U.S. Relations With the People's Republic of China (2008)

U.S. Department of State

Release of the Report 'Global Trends -2025' by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Dr. Mathew Burrows, National Intelligence Council Counselor and Principal Organizer of Global Trends 2025
Foreign Press Center Briefing
Washington, DC
November 21, 2008

11:00 A.M. EST

MODERATOR: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming on this Friday to the Washington Foreign Press Center. We're extremely pleased this morning to have with us Dr. Mathew Burrows, who is the Counselor for the National Intelligence Council and the author of a report that was released yesterday called "Global Trends -- 2025." Dr. Burrows was also the editor and author of the previous report that was issued four years ago, and that was "Global Trends -- 2020."

He's going to have an opening statement to talk a little bit about how the report was prepared and what their primary findings are, and then we'll have time for your Q&A. Thanks so much.

DR. BURROWS: Well, thank you for coming out. And as indicated, I'll talk a little bit about the process involved in putting this together and then some of the key findings, and then we'll give you ample time to pose questions.

Every four years, the National Intelligence Council puts out this report. We time it for publication between the presidential election and the inauguration. It's an effort to raise policymakers' sights above their daily in-box. We look out -- each of the reports looks out about 15, 20 years. We're talking about big trends as well as possible shocks, surprises, that we encapsule in the scenarios.

What we -- it takes about a year to put these things together. And the process that we go through is basically to talk to a lot of experts, both in this country and increasingly overseas. If you turn to the acknowledgements paper -- page in here, you'll see the number of think tanks that we partner with both in this country and abroad. And in preparation for this publication, we actually went to about 20 to 25 countries. We talked to literally hundreds of experts.

And moreover, over the past five months as we were putting together this draft, we sent out two experts all over the world and met with various experts -- Beijing, Stockholm, London, practically every continent. We've been in Africa and Latin America. But we sent out versions of this and got reactions. And the effort here is to get perspective by others outside the U.S. as well as those inside on the key challenges facing the globe.

The NIC, just to give you an idea, it's a peculiar intelligence institution in the United States. As you probably realize, there are 16 intelligence agencies. The NIC sits on top of them. Our ordinary products are very classified works. You've probably heard of National Intelligence Estimates that look at key decisions and strategic priorities for the Administration. We tend to be looking always out.

This is a publication that we actually look farther out into the future, and we have -- this is the fourth in the series. We have always put them out unclassified. They tend to be big sellers overseas as well as in this country. The last one was published in various languages -- Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish. And then a lot of other countries and institutes translate portions of it that pertain to their particular interest. It's used universally in a lot of universities, both in this country and overseas.

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So I thought I would just go down in a few of these cases, talk a little bit about it, and then we can get into your questions. The first box you'll see on the left-hand page -- a global multi-polar system is emerging with the rise of China, India. We also talk about Russia, Brazil, and then three upcoming powers that we name in the text which are Turkey, Indonesia, and Iran.

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The next one talks about the unprecedented shift in relative wealth and economic power roughly from east to west. There are two drivers here. What has been until recently the -- with the increasing energy prices, huge transfer of wealth to Middle East producers -- Russia is another producer. And then second is, of course, manufactured activity in China, a huge shift in economic power. We see these -- this is the basis for the rise, but we see these countries as actually having dual identities in 2025. So in -- these are very, very large states -- India, China, 1.3 billion or so. Their GDP will rival practically all countries except the U.S. However, on a per capita level, they'll still be relatively poor compared to the West.

So in one sense, they're going to feel still poor, developing. But in another sense, they're going to be huge, powerful or potentially powerful countries. Now I raise this dual identity because in terms of the international system, first, they don't feel in many cases that they have a stake in the international system. It was designed in 1945, 1948 when they were more or less left outside of the inner circle. However -- so they don't have ownership in any sense.

They have benefited, however, and that's when their rise, of course, has benefited from this international system. They are status quo powers in that sense. But they don't necessarily feel any obligation to assume the burden, and that's going to be a continuing tension as we go along. Because on the other side of it, as I -- we've been talking and it -- and in another of the boxes down here, we have more or less decline of a lot of Western countries, including the U.S. -- the relative decline. So those capabilities that the West has had, and it's not only because of their own, as we will see, demographic issues and others that you have this decline, but also because of the dispersion of power, that they don't have the capability to continue to assume or shoulder the burdens, particularly the farther you go out to 2025.

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In the next 15 years, we will see a lot of countries, though, where the youth bulges will begin to decline. This is good news. Many of these countries with the beginning -- the youth bulge beginning to peak will be in a position of beginning to reap the benefits of the demographic bonus. In other words, the profile will be similar to what happened in Taiwan, South Korea in the '60s and '70s where they can be in a position of economic takeoff, that's if they manage their economic affairs well.

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Potential for conflict will increase in the Middle East. Here again, what we expect is actually a much more diversified Middle East and possibly some changing patterns in the Middle East. And this has to do, again, with the potential that we see in countries in North Africa to actually begin getting on the globalization train and growing and beginning economic takeoff. Even where that is going to happen in the short term, that usually involves political turbulence. So we could still see, particularly these are areas with a lot of authoritarian regimes, managing -- you know, China has been able to do this fairly well, but other countries don't necessarily. Regimes can be very brittle with new economic forces, development of middle classes. So what we would expect to see is still political turbulence.

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The third area is possible interstate rivalries and conflict over resources. We see a little bit of this already -- countries, China, India developing blue navies, worries about maintaining their access to energy, rivalries elsewhere in the developing world and Africa. And so this is another concern. It's a type of conflict we have not seen for some time.

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QUESTION: Hi. Nadia Tsao with the Liberty Times from Taiwan. I wonder that since you predict in this report that China will become leading military in 2025, do you have an estimate about an impact on its, you know, ability to resolve Taiwan issues or how it will impact -- how impacting U.S., you know, force structures in this area?

And the second question is about sea lane security. I don't see any prediction or discussion here. But during your discussion, have you thought about this? Thank you.

DR. BURROWS: I didn't quite catch the second about sea lane --

QUESTION: Sea lane security.

DR. BURROWS: Security.

QUESTION: Yeah, because with this change, so now U.S. is the dominant power keep the sea lane security globally. But will that, you know, change?

DR. BURROWS: Well, on the second one, I mean, the U.S. will remain in 2025 still the premier maritime power. And in terms of protecting the vitals, the sea lanes, U.S. certainly will be the only one capable. The caveat here is that Chinese navy, potentially India, will begin to be developing those capabilities. And we actually talk about -- you know, I mentioned rivalry. We also talk about the potential for cooperation. There is a map at the beginning of one of the chapters which looks -- entitled "Dire Straits," looks at particularly the energy supplies and the long, of course, maritime routes that tankers and others have to take. In that sense, there are a lot of opportunities for U.S., China, India and others to cooperate on sea lane security.

Certainly, what we -- with the rising power of China, on its military modernization programs, I mean, I think it's their feeling that that, becoming a growing military power as well as an economic power, is part of being a big power. We would expect that to continue to happen, and we would expect it to be playing a greater regional role, both economically and militarily.

QUESTION: About Taiwan, I mean, especially as, you know, the impact on Taiwan issues?

DR. BURROWS: We don't make any particular projections. I mean, we have looked -- I mean, you know, what we have said when we talk about China is that it's -- the regime's primary objective is to maintain employment and to keep the unemployment rate down. So in that sense, it doesn't want -- it wants a harmonious environment globally and regionally in order to do that. So there is, you know, impetus and incentive for it not to roil the waters with Taiwan, to explore peaceful ways for accommodations.

However, I mean, we can envision, and particularly you get to looking at what could happen economically, a reverse or whatever, then the regime may play the nationalistic card. There you may have potential for frictions to develop and a situation in which there's a lot more hostility and tensions in the region.

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QUESTION: Gregory Asmolov, Israel's Channel 9. Do you have any special chapter in your report about the role of information technologies and the Internet, how it's going to change the world in 15 years?

DR. BURROWS: We don't have -- well, it's sprinkled around. I mean, first off, the (inaudible) talks about technologies and there's a little bit about the Internet in there. There's also, when you go to one of the chapters at the end talking about networks, and one of the themes there is that -- and I alluded to this at the beginning -- the rise of non-state actors in terms of networks and in terms of identities. The Internet is a crucial element in that, so that, you know, people in Brazil worried on the environment are connecting with those in the U.S., with those in China, with those around the world. And in many ways, there's a multiplication of identities. You may not feel not just Brazilian, but you also may feel a connection as an environmentalist. So yes, in that sense, we talk.

QUESTION: Hello. My name is Ilin Stanev. I work for Bulgarian newspaper, Capital. Why do you think that the emerging powers are likely to challenge the international system as it happened in the beginning of last century? Now in the beginning of the last century, everybody felt that the (inaudible) will last forever, but it didn't happen. And my second question is you raise climate change as a definite risk. I remember that, you know, your previous reports climate change was also brought up as a risk. Why do you think that it's -- this recommendation was taken not very seriously by the Administration?

DR. BURROWS: Well, on the second part, I mean, we don't do policy, in a sense. So, I mean, you'll have to pose that question to policymakers why they didn't do more on climate change. On the first question which -- essentially you're saying is, you know, why won't we see the repeat of what happened with Germany, Japan and so on and the two world wars; a couple of reasons.

I mean, one thing is that I don't believe history necessarily repeats itself. But much more importantly, as I indicated before, China has an interest in growing, developing materially. I don't think they want to, particularly during this period, challenge the system because they would see that as disrupting their own rise, and they have a much longer-term perspective, and they don't see themselves being able to, in any way, challenge the system. I think what you will see -- I mean, they -- we actually had a meeting in Beijing. We talked about this issue, and they felt that, you know, they wanted to write the rules much more and be in the inner circle, but they didn't see that happening within this period. And I would say the same thing with India. We are less -- we're more cautious, less sure in terms of Russia, because we see them challenging the system more.

Yes.

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QUESTION: This is Chinling Sung from Hong Kong, Phoenix TV. You mentioned there's a few key uncertainty and one of them are -- is whether there's a democratic system in China and your summation -- the political -- potential consequence. There's a middle-class interest. Can you express more on that topic, please? Thank you.

DR. BURROWS: Yes. I mean, you -- if you look in the first chapter, we talk a lot about growing middle classes. And this is not just in China; also in India, and to an extent, in Russia. What we see this doing over this next 15, 20 years is, in many ways, putting pressure on governments and regimes in those countries. One thing, they're keeping the material advantages and growth going on because they're still, as I mentioned at the beginning, at a fairly low level, but they are, in terms of cars and houses and ownership of houses, that they're aspiring to it, that they're increasingly getting those things as symbols of middle class status. The governments have to be increasingly accountable to those demands by the middle-class. We don't necessarily see democracy, particularly Western-style democracy, breaking out. We think in many ways that the material, so long as the material benefits continue to flow in and governments, to the extent that they are accountable, increase the availability of public services -- the health, the education -- that they can maintain at least a semi-authoritarian status.

Russia is in a slightly different case because it's -- you know, has developed this (inaudible) economy devoted to continuing energy streams. Historically, those type of regimes have a way of buying off oppositions. So -- but again, it's dependent on whether it can continue to -- if prices, I mean, continue to get the energy streams. And this is dependent of course, on higher oil prices and gas prices. If that begins to fail, then we see a likelihood that there will be pressure to more liberalize, to open up to more greater political accountability.

MODERATOR: Thank you, sir, very much.