Sino-Indian Relations in a Global Context

NEW YORK – Asia Society

6 April 2015

TOM NAGORSKI: Good morning everyone and thanks for joining us. My name is Tom Nagorski, I’m the Executive Vice President of the Asia Society calling in today from New York. Welcome to this AsiaConnect briefing call. In this AsiaConnect series we offer insights on policy related developments in Asia and in US-Asia relations. Our last iteration last month was on the international response to the quake in Nepal, we look next month to take up Iran and the United States and the looming nuclear deal or the lack thereof. This series exists thanks to the generous support of Asia Society Trustee, Mitch Julis.Just a few words of introduction of today’s subject, it covers what is perhaps the most important bilateral relationship in Asia today namely the relationship between China and India. Two countries so vast one can hardly imagine peace and prosperity on the continent if there is not peace and prosperity within and between these two great nations. Last month Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, visited China for a summit with President Xi Jinping, which followed a similar visit by President Xi to India last September. By most accounts the May summit was a success – the two countries signed two-dozen agreements to enhance diplomatic communication, people-to-people ties, economic cooperation, regional connectivity and coordination on major global issues including climate change.But serious differences in issues certainly remain – border disputes remain, trade between the two countries remains modest and Premier Li Keqiang has asked India to improve its domestic environment for foreign investment. The world also waits to see how China and India will shape regional policy issues. The two countries have long agreed that the region must be better represented in global insittutions and that Asian countries should play a larger role in international policy discussions. Few, if any, international topics are more pressing than climate change or more subject to the influence of these two giant nations. Their joint statement on climate change made clear that both countries want to advance the global negotiations at the UN climate summit at Paris this December, both want rich countries to provide financing and technology for reducing greenhouse gas emissions but what the actual concrete steps might be remain unclear.Today we will hear from Asia Society Policy Institute President Kevin Rudd who is with me here about the future of the China-India relationship and the implications for global climate change. Kevin Rudd is not only an expert on climate issues, he has also met with both President Xi and Prime Minister Modi so he is particularly suited for this conversation. As he wrote just last week in the New York Times he sees opportunity for these two decisive leaders, not only to transform the bilateral relationship, but also to engage in cooperative action on climate change. He has emphasised the need for the US to work with both countries to forge a global climate deal in Paris this December. Mr Rudd will offer remarks for about 20 minutes or so and leave 15 minutes for questions and answers. An important logistical matter – our operator will facilitate those questions on a first come, first served basis. A reminder that this call is being held on the record and with that I am pleased to introduce Kevin Rudd.KEVIN RUDD: Thank you very much Tom and good morning to everybody from New York, New York. The India-China relationship in my judgement is one of the several most critical relationships in the world today. Obviously, the US-China relationship is central, the China-Japan relationship is of great significance and the China-India relationship is also of great significance. In fact the future stability and the future prosperity in the wider Asia-Pacific region, in large part, hinges on the future dynamics of the Washington-Beijing-Tokyo-Delhi set of relationships. Add to that the internal dynamics of South East Asia. If you look at the history of the China-India relationship and none of these relationships exist in a vacuum, they are all captured by developments over time, this relationship has gone through a complex revolution from the halcyon days of the 1950s between Nehru and Zhou Enlai, through to the difficulties of the border conflict in the early 1960s and through the period where India found itself increasingly more allied with the then Soviet Union, then through the ‘70s where China changed its strategic orientation to the United States. So we arrive at this point in the second decade in the 21st century with all the downstream influences of these significant core facts in the evolution of the China-India relationship.From India’s perspective the border dispute remains central. This has been in existence from the beginning of both Indian independence and the assumption to political power of the Chinese Communist Party two years later in 1949. To this day it overshadows the relationship. It is a long border disagreement in two parts where we have seen military activity of one form or another over the ensuring half-century.The second dynamic in the security domain between India and China has to do with India’s western neighbour, Pakistan and by extension the broader security dynamics of Afghanistan. From an Indian perspective, Chinese cooperation with the Pakistani military over a long period of time, particularly in terms of the evolution of the Pakistani nuclear program has left a very deep and negative set of sensitivities in New Delhi about China’s long term aspirations for strategic stability in the China-India relationship. In relation to that of course and beyond the nuclear program in Pakistan is concern, from New Delhi’s perspective, of the threat to domestic security from individuals associated with the Pakistani state directly or indirectly in India’s allegation in terrorist activities within India itself. These of course reached their crescendo at the time of the horrendous attacks in Mumbai not that many years ago.If there is a final dimension in the China-India relationship which concerns Delhi it is China’s increasing move into the Indian Ocean. From China’s perspective, given its overwhelming dependency on oil supplies out of the Gulf, this is seen from China’s perspective as a natural projection of China’s long term strategic interests in guaranteeing its sealines of communication given its extraordinarily high levels of foreign energy dependency. This of course has lead China to expand its naval cooperation with a range of states around the Indian Ocean periphery as well as China increasingly participating in counter-piracy operations with various navies including those of the United States and countries like Australia in enhancing security in the area of the coast of Somalia into the Arabian Sea.Finally, from the Indian perspective if you look beyond the security prism, there is of course the potentiality which lies in the economic relationship. The truth however is that until 2015 these security considerations – the four which I have just referred to – have exercised a dominating influence over the evolution of a more robust trade, investment and broader economic engagement between China and India. This is reflected in the numbers. Just on two way trade alone where the current number stands at $70 billion, this is a figure infinitely smaller for example than that which currently characterises the China-Australia trade relationship. Given the relative size of the Chinese and Indian economies, this should be operating at a much higher level than it currently is. The truth is these security factors have been dominant.From Beijing’s perspective the China-India relationship exhibits a reverse view of most of the issues I have just listed. But if I was to bring it into the current perspective, the Chinese view would be one which would seek to stabilize strategic tensions between China and India on the one hand to the greatest extent possible in order, secondly, to open up the lines of economic engagement. China’s general approach to its relationship with its neighbours – both friendly and problematic – has been to allow economics to take the lead against the robust logic that if economic engagement flourishes political relationships tend to improve. Once political relationships improve, foreign policy behaviours tend to change. And as foreign policy behaviours change, national security postures are also evolved for the better over time.This of course brings us to the dynamics of the most recent visit by Prime Minister Modi to Beijing and this follows the earlier state visit by President Xi Jinping to India. The background to the most recent visit to Beijing by Prime Minister Modi lies in the events of January this year when on India’s National Day on the 26th of January Prime Minister Modi, after his successful bilateral visit to the United States, invited President Obama as the national guest of honour to participate in India’s National Day celebrations in Delhi. This was a remarkable visit given the equivocal nature of the Indian relationship with the United States in recent decades. President Obama’s visit was heralded as a significant turning point in Delhi in the India-US relationship, not just in terms of their cooperation on civil nuclear matters, but more broadly in terms of their geostrategic engagement over time. The intensity of the discussions between Prime Minister Modi and President Obama were reflected in their joint declaration on the sort of Asia-Pacific region both of these countries would like to see in the future. Within that declaration there was language that could easily be discerned in Beijing as language which was warning about various Chinese postures in the South China Sea and elsewhere. That therefore is the background to what has just occurred and unfolded with this most recent visit.So when Prime Minister Modi went to Beijing his objectives, as one commentator has I think observed with an interesting twist of language, one commentator has said that Prime Minister Modi went to Beijing wearing two hats. The first hat was of the Indian business minded leader who wanted to do business with China acting almost as the Chief Executive Officer, the CEO, of India Inc., at the same time he was visiting China as India’s chief security officer. These two predispositions obviously based on what I’ve said already, tend to pull in reverse directions.On the economic engagement, any casual observer of Prime Minister Modi’s first twelve months in office would conclude that the centrality of his economic reform program and of the need to bolster short and long term economic growth has actually been the centre piece of his political program. He ran for the election when he was first elected as Prime Minister on a program of getting the Indian economy moving. Based, of course, on his long experience as we all know as the Chief Minister of Gujarat State over a considerable period of time. The application over time of the so-called Gujarat Model of what Prime Minister Modi has sought to do nationally in the twelve months since his election to the Prime Ministership has been the focus of the commentary within Indian domestic politics.Twelve months on, Indian commentators and others have pointed to the fact that the Indian growth rate is improving and improving significantly. It is a much more open debate as to the extent to which the Indian economic reform program is proceeding at the pace that Mr Modi would like. However, in my own discussions in Delhi during a number of visits in recent times, it is quite plain that one of the core challenges facing the economic reform program in Delhi is to ensure that there is new sources of investment into India’s overall extraordinary infrastructure investment deficit.This covers all branches of infrastructures whether it is in transport, communications, telecommunications. Transport in particular, where those familiar with the Indian economy will know the problems currently facing its road, rail and port network. Acting effectively as impediments of Indian economic growth and constraining the country’s growth potential. This, of course, presents India with an immediate challenge – given the complexities of India’s domestic legal system, how is such capital to be obtained either from domestic investors within India or from abroad from the United States and the rest of the international community or from new potential sources of investors such as China.This is very much the prism through which Prime Minister Modi approached his visit to China, in particular the capital needs of India’s railway system. It remains to be seen the extent to which this will now be taken up by Chinese state or non-state investors in the years ahead but if you read the tea leaves in the various statements, observations and agreements outlined during the visit by Prime Minister Modi to Beijing it is quite plain that this prospective Chinese investment in India’s infrastructure in general and in the rail network in particular remains a core priority. China of course has already indicated its intention to become much larger scale investors in its so-called One Belt One Road initiative across the rest of the Eurasian continent. Of course India lies at the centre of the Eurasian continent. India, fearing the geopolitical consequences of One Belt One Road, has not explicitly embraced this particular Chinese proposal. However, my estimation is that if new sources of investment capital emerge as a consequence of this new Chinese proposal which at present constitutes, between the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on the one hand and the Silk Road investment fund on the other, a potential sources of $150 billion north of investable capital. I think our friends in India will want to secure as much of that as possible for their own domestic infrastructure needs.On the security front, and I’ll conclude my formal remarks on this given we want to leave sufficient time for question and answer in this AsiaConnect call today, it is important to note that no real progress was achieved on the resolution of the border question. However, interesting language was deployed by both sides on it. Language in the joint statement which referred to the early settlement of the boundary question needing to be pursued as a strategic objective and to be done actively rather than passively by both sides. Recognizing the depth of the impediment which it constitutes to the overall relationship. Also Prime Minister Modi reiterated that the two countries must try to, “settle the boundary quickly,” to transform the overall relationship. How this unfolds in the period ahead remains to be seen but I think strategic and economic realists in Beijing, mindful of the evolving India-US relationship, may well be inclined towards a more proactive approach to resolving the border question than we’ve seen in the period of previous Indian administrations. But it is fair to say as a consequence of this visit that no substantive progress was achieved on the border but the language contained in the joint statement of the visit indicates that this will not simply be pushed to the backburner but be the subject of a more proactive approach from both sides.The final thing I would conclude is this – a new and potentially emerging area of cooperation between China and India does arise in terms of their common concerns about the rise and rise of violent global jihadism. India’s exposure to this is well-known and well-documented. Less well-known is of course China’s exposure through the events which are unfolding in Xinjiang, the Muslim communities in the Xinjiang autonomous region in China’s north west – a vast tract of land and one of course adjoining Central Asia and of course also connected through various traditional trade routes to Afghanistan and through Afghanistan to Pakistan. So India and China now face common security concerns, not just divided security concerns, which is how to deal with the sources of violent jihadism now in some respects intensifying and progressively, in the eyes of India and China, threatening their own domestic national security. I believe what we are beginning to see is the emergence of a low-level strategic dialogue between India and China which may go much further in the future on their common interests in dealing with violent militant Islamism coming out of either Afghanistan or, in the judgement of both, from some of the less controlled areas of Baluchistan and Northwest Territories in and around Kashmir.I will leave my comments at that. In overall terms I would say the future of the China-India relationship will be driven by the economy, the visit underlined that fact given the mindset of both Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping in terms of the blueprints for both of their countries’ long term development. But the impediment remains on the security front, in particular the border and in terms of what constitutes a baseline political reality check in Delhi itself, nothing radically transformative in the India-China relationship can occur until the border is ultimately resolved.NAGORSKI: Thank you so much for those remarks, quite a sweep of the relationship and the two countries in the region. As questions come in, a quick one of my own. Coming back to the global struggle against climate change, or I should say, the struggle against global climate change and these two countries – many have said and you frequently have made this point, that there is really no road to international success in this struggle that does not involve both these countries given their rates of emissions and their importance. It appears that there has been an uneven posture so far on the issue, that it is a matter of stated public policy right now, at least on paper, to begin a substantive fight against climate change. Perhaps because, as you call him the CEO of India, Mr Modi’s incredible imperative to succeed in the economic growth metric. Do you see signs of hope that Mr Modi and his government and his country may get to some level of interest and attention to this that might make a difference?RUDD: Well Tom your question is a good one and it certainly the reason in part that I placed an opinion piece in the New York Times only a week or so ago on this essential subject, the core of which is as we look to the events of December 2015 in Paris where the International Framework Convention on Climate Change will convene its 21st Conference of the Parties, that the success or failure of Paris will hinge on essentially on the postures adopted in three capitals or possibly four. Washington being one, Beijing, India and what happens with the future evolution of European policy through Brussels. Put those four players together and you are looking at well north of half of the global greenhouse gas equation.Projecting ahead to 2030 and then beyond that to 2050 this will be an order of hierarchy which has China as an even more dominant polluter in terms of carbon emissions world wide, India’s profile rising, America’s profile decreasing but still of great significance and the Europeans continuing proportionally about where they are. Frankly, when it comes to the politics of a final negotiation in Paris and most critically what happens beyond Paris, while the rest of us may think we are important the bottom line is those four capitals are important. So you go then to the chemistry of the China-US and India-China relationship on climate change. We will recall that in the November 2014 Summit in Beijing between the President of the United States, President Obama, and President Xi Jinping, international public opinion was surprised that they did issue a joint agreement, a joint declaration, a joint statement on climate change. The core of which was both sides agreeing to a peaking year when they estimate that their climate emissions would peak and, secondly, what their peaking thresholds would be – that is, the volume of emissions. This is a significant outcome, however, much further work of detail needs to occur within that quantitative formula if we are actually to see the action unfold which keeps global greenhouse gas emissions within 450 parts per million which is the threshold figure for keeping climate change or temperature increases worldwide on average within two degrees centigrade, which is a significant increase of itself.Enter the China-India equation. There has been no high level bilateral discourse of policy between Delhi and Beijing on climate change in recent times. They have cooperated through the BRICS mechanism – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – as effectively a negotiating bloc from the events of the Copenhagen Conference which I also attended back in 2009 and in most of the climate change negotiations since then. But the core of the BRICS group is in fact China and India when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. The fact that we were able to see a headline agreement between both Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping during this visit to Beijing which said that both sides were committed to the success of the Paris Conference it was the first serious bilateral statement we have had locking in both governments to a successful outcome.Of course, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, and what constitutes success and how is that defined? But if it is defined as a series of national commitments which have to fall within the global peak of 450 parts per million in order to keep temperature increases within two degrees centigrade; and if on top of that you also have a commitment to a universal system of measurement, reporting and verification to ensure that what people commit to they actually do; and then on top of that again, you have a review mechanism built into the Paris Agreement which is that if commitments given are either (a) not adequate to the quantitative tasks which are necessarily dictated by the science or (b) commitments given are not honoured that there is power within the agreement to bring parties back to review their level of commitments over time and what is measured over time as well in order for the Paris Agreement to have real teeth.But the positive outcome – because it is so easy to be negative in this domain – the positive outcome of the Modi visit to India was that this issue was addressed, it was the subject of a non-definitive but nonetheless declaratory commitment by the two governments to ensure the success of Paris which represents light-years on where we were just five years ago. Having been in the negotiating green room myself with Chinese and Indian representatives myself in Copenhagen in 2009.NAGORSKI: Always good to end on some optimism. Operator if you could direct us to our first question that would be great.OPERATOR: Our first question comes from David Sedney with CSIS, you’re with us live.CALLER: Thank you very much for the discussion and I wanted to raise an issue regarding the potential for regional competition between China and India. In recent years the countries of Myanmar and Sri Lanka have both reacted against what they apparently see as overaggressive Chinese economic activity and military activity, and they’ve turned towards India. In the January Sri Lankan election the headline of one local paper said that China loses, India wins. So I would very much like Prime Minister Rudd’s comments on that particularly the potential for regional competition between the two?RUDD: Thank you Dave for the question and thank you for the good work done by CSIS on the China-India relationship. I’m also pleased to be a Distinguished Fellow at the CSIS in Washington. You’re right to point out the nature of geopolitical competition in South Asia, and you’re right to drawn attention to what happened in the Sri Lankan elections not that long ago. A central issue in the Sri Lankan elections, I think most analysts would agree, would be the nature, the proximity and the intensity of the relationship between the previous administration of Rajapaksa and successive Chinese administrations.The outcome in the Sri Lankan elections surprised not only the good people of Sri Lanka I think, it certainly surprised those in Delhi as well as Beijing. Of course, we have seen a few examples in, let’s call it, a wider regional circle of China becoming a domestic political issue. If you look, for example, at what occurred in the Zambian national elections if I’m not wrong in my recollection, where the nature of the relationship between the then-Zambian administration and Beijing became a highly politicised questions within that campaign which saw the voting out of office of the then-Zambian administration.If we look at this carefully across South Asia which was the focus of your question, I think most countries in South Asia that I’m familiar with would want to maintain a balanced relationship between Delhi and Beijing. Certainly Beijing when it has observed the electoral results in Sri Lanka have not thrown their hands up in horror and said, “That’s the end of the Sri Lanka relationship.” The Chinese have said, “We must learn from this and rebuild our relationship with the Sri Lankan administration.” Certainly when I was at the Boao Conference in China in February and March this year I noticed one of the keynote addresses being given by the newly elected President of Sri Lanka, there as a guest of President Xi Jinping.So China’s approach to difficulties in bilateral relationships is to learn from them and nonetheless to keep the level of engagement going into the future. From regional countries’ point of view I think their interest is to maintain balance between the two. I don’t think, from Delhi’s perspective, they wish to see a bifurcated region of countries more aligned to Beijing in one department and more aligned to Delhi in the other. But it does leave the broader strategic question in play as to how India and China will now at the level of naval operations cooperate or otherwise in the Indian Ocean, given China’s stated interest through its naval operations to protect and defend its global interests. I referred earlier to its economic and energy interests in the Gulf, on the one hand, with an Indian Ocean which has a particular adjective attached to it namely ‘India’ and India’s proximity to this vast oceanic domain.NAGORSKI: Thank you Kevin and thank you David Sedney. Operator, another question.OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Aziz Haniffa with ‘India Abroad’. Your line is live.CALLER: Thank you very much Mr Rudd for that very comprehensive overview. Let’s face it, in terms of the overall US-India strategic relationship it’s not only the neocons who hope that India would be some sort of a counter weight to China, even though India strongly denies it and say that that’s the last thing they want to be drawn into. But in terms of recent Beijing muscle flexing, in terms of South China Sea, the islands et cetera – India’s looked at these policies and also the border problems that are there and vis-à-vis your experience in Australia and the whole Asia-Pacific Region and the US looking towards that region too. What’s your prognosis in terms of India being dragged into something of a more assertive role in the region even though both countries – India and China – would rather their strategic tensions be alleviated by economics and trade like you spoke to? One housekeeping question, if someone could email those opening remarks of yours it would be very appreciated.RUDD: Thanks very much for your question. In terms of the long term dynamics of the China-India relationship, I go back to a core principle. That its evolution will be strategically shaped by-and-large by whether an agreement can be reached on the border. This, as my Indian friend who has just posed the question would know, still dominates most conversations in Delhi and certainly on the part of Indian policy elite. It’s certainly a live consideration in the mind of Chinese policy elites as well. In terms of broader strategic postures by India in partnership with other countries and China more broadly in the region, this border question I believe will remain a central consideration.The second point I would make is this, it is very easy to make a list of all that could go wrong in the strategic future of the Asia Pacific Region. You would begin with North Korea, you would then point to the continuing toxicity in the Japan-China relationship despite recent improvements but again focussed on a territorial question, namely the sovereignty of Senkaku/Diaoyudao. Taiwan hasn’t disappeared as a strategic question, Presidential election loom and the prospects of a return to political office of the Democratic Progress Party, the traditional pro-independence opposition party in Taiwan now constitutes a new reality but also a new administration in the person of Xi Jinping who has shown himself to be vigorous in asserting China’s broader interests within the region. That’s before we get to what is in the news most recently and that is in the South China Sea and action and counter-action between China, the United States and various regional states. That’s before we swing around through the Malacca Straits to the vast waters of the Indian Ocean and some of the issues that we’ve discussed particularly in response to the last question put to me by David from CSIS.So a list of everything that could go wrong is there and there sub-scenarios to be described with each but because of I’m in the professional business of foreign policy optimism as opposed to simply producing pessimistic lists I believe that these many developments point in a direction which governments across the region should embrace. That is, how do we take our existing thin pan-regional institutions – whether it is APEC or whether it is the East Asian Summit or even the various ASEAN-Plus arrangements and turn them into something more robust, pan-regional in time which can in fact help to manage down tensions within the Asia Pacific Region rather than simply allow those tensions to continue to escalate and against some scenarios one day explode.That’s why I’ve been a long term proponent of what I describe as the Asia-Pacific Community idea. How do we take, for example, the East Asian Summit – presently a weak institution, barely ten years old but involving the 18 key states of the wider Asia Pacific Region including India, including the ten South East Asians, including China, Korea and Japan, including the United States and Russia and also including Australia and New Zealand – how do we take that annual gathering which has a wide and open mandate outlined in the Kuala Lumpur declaration of 2005 when this entity was brought into being and evolve it over time into something more robust which I call an Asia Pacific Community. I’m not from a view of foreign policy which is utopian or idealist but I am attracted to the impact which credible institutions can play on a regional basis, as I said, in taking the temperature down in strategic tensions rather than simply standing to one side and waiting for the fireworks to erupt.NAGORSKI: I think we have time for one more quick question and answer operator if there is one?OPERATOR: Our last question comes from Raymond Vickery with the Woodrow Wilson Centre. Your line is live.CALLER: Yes sir, Mr Rudd. Thank you very much for this sweeping overview. My question goes to climate change and your op-ed in the New York Times in which you make a very eloquent plea for cooperation between China, India, US, Europe leading up to the Paris meeting. But I’m wondering what kind of commitment you might possibly ask for from India which has a per capita use of energy, say, 1/13th of the US, 1/5th of China and overall the US is producing twice as much greenhouse gasses as India? In view of the needs for economic growth where, as you know, the per capita wellbeing economically is so much smaller, how does India play into this? And the related question if you have time is on the question of coal dependency by India and China in part fuelled by Australia and how do you deal with the climate change energy issue without dealing with coal?RUDD: The short answer, Raymond (and greetings to all my friends at Woodrow Wilson) – the short answer to your question is you cannot deal effectively with climate change unless you are dealing with carbon fuels, the greatest offender of which is coal. That’s not a question of opinion. It’s a question of scientific and mathematical fact. So long as you have demand for coal in the international community you’re going to have supply, whether it is from Australia or from other coal suppliers in the world. Of course, a proper answer to that question at a global level and certainly at a Chinese and Indian national level but, frankly more broadly in countries like Germany as well, is to have a coherent global carbon price which actively prices and therefore discourages continued chronic dependency on coal into the long term future.Secondly, however, if we look specifically at the dynamics of India which is the basis of the first part of your question. My own discussions in Delhi when I was there only several months ago with most Ministers in the Government including the Prime Minister – although in my discussions with the PM we did not focus on this explicitly – but certainly with economic ministers and the environment ministers and others, coal is a central element of the equation. You’re right to point out that carbon use is infinitesimally smaller than that of your average developed economy before you get onto the extraordinary standards of per capita energy consumption here in the United States of America – I’ve just turned the lights out here to make my own personal contribution.The bottom line is, if you’re sitting in India – and this is what so many of the ministers had to say to me – the global community needs to help us on coal. How do you do that? Let’s just reduce this to tintacks. One thing you can do is massively assist through investment in India with strong policy settings also to encourage that also within India in energy efficiency, referred generally globally in the climate change debate as one of the low hanging fruit of the overall energy consumption challenge. Related to that in India is an appalling loss of electricity through line loss, calculated somewhere between 15-30% of electricity generation as opposed to that which reaches the point of distribution. Again, this is a question of investment in the transmission system to reduce that level of line loss.Then you go to, of course, the energy supply composition itself. Though we have not achieved any significant breakthroughs in the three to four mainstream technologies associated with carbon sequestration and storage, or so-called clean coal. This must continue given the nature of coal dependency both in India and in China. But also the capacity of other energy sources to achieve, shall I say, energy at scale capable of competing with coal. Within the carbon space, for example, we all know that gas is less offensive than coal when it comes to its ultimate greenhouse gas impact, that is natural gas. Therefore, again investment is needed within the Indian infrastructure investment system either to enhance the possibilities of domestic supply which means exploration, extraction and supply given a range of questions around prospectivity of natural gas within India, but also to increase radically India’s external use of gas supplies either from the Gulf which are very close to India or from gas suppliers from Australia, for example from the North West shelf which are also not geographically vastly removed.Therefore, my answer to your question is that we can’t just, frankly, a song and dance routine about the Paris Outcome this December which celebrates, I hope, the collective policy aspirations of the internaitonal community, unless the nuts and bolts of this are attended to in terms of energy efficiency, transmission systems and alternative supply including from gas and cleaning up coal the extent that we can as part of an integrated energy fix. No country is going to walk away from energy security, neither India nor China. Our job, as global citizens, is to work with them on how to deal what for them is a national energy security challenge and what for all of us is a global climate change threat. Thank you for the question.NAGORSKI: Thank you, you’ve been listening to Asia Society Policy Institute President Kevin Rudd and our AsiaConnect series.