尼古拉斯·伯恩斯大使谈中美关系
（讲稿：芝加哥全球事务委员会线上活动）
2022年11月30日(北京时间) – (YouTube链接)
 
Fay Hartog Levin
Hello and welcome. My name is Fay Hartog Levin and I’m a member of the Board of Directors of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. And I also serve as a distinguished fellow there. I served as ambassador of the United States to the Netherlands from 2009 to 2011. Thank you to everyone tuning in from around the world. And a special thanks to the live audience here in Chicago for joining us for this conversation with U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, Nicolas Burns. Our conversation comes at a significant moment amid the recent protests in China, as well as Joe Biden and Xi Jinping’s first meeting as presidents at the G20 Summit. As a reminder, the Council is a nonprofit, independent, and nonpartisan platform. The views expressed by individuals we host are their own and do not represent institutional positions or views of the Council. Following this on the record discussion, we’ll have an off the record question and answer session with members in the room. I encourage you to visit the Council’s website to learn how to join the community.
 
It’s now my great honor to introduce the U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China. Ambassador Burns’ distinguished career in American diplomacy includes service under six presidents and nine secretaries of state. Most recently he was a member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Board for Secretary of State John Kerry. He’s an internationally respected authority on foreign policy and is currently on a public service leave of absence from the [Harvard] Kennedy School of Government. Ambassador Burns served as United States Ambassador to NATO from 2001 to 2005 and led the U.S. efforts in Brussels on 9/11 when the Alliance invoked Article Five of the NATO Treaty for the first time in its history. Today he joins us as the U.S. Ambassador to China, leading a team of experienced, dedicated, and diverse public servants from 47 U.S. government agencies and sub agencies at the U.S. Mission in China. He oversees the Mission’s interaction with the PRC on a full range of political, security, economic, commercial, consular, and other issues that shape this critical relationship. Please welcome Ambassador Nicholas Burns to the Council. The Ambassador will first share a few words before we begin our conversation.
 
Ambassador Burns
Well Ambassador, good evening to everybody in Chicago. Good evening to you Ambassador, good evening to my very good friend Ambassador Ivo Daalder, who is your fearless leader of the Chicago Council, and Ambassador, I want to thank you for moderating, and thank you for your service as our Ambassador to the Netherlands. And by the way, it’s early [in] the morning here, Wednesday morning. I got up at four in the morning to watch the second half of the U.S. victory in the World Cup over Iran. And we’re playing the Netherlands next on Saturday evening. So we’re all going to tune in. And let’s go Team USA. Delighted to be here, looking forward to a good conversation.
 
Obviously, we have a consequential relationship with the People’s Republic of China, it’s the most important bilateral relationship that the United States has, I think the most challenging relationship. And what we’re trying to do under President Biden’s leadership, is we’re competing with China, on trade issues, on technology issues, on security issues. We’re very vocal about our differences on human rights, and the rule of law. We’re also trying to work with the government here on climate change, on food security, on global health issues. And frankly, for an audience in the Midwest we’re working very closely with China on agriculture. So let’s talk about all those issues, both the competitive aspects of this relationship and the more cooperative ones. But I’m proud to lead our efforts here in China. We have a great group of public servants at our embassy in Beijing, our consulates in Shenyang in northern China, in Wuhan in central China, in Shanghai in eastern China, and in Guangzhou in southern China. And I’m really honored to work with those career professionals. So thank you.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
Thank you. In recent days protests over the zero-COVID policy have taken place in China and have gotten a lot of attention over here. Can you give us a sense of the scale and scope of these protests?
 
Ambassador Burns
Thank you very much. And obviously, that dominated the news here. And I know around the world, over the last several days, you saw these extraordinary protests, over the weekend in particular – on Saturday and Sunday. And we’ve been very clear publicly in the last few days. And what we’ve been saying, both from the White House and State Department as well as from our Embassy, we believe the Chinese people have a right to protest peacefully. They have a right to make their views known. They have a right to be heard. That’s a fundamental right around the world, it should be, and that right should not be hindered with, and it shouldn’t be interfered with. And I should also say, Ambassador, we support freedom of the press, as well as freedom of speech, of course. And there have been instances where journalists have been interfered with and even detained. And so that’s our view. We’re watching these protests along with everyone else.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
Can you tell us a little bit about how the Chinese government is responding to these protests?
 
Ambassador Burns
Well, you know, we haven’t seen many public statements by the government here in Beijing, but you’ve seen just in the last 48 hours, a very heavy security presence here in Beijing, and in the major cities of China. And you’ve seen varying degrees of reactions by the police over the weekend and security forces, in some cities, a heavy hand and other cities not so much. So we’ll just have to see how this plays out. It’s obviously a very important event for the people of China. And, we’re watching it, of course, with great care and great attention.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
Do you expect any meaningful change to come from these protests?
 
Ambassador Burns
It’s very hard to say at this point. This is a very, very big country. It’s also a critical time because the Chinese people and the government here are dealing with a spike in COVID infections. And that has really gripped the country here over the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen a dramatic rise in infections in Chongqing, which is the largest city in China by population. In Guangdong Province in southern China, Guangzhou, for several weeks now has been experiencing very high rates of infection. In Beijing, there is the highest rates of infection of any time in the last three years. Since the pandemic first broke out in Wuhan in late 2019, early 2020. And what that’s done, it’s really shut down normal life. I’ll give you an example. Here in Beijing, most of the stores are closed. Most of the restaurants are closed, if not all of them, the parks are closed, public transport is limited. It’s very difficult to go into government ministries. In fact, I expect to be having some virtual meetings this week with the government of China, because of these COVID restrictions. And China is practicing zero-COVID, which is the policy of the government here, and has been for three years, which is very different from what we’ve been doing in the United States. And it means that the lock downs are quite severe. It also constrains our ability for us to do our jobs. If I wanted to go to visit our consulate in Shenyang in northern China up near the North Korean border this week, I could probably get there. I’d likely get stuck there for about 10 days. Same with Shanghai or Guangzhou or Wuhan. So that makes it difficult.
 
I’ll give you another practical example, and you’ll recognize this from your time as American Ambassador. We’re very much responsible for the safety and welfare of American prisoners here. And we have quite a number of Americans imprisoned in China. Our young consular officers’ job is to go out and visit them to make sure that their health is okay, that they’re being treated well, that their rights are being respected. We haven’t been able to get into to see most of the American prisoners here for the last three years. Because the government here has said that for COVID reasons, for precautionary reasons, they won’t let our diplomats into these prisons. And you know, I’ve fundamentally objected to that. We have a right under our 1980 consular agreement to see American prisoners. So, in almost all aspects of our work, but I think this is true for any Chinese business or government ministry, or private organization. Life here is difficult because the COVID restrictions are so severe, there are reasons for them, given by the government of China. I don’t want to debate those publicly, I want to be respectful. But you know, we have a different theory of the case. And so we’re living in a very different time, in a very different way, than people are in the United States.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
The restrictions you just described, the very severe restrictions of the last few weeks, how does that differ from what the COVID policy or the zero-COVID policy was when you arrived earlier this year?
 
Ambassador Burns
Well, there are very strict requirements here for quarantine, for instance. So I’ve been here nine months, I’ve quarantined already three times, I’ve had to leave the country twice to go to meetings with President Biden, Secretary Blinken. And I’ve now quarantined for a total of 40 days, in nine months. And that’s not unusual. So, you know, when you do travel into China, there is a quarantine right now of eight days.  It was 21 days when I arrived nine months ago, when my wife and I did. And if you are a close contact or deemed to be a close contact of an infected person that can shut you down. For five to seven days, you have to isolate at home, quarantine at home. So we have quite a number of people from our Embassy, both our Chinese employees and our American colleagues or employees who’ve had to self-quarantine in their homes, not just because they’ve been infected, but because they’ve been deemed a close contact by the system here. And so if COVID is really dominating every aspect of life, you’ve seen the impact it’s had on the economy of China, if you look at the lower GDP growth rates forecast for 2022.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
Thank you. How has the attendance of your staff at the Embassy been since you arrived in terms of all of these quarantine restrictions. Have you ever had a full complement of your staff there?
 
Ambassador Burns
We have had, it’s been a difficult time. We’ve had to go to a series of government charters, to get our people into this country and to bring them out, whether it’s on home leave or R&R or they’re leaving post permanently. There are so few commercial airline routes into China these days, American airline routes, by the big three American carriers, they’ve been restricted by the government here. That is very difficult to run a big operation like this. And we’re one of the largest American embassies in the world, obviously, given the importance of this relationship. So we actually have government charters now on a monthly basis. We leave Washington, and we bring hundreds of people at a time into China, they all quarantine then, now for eight days in hotels, quarantine hotels, and they’re able to work to get people out. We’ve got to run the government charters out. There’s no other way to do business here. So it’s tested us.
 
But I have to tell you, and you’ll recognize this from your time in government. I had been out of government for a while… I was a career Foreign Service officer from the early 80s until 2008. And I taught, as you indicated, as a professor at Harvard, and now I’m back in government. I have so much respect for our career professionals, and we have 47 U.S. government agencies here. They work extremely hard. They’re working under adverse conditions here. They’re working under restrictions of the type that I talked about from COVID. We are in a society that doesn’t always, or I should say, an environment where it’s difficult for Americans to be heard or move around the country, and so I’m really proud of the men and women here with whom I work, and I couldn’t have a better set of colleagues.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
That’s terrific. As you mentioned, the U.S.-Chinese relationship is one of the most consequential in the world right now. But it’s been mostly characterized by competition. What is your outlook for the U.S.-China relations in the immediate and long-term future?
 
Ambassador Burns
I was with President Biden in Bali two weeks ago for his meeting with President Xi Jinping, which ran for over three hours. And if you heard President Biden’s press conference that evening, and then look at what the statement that we put out, our government put out, after the meeting, this is a very important, vital relationship for us. I think it is characterized in the main by competition, I think it’s fair to say that we assume that that competitive side of the relationship is going to be with us for quite some time. Because of the structural, philosophical, ideological, national security differences that we have with China. As I explained, Ambassador, I referred to them at the very beginning, but I’ll just take a moment to say, you know, we have an obvious difference with China, with the government of China, on human rights issues and the rule of law. And we speak out about them, about the repression in Xinjiang, against the Uyghur population and the other Muslim Turkic populations of Xinjiang, about what’s happened in Tibet, to the rights of the people there, about Hong Kong.
 
We speak out about our differences on trade, where American companies do not often have a level playing field because of discriminatory actions taken against them by the government here. Intellectual property rights violations are an example of that. We have differences on technology. And you’ve seen our administration and the United States take some very tough measures to restrict the ability of companies to export technologies to China that might strengthen the People’s Liberation Army. And we have no interest in doing that. In fact, we’ll make sure that we don’t do that, and our companies don’t do that.
 
And the United States is very proud, and we have been since the close of the Second World War, with the role that we’re playing here as an agent of peace and stability in the Indo Pacific. If you think about our treaty alliances with Japan, with South Korea, with Australia, with the Philippines, with Thailand. O­­­­­­ur new strategic partnership is not formally an alliance, obviously, with the Government of India and the people of India. So we want to safeguard that against the assertiveness, at times, in the South China Sea, in the East China Sea, in parts of the Indian Ocean, of the PLA – the People’s Liberation Army. So these are major competitive differences that will be here for a long time.
 
And Secretary Blinken has given the major U.S. speech on China, Secretary Tony Blinken, back in May at Georgetown University. And he summed it up by saying our strategy can be summed up as “invest, align and compete.” On the invest part, we’re trying to invest in the American economy, in our technological base. And that’s everything from the Bipartisan Infrastructure [Law] of a year ago, rebuilding our airports, our bridges and ports. It’s the CHIPS and Science Act, which is going to put over $50 billion to stimulate innovation and productivity in our semiconductor industry here in the United States. It’s the Inflation Reduction Act, we’ll be putting $369 billion in the greatest ever American investment in clean energy technology. We believe we can reduce our carbon emissions by over 50% in the next eight years, because of that one Act, that $369 billion. So that’s the invest part to strengthen America.
 
The align part is what I just referred to. Our great strategic advantage in the world, as a great power, is the fact that we have tested, long-term alliances. And I refer to our Indo Pacific alliances; we’re also working very closely in NATO. In fact, Secretary Blinken is in Romania today, at a NATO foreign ministers meeting. NATO has a position on China, and we’re working with the European Union. So those alliances in both the Indo Pacific here, where I am, and in Europe, make us stronger. That’s the align part. And the compete part we’ve talked about, and I describe how we’re competing in the four areas that we are. We think this strategy is a long-term strategy for the United States to respond to this challenge of a more assertive, more aggressive China in the world.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
Do you think all of these efforts on this side will affect the balance of trade with China?
 
Ambassador Burns
It’s very, it’s a very interesting question, Ambassador. We have a $718 billion annual two-way trade relationship with China – China’s our third largest trade partner. To give you an example, because I know you’re in the Midwest obviously, 1/5 of all U.S. agriculture exports in the world go to China, about $38 billion last year, we think it’ll be a higher number by the end of the 2022. So actually, agriculture is one of the areas where we’re working quite well with the Chinese. They need our wheat, and our sorghum, and other grains, and our pork, and our beef, and they’re buying it. We have a very experienced Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, who’s in his second time as Secretary. So in terms of a Midwestern perspective, this is a very important market for us. There are areas where we differ in terms of China’s use of state subsidies, or dumping, or China’s actions to weaken American companies, competitors to Chinese companies, which we think are grossly unfair – violations of China’s World Trade Organization obligations. And we call, we talk about this, and we discuss it. And I’ve been very active here making that point to my counterparts in the government of China that they need to treat our firms in a more balanced way, in a more fair way. And so that’s a major issue for us on the economic side. I do think we’ll continue to have a very robust trade relationship with China.
 
But there are some areas of concern. Obviously, we don’t want to see Chinese investments in American companies that would strengthen China’s, what we call the civil military fusion, their national security apparatus, or their military. And so through CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States – it has been around for a couple of decades – there are times when we restrict the ability of Chinese firms to acquire American firms in sensitive technology areas. And you know, as my advice to American businesses here, and I work very closely with the business community here and want to support them, is:  we want you to trade, we want you to be successful. But we also don’t think you ought to be investing in parts of the Chinese economy that are critical to our national security. You hear that from Congress. I think there’s a very, very strong message from Congress, from both parties, about that. So there are some limits here. But I do expect we’ll continue to see a strong economic relationship between the two countries.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
We’re almost running out of time for our on-the-record portion. I just wanted to ask you one more question about Taiwan, and your view of the frequent, or the increased congressional delegations, most notably by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and how that has affected the relationship.
 
Ambassador Burns
Well, we supported Speaker Pelosi’s right to visit Taiwan. I specifically did in countless meetings, including the evening she arrived when I was called into the Foreign Ministry, when they protested to me, and my response on behalf of our government was:  we support Speaker Pelosi, she’s the co-equal head of a branch of the U.S. government, and she has a right to visit. And what you’ve seen is, you’ve seen many members of Congress visit since and members of the Japanese Diet, and the Canadian, and British, and European Parliaments. We believe the Chinese grossly overreacted to her visit. And our message since, our private message, as well as our public message, is that China should respect the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. Act peacefully, not disturb what has been a peaceful Taiwan Strait for the last 68 years, since the status quo was implemented in 1954. And that we should hold China to the standard that any resolution of this very, very difficult dispute (Cross-Strait) with Taiwan, should be done peacefully. That’s obviously an issue that we care a lot about. It’s an issue that’s at the center of our disagreements with the People’s Republic of China, it’s an issue that President Biden raised with President Xi Jinping when they were together in Bali. So I’m happy to take more questions on Taiwan.
 
Because we’re short on time in this portion, I think, I really do want to say – in addition to the competitive aspects of this relationship, we’re trying to work with China, in a couple of big areas. Climate change, we’re the two largest carbon emitters. China has about 27% of all carbon global emissions; we’re 11%. So we have a self-interest, and frankly, we have an obligation to the rest of the world, as well as our own countries, to work together. And it’s good to see that John Kerry, our great negotiator, is now back negotiating. The Chinese are now negotiating with him again. They had been stonewalling us for four months on this. We want to work on agriculture. We want to work on global health issues, on infectious diseases, obviously. We want to work on food security, which has been such a major problem particularly since the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine has disrupted the global grain trade. And so there are areas we need to work together.
 
And a last one which is so important, really to every city and town in America:  the fentanyl crisis, the opioid crisis, the more than 100,000 Americans who have died in the last 12 months in that crisis. The government of China is not involved in this. But illicit Chinese companies are shipping precursor chemicals from China, to the narco-trafficking rings in Mexico and Central America. And that’s how the fentanyl is produced. So we’re trying to work with the government of China here to say, please crack down on those illicit Chinese firms and help us to deal with this major problem in the United States and, frankly, in other countries of the world. So I did want to, I wanted to indicate to you that, in addition to competing with China, which we’re going to do with a great deal of determination, we do want to work with China, as President Biden has been saying. We’re going to be responsible about this, we do not want this relationship to end up in conflict; we want a peaceful relationship with China.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
Thank you so much. It’s clear, we’re very lucky to have you in that very important Embassy in Beijing. And thank you for joining us tonight. And before we turn off the on-the-record portion of this evening’s program, I’d like to thank all of those who tuned in online, and hope that you’ll join us again very soon. We’re so grateful for everyone including the people in the room and we look forward to seeing you again. And thank you for waiting for the off-the-record discussion.
 
ON-THE-RECORD ADJOURNS HERE.

Ambassador Nicholas Burns on China-U.S. Relations 
(TRANSCRIPT: Chicago Council on Global Affairs Virtual Event)
November 30, 2022 (Beijing time) – (YouTube link)
Fay Hartog Levin
Hello and welcome. My name is Fay Hartog Levin and I’m a member of the Board of Directors of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. And I also serve as a distinguished fellow there. I served as ambassador of the United States to the Netherlands from 2009 to 2011. Thank you to everyone tuning in from around the world. And a special thanks to the live audience here in Chicago for joining us for this conversation with U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, Nicolas Burns. Our conversation comes at a significant moment amid the recent protests in China, as well as Joe Biden and Xi Jinping’s first meeting as presidents at the G20 Summit. As a reminder, the Council is a nonprofit, independent, and nonpartisan platform. The views expressed by individuals we host are their own and do not represent institutional positions or views of the Council. Following this on the record discussion, we’ll have an off the record question and answer session with members in the room. I encourage you to visit the Council’s website to learn how to join the community.
 
It’s now my great honor to introduce the U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China. Ambassador Burns’ distinguished career in American diplomacy includes service under six presidents and nine secretaries of state. Most recently he was a member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Board for Secretary of State John Kerry. He’s an internationally respected authority on foreign policy and is currently on a public service leave of absence from the [Harvard] Kennedy School of Government. Ambassador Burns served as United States Ambassador to NATO from 2001 to 2005 and led the U.S. efforts in Brussels on 9/11 when the Alliance invoked Article Five of the NATO Treaty for the first time in its history. Today he joins us as the U.S. Ambassador to China, leading a team of experienced, dedicated, and diverse public servants from 47 U.S. government agencies and sub agencies at the U.S. Mission in China. He oversees the Mission’s interaction with the PRC on a full range of political, security, economic, commercial, consular, and other issues that shape this critical relationship. Please welcome Ambassador Nicholas Burns to the Council. The Ambassador will first share a few words before we begin our conversation.
 
Ambassador Burns
Well Ambassador, good evening to everybody in Chicago. Good evening to you Ambassador, good evening to my very good friend Ambassador Ivo Daalder, who is your fearless leader of the Chicago Council, and Ambassador, I want to thank you for moderating, and thank you for your service as our Ambassador to the Netherlands. And by the way, it’s early [in] the morning here, Wednesday morning. I got up at four in the morning to watch the second half of the U.S. victory in the World Cup over Iran. And we’re playing the Netherlands next on Saturday evening. So we’re all going to tune in. And let’s go Team USA. Delighted to be here, looking forward to a good conversation.
 
Obviously, we have a consequential relationship with the People’s Republic of China, it’s the most important bilateral relationship that the United States has, I think the most challenging relationship. And what we’re trying to do under President Biden’s leadership, is we’re competing with China, on trade issues, on technology issues, on security issues. We’re very vocal about our differences on human rights, and the rule of law. We’re also trying to work with the government here on climate change, on food security, on global health issues. And frankly, for an audience in the Midwest we’re working very closely with China on agriculture. So let’s talk about all those issues, both the competitive aspects of this relationship and the more cooperative ones. But I’m proud to lead our efforts here in China. We have a great group of public servants at our embassy in Beijing, our consulates in Shenyang in northern China, in Wuhan in central China, in Shanghai in eastern China, and in Guangzhou in southern China. And I’m really honored to work with those career professionals. So thank you.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
Thank you. In recent days protests over the zero-COVID policy have taken place in China and have gotten a lot of attention over here. Can you give us a sense of the scale and scope of these protests?
 
Ambassador Burns
Thank you very much. And obviously, that dominated the news here. And I know around the world, over the last several days, you saw these extraordinary protests, over the weekend in particular – on Saturday and Sunday. And we’ve been very clear publicly in the last few days. And what we’ve been saying, both from the White House and State Department as well as from our Embassy, we believe the Chinese people have a right to protest peacefully. They have a right to make their views known. They have a right to be heard. That’s a fundamental right around the world, it should be, and that right should not be hindered with, and it shouldn’t be interfered with. And I should also say, Ambassador, we support freedom of the press, as well as freedom of speech, of course. And there have been instances where journalists have been interfered with and even detained. And so that’s our view. We’re watching these protests along with everyone else.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
Can you tell us a little bit about how the Chinese government is responding to these protests?
 
Ambassador Burns
Well, you know, we haven’t seen many public statements by the government here in Beijing, but you’ve seen just in the last 48 hours, a very heavy security presence here in Beijing, and in the major cities of China. And you’ve seen varying degrees of reactions by the police over the weekend and security forces, in some cities, a heavy hand and other cities not so much. So we’ll just have to see how this plays out. It’s obviously a very important event for the people of China. And, we’re watching it, of course, with great care and great attention.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
Do you expect any meaningful change to come from these protests?
 
Ambassador Burns
It’s very hard to say at this point. This is a very, very big country. It’s also a critical time because the Chinese people and the government here are dealing with a spike in COVID infections. And that has really gripped the country here over the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen a dramatic rise in infections in Chongqing, which is the largest city in China by population. In Guangdong Province in southern China, Guangzhou, for several weeks now has been experiencing very high rates of infection. In Beijing, there is the highest rates of infection of any time in the last three years. Since the pandemic first broke out in Wuhan in late 2019, early 2020. And what that’s done, it’s really shut down normal life. I’ll give you an example. Here in Beijing, most of the stores are closed. Most of the restaurants are closed, if not all of them, the parks are closed, public transport is limited. It’s very difficult to go into government ministries. In fact, I expect to be having some virtual meetings this week with the government of China, because of these COVID restrictions. And China is practicing zero-COVID, which is the policy of the government here, and has been for three years, which is very different from what we’ve been doing in the United States. And it means that the lock downs are quite severe. It also constrains our ability for us to do our jobs. If I wanted to go to visit our consulate in Shenyang in northern China up near the North Korean border this week, I could probably get there. I’d likely get stuck there for about 10 days. Same with Shanghai or Guangzhou or Wuhan. So that makes it difficult.
 
I’ll give you another practical example, and you’ll recognize this from your time as American Ambassador. We’re very much responsible for the safety and welfare of American prisoners here. And we have quite a number of Americans imprisoned in China. Our young consular officers’ job is to go out and visit them to make sure that their health is okay, that they’re being treated well, that their rights are being respected. We haven’t been able to get into to see most of the American prisoners here for the last three years. Because the government here has said that for COVID reasons, for precautionary reasons, they won’t let our diplomats into these prisons. And you know, I’ve fundamentally objected to that. We have a right under our 1980 consular agreement to see American prisoners. So, in almost all aspects of our work, but I think this is true for any Chinese business or government ministry, or private organization. Life here is difficult because the COVID restrictions are so severe, there are reasons for them, given by the government of China. I don’t want to debate those publicly, I want to be respectful. But you know, we have a different theory of the case. And so we’re living in a very different time, in a very different way, than people are in the United States.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
The restrictions you just described, the very severe restrictions of the last few weeks, how does that differ from what the COVID policy or the zero-COVID policy was when you arrived earlier this year?
 
Ambassador Burns
Well, there are very strict requirements here for quarantine, for instance. So I’ve been here nine months, I’ve quarantined already three times, I’ve had to leave the country twice to go to meetings with President Biden, Secretary Blinken. And I’ve now quarantined for a total of 40 days, in nine months. And that’s not unusual. So, you know, when you do travel into China, there is a quarantine right now of eight days.  It was 21 days when I arrived nine months ago, when my wife and I did. And if you are a close contact or deemed to be a close contact of an infected person that can shut you down. For five to seven days, you have to isolate at home, quarantine at home. So we have quite a number of people from our Embassy, both our Chinese employees and our American colleagues or employees who’ve had to self-quarantine in their homes, not just because they’ve been infected, but because they’ve been deemed a close contact by the system here. And so if COVID is really dominating every aspect of life, you’ve seen the impact it’s had on the economy of China, if you look at the lower GDP growth rates forecast for 2022.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
Thank you. How has the attendance of your staff at the Embassy been since you arrived in terms of all of these quarantine restrictions. Have you ever had a full complement of your staff there?
 
Ambassador Burns
We have had, it’s been a difficult time. We’ve had to go to a series of government charters, to get our people into this country and to bring them out, whether it’s on home leave or R&R or they’re leaving post permanently. There are so few commercial airline routes into China these days, American airline routes, by the big three American carriers, they’ve been restricted by the government here. That is very difficult to run a big operation like this. And we’re one of the largest American embassies in the world, obviously, given the importance of this relationship. So we actually have government charters now on a monthly basis. We leave Washington, and we bring hundreds of people at a time into China, they all quarantine then, now for eight days in hotels, quarantine hotels, and they’re able to work to get people out. We’ve got to run the government charters out. There’s no other way to do business here. So it’s tested us.
 
But I have to tell you, and you’ll recognize this from your time in government. I had been out of government for a while… I was a career Foreign Service officer from the early 80s until 2008. And I taught, as you indicated, as a professor at Harvard, and now I’m back in government. I have so much respect for our career professionals, and we have 47 U.S. government agencies here. They work extremely hard. They’re working under adverse conditions here. They’re working under restrictions of the type that I talked about from COVID. We are in a society that doesn’t always, or I should say, an environment where it’s difficult for Americans to be heard or move around the country, and so I’m really proud of the men and women here with whom I work, and I couldn’t have a better set of colleagues.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
That’s terrific. As you mentioned, the U.S.-Chinese relationship is one of the most consequential in the world right now. But it’s been mostly characterized by competition. What is your outlook for the U.S.-China relations in the immediate and long-term future?
 
Ambassador Burns
I was with President Biden in Bali two weeks ago for his meeting with President Xi Jinping, which ran for over three hours. And if you heard President Biden’s press conference that evening, and then look at what the statement that we put out, our government put out, after the meeting, this is a very important, vital relationship for us. I think it is characterized in the main by competition, I think it’s fair to say that we assume that that competitive side of the relationship is going to be with us for quite some time. Because of the structural, philosophical, ideological, national security differences that we have with China. As I explained, Ambassador, I referred to them at the very beginning, but I’ll just take a moment to say, you know, we have an obvious difference with China, with the government of China, on human rights issues and the rule of law. And we speak out about them, about the repression in Xinjiang, against the Uyghur population and the other Muslim Turkic populations of Xinjiang, about what’s happened in Tibet, to the rights of the people there, about Hong Kong.
 
We speak out about our differences on trade, where American companies do not often have a level playing field because of discriminatory actions taken against them by the government here. Intellectual property rights violations are an example of that. We have differences on technology. And you’ve seen our administration and the United States take some very tough measures to restrict the ability of companies to export technologies to China that might strengthen the People’s Liberation Army. And we have no interest in doing that. In fact, we’ll make sure that we don’t do that, and our companies don’t do that.
 
And the United States is very proud, and we have been since the close of the Second World War, with the role that we’re playing here as an agent of peace and stability in the Indo Pacific. If you think about our treaty alliances with Japan, with South Korea, with Australia, with the Philippines, with Thailand. O­­­­­­ur new strategic partnership is not formally an alliance, obviously, with the Government of India and the people of India. So we want to safeguard that against the assertiveness, at times, in the South China Sea, in the East China Sea, in parts of the Indian Ocean, of the PLA – the People’s Liberation Army. So these are major competitive differences that will be here for a long time.
 
And Secretary Blinken has given the major U.S. speech on China, Secretary Tony Blinken, back in May at Georgetown University. And he summed it up by saying our strategy can be summed up as “invest, align and compete.” On the invest part, we’re trying to invest in the American economy, in our technological base. And that’s everything from the Bipartisan Infrastructure [Law] of a year ago, rebuilding our airports, our bridges and ports. It’s the CHIPS and Science Act, which is going to put over $50 billion to stimulate innovation and productivity in our semiconductor industry here in the United States. It’s the Inflation Reduction Act, we’ll be putting $369 billion in the greatest ever American investment in clean energy technology. We believe we can reduce our carbon emissions by over 50% in the next eight years, because of that one Act, that $369 billion. So that’s the invest part to strengthen America.
 
The align part is what I just referred to. Our great strategic advantage in the world, as a great power, is the fact that we have tested, long-term alliances. And I refer to our Indo Pacific alliances; we’re also working very closely in NATO. In fact, Secretary Blinken is in Romania today, at a NATO foreign ministers meeting. NATO has a position on China, and we’re working with the European Union. So those alliances in both the Indo Pacific here, where I am, and in Europe, make us stronger. That’s the align part. And the compete part we’ve talked about, and I describe how we’re competing in the four areas that we are. We think this strategy is a long-term strategy for the United States to respond to this challenge of a more assertive, more aggressive China in the world.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
Do you think all of these efforts on this side will affect the balance of trade with China?
 
Ambassador Burns
It’s very, it’s a very interesting question, Ambassador. We have a $718 billion annual two-way trade relationship with China – China’s our third largest trade partner. To give you an example, because I know you’re in the Midwest obviously, 1/5 of all U.S. agriculture exports in the world go to China, about $38 billion last year, we think it’ll be a higher number by the end of the 2022. So actually, agriculture is one of the areas where we’re working quite well with the Chinese. They need our wheat, and our sorghum, and other grains, and our pork, and our beef, and they’re buying it. We have a very experienced Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, who’s in his second time as Secretary. So in terms of a Midwestern perspective, this is a very important market for us. There are areas where we differ in terms of China’s use of state subsidies, or dumping, or China’s actions to weaken American companies, competitors to Chinese companies, which we think are grossly unfair – violations of China’s World Trade Organization obligations. And we call, we talk about this, and we discuss it. And I’ve been very active here making that point to my counterparts in the government of China that they need to treat our firms in a more balanced way, in a more fair way. And so that’s a major issue for us on the economic side. I do think we’ll continue to have a very robust trade relationship with China.
 
But there are some areas of concern. Obviously, we don’t want to see Chinese investments in American companies that would strengthen China’s, what we call the civil military fusion, their national security apparatus, or their military. And so through CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States – it has been around for a couple of decades – there are times when we restrict the ability of Chinese firms to acquire American firms in sensitive technology areas. And you know, as my advice to American businesses here, and I work very closely with the business community here and want to support them, is:  we want you to trade, we want you to be successful. But we also don’t think you ought to be investing in parts of the Chinese economy that are critical to our national security. You hear that from Congress. I think there’s a very, very strong message from Congress, from both parties, about that. So there are some limits here. But I do expect we’ll continue to see a strong economic relationship between the two countries.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
We’re almost running out of time for our on-the-record portion. I just wanted to ask you one more question about Taiwan, and your view of the frequent, or the increased congressional delegations, most notably by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and how that has affected the relationship.
 
Ambassador Burns
Well, we supported Speaker Pelosi’s right to visit Taiwan. I specifically did in countless meetings, including the evening she arrived when I was called into the Foreign Ministry, when they protested to me, and my response on behalf of our government was:  we support Speaker Pelosi, she’s the co-equal head of a branch of the U.S. government, and she has a right to visit. And what you’ve seen is, you’ve seen many members of Congress visit since and members of the Japanese Diet, and the Canadian, and British, and European Parliaments. We believe the Chinese grossly overreacted to her visit. And our message since, our private message, as well as our public message, is that China should respect the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. Act peacefully, not disturb what has been a peaceful Taiwan Strait for the last 68 years, since the status quo was implemented in 1954. And that we should hold China to the standard that any resolution of this very, very difficult dispute (Cross-Strait) with Taiwan, should be done peacefully. That’s obviously an issue that we care a lot about. It’s an issue that’s at the center of our disagreements with the People’s Republic of China, it’s an issue that President Biden raised with President Xi Jinping when they were together in Bali. So I’m happy to take more questions on Taiwan.
 
Because we’re short on time in this portion, I think, I really do want to say – in addition to the competitive aspects of this relationship, we’re trying to work with China, in a couple of big areas. Climate change, we’re the two largest carbon emitters. China has about 27% of all carbon global emissions; we’re 11%. So we have a self-interest, and frankly, we have an obligation to the rest of the world, as well as our own countries, to work together. And it’s good to see that John Kerry, our great negotiator, is now back negotiating. The Chinese are now negotiating with him again. They had been stonewalling us for four months on this. We want to work on agriculture. We want to work on global health issues, on infectious diseases, obviously. We want to work on food security, which has been such a major problem particularly since the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine has disrupted the global grain trade. And so there are areas we need to work together.
 
And a last one which is so important, really to every city and town in America:  the fentanyl crisis, the opioid crisis, the more than 100,000 Americans who have died in the last 12 months in that crisis. The government of China is not involved in this. But illicit Chinese companies are shipping precursor chemicals from China, to the narco-trafficking rings in Mexico and Central America. And that’s how the fentanyl is produced. So we’re trying to work with the government of China here to say, please crack down on those illicit Chinese firms and help us to deal with this major problem in the United States and, frankly, in other countries of the world. So I did want to, I wanted to indicate to you that, in addition to competing with China, which we’re going to do with a great deal of determination, we do want to work with China, as President Biden has been saying. We’re going to be responsible about this, we do not want this relationship to end up in conflict; we want a peaceful relationship with China.
 
Fay Hartog Levin
Thank you so much. It’s clear, we’re very lucky to have you in that very important Embassy in Beijing. And thank you for joining us tonight. And before we turn off the on-the-record portion of this evening’s program, I’d like to thank all of those who tuned in online, and hope that you’ll join us again very soon. We’re so grateful for everyone including the people in the room and we look forward to seeing you again. And thank you for waiting for the off-the-record discussion.
 
ON-THE-RECORD ADJOURNS HERE.