But we're going to go ahead and dive right in. I'm going to try to keep the biographies to a minimum so we can get into the substance. So I'll just introduce people quickly. To my left is Stephen Goldstein. He's been the Sophia Smith Professor of Government at Smith College since 1998. His current research focuses on the relations between mainland China and Taiwan, as well as the evolution of US-Taiwan relations. He has served as Director of the Taiwan Studies Workshop at Harvard University and has been a visiting faculty member at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Columbia University. And he has written, co-authored, or edited nine books, as well as many scholarly articles and book reviews, and received his PhD from Columbia University. To my immediate right is David Huang, who is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies of Academic Acinica in Taiwan. His focus is on comparative politics, election studies, and the European Union. Mr. Huang served as Secretary General at the Taiwanese Political Science Association from 2000 to 2003. And from 2004 to 2005, he served as the Vice Chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council in Taiwan. And he has also served as a Deputy Representative at Tech Row here in the United States. And to his right is Li Peng, the Deputy Director and Professor of Political Science at Shaman University's Taiwan Research Institute, the Deputy Director of Shaman University's Taiwan Research Center, and an adjunct research fellow at the Research Center for Cross-Strait Relations under the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council. He's currently a Fulbright Visiting Fellow at the University of Maryland, College Park. And his research focuses on Taiwan politics and cross-strait relations. Just before we kick off the discussion, I just would like to, since it came up in our last panel, to note for our Chinese friends studying international relations that Professor Mirsheimer also predicts the inevitability of a nuclear exchange between the United States and China. So they might want to think about that one. Stephen, why don't you kick off? Well, my charge is to talk about the TRA in the 21st century. And I guess I would begin by saying that the 21st century ends 85 years from now. So I think I have to scale back what I'm going to do or what I'm going to hope to do. What I thought might be a fun exercise is if I tried to imagine what the next anniversary of the passage of the TRA would look like. That is the kinds of things that we'll talk about the next time we have to observe the anniversary of the TRA in 2019. I'm not going to predict the future. I can predict the future, obviously. But what I want to do is try to raise some questions about what some of the trends will be in Asia that will touch on the application of the TRA and will certainly challenge American policy in the area. So if we look five years hence, I think there are two areas where there will probably be very few challenges and very little change in the application of the TRA. One of those areas is obviously the representation area via AIT. That has developed very creatively and very constructively since the passage of the TRA. And the representation function has really been firmly established. And that is a fact that's symbolized by the new embassy or the new AIT office which is being built in Taipei. There will be issues probably. There will be issues of staffing. There will be issues of particularly visits by Taiwan officials to the United States. I'm sure there'll be pressure for some changes in both those regards, visits to both sides. I think also the sections of the TRA regarding Taiwan's status in American law will probably not change very much and that the trajectory will remain what it's been again for the past 35 years. There's a very rich, if you read law journals, very boring discussions of the various aspects of Taiwan's status in American courts. Obviously, the two areas where there will be challenged will be in the area of security and also in the area of congressional legislative relations. Now, despite the ambiguous nature of the TRA and despite the fact that my friend Richard Bush argues that there's generally less than meets the eye in the TRA, it has become a well-established, well-anchored part of both American domestic politics and American foreign policy. It's cited along with the three communiques and now recently the six assurances as part of American policy. Congress, there's no question, takes the TRA very seriously and they consider it to be a very well-established and firmly founded instrument of congressional prerogative in foreign policy. So the brief answer is that the security sections will not go away. The focus will continue to be on the security sections and then the question becomes where will the challenges come or where will the possible applications of the TRA have to be considered. I think that obviously the one that stands out is the recent, depending on the term that you use, the recent more assertive or more provocative nature of Beijing's foreign policy in Asia. Clearly the TRA and particularly that part of the TRA, which talks about the maintenance of an American presence in Asia, particularly that part of the TRA, one would think, will become an increasingly broad or an increasingly important area of discussion in regard to the TRA. And that will probably touch on, which I'll talk about a little bit more in a minute, on the question of the rebalancing and on the question of American interests in the Western Pacific area. Secondly, I think one would expect that the development of mainland military capabilities will also touch on the question of arms sales. If the present trends continue, I think there are going to have to be increasingly more serious considerations of the nature but also the efficacy of arms sales to Taiwan and about the possibility of American assistance in the defense of Taiwan, given the growing anti-access capabilities of China. And this is going to bring not only American-Taiwan security cooperation to the forefront, which is a neurologic issue, obviously, as far as the mainland is concerned, but it will also, again, bring to the forefront the issue of rebalancing to Asia and the place of Taiwan, which even the discussion of which might also be neurologic as far as the mainland is concerned. Turning to economic achievements, again, looking five years hence, when we talk about the TRA and we talked about it this morning, the issue of how the United States plays a major role in the economy of Taiwan and how Taiwan plays a major role in the economy of the mainland. I think bilateral economic relationships, again, in the next five years will become much less important. The emphasis now, or the major issue now, is on multilateral, is on the ability of Taiwan to become a part of not only the growing production chains in Asia, they're already a part of those, but also play a part of the multinational, regional, economic forms that are being created in Asia. And, of course, the question of TPP, and that will touch on the United States and American policy. So I think we're going to be, and I think Taiwan is going to be thinking much more in terms of multinational, multilateral kinds of economic relations, and I think we will as well. Now, these are secondary questions that I've just raised, I think, compared to the issue of the temperature in the Taiwan Straits and where things might look five years from now. If you look at the uses that the TRA has been put to, it's been implicitly, never explicitly, but it's been implicitly used in the 1996 confrontation in the Taiwan Straits to try to restrain what was perceived as dangerous actions by the mainland. But I think it was also implicitly used during the administration of Chen Shui-bin to restrain him as well. So the TRA can restrain one side or the other. The TRA can also, if the two sides get to talking about serious issues, of course, the TRA and arm sales can be used to promote some kind of reconciliation between the two sides. That is, I'm not talking about consultation. I'm talking about a situation where negotiations between the two sides begin to move things into a less confrontational posture. It's determined that the danger of cross-strait conflict has been reduced, that danger to Taiwan has been reduced, and the United States can play an indirect role by modulating arm sales in relation to those changes. What might change the status quo, though, in a more dangerous direction rather than talking about peace are the domestic politics on Taiwan. I think that after a very encouraging start with the early years of the MA administration, MA's mainland policy has not resulted, as some people here in Washington feared, that Taiwan would somehow inadvertently drift into the grasp of Taiwan, of the mainland. It's actually developed in somewhat of an opposite direction. That is, in the last two or three years, MA's mainland policy has hit some very rough domestic political waters. Things at the moment are at a juncture where it is not clear to me, at least, how much further he'll be able to go. If you add to that the fact that there are going to be elections in the fall, and then there are going to be elections in 2016, and the mainland will be watching those elections very closely, and that I think it's very likely that at least before the elections this fall, Taiwan will be able to do nothing on the services pact. It begins to strain, and if the DPP begins to show strength, it begins to strain the patience of the mainland. It begins to look like peaceful separation, clipping fungi at it. In fact, if the DPP, as the campaign develops, and as the competition between the KMT and the DPP grows, the mainland is going to be faced with what's really basically a Hobson's choice. They can either back an uncertain KMT that is opposed by 40% of the population, assuming they do well, or it can back a DPP or deal with the DPP, but the only choice there will be somehow to accept a compromise with the DPP that at the moment the mainland isn't willing to accept it. So there is no good candidate for the mainland as the Taiwan political situation unwinds in the next two years. So those are some of the trends that I would look at. And then the final question becomes what's the American response going to be? And there I think domestic politics are key again. We heard this morning that the TRA was the result of a bi-ideological, if there's any such word, a bi-ideological and bipartisan agreement or effort in the Congress to somehow balance the new and dramatic relationship with China, with the old and what was considered to be very important relationship with Taiwan. And I think balance is the operative word there. It was to be a balancing effort. I think what's happened really since the late 1980s, clearly through the Clinton administration, has been the increasing politicization of the TRA. The TRA has evolved into not only an expression of the prerogative of Congress in the area of foreign policy, but also become the rallying point for anti-Chinese supporters of Taiwan from both parties. And what was intended to balance the United States cross-strait policy has in the legislative branch become an instrument of those who would undermine that balance. Now, it's not fair because Randy's not here and Randy was my co-author of a piece on the TRA, but when he says that Taiwan relations are a subset of relations with the mainland, that's not quite right. The two relationships are interconnected and policy in one area always has to be considered in regards to policy in the other area. But I think what he expresses is a sense, perhaps, of some in Washington that Taiwan is in a secondary position and that somehow you have to pass congressional resolutions that clearly are not constructive, that clearly are unbalanced, and that further polarizes the question within the United States government. So what we don't need, if I'm right, and I rarely am, if the next five years are going to be difficult years with serious challenges, what we don't need is a divided government. Now, this has always been, you know, this has always been the case with the TRA, but the division between the executive and the legislature, I think, is fundamentally dysfunctional and it sends the wrong signals. It sends the wrong signals both to the mainland, but most of all, since we're talking about Taiwan today, it sends the wrong signals to Taiwan. Because Taiwan has a very selective vision when it looks at what's being said in Washington, and I say that as someone who met with Chun Shui, four times or five times in the early part of the century, they see and hear what they want to hear or at least they did during that period. And Congress gives them a lot of things to see and hear, even more things than John Mirsheimer gives them to see and hear and worry about. So I would just end. I will go back to my liberal northeast institution and leave Washington, but I would end with sort of a need to get the act together on Taiwan and try to pursue what the TRA intended to do, and that is create a balanced, rather than an unbalanced, cross-strait policy. Thanks. Thank you, Steve. That's good. David, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to first express my gratitude to Dr. Bush and Dr. Von Glasser to invite me to participate in this very important event and share some of my ideas about the TRA. I was asked specifically to talk about the implementation of the TRA in the future. Let me recapitulate what the panelists said in the morning and also Ambassador Rae Berhart just said. I think the essence of the TRA expects that the future of Taiwan will be determined by the peaceful means. And the TRA specifies that it is a policy to consider any non-peaceful means to determine Taiwan's future a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific and of great concern of the United States. And TIA also authorizes the US government to provide Taiwan with arms of defense characters. And TIA establish a congressional role in determining security assistance necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capabilities. And TIA also insists to maintain the capacity of the United States to use any result of the force or other form of coercion in dangerous security or social or economic system of Taiwan's people. And TIA set up the ART to carry out the daily matters of the relationship between the people of the US and Taiwan, which according to Ambassador Rae Berhart just said that it set up example for the foreign country to set up the representative office in Taiwan to function that way. For the US domestic application, the TIA requires that Taiwan continue to be treated as a US law as a state or as if it is a state, will be a state. It further provides the continual applications of treaties and international agreements to which the US and ROC were parties or any US law that covered Taiwan. The TIA, the law as such does not prejudice against the status of Taiwan's memberships in international organizations. And finally, the TIA reaffirms that the preservation and enhancement of the human rights of all of the Taiwan's people are US top objectives. The TIA, as far as I know, I consult some legal scholar at the TIA and join unique status as a federal status. In contrast, the three communiques with China from the US views are not treaties or executive agreements, hence are not equal in status or dignity of the US domestic laws. Although the three communiques and TIA together with the six assurances are the core elements of US-China policies, the US president is not free to disregard the TIA, whereas he would be free to terminate the communiques if he see fit, even if they were binding the treaties. The US, one China policy, US normalizations of the relations with China is premised on the understanding of China's commitment to the peaceful means resolve the dispute between China and Taiwan. Based on that understanding, the US acknowledged China's sovereign positions over Taiwan but not recognized it. Because from the US perspective, Taiwan's sovereign status is yet to be determined and the US does not accept the PRC claim that Taiwan belongs to the PRC at this moment. Now, to China and Taiwan, US policy is a process oriented which does not prejudice either on unification or independence. Cross-strait disputes must be resolved peacefully by peoples across Taiwan Strait. The US opposed the unilateral change of the status quo by either side of Taiwan Strait, especially US opposed the unilateral change by use of force or non-peaceful means which is deemed as a great threat to the peace of the Western Pacific by the TIA. In other words, US, one China policy is open-ended policies relying on uncourse consents of the people in both China and Taiwan. Now, defining the status quo through the PRC's constitution, now I want to talk about China's anti-successional role which states that Taiwan and mainland are an inevitable part of China. The status quo is such that, legally speaking, Taiwan and mainland have never been separated, only that they have not yet been re-unified. So, any attempts defined by the Beijing's to separate China and Taiwan will invoke the legitimacy of China to use the non-peaceful means against Taiwan. So, China's policy to Taiwan enshrined in the anti-successional role is close-ended and inclined to use the non-peaceful means if Beijing sees it fit. So, comparing China's anti-successional role and the US-Taiwan Relations Act, the latter one fulfilled the democratic sentiments. When the future of Taiwan is open-ended and subject to Taiwan's people's consent. Now, being a democracy, what about the Taiwan policy toward China? Being a democracy, Taiwan's policy toward China is always try to preserve all the options open for Taiwanese people to decide when times come. For instance, we have an implication guideline. The time is that when China becomes a genuine democracy. Now, Taiwan governments, whoever empowered, does want to have a good relations with China. And in fact, Taiwan cannot afford not to have a good relations with China. But a good relations with China cannot come at the expense of Taiwan's democracy, a democratic way of life which respect people's right to choose among multiple options. Which is against Taiwan independence. But it does specify clearly that it respect the articulations where Taiwan independence belong to the freedom of speech. And Ma declared that the potential peace agreements between China and Taiwan will be subject to a referendum of Taiwanese people. So I think the Ma's government also more or less fulfill this kind of democratic sentiments. Here, the DPP does not differ from Ma's government too much. The DPP always insists that any change should be agreed by Taiwan's people through referendums. And unlike Ma who proclaimed no unifications. A DPP government probably would have to concede unifications if the majority of people of Taiwan agreed through the referendums. Both DPP and KMT want Taiwan to be better represented in international organizations and participate meaningfully in international affairs. Both parties want to integrate Taiwan into regional economic structures. The difference between KMT and DPP is how to bring Taiwan into the regional integration structures. For KMT, China is the key to unlock Taiwan's economy to regional integrations because China can block all Taiwan's attempts. For DPP, regional integration, the multiple liberalizations go first. Then the bilateral agreements with China come second. Now, given there already is 21 agreements exist between Taiwan and China, it would be irrational for any DPP government or any future DPP government to scrap them. But I think a review and revisions of their implementations are very likely. In fact, Ma's governments also do the same things through their self and our artists on a regular basis to review the implementation of the cross-strait agreements. Both KMT and DPP want to strengthen the national defense. But I think both suffer from the budget constraints and also public inclinations toward butters rather than guns. Transfer of the defense article I think there are some opportunity and challenge of implementing the TIA in the coming 5 years or 10 years. I think first, we have to think about transfer the defense article and service prescribed in the TIA. First, we need to upgrade the qualities of the defense articles. Secondly, build up the credible deterrence capacities to avoid Jomi Sharma's way to say goodbye to Taiwan. Secondly, consolidation of Taiwan democracy. As I said that the TIA said it clearly, the preservation of the and promoting the human rights is a US objective. So I think consolidation of Taiwan democracy is very important for the TIA to focus on in the coming features. Especially in support of Taiwan's institutional reforms to encourage more transparency, more meaningful participation of the people. And try to defend the democracy not a State Christian. Defend the legitimacy, not legalities. Defend a strong democracy, not thin electoral democracies. Defend the rule of law, not rule by laws. I think these are all very, very important issues that maybe in the future the TIA can help Taiwan to consolidate the institutions. And also I think it's very important most of people in Taiwan, I think the great majority of Taiwanese people has an aspiration to become meaningful participate in international organizations and NGOs. And we really appreciate that US government reiterates several times that the US supports Taiwan's participation in even recently the UN community. So I think we are really grateful that US make that kind of articulations and support in the public. And I think further things that need to be done by Taiwan. And of course from Beijing's perspective that any kind of participation of Taiwan in international organizations must have prior consultations between Beijing and Taiwan. That probably would be a very, very difficult for Taiwanese government to do so. Maybe some kind of exchange of opinion may be possible. But it's a prior consultation or prior agreement with Beijing to allow Taiwan to participate in international organizations. That would not be a feasible option for Taiwan. I think additional issues that in the coming years is that assist Taiwan accession to the regional integration schemes. Taiwan's government has reiterated several times that Taiwan would like to participate in the DPP RCEP and FTAAP in the APEC schemes. Taiwan of course should do it in a very transparent way. I think recent student movements in Taiwan according to master Ray Berhard said it's more or less against China. But I would say that it's more against the black box in a transparent way of doing the DPP. It's not about whether Taiwan would like to have a further trade liberalization. I think Taiwan, most of people in Taiwan would probably for support a trade liberalization. But the real problem is how do you do it in the proper way? The more transparency is very important. Even this is a trend where I learned from the European countries even in the EU. They started two or three years of consultation of the sectors after sectors that really get started in negotiation. Whereas this service agreement that the students is against the black box where the problem here is that one of the L.Y. members in the committees proclaimed that the law is already being passed within 30 seconds. So I think in this way the government disregard the democratic procedures that would really hurt the Taiwan democracies. So I think for Taiwan to have some of the very good strategies to integrate Taiwan into the regional economic schemes I would say that the best way right now under the current situations is to have some unilateral and multilateral liberalizations combined these two approaches is more cost effectively. Now signed bilateral agreements of course is more or less for psychological consultation. Most economists would not agree to have more and more bilateral free trade agreements because it will create spaghetti balls effect that we complicate the trade. Finally I think we have to consider in the coming future as Taiwan and China integrate each other on economic, social terms so extensively would it be possible for China at some point to use economic coercions rather than foreign origins against Taiwan? That could be the possibilities. You know you can witness the problem is that some southern part of the cities try to host the Uyghurs leaders and that China immediately stop the tourist to the southern part of the cities in Taiwan. So that kind of a thing that could happen. You cannot assume that economic integration will not have any cost of the future strategic considerations and that's the best way for Taiwan as mask government trying to do is try to diversify our economic activities from China to elsewhere and I think this is critical important and also DPP government probably would do the same things. For the US I think it's very difficult to managing the operating signals of the US rebalance strategy. I think Professor Gosling just said that there's the difficulty in the Congress and the executive branch of the way that they present the TIA and passing the TIA resolution may be looking good to Taiwan but then that send out some different signals to other signal receivers perhaps in Beijing's. So that would be a very very daunting task for the US to managing the balancing the signals. It's not that easy to have always have sent consistent signals to signal receivers and I would say that adhering to the original spirit of the TIA is the best way to do so and because it will reassure the US Asia partners. Finally, I think in response to the Joe Mishomer's argument I don't say goodbye to Taiwan. I think Taiwan would never say goodbye to the US because you have a TIA, it's your law. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon everybody. It's my great pleasure to be here to attend such a conference about the TIA and cross-re relations and many asked me two months ago whether I'm interested in participating in such a conference. I hesitated for a while because she told me I was the only scholar from mainland China and even I was a scholar at the University of Maryland and she told me I will face a lot of pressure I told her, huge pressure at this meeting maybe and she had already predicted that I will say maybe something different with some other scholars so I've been under this pressure for almost two months so maybe today is a good opportunity for me to relieve this pressure I'm going to start with mainland China's position over TIA as all of us know that China opposes TIA from the very beginning so every time when U.S. officials reiterate that the United States will stick to one China policy three U.S.-China Communicates and the Taiwan Relations Act so the spokesperson and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in China will just mention the first part to mention TIA China regarded TIA as the violation of U.S.-China three Communicates and the interference of China's internal affairs so in the future we cannot see any possibility that China will say yes to TIA also we cannot see any possibility that the United States will revise or abolish TIA or give up one China policy or something like that so that's the basic reality we have to when we are trying to analyze the future development of cross-strait relations and U.S.-China and Taiwan relations so when talking about TIA U.S. scholars always mention I think it's two keywords some scholars just mentioned in the morning a lot of times the two keywords are balance and confidence so let's talk about these two keywords the United States has been trying to balance its relations with Taiwan and with the many China in the last 35 years or even maybe even longer maybe we can regard the making of the TIA itself as the balance to the establishment of diplomatic relations with the United States and China maybe we can regard the arms sales to Taiwan as a balance to the so-called growing China's military threat to Taiwan and maybe the enhancing and the deepening of U.S.-Taiwan relations as a balance to cross-strait relations etc so maybe from the United States perspective TIA successfully maintained peace and stability in that region and protected Taiwan very well from China's so-called potential threat something like that but from the Chinese perspective you can see many remarks from the scholars Chinese scholars TIA only played the role of hindering China's ratification course so because in this kind of balance some scholars regard the United States balance was kind of hard balance so it's time to use this kind of strategy or tactics to and maybe to contain China's intention to influence Taiwan or something like that it's kind of hard balance also China also do some kind of balancing over Taiwan issue but our strategy is maybe pay more attention on the soft balance we want to create some harmonious atmosphere in that region we want to convince almost every party and different groups in one party PPP or KMT we just want to create such a harmonious environment so you can see this kind of hard balance can create some atmosphere that both sides are not happy when many China of course many China are not happy to see any breakthroughs of US-Taiwan relations and also are not happy to see the US arms sales to Taiwan also Taiwan was also was nervous every time when China's leader and the United States leader to be together and they are worried about whether they are going to a new statement there are some wars and not so good to Taiwan so every time when the US scholars say something like abandoning Taiwan are still in nervous so everybody was in nervous so that's not a good balance so maybe we prefer the soft balance let everybody happy not let everybody unhappy so of course the other key words is so-called confidence yeah I know many US scholars believe that TRA can give the people in Taiwan confidence to facing many China maybe the logic is clear that Taiwan is weaker side and maybe China is not should not be trusted and many China intends to threaten Taiwan's security or trying to rule Taiwan something like that so many people believe that without the United States port Taiwan will be not so confident to face many China and cannot get what they want from many China so when government officials once told me a few months ago that the United States just want to create a fair environment for the two sides to handle their disputes or handle their problems but this logic was also doubted in China so the US definition of fair was regarded as unfair by China the United States believe it's fair but some Chinese scholars say it's not fair it's unfair so of course a few weeks ago there is this sunflower movement happening in Taiwan so some scholars regarded as and that movement just shows that some people in Taiwan are not so confident enough while facing the mainland so from China's perspective the United States only give the Taiwanese people the confidence to say no to mainland not giving them confidence to face the reality and to handle the problems let's just tell the people in Taiwan if you don't want to talk with the mainland you can have the confidence to say no but do not give them confidence to say yes so that's a problem if the United States really believe Taiwan people can get confidence from them so then they should tell the people in Taiwan you should be brave and to talk with the mainland if the mainland do something not good for you or use coercion to threaten you so the United States will stand behind you that should be the normal logic but now the reality is not that so the people in Taiwan are a little bit worried about talking with the mainland are worried about the economic integration political talks so that's why many scholars in mainland China are doubted about the so-called confidence theory so on the contrary the United States want to give Taiwan confidence and the people in Taiwan are not so confident enough maybe the mainland is already confident but the people in Taiwan are not so confident they do not want to give the confidence to the mainland but mainland China is more confident than before it's more confident than before from the remark of Xi Jinping to Lianzhai in February and his remarks to Jameson maybe just last week we can see the confidence of mainland China and these kinds of confidence I believe will have some kind of influence over the future development of cross-strait relations I'd like to mention four points the first point is mainland China are confident enough to focus on the peaceful development process so though we will never give up the ultimate goal of re-invocation so every time when Chinese leaders and some influential scholars or officials mention the term of re-invocation or mention the term the issue cannot be delayed forever the problem should not be passed from generation from generation and some people in Taiwan or in the United States are deeply concerned about these kinds of remarks they just worry about whether the China will change its peaceful development policy or not my understanding is mentioning re-invocation or mention the issue cannot be delayed forever does not mean re-invocation re-invocation will be achieved in a short time or the issue should be resolved tomorrow or the day after tomorrow that only means we need to sleep down to create some conditions and environment to handle this problem just like Xi Jinping mentioned last week to Jameson He Ping Fa Zhan Ren Zhong Dao Yuan peaceful re-invocation is a heavy task it has a long way to go so but in that long way we cannot just wait and see we have to stand up and do something that's what we want we not just want to settle this problem in maybe tomorrow or the day after tomorrow so we know it's complicated we know it's a very long task to achieve so our second point is many China especially Xi Jinping regard the two sides feminine we are confident to win the heart of Taiwanese people eventually not maybe it's still it's a long task it's a long way to go but we are confident to win the heart of Taiwanese people eventually Xi Jinping used the new term Liang An Yi Jia Qin we used to use the term Liang An Gong Tong Ti and also maybe before somebody used Liang An Yi Jia Ren but this time Xi Jinping used the term Liang An Yi Jia Qin he just want to focus on the relative relations close relative relations across the two sides so maybe some people in Taiwan do not admit that their family do not admit that they are Chinese but the key problem is whether mainland really treats the people in Taiwan as family members so that's the most important thing I'll give you an example every time when I forced my daughter to study Chinese Xi Xi was the first graduate student in American elementary school she just found English much easier than Chinese so every time I forced her to write Chinese capital and forced her to study she was mad and said you are not my father I don't want you to be my father so but I never say you are not my daughter so that's the most important thing whether we treat the people in Taiwan as a family or as a family member or not that's the most important thing so that's why when Xi Jinping met Liang Zhan he showed the deep understanding over Taiwan's special history and the special feelings of Taiwanese people so that's what just now ambassador said that's very important maybe that's a new change in many Chinese policy toward Taiwan and third point is maybe confidence give many China encouraged to correct the mistakes during the cross-strait exchanges I know the Taiwan issue is very complicated Taiwan's domestic and political situation is very complicated in the last few years China just issued a lot of policies just want to benefit the people of Taiwan we admitted that during the implementation of these policies there could be some mistakes or false I just want to be clear false or mistakes if the reporter wants to translate into Chinese false or false not false or false so from Xi Jinping's remarks with Jamsong and China realize that we are we have some mistakes we have some false or false during the policy implementation we are trying to correct that maybe so in the future maybe many China will hear or ready to hear the voice of the young people in Taiwan and the grass-rooted people in Taiwan just like our director of TAO said when he he paid a visit to Taiwan is willing to meet the young people in Taiwan so the confidence give many China the courage the courage to correct these kinds of mistakes so the first point is many China is confident to face the US factor and maybe to discuss some issues with the United States such as arm sales issue many China refuse to discuss Taiwan issue with the United States because we believe Taiwan issue is China's internal affairs so the issue should be resolved between the two people across the Taiwan Strait there are no need to discuss with the United States but last year when our Foreign Minister Wang Yi made a speech at Brookings he just said Taiwan could be the access of US relations also our PLA leader just mentioned we can discuss arm sales issue so I think these kinds of confidence is very important these kinds of confidence will help reduce the sensitivity of Taiwan issue in China US relations because China always mentioned that Taiwan issue is the most important and the most sensitive issue in China US relations in conclusion I will say that many China is confident enough to handle the disputes with Taiwan and with the United States it's time for Taiwan to be more self-confident and it may be it's time for the United States to give Taiwan more confidence to face the disputes not to run away from this disputes so the continuous delay of these disputes will increase the anxieties of Taiwanese people and benefit nobody in the last so I stop here thank you for listening great thank you for your candor I think you've met the pressure test well with humor and linguistic precision so that was a good thing okay well in the interest of time I think we're going to jump straight out to the audience I have a question that I'd like to ask the panel myself we'll see what the audience has to say first per our other two panels please do identify yourself confine yourself to a question and we'll take it from there who's up first hi Nadia just one question for Professor Li this morning our representative Shan mentioned the process between the two sides of Taiwan is integration neither unification nor independence I wonder do you share this analysis and is this widely accepted in China thank you maybe integration is yes we are on the road of integration you know many Chinese scholars mentioned economic integration, social integration something like that so also I know some scholars in Taiwan just like Zhang Yazong also mentioned so-called integration Chinese translation is Ronghe or Tonghe so maybe but I don't think China say no to these kinds of concepts so I think the officials at the TAO often mention that all these are discussable we can discuss this so I believe maybe I don't think there are some conflicts between so-called unification or integration so that depends on how you interpret these terms these terms also I know some people in Taiwan just preferred European model EU model so I think Chinese men and I think these models are discussable but maybe it's not the final one that we will accept so if this if these kinds of integration will be good for the peaceful development it will help for the two for two people to understand each other for the two sides to settle their disputes especially the political disputes that way will be helpful so I think during the process of peaceful development integration is very important re-indication is our ultimate goal the gentleman over here I'm a Garrett van der Wies editor of Taiwan communique I have a question for Steve Goldstein and I actually want to go back to something that Chris Delsen said this morning Chris I really want to let you know that I listened to what you were saying okay one of the things that he said is if Taiwan was a functioning democracy in 1979 but we have broken relations Taiwan is a democracy now do we still stick with a policy that was based on the situation in the 1970s or could you somehow envision a different policy to take better account of the fact that Taiwan is now a democracy and the more equal role it does want to play internationally thank you one of the things that practitioners of American policy towards Taiwan always say or always talk about is the impact of democracy on Taiwan-American relations and what's interesting for me is that you'll hear a certain amount of grousing that it's a much more difficult kind of relationship because of democracy but then in the end they'll say you know it's easier to deal with a democracy because you can impact different parts of the population on different kinds of issues I'm not sure that policy towards Taiwan would be any different or would have been any different if it were a democracy then and I'm frankly democracy and American foreign policy are very tricky items democracy doesn't give you de facto legitimation not being a democracy doesn't delegitimize you as a friend to the United States I still think that the major American interest in Taiwan is the American interest in Asia and that's it all the other stuff helps there are little fringe benefits but we cannot remain an Asian hope to be influential in Asia if we walk away from Taiwan this couldn't happen again I don't think I think meaningful participation I think the kind of policy that we've been pursuing is a legitimate kind of policy you know it's hard for me to look at Taiwan as an isolated little island particularly when you go abroad and go to Europe Europe has much different has much different hang-ups about dealing with Taiwan their virtual embassies TECRO in Europe they're treated as embassies they're given the dignity of them they call themselves ambassadors by that in the United States you have to reprint your cards but the the other point that I'd make about participation and I was hoping to provoke something about rebalancing because I think one thing to keep in mind is that twice in American history since the Second World War that we've had a major influence towards Asia and that was the Vietnam War and the Korean War American efforts were to keep Taiwan out of it and the efforts were to keep Taiwan out of it because of the fear of provoking the main one and I think that was a good policy and I think that in spite of all the hopes that Taiwan might have about its role in rebalancing my guess is that it's going to remain like that do you still want to interject just wait me for the microphone just a quick and thank you Garrett it's always nice to be taken seriously even if you don't deserve it necessarily when I asked obviously a rhetorical question about Taiwan democracy I was asking it to focus on where it is now today as we go forward but we could have had a long discussion about the tragedy of history that if Taiwan had been a democracy for many years prior to 78-79 you have to wonder what the relationship with the mainland might have been would the government in Taipei have still been claiming to rule all of the mainland how could you do that if you're a democracy you know so we could have a wonderful almost Star Trek sci-fi alternative history discussion here but that was part of what was in my mind that there were so many lost opportunities leading up to 78-79 that the authorities in Taipei had lost the battle really by then and it was too bad but that's really what I was getting at question in the back corner David Brown from CIS I thought we got three excellent presentation my question is for Dr. Huang those of us who were not in Taiwan at the time of the Sunflower student movement are still trying to understand it and I would appreciate it if you could explain what you think its implications are for future cross-strait relations how will it impact on President Ma's ability to pursue his policies how will it impact on the DPP which has been considering whether or not to revise its own policy and any other implications you think it might have thank you well thank you Professor Brown's questions I think the first the Sunflower student movements come with as a result of the protest of the student against the so-called black box decision-making of the service agreements that's the original I think the first casualty right now is not from the KMT it's from DPP the premier student said that he won't stand against to reelect as the chairman of the DPP I think the student movements itself slow down the cross-strait interaction I think especially service agreements seems to be now grounded in the L.Y. until the new law that would monitor or control the cross-strait agreements enacted so after that then there will be a review of service agreements right now I think it seems that the situation is that you need to enact the law that review cross-strait agreements first and then review the service agreement itself and I think it will slow down the play-hole dialogues I think the initially in February the director of Taiwan Affairs and then Wang Yiqi met in the mainland China presumably there are a lot of discussion but the media focus on whether there will be some discussion about Ma and Xi meeting in the coming October-November and there was a schedule that Zhang Xijin will return visit to Taiwan in April but then with March 18th student movements it seems that the arrangement is slowed down so to think that maybe Zhang Xijin would not be able to come to Taiwan before June because right now there's no way for the service agreement to be passed by the end of June so and then we'll come into the 2014 elections that we have a midterm elections and then with the elections in May that would be a very difficult time to have a Marchi Hui so I think I would say that the student movements actually slowed down the cross-strait integrations in this way but I think there are other things still undergoing the cross-strait negotiation setting up the representative office of the self and the editors still continue to discuss and if I would be recently concluded because China already granted the humanitarian visit of our office in Beijing so there will be some progress in this way so if you ask me whether Zhang Xijin can visit Taiwan maybe next year but next year is another elections we have already a presidential elections in view so Zhang Xijin maybe come to Taiwan to open up the office of the editors but that would be an occasion that only my guess okay so undoubtedly it will slow down the whole process of cross-strait integrations and I would say that the student movements will have a great impact on the way that we review the cross-strait agreements I think there will be a mechanism set up in the L.O.Y and that would be help Taiwan to be more transparent and Zhang Xijin in the Jam Song meeting said that he already noticed that these service agreements or any cross-strait agreement must trickle down to the average Taiwanese people so I think to have a more transparent way to do the cross-strait agreement or cross-strait negotiations would be a benefit not only for Taiwan democracy but also for the benefit for the people across the Taiwan Strait thank you in the middle here yes my name is Bill Sharp and I teach at Hawaii Pacific University and University of Hawaii in Manoa a follow-up on David Brown's question so how is this going to impact the 7-1 elections that are slated for next November Professor Goldstein talked briefly made a comment about the 7-1 earlier and you just alluded to it so I'm really curious about that and then the other thing if I could let me see well I'll let that one go but I'd be interested in hearing your comments on the 7-1 election what's the outcome of that going to be as you see it today I think you have to ask the fortune tellers if you're looking into the opinion poll right now especially with regard to the Metropolitan Mayor's elections you have six Metropolitan Mayor's elections right now if you look into the Taipei cities the current candidate from the KMT is Lian Shengwen that's Lian Zhan's son and I don't know whether the DPP will promote its own candidate in Taipei Mayor's elections but right now there will be one candidate of the DPP and stand in comparison with the independent candidates Dr. Covinger medical Dr. Covinger and they will compare the opinion poll but I think in the Taipei cities it seems to be if you want to count the voters there are a lot more voters to support the KMT than to support DPP unless there's a sprit in the blue camp it would stand a good chance to win but right now even the Lian Shengwen and Dr. Covinger independent candidates is running in the neck-to-neck opinion poll in opinion polls so it's difficult to determine whether Taipei city will go for one way or the others I think if you look into the Taichong right now Jason who is already three terms Mayor four terms and his opinion poll is really lower and compare with the challenger from the DPP by 20% of differences so the DPP probably would gain of the Taichong cities and in my hometown the Zhanghua counties and the opinion poll is also favorite of the DPP so I think in general the DPP stand a good chance to win in local elections are always considered as second-order elections which means that the elections will not have a great impact or will not have a major impact in the national regime change of national regimes so people are more or less favored to cast a sincere vote in the second-order elections that would vote against the government so seven-in-one elections most people will say that the DPP probably can retain the Kaohsiung and Tainan and then increase win the Taichong and also the maybe Zhanghua that's the central part of Taiwan and the northern part of Taiwan it all depends there are some speculations with the Prime Minister's step-down as candidate of the DPP whether that he will stand as candidate of the new Taipei cities I don't know but new Taipei cities now currently the DPP is going to have the Yoshihiko former premier to stand as candidates and Eric Zhu think that the current Taipei mayor new Taipei mayor Eric Zhu probably would wrong for the 2016 presidential elections so if the current DPP candidate stand then he will ask his deputy mayor to run for the new Taipei cities and he was going to run for the 2016 presidential elections so in that case the new Taipei city is still difficult to judge because they can't themselves that's not yet determined so the DPP already proclaimed that if they can win the Taichong mayor then the DPP will have the power for DPP but most of the DPP supporters probably would not agree with that because given that the lower opinion power of the mayor demonstrations that DPP should win more than just three out of the six metropolitan mayors so in this sense I think I wouldn't I don't know what will happen but you will probably expect the next presidential elections right here and I know I have a question for Professor Li we talk about democracy here so 25 years ago they have democracy in Tiananmen and so this is Tiananmen Mexico is 25 years so I wonder the Xi Jinping where we do anything I don't know what your comment about this Tiananmen Mexico thank you I'm an expert of Taiwan issue so I don't know anything about China's domestic politics yeah that's an off topic how about back here in the coin you can ask your uncle thank you, my name is Yu Dachou I'm a first year school here currently studying agent studies my question will be my question will go to Professor Li because it seems like China has a lot of confidence in dealing with Taiwan problems as you've mentioned four of the Chinese confidence one of them is the one of them is that China has the confidence to win Taiwan people's heart eventually I would like to first of all with Professor Huang had mentioned that Taiwan is now facing the turning point especially institutional reform which is really important because as we have known right now the constitution of ROC doesn't really match the reality in Taiwan right now and also the student movement currently in Taiwan one of their main asks to the government is to set such kind of dialogue between the government and the people on this kind of constitutional reform or institutional reform issues which President Ma didn't really focus on this I mean during his talks in the period of student movement so and also Professor Huang has mentioned that if DPP really won the future elections presidential elections or the mayoral elections this year they would tend to decide the future of Taiwan through the referendum process which is also not acceptable by PRC regime so can Professor Li would you mind to extend a little bit on your confidence where did your confidence come from to win the Taiwanese people's heart eventually thank you thank you for your question I believe many in China are trying to build this kind of confidence to convince the people of Taiwan to make the people of Taiwan and to get to know more about the mainland I know since the two sides opened communications for over 20 years or over 20 years but I believe most of the ordinary people do not understand each other I believe most of the people in Taiwan do not really know what happened in mainland China and maybe 95% of the people in mainland don't really know what's happening in Taiwan so that's the source of some misunderstandings and problems we receive students from Taiwan our institute receives students from Taiwan each year always these students ask some very strange questions they are very strange for our some of our students do not even believe that questions just come from the students of Taiwan so they ask maybe can you eat some maybe do you have car okay in Xiamen something like that so that's why we believe that's a very big issue our institute is trying to play the role to make the two sides to understand each other what we are trying to do is to make our teachers our researchers and our students to know Taiwan better than the other people when they come to their positions in the government or in other places they can tell the other people what Taiwan really looks like we established three offices in Taipei in Taichung and in Kaohsiung we sent our teachers and students every month to Taiwan we asked them to not just talk to the scholars and officials we forced them to talk with the ordinary people talk with the farmers the fishermen some of our students and researchers can speak Minnan dialect Taiwan is very different from what the television tells them that's what we are trying to do of course our institute the role is limited but I believe through the frequent communication more and more people will get to know China maybe they do not accept the political system in China maybe they do not understand our belief our value, our mind but if they learn how to respect it that's enough we are just trying to make the people in Minnan China to respect the lifestyle of Taiwanese people respect the political system of the Taiwanese people to understand why the two sides cannot come into war to understand why to keep the peace and stability in the region so I think that's enough for two sides so why Xi Jinping mentioned He Ping Fadang that means we are ready to do this in the next several years maybe several decades of years we are maybe another idea is all this problem all this trouble the sunflower movements yes there are problems but in our perspective it's the problem of development during China's rise we have to face a lot of trouble a lot of problems maybe some people in Taiwan some people in Hong Kong do not understand they do not accept our policy they do not accept what we are doing that's all right maybe after 20 years after 30 years even 50 years when we come back we say what we are doing today is worthwhile that's enough great just want to point of clarification you're not suggesting better relations through karaoke just want to all right I think we have time for one more question how about over here in the back hi I recently graduated from a university focusing on human rights and I think I totally agree that professor Li you contribute yourself to mutual understanding between Taiwan and China and the people in Taiwan we think that's really good because it helps the mutual understanding and peace but regarding since you gave our really interesting story about you and your daughter you force your daughter to study Chinese and then your daughter say back to you that you are not her father then I will give you my story my side since RLC was founded earlier than PRC then I would say RLC is the older part of PRC then RLC can say you are not my water then that's acceptable too the question will be based on your opinion that you say China whether China treated Taiwan is the most important issue how China treat Taiwan the people in Taiwan is critical is the most critical point in my opinion I think the critical point is when and how China democratize when China democratize that's when the people in Taiwan will start to think maybe unification is not bad but until then I don't think Taiwanese people will accept the fact that China tries to force Taiwan to be unified or to be part of them so that's my personal opinion did you have a question? regarding the democratization of China when or how China will carry on democratization you have two and a half minutes okay don't bother okay well I just want to thank everyone for their participation you've been a very patient audience and I especially want to thank both this panel and also my colleagues Richard Bush and Bonnie Glazer for helping us put together what I thought was a fantastic program so thank you very much for your participation thanks


Let's take a look at one of our four agreements. Oh, look at that, I gotta pick another one. Holy cow, it just dropped. Okay, let's see what we got here. Love is kind and just. When you're in love, a smile is always on your face. You feel good about yourself, and because you are happy, you are always kind. Love is also just. When you make a mistake, you only pay for it once. You only pay once for that mistake. Mug it wise! Let's take a look at it out here. We have the Dow Industries right now, trading down 83.  Gold contract down $5.70, trading at 18.21 an ounce. We have Silver down 7 cents, $23.13 an ounce. Light sweet crude off 81 cents, $81.83 a barrel, notes and bonds. The 10-year note, up 6 ticks, trading 128.25, the 30-year up 19 at 156.20, and King dollar. King dollar's down 112.6, trading out at 94, 803. Euro's at 114, the end's at 114, the British pound's at 137 to one US dollar. Excuse me, folks. Our phone number's<PHONE_NUMBER>. Give us a call, folks. Want to know what's going on in your world, and the world of the S&P's. Let's take a look at them. What do you have? Well, gonna get pretty cool here, checking this baby out. Okay, so what do we have? You're down $4.80 on the spy. We have 54 million shares traded. Now that's really life-volume, folks, okay? We hit the lows with 119 million. We came off those on Tuesday with 74. So I suspect we're gonna do 64 into 74. The way this is set up, it looks to me like you actually can't hit the 465. We'll probably do it tomorrow. We'll probably reject lower price. The cues are gonna give us more of an indication of where this market wants to go. The cues lead up, the cues lead down, and right now the cues are going right after the highs of the low. Now, I just did it, okay, as we were coming on the air. So, the cues right now are down eight bucks. You get 56 million shares traded. You're going into 91. Now the way this works, folks, on price and volume, if you don't get the rejection of lower price out here today, which is the 380-64, bottom line, it's gonna go right for it tomorrow.  Why? Because what you'll end up getting more than likely is that the market will run out of energy. The market's going under a high-energy day, meaning last Friday, a Monday, rather. And I just can't see the market basically getting another 91 million shares in the cues when today it's gonna be about 65. So we'll see whether the baby's gonna shake out, but that's how that baby is set up. We go to the gold contract. We take a look at gold. Gold's rejected lower price again at 1811 today. You're trading 1821, bottom line, this one's higher price in a big way, not in a small way either. This just came down, came against the strain from Tuesday saying, okay, I want higher price. And if we go over to the good old US dollar, the US dollar says it all, because what we had with the US dollar is this. US dollar broke the consolidation yesterday, broke it in spades. We are at 94.809 in the beginning where the dollar went topside, okay? So this is where we go. The highs of the lows where we went topside, meaning the day of strength, which was November 10th, is 94.903. Well, we just got into that by 100 ticks. If it stays in it, it's gonna go to the bottom of that, which is 91.967. If we get the same kind of movement that we got yesterday on the way down to that level, bottom line, this thing will get all the way down to 90, next one is 91.4, now 91.947. And that's a decent movement. You can see that the correlation is pretty clear. When you take a look at the correlation, we go over to the euro, you're gonna see the euro broke topside after consolidation. We go take a look at the British pound, British pound has been strong anyway. And the bottom line is that you had fall through inside the British pound. The low on the British pound, bottom line, you go back three weeks ago was 131, you're at 137. This pound wants to get up to the 139. And then the yen, the yen is also cooperating with us. The yen is getting stronger. But to have at the end, the yen's down 56 ticks right now. We are trading at a price point of 114. That is saying that the yen wants to run down to this level of 112.53. Let's go to Earl in Seminole. Hey, Earl, what's going on? Hey, Tommy. How you doing, man? How you doing? I'm doing great, man, yourself? Yeah, I wanna have you take a look at IEF. IEF. I think it's made a nice move today. It's at the bottom from what I see. And I like it long from here. Okay, let's take a look. So the IEF is the seven to 10 year treasury bond ETF. Okay, so 113.30. Yeah, I mean, you can trade this. This looks to me like you can get 115.39 out of it. It's gonna try to break back inside this range. I'm sorry, what did you say, Earl? I say that's what I'm looking for. It looks like it could drive back up to that area. Where I'm going with this is the lows of the high. See that borrower there on the December 3rd? That's where that baby can get to. So let's go and take a look at this 10 year. Cause I talked about this at the beginning of the program. So if we take a look at the 10 year GC, let's get the, what you're gonna see is that the 10 year folks, as well as the 30, that had broken and it's 128.22. Yeah, look at that. So the 10 year just got back inside this range. When that happens, folks, the bottom line is that is get back inside this higher range and guess what? It's saying that it wants to go to higher price. Yeah, so this is a good setup, man. The 30 year had already got back inside the higher range and I know this is bizarre because the fact that it matters, we know the Fed's gonna go up. But that Fed going up, the bond and note market are saying they're not gonna go up as fast as markets may think. So yeah, I think you get some action there, Earl. Yeah, I like it as a head, in case we have a down drop. Exactly, that's a fact, that's a fact, man. Cookin' brother. Thank you. Have a great one, man, have a safe one. Stay right there folks, we'll come right back.


The economy has recovered quite nicely and this has been enabled by a lot of timely and purposeful interventions made by the government during the pandemic and the reforms undertaken by the government under the leadership of the Honourable Prime Minister particularly during the pandemic period are truly transformative reforms like Gatishakti, PLI and many more which were part of the Union budget are truly transformative and augur well for the economy and under his leadership we believe that India is poised for many great things in future.


Tired of long-term commitment plans? Then Appalachian Wireless has the new plans for you. No credit checks, no contracts, and most of the features of PostPaid is ForwardPaid. The simpler way to do wireless on the region's premier cellular provider. And it starts as low as $19.99 a month with unlimited talk and text. We are you. We are Appalachian Wireless. A Healthier We launched Appalachia Rising to facilitate the first ever Buy County Task Force aimed at bringing healthier living to Pike and Mingo counties. A Healthier We is a not-for-profit organization that was developed to improve the health. And we use the World Health Organization's definition of health to discuss health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being. I would also include spiritual well-being, not only the absence of disease or infirmity. The event held at the Overlook Event Center in Pikeville hosted key stakeholders from both Mingo and Pike counties to share stories and work together to create a task force that will offer collaborative options to bring about healthier living in the region. We are here because one of our associates, June Sergeant, was raised in this area and said there's a real opportunity to try to bridge the gap between Mingo County and Pike County. Sort of a second generation of the cut through to make sure both counties collaborate more and enhance the quality of life for the entire Central Appalachia region. We're not here to create an initiative. We're here to help facilitate the initiative. And what we would like to see at this point, which is a dream state, not a real state, we would like to see the formulation of the Buy County Task Force. The event hosted several speakers with unique perspectives and touched on several points including creating healthier, more equitable communities, making health a shared value, and fostering cross-sector collaboration. For Mountain Top News, I'm Kelsey Dean.


Can we all know who this is? So it's Amory Scott, and I think we need plenty more than 30 minutes to talk about buying from EdTech, but she says she's going to be able to do this in 20 and then leave time for questions or at least an early exit to get ready for the gala dinner tonight. Thank you, John. Thank you. Hopefully I'll get through this in about 20 minutes. This is a talk I've done a couple of times before at varying lengths in other places, so hopefully I can do this in 20. First of all, I want to acknowledge that a lot of the thinking and work I'm going to talk about here was done while I was in Canada. It was done in a place coated with Kamloops to Shquetwick, the unceded in traditional lands of the Shquetwick Nation, also known as Kamloops British Columbia for those of you who were in my keynote yesterday. Learning has taken place since time immemorial and I think it's important just with the session we just heard to recognise that learning and thinking takes place in a physical location. So, five things you need to know before you buy ed tech. Well, five things I think you need to know before you buy ed tech. This is not going to be a vendor management talk. I'm sorry if that's what you came for and if you work for a vendor, I'm very sorry. You may not like some of the things I'm going to say. But I'm going to talk through five points that I think are important when we think about buying ed tech. And the reason I think they're important is because I hear a lot in the institutions I've worked with and in the work I do for the Government of British Columbia about how does this stuff end up in our institutions? How, you know, suddenly I'm expected to use this digital technology that's just sort of appeared and I don't really know how it appeared and where it came from and what was the process of bringing it into the institution. And when I hear things like that, I start because I'm a senior administrator in institutions. I start to think about, well, you know, what's the, what are the processes by which this stuff comes into our institution and where may be the issues in those processes. So that's really where I started with this, starting to think about why do people have these questions about where stuff comes from and who made the decision. And then as I started to dig into that, I started to think about procurement practice and the extent to which it slightly lives outside our sphere as learning technologists. Some of us might get involved in procurements, but, but it's sort of, you know, it's driven maybe from somewhere else. And I've done quite a lot of work on this with a Canadian colleague, Dr Brandon Clark Gray, who's at Thomson Rivers University, and we have a book chapter coming out on this in HE for good, edited by Laura Chenewich and Catherine Cronan, which I also name checked yesterday. And please look for that when it's out. And it's something we continue to talk about. So what I'm going to talk about today is a kind of work in progress. So this is why I want to have space at the end for a bit of discussion because I've got questions and not all the answers at the moment. OK, so five, five areas that I think are kind of interconnected and fundamental when we think about how ed tech comes to be in our institution. And I'm going to talk a little bit about possible solutions. But this is where I want you also to jump in. So my first proposition, if you like, is that ed tech is big business. And I don't think this should come as any surprise to us. There are a variety of economic influences, economic interests influencing the technologies that we use. You can find updated versions of this slide from Holonica IQ, but it really shows you the investment in venture capital that's been pushed into the ed tech market. Now it's dropping off at the moment, but I would suggest that actually that shift of venture capital into AI and away from ed tech is still in the ed tech space. There are some questions about whether there's a kind of ed tech crash coming. But I think we have to accept that our field has been a space of venture capital speculation. And as the quote I've put on the screen there shows, the people who are speculating in this space are not necessarily aligned in values terms to the same things that we are aligned to. The other thing that influences ed tech markets is our own internal thinking around digital transformation. And I'm glad I'm able to follow on from the previous session for those who were in here. And maybe some of you saw the just session earlier on digital transformation. We as institutions are pursuing digital transformation often as a way to grow our institutions to cope with scale or to think about new groups of learners that might join our institutions and that could be international students, that could be people at a distance, but it could be micro-credentials, it could be degree apprenticeships, it could be whole new products if I can use that phrase. So, I want to talk about supporting growth. So ed tech companies have got a vested interest in influencing us and making markets for their stuff and institutions have got a vested interest in ed tech to support some of these bigger visions about growth and digitisation. My second proposition is ed tech is not a tool. I fundamentally believe that the technologies that we use are a quality assurance matter and that really draws on the concept of entanglement when we think about technology and pedagogy. I cannot abide that diagram on the side. It is complete fabrication. You cannot separate technology and pedagogy from each other. This quote from my colleague, Shan Bain extends on that a little bit. So yes, we need to acknowledge that the two are co-constitutive of each other entangled in cultural, material, political and economic assemblages of great complexity. You can't pick the two things apart. More recent work from another colleague, Tim Fawns, where he has this neat diagram around entangled pedagogies. He again makes the same point that the reality, you know, you've got these two illusions of tech driving or pedagogy driving, but the reality is that they act upon each other all the time. And they're also mixed up with other complex ideas about the purpose of education, the context in which education takes place and the values that we have as educators. So if you believe that technology and pedagogy aren't separate and then you start to think about quality assurance frameworks, we're very good at assessing, very good, sometimes we're very good at assessing the quality of education, but when you look at a lot of quality assurance frameworks, they're looking at the learning and teaching activities and not looking at the technology piece. You look at who does the teaching, you look at what qualifications they have to do the teaching, but you don't look at what technology is used and you don't look at how the technology came into being. So we have this mismatch in our quality assurance practices and if technology can act upon the quality of education and these kind of framing suggests it can, then I think we have a gap. So good use of technology is not as simple as picking the right tool and training people on how to use it and quality assurance processes are not broad enough to really accommodate a proper evaluation of the technologies and that entangled impact. Edtech is not neutral. It is absolutely driven by political ideologies of what education is for and about and it's not an ethics-free zone and I suspect I don't need to tell this community about that, but I'm going to because I've got some slides on it. Edtech is often pushed at us as part of this bigger narrative that we're broken and that we need to be disrupted. I do like to point out proctoring companies who tell us that the value of our degrees will be suspect without their tools that I come from a 400-year-old university that has survived two world wars and that was just the 20th century bit of that university. We are not broken and do not need to be disrupted in the way that we are told, but there is a series of political agendas here about what education is. I mean I think just again in the last session we were talking about the push from the UK government at the moment to present tourism on campus again. There are absolutely political narratives in this space and we see this in the edtech space as well. I'm going to lovely quote from again American and Canadian colleagues about this, financially driven about privatisation of public structures, prepackaged deliverables and technology in a solution in and of itself, this kind of technical solutionism. I think that takes us into kind of interesting spaces when we think about risk. We are now starting to see class action lawsuits in the US, successful class action lawsuits from students who are, yes, this one says, clearly making the case that large-scale use of exam proctoring was a violation of their privacy and indeed the judge in this case found that it was. So students are pushing back on some of our use of edtech and this is my colleague, a link letter who was at the University of British Columbia now BCIT who is being sued by proctorial. He has been in and out of court for the last three years. So not only are our students pushing back on some of the edtech we choose if we don't choose it carefully, use it carefully. If we are critical of it, some companies are coming for us as well. I think there's a whole new market and liability insurance for learning technologists unfortunately. This quote from Neil Selwyn is really interesting because he wanted to do some work on proctoring technologies and it was around the time that proctorial took the action against Ian and various journals wouldn't publish the research that he wanted to education journals wouldn't touch it and it was published in a media journal instead. So there was a chilling effect from that case on research as well. And I think at the point that we are not able to critically examine our own practice in our institution through our own applied research because we are scared of legal action from vendors. It's not a good place to be. So edtech is complicit in these narratives of disruption. It's presented as a solution to all of our problems and ethics, I say, are a structural consideration in one ear of our education. We do a lot of ethics clearance in our research but actually can be a really risky business to engage with in other parts of our organisations. We don't think about ethical approval in our operations in the way that we do in our research and I think the proctoring cases really show us that there is a big gap there. Edtech is killing us. I talked yesterday in my keynote about climate change. You cannot avoid it and technology excess of which edtech is one small part is fueling increasing disadvantage in a climate crisis. We don't talk enough about the intersection between technology and climate and that doesn't just apply to our field. That applies to technology in general, but I think as educators we really do have a responsibility in here for every single one of us whose universities have signed up to the Sustainable Development Goals. I find it quite difficult to think about how you're going to deliver environmentally conscious education and really think about underpinning those goals without thinking critically about the extent to which we need less edtech. So this is again work from Neil Selwyn. This is a screenshot from a presentation he gave to colleagues at Edinburgh, but I really love this question he asks. Is digital education part of a realistic, livable future or even just a survivable planet and if so in what form? Since we've all entered a period of collective madness around AI, if any of you haven't read Kate Crawford's Atlas of AI, I would absolutely recommend it or even just go and find the graphic that was designed in anatomy of an AI, which really shows you the material processes involved in developing an artificial intelligence, the mining of rare minerals to create the data centres and the e-waste that exists at the other end of that process. So yes, how much edtech is too much edtech? I also like to think about where does OER fit when we're trying to be climate conscious?  I really think there are. In my Canadian context when I think about the relationship of First Nations people to the land and the way they conceptualise that relationship are commitments to decolonisation, which has to include responsible use of natural resources. And then how do we reach some of the most marginalised learners? Particularly again in my Canadian context, in areas that are very poorly served by internet access. But you can apply that to other rural areas in Europe as well. Though I think in Scotland Tyree, the small island of Tyree has the best internet access in the whole of Scotland. There's a couple of other papers which have come out in the last year really starting to push on this that I feel has been pretty slow to really engage with the environmental arguments. So this is a paper that talks about talking about, if you're going to talk about social justice and education you can't really escape the use of minerals and the e-waste and what that means at a global level that our use of digital education is actually impoverishing people or pushing people into dangerous work. And again, if you've read the time article about how Jack GBT was trained on the kind of labour, horrific labour that went into training Jack GBT, and the trauma that that's left behind it, I think that's just another example. And digital literacy is again coming back to, you know, we talk about digital skills. We talk about being able to make critical judgements about our use of technology, but we never go quite as far as that critical judgement about not using technology. It's always a choice between certain types of technology. We don't talk about not using it. And again, we don't talk about, you know, the lives of our phones and the lives of our computers and what they mean in material terms. So should we, when talking about quality assurance area, should we be assessing the environmental footprint of our courses as a design quality assurance like we do with accessibility? And fundamentally, do we need more ed tech? Should we be using more trailing edge technology rather than bleeding edge technology? Which leads me to my final point when I think about the processes and the mechanisms by which this stuff comes into our institution. And I think about all the ways in which ed tech can be problematised. I think our procurement practices are fundamentally broken because we don't have any frameworks to help us navigate this territory. So what's missing? The kinds of things I think you're missing. You know, what's driving procurement? Where did it come from? Was it? Is the market making happening? Did somebody come in and show us something shiny and now we want it? Are we being told all of our peers have it and now we have to have it? Who benefits and what are the costs and let's get real about what the costs are. Can any claims of efficacy that are made actually be validated as the research that underpins the use of these tools? What are the risks of harm to staff and students? Are we going to get sued? Are our students going to sue us and then what about that sustainability piece? What are our obligations to the sustainable development goals and are they real and are they more about more than reducing our turning the lights off at night and reducing our server consumption? And this is a quote I've used in a blog. I finally got it in print fairly recently. I have walked into God knows how many university rooms and seen fair trade tea and fair trade coffee and fair trade sugar. And we think more about the ethics of how we buy teabags on our campus than we do about technology. We assume it's this neutral free zone. But that also gives me hope because that says that there are frameworks that we can use. Frameworks do exist. And if we could create those kinds of frameworks then I think we could start to solve some of this problem. However, I also think there's a bigger problem. That public procurement, public sector procurement is driven by two things, transparency around use of public money. You've got to demonstrate good fiscal practices and also you've got to be fairly competitive. So you're really looking, those are the risks that public sector procurement is trying to manage, that you've spent money wisely, that you've made a good choice, you haven't wasted public money and that you haven't prevented any company from coming forward with a product. But I wonder whether there, well as I've said I think there are other risks we're not managing in here. And it's a huge amount of money that goes into public sector procurement. And I don't know that we're meeting these standards. So I think that we are often measuring what's easy to measure and that we're not assessing risk appropriately. And if I can, I'm going to scoot back actually to Tim's model when I think about, when I think about this piece here, this purposes context values piece. And I think about my experience of procurement and I think about writing requirements specifications and those functional requirements. What's become really clear to me is that those functional requirements are a very, very poor proxy for a set of very complex ideas about what we think education is. And I think about how I used to write some of those RFPs. It was often a case of getting somebody else's who'd done a similar procurement recently and having a look at that and running some workshops and getting whoever was prepared to come forward and tell us what they wanted. But the conversation was often all about features, all about functionality and not about these more complex ideas, purpose, context and values. And I think we have a big gap here in that translation piece from those complex ideas about what we think teaching is and why we do it and what are, what do you think good education is? And then how does that manifest inside ed tech? And I think that is a big problem. I don't have an answer for it though. Let me scoot forward. I need to put that in my slides again. Okay, I do think we have some places that we can go though. I see some things that are giving me some hope. The framework for ethical learning technology that all has worked on I think is a great tool that gives us a place to start that reflective process. I think we need to expand our scope of reflection and I hope that the points of propositions I put in front of you will do that a little bit. But I think if we go through some of this reflective process and just really think about what is driving, what we're doing, why we're doing it, do we need to do it, do we need as much of it, can we embrace something we already have and use it differently? I think we could do more of that kind of thinking. It's also a really fascinating report, I think really fascinating report from London School of Economics which really looks at ed tech procurement, a beyond higher education that looks at the school sector as well. It makes a number of recommendations and a number of final points, but I think there's some really interesting pieces in there about standards. Education stakeholders need standards to understand and choose ed tech products with ease. Not every institution has learning technologists, not every institution is equally provisioned with learning technologists, so there are issues of equity in here I think without some of those standards. I really like some of this stuff around ed tech companies adhering to more frameworks that we put in front of them, policies, terms and conditions within national contexts. We do this a bit in public sector procurement with shared procurement, negotiating terms and conditions, but we could be stronger and this one I found really interesting, ed tech products should be licensed to operate in educational institutions. This I find interesting, there are a few moves towards it in the US, but in the EU and I mentioned this a little bit Machino yesterday this, we're starting to see the beginning of the regulations of the software industry full stop, so some of the work I do in open source I'm looking at the impact of the EU Cyber Resilience Act on open source communities, but that act is going to apply the CE mark to software into digital products, so this is starting to put a safety stamp on software and it's a digital security safety stamp, but it is the star of a regulation for software industry. So I think about models like fair trade, which are to some extent a regulation of labour and working practices in other areas and I think we are going to start to see some of this regulation and licensing coming in and I think we need to be thinking about this and maybe trying to influence it. I'm very worried that educational institutions are not at all interested in the impact of the EU act, they don't seem to understand that it might have big impacts for open science and open research. So I think there are some things on the horizon that are interesting in this space, but there aren't solutions in front of us today, but I think there is when we think about that, do we need more tech? I think we can and we think about our post pandemic cost of living space as well. I think we can also start to maybe shift our own thinking from a culture of excess, which we've had to date, to starting to think about constraints and I really like that this book, it's kind of marketing speak that it's written in, but it says really good things. I like, you know, the tone irritates me, but the content is good. But I really love this quote that don't see constraints as negative things, they're not punishment. They can force us to question, surface and challenge our assumptions and things that might have been reasonable for us to do in the past may not be useful strategic foundations for us anymore. So can we start to think about using less ed tech or using maybe trailing edge technologies in more creative ways by taking that kind of constraints thinking and taking as a design challenge rather than let's just buy a new shiny thing because there's another new shiny thing out there. I think we have a culture of excess and abundance and it's in some people's interests that we do and I don't know but it's always in our interest. So I'm going to stop there, how are we doing for time John? Did I rattle through that? We got seven minutes. Okay that was not too bad, that was rather fast. That really is things that keep me up at night about educational technology but I would be really interested in any questions, comments, thoughts people have. This is a space of evolving thinking for me. I see gaps, I see problems, I see a need for frameworks. I think, am I wrong? Am I right? I would really appreciate people's reactions but I also understand that it's 20 past five so I'm not going to lock you in the room. Any questions? Sure there are. Thank you, that was really really interesting, well wind. Interesting. So my institution is currently in the process of doubling the number of institutional digital education tools that we have and one of the things I found quite frustrating is not knowing what other institutions are using and what their experiences are and I was just wondering if you had any thoughts on that and how we can kind of share our experiences I suppose and the kind of questions that we're asking and the kinds of answers that we're getting so that we're not all just doing the same thing. I think that's a really great question and I'm going to scoot back to a slide with the one with the teabags. So I cannot remember the detail so taken out of this URL. Okay because that article that I managed to get the quote into does talk about a couple of services that exist in the US that do exactly that. It is a kind of place to pool information about what has worked. So I think there would be, whether it's an alt thing, whether it's a GISC thing, whether it's a sector level procurement agency thing, I think it could be in any and all of those spaces but I absolutely agree. I think there could be a place to have a kind of what worked for us database kind of thing where you could capture beyond use cases, something that's tighter and again I think we'd have to have a conversation about what the format of that would need to look like, what would be useful but yes, what worked, what didn't. We bought this and it made this promise and it didn't deliver in this way or it made this promise and it did or we bought it for this reason and then it actually turned out to be really good for that. I think we talk about it, we do lots of presentations that places like alt, we publish stuff out on our own websites but I think yes, a searchable kind of database managed source of that information would be really valuable and there are a couple of models in the US to point to. Kind of falling on from that question, I remember it came up when we were looking like the felt framework was being developed and there was a mention of approved vendors or approved tools and things and that was kind of very quickly not back as no, that's not a kind of valid thing to do at this point and you're right like a database would be great but how can you do something like that and still protect learning technologists and make them feel safe to criticise without being worried about the fallback of that criticism like we've seen, you know, how do we create a database that's sort of being anonymous but still respecting, you know it's not just a Google review with no name on it but you know that you're getting good advice on people without them putting their careers or other things at risk. I think that's where I think that's you make a really great point. I think that's where sector level agencies are important because that's how you can have some anonymity, it's published by an organisation but you're right that behind that is always the threat of a legal action I think and that for me highlights a bigger issue about who's in control of our education system when we are scared to talk about whether something works for us or doesn't work for us because we're scared of legal action. Who's running the university at that point and if you don't know, I'm a colleague Ben Williamson from Edinburgh and some of some of his colleagues who research in this particular space, they're digital sociologists who research in the extent which fat-formatisation of at the education system is really starting to exert a governing control and a behavioural control on education systems so we're definitely going to look at his work but I think you highlight a really interesting tension, our freedom to speak on this stuff but at a basic level I think this is where sector level organisation can provide some of that anonymity and can do some of that quality assurance piece of you know weave check so that somebody bona fide from within the education system you know but we're not going to put their name on it but this hasn't come in from left field from somewhere else as well so there's a sort of gate keeping effect there but yes the extent to which somebody is prepared to do that and take the potential legal risk is also I think a question. Final question perhaps. I'm full of doom. Yesterday and today I'm full of doom. It's cheery kind of doom I think. I just want to say thank you first of all it was really eye-opening to a certain extent the information that was discussed there so in the institution I work for the Open University UK I'm a learning designer in the STEM faculty so when we do certain design sessions that involve tools for example and we're thinking about third party tools that aren't owned or kind of developed in-house then we often go through a set of questions with module teams so for example does the tool share user information with others you know has the tool been tested for accessibility what are the values of the company that make the tool etc but it kind of inspired me to think about do we do that for the tools that are currently being used I'm not sure if we do or not and I think that's a useful kind of point of reflection for me to take back in terms of how I initiate that conversation with my seniors and so on so yeah I just wanted to thank you for that. No thank you I think that's a really that's a really great point we have and I say this is somebody who is a bona fide advocate for open source we tend to use open as a shortcut for goods and I don't think that a bill was as either and it certainly falls down again in a decolonial context and my Canadian context but yes I think we have to recheck our assumptions in all cases and you know what you've explained there in terms of the kinds of questions you use you have a standard rubric for this stuff I think about my training in data protection and the kind of legitimate interest balancing tests that you use so it's not a black or white answer it's what is the common good versus the impact on individual privacy and you weigh that up to determine if you've got a legitimate interest to use that data we could use those sorts of frameworks and thinking for AI and the potential harms versus potential benefits massive environmental and IP and horrible harms over here massive potential for accessibility over here when do we use AI and when do we not use AI or generative AI in particular I think there are things we've already got which if we could just tweak them a little bit we'd service quite well in that space I do think these frameworks are within our grasp if we choose to knuckle down and do the work we've got we've got more things to follow so I think that's a really great point thank you I'm afraid we're probably out of time oh yes go and have a gala dinner and don't listen to me do anything anymore thank you so much


Europe has seen large waves of asylum seekers but the current wave is much larger. Dealing with refugees has many dimensions. Today what I would like to do is focus on the economic dimension which is our core expertise. We find that within the first five years of their arrival the employment rate of refugees is 20% lower than that of natives with the same characteristics. However this gap narrows gradually over time and that reflects several barriers. They are legal barriers during the asylum process. Poor knowledge of the local language and limited transferability of job qualifications. All this points to the importance of policies that can help refugees overcome barriers to the labor market. One, a policy of subsidies. In Denmark for instance, wage subsidies to private sector employers were very effective. Second type of policies, training and skilled provision that helped immigrants in Germany and refugees in Denmark. Third policy, access to work at temporary agencies. Native workers are often concerned that immigration will lower wages and increase unemployment. Past experience however indicates that these adverse effects tend to be limited and temporary. The Surgeon Refugees is a challenge. It's one that requires solidarity. It's one that requires that holistic approach. In our view this is a time for a major international initiative.