We have a very robust economic relationship, highly interdependent by design. We have an enormous trading relationship. China's our, I guess, our third largest export market. You know, it's certainly one of our largest trading partners. And by and large, when you break down the what we produce and sell, and what they produce and sell, there's a lot of complementarity. That said, this is Washington, DC, and the basic economic logic doesn't always apply. And there are serious challenges in that relationship. This is in a time when jobs equals trade equals China. This is a very difficult time for President who to come to the United States, particularly when the Chinese public and many of the Chinese leadership are not particularly interested in, quote, doing something, end quote, for the Americans on trade and economic. That's rather a challenge. The issues are pretty straightforward. You've got, the president has defensive issues primarily on currency and the impact of currency on US jobs. But also suggestions that other parts of the Chinese economy are subsidized and therefore directly compete unfairly with US production. And you've got some market access issues, tremendous market access issues for a business community that has been, that has carried China's political water here in Washington for most of the past 20 years. So when the business community begins to become unhappy or begins to find a competitive environment in China that much more difficult, it seems less and less likely and inclined to wanna do something for the Chinese here in Washington. So pretty difficult. Now, what are the administration has been hoping against hope that there would be a shift in the valuation of Remnant B in the positive way more than the simple numbers to date for this year or since the announcement of revaluation or re-application of flexibility was made earlier this year. There's a bit of hair pulling going on in Beijing from the contingent, not only at the embassy but the heavy USG contingent that went over to China earlier this week. There's a concern about what can we do on the market access issues, particularly as there are other things that we can do on the indigenous innovation challenges that our companies have, some of the intellectual property rights issues and others, although I think the administration in China will largely point back to the results of the Joint Commission and Commerce and Trade that took place in December and say, well, here's what we got those things accomplished. And then there's been a lot of hope, particularly from some larger companies that President Hu's visit would be accompanied by significant commercial transactions and that really hasn't panned out to date and it looks with just a few days left for the visit that it's going to be very difficult to put in place a very significant order that the administration can point to and say, look, see China equals trade, equals jobs in a good way. So it's a fairly challenging environment for the President and President Hu to come into. And I'm not sure that at this point that one can say that the economic relationship is a primary source of stability. In fact, one might argue that it's shifted into, that the frictions in that relationship have begun to define the relationship in a fairly negative way. Again, not always appropriately, but that's certainly the suggestion. President Hu, I know, will try to showcase the beginning of what everybody outside the Beltway hopes is a wave of Chinese investment into this country and I think there are some suggestions that there may be hope in that direction, but I'm not sure that some of the messaging there is going to be effective enough to overcome a lot of the negativity surrounding currency and some of the market access questions. So with that, I'll stop there. Bring him back over to questions. Karen. Like you, I think I've been assuming that the new makeup in Congress makes action, whether it's legislation or other activity in Congress on currency that much less likely. And the Chinese certainly have made that calculation and believe that they've all taken, breathed a big sigh of relief that, well, we've got some good old pro-business Republicans in the house now and that's gonna carry us and make sure that our water continues to be carried. I just spent the last weekend at a new member's retreat and I think the Chinese have made a serious calculation and I think my assumptions about the likelihood of currency legislation having been reduced were wrong. This is a crowd that is anxious to do something and to quote one incoming member.  Well, I think the usual Sussex still will lead the charge but there are, without naming names, I think there are quite a number of the incoming members that are pretty serious about the issue. Just a couple of sentences on your human rights question. First, I think this is a topic always comes up in meetings with the Chinese and so I think it's serious and the president probably wants to convey a serious message. It's not all about the public message but as far as the domestic political context here, I do think that there will be something that would be said, it could be in a statement that is issued by the White House. Afterwards, on the summing up the discussions, I would not be surprised if Secretary Clinton also includes it in the speech that she is giving on Friday. I don't know if there's going to be, you may know a joint press conference, I know there was a request that was issued to the Chinese to have one, yet it remains to be seen whether or not they are going to accept it. That would be another opportunity. The joint, there will be a joint press conference, I understand. In 2005, when President Bush went to Beijing, he gave a speech about democracy in Japan. The next day at the press conference that who and Bush were asked about it, President Bush talked about the importance of democracy and President who said China's also working on democracy in its own way. So the democracy issue is a little bit easier to talk about with the Chinese president there because they can co-opt the language and they're debating intro party democracy and so forth. Human rights is different because from Hu Jintao's perspective, Liu Shobo and these others are anti-bodies that must be contained, they are threats to the state. So it's an extremely awkward thing to do, whether it's Secretary Clinton in a dinner or President Obama in a press conference and certainly you won't see it in a joint statement negotiated with the Chinese. And that's one of the reasons why in the past people have been hesitant to have the full state visit protocol. Usually there's a Rose Garden or sometimes off office joint press availability. Press availability means they may not let you ask questions. But yes, usually that's part of the package. So I think Bonnie's right. I think President Obama and Secretary Clinton and others are being very clear on these issues in private and consistent. But the public framing of this, I think is gonna be challenging. Let's go back to Chris. Thanks very much. Chris Nelson, Nelson important. Just a quick question on the joint statement. So we're not quite clear yet, is there, is there, is there ain't gonna be a joint statement? That's still the work in progress, is that the latest? My understanding is that, well, it's a matter of public record now that Kurt Campbell's in Beijing negotiating this. But the November 2009 joint statement was, I had a lot of, you know, it was 99% or as Deng Xiaoping said about Mao was 70% good, 30% bad. It had a lot of good stuff in it, but the language about India, the language about core interests didn't succeed in reassuring the Chinese public or building a kind of understanding about continued military to military relations and the other things the White House wanted. And on the other hand, it provoked a lot of controversy. So my sense is that the White House is a little bit more cautious about their expectations for joint statements, and which means there may not be one. I don't think that they've promised that there will be one, they're negotiating it, and I think that the quality will matter. And if they could either put out something that's fairly descriptive of cooperative areas, skip it, or perhaps come up with some meaningful language on the overall relationship, I think that will be hard. And so I would not expect to sort of forth communicate with really significant language about the overall strategic nature of the relationship. Thanks, actually my question is gonna be about the currency thing. I'm interested that I'm hearing from Charles now, and I've heard from a number of friends who have good ties into the Republican side of things, that what looked like Chairman Kamp awaits him means trying to make very clear that his cosponsorship with Levin was a way of positioning the issue, but that he had no intention of making that a priority for this year. I was told that personally, several times by his senior staff person who actually called me and said, you did see that in the speech, right? So are you hearing a real change of mind about that? And if so, why? No, I'm not hearing that Kamp has changed and suddenly gonna make currency a priority. I'm saying that for many in the Republican party the notion that this is all going away is somewhat fanciful. And I guess my point in underscoring it is, I think there has been a concerted, gambles probably 200 or 200, but invading that they don't really have to worry about this issue as a political matter between the United States and China. And I think that's wrong. I listened to that, okay, I dealt too much. All right, thanks very much. Questions? Sean. My cough doesn't help. Actually a very broad question. I think Bonnie, it was something that you were mentioning about the image of China in the United States and how important that may or may not be. Do you think that that's something that the Chinese are looking at, that having this trip as something that could potentially rehabilitate the Chinese image that we saw, it's taken quite a beating? And is that something that could potentially be on the cards, have been with all the issues on human rights and the economy and whatnot? Absolutely, I think number one is the domestic audience back home in China and the elites and the other members of the Senate committee of the Polypure and ensuring that, as I said, Hu Jintao is seen as being a good responsible steward of this bilateral relationship. But I think that here in the United States message is going to be that China is a responsible nation that is rising peacefully. Hu Jintao will give a speech here at a luncheon in Washington DC, I imagine, that the theme of that will be reassuring everybody that China is rising peacefully and going to contribute to, in some way, to global issues and resolving problems around the world. But I think the Chinese were unnerved by the discussions here that took place in the run-up to the midterm elections about China stealing our jobs. And I think they would like to try and shape that narrative in a more positive direction. I think that's, as I said, that's what Hu Jintao will be doing in Chicago. So yeah, I think it's an objective, I would say, it's not at the top of the list of China's priorities, but that's one of the things that Hu Jintao would like to do here. Hi, of all the shifts in relationships in Asia, and I'm talking about U.S. India, U.S. Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, military, sales to Taiwan, and so forth, which alarms China the most? Maybe Michael, do you want to? The one that you hear, at least I hear, I was in Beijing a few weeks ago, the one I hear the most about is South China Sea, where the Chinese view is that these small states like Vietnam pulled the U.S. in to a confrontation with China. But I think, as a strategic matter, the relationship that worries them the most is the U.S.-Korea-Japan. And that's both a risk and an opportunity for us. To the extent that Beijing and secondarily, Pyongyang sees U.S.-Japan and U.S.-Korea alliances, which have been quite separate. Victor wrote the seminal book on this. To the extent that those are triangulating and coming together because of North Korea, it really affects the long-term balance of power and alignment in Asia and worries Beijing. And that, frankly, puts pressure on Beijing to be more active on North Korea. And I think that's part of the reason why Beijing has changed its tone. Polls in South Korea about China now are very negative, and in Japan as well. 89% of Japanese say they don't trust China. So this sort of threat assessment converging among Japan's major democratic neighbors, excuse me, China's major democratic neighbors, is worrying because China's strategy is to offset that with economic interdependence. If we overdo it, we're gonna create our own enemy, but it does help to motivate Beijing on the North Korea question. I don't wanna blow by the Taiwan issue because I do think that continues to be the primary third rail in U.S.-China formulations, at least in the region. I think all this other stuff is new and shocking, but if you have to sort of poll your average Chinese official, that's gonna continue to be the first concern. And there is growing concern in Beijing that maybe Ma might actually not win. And what does that mean? What would happen if U.S. arms sales to a DPP, suddenly DPP group were to take place? So I think that continues to be the primary focus, but all this other stuff is new and is creating a lot of bubble of discussion and debate. Let me briefly, I completely agree with that. And the amount of time spent on Taiwan will actually be very short in the summit, I suspect. 2000 with Clinton, 2001, 2003 with Bush, Taiwan occupied maybe 30%, 40% of the dialogue. And there's a sense it's sort of under control and quiet now, but Charles is right. Hu Jintao's legacy hangs on what happens in Taiwan. And if Taiwan goes in a direction not anticipated, Xi Jinping will have a very hard time justifying the current, not accommodating, but more peaceful development mode towards Taipei. So this one is not solved yet. Let me weigh in on that, since my colleagues have already said something about Taiwan. I think that first of all, I would say that Secretary Gates's statement, in my mind, is really not new. The logic behind that statement is that if there is an improvement across trade relations, there is a significant reduction in the Chinese military threat to Taiwan. Taiwan itself will need to spend less, procure less in terms of advanced weapons from the United States. And in that context, would then ask the United States for less. I don't think that Secretary Gates was saying that the United States by itself is going to make an assessment that because China is pressuring us that we should, we would reconsider this position and our obligations under the TRA. I don't interpret it that way at all. And so I think this is very consistent with past US policy. I would agree with Mike that Taiwan conversation between President Hu and President Obama will be short. It will be a reiteration of past positions, present concerns. I would certainly expect that Hu Jintao would want to signal that sustaining the military relationship depends in part on the United States not selling major advanced weapons to Taiwan. I would doubt that he would get into specifics. And basically the threat. It's based on the threat and Taiwan's defense needs, which are in part a function of the cross-strait relationship. But this would be, in my view, it's left up to Taiwan to decide what Taiwan's needs are and then what requests they then make of the United States. Questions? Go in the back here and then we'll come over here. Hi, Betty Lin of the World Journal. Could the panel elaborate on the differences between the civilian and military leadership in China and how dangerous it can become? And also there's an observation that after President Ma's coming to power, is China feel more confident or more comfortable that Taiwan's issue kind of taking care of at least for a temporary period of time so that they can feel free to crack down on Tibet the first year and Xinjiang the next year and then maybe feel more free to, more assertive in East Asia and the South China Sea. Thank you. Let me start, I think the military, civil military relationship with China is not only a focus of interest for academics and media but is a real concern for the administration. And there are several problems. The good news is Secretary Gates got some momentum and there's some prospect for more dialogue. And Bonnie could probably say a lot more about what's likely to come. The bad news is that one, the PLA leadership is free to speak on foreign policy in a way they never were before and take actions that can really spoil efforts to build a more stable relationship with the U.S. or China's neighbors. Second, despite some tactical changes in Chinese diplomacy in the region, the military buildup in the East China Sea, South China Sea along the Indian border continues moving forward. And the stealth test yesterday was the PLA's message to the world that that's the case. And the third thing is, although Hu Jintao chairs the Central Military Commission and presumably Xi Jinping will as well, when you look at the photographs and the images of Secretary Gates in China, one of the most striking things is how every meeting he has basically, the other guys wearing a uniform, whether it's the defense minister, the chairman, the head of the Air Force, the PLA too, Intel, whoever it is, the other guy has a uniform. So the checks and balances, the oversight of the PLA is a growing concern. And hopefully Secretary Gates's visit will start moving this dialogue forward and shedding more transparency. I think it's gonna be a very high priority on this trip together with trade and human rights and North Korea. That's, I mean, from my experience, people would often ask, what's your highest priority in this trip? China visit and you had five and you couldn't say, it's one, two, three, four, five, they're all really challenging. So one of the reasons that Secretary Gates proposed this new security dialogue is indeed to bring the civilians in the military into the same room to coordinate, promote coordination on security issues. I mean, in our system, we don't talk about these issues at two separate stovepipe systems. And we need the Chinese increasingly to begin to coordinate. Yes, I agree with Mike. There are concerns about the civil military relationship. There's some evidence of that. For example, there are indications that the PLA really did not want to resume this military relationship when it did, was not as enthusiastic about having Secretary Gates visit. They were essentially told to get on board and they did. But I could cite similar cases in our own system. So China is not unique in that regard. And so I wouldn't want to exaggerate the differences. When it comes to civilian control over the PLA, party control over the PLA, I don't believe that that's in jeopardy. I don't think that's what we're talking about here. But yes, there are differences. There are some concerns in the Obama administration and trying to get these two communities in the room to talk about security issues, I think would be very helpful. Just to answer your second question, whether the more calm relations across the Taiwan Strait have been a reason that the PLA has been more assertive. I'm not sure that you can draw direct correlation, although you certainly some people have suggested that as a result of the relaxation of tensions that the People's Liberation Army needs other tensions to justify new forces and the rest. But I think the bottom line is if the PLA really was not as focused on Taiwan as an issue, you would have seen a lot more pullback of missiles and other things that just haven't taken place. So I'm not sure the People's Liberation Army is as relaxed as perhaps the civilian leadership might be. Yeah, a quick question for Michael. We talked a little bit about this, sorry, Tracy Kwek from the Singapore Straits Times. South China Sea disputes. China-US have a long list of things to work on. How do you think this South China Sea disputes, especially those involving the Southeast Asian countries are gonna figure in the upcoming talks? That's one. And for Charles, I was interested when you talked about when you attended the meeting with the newcomers into Congress, the people who are taking a more hard line stance towards the currency issue towards China were they from the Tea Party wing of the Republicans? And also how much awareness is there about what China says in its defense about raising the currency is gonna affect its export sector which supports millions of jobs which could be to social unrest and all that. How much finesse or understanding is there about those kind of domestic concerns in China? Do you see among the newcomers, thank you. I would imagine the South China Sea will come up because if this were on the margins of a UN meeting or G20 or something, there might not be time but I think they'll have time and I think it will likely come up. In some ways it has cooled down. Secretary Clinton in the July ARF meeting was pretty forward leaning appropriately about US interests in this issue really gave ASEAN a lot of support. China has now gone back to the discussions as you probably know in the Code of Conduct. So instead of negotiating and pressing ASEAN countries separately they've agreed to go into a collective discussion which is what ASEAN wanted and I think it should be what the US wants. We're back now to a diplomatic approach and so in that sense it's cooled down. Chinese side has said look we never said publicly South China Sea is a core interest for China although privately they did to US officials. So everyone's sort of backing off a little bit and I think it's a successful outcome but I think the President will raise it just to remind President Hu that we're watching and we care and the proof will be in the pudding in our US engagement with ASEAN which is pretty robust and I think we'll continue. Just real quick, as far as who in the Republican Party is more anxious, I mean there certainly are. There are some members that are more vociferous on a lot of different issues. I was really struck by the fact that this issue really has much more residence than I expected and a lot of people trying to figure out exactly what are the options to deal with this challenge and what are the legislative options? What are the tools that we have in the toolbox? A real eagerness to actually find a solution as opposed to simply talk about a solution which I know has been a feature of the current debate for a while. Has been well how do we demonstrate our sincere anxiety about the issue as opposed to okay what are the real tools that we have to manage the challenge such as we see it? Is there an understanding of the domestic reasons within China for a go slow approach to currency flexibility? No, Chinese don't vote here so it doesn't really matter too much to people but I will say that those of us that have followed this issue note that even at the time when the export lobby in China and the coastal regions were screaming that a two, three percent revaluation would cost millions of jobs at the time from the very first part of the last decade when they did begin to make adjustments China's current account surplus skyrocketed. So the notion that suddenly China's exports were made uncompetitive is a complete fallacy and so the fact that the export lobby continues to make this case really flies in the face of all evidence. So maybe there should be more sensitivity to the concerns of aging about a rapid expansion or rapid revaluation of the rem in B but to date the evidence is pretty solidly there that a revaluation isn't gonna cost China the jobs that it says it is. Go right back here, we're just gonna take a couple more. Well I can answer why President Bush didn't and it was because every state visit he did every state visit he did was essentially with a democracy and the president particularly in the second term you'll recall emphasize what he called the freedom agenda the importance of democracy and human rights and rule of law and American foreign policy and frankly the politics of it were as I described fraught with peril not only for the president but for US-China relations. I mean there's a bit of a, there's a risk if you wanna struggle and productive US-China relationship and overselling where we are. You should ask the administration why they chose a state visit I think their answer would be we wanna demonstrate US-China relations have come to a new level that we can the respect China and work with China but as I said that's not risk free and part of the challenge is gonna be that every Chinese visitor wants more protocol than the last time and so now that we've sort of hit the five star gold-plated visit I'm not sure what President Obama's gonna do for Xi Jinping in two or three years but you should ask the administration I think there's some logic to it in terms of as Bonnie said showing respect and so forth but there's also some risk. Victor's gonna jump in and then we're gonna have to wrap it up because unfortunately we have another event coming into this room but before we do I wanted to say you all have in front of you critical questions prepared by our experts here which we'll also be emailing out later today and we're all reachable during the visit and before if you need to ask some individual questions and I'm sorry Victor go ahead. Just on this last question just to amplify some things that Mike said in the Bush administration's second term if I remember correctly we gave three state visits and they were all to US democratic allies India, Japan, and Australia and so it was in that sense Mike was connected to the freedom agenda. The other thing is that White House is also different and not just the policy folks, the protocol folks and the way they do things are different and the Bush White Houses were famous for being very stingy with these sorts of visits. Everything was generally a working level visit and everybody who came in they got a working level visit that was generally what you got and I think that you can count maybe on, well you could certainly count in the second term on one hand how many state visits they've given and I can't speak for this administration but they seem to do things in a different way and at least my impression is they're not as stingy with the overall protocol. So part of it is just a White House style thing and administrations are different not always directly related, necessarily only related to policy. And also just President Bush found other ways to signify the importance of US-China relations. President Zhang Zhiming was one of the few leaders who went to Crawford. President Bush thought it was a great deal, it was his home, it was his ranch, I think a lot of foreign visitors just thought it was a hot place in Texas but it was a real signal of special attention to our leader, he had a lot of time to talk and he went to the Olympics. So he found ways to not diss China, to show the US wanted to steadily improving relations, respected China's important role in the world but I think for the Bush White House state visit was in a different category that would be hard to justify given some important differences that still exist between the US and China that we need to work on. Thank you all for coming today and we'll have a transcript up of this later which we'll also mail out and we will have video and audio posted later today as well. Thanks for coming.


My name is Knox Tames. I'm a senior fellow at Pepperdine University, and I'm also a senior visiting expert here at the US Institute of Peace. And I'm here today to talk about the nexus of religious freedom and global peace and security. Religious actors are everywhere, and the role of religion is involved in every society around the world. Religions, beliefs guide the actions of men and women in ways both positive and negative. So if peacemakers want to get at the crux of conflicts that are dividing communities that are leading to violence, leading to instability, understanding the religious dynamics, understanding the religious landscape, and understanding how openness to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief can help deescalate violent narratives is a crucial piece of that puzzle, and peacemakers would be wise to understand that and appreciate it. You look at the effort to counter the devastation that ISIS wrought in northern Iraq, efforts to re-establish religious life for the tapestry of different religious groups that had lived in Sinjar and Nineveh for millennia or more. It's been a key piece of reconstituting that society, enabling churches to meet for worship, to rebuild, enabling Yazidis to reconstruct their temples, allowing smaller communities like the Sibian Mendians, the Shabbat, the Kaqai, also Baha'is or Astrians, all giving them the space to live out their beliefs peacefully without fear of violence or discrimination. We've seen communities return and start to reintegrate in a way that's hopefully over the long term going to see that country start to pivot back towards a stable, prosperous, and democratic country that respects the rights of all of its citizens. USIP has played a foundational role in helping the United States engage on religious freedom internationally. From the very first discussions in the late 1990s, USIP hosted scholars and academics and experts to think about how can the United States play that indispensable role that we often do on this fundamental value that's so connected to our own narrative, our own history, our own effort to support civil rights. And so in the ensuing years USIP has continued to provide space for thought and scholarship. I've been affiliated with the Institute now for three years, thinking about the role of religion societies, the engagement of human rights principles, and what does that mean to de-escalation, to stability, to creating the world we all want to see, a world that's in the US' United States' vested interests, that has a reflection of our values and of our security interests.


Welcome to Toffey TV, coming live from the Philharmonic tonight where the Everton ADM has taken place. The big news, I suppose, from the ADM is that Alicia Usmanov and his USM company have purchased a £30 million option on the name and rights for Bramley Mordock. That was the big news in the room tonight. Lot of other stuff come out about it. Obviously, Denise Barrabaxendale said that the plan and permission is in place, you know, and we're moving forward with that, but we're not probably not going to hear anything until the end of spring. That was reaffirmed, really, by Colin Young, who spoke later on and said a similar thing, but also said that Everton had taken big steps to ensure that any questions and any concerns maybe that a government would have, Everton have hopefully headed off at the other end. So, only what we've been told before, but Everton just showing that as well. Marcel Brands did the presentation regarding the playing squad and said that when he came in there was 38 playing staff and he had to reduce that down, said the optimum number of players he likes in the squad is 23, and that gives the opportunity then to people coming out of the academy to potentially make themselves a squad member for the first team. Put up a graphic saying that Everton are playing a 4-4-2 at the moment and showed the players who we have in what positions. Obviously the glaring backup positions were at centre back, which we know about, and also on the right side of, well, right wing, rather, was only Theo Walcott on his presentation, and so they may be areas that Everton are looking for. Warrion Lee, for me, said that we were quite well stocked in the centre of the midfield. I'd still like another centre of the midfield player brought in, I'm not going to lie, this January transfer window. Other things that were said as well tonight, Sasha Ryanssef said that Everton had employed JP Morgan and along with MUG, something or other, to find the best financial partner for the building of Bramley Mordoch. JP Morgan, obviously a massive financial institution, said that they had 20 companies who they spoke to with regards to funding, including Liverpool City Council. That is now being whittledown to two. We'll have to wait and see what happens with that. Nothing was announced concrete wise with regards to the finance of the stadium. We also said that partners have increased financial partners, but Everton are on the lookout for more of them. A lot of information given, but ultimately, one of the big things to come out of it was that the debt has reduced now down to £9 million. That is the fact that Sfarad Meshiri has £350 million, that is how Everton are theoretically indebted to Sfarad Meshiri for £350 million, but the debt on the club is £9 million. That is basically the takeaways. We heard Carlo Anciolotti speak as well. He spoke about the welcome that he has received, that Everton's ambition to make Everton a top club again. He said that the facilities that Everton, in terms of Finchfarn training ground, is one of the best he has ever seen. He said that the reception he was given for the Burnley game was incredible, one of the best he's heard. He's just very, very positive. He also thanked Duncan Ferguson for the job he's done. That was reiterated by Denise Barrabach and Marcel Brands as well. Highlighting the key factor of Duncan Ferguson and his impact on the evidence seemed to turn round what was a very, very difficult period for Everton. That was it, really, the takeaway as opposed to big news, the £30 million USM name and right deal for the stadium. That was hinted at last week by the Financial Times article that they done with Alasher Oswann of, so interesting times ahead where that's concerned. A bit of good news, and this was confirmed tonight as well at the general meeting, is that Andre Gomez has returned to Finchfarn today to step up his rehabilitation. It was nine weeks since he'd done the injury and he is back doing his personal rehabilitation. So there is an outside chance that we might see the Portuguese midfielder back in the evidence side before the season's out and that is absolutely incredible if that turns out to be the case. A further good news was highlighted with the news that John Philip Gabbaman is back training, not full training yet with the first team although that isn't too far away. So that's really good and also that Alex Obobi is almost ready to join back in with full 13 training and that just gives Carlo Anciolotti some more options as we move forward. So just to round up the ADM news, far atmosphere he wasn't actually here tonight at the Philharmonic. He is away securing or in negotiations with the finances for the new stadium, which is massive really of Everton can get that sorted. And the £30 million that Alasher Oswann of USM have paid for the option on Naamanite is ring fence. That is going towards the stadium costs as well. So that's really key information that's come out today. And just finally before a finish, Ella Sims scored twice last night as the under 23s drew 3-3 with Arsenal at Hague Avenue and there was a return for Lewis Gibson. It was a goal scorer and return back into the 23s team. He scored evidence, other goal in a 3-3. That is it. Make sure you give the video a thumbs up, subscribe if you haven't. Join us on Patreon for more videos. We'll have more on the ADM. So look out for that. Thanks for watching. See you later.