Ambassador Julia Chen Block and Benjamin Hopkins launch the Distinguished Speakers series, featuring remarks from Tom Pickering and Nick Burns on U.S.-China relations. Pickering proposes a mediated Russia-Ukraine settlement with a five-year withdrawal timeline and nuclear non-proliferation limits, while Burns frames the rivalry across Indo-Pacific alliances, AI competition, trade tariffs, and human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet. Despite declining American students from 15,000 to 2,000, Burns advocates for their return to foster mutual understanding amidst climate cooperation needs. Ultimately, the event underscores that while competition intensifies in technology and security, strategic collaboration remains essential for global stability. [Automatically generated summary]
Today, on C-SPAN's Ceasefire, a look at the war with Iran, join policymakers, analysts, and national security experts on a bipartisan discussion exploring the evolving military coordination between the United States and Israel in operations responding to the threats linked to Iran.
Also, how events could shape security in the Middle East, the potential for regional escalation, and the diplomatic and economic effects around the world.
Watch Ceasefire today at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
To a discussion now with former ambassadors on U.S.-China relations, they also talked about the Russia-Ukraine war and sports diplomacy ahead of the upcoming Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
This discussion is hosted by the U.S.-China Education Trust and George Washington University.
Good morning, everyone.
My name is Benjamin Hopkins, and I am the Senior Associate Dean here at the Elliott School.
And it has fallen to me to begin today's event by offering warm words of welcome to both our distinguished guests as well as everybody assembled in the audience today.
We here at the Elliott School are extremely proud of our long-standing partnership with the U.S.-China Educational Trust and also are extremely proud of the type of policy-engaged public events that we regularly put on here at the school.
In fact, last year we put on nearly 400.
Not all of this level and marquee kind of emblematic, but nonetheless, excellent quality events.
So, this very much fits within our role as both an educational but policy center.
We are one of the leading schools of international affairs in the world, and I think that very much is reflected by today's guests as well as today's topic, which is extremely timely given current events in the world.
So, on behalf of the Elliott School, welcome to today's event.
I hope you greatly enjoy it, and I turn the floor over to Ambassador Julia Block.
Thank you, Dean Hopkins, and good morning, everyone.
It is also my pleasure to welcome you all to the Elliott School today.
I am Ambassador Julia Chen Block, founder and executive chair of the U.S. China Education Trust, a proud co-host of today's program.
We are gathered this morning for a special occasion, the launch of USET's Distinguished Speakers series, and the opportunity to begin it with two of the most distinguished diplomats in modern American history.
I am not exaggerating.
Ambassador Burns, Ambassador Pickering, and you guys take my breath away.
Your presence here today is a rare privilege, and we are deeply, deeply grateful for both of you being here today with us.
Few discussions could be more timely.
Today, we turn to diplomacy to what is arguably the most significant, consequential bilateral relationship in the world, that between the United States and China.
So, who better than our two ambassadors to lead this discussion?
Both men have served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the senior most career position in the United States Foreign Service.
Together, their careers span virtually every corner of the globe and every major challenge of our era.
The breadth of their service, the depth of their experience, the distinction of their contributions to our nation and to the world are truly, truly inspiring.
Today's program will begin with an introductory remark from Ambassador Pickering, followed by a presentation by Ambassador Nick Burns.
Representing the very pinnacle of American diplomacy, I have no doubt that what follows will inspire us all, but particularly the students in this room who aspire to become the diplomatic leaders of the next generation.
You have no better role mottos.
How many of you are students and want to be diplomats?
Ah, a lot of you.
A lot of you.
You guys should not be sitting in the back, you should be coming up in the front so you can listen better.
Hear my words.
Today's program.
I mean, really, you can't miss today's program.
Ambassador Nick Burns has served under six presidents and nine secretaries of state, most recently as United States Ambassador to the People's Republic of China, one of the most demanding and strategically significant diplomatic assignments in the world.
In Beijing, he faced a period of intense competition and complexity in the bilateral relationship, working to stabilize communication with Chinese leaders while advancing American interests.
Earlier in his career, he served with great distinction as Ambassador to NATO, Ambassador to Greece, and as spokesman for the State Department.
Ambassador Tom Pickering's career stands among the most distinguished in the history of American diplomacy.
Over four decades, he represented the United States as ambassador to the United Nations, Russia, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, and Jordan.
A record unmatched yet by any other American diplomat.
And we at USED are especially proud that Ambassador Pickering has long served as USET's Advisory Council member, generously sharing with us his wisdom, his counsel, and friendship.
Thank you, Tom.
At a moment when tensions in the Middle East risk, well, widening, widening into broader conduct, conflict and strategic competition with China is reshaping the international system.
The steady craft of diplomacy remains indispensable.
Simply put, when the world grows more dangerous, the work of diplomacy grows ever more necessary.
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Ambassador Tom Pickering and Ambassador Nick Burns right now.
Tom, the floor is yours.
Opportunity With Russia00:12:03
Good morning to all of you in this haven of calm in the midst of turbulent Washington.
It's a delight to be here.
I come not as an authority on the subject as hand, but hopefully on a semi-informed commentator on events in China.
I believe that China is, Julia, as you just told us, our most important contemporary partner or perhaps foe, depending on your point of view and attitude toward it.
I have become tired of our political leaders telling us about all of the tragic foibles of China in its opposition to the United States.
Not that I don't know that, and not that it has escaped our ken, our vision, and our outlook on the problem, but because it represents what is the conclusion of a dead-end streeter, no place to go.
And this morning I want, in a few words, to talk to you about what I think are the opportunities with us in China.
And I do so with humility because sitting in the ranks here are a number of people so distinguished in their scholarly interest in China and an ambassador distinguished in his mastery of the subject that I feel more than a little tremor about taking this on.
And so I will attempt to do so in short compass in hope that the mistakes are limited and maybe some words of wisdom will peep through to all of you as we go ahead.
In short, compass is indeed hopefully in five or ten minutes.
I don't wish to keep the podium longer than that, and I am extremely interested in what my colleague Nick has to tell us about China.
I think that if we begin by characterizing China not only as an enormous challenge, but in some ways as a unique opportunity, and cast our lives back to the headier times of the Kissinger-Nixon recognition exercise, we have a little bit of sense that China is not an unalloyed evil,
As portrayed by so many, but as an opportunity for us to cultivate a relationship, as I know Nick did, with somebody and someone in that particular country who is both a leader and a valuable potential source for us of contact and perhaps.
over time commitment on subjects of joint interest.
Our president will go, what, Nick, in two weeks.
And so we are not without the contact.
But the contact itself tends to fall in areas of differences.
And while I would be the last to abandon the notion that we have differences with China and need to remind them of them, I also believe we have many areas of potential cooperation that we need now to get going and see if we can do more to exploit.
I characterize those in six baskets, and I won't bore you with naming them all, but I'll run down the list very quickly to give you a sense of what they're all about.
I think there is a real opportunity, and I've thought this for four years as a former ambassador in Russia, that without China engaged in a little more active role in dealing with the Ukraine war, we have in many ways condemned ourselves to the thought that the use of force can produce a miraculous result,
even if we cannot quite identify it now at American leadership level.
And I believe in a way that were I to pursue the question of China and cooperation on Ukraine, I would take the opportunity of the embassy, as I know Nick has, for quiet conversations with our Chinese counterparts about the opportunities for them to begin to think about and deal with China.
There's no role more important in the world today than the role of bringing peace and stopping the wars.
And without them, or with them on the wrong side, we have no opportunity, I believe, to exploit their power, their influence, and their capacity to bring about change.
And we need first to talk to them about that, about that opportunity, about how one could plan it.
I have no magic solutions to Ukraine, but I do know that I join with those who believe that President Zelensky should not be forced to give up valued Ukrainian territory as a result of the Russian invasion.
But I also know that there is no ready-to-hand way to seize that territory back from Russia.
But I do think that there is a combination of circumstances in which over time and with the continued support of Ukraine, we may bring about enough pressure to begin to do a deal.
And that deal involves perhaps retaining Russian presence in the occupied or some of them territory, while at the same time setting a finite limit for that, bringing in peacekeepers and peacemakers to begin to provide some of the authority over that territory that the Russians have absorbed,
and over a period of time begin again to Ukrainize it, if we could put it that way.
I do believe that maybe for Crimea, we would have to go for a referendum of its population run by a constituted authority, whether it's the United Nations or another group we bring together or others bring together, to test the will of the people of that particular area to move in a positive direction.
With the other territories, I believe that we should seek a withdrawal of Russian forces in five years.
That's painful.
It's drawn out of the air.
It's highly negotiable, but it does bring about a process that can take advantage of what we are doing militarily to use pressure to achieve the result.
And I feel certain that any referendum in the six occupied oblasts of Ukraine, done freely and fairly, would produce a majority of Ukrainians once again to be relinked to their own country.
In the meantime, such a deal would involve significant Ukrainian presence in that territory.
It would be a shared system.
It would provide for definitions of how and in what way the Russians might participate in commerce, in assuring Ukrainian labor and workers a fair role in the process, and opening the door to other areas of trade.
My second issue concerns non-proliferation, disarmament, and arms control.
These particular regions and areas are things that the Chinese should be interested in and over time have been.
And one, I would hope, find them on the right side, not on the wrong side of history on non-proliferation.
At best, as I can say is that they have bounced.
But no nuclear power, I think, is willing to see the presence of additional nuclear powers contending in that area, given the danger, and we see today the heightened danger of the process of backing into, stumbling into, or falling into some kind of a development of a nuclear conflict,
the results of which would be catastrophic for our people and for many of the other people caught up in it in the world, which is certainly our problem with Iran at the present time.
Arms control also means going back to a limit on the number of nuclear warheads.
And China was not included in the original deal.
China is fast-building warheads going up.
Reports are from 600 to 1,000.
We should find an opportunity, hopefully with the Soviets, with the Russians.
They've not been particularly amenable, but they themselves know the danger of an untrammeled race in nuclear weapon construction, and it would be valuable there.
And I think over a long period of time, particularly with these wars, it is time for us to think once again of significant limits on military spending, significant limits on military personnel, and significant limits on some of the most significant weapon systems around.
Missiles and drones constitute some of them, but we have others, including perhaps the application of artificial intelligence to war.
My third preoccupation is guess what?
Tariffs.
I have followed with great attention Our distinguished president's preoccupation with tariffs and its constant repetition of his belief, maybe it joins the tooth fairy in credibility, that foreign governments pay tariffs.
When every reliable economist I have heard express her or himself, says that over 90% of tariffs are paid by American people in the price of the goods they buy, which are imported.
Taiwan's Complex Future00:03:00
This is not good for confidence in the American way of economy.
It's not good for our confidence in the affordability of our economy.
And it's not good, in my view, from shifting what are the hard-earned benefits of a large part of the public on a population basis, perhaps to a small number of billionaires, or maybe to replace the income tax as a source of funding for the government, neither of which I believe is either wise, fruitful, or beneficial, but it's out there nevertheless.
My last issue is Taiwan.
And Taiwan is certainly something we should be paying attention to.
Chinese threats on Taiwan are hard to believe, seemingly postponable, but constantly there.
And as a result, it is not a luxury we can afford to set them aside.
I wondered whether the process should not begin by an exercise in the value of one China.
The Shanghai Communique was built around one China.
One China would mean to me at minimum a regular contact between authorities in Taiwan and authorities in the PRC on some kind of an organized basis.
It should be protected, obviously, by secrecy in the sense that each side will have differences and will want to display them, but it is not an article in what I would call bearbaiting so much as one to see which of the sides can begin to produce more of a common interest in how the process goes ahead.
I'm not suggesting that it involves the surrender of Taiwan independence or indeed the capitulation of the PRC to a situation it has long opposed.
All I am suggesting is meeting at the table and beginning to put together a list of subjects.
Even here, one could see the open continuation of free trade as a very useful subject between the two countries, or between the two entities, perhaps, is a more correct way to exphrase it.
And we should look at that and see whether, in fact, that makes sense.
There are many other advantages, and I won't go into them.
Diplomatic Crises and Free Trade00:14:58
Now, I am standing up in front of you as perhaps one of the last lunatics to address you this day, because these are hard subjects.
They're not easily resolved.
But unlike the question of bombing people into smithereens with no tangible result ready to hand and four competing options all out there waiting somehow to come down from the sky to rescue us from our folly,
it does provide the beginning of some more narrow tracks of cooperation and sense in a difficult set of circumstances.
So I stand before you pleading lunacy in support of a good service.
And I thank you for your time and attention.
It was great to be with you.
Ambassador Pickering, thank you so much for those words.
I want to thank so many people for being here today.
I want to get back to Tom in just a minute, but just say what a pleasure it is to be here at the Elliott School at George Washington.
Dean Alyssa Ayers is a close friend, former colleague at the State Department.
We worked together on an issue that Tom launched, and that is our strategic opening to India.
Tom is ambassador to India, was the father of that policy.
Alyssa and I came behind him with the civil nuclear deal and worked on what I think is the most important strategic partnership we have with any country in the world, and that's with India.
So I'm very pleased to be at GW, very pleased to be with Ambassador Julia Chiang Block and the USCET.
Pleased to see so many friends in this audience.
Dr. Ken Lieberthal, one of our great China specialists in the United States of America.
Professor David Lambton, another one of our great China specialists.
And I feel a special allegiance to Johns Hopkins Seiss.
I'm afraid to tell you all, I'm from that other school.
I don't know if Professor David Shambaugh is here, but David and I were classmates at SIIS.
He's now gone over to your side.
But David, one of the most prolific writers, academics, writing today on the current relationship, the complicated relationship between the United States and China, has been really a mentor to me when I was appointed ambassador and had a very long time to be confirmed by the Senate back in 2021.
I really relied on his judgment.
He's written a great new book, by the way, which kind of brings you up to date on U.S.-China relations.
I don't want to leave anybody out, including Ambassador Craig Allen, who headed the U.S.-China Business Council when I was ambassador.
And we were working very closely together.
And Craig and I are now working together at the Cohen Group here in Washington.
And last but not least, I want to say to my very good and close friend, Dave Mealing.
Dave was Deputy Chief of Mission of our mission in China, our embassy in our four consulates.
He was chargé d'affaires for a good eight months, nine months before I arrived.
Outstanding diplomat who served in Taiwan, in Hong Kong, in mainland China, and at the very top of our mission.
And his wife, Lisa O'Donnell, they were a big part of our community.
I wanted to salute both of them today.
So I really feel welcome here.
But let me say a word about Ambassador Pickering.
For those of us of a certain generation, and I'm thinking of Bill Burns, friend, a close friend, of Linda Thomas Greenfield, of Victoria Newland, all of us who came of age as young diplomats in the 1980s, Ambassador Pickering was the gold standard.
He has, as Julia said, had a career that is unmatched in the 102 year history of the United States Foreign Service, both in the number of his ambassadorships, but also in the quality of his work.
Both as an advisor to Secretary Kissinger, in the opening to China, in the détente with the Soviet Union in the early 1970s, all the way through to the present day.
I got to know Tom, and I didn't call him Tom back then, when I was a second tour officer in the American Consulate General in Jalushim.
I should say I was working for Peter McPherson at the time.
He's sitting right behind Ambassador Pickering, and Peter was the administrator, the director of USAID.
And I was a State Department officer carrying out our aid program to the Palestinian people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
And Tom was ambassador to Israel.
At that time, our consulate in Jerusalem was an independent consulate.
The only other one was in Hong Kong.
It had been independent since the 1840s, since the Ottoman Empire.
And I looked up to him.
I learned from him almost through osmosis.
I was a very young guy who really didn't know much about how to be an effective diplomat.
But Tom was the person we all looked up to.
And later, when Tom was ambassador to Russia, I was on the National Security Council staff and worked very closely with him as he led this incredible effort that President George H.W. Bush and then President Bill Clinton made to try to get closer to Russia, to try to help Russia make the transition from a communist system to a democratic system, from a command economy to a free market economy.
He was our man in Moscow.
And I have to tell you, in a humble sort of way, I felt I had memorized his career.
And when he was appointed ambassador to Russia, he came into the old executive office building to my office.
And the first thing I said was, Ambassador, congratulations on your sixth ambassadorship.
And you know how humbly Ambassador Pickering is.
There was a pause.
He said, actually, I think it's my seventh.
But I feel, and it was, you said it with great humility, as usual, that it was a fact.
And I said, staff work.
I was guilty that day of insufficient staff work.
I want everyone to stand and salute Ambassador Pickering.
And how can I forget Ambassador Nancy Eli-Raeferl Pickering, seated right here, another great friend and mentor from the Foreign Service.
We want to get to your questions, especially the students here and your comments.
It doesn't have to be a question, it can be an idea to help us with this really complex subject.
How can the United States of America deal effectively and peacefully, but with vigor and strength, as we negotiate the many differences between the People's Republic of China and our country?
It was an incredible honor for me and my wife Libby to go out to China to serve with Dave and Lisa and the incredible people in the Foreign Service and in the 48 U.S. government agencies and U.S. Mission China.
And here I just want to say as we reflect on the Foreign Service and Tom and Dave and I, proud Foreign Service officers, we will never be former Foreign Service officers.
It's just Foreign Service Officer Kamer retired.
Foreign Service is in a crisis.
We're 102.
There's never been a time when so many people have been summarily fired, summarily cast aside.
You look at the great negotiations just of the last couple of weeks.
The United States trying to mediate between Russia and Ukraine.
I think we should be Ukraine's lawyer, by the way, not some kind of independent mediator.
The United States trying to consolidate the Gaza ceasefire and put in place the Board of Peace that President Trump has put together.
Or the negotiations a week ago yesterday with Foreign Minister Arak Shi to try to avoid a war in Iran.
Foreign Service officers not present in any of those negotiations.
Not just not in the pictures, not in the room.
And that doesn't make sense to me.
That has never happened before in 102 years.
It would have been good to have someone in the room last week who maybe spoke Farsi, who understood Persian culture, who understood the tortured history of our relationship with Iran going back to November 4th, 1979, when Iranian students led by the government, inspired by the government, took 52 of our colleagues hostage for 444 days, and all the terrorism and all the pain and suffering since then.
But to exclude our career diplomats, it would be unthinkable to exclude our military, and we shouldn't.
Our military is great, and they're proving it again, and we honor them.
It would be unthinkable to exclude our intelligence community.
Of course, we wouldn't do that.
They're critical.
But I would suggest that the American Foreign Service, our Foreign Service and civil service officers, are critical to understanding the world, to speaking the languages of the world.
People like Ambassador Pickering or Dave, who've served all over the world, and understand the psyche and the culture of different countries.
This is unilateral disarmament.
And it's painful for us, who are now retired Foreign Service officers, because we are resolutely nonpartisan.
All of us, from the day we take the oath of office to the day we retire, we expect to serve both parties.
We understand our obligation is to serve whomever the American people elects.
No one ever asked me in my career, you're a Republican or you're a Democrat, and I wouldn't have told them if I was, if I had been asked that.
We understand that we have to give 100% effort to any president.
And we all did it.
And now, unfortunately, this administration is looking at our Foreign Service and civil service officers through the lens of politics and politicizing our great civil and foreign service.
And it's a shame that that's happening.
And I think one of the things we have to do, and I now teach at Harvey Kennedy School, we need to help a lot of the younger people here and all the great universities across our country understand that there will come a time, not 30 years from now, but hopefully just a few years from now, when a Republican or a Democratic president or a Republican or a Democratic Congress will say, we need to rebuild the American Foreign Service and our civil service.
And I'm looking at Peter as I say this, some version of USAID.
What a crime to fire 10,000 people in two weeks, to chisel out the name of USAID from the building on Constitution Avenue.
What a crime.
I thought about it in the U.S.-China context.
I had just come home from China when this was happening.
One of our great challenges is how do we compete with China?
Belt Road Initiative, a trillion dollars out over the last, since 2013.
Well, USAID and all the great work it was doing, particularly on health programs in the global south, was one way to compete, but now we don't have any agency that can compete with China in that vast part of the world where people are looking for assistance and looking for help from the strong economic powers in the world.
So I wanted to start there because I was inspired by Ambassador Pickering as a young officer.
And we need more people to go into our foreign and civil service, and we need to rebuild it on a non-partisan basis.
Now to the easy subject of how we get along with China.
And I'm going to just speak briefly about this because I really would like to hear from you.
I say this.
I think the problem we have is that we're embedded in a structural rivalry between the United States and China.
We're the two largest economies in the world.
We're the two strongest militaries in the world.
And I hope the following statement doesn't appear arrogant to the non-Chinese and non-Americans in the room.
I think we're the only two powers right now that have true global reach.
You know, that are influential, whether it's technologically, economically, culturally, politically, in all the world.
But you see, China is a total global power, as is the United States.
And both of us want to be number one.
And it's not possible to have co-number ones in most realms of international competition.
So I think the word that we used in the Biden administration is the correct word.
This is a highly competitive relationship.
Words are important in diplomacy.
We could have used the word rival.
That's stronger than competitor.
We could have used the word adversary.
That's even stronger.
We would never use the word right now enemy because we are not enemies with China.
We're competing.
We may be enemies with Iran this week.
We certainly are.
We're fighting.
But we're not enemies.
And I think, Julia, I reflect on your work that you're trying to do through the U.S.-China Educational Trust.
We want to narrow the differences.
We want to expand the people-to-people bridges between the two countries because we're not enemies, but we are competitors.
And actually, I've never talked to Dave about this, the percentage, but I should be interested to get Dave's view.
I feel we spent about 80% of our time on the competitive edge.
So, where was that?
Four different areas.
Number one, we are competing for military power in the Indo-Pacific.
Competing Powers in the Indo-Pacific00:08:26
The PLA is trying to push the United States past the first island chain and become the dominant power.
If you don't believe me, that's what Lee Kuan Yew said at the end of his life.
Probably the leader who understood the mentality and the strategy of the two countries best was the great Lee Kuan Yew.
He said, Of course, China wants to become the strongest military power in the Indo-Pacific.
And as an American, we cannot let that happen.
We can't allow a situation where in 2036 or 2046, we're suddenly reduced to being number two.
And that's why we honor our military alliances with Japan and South Korea and the Philippines and Thailand and Australia and our security partnerships with India, especially, and with New Zealand, and Singapore and other states.
That's competitive area number one.
It includes Taiwan.
It includes what China is doing to push out beyond, in violation of the Law of the Sea Agreement, in the Sproutleys and Paracels, in the Sinkhokus, and even in the Yellow Sea, vis-à-vis the Republic of Korea.
Number two, of course, is technology.
And I think that's actually the coin of the realm.
And even, I guess if you had asked me on my first day in China, how important is technology in the competition?
I would have said very important.
And the day I left, 13 months ago, I would have said it's now center stage.
The commercial competition in artificial intelligence between our companies, in quantum computing, in synthetic biology, in cyber and space-based technologies, and there are many more, just to name five.
That's going to determine the future economic makeup of the world, but also who has power in the world, technology being the coin of the realm.
It'll also inform the first part of the competition because we're seeing this week really the introduction of AI-enabled military technology in the Israeli and American air campaign against the Iranians.
We have seen it for four years as the Ukrainians and now the Russians have mastered sophisticated drone technology.
We are in a different world and we need to master the application of the commercial advances in its translation into new military hardware.
That is why we should not be reducing federal funding for basic science research at Harvard University or MIT or Caltech or the University of Illinois or Texas AM.
We need the federal government to do what it's been doing since the Manhattan Project, and that's fund our university and research institutes and allow the private sector to monetize those ideas into technologies.
That's what made us great, a great industrial power since the middle of the Second World War.
But the federal government in this administration has broken the chain.
And as I was leaving China in January of 2025, President Xi Jinping announced a massive expansion of Chinese state funds for its leading companies.
In fact, just before I left, in quantum research.
So if we stop competing, Chinese are not going to stop competing in this technology realm.
That's area number two.
Number three is, of course, what I think President Trump will focus on with President Xi when they meet March 31st, April 2nd, and that is tariffs, trade, a world that Craig knows very well.
I hope they'll be able, I'm glad that President Trump is gone.
He needs to have a working relationship with President Xi.
They're the two most powerful people in both systems and in the world.
I hope they'll be able to announce a tariff truce that will last through the end of this year.
A supply chain truce so we don't threaten each other with jet engines, rare earth, withholding them from the markets through the end of the year.
I hope that China will go back to major purchases of American agricultural products.
In my first full year in China, when Dave and I were working together, U.S. farmers, ranchers, and the fishing industry sold $41 billion worth of ag products to China, our largest market.
One-fifth of all of our ag products go to the Chinese market.
China, because of political problems between us, has been withholding those ag purchases.
I hope that China will be able to continue to help us on fentanyl.
It remains the leading cause of death in our society, Americans 18 to 49.
The majority of the precursor chemicals come from the black market in China, not from the government, to the drug cartels in Central America and Mexico.
That makes this synthetic opioid.
And President Xi Jinping promised President Biden in November 2023 and has promised President Trump that he will work on this.
And he has.
I would say the energy has been good, but not sufficient.
The progress has been okay, but not nearly what we need.
And here's an example of bipartisanship.
President Biden and President Trump have been pushing on the same door.
And I think President Trump's right to raise this when he gets to Beijing in just a couple of weeks' time.
So this is a very important meeting.
And I understand that the White House would like to have further meetings between President Trump and President Xi.
I think that's a very good idea.
In fact, I wish looking back with 2020 hindsight, we'd have had more interactions between President Biden and President Xi.
It was a really difficult time.
We had a visit by Speaker Pelosi in early August, which we supported.
Speaker of the House, independent branch of the United States government, she wanted to go to Taiwan, and with my position as ambassador, we should support her.
That was our administration's position.
We had a strange balloon.
You all remember this?
Soar overhead from Alaska to Montana, low enough at Montana that people actually shot at it.
I admired those people defending our country.
Dave and I were handling it.
Dave's a great diplomat.
And the Chinese were a little bit contrite.
They never apologized, if I could remember Dave.
But as soon as President Biden rightfully ordered it shot down in our territorial waters off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the Chinese interlocutors acted like we were the problem.
And I said that was slightly Orwellian.
And I had to define, remind them who Orwell was and what that word meant.
So a lot of tension here.
Military competition, tech competition, trade and econ competition in a big relationship.
But the fourth area of competition is the most important.
And that's the difference between us on human values, human rights, individual rights that are enshrined in our Bill of Rights and our Constitution.
Communist Party of China is the major violator of human rights in the world.
In Xinjiang, in Tibet, in Hong Kong, the fact that Jimmy Lai has been given effectively a life sentence is a crime.
It's outrageous.
And I really hope the Trump administration can find its voice to mention these issues publicly.
I was very happy to see Secretary Rubio say a couple of weeks back that Jimmy Lai should be freed.
I hope that will happen before, during, or after this summit meeting, because he's a great champion of human rights and someone that we all respect.
This is a complicated relationship, and it's competitive.
But let me conclude by offering two other thoughts.
It's not just a competitive relationship.
We have to work with China.
We have to work with China on climate change.
We were proud to do that in the Biden administration.
I wish the Trump administration would reconsider.
We're the two largest carbon emitters.
We have to work on fentanyl together.
We have to work on global health together.
One of the frustrations in my early years in China was that China withheld the origin data of the coronavirus from the World Health Organization and from us.
American Students in China00:07:39
And we did ask.
I did in four individual meetings in 2022 and was stonewalled.
China needs not just to be part of the World Health Organization, but actually contribute data so the next time we face a pandemic, we can do it together and we can do it on the right basis.
But there is an opportunity and a necessity for the two largest countries to be working together to build some trust with each other.
And I think that cooperation component is very important.
And finally, President Biden's instruction could not be clear to all of us who are working in China.
We have to live in peace with China.
The idea that we would stumble by accident or misunderstanding into a war, unacceptable.
The idea that we would go purposefully, completely unacceptable and unthinkable.
We have to live together in the nuclear weapons age.
One way to cooperate, one way, I'm looking at Julia, to keep the peace is to keep Americans and Chinese meeting together.
We had 15,000 American students in China in the last decade.
We went down to 350, 350 in 2022 during the COVID, the zero-COVID scourge.
When I left China, in my last few months, I asked my team, how many American students do we have in China?
And we really didn't know.
So we called every Chinese university.
And the number came back, I think in October, just before our election, to me, 1,104.
Until I went to Guizhou University in December of 2024, after our election, I met with the president, 40,000 students.
And I said, Mr. President, I understand you don't have any American students.
He said, I have one.
He's right behind this curtain.
Do you want to meet him?
I said, yes.
Out came 19-year-old Jared Shelley, Sacramento, California, who had been living with six Chinese guys in a dorm speaking perfect Mandarin.
In fact, I have very humble, limited Mandarin.
He was speaking to me in a melange of the two languages because he hadn't seen an English speaker in six, seven months.
I said, Jared, how did you get here?
He said, Well, it's simple.
I had a girlfriend in my Sacramento high school from the Meow minority community from Guizhou.
She was an immigrant to the United States, and she convinced me that Guizhou was the center of the world.
And I said, So is she here with you?
No, we broke up.
And I said, Jared, you are student number 1,105.
And now Julia tells me that in the 13 months since I've left, maybe we're up to about 2,000 American students.
Here's where I agree with President Xi Jinping.
He said in San Francisco two and a half years ago, he wanted to see 50,000 American students.
I'm just looking at Professor Lampton saying this as a lifelong educator and Professor Schambaugh.
We need more young Americans.
Summer program, semester program, year-long program, dive into Chinese studies.
Learn Mandarin at an early age.
Don't try to learn it at age 67, by the way.
And understand the culture.
And Dave and I were talking this morning.
We're not going to have a strong bench at the State Department in China Studies 10 years from now.
Not with 1,105 or 2,000 Americans in China, half of them almost at NYU Shanghai.
We need to have Americans in our private and public sector, and so I really support the work of the USCET.
And whether it's in education or the arts or music or sports, which is a big bridge between our two countries, I used to look up to Yao Ming, literally and figuratively.
We need to keep these societies together, which is why I support Julia, what you're doing.
And Tom, you as a board member.
And thank you so much for listening to me today.
So we have an opportunity now for some questions for you, Investor Burns, if you're willing.
So if you wouldn't mind seeing here, a couple of our staffers will be coming through the audience.
So if you do have a question for Ambassador Burns, please raise your hand and our staff will come and bring you a mic.
So maybe right here, Ellie here in the front in the end of the first row, right here.
And then Rebecca right here in black.
Yep.
For the first question.
Go ahead.
Hello, Ambassador Burns.
Jay and I were both two of the American students in China 2023 to 2025.
We're very happy to hear that.
I was wondering for students or early professionals who are interested in a career focused on China and would like to see more cooperation and working towards that.
Would like to see more cooperation with China and for students and early career professionals, given that the government and the State Department are no longer a great avenue to do that at the moment, what other avenues do you think beyond government can we continue to look for careers or look for ways to contribute to a better relationship?
Thank you very much.
And where were you studying in China?
We were at the Hopkins Nanjing Center.
That's a great school.
I got to say this because David and I, the two Davids and I are homers.
NYU Shanghai is so impressive: 500 American students, four beautiful new buildings.
Duke Kunshan, just north of Shanghai, terrific campus.
They're building, a lot of the American universities are coming back.
But I've got to say, Hopkins Nanjing, all the American students have to study in Mandarin, and the Chinese students have to study in English.
And I went to the commencement in 2024 and spoke.
I was so inspired by what Hopkins has done.
So, David, congratulations.
I'm glad you were there.
I think, you know, our private sector, from private equity to hedge funds to technology companies to the big banks, are going to need people who understand China.
And they've had them for the last two or three decades because in the 90s, in the first two decades of this century, a lot of young Americans were going to China, multiples beyond 2000.
And so a lot of our students at Harvard Kennedy School are going into the private sector because they have Chinese experience, they've lived there, and they have Mandarin.
So I think that's one option for you.
A second is to wait for the pendulum, and I'm not being partisan in saying that, to swing back.
The pendulum of rationality that we as a country should be trying to produce China specialists for the public sector, for the Pentagon, for the CIA and DIA, for the state and commerce and treasury departments.
I am confident that pendulum is going to swing back, because that would be another area for you.
And you might just want to get a PhD and wait it out until the time is better.
And we have two of the greatest, three of the greatest scholars in Shambha, LibreThal, and Lambton who are exemplars for you.
And I mean that.
In-depth study of China.
we had our consul general.
Welcome to Ceasefire00:00:13
Welcome to Ceasefire, where we look to bridge the divide in American politics.
I'm Dasha Burns, Politico White House Bureau Chief.
And today I'm joined by two guests with extensive foreign policy experience across multiple presidential administrations.