00:57.7
Sorry, it happens when you work in television.
00:59.9
We only have two minutes to explain what I'm going to explain to you guys in the next 45 minutes.
01:04.6
So I'm going to be very conscious about this.
01:06.7
Apologies for that if sometimes I go too fast.
01:09.6
I only got like 45 slides, but I'm not going to discuss all of them.
01:14.6
So some of the slides there are just maps, just coordinates, so that we orient ourselves to the discussions we're going to have.
01:23.2
I'm not going to discuss all of them.
01:24.2
I'm just going to focus on a few of the slides, but hopefully during the question and answer, and hopefully more of questions than answers, we're going to refer to some of these slides.
01:34.8
Now, going back to this again, the challenge in speaking in superpower nations, whether it's the United States or China, is to remind everyone that the world is a big place.
01:51.9
And usually also us in Asia.
01:54.2
We tend to use this expression of, you know, the two giant elephants and the grass.
02:02.3
It actually has a, if I'm not mistaken, a sub-Saharan Swahili source.
02:07.4
But in Asia, especially our Singaporean friends always tend to talk about that.
02:11.3
And of course, the two elephants stand for the United States and stand for China.
02:16.2
And in that metaphor, it's the idea is, you know, if the two elephants make love or fight, it's always the grass that suffers.
02:24.2
I always had a problem with that because to be honest, I always thought, I'm not saying this because I'm here.
02:29.7
I always thought of the world today in the 21st century, more like a savanna.
02:35.0
Or more like a lion king, kingdom.
02:38.0
Whereby you may have big elephants, but you also have giraffes, you have lions, all sorts of different predators and different kind of robust animals who could also hold their own.
02:48.7
And that's how I understand this world.
02:51.1
There's no denial that the United States and China are the two preeminent.
02:54.2
The powers of our era, but as we'll discuss later on, not only smaller powers, I actually upgraded that and call them middle powers.
03:01.5
So countries that are not big enough and rich enough to have the capabilities that you guys here in the United States have or in China, but they're going to be big enough to hold their own and sometimes learn to say no to both superpowers in the interest of their national interest.
03:17.8
So that's what we're going to discuss.
03:19.5
But before going there, I know that you also invited me here to discuss the problems.
03:24.0
We have in our own neighborhood.
03:25.7
And of course, as far as our neighborhood is concerned, you know, in the same way that some of my Latino friends talk about you gringos, we also tend to talk in the same way about the Chinese.
03:36.1
Always in every region, there's the big guy.
03:39.2
So in our region is China.
03:41.5
Now, very quickly, the term actually we use nowadays, and I discussed that extensively in my book, is in the Pacific.
03:49.3
So I know a while ago there was a mention of Western Pacific.
03:53.1
But increasingly, we see the Pacific Ocean in the Indian Ocean as an integrated theater, both in geopolitical sense, but also in geoeconomic and psychological terms.
04:03.0
And in fact, the person that who has to be credited with that is the late prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, in a very important speech he gave in India almost 20 years ago when he talked about the confluence of two seas.
04:15.8
So we tend to see the Pacific and the Indian Ocean as two different theaters.
04:19.8
But the reality is that if you look at history, that division.
04:23.1
It was quite artificial.
04:24.4
And in fact, it started with the Treaty of Tordesillas and Zaragoza, especially when the Spanish and the Portuguese, you know, pretentiously divided the world between the two of them.
04:34.4
I'm in church right now.
04:35.4
But, you know, the Vatican played a role in that back in the day.
04:38.3
But if you look at the history, Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean were always interrelated.
04:44.2
And I come from the Philippines, which is at the intersection of those two.
04:48.2
And countries like Indonesia and Australia very much are kind of a two ocean.
04:53.1
Nations and throughout history, that part of the world was extremely interconnected.
04:58.2
You know, Arab merchants coming from the Middle East, going all the way to Southeast Asia.
05:02.1
That's why the spread of Islam, Chinese porcelain and Chinese products traveling the other direction.
05:08.2
In fact, I live in a city called Manila and Manila.
05:11.6
Actually, the word Nila comes from the Nilad, which has an Indian Indic source etymology, which means that it refers to.
05:23.1
It's a color blue, right?
05:24.8
In Indic language.
05:25.6
So a lot of us actually Indigo.
05:27.4
So a lot of us in Southeast Asia were actually part of a greater Indian sphere.
05:32.3
So in short, what I'm saying is that a lot of divisions we make today of Pacific, of Indian Ocean, Asia Pacific, it actually doesn't make sense when you look at history.
05:42.4
Now, I'm not going to go too much into that.
05:44.2
We can have a conversation about the Pacific later on.
05:46.5
But I just wanted to give you an idea of why we use the term in the Pacific more and more nowadays.
05:51.1
Aside from the fact that the Trump administration.
05:53.1
Of course, also use that a lot in now the Biden administration.
05:56.5
Now, having said that, the problem we have today is that there's a country called China, right, that understands today's world not very differently from how things operated in the premodern era, particularly the tributary system.
06:15.5
So as you know, before the arrival of the Western and European empires, of course, it doesn't include you, America.
06:23.1
So the Chinese had a tributary system of kind of a concentric circles of influence, right?
06:29.9
And the idea is that they're near barbarians and they're far barbarians and they have to pay tribute to the emperor.
06:35.0
And in fact, in history, in annals of history, there were Filipino sultans from the South who went all the way to China and pay tribute and did the kowtow and all of that.
06:43.7
Now, that's 500, 600, 700 years ago.
06:46.9
And we can have a long conversation about the actual dynamics of the tributary relations.
06:51.7
Because there's a lot of history.
06:53.0
There's a lot of history out there that says, you know, what happened is that some sultan from Indonesia and Philippines will go up there, he'll pretend to pay respect to the emperor in China, but he's really just doing it for the money and the trade, right?
07:03.9
It was really symbolic.
07:05.7
But the reality right now is that in China, many understand the rise as an opportunity to recreate that system.
07:13.4
And now we go to really the main discussion of today, which is, of course, this is the spheres of influence that I was talking about.
07:20.8
This is the issue right now.
07:21.9
So there's no way.
07:23.0
You can understand the South China Sea disputes or disputes between China, a whole range of nations in that part of the world, and inevitably also collision, of course, with the United States, without understanding how China is trying to enforce that kind of its own sphere of influence in the Pacific region.
07:42.8
So actually, there are two island chains that we have to talk about.
07:46.7
And as you can see, the Philippines is very blessed to be exactly in the middle of the two island chains, right?
07:51.9
So the first island.
07:53.0
The first island chain runs from East China Sea all the way to the South China Sea, and the second island chain cuts across the Philippine Sea, goes to the South Pacific Islands.
08:02.6
For a lot of Chinese strategists, if China wants to be a real power, it has to be able to dominate its own adjacent waters.
08:11.1
And interestingly, this concept is not only Chinese.
08:14.4
You can find analogs of this in other parts of the world.
08:17.7
The Romans made the Mediterranean a kind of a Roman lake, right?
08:21.2
And well, you Americans.
08:23.0
You made the Caribbean and parts of the Pacific as part of the extension of your sphere of influence back in the day.
08:28.5
So many strategists in China realized that one way for them to be a real power is to secure their rear.
08:34.7
And the first island chain is important because it also includes Taiwan.
08:39.9
And as you know, the Taiwan issue is not just a sphere of influence issue.
08:44.1
It's about reunification of China.
08:47.0
It's about righting some of the wrongs in history, as we'll discuss more later on.
08:52.2
So the first island.
08:53.0
And the idea for China was, well, I think they're behind schedule.
08:56.4
They were supposed to dominate that area actually five or ten years ago, but they're scrambling to do that.
09:02.3
But as you know, this is what I call the dialectics of empire.
09:05.3
I mean, I was asked maybe the reason why the Russians went from kicking out the Golden Horde to all the way reaching San Francisco was this dialectics of empire, right?
09:14.9
The more you expand your territory, the more you have to create cushion, right?
09:18.9
And then that creates its own dynamic and so on and so forth.
09:22.0
Something similar.
09:23.0
It's also happening here.
09:24.0
If China wants to secure its dominance in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, and that's very important because if you want to take over Taiwan, you have to secure its rear, right?
09:35.0
And that's where the South China Sea and East China Sea comes in.
09:37.9
But if you want to be secure in the first island chain, it's inevitable that you want to also dominate the second island chain area.
09:45.3
Now, the first island chain is really about China reasserting its historic rights, whatever they call it.
09:52.0
That blue national soil.
09:54.2
But the second island chain, it's about you guys kicking out the Americans from the area.
09:58.7
It's about pushing out the Americans so that they can secure their natural backyard.
10:03.6
Again, I'm not saying this is the right perspective.
10:06.6
This is just the thinking, the strategic thinking in China.
10:09.8
And actually, a lot of this is open source, right?
10:12.7
Their strategists in PLA and their defense colleges are openly discussing it.
10:17.2
And interestingly, a lot of them actually cite a certain American called Admiral.
10:23.3
As their inspiration.
10:24.5
I mean, this is the reality we're facing right now.
10:27.2
So this is where the problem is right now in our part of the world.
10:30.6
And if you look at it, Europe is important, of course.
10:35.0
The Middle East is still important.
10:36.9
But if you look at much of the industries, much of the manufacturing power, firepower of the world is in that region.
10:43.7
And much of the population of the world is in that region.
10:46.4
This is the center of gravity for the 21st century.
10:49.4
And that center of gravity is going to be even more dominant.
10:52.0
In the decades to come, as we're going to look at the numbers later on.
10:56.2
So, again, just to concretize the problem we're facing today, on the left side,
11:03.3
yeah, that's why I was told not to do a PowerPoint.
11:05.1
But on the left side, you'll see a cow tongue-shaped nine-dash line.
11:10.2
So China is almost claiming 85% of the entire South China Sea.
11:14.8
And the problem we have right now is that they don't even specify the exact coordinates.
11:20.4
So it's southern portions.
11:22.0
The southern portions are actually kind of fuzzy.
11:24.2
So it even overlaps with waters of Indonesia, the so-called North Natuna Sea.
11:29.9
Now, if you were to follow international law, and thanks to the Philippines,
11:34.6
we took China to international court a decade ago, more than a decade ago,
11:39.2
and we had a very successful outcome in the arbitration case in 2016.
11:45.4
Actually, China's claim is far smaller based on modern international law, right?
11:50.4
Compared to what they claim.
11:52.0
Based on their historic rights.
11:53.8
And just to give you a very short preview, the idea is this.
11:57.4
You know, back in the day, China was the great guy.
11:59.5
We had a certain admiral called Zhang He.
12:01.8
He went around the area.
12:03.1
That whole area belongs to us, right?
12:05.0
It's a very problematic claim, which, let's be honest, when Putin talks about Ukraine,
12:10.3
he doesn't sound too different to me, right?
12:12.2
And I saw some Mongolian friends making jokes like, oh, you want to talk about history?
12:16.0
This is what Mongolia was back in the day.
12:18.1
You know, this is preposterous.
12:19.5
This is ridiculous.
12:20.7
But unfortunately,
12:22.0
it's shaping the geopolitical strategy of a lot of rising powers
12:25.4
or a lot of aggrieved powers,
12:28.5
whether it's Russia, whether it's China.
12:30.9
So this revanchist mindset is shaping their actual policy nowadays.
12:36.7
Now, obviously, there are other factors that also shape how China is approaching this.
12:41.4
It's not just identity.
12:42.9
It's not just nationalism.
12:44.8
Although nationalism is very important because we know that communism,
12:48.1
as an ideology, lost its hold on China,
12:50.7
especially after the Tiananmen.
12:52.0
It was very clear that, you know,
12:53.4
the Chinese people were no longer inspired by communism.
12:55.9
So this hyper-nationalism,
12:57.9
the sense that all of these areas is our sphere of influence,
13:00.9
is politically very important to China.
13:03.1
But that area is also very rich in resources.
13:07.7
Fishery resources in that area is huge.
13:10.8
The diversity is immense.
13:13.0
And there's a lot of untapped oil and gas resources, right?
13:16.8
And China has been developing its drilling capacity
13:19.2
to drill kilometers deep into China.
13:22.0
Into the sea, precisely because they expect a lot of resources to be there.
13:25.6
So if you look at South China Sea,
13:27.7
it's a cauldron, precisely because there are multiple stakes there.
13:31.8
There's the energy stake.
13:33.4
There's a fishery stake.
13:34.8
There's this nationalist pride stake, right?
13:37.6
All of these dynamics are coming together.
13:39.8
And also for China, it's about pushing out Americans
13:42.4
and exerting its dominance in that part of the world.
13:46.4
But the problem is, you have a country like China,
13:48.4
which signs up to international law,
13:50.3
like the United Nations Convention of the Sea,
13:52.0
but when things don't go their way,
13:54.9
international law doesn't apply to them.
13:57.2
In the non-superpower world,
13:59.0
we call it superpower exceptionalism.
14:02.1
Whenever a court ruling doesn't go in your favor,
14:04.4
you take an exception, right?
14:06.9
Again, I suppose you see what I'm implying here, right?
14:10.0
Because China is not the only superpower that does that, right?
14:15.1
Now, this is the situation on the ground
14:18.0
whereby if each of the countries actually project
14:20.4
their exclusive economies,
14:22.0
their exclusive economic zone,
14:23.0
because as you know,
14:24.0
based on United Nations Convention of the Sea,
14:26.0
you can have 200 nautical miles of exclusive economic zone
14:29.0
claiming fishery resources in the area.
14:31.0
You have 12 nautical miles of territorial sea,
14:34.0
24 nautical miles of contiguous zone.
14:36.0
This is not a lecture in enclos,
14:37.0
but we can have more conversation about that later on.
14:40.0
So if we just followed international law
14:42.0
and everyone just projected what is accorded to them
14:45.0
under international law,
14:46.0
you're going to see a picture which is much more diverse
14:49.0
and more or less a pie that is divided sensibly.
14:53.0
But the problem is that China doesn't follow that, right?
14:55.0
They just want to claim the entire 85%.
14:58.0
And their idea is that the way forward is,
15:01.0
I mean, many people in marriages can relate to this.
15:05.0
Essentially, the approach of China is,
15:08.0
what is mine is mine,
15:10.0
we can share and have a conversation about that.
15:12.0
So that's the approach, right?
15:15.0
Sorry about that.
15:16.0
I have to drop that.
15:17.0
Because that's exactly how we feel about it.
15:19.0
China is claiming the rest of the area,
15:22.0
you know, I'll be nice enough to maybe divide your parts
15:25.0
between me and you,
15:26.0
and you have to be thankful for that.
15:27.0
And this is not going to work for a lot of us.
15:29.0
We're not as big as China,
15:31.0
but we don't want to be pushovers, right?
15:33.0
And this is also the scramble on the ground.
15:36.0
If you look at it,
15:37.0
Vietnam actually has the most number of land features.
15:40.0
They're very, very proactive people.
15:42.0
They have more than 20 land features under their control.
15:44.0
Philippines around eight to nine,
15:46.0
Malaysia around five.
15:48.0
Taiwan has the biggest one, Itoaba.
15:50.0
Naturally formed.
15:52.0
China doesn't have too many,
15:54.0
but it's what they did with the few islands they control.
15:57.0
You know, this is geoengineering on steroids, right?
16:01.0
They turned atolls, almost non-existent features,
16:05.0
into huge, huge military bases.
16:08.0
So here you can see some of the Chinese fake islands, right?
16:12.0
Compared to the islands including fake islands by the Vietnamese, right?
16:16.0
So actually the two communist countries are very proactive there.
16:19.0
They're building all sorts of artificial stuff.
16:21.0
But this is like NBA level, right?
16:23.0
Well, these are more like J-League and like Asian basketball leagues.
16:26.0
It's just incomparable.
16:28.0
And the Chinese have built massive military bases
16:31.0
over some of these islands,
16:33.0
some of them three kilometer long airstrips, right?
16:39.0
so this is some of the satellite imagery we have
16:42.0
of the facilities they built on essentially nothing.
16:45.0
So it was here, it's something like this,
16:47.0
and then now it's something like this, right?
16:49.0
And so we see it actually in four phases.
16:52.0
So it's one thing for you to claim a whole body of water.
16:55.0
What is important is what you do with that claim
16:58.0
and whether you have the capability to enforce that claim.
17:01.0
So for me, there are essentially four or five phases
17:04.0
to what China is doing.
17:06.0
So for decades, they just had generic claims,
17:09.0
which, by the way, they pirated from the Kuomintang
17:12.0
who are, you know, who moved to Taiwan, right?
17:14.0
Actually, the Kuomintang of Taiwan started a lot of this problem,
17:17.0
of this claim of 9-line, 10-line, 11-line.
17:22.0
But the thing is, China really began to enforce
17:25.0
that expansive claim just over 10 years ago.
17:29.0
In 2012, they built the central city,
17:32.0
they created administrative regions,
17:34.0
and then things suddenly accelerated.
17:36.0
In December of 2013,
17:38.0
the Chinese began to reclaim huge, huge islands,
17:42.0
and I'll be honest, everyone was caught off guard.
17:45.0
Everyone was caught off guard.
17:46.0
And I remember a lot of officials, even in the United States,
17:49.0
were initially dismissive about this
17:51.0
until the scale and the sophistication
17:53.0
really dawned upon all of us.
17:55.0
So from 2013, December onwards,
17:57.0
they went on this massive island building.
18:00.0
So that's phase two.
18:02.0
So phase one is generic claims.
18:06.0
Second, create administrative region.
18:08.0
Third phase is militarization.
18:11.0
Deployment of missile systems,
18:13.0
anti-electronic warfare systems,
18:15.0
building massive air streets, right?
18:18.0
And phase four is what we're seeing right now,
18:21.0
which is China using armada,
18:24.0
armada of coast guard vessels,
18:28.0
which are bigger than our warships, right?
18:30.0
And militia forces who pretend to be fishermen.
18:34.0
And how are you going to deal with that, right?
18:36.0
They're going to send 200, you know,
18:38.0
fake fishermen around you,
18:40.0
and let's say you're the Philippines, right?
18:42.0
Remember, these islands are, you know,
18:45.0
or islets, rather.
18:46.0
A lot of them are very isolated, right?
18:48.0
So in some of them, you have troops there.
18:51.0
There's no natural water there
18:53.0
because there's really no island there.
18:55.0
Island in the sense of international law,
18:57.0
meaning it can support human habitation.
18:59.0
So you have to import a lot of products, right?
19:02.0
Food and basic supply.
19:04.0
So all China has to do
19:05.0
is not to use its massive navy.
19:07.0
All it has to do is to use this armada.
19:10.0
And then if you touch them, they'll say,
19:12.0
oh, you're hurting our fishermen,
19:13.0
our poor fishermen.
19:14.0
They're just there for their livelihood.
19:16.0
But everyone knows these guys
19:18.0
all got their own version of GPS, Chinese.
19:21.0
They get training.
19:22.0
Some of them are armed, right?
19:24.0
And they directly coordinate
19:26.0
with their coast guard and their naval forces.
19:28.0
In fact, for a long time,
19:29.0
we talked about this salami slicing
19:31.0
or cabbage strategy whereby
19:33.0
the first layer is a fisherman.
19:35.0
You touch the fisherman,
19:36.0
the coast guard comes in.
19:37.0
You deal with the coast guard,
19:38.0
the navy comes in.
19:39.0
So that's how they dominate
19:41.0
and they impose their will.
19:43.0
And what's warning is,
19:46.0
China is very smart.
19:47.0
No offense to Russians, right?
19:50.0
They just roll into Kiev.
19:51.0
They don't do that.
19:52.0
They have been relying on what they call
19:54.0
or what we call gray zone strategy, right?
19:56.0
They will use all sorts
19:58.0
of different intimidation techniques
20:00.0
that are short of shooting war.
20:03.0
But something happened just a few weeks ago.
20:05.0
I'm not saying that because I'm here,
20:06.0
but it's quite timely for us
20:08.0
to have this conversation
20:09.0
for a number of reasons.
20:10.0
But one of them is this.
20:12.0
China is beginning to use
20:14.0
very, very powerful water cannons.
20:17.0
And I was actually suggesting to some people,
20:19.0
I said, maybe what you should do
20:21.0
is to compare the power of those water cannons,
20:24.0
which you can measure scientifically,
20:26.0
to the punching power of Mike Tyson, right?
20:29.0
Because if you do that,
20:30.0
then people will realize
20:31.0
this water cannon could be actually deadly.
20:34.0
And there's some videos you can check online.
20:36.0
I didn't put it here
20:37.0
because I didn't want to, you know,
20:39.0
put the audiovisual people in more,
20:44.0
It's really powerful.
20:45.0
In fact, the water cannon is so powerful
20:47.0
that the boat moves around, right?
20:49.0
So if that directly hits you
20:51.0
or it hits you then you hit the wall,
20:53.0
And in fact, several of our naval officers
20:56.0
were injured because of these Chinese water cannons.
21:00.0
So my worry is that we are
21:02.0
at the darkest shade of the gray zone
21:04.0
or we're almost getting closer to lethal force.
21:09.0
why should I mention that?
21:10.0
Well, guess what?
21:11.0
We have a mutual defense treaty
21:13.0
between the Philippines and the United States.
21:15.0
Now, for a very long time,
21:17.0
the United States adopted what they call,
21:19.0
in the State Department,
21:20.0
strategic ambiguity.
21:22.0
This actually started with Henry Kissinger
21:24.0
and the Nixon administration
21:25.0
because the last time we had
21:27.0
Ferdinand Marcos Jr.,
21:29.0
Ferdinand Marcos as the president,
21:30.0
now as the junior,
21:32.0
the Philippines actually was very proactive.
21:34.0
We built one of the first military bases in the area.
21:40.0
because we're well armed
21:41.0
and trained by America, among others,
21:43.0
we were kind of like the small bully there, right?
21:46.0
So the Nixon administration was worried
21:48.0
that we will drag you guys into our
21:51.0
territorial expansion strategies.
21:53.0
So expressly, Kissinger said,
21:55.0
the mutual defense treaty will not,
21:57.0
should not be used as a self-aggrandizement tactic
22:01.0
by the Philippines.
22:02.0
Therefore, the most that the United States should offer
22:05.0
is political support, diplomatic support,
22:09.0
whatever that meant.
22:10.0
And in my understanding,
22:11.0
that was essentially America's policy
22:13.0
up until the Obama administration.
22:15.0
In fact, Obama was in Manila in 2014
22:17.0
and two of my friends
22:18.0
asking questions during the press conference
22:21.0
will you help the Philippines
22:22.0
if there were to be shooting wars
22:24.0
between China and the Philippines, right?
22:27.0
And remember, in 2012,
22:29.0
China took over the Scarborough Shoal,
22:31.0
which was also claimed by the Philippines
22:32.0
after a months-long naval standoff.
22:35.0
And Barack Obama, you know, fantastic guy.
22:38.0
He said something like,
22:39.0
we don't go to war over a bunch of rocks, right?
22:42.0
And I was like, that was quite inartful
22:45.0
because maybe it's a bunch of rocks to you,
22:47.0
but to us, it's our national territory.
22:50.0
But what made it very painful,
22:52.0
that episode made it very painful,
22:53.0
was that just days earlier, he was in Tokyo,
22:56.0
not only enjoying the sushi,
22:58.0
but he also made it clear
23:00.0
that the U.S. will stand by Japan
23:02.0
if Japan's claim in the East China Sea
23:05.0
trigger a war between Japan and China.
23:07.0
So we felt we were not treated equally as an ally.
23:10.0
Now, obviously, we can have a long conversation.
23:12.0
Japan's situation in Senkaku is different.
23:15.0
But to be honest, in the Philippines,
23:16.0
we felt that America was more ambiguous than strategic,
23:20.0
to be honest about it.
23:22.0
And in retrospect,
23:23.0
the critique I have of the American approach
23:25.0
was that ambiguity was what China exploited very smartly.
23:29.0
So they said, well,
23:30.0
the Americans are wishy-washy about it.
23:32.0
Their allies are quite weak.
23:33.0
Let's just push the envelope short of direct war.
23:36.0
And that strategy has paid them huge dividends,
23:38.0
as some of those islands will show you.
23:41.0
But things changed under the Trump administration.
23:43.0
I'm not saying this because I'm in South Carolina.
23:46.0
I followed the primaries and all of that.
23:48.0
But in 2019, Secretary Pompeo was in Manila
23:52.0
shortly after that big meeting in Hanoi
23:55.0
between President Trump and Kim Jong-un.
23:58.0
And he made it very clear
24:00.0
that any attack on Filipino troops, vessels, or aircraft
24:04.0
in the South China Sea,
24:05.0
not generically in the Pacific,
24:07.0
in the South China Sea,
24:08.0
will activate the Mutual Defense Treaty.
24:12.0
there was a violent incident
24:13.0
where a Chinese militia
24:15.0
sank and almost killed more than 12 Filipino fishermen.
24:18.0
And what happened there was,
24:20.0
the American Ambassador Sung Kim said that
24:22.0
even Chinese militia attacks on Filipino troops and all
24:26.0
could activate the Mutual Defense Treaty.
24:28.0
So I would argue that since 2018-19,
24:32.0
while America is still neutral
24:34.0
on the status of disputed futures,
24:36.0
the dynamics of the Mutual Defense Treaty
24:39.0
have become much more poignant,
24:41.0
have become much more relevant.
24:42.0
And I think that is where
24:44.0
it's almost impossible for America
24:46.0
to ignore what's happening there
24:48.0
in the South China Sea.
24:49.0
Because inevitably,
24:50.0
this is also about your alliance commitments.
24:53.0
It's also about your credibility.
24:55.0
And last time I checked,
24:56.0
you got a lot of commitments all around the world.
25:00.0
the situation in the Middle East right now.
25:02.0
So we are also wondering
25:03.0
if America is in a position
25:04.0
to be involved in multiple conflicts right now.
25:06.0
So this is a very worrying situation.
25:10.0
that's not the only problem.
25:12.0
There's even a bigger problem, right?
25:14.0
Next to those small islands we're fighting over,
25:16.0
there's a bigger island called Taiwan.
25:20.0
Which is also potentially going to become
25:22.0
a point of contention,
25:24.0
if not a theater of conflict.
25:25.0
So as you can see,
25:26.0
Taiwan is very close to mainland China.
25:29.0
And some of their islands,
25:30.0
Kinmen for instance,
25:32.0
you can pick up a,
25:34.0
and you can see the shores of China.
25:36.0
I think it's the Xiamen area and all.
25:38.0
So some of them are very close to China.
25:40.0
So the idea of war there
25:44.0
is not totally impossible.
25:48.0
I would still say,
25:49.0
China is learning its lessons
25:51.0
from what's happening in Ukraine.
25:52.0
Because look at what happened to Russia.
25:54.0
And as you look at the Chinese weapon systems,
25:56.0
it's not too different from Russia
25:58.0
because they reverse engineer and pirate
25:59.0
a lot of Russian technology.
26:01.0
And Ukraine was a land border invasion.
26:04.0
An amphibious attack would be
26:05.0
a totally different ballgame.
26:07.0
So the Chinese are watching it.
26:08.0
But nevertheless,
26:09.0
President Xi Jinping
26:10.0
has consistently made it clear
26:12.0
that the reunification with Taiwan issue
26:14.0
should be settled
26:16.0
within his lifetime,
26:20.0
the Chinese military has to be prepared
26:22.0
to logistically pull it off.
26:24.0
It's another question
26:25.0
whether he'll politically decide to do that.
26:27.0
But we have to be
26:28.0
logistically prepared for that.
26:30.0
So that's where there's growing worry.
26:33.0
But Taiwan matters
26:34.0
in so many other ways
26:35.0
aside from their fantastic food,
26:37.0
for some of you who have been in Taiwan.
26:39.0
our hearts go to people in Taiwan
26:40.0
who are coping with
26:41.0
a very powerful earthquake recently.
26:44.0
Taiwan also matters
26:45.0
because it's at the heart of
26:46.0
what Chris Miller calls
26:51.0
TSMC alone of Taiwan
26:54.0
is producing close to
26:56.0
a quarter of all semiconductors in the world.
26:58.0
But that's not the important thing.
27:00.0
Many countries can make semiconductors.
27:03.0
Philippines, we make some.
27:04.0
Vietnamese, Malaysians.
27:06.0
But more than 90%
27:08.0
of the most high-end semiconductors
27:10.0
is made in Taiwan.
27:11.0
The things that are going to run
27:13.0
your weapon systems,
27:14.0
your most advanced computer systems,
27:16.0
things that are going to be central
27:17.0
to conquering and dominating
27:19.0
the next generation technologies,
27:21.0
whether it's artificial intelligence
27:22.0
or 6G telecommunications
27:25.0
or quantum communications.
27:29.0
Taiwan is kind of like a...
27:32.0
I mean, if oil was the driving force
27:36.0
of 20th century global economy,
27:39.0
you can say that semiconductors
27:41.0
are almost as important.
27:42.0
Except oil was exported by what?
27:44.0
12, 15 different countries.
27:46.0
But there's only one Taiwan, right?
27:48.0
As far as the upper end
27:50.0
of semiconductors is concerned.
27:52.0
So imagine a country
27:54.0
kind of like the Saudi Arabia of electronics,
27:57.0
except in this case,
27:58.0
there's only one country,
27:59.0
major country producing
28:00.0
all of those advanced semiconductors.
28:03.0
the conversation nowadays
28:05.0
if ever China invades Taiwan,
28:07.0
should the Taiwanese blow up
28:09.0
their semiconductor industry
28:10.0
before the Chinese
28:11.0
will take control of that?
28:12.0
Because if China takes control
28:13.0
of those very high-end semiconductors,
28:16.0
it's totally different ballgame.
28:18.0
They will move forward
28:20.0
in terms of their military capabilities.
28:22.0
I mean, that's why nowadays
28:24.0
I watch more sci-fi
28:25.0
because sci-fi is looking
28:26.0
more and more realistic
28:28.0
Things that I used to be
28:29.0
very dismissive about,
28:30.0
like, no, I mean,
28:31.0
with artificial intelligence
28:33.0
and things that these
28:34.0
high-end semiconductors
28:36.0
The ballgame is changing.
28:38.0
Now, geography matters.
28:40.0
And if you look at Taiwan,
28:42.0
it's squeezing between
28:43.0
two American allies.
28:45.0
Again, you guys are involved here.
28:46.0
Of course, you have
28:47.0
the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act,
28:50.0
whereby you no longer recognize
28:52.0
Taiwan as an independent country.
28:54.0
You no longer have
28:55.0
a mutual defense treaty with them.
28:56.0
But Taiwan is important
28:59.0
in the United States,
29:00.0
and there's a certain degree
29:01.0
of attachment to Taiwan.
29:02.0
And I don't know about Biden,
29:03.0
I mean, whether these were gaffes
29:05.0
or something else,
29:06.0
but on multiple occasions,
29:07.0
President Biden said that
29:09.0
we will help Taiwan
29:10.0
if ever things go ugly down there.
29:12.0
But the thing is,
29:13.0
it's not just U.S. and China and Taiwan.
29:15.0
To the north of Taiwan immediately,
29:17.0
there are many Japanese military bases,
29:20.0
just over 100 nautical miles, right?
29:22.0
And actually, as we speak,
29:24.0
the Japanese are fortifying
29:25.0
their position there
29:26.0
because the Japanese
29:27.0
are also preparing
29:28.0
for a potential D-Day there.
29:29.0
For the Japanese,
29:30.0
this is also an emotional issue.
29:32.0
As you know, Taiwan was their colony.
29:34.0
And if you go across northeast Asia,
29:37.0
almost everyone hates Japan, right?
29:39.0
Because of history, right?
29:41.0
But not in Taiwan.
29:43.0
In Taiwan, we meet a lot of people
29:44.0
who proudly speak still Japanese
29:46.0
and are very fond of Japan.
29:48.0
And in fact, if you look
29:49.0
at their food and culture,
29:50.0
I stayed a lot in Taiwan
29:52.0
it's very Japanese influence.
29:54.0
So there's also the cultural attachment to Taiwan.
29:57.0
But geography is also very, very important.
30:00.0
As luck may have it,
30:02.0
the Philippines has the same situation
30:05.0
We have military facilities
30:07.0
in Mavulis in particular,
30:10.0
which are extremely close
30:11.0
to some of the small islands of Taiwan.
30:14.0
we have multiple provinces here,
30:16.0
which are, you know,
30:18.0
Philippines is supposed to be
30:20.0
a Southeast Asian country.
30:22.0
It is, of course.
30:23.0
But Manila to Taiwan
30:25.0
is just over an hour of flight.
30:27.0
And some of our northern cities
30:29.0
where my current president
30:30.0
comes from, Marcus Junior,
30:31.0
is just 40 minutes or so away
30:33.0
from some of the Taiwanese cities
30:36.0
It's much faster for us
30:38.0
than any major ASEAN capital,
30:40.0
Southeast Asian capital.
30:41.0
It takes three to four hours
30:42.0
to go to Singapore,
30:43.0
three to four hours
30:44.0
to go to Kuala Lumpur,
30:46.0
two, three hours to Hanoi,
30:47.0
so on and so forth.
30:48.0
So we're also part of this situation,
30:52.0
whether we want it or not, right?
30:54.0
As they say, you know,
30:55.0
you can choose your wife or friends,
30:57.0
but not your family, right?
30:58.0
It's the same thing.
30:59.0
You cannot choose
31:00.0
your geographic neighbors.
31:01.0
And in fact, in the Philippines,
31:02.0
the serious conversation right now
31:03.0
is that as if the province
31:05.0
in the South China Sea
31:07.0
there's even a bigger island,
31:22.0
there's just talented men
31:25.0
and they're the ones
31:36.0
that if this country
31:37.0
is so so healthy,
31:39.0
that at our bottom line,
31:44.0
is able to change
31:51.9
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