BIT Aff

1AC

PlanThe United States federal government should propose an amendment to, and ratify upon completion of, the Bilateral Investment Treaty with the People’s Republic of China that specifies: The United States will simplify its National Security Review process if the People’s Republic of China agrees to reduce the scope of its “negative list.”

SolvencyConcessions on security reviews are key earning Chinese concessions on the negative listHu Weijia, 6/7/2016, The Global Times, “US must meet China halfway to reach agreement in investment treaty negotiations,” http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/987281.shtml, mm

It is a source of concern to see pessimistic views on the China-US Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) circulating in American society, as it suggests that the US may lack confidence in furthering the negotiations.¶ Prior to the current China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED), in which talks on the BIT are expected to be high on the agenda, Leland Miller, president of data analytics firm China Beige Book International, was quoted by media reports as saying that the current political atmosphere in the US is not conducive for the BIT negotiations.¶ Some other American analysts have echoed Miller, saying it is unrealistic to expect the US Congress to approve the China-US BIT this year. It seems US society's enthusiasm for the deal may not

be as strong as had been expected.¶ After years of negotiations, the talks are now at a critical moment as the two nations are expected to submit their new "negative list" proposals for those sectors that will remain off-

limits to investment from the other side. ¶ The US wants China to shorten its list of these sectors, while China wants the US to make concessions in areas such as high-tech investment and security reviews.¶ Although top leaders on both sides have called for the rapid conclusion of a high-standard China-US BIT, this will not be

a simple task, either for China or for the US. ¶ China's National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic planning agency, published a draft earlier this year on adopting the negative list approach in some pilot areas in the country. ¶ It was considered unlikely that China would adopt the negative list approach several years ago, because it was totally different from the country's existing management system for foreign investment. ¶ In the process of extending the negative list approach, the central government has to push forward domestic reforms and promote the formation of a national consensus among various interest groups.¶ However, it is doubtful whether the Obama administration has enough political resources to push forward domestic reforms, especially at a time when American society is showing less enthusiasm

for the BIT negotiations. It seems the US now wants to pressure China to make more concessions in order to reach an agreement.¶ But it is unrealistic for the US to force China to sign the agreement without making concessions itself. While China will make great efforts to adopt the negative list approach, the US has to properly handle issues such as security reviews to meet the concerns of the Chinese side.¶ According to media reports, Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei recently became the target of a US investigation over its trade with Iran. ¶ Concerns were expressed by some in China that this represented unfair treatment of Chinese investment by the US. The Obama administration may need to put more focus on domestic affairs, instead of putting pressure on

China.¶ Admittedly, there's not much time left for the two countries. If negotiations are not concluded while Obama is still in office, the treaty might be hit by growing uncertainties. ¶ Both China and the US have to do more in order to improve their domestic investment environments, and should avoid a diplomatic war over the BIT issue.

Mutual concessions are key – the plan pushes the BIT over the finish lineFan He and Bijun Wang, 2014, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, EABER Working Paper Series, Paper No. 90, “Chinese interests in the global investment regime,” http://www.eaber.org/system/tdf/documents/EABER%20Working%20Paper%2090_He%20Fan%20and%20Wang.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=23755&force=, mm

In addition to revising existing BITs to better position China as a source of FDI,¶ China should also push ahead with bilateral BIT negotiations with the US. The two¶ countries have held nine rounds of negotiations between September

2008 and June 2013. But so far, the progress has been quite limited. Negotiations have not entered an¶ essential phase: the United States is still explaining its BIT Model to China, while¶ China has not proposed its own negotiation text. One reason for the slow progress is¶ that Sino-US BIT negotiations were held up because of the 2004 Model BIT revision in¶ the US from the end of 2009. The negotiations did not resume until October 2012 in¶ Beijing. The new model (the 2012 Model BIT) attaches greater importance to¶ environmental protection, labor practices, SOE discipline, as well as transparency of¶ laws and regulations in the

host country. The more important reason for slow progress¶ on the proposed BIT between China and the US is that there are several sources of¶ disagreement in the negotiations, including:¶ (1) Market access: in particular, whether the parties should commit to¶ pre-establishment national treatment for investments and thereby narrow the¶ scope for considering industrial policy and national security goals;¶ (2) Fair competition: the question has been what standards, if any, should be set¶ with regard to SOEs, labor practices, and the environment;¶ (3) Investor protection: there has been debate over the liberalization of capital¶ flows, customary international law, performance requirements, and the¶ transparency of law and regulations; and¶ (4) Dispute settlement: discussions have centered on the extent to which arbitration¶ is governed by the Convention on Settlement of Investment Disputes between¶ States and Nationals of Other States (the ICSID Convention/Washington Convention) and the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and¶ Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (the New York Convention).¶ Generally

speaking, the US has pursued BITs that facilitate market access by¶ lowering barriers to investment, whereas Chinese BITs have focused largely on¶ protecting investment assets and dispute settlement.12 Reaching an agreement does not¶ require the resolution of all these differences since some can be exempted through¶ exceptional arrangements and other legislative techniques. But both sides will have to¶ make major concessions . China has taken the lead in making a major concession.¶ During the fifth Sino-US strategic and economic dialogue in July 2013 in Washington,¶ China for the first time promised pre-establishment national treatment for investments.¶ This breakthrough is likely to bring the Sino-US BIT negotiations into an essential¶ phase. Negations will be complicated and drawn out. It took 18 years for China to¶ establish a BIT with Canada. We do not expect a Sino-US BIT deal to be reached¶ anytime soon, but negotiations are helpful in themselves in promoting a healthy¶ Sino-US investment environment.

China will say yes – it wants the deal – concessions on security reviews are keyLi Xiang, 6/7/16, China Daily USA, “Off-limits sectors up for review,” http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2016-06/07/content_25641287.htm, mm

More time is needed for the revision of China's "negative list" - sectors that would remain closed to US

investment - in the negotiations for a bilateral investment treaty, a senior trade official said on Monday.¶ "Both sides are working closely to push for positive progress," said Zhang Xiangchen, vice-minister of commerce.¶

Zhang, at a news conference on the sidelines of the eighth US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing, said that China hopes the negotiations will achieve a win-win result.¶ Vice-Premier Wang Yang said China will submit its negative

list next week.¶ The United States would like to see a reduction in sectors closed for US investment, which is crucial for reaching a deal.¶ The last time China and the US exchanged offers of negative lists was in September, ahead of President Xi Jinping's state visit to the United States, according to Xinhua News Agency.¶ Negotiations for a bilateral investment treaty have been a key issue of the ongoing S&ED talks. Twenty-four rounds of talks on the treaty have been held since

negotiations started in 2008.¶ Meanwhile, Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng said on Monday that Beijing hopes to

see the US loosen its restrictions on exports to China.¶ Gao also demanded fair treatment of Chinese companies in the security review of their mergers and acquisitions in the US.¶ "We hope that the security review will not be an obstacle for cooperation between Chinese and US companies ," Gao said.

Advantage 1 – TradeInterdependence between the US and China is breaking down – trade is peaking now – increasing economic ties is key to prevent a great power warDrezner 2016 – professor of international politics at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University (Daniel W., “Five Known Unknowns about the Next Generation Global Political Economy,” Brookings Institute, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2016/05/future-global-political-economy-drezner/ios-drezner-web.pdf)

Multiple scholars have observed a secular decline in interstate violence in recent decades. 105 The

Kantian triad of more democracies, stronger multilateral institutions, and greater levels of cross-border trade is well known. In recent years, international relations theorists have stressed that commercial interdependence is a bigger driver of this phenomenon than previously thought. 106 The liberal logic is straightforward. The benefits of cross-border exchange and economic interdependence act as a powerful brake on the utility of violence in international politics. The global supply chain and “just in time” delivery systems have

further imbricated national economies into the international system. This creates incentives for governments to preserve an open economy even during times of crisis. The more that a country’s economy was enmeshed in the global supply chain, for example, the less likely it was to raise tariffs after the 2008 financial crisis.107 Similarly, global financiers are strongly interested in minimizing political risk; historically, the financial sector has staunchly opposed initiating the use of force in world politics. 108 Even militarily powerful actors must be wary of alienating global capital. Globalization therefore creates powerful pressures on governments not to close off their economies through protectionism or military aggression. Interdependence can also tamp down conflicts that would otherwise be likely to break out during a great power transition. Of the 15 times a rising power has

emerged to challenge a ruling power between 1500 and 2000, war broke out 11 times.109 Despite these odds, China’s recent rise to great power status has elevated tensions without leading to anything approaching war. It could be argued that the Sino-American economic relationship is so deep that it has tamped down the great power conflict that would otherwise have been in full bloom over the past two decades. Instead, both China and the United States have taken pains to talk about the need for a new kind of great power relationship. Interdependence can help to reduce the likelihood of an extreme event—such as a great power war—from taking place. Will this be true for the next generation economy as well? The two other legs of the Kantian triad—democratization and multilateralism—are facing their own problems in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.110 Economic openness survived the negative shock of the 2008 financial crisis, which suggests that the logic of commercial liberalism will continue to hold with equal force going forward. But some international relations scholars doubt the power of globalization’s pacifying effects, arguing that interdependence is not a powerful constraint.111 Other analysts go further, arguing that globalization exacerbates financial volatility—which in turn can lead to

political instability and violence.112 A different counterargument is that the continued growth of interdependence will stall out . Since 2008, for example, the growth in global trade flows has been muted, and global capital flows are still considerably smaller than they were in the pre-crisis era. In trade, this reflects a pre-crisis trend. Between 1950 and 2000, trade grew, on average, more than twice as fast as global economic output. In the 2000s, however, trade only grew about

30 percent more than output.113 In 2012 and 2013, trade grew less than economic output. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that global flows as a percentage of output have fallen from 53 percent in 2007 to 39 percent in 2014.114 While the stock of interdependence remains high, the flow has slowed to a trickle. The Financial Times has suggested that the global economy has hit “peak trade.” 115 If economic growth continues to outstrip trade, then the level of interdependence will slowly

decline, thereby weakening the liberal constraint on great power conflicts. And there are several

reasons to posit why interdependence might stall out. One possibility is due to innovations reducing the need for traded goods. For example, in the last decade, higher energy prices in the United States triggered investments into conservation, alternative forms of energy, and unconventional sources of hydrocarbons. All of these steps reduced the U.S. demand for imported energy. A future in which compact fusion engines are developed would further reduce the need for

imported energy even more.116 A more radical possibility is the development of technologies that reduce the need for physical trade across borders. Digital manufacturing will cause the relocation of production facilities closer to end-user markets, shortening the global supply chain.117 An even more radical discontinuity would come from the wholesale diffusion of 3-D printing. The ability of a single printer to produce multiple component parts of a larger manufactured good eliminates the need for a global supply chain. As Richard Baldwin notes, “Supply chain unbundling is driven by a fundamental trade-off between the gains from specialization and the costs of dispersal. This would be seriously undermined by radical advances in the direction of mass customization and 3D printing by sophisticated machines…To put it sharply, transmission of data would substitute for transportation

of goods.”118 As 3-D printing technology improves, the need for large economies to import anything other than raw materials concomitantly declines.119 Geopolitical ambitions could reduce economic interdependence even further. 120 Russia and China have territorial and quasi- territorial ambitions beyond their recognized borders, and the United States has attempted to counter what it sees as revisionist behavior by both countries. In a low-growth world, it is possible that leaders of either country would choose to prioritize their nationalist ambitions over economic growth. More generally, it could be that the expectation of future gains from interdependence—rather than existing levels of interdependence—constrains great power bellicosity.121 If great powers expect that the future benefits of international trade and investment will wane, then commercial constraints on revisionist behavior will lessen. All else equal, this increases the likelihood of great power conflict going forward. There have been other drivers of the decades-long reduction in militarized interstate disputes. Nuclear deterrence has helped curb violent conflict among the great powers. Multilateral peacekeeping missions mitigate small country conflicts. Even if there is a decline in interdependence, it is possible that the “Long Peace” will endure. Furthermore, it is impossible to predict the degree to which either innovations or geopolitics will lessen the need for international trade. Even technological optimists acknowledge that the future diffusion of 3D printing is unclear. Advocates of networked manufacturing insist that economic openness is a prerequisite for the process to continue.122 And the degree of geopolitical revisionism among great powers might be endogenous—that is to say, preexisting levels

of globalization might constrain revisionist impulses, rather than such impulses weakening the globalized economy. If great powers resort to revisionist foreign policies, however, then the global economy will start to resemble the Cold War era of economic blocs and strategic embargoes—one in which trade and investment follow the flag rather than follow the rate of return. The increased American use of targeted financial sanctions, for example, has already generated grumblings from peer competitors about finding ways to diversify away from reliance upon the dollar.123 In 2015, China introduced its own international payment and settlements system, in part, to diversify

away from reliance upon the dollar.124 The correlation of economic flows with geopolitical alliances would not just have a profound effect on cross-border flows; it would likely lead to the fragmentation of global economic governance. Just as significantly, great power governments would reverse post-Cold War trends and choose to allocate more scarce resources towards their militaries.

FDI uniquely locks in interdependence – it dramatically increases the costs of initiating conflictRosen and Hanemann 2011 – Daniel H. Rosen is Founder and China Practice leader of the Rhodium Group (RHG), a specialized firm advising the public and private sector. Mr. Rosen is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University, where he has taught a graduate seminar on the Chinese economy at the School of International and Public Affairs since 2001. He is a Fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC, where he has been affiliated since 1993. Thilo Hanemann is Research Director at the Rhodium Group. (“An American Open Door? Maximizing the Benefits of Chinese Foreign Direct Investment,” Center on U.S.-China Relations Asia Society and Kissinger Institute on China and the United States Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, http://asiasociety.org/files/pdf/AnAmericanOpenDoor_FINAL.pdf)

Foreign ownership of domestic assets is a deeper form of global economic integration than simply importing and exporting, and it has deeper implications for national security. There are concerns about FDI and American security that must be taken seriously, which is why the United States has a stringent inward

investment screening regime. On the other hand, deepening FDI integration can have positive impacts on national security as well. In the liberal worldview, FDI fosters economic interdependence between countries and, by aligning economic interests, makes conflict less likely. Firms can stop trading with one another, and short-term portfolio investments can be withdrawn, but direct investments in factories and warehouses cannot be moved quickly. From this perspective, the likelihood of conflict between two countries is lower if there are high cross-border holdings of FDI.66 Exchange between firms and people in one another’s economies, instead of through trade relations, fosters trust and understanding. Perceptions of Japan in the United States morphed from “yellow peril” to reliable long-term partner as Toyota, Sony, and many other companies invested in

communities instead of just exporting to U.S. households. In this sense, Chinese investment in the United States has great potential to promote better bilateral relations. Consider the efforts of American multinationals with operations in China in lobbying Washington for moderate China policies, and imagine a future in which Chinese multinationals do the same in Beijing to protect the value of their U.S. operations.

Mutual concessions are key – the plan gets China to say yes – and a BIT locks in interdependence which solves multiple scenarios of war between the US and ChinaNicolas Jenny, 10/6/15, Global Risk Insights, “Can a China-US investment treaty bring security to the Asia-Pacific?” http://globalriskinsights.com/2015/10/can-a-china-us-investment-treaty-bring-security-to-the-asia-pacific/, mm

With Xi Jinping’s visit to the US over, the two leaders have pledged to continue working towards achieving a comprehensive BIT (for a quick summary of key outcomes during Xi Jinping’s visit, have a look at GRI’s latest infograph at the bottom of this article).

Negotiations originally began in 2008, but were put on hold following Obama’s election.¶ Now that a firm commitment has been made by both parties, the prospects for reaching such a treaty are increasingly bright .¶ The main aim of a Sino-US BIT is to help encourage bilateral investment by guaranteeing companies non-discriminatory market access and protection from arbitrary treatment. In that respect, a BIT makes strong economic sense in the current climate by

providing a level playing field for both US and Chinese companies to invest in one another’s markets.¶ Several roadblocks

must first be addressed by both sides: US legislators are concerned about the favourable terms given to

Chinese State Owned Enterprises & domestic firms and the application of China’s anti-monopoly law; the Chinese are concerned about the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which has the power to block foreign investment should it be deemed a threat to national security .¶ However,

there is a strong impetus for both countries to overcome these issues.¶ The US and China have already made narrowing down the list of sectors which will be restricted to foreign investment a key priority. The time is therefore ripe for

producing results – political momentum on both sides of the Pacific is strong.¶ The biggest benefits of a far-reaching and comprehensive BIT would exceed simple investment and trade. Rather, the treaty will provide the opportunity to significantly increase cooperation between both countries and in doing so will greatly reduce tensions in the entire Asia-Pacific region .¶ Since Kant’s principle of

perpetual peace, the notion that trade decreases the chance of interstate conflict has become widely accepted. The logic is simple: by increasing bilateral investment, the cost of conflict becomes too high for both countries to consider it a viable option. The European Community (EC) was built on this foundation by

making the cost of another war between France and Germany too high to fathom.¶ The process of negotiating towards a BIT is as important as the end result. BITs are difficult to achieve because they require negotiating through political and economic security challenges which are sensitive topics in both countries. However, the fact that both sides are willing to sit down and talk about these traditionally taboo areas is a success in itself and will help both sides become increasingly open in their dealings and achieve trust

between one another.¶ With the US and China as the two biggest ‘strategic competitors’ in the region, the potential to calm tensions in the region is high. Concerns over the risk of cyber-attacks spilling into kinetic war would be largely mitigated. Unexpected encounters at sea between each other’s navies would be less likely to result in conflict, while tensions between US regional allies and China could be allayed. Most importantly, societal relations would be greatly improved. With over 50% of Americans seeing China as a threat, a BIT would help promote China as an economic opportunity.¶ While many believe the recent success of

the TPP will be Obama’s greatest foreign policy achievement, that treaty does little for the Sino-US relationship. A comprehensive BIT between the US and China would be a significant achievement in Obama’s “pivot to Asia.”¶ A BIT will, first and foremost, promote bilateral investment. However, the intangible benefits it has the potential to produce should remind both leaders that there is more at stake should they fail to agree to a comprehensive BIT.

That war causes nuclear winter – extinctionWittner 11 – Professor of History @ State University of New York-AlbanyLawrence S. Wittner, “Is a Nuclear War with China Possible?,” Huntington News, Monday, November 28, 2011 - 18:37 pg. http://www.huntingtonnews.net/14446While nuclear weapons exist, there remains a danger that they will be used. After all, for centuries national conflicts have led to wars, with nations employing their deadliest weapons. The current deterioration of U.S. relations with China might end up providing us with yet another example of this phenomenon. The gathering tension between the United States and China is clear enough. Disturbed by China’s growing economic and military strength, the U.S. government recently challenged China’s claims in the South China Sea, increased the U.S. military presence in Australia, and deepened U.S. military ties with other nations in the Pacific region. According

to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the United States was “asserting our own position as a Pacific power.” But need this lead to nuclear war? Not necessarily. And yet, there are signs that it could. After all, both the United States and China possess large numbers of nuclear weapons. The U.S . government

threatened to attack China with nuclear weapons during the Korean War and, later, during the conflict over the future of China’s offshore islands, Quemoy and Matsu. In the midst of the latter confrontation, President Dwight Eisenhower declared publicly, and chillingly, that U.S. nuclear weapons would “be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else.” Of course, China didn’t have nuclear weapons then. Now that it does, perhaps the behavior of national leaders will

be more temperate. But the loose nuclear threats of U.S. and Soviet government officials during the Cold War,

when both nations had vast nuclear arsenals, should convince us that, even as the military ante is raised, nuclear saber-rattling persists. Some pundits argue that nuclear weapons prevent wars between nuclear-armed nations; and, admittedly, there haven’t been very many—at least not yet. But the Kargil War of 1999, between nuclear-armed India and nuclear-armed Pakistan, should convince us that such wars can occur. Indeed, in that case, the conflict almost slipped into a nuclear war. Pakistan’s foreign secretary threatened that, if the war escalated, his country felt free to use “any weapon” in its arsenal. During the conflict, Pakistan did move nuclear weapons toward its border, while India, it is claimed, readied its own nuclear missiles for an attack on Pakistan. At the least, though, don’t nuclear weapons deter a nuclear attack? Do they? Obviously, NATO leaders didn’t feel deterred, for, throughout the Cold War, NATO’s strategy was to respond to a Soviet conventional military attack on

Western Europe by launching a Western nuclear attack on the nuclear-ularmed Soviet Union. Furthermore, if U.S. government

officials really believed that nuclear deterrence worked, they would not have resorted to championing

“Star Wars” and its modern variant, national missile defense. Why are these vastly expensive—and probably unworkable—military defense systems needed if other nuclear powers are deterred from attacking by U.S. nuclear might? Of course, the bottom line for those Americans convinced that nuclear weapons safeguard them from a Chinese nuclear attack might be that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is far greater than its Chinese counterpart. Today, it is estimated that the U.S. government possesses over five

thousand nuclear warheads, while the Chinese government has a total inventory of roughly three hundred. Moreover, only about forty of these Chinese nuclear weapons can reach the United States. Surely the United States would “win” any

nuclear war with China. But what would that “victory” entail? A nuclear attack by China would immediately slaughter at least 10 million Americans in a great storm of blast and fire, while leaving many more dying horribly of

sickness and radiation poisoning. The Chinese death toll in a nuclear war would be far higher. Both nations would be reduced to smoldering, radioactive wastelands. Also, radioactive debris sent aloft by the

nuclear explosions would blot out the sun and bring on a “nuclear winter” around the globe— destroying agriculture, [and] creating worldwide famine, and generating chaos and destruction. Moreover, in

another decade the extent of this catastrophe would be far worse. The Chinese government is currently expanding its nuclear arsenal, and by the year 2020 it is expected to more than double its number of nuclear weapons that can hit the United States. The U.S. government, in turn, has plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars “modernizing” its nuclear weapons and nuclear production facilities over the next decade. To avert the enormous disaster of a U.S.-China nuclear war, there are two obvious actions that can be taken. The first is to get rid of nuclear weapons, as the nuclear powers have agreed to do but thus far have resisted doing. The second, conducted while the nuclear disarmament process is occurring, is to improve U.S.-China relations. If the American and Chinese people are interested in ensuring their survival and that of the world, they should be working to encourage these policies.

Global growth is stalling – conclusion of the BIT is key to stimulate the global economyZhang Yugui, 4/7/16, Beijing Review, “China-US BIT matters to the Global Economy,” http://www.bjreview.com/Opinion/201604/t20160405_800053736.html, mm

Chinese and U.S. representatives expressed optimism for the future of the China-U.S. Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) negotiations

during a session at this year's Boao Forum for Asia annual conference.¶ Against the backdrop of a global economy facing risks of derailment and investment and trade rules becoming increasingly fragmented , it is necessary for China and the United States--the two most important economies in the world--to collaborate as

much as possible with each other in order to maintain global economic and financial stability, boost world economic growth and create new investment and trade rules.¶ Chen Deming, China's former Minister of Commerce, said that China-U.S. BIT talks are nearing the final stages of completion, with most of the core issues resolved. The only remaining issue is the negative list, a management model that defines areas restricted for foreign investment. We can therefore expect that the two economies are likely to announce the achievement of a high-level investment treaty at some point in the future.¶ China and the United States started the BIT negotiations in 2008, which are considered one of the most important and complicated economic negotiations following China's entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. In July 2013, the two sides made a major breakthrough when they began discussing each other's negative lists. They were still negotiating those terms during the 24th round of BIT talks in January.¶ Over the past eight years of BIT negotiations, both China and the United States have consulted their respective economic partners in rebuilding trade rules. Both countries have had breakthroughs in establishing bilateral or multilateral free trade areas.¶ The United States, for example, has spearheaded the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with 12 member nations along the Pacific Rim, and signed the trade agreement into place in New Zealand on February 4. In addition, negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the European Union and the United States are gaining traction. Both parties have demonstrated that they are willing to reach an accord on the high-level trade agreement.¶ On the other side of the Pacific, China is working on three main projects: upgrading the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area, actively pushing forward the negotiation on Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and gradually realizing the Beijing Roadmap for APEC's Contribution to the Realization of the Free Trade Area of Asia-Pacific by signing free trade agreements with South Korea and

Australia.¶ Nonetheless, as the investment and trade territories respectively built by China and the United States expand, economic ties between the two countries are becoming closer. This is another reason for both countries to push forward the signing of the BIT .¶ Media reports frequently mention the TPP, TTIP, RCEP and the spillover effect of China's Belt and Road Initiative, especially the influence of potential clashes in interests between the two powerful economies. Still, there is reason to believe that China will not pursue economic antagonism.¶ In today's world, where trade and finance in major economies are highly interdependent and mutual investment is growing, major powers cannot be expected to build a wall to isolate their investment and trade rules from their partners.¶ This is also true for China and the United States. As one of the biggest beneficiaries of the existing global trade system, China has been carrying out global

investment and industrial transfer since joining the WTO in 2001, and it has been branching out its value chain around the world. China became a net capital exporter in 2014 and is now one of the world's top investors. China's investment in the United States is

also rapidly growing.¶ Even so, the growth in trade that China has achieved doesn't change the existing global trade structure. China's investment in countries along the land-based and maritime Silk Road, as well as in developed economies, is expanding, but it is far from changing global investment and trade rules.¶ The United States still enjoys the most benefits from the global value chain. In this respect, China is no match for the United States, particularly in the trade of services and high value-added manufacturing products. The strategies China has adopted to actively expand its role in the global economic trade network have never aimed to ostracize the United States.¶ China knows very well that if it were to alienate the United States, it would end up losing more than what it stands to gain. On the other hand, it will never be easy for the United States to take away China's influence in the Asia-Pacific region's trade network. China has stated that it is willing to consider joining the TPP--a rational

step forward--just as it welcomes the United States to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. If both countries can finally reach an accord through the BIT talks, they will precipitate the rebuilding of global investment and trade rules.¶ The complex and tight economic ties between the world's top two economies form the cornerstone for the creation of a new type of partnership between major countries.¶ Once the BIT is signed, it will be conducive to changing the current economic pattern, wherein China is a producer while the United States is a consumer. Moreover, the BIT will provide a model for effective partnership between super economies representing different governance systems. Ultimately, it will escalate world economic cooperation to higher levels and boost steady growth.¶ To Chinese and U.S. political and business leaders with far-reaching vision, regardless of how complicated the conflicts between China and the United States are, the development of mutual interests and the establishment of the economic cooperation

take precedence.¶ China and the United States must, based on a search for common ground, establish their partnership as the aegis of the global system. This will ensure global economic growth and rebalance, financial stability, reconstruction of trade and investment rules, as well as effective settlement of their respective economic issues and stable growth of their respective economies .

Economic decline triggers lash-out and global war---no checks Harold James 14, Professor of history at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School who specializes in European economic history, 7/2/14, “Debate: Is 2014, like 1914, a prelude to world war?,” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/read-and-vote-is-2014-like-1914-a-prelude-to-world-war/article19325504/

As we get closer to the centenary of Gavrilo Princip’s act of terrorism in Sarajevo, there is an ever more vivid fear: it could happen again . The approach of the hundredth anniversary of 1914 has put a spotlight on the fragility of the world’s political and economic security systems . ¶ At the beginning of 2013, Luxembourg’s Prime Minister

Jean-Claude Juncker was widely ridiculed for evoking the shades of 1913. By now he is looking like a prophet. By 2014, as the security situation in the South China Sea deteriorated, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cast China as the

equivalent to Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany; and the fighting in Ukraine and in Iraq is a sharp reminder of the dangers of escalation. ¶ Lessons of 1914 are about more than simply the dangers of national and sectarian animosities. The main story of today as then is the precariousness of financial globalization , and the consequences that

political leaders draw from it. ¶ In the influential view of Norman Angell in his 1910 book The Great Illusion, the interdependency of the increasingly complex global economy made war impossible. But a quite opposite conclusion was possible and equally plausible – and proved to be the case . Given the extent of fragility, a clever twist to the control levers might make war easily winnable by the economic hegemon. ¶ In the wake of an epochal financial crisis that almost brought a complete global collapse, in 1907, several countries started to think of finance as primarily an instrument

of raw power, one that could and should be turned to national advantage. ¶ The 1907 panic emanated from the United States but affected the rest of the world and demonstrated the fragility of the whole international financial order. The aftermath of the 1907 crash drove the then hegemonic power – Great Britain - to reflect on how it could use its financial power. ¶ Between 1905 and 1908, the British Admiralty evolved the broad outlines of a plan for financial and economic warfare that would wreck the financial system of its major European rival, Germany, and destroy its fighting capacity. ¶ Britain used its extensive networks to gather information about opponents. London banks financed most of the world’s trade. Lloyds provided insurance for the shipping not just of Britain, but of the world. Financial networks provided the information that allowed the British government to find the sensitive strategic vulnerabilities of the opposing alliance.¶ What pre-1914 Britain did anticipated the private-public partnership that today links technology giants such as Google, Apple or Verizon to U.S. intelligence gathering. Since last year, the Edward Snowden leaks about the NSA have shed a light on the way that global networks are used as a source of intelligence and power.¶ For Britain’s rivals, the financial panic of 1907 showed the necessity of mobilizing financial powers themselves. The United States realized that it needed a central bank analogous to the Bank of England. American financiers thought that New York needed to develop its own commercial

trading system that could handle bills of exchange in the same way as the London market. ¶ Some of the dynamics of the pre-1914 financial world are now re-emerging. Then an economically declining power , Britain, wanted to use finance as a weapon against its larger and faster growing competitors, Germany and the United States.

Now America is in turn obsessed by being overtaken by China – according to some calculations, set to become

the world’s largest economy in 2014. ¶ In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, financial institutions appear both as dangerous weapons of mass destruction , but also as potential instruments for the application of national power. ¶ In managing the 2008 crisis, the dependence of foreign banks on U.S. dollar funding constituted a major weakness, and required the provision of large swap lines by the Federal Reserve. The United States provided that support to some countries, but not others, on the basis of an explicitly political logic, as Eswar Prasad demonstrates in his new book on the “Dollar Trap.” ¶ Geo-politics is intruding into banking practice elsewhere. Before the Ukraine crisis, Russian banks were trying to acquire assets in Central and Eastern Europe. European and U.S. banks are playing a much reduced role in Asian trade finance. Chinese banks are being pushed to expand their role in global commerce. After the financial crisis, China started to build up the renminbi as a major international currency. Russia and China have just proposed to create a new credit rating agency to avoid what they regard as the political bias of the existing (American-based) agencies. ¶ The next stage in this logic is to think about how financial power can be directed to national advantage in the case of a diplomatic tussle. Sanctions are a routine (and not terribly successful) part of the pressure applied to rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. But financial pressure can be much more powerfully applied to countries that are deeply embedded in the world economy. ¶ The test is in the Western imposition of sanctions after the Russian annexation of Crimea. President Vladimir Putin’s calculation in response is that the European Union and the United States cannot possibly be serious about the financial war. It would turn into a boomerang: Russia would be less affected than the more developed

and complex financial markets of Europe and America. ¶ The threat of systemic disruption generates a new sort of uncertainty, one that mirrors the decisive feature of the crisis of the summer of 1914. At that time, no one could really know whether clashes would escalate or not. That feature contrasts remarkably

with almost the entirety of the Cold War, especially since the 1960s, when the strategic doctrine of M utually A ssured D estruction left no doubt that any superpower conflict would inevitably escalate . ¶ The idea of network disruption relies on the ability to achieve advantage by surprise, and to win at no or low cost. But it is inevitably a gamble, and raises prospect that others might, but also might not be able to, mount the same sort of operation. Just as in 1914,

there is an enhanced temptation to roll the dice, even though the game may be fatal.

Advantage 2 – RelationsCompleting the BIT is key to sustain US/Chinese relations – reinvigorates cooperation and solves various disputesJenny 2016 – political risk analyst based out of Hanoi, Vietnam, and contributor to Global Risk Insights (Nicolas, “Chinese overseas M&As: Where's the Sino-US bilateral investment treaty?,” http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/chinese-overseas-mas-wheres-the-sino-us-bilateral-investment-treaty)

A Sino-US bilateral investment treaty (BIT) has long been on the agenda in Beijing and Washington. After Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to the United States last September, both he and US President Barack Obama pledged to work towards an agreement. Nonetheless, progress appeared to stall until a former Chinese commerce minister declared last month that negotiations

were in their final phases. Clinching that deal would mark a major advance in Sino-American relations, helping to level the playing field for investors from both countries by protecting against unfair and arbitrary treatment. For US lawmakers and industry giants, concerns about Chinese investment revolve around intellectual property infringements. In the American view, Beijing wants to obtain trade secrets through both illegal (industrial espionage) and legal activities (acquiring companies and strategic patents). It's no wonder a climate of distrust exists: In a recent survey, only 38 per cent of Americans held a favourable view of China, while only 44 per cent of the Chinese public saw the US in a positive light. A second major concern (that stalled negotiations for the better part of eight years) was the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which many US analysts view as a tool for foreign investors to attack American sovereignty. However, an ISDS works for investors in both countries - its core aim is to prevent unfair competition and governmental expropriation of foreign assets. Both parties would gain significantly by deferring dispute resolutions to a third party. Other concerns loom as well. US media outlets have gloated about Beijing's flailing economy since the August 2015 market crash - perhaps a sign that the Chinese dragon is finally flaming out. Those same outlets are now stoking the perception that Chinese merger and acquisition (M&A) activities overseas are receding, shot down either by US regulators or sheer over-extension. Reality couldn't be further from the

truth. The year 2016 may see Chinese investment in the US reach unprecedented levels - all the more reason why a BIT is needed sooner rather than later. A BIT would force Chinese investors in the US to "play by the rules" or risk being sanctioned. However, even a BIT is not the silver bullet some chalk it up to be. Beijing believes the Council on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) is singling out Chinese companies in order to impede US-bound Chinese investments. CFIUS was created under then President Ronald Reagan to examine foreign investments that could threaten national security. The inter-departmental committee, chaired by the Treasury alongside members of other government agencies (including the intelligence community), receives notices of pending foreign investments and either approves or investigates further. The problem is that "national security", especially where the US government is concerned, is an ever-expanding concept. As a result, investments are now investigated for reasons once overlooked. While past investments were scrutinised only if linked to defence industries, they are now held up for buying up too large a share in a specific industry or for gaining access to sensitive technology, particularly in critical sectors (like energy and agriculture). The planned US$43 billion (S$59 billion) merger between agro-giants Syngenta and ChemChina is one of those being carefully scrutinised by CFIUS. While Syngenta is Swiss-owned, its biotech division is US-based and a leader in genetically modified seeds. ChemChina is essentially state-owned, enough to send alarm bells ringing throughout Capitol Hill. A group of congressmen led by Senator Chuck Grassley explicitly asked the Treasury to review the investment, saying they are "concerned about national security"; in particular, the effects of a Chinese company gaining access to US technology and potentially compromising food security. US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has also expressed concerns. Such opposition can have a powerful effect on M&A deals. CFIUS might still scuttle the current Syngenta/ChemChina merger, especially since Syngenta's facilities are located near key US military bases. In the first two months of this year alone, investigations undertaken by CFIUS resulted in three investments being abandoned by Chinese companies. A fourth deal, a proposed acquisition of Starwood by insurer Anbang, fell through after the Chinese company walked away over potential issues with China's own regulators. The Insurance Regulatory Commission allegedly opposed the deal because Chinese rules state the outstanding value of overseas assets

owned cannot exceed 15 per cent of a company's total assets. A BIT would do little to resolve such deep-rooted issues.

For example, CFIUS has routinely put up roadblocks before proposed M&As with British, Canadian or Japanese companies. As long as China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are perceived as too closely aligned with the Chinese

Communist Party, any acquisition would be interpreted as nationalisation. For example, a 2014 anti-monopoly law appearing to

target foreign companies in a bid to support Chinese SOEs did little to build trust. A BIT's true value comes from it helping Beijing be seen as a responsible and trustworthy economic partner - something China clearly views with great importance, considering its systematic lobbying to join key

international institutions. While a BIT would provide US companies with fair and equal access to Chinese markets, it

would only be the beginning. Cross-border investment effectively creates an incentive to resolve conflicts on the basis of shared interests . A BIT may not guarantee peaceful coexistence on its own, but it will at least be a step in the right direction for bilateral relations.

Concluding the BIT before the end of the year is crucial to stabilize the global economy. Failure erodes Sino-US cooperation.Xinhua 5/19/16 (“U.S. Chamber of Commerce calls for completing investment treaty talks with China this year,” http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-05/19/c_135372224.htm )

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday called on the United States and China, the world's two largest economies, to wrap up their investment treaty talks by the end of this year . "China has become a huge and growing market for U.S. businesses, and Chinese investment in the United States has rapidly accelerated," Thomas Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in opening remarks for the eighth annual China-U.S. CEO and Former Senior Officials' Dialogue held at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters in Washington D.C. "But

there are serious, and in some cases escalating, challenges that are undermining mutual trust and threaten to derail these positive trends" in the China-U.S. relations, Donohue said, adding that the two countries must advance a positive, constructive and achievable agenda to move forward the bilateral relationship. That agenda includes completing negotiations for a high-standard, comprehensive bilateral investment treaty (BIT) by the end of this year , expanding commercial cooperation in key industry sectors and strengthening the global trading system , he said. Donohue said

the United States and China should also work together to "give the global economy an immediate boost" at the G20 meeting in Hangzhou, China later this year, which is a great opportunity to advance a WTO agreement to end

tariffs on environmental goods. While there are a lot of issues that both countries have to sort out in the BIT talks, China and U.S. officials have repeatedly signaled willingness to finalize a deal before U.S. President Barack Obama leaves the White House in January 2017. It will also be high on the agenda of the upcoming China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue scheduled early next month in Beijing. A total of 24 rounds of BIT talks have been held since negotiations started in 2008 as both countries sought to increase mutual investment, which only accounted for a tiny share of their respective overseas investment. The BIT is expected to continue to expand two-way trade and investment and cement the foundation of China-U.S. economic ties. The China-U.S. CEO and Former Senior Officials' Dialogue was initiated in Beijing in March 2011 with an aim to conduct non-governmental exchanges in bilateral economic relations.

Specifically, BIT cooperation spills over to resolve SCS disputes and warming cooperationNguyen 2016 (Yen, “Bilateral Investment Treaty,” Balancing Cooperation and Competition: A New Era In U.S.-China Relations Task Force Report March 2016 The Henry M. Jackson Foundation at the University of Washington)

China must negotiate for a BIT because they would want their investment coming to the U.S. not to be turned down because of Congress, CFIUS or any U.S. regulation. In January 2016, CFIUS blocked the sale of Philip’s lighting business to a group of Asian buyers that also includes Chinese companies. In late February of 2016, Fairchild Semiconductor refused an offer from state-backed China Resources and Hua Capital, due to concerns from U.S. regulators. A BIT would offer transparency in the CFIUS reviewing process for both sides, decreasing the negative conception which the Chinese investors harbored while CFIUS doesn’t have to compromise its

review procedures, since there are many other political variables behind a CFIUS procedural change.39 Moreover, a BIT would

let the United States have a larger, more effective voice within the bilateral diplomacy, enabling the U.S. to expansively reach over other issues such like the South China Sea disputes, CO2 and SO2 emission levels, humanitarian issues, all of which should be within Congress’s interests, since they empower the U.S.’ dominance globally. According to the executive summary New Neighbors, Chinese FDI in the U.S. proved to be benefiting local economies since these investments save local businesses from bankruptcy and bring progress, mostly under the form of acquisition.40 In addition, Chinese-affiliated enterprises generate “higher employment intensity,” creating jobs through expansion within the U.S.. State senators and representatives should take this into account and acknowledge these local developments with Chinese FDI. In terms of Congress, a BIT requires the vote of two-thirds of the Senate, as opposed to a bilateral investment agreement, which would require a simple majority in both the House and Senate. If the Senate were to turn down a BIT, a bilateral investment agreement can be a substitute. A major concern in presenting a bilateral investment agreement is the Rules Committee. However, the success of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) legislation is the most favorable possible signal for the Rules Committee to agree with a bilateral agreement. In addition, the fact that the Republican control of the Senate since 2014 would help the prospects for ratification of a BIT because Republicans are “more pro-trade, pro-FDI, and generally more pro-business (the biggest supporters of the BIT) than Democrats.”41 In essence, this current dynamic in the Senate is likely to be supportive of the proposed BIT. Since the Democrats could regain control of the Senate in the 2016 election, it is strongly urged

that a major effort is made to present the issue before the current Senate.42 Conclusion Though both China and the U.S. have strategic narratives about each other, the U.S. and China also hold significant interests in each other.43 Coming to an agreement on investment policies signals the future opportunities for both sides to not only prevent crisis or potential conflict but also engage in a transparent economic relationship. In addition, it is also encouraged that the BIT act as a strategic long-term response to the existing and future conflicts, as a BIT maintains a politically-bound collaboration.

A conflict in the SCS would quickly escalate to nuclear warHugh White, 2012, (professor of strategic studies at the australian national university), The China Choice, p. 120 – 124, mm

These risks are best seen by exploring a simple scenario. Over¶ the last few years, America has responded to China’s

strident¶ assertion of its claims to the disputed waters and islands of the¶ South China Sea by clearly stepping up its support for other¶ claimants, especially Vietnam and the Philippines.23 As the¶ United States and China up the ante in this way, it has become¶ clear that for both of them the substantive issues at stake are¶ less important than what the dispute symbolises about their¶ respective positions as maritime powers in the Western Pacific.¶ That makes the situation much more dangerous. Both Beijing¶ and Washington are now committed to positions from which¶ they cannot withdraw without conceding a win to the other. If¶ China backs off, America’s status as the dominant maritime¶ power in Asia will have been confirmed. If Washington fails to¶ back Hanoi or Manila against Chinese pressure, Beijing’s ascendency will have been confirmed, and America’s claims to¶ maritime primacy in Asia badly dented. So for both the United¶ States and China there is a lot more at stake now than rocks and¶ reefs, or

even oil and gas.¶ Against this background, what happens if a future China–¶ Vietnam incident in disputed

waters escalates? Say a Chinese¶ patrol vessel once again interferes with Vietnamese seismic surveys¶ in disputed waters around the Spratly Islands in the South¶ China Sea, and in response the Vietnamese fire on a Chinese¶ ship. China fires back and a skirmish ensues. China increases its¶ forces in the conflict zone, while Vietnam turns to America for¶ support. America has no treaty

obligations to Vietnam, but it¶ has sent Hanoi strong signals of support in standing up to¶ China over the Spratlys. America would therefore face an awkward ¶ choice . If it supports Vietnam, it risks being drawn into a¶ conflict with China. If it stands back, it risks damaging its standing¶ in Asia as a reliable bulwark against China’s power. The fear¶ in Washington would be that not just in Hanoi, but also in¶ Manila, Singapore and Jakarta, and even in Delhi, Seoul and¶ Tokyo, America’s standing as an Asian power would be weakened.¶ Americans would fear that they would be seen to have¶ backed down to Beijing, thereby surrendering a big share of the¶ maritime power that Washington has for so long claimed and¶ exercised in the

Western Pacific. The domestic politics of this in ¶ the United States would be strident. Saying no to

Vietnam might ¶ well seem impossible . So they say yes.¶ Having said yes, what can America do? Fifteen years ago the¶ answer would have been simple. CINCPAC would have sent a¶ couple of Aircraft Carrier Battle Groups steaming through the¶ South

China Sea, confident that this formidable display of¶ seapower would deter the Chinese from any further action. Today it is not so simple. America can still sail its carriers through¶ the South China Sea, but as we saw in Chapter Four, China has¶ a much better chance of sinking one of them now than it had¶ fifteen years ago. The US Navy might calculate that China¶ would not attack a carrier unless US forces attacked them first,¶ but in that case, what use are the carriers? Their presence and¶ vulnerability inhibits rather than empowers the United States,¶ because the need to protect them would discourage action that¶ might escalate the crisis. China could continue to act against the¶ Vietnamese forces, secure in the knowledge that America would¶ not intervene for fear of Chinese retaliation against a carrier.¶ The carrier deployment then becomes more a demonstration of¶ weakness than a show of strength, and all the negative consequences¶ that America hoped to avoid by agreeing to support¶ Vietnam happen anyway. The

brutal conclusion is that once its willingness to support¶ its Asian friends and allies is put to the test, America can only ¶ protect its position in Asia by being willing to engage in combat ¶ with Chinese forces. So the carriers

launch their aircraft and¶ sink some Chinese ships. How does Beijing respond? It now¶ faces the same problem Washington faced a few days earlier: if it¶ backs down, its claims to a leading role as a maritime power in¶ Asia are dashed, and

public opinion in China is no doubt outraged.¶ For China’s leaders, not responding to the sinking of a¶ PLA Navy ship by

the US Navy would seem to be impossible. So¶ they sink an American ship. If they are smart, it would not be a¶ carrier but something smaller. Let’s hope they are smart, because¶ once China sinks a carrier, all hope of resolving the crisis would¶ be ended. If they sink a small destroyer, there is still a small¶ chance that, with very adroit diplomacy and great political courage¶ on both sides,

it might be possible to pull back from the brink. The chances are, however, that these will either not be in¶

evidence or not be sufficient to prevent governments being ¶ swept along both by their own anger and anxiety, and by ¶ immense public pressure, towards escalation .¶ From here the step to major war is short and sharp. As we saw¶ in Chapter Four, under America’s evolving operational concept¶ for war against China – the

Air–Sea Battle – the United States ¶ would start hostilities with a massive strike campaign to destroy¶ China’s air and naval forces so that its maritime forces could¶ operate with impunity. While that makes operational sense, it¶ has

very grave strategic implications, because it guarantees that ¶ any conflict with China immediately escalates to very high levels ¶ of intensity , with wide-ranging US attacks directly on Chinese¶ territory. Therefore, this operational

concept alone guarantees¶ that the conflict [would] very quickly becomes the biggest war for many¶ decades, and

quite possibly the biggest since the Second World ¶ War. But America would still be no closer to achieving its overall¶ strategic objectives, however they might be defined. What¶ would count as winning the war that could justify the immense¶ cost of

the conflict now unleashed? Even more than most wars, ¶ this one would turn out to be easy to start, but very hard to end. Finally, there is the nuclear dimension. We can only guess¶ about where the nuclear threshold would lie in a crisis like the¶ one we are envisaging. And in fact the threshold is probably as¶ unclear to those responsible for managing the crisis as it is to the¶ rest of us. In the Cold War, the conditions under which each¶ side would resort to nuclear weapons were extensively discussed¶ and – within limits at least – well understood. Between the¶ United States and China

these issues are much less clear, and the ¶ scope for misunderstanding is huge. Suffice to say that once¶ operations

against China on the scale of the Air–Sea Battle were launched, it would be very unwise to assume that China would ¶ not consider the use of nuclear forces against the bases from¶ which those operations were being mounted, for instance¶ Guam. As we saw in Chapter Four, China’s leaders might well¶ believe that America would not retaliate with nuclear force for¶ fear that China might then launch its intercontinental ballistic¶ missiles against cities in the United States. Who knows if they’d¶ be right?

US/China climate cooperation is key to global mitigation and adaptation strategies – that solves warming

Li 2014 – MA in Global Studies @ U Denver, Int’l Affairs Coordinator @ UN

(Xiaoyu, “China-US Cooperation: Key to the Global Future,” China Institute of International Studies, http://www.ciis.org.cn/english/2014-01/13/content_6606656.htm)

• Cooperation on climate change mitigation, adaptation, and consequence management. China-US cooperation will be increasingly critical to the global response to climate change. New scientific studies warn that the worst-case scenarios for climate change impacts are the most likely outcomes. Scientific assessments also maintain that anthropomorphic climate change is partly responsible for extreme weather events that the world is already experiencing at an increasing rate, from the floods in Pakistan and the heat wave in Russia to the melting glaciers and ice sheets and the “superstorm” Sandy that inflicted unprecedented destruction on New York and New Jersey. It is highly likely that

global climate change will be a key issue in the coming two decades as the world faces increasing climate-induced humanitarian disasters and infrastructure destruction requiring immediate and expensive relief as well as costly, long-term adaptation . Climate change likely will increase social and political instability in many areas of the world, including emerging economies and developed countries. It also will likely renew political pressure for emissions reductions, especially by

China and the United States, the world’s two biggest emitters. China-US cooperation in all these areas will be critical to whether the world cooperates and how effective any cooperation is in responding to the potentially existential threat posed by global climate change. The two countries also can build

on decades of bilateral cooperation on energy and environment to seize opportunities for lucrative joint energy technology development that would substantially benefit Chinese and US businesses as well as lower costs and widely disseminate clean energy technologies.

Warming is real, anthropogenic and causes extinction

Flournoy 2012 -- Citing Feng Hsu, PhD NASA Scientist @ the Goddard Space Flight Center. Don Flournoy is a PhD and MA from the University of Texas, Former Dean of the University College @ Ohio University, Former Associate Dean @ State University of New York and Case Institute of Technology, Project Manager for University/Industry Experiments for the NASA ACTS Satellite, Currently Professor of Telecommunications @ Scripps College of Communications @ Ohio University (Don, "Solar Power Satellites," January, Springer Briefs in Space Development, Book, p. 10-11

In the Online Journal of Space Communication , Dr. Feng Hsu, a NASA scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center, a research center in

the forefront of science of space and Earth, writes, “The evidence of global warming is alarming,” noting the

potential for a catastrophic planetary climate change is real and troubling (Hsu 2010 ) . Hsu

and his NASA colleagues were engaged in monitoring and analyzing climate changes on a global scale, through which they received first-hand scientific information and data relating to global warming issues,

including the dynamics of polar ice cap melting . After discussing this research with colleagues who were world experts on

the subject, he wrote: I now have no doubt global temperatures are rising, and that global warming is a serious problem confronting all of humanity. No matter whether these trends are due to human interference or to the cosmic cycling of our solar system, there are two basic facts that are crystal clear: (a) there is overwhelming scientific evidence showing positive correlations between the level of CO2 concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere with respect to the historical fluctuations of global temperature changes; and (b) the overwhelming majority of the world’s scientific community is in agreement about the risks of a potential catastrophic global climate change . That is, if we

humans continue to ignore this problem and do nothing, if we continue dumping huge quantities of greenhouse

gases into Earth’s biosphere, humanity will be at dire risk (Hsu 2010 ) . As a technology risk assessment expert, Hsu says he can show with some confidence that the planet will face more risk doing nothing to curb its fossil-based energy addictions than it

will in making a fundamental shift in its energy supply. “This,” he writes, “is because the risks of a catastrophic

anthropogenic climate change can be potentially the extinction of human species , a risk that is simply too high for us to take any chances” (Hsu 2010 )

Inherency/Solvency

Inherency – BIT StalledThe BIT is stalled over the negative listKoh Gui Qing and Greg Roumeliotis, 6/20/16, Reuters, “top us official says more work needed on china investment rules,” http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-investment-idUSKCN0Z62NK, mm

China's latest proposed list of industries that would be off-limits to foreign investors shows more work is needed to agree on a new investment treaty with the United States , U.S. Commerce Secretary

Penny Pritzker said in an interview on Monday.¶ Reaching an agreement over the so-called 'negative list' of

businesses in China that are out of bounds to foreign investors is crucial in sealing a treaty between Beijing and Washington that would lift investment flows between the world’s two largest economies.¶ The issue has been made more prominent by a wave of Chinese acquisitions of U.S. companies that have raised questions over the inability of U.S. companies to buy assets as freely in China.¶ In less than six months of 2016, China's appetite for overseas acquisitions has already outgrown last year's record, as deal-hungry mainland buyers chase global assets such as real estate, chemicals and high-end technology.¶ Chinese negotiators sent the latest revised draft of the negative list to their U.S. counterparts last week. U.S. officials have said in the past that the number of sectors on the list that are closed to foreigners needed to be greatly reduced for an investment deal, also known as the Bilateral Investment Treaty, to be reached.¶ "We are evaluating the list that we have been given (by our Chinese counterparts) and there is more work to be done," Pritzker told Reuters on the sidelines of an investment summit in Washington DC, declining to comment on whether an investment treaty can be signed before November, as some have hoped.¶ "We are not going to lower the standards of our typical bilateral investment treaty just to make a deal," she said, adding that a review of China’s trade status as a non-market economy - defined as one controlled by

the state - will be driven by U.S. laws.¶ The latest negative list submitted by Chinese negotiators has not been made public, although sources told Reuters previously that the number of items on the list in earlier drafts had fallen to between 35 and 40, from around 80 previously .

Negotiations stalled now – need to further reduce restrictions on investmentBehsudi 6-17-16 – Adam Behsudi is a trade reporter for POLITICO Pro (“U.S., China talks ratchet up a BIT,” http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-trade/2016/06/us-china-talks-ratchet-up-a-bit-214880)

U.S., CHINA TALKS RATCHET UP A BIT: The United States and China have exchanged updated negative list offers in their bilateral investment treaty negotiations, POLITICO has learned. The new offers will likely be a point of discussion as U.S. and Chinese negotiators close out a

week’s worth of meetings today, although the gathering in Washington is not being considered a formal round of talks. The two sides committed at last week's high-level Strategic and Economic Dialogue to updating market access this week . Beijing last updated its negative list, which lists sectors excluded from investment liberalization, in September. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on

Thursday said he had not seen a full analysis of China’s revised offer. "But [China] certainly led us to expect a list that would be the basis for working together going forward, even though it wouldn’t be the final end result. I hope that’s the case when our experts go through the list, but the jury is out because it still really is happening in real time,” he said at an event

hosted by the American Enterprise Institute. LEW HOPING FOR BIT UNDER OBAMA: Lew said he still hoped the two sides could strike a deal before President Barack Obama leaves office on Jan. 20 and wanted to see as much progress as possible before U.S. and Chinese leaders meet in September. But “I don’t think we have any interest in an agreement for the sake of an agreement, so it will either be a good, ambitious agreement or it will not happen,” he said. “Up until this last round, the negative lists that we’ve seen have not been sufficiently ambitious to open enough of the economy for the BIT to have a successful path

forward,” Lew said, meaning they would not get the necessary two-thirds votes in the Senate to win approval.

BIT not inevitable – requires Senate ratification once negotiations are concludedBergsten 2015 – senior fellow and director emeritus, is the founding director of the Peterson Institute for International

Economics (C. Fred, “A BILATERAL INVESTMENT TREATY AND ECONOMIC RELATIONS BETWEEN CHINA AND THE UNITED STATES,” https://piie.com/publications/briefings/piieb15-1.pdf)

The US administration is aggressively pursuing all the negotiations cited earlier, at both the megaregional

and plurilateral levels. However, its ability to win congressional support for any or all of those efforts is uncertain. The administration sought approval of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) in early 2014 but was rebuffed, notably by leaders of its own Democratic Party in Congress, and did not make much of an effort to reverse that outcome. (The somewhat similar failure throughout 2014 of the administration’s efforts to win congressional support for the International Monetary Fund [IMF] reform package that President Barack Obama agreed to at the G-20 summit in Seoul in 2010, while on a substantively different issue, also falls within the domain of foreign economic policy and hence is another disquieting sign.) No votes have been taken, and no specific agreements submitted recently for congressional ratification, so no definitive conclusions can be reached. Moreover, the administration has indicated in early 2015 that it will be making a major new effort to win political support for its trade initiatives. However, the administration’s inability to win Hill approval for its negotiating program, at least for now, may have dampened the enthusiasm of some of its negotiating partners in both TPP and TTIP. There has always been a close linkage between the international and domestic dimensions of US trade negotiations, dating back to the Kennedy Round in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in the 1960s when Congress rejected important parts of the package that the administration of the day had worked out with the European Common Market (as it was then called). But today’s uncertainties are particularly acute in light of the ongoing backlash against globalization in the United States and polls that reveal substantial public doubt about new trade agreements, the widely perceived (if partially inaccurate) weaknesses of the economy and the job market, and large (if substantially

reduced) trade and current account deficits. A unique feature of a BIT in US domestic politics could amplify these uncertainties. If the BIT is concluded as a treaty, as is typically the case, it would require congressional ratification via a two-thirds vote of the Senate (as opposed to the simple majority, albeit of both House and Senate,

that must approve an FTA). Such a majority is difficult to achieve in the Senate on any issue at this point in time. Even if the US-China negotiations are successful, the BIT ultimately faces an important hurdle within the US political process; hence there has been talk of converting the BIT into a “bilateral investment agreement,” which would be treated like an FTA in Congress, on the grounds that the House would have keen interests in some of the deal’s more far-ranging components, but such an effort is unlikely to survive the Rules Committees and is thus unlikely to succeed.

Solvency – Security Reviews

Security review concessions are keyLi Wei, 9/22/2015, National Academy of Development and Strategy, “China, US aim at high-level treaty,” http://nads.ruc.edu.cn/displaynews.php?id=2846, mm

As Chinese President Xi Jinping begins his first State visit to the US on Tuesday, hopes are high for another breakthrough in the bilateral investment treaty (BIT) negotiation, which analysts say will help both countries safeguard their overseas investments and boost the US manufacturing industry.¶ Chinese Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng wrote

in the People`s Daily Monday that the two countries are speeding up the BIT negotiations and have already started negotiation on the negative lists.¶ "The two sides will work to reach a high-level treaty that will benefit both countries as soon as possible to bring benefits to their businesses and people. It will also be an exploration in the improvement of global investment rules," Gao wrote.¶ "Xi`s visit comes as Sino-US relations are relatively tense. Ties have been affected by issues concerning Chinese territory and cyber security, so it`s more likely that the two countries will see concrete breakthroughs in economic cooperation and climate change, where there are more common interests," Li Wei, a senior research fellow at the National Academy of Development and Strategy under the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times.¶ Since

2008, the two countries have gone through 21 rounds of negotiations and have recently exchanged revised

offers for the negative lists at the latest meeting.¶ "In order to conclude the BIT negotiations successfully, the two sides will need to reach an agreement on a high standard treaty text and a Chinese negative list that is limited, narrow, and represents a substantial liberalization of the Chinese investment market," a spokeswoman of the US Trade Representative was quoted as saying by Reuters last week.¶ There is no information available on the details of the negative lists, which analysts said would include banned investments in industries involving heavy pollution and national security.¶ "China still expects the US to invest more in high-tech manufacturing, while the US hopes for a more open market in services and the financial sector in China," said Bai Ming, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of

International Trade and Economic Cooperation.¶ Zhang Xiangchen, a deputy negotiation representative of the Ministry of Commerce, told news site yicai.com that both sides had made "important and substantial" changes to the lists.¶

He said that the US mechanism of national security review is a key issue in the BIT negotiation and that China will ask the US to improve transparency in security reviews and simplify the procedures to reduce unnecessary burdens and obstacles for potential investors to the US .

Concessions on security reviews are keyReuters, 6/18/16, “bilateral investment talks between US and China productive after new offers: USTR,” http://indianexpress.com/article/world/world-news/bilateral-investment-talks-between-us-and-china-productive-after-new-offers-ustr-2860180/, mm

Bilateral investment talks between the United States and China “continue to be productive ,” the US Trade Representative’s office said on Friday after the two sides exchanged new offers this week.¶ A USTR spokeswoman said US

and Chinese negotiators exchanged revised “negative lists” of sectors that would stay off-limits from foreign

investment as they try to reach a deal for a bilateral investment treaty.¶ “China will need to demonstrate the substantial liberalization of its investment market, ensure that US firms can compete on a level playing field, and

address other key priorities to facilitate the progress and successful conclusion of a mutually beneficial and

high standard BIT,” the USTR spokeswoman said in a statement.¶ Obama administration officials and US companies have

complained that China has over 100 sectors of its economy closed to US investment and that these must be narrowed substantially to reach a treaty deal.¶ Chinese officials have said that US

security reviews of Chinese acquisitions of American firms are too onerous, particularly for investment in high-technology sectors.¶ The USTR statement did not specify any new sectors that China had offered to

open to US investment or divulge other details of Beijing’s latest offer.¶ US businesses have complained about Chinese ownership restrictions in key areas such as financial services, health insurance, agriculture, and audio-viisual, while the Chinese side has complained about limited market access in certain US sectors such as transportation, radio communications, natural resources and high-technology companies.¶ US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Thursday said that “the jury is still out” on the merits of China’s latest negative list, and that Beijing’s negotiating stance in the bilateral investment treaty talks were “one important barometer” in China’s commitment to reform its economy and open it to foreign competition.

Solvency – AT Strict NSR GoodNo damage to national security – restrictions unnecessaryRosen and Hanemann 2011 – Daniel H. Rosen is Founder and China Practice leader of the Rhodium Group (RHG), a specialized firm advising the public and private sector. Mr. Rosen is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University, where he has taught a graduate seminar on the Chinese economy at the School of International and Public Affairs since 2001. He is a Fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC, where he has been affiliated since 1993. Thilo Hanemann is Research Director at the Rhodium Group. (“An American Open Door? Maximizing the Benefits of Chinese Foreign Direct Investment,” Center on U.S.-China Relations Asia Society and Kissinger Institute on China and the United States Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, http://asiasociety.org/files/pdf/AnAmericanOpenDoor_FINAL.pdf)

At the same time, the current policy process works well to screen out security risks, and most Chinese investments in the United States happen without drama. Popular Chinese fears that the United States is closed to their investment are simply wrong, as the evidence on growing Chinese FDI inflows makes clear. Those bids that have been impeded concerned specific threats, mostly falling under

the category of preventing critical access to strategically important goods or services, new defense-related technologies, or fifth-column homeland security risks. As for concerns that CFIUS is not restrictive enough, we are aware of no damage to U.S. national security that can be attributed to a faulty investment approval process, and we see no evidence that the existing process cannot handle greater flows of Chinese FDI into the United States.

Solvency – Negative ListThe negative list is the only sticking pointAvaneesh Pandey, 3/24/16, International Business Times, “US-China investment treaty: core issues resolved, but disagreements over negative list persist,” http://www.ibtimes.com/us-china-investment-treaty-core-issues-resolved-disagreements-over-negative-list-2342456, mm

China and the United States are nearing the end of negotiations over a key agreement aimed at increasing

trade between the two nations, former Chinese minister of commerce Chen Deming reportedly said Wednesday. The Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) has been in the works for several years now, and, last September, the two countries reaffirmed that finalizing the accord was a “top economic priority.”¶ “After years of negotiations, most of the core issues have been resolved, and the negative list is the only thing left to be settled,” Chen, speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Boao, China, reportedly said.¶ The negative list spells out the industries and sectors in which foreigners are barred from investing. Even the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, seen as a testing ground for future economic and social reforms, includes a lengthy list of off-limit industries, ranging from agriculture to automobile

manufacturing.¶ Although more than 20 rounds of talks over the BIT have been held since negotiations first

began in 2008, the composition of the negative list has remained a key sticking point . In September,

during talks conducted on the sidelines of Chinese President Xi Jinping's trip to Washington, senior U.S. officials claimed that

they were able to get Beijing to shrink the list of sectors it is seeking to exclude from the framework.¶ “In light of the progress made in the BIT negotiations and both sides’ improved negative list proposals ... the United States and China commit to intensify the negotiations and to work expeditiously to conclude the negotiation of a mutually beneficial treaty that meets these high standards,” the White House said in a statement released in September.¶ On Wednesday, Chen also reiterated comments made last week by the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, when he said that opening domestic markets to foreign investors should be a “reciprocal” process.¶ “The U.S. should also be more open to China, not only in terms of market access, but also in the review aspect where more transparency is needed,” Chen reportedly said. “No matter who becomes the [next] U.S. president, when he or she takes office, he must see the U.S. will have to be more open to the world, otherwise U.S. companies and people will be affected.”¶

With bilateral trade reaching nearly $600 billion in 2015, China is currently America’s largest trading partner. The BIT is being seen by many as a stepping stone toward a future free-trade agreement.¶ While the Chinese government hopes that greater foreign competition and investment would reinvigorate its slowing economy, U.S. investors believe that the treaty will give them increased access to China's many state-dominated industries, including financial services and telecommunications.

Solvency - AT “China’s Negative List Too Large”China’s negative list has decreased dramatically – more progress possibleKoh Qing and Greg Roumeliotis, 6/20/16, Business Insider, “top US official says more work needed on China investment rules,” http://www.businessinsider.com/r-top-us-official-says-more-work-needed-on-china-investment-rules-2016-6, mm

Reaching an agreement over the so-called 'negative list' of businesses in China that are out of bounds to foreign investors is crucial in sealing a treaty between Beijing and Washington that would lift investment flows between the world’s two largest economies.¶ The issue has been made more prominent by a wave of Chinese acquisitions of U.S. companies that have raised questions over the inability of U.S. companies to buy assets as freely in China.¶ In less than six months of 2016, China's appetite for overseas acquisitions has already outgrown last year's record, as deal-hungry mainland buyers chase global assets such as real estate, chemicals and high-end technology.¶ Chinese negotiators sent the latest revised draft of the negative list to their U.S. counterparts last week. U.S. officials have said in the past that the number of sectors on the list that are closed to foreigners needed to be greatly reduced for an investment deal, also known as the Bilateral Investment Treaty, to be reached.¶ "We are evaluating the list that we have been given (by our Chinese counterparts) and there is more work to be done," Pritzker told Reuters on the sidelines of an investment summit in Washington DC, declining to comment on whether an investment treaty can be signed before November, as some have hoped.¶ "We are not going to lower the standards of our typical bilateral investment treaty just to make a deal," she said, adding that a review of China’s trade status as a non-market

economy - defined as one controlled by the state - will be driven by U.S. laws.¶ The latest negative list submitted by Chinese negotiators has not been made public, although sources told Reuters previously that the number of items on the list in earlier drafts had fallen to between 35 and 40, from around 80 previously.

Solvency – China Abides by BIT/AT CircumventionChina will follow the BITFrisbie 14John Frisbie. March 31, 2014. Why an Investment Treaty with China Matters. John Frisbie, president of the US-China Business Council (USCBC) since November 2004, has more than 25 years of experience in business and government relations with China, including nearly 10 years living and working in Beijing.. http://www.chinabusinessreview.com/why-an-investment-treaty-with-china-matters/

Can we trust China to honor such an agreement? On the whole, China has a decent albeit not perfect

record of complying with agreements that it has signed onto, but the BIT provides an additional way to ensure that it does. It gives the US government and American companies enforceable rules that they can use when China fails to meet its commitments under the BIT.

Arbitration ensures China’s complianceAisbett 7Emma Aisbett. March 14, 2007. Bilateral Investment Treaties and Foreign Direct Investment: Correlation versus Causation. UNIVERSITY OF HAMBURG (August 2012 - Present) Junior Professor for International Trade, School of Business, Economics and Social Sciences. Ph.D. University of California Berkeley. Agricultural & Resource Economics. 2007 https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/2255/1/MPRA_paper_2255.pdf

The need for an externally supported commitment device is motivated by the presence of sunk costs of investment which can lead to dynamic inconsistency of optimal policy for the host. Before the investor makes the investment, the host’s optimal policy is to promise good conditions such as low taxes. After the investment takes place and costs are sunk, the optimal policy for the host is to extract rents up to the value of the sunk costs, that is, to directly or indirectly expropriate the investment. The result is a classic hold-up problem leading to underinvestment. BITs can solve the problem because they provide extra-national arbitration of investor compensation claims and thereby help the host to credibly commit not to change its policy toward the investment.

China Says Yes – Security ReviewsChina says yes – wants NSR concessionsHufbauer et al 2015 – Gary Clyde Hufbauer has been Reginald Jones Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics since 1992. Sean Miner is China program manager and research associate at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Theodore H. Moran, nonresident senior fellow, has been associated with the Peterson Institute since 1998. (“COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN INVESTMENT IN THE UNITED STATES AND THE US-CHINA BILATERAL INVESTMENT TREATY: CHALLENGES IN MEETING CHINA’S DEMANDS,” https://piie.com/publications/briefings/piieb15-1.pdf)

The United States and China have continually sparred in the area of national security reviews for bilateral investment. The current negotiations on an investment treaty between the two countries cover a wide range of topics. The US-China bilateral investment treaty (BIT) could be an opportunity to clear up issues relating to security reviews, although both sides may end up disappointed. China’s grievances stem from some high pro- fi le acquisition attempts launched by Chinese firms that were ultimately unsuccessful because they ran into political obstacles from the US Congress or the CFIUS. But the high-

profile cases have skewed public perception and now some see CFIUS as an unfair barrier to Chinese investments in the United States. The Chinese will look to accomplish two things in the BIT. First they would like to ensure greater transparency in order for Chinese firms, including state-owned enterprises (SOEs), to have a clearer understanding of the decisions criteria in a CFIUS review. Second, they would like CFIUS to apply the same criteria to a Chinese fi rm trying to acquire a US firm as it would to a British firm doing the same. This is called most favored nation (MFN) treatment. Chinese commentators point to the perception that even the prospect of going through a review is sometimes enough to prevent an investment. Moreover, additional factors, besides the prospect of a CFIUS review, may discourage potential foreign investors. In certain industries foreign investment is explicitly limited or prohibited by the US Congress, namely natural resources, telecom, TV, and radio. Investment in other sectors may face barriers even though the official US policy is an open door. As mentioned, congressional disapproval can prove too much for a foreign investor.

Intense media scrutiny, usually linked to congressional protests, can force a bid withdrawal if it sparks strong negative public sentiment. Most of the Chinese grievances could be alleviated if the BIT could simplify the CFIUS process. The US government is unlikely to take further steps to ease the path through CFIUS, but recently more and more investors, including from China, have successfully navigated a CFIUS review.

China Says Yes – Wants the BITChina says yes – current trend of trade liberalization provesSophos 2015 – Manager at US-China Business Council (Zoe, “China’s Other BITs: What They Mean for a US-China Deal,” https://www.uschina.org/china%E2%80%99s-other-bits-what-they-mean-us-china-deal)

The US-China Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) negotiations, which aim to establish the rules of the road for cross-border investing, have the ambition to

reach an agreement of unprecedented scope, although the prospects and timetable for completion remain uncertain . While a BIT

linking the world’s two largest economies would be groundbreaking in its own right, the path towards the agreement—including use of a negative list and potential pre-establishment protection for investments , which is characteristic of the United

States’ BITs but not of China’s—is setting an entirely new precedent for investment negotiations globally. The

United States and China previously have taken different approaches to negotiating investment treaties, but the evolution of China’s existing BITs with other countries suggest there is potential for a high standard US-China BIT. China’s Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao emphasized the complementary nature of the American and Chinese goals for a BIT, saying that the US philosophy is “in accord with China's economic restructuring.” China’s BITs worldwide China’s over 100 BITs concluded to date are much less exacting than the 42 implemented by the United States. None of China’s existing BITs, for example, address the array of ownership restrictions that foreign investors are subject to in China but domestic investors are not. Yet China has shown “incremental progress towards higher standards,” according to Jeffrey Schott and Cathleen Cimino of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, suggesting the two countries can reach an agreement acceptable to both sides. Several indications of that progress are evident in the China-Canada BIT, which was heralded as a “major breakthrough” in economic relations when it was signed in 2012. While that agreement does not cover all investment to the same extent as the US Model BIT—the basis from which the United States negotiates its BIT agreements—it suggests that China may be willing to go further on issues that had been sticking points in the past, according to analysts at the Center on Sustainable Development at Columbia University. For example, China first agreed during BIT talks with Canada to include the use of a robust investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which gives investors the ability to initiate a claim directly against a host country. Chinese BITs now include access to ISDS procedures as standard practice.

The China-Japan-Republic of Korea Agreement for Promotion, Facilitation and Protection of Investment (CJK investment pact) was another step forward for China’s investment agreement negotiations. The CJK investment pact’s pledge to launch negotiations on pre-establishment national treatment surpassed the China-Canada BIT’s commitment, which offered protection only for the disposition of investments that had already been made (known as post-establishment). Pre-establishment national treatment refers to equal treatment of foreign and domestic companies even before an investment is made, and thus provides greater protection for foreign companies – and potentially more investment opportunities – than agreements that only protect existing investments. In China, this is of particular interest to foreign companies, since it means that many of the restrictions included in the Catalogue Guiding Foreign Investment (CGFI) may be removed to ensure that investors receive equal treatment during the pre-establishment phase. What to expect from the US side of the table Several hallmarks of the US Model BIT, including regulatory transparency, national treatment, a dispute settlement mechanism, and

safeguards against expropriation, were included in the CJK pact, creating a precedent for the US investment negotiations with China. Yet, in some ways, the US-China BIT talks have already exceeded China’s prior approach to investment negotiations. China’s agreement to use a negative list to enumerate industries that are off-limits to foreign investment, for example, marked a substantial turning point in China’s traditional use of the Catalogue Guiding Foreign Investment (CGFI) for such purposes; the CGFI identifies industries in which foreign investors are allowed to invest, and in many cases sets limits to how those investments can be structured. By contrast, a negative list identifies only the areas where foreign companies cannot invest—all other sectors are required to treat domestic and foreign investors equally. China is expected to release this negative list in the

coming weeks. While there is no guarantee that the negotiations will be easy , China’s evolution in its approach to investment treaties through incremental incorporation of stricter standards—as seen in both the China-Canada BIT and the CJK pact—bodes well for US negotiators in their push for more substantial liberalizations.

China wants a BIT to protect its FDIZiegler 2016 – J.D., expected May 2016, The George Washington University Law School (Samuel, “China's Variable Interest Entity Problem: How Americans Have Illegally Invested Billions in China and How to Fix It,” 84 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 539)Although some negotiation will be required to reconcile the two countries' default BIT models, there are several reasons to believe a U.S.-China BIT is the best vehicle for reforming the VIE system at this moment in history. The first reason is that both the U.S. and Chinese governments seem to look favorably upon BITs as a policy tool. n128 The United States views BITs as successfully protecting investors' rights in countries that are not covered by a free trade agreement, n129 and it currently has forty-one BITs in force. n130 On the Chinese side, BITs are even more popular - the Chinese government had over 100 BITs in force by the

end of 2014. n131 In addition, the Chinese government is likely very interested in pursuing a BIT with [*557] the United States because Chinese private investment in the United States is increasing rapidly - for

example, 2013 levels doubled from 2012 levels to reach $ 14 billion n132 - and a BIT will serve to protect these investments. n133

Advantage 1 – Interdependence

UQ – Interdependence Breaking Down Interdependence is breaking down – the mutual concessions of the BIT are keyIan Talley and Mark Magnier, 6/2/16, The Wall Street Journal, “US-China trade troubles grow,” http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-china-trade-troubles-grow-1464887897, mm

The U.S. and China, facing mounting political pressures at home, are seeing economic tensions flare to their worst point in years over currency and trade practices.¶ China has pushed the yuan to a five-year low against the

dollar, reviving charges from American firms of currency manipulation to gain a competitive advantage for Chinese goods. The Obama administration has fired off a series of trade complaints and levied duties on several Chinese industries, from chicken feet to cold-rolled steel used in appliances and auto parts.¶ The friction between the world’s two largest economies could worsen as domestic politics collide with already weak growth.¶ The U.S., seeing heightened anti-China rhetoric in the presidential election, wants China to press ahead with promised policies to open up its markets and allow greater international investment.¶ Chinese leaders, worried about a deeper economic slowdown, are trying to keep factories humming and prevent the kind of market unrest that gripped global investors over the past year.¶ U.S. Treasury and State Department officials fly to Beijing early next week for two days of talks to try to calm some of the trade irritants and address ongoing geopolitical tensions, particularly over the South China Sea, where their militaries are operating in sometimes dangerous proximity.¶ The U.S., which moved on Wednesday to cut off North Korea from the banking system, wants Beijing to help rein in its increasingly belligerent ally.¶ U.S. officials also will seek reassurance from Chinese officials about moving ahead with promised reforms, such as restructuring state-owned enterprises and reducing industrial overcapacity, and try to advance talks on an investment treaty.¶ “Implementing this reform agenda—and resisting the urge to hang on to an outdated growth model—offers the best formula for China to achieve an orderly transition and put its economy on a more sustainable footing,” said Nathan Sheets, U.S. Treasury’s undersecretary for international affairs.¶ China’s Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao, while acknowledging at a media briefing Thursday major challenges for China’s economy, insisted Beijing would adhere to its reform agenda and commitments made by the Group of 20 against competitive currency devaluation.¶ Some analysts think President Xi Jinping, wanting to consolidate power in the Communist Party ahead of a leadership transition next year, has paused reform efforts and instead is revving up the old playbook of credit-fueled growth and infrastructure spending. His aim: Ensure economic stability and mollify rivals, they say.¶ An attempt last year by Beijing to allow markets to play a role in setting its exchange rate was mismanaged, adding to a summertime of woe for China’s financial markets and sparking global jitters. The reaction surprised Chinese officials and created a headache for reformers.¶ The Chinese government is keeping steel mills, coal plants and a host of manufacturing industries afloat despite dwindling demand and a tumble in commodity prices that should have closed many.¶ The U.S. recently slapped Chinese cold-rolled steel imports with duties worth 267%, accusing the country of selling products below production cost.¶ By supporting excess production capacity, the Chinese government is “engaged in economic warfare against the U.S.,” said John Ferriola, chief executive of North Carolina steel giant Nucor Corp. “Thousands of hardworking Americans have lost

their jobs because of these illegal, unfair trade practices.”¶ The Chinese economy has decelerated after decades of double-digit expansion. Growth is clocking in at 6.7%, its slowest pace since the global financial crisis amid rising debt, growing labor unrest and factory output well above demand.¶ China acknowledges it has an excess-capacity problem. “But we have to prevent massive unemployment,” Premier Li Keqiang said in March.¶ When President Bill Clinton persuaded Congress to in 2000 to back China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, the U.S. counted on expanded trade as the catalyst for political change in the Communist state. U.S. firms hoped to capitalize on the industrialization of the world’s most populous nation.¶ A decade and a half later, U.S. firms and voters are growing increasingly frustrated despite China’s promises to open up the country. Cheaper wages and costs pulled production out of the U.S., Chinese imports surged and American manufacturing declined as a share of the economy. The U.S. trade deficit with China has swollen to $365 billion, now about 2% of U.S. economic output.¶ U.S. presidential contenders are leveraging anger at China over lost jobs into potential votes. Many of the areas hit hardest by China’s rise have shown some of the strongest support for Republican candidate Donald Trump, who has threatened to slap a 45% tariff on China as a way to force a change in Beijing’s trade policies.¶ The Obama administration points to the yuan’s broader appreciation since 2005, renewed talks for a bilateral investment treaty and Beijing’s vows to allow markets to play a greater role in the economy as proof that its diplomacy has yielded gains. But the yuan's recent depreciation and continued

obstacles to U.S. corporate access threaten to erode those advances.¶ “There’s a growing risk that if China remains closed, we’re going to see more and more concern about a growing investment imbalance ,” said

Jeremie Waterman, a U.S. Chamber of Commerce executive overseeing China.¶ China says it also faces access problems in the U.S. Its firms complain of a complicated web of U.S. state and federal laws and

rules that are “not transparent enough” and of restrictions on Chinese investment in areas deemed strategic, said Zhang Xiaoqiang, executive vice president of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges.¶ Chinese officials also are eyeing the U.S. political scene warily, concerned about making commitments the next administration could backtrack on.¶ Recent articles in China’s controlled media have raised questions about who is in control of U.S. economic policy.¶ “President Obama’s ability to implement has always been a bit weak, and on the Chinese side now it may be the same,” said Jing Huang, a professor of U.S.-China relations at the National University of Singapore.

Interdependence – Solves ConflictInterdependence key to solve global conflict – diversionary theory proves Royal 10

(Jedediah, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense, 2010, Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises, in Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-215)

Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of interdependent stales. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic

and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level. Pollins (20081 advances Modclski

and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin. 19SJ) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Fcaron. 1995).

Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner.

1999). Separately. Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level. Copeland's (1996. 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states arc likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of

future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resource s . Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third,

others have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Momberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write. The linkage, between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict lends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts self-reinforce each other (Hlomhen? & Hess. 2(102. p. X9>

Economic decline has also been linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism

(Blombcrg. Hess. & Wee ra pan a, 2004). which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. "Diversionary theory" suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DcRoucn (1995), and Blombcrg. Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force arc at least indirecti) correlated. Gelpi (1997). Miller (1999). and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that Ihe tendency towards diversionary tactics arc greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically

linked lo an increase in the use of force. In summary, rcccni economic scholarship positively correlates

economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict al systemic, dyadic and national levels.' This implied connection between integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention.

Trade - Internal – BIT -> FTABIT is key to a broader FTAC. Fred Bergsten, February 2015, Peterson Institute for International Economics, “toward a US-China investment treaty,” https://piie.com/publications/briefings/piieb15-1.pdf, mm

Another encouraging sign in both China and the United States has been a new willingness to at

least discuss¶ the possibility of negotiating a comprehensive bilateral FTA or to achieve the same outcome through China’s¶ new-found interest in the TPP and/or a comprehensive FTAAP. There was little interest in the idea, and indeed¶

strong doubts about its feasibility, when it first surfaced in 2009. However, conditions have changed dramatically¶

since that time in terms of the economic recovery of both countries from the Great Recession and the¶ adoption of the very active

trade agendas described above. Some elements of the US business community and¶ some close policy observers in China have recently endorsed the concept or at least serious consideration of it.¶

This could have several important implications for the BIT. Most ambitiously, any agreement between¶ the two countries to pursue their own FTA (including via TPP or a new FTAAP) would presumably encompass¶ investment and thus provide

major impetus for a BIT (perhaps as a precursor to even more expansive agreement¶ on investment in the FTA itself). The BIT might even be viewed as a first important step toward an FTA,¶ especially if the two countries choose to pursue such an agreement incrementally via stand-alone pacts on¶ specific topics rather than comprehensively all at once through a single undertaking (Bergsten, Hufbauer, and¶ Miner 2014).

Trade Good - Solves WarBest models of alliance networks prove that trade solves war by reducing the instability of loose networks. Trade-driven alliances deter conflict, incentivize cooperation, and reduce escalation. Matthew O. Jackson 15 (William D. Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford and Stephen M. Nei, PhD Student in Economics at Stanford, June, “Networks of Military Alliances, Wars, and International Trade”, October 2014, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2389300

It turns out that there are no war-stable networks, even with this definition that imposes minimal requirements. The tension is

understood as follows. Requiring that countries not be vulnerable to attack and having every alliance serve some purpose leads networks to be relatively sparse - with each country having a few alliances but a network that is not overly dense. However, this can make a country susceptible to some of its allies joining forces and defeating it. Essentially, the pressure to economize on alliances conflicts with stability against the formation of

new alliances, which leads to instability and would suggest chaotic dynamics. This instability provides insights into the constantly shifting structures and recurring wars that occurred throughout the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries.7 Wars, however, have greatly subsided in parallel with the huge increase of trade (which was partly driven by the introduction of containerized shipping in the 1960s, which greatly decreased costs): Between 1820 and 1959 each pair of countries averaged .00056 wars per year, while from 1960 to 2000 the average was .00005 wars per year, less than one tenth as much. We see this pattern quite clearly in Figure 1.8

These changes also follow the advent of nuclear weapons, which impacted the technology of war. However, we show that nuclear weapons cannot lead to stability in the absence of trade, as our model allows for quite arbitrary asymmetries between the military capabilities of countries and offensive or defensive advantages in wars - and instability ensues for any specification of technology and relative military capabilities. Indeed, in order to capture the actual patterns that have emerged one must add other considerations -

such as trade considerations - since the base model shows that all networks of alliances are unstable with nuclear weapons but without trade.9 Thus, the second part of our analysis is to enrich the base model to include international trade. Indeed, there has been a rapid increase in global trade since World War II (partly coincident with the growth of container shipping among other stimuli). The empirical relationship between war and trade is an active area of research, with strong suggestions (e.g., Martin, Mayer, and Thoenig (2008)) that network concerns may be important. So, we introduce a concept of a network of alliances being war and trade stable, which allows countries to form alliances for either economic or military

considerations. In this richer model, an alliance allows countries to trade with each other and to coordinate military activities,

and so can be formed for either reason. This restores existence of networks of alliances that are stable against

the addition or deletion of alliances. Trade provides two helpful incentives: first it provides economic motivations to maintain alliances, and the resulting denser network of alliances then has a deterrent effect; and second, it can reduce the incentives of a country to attack another since trade will be disrupted. This reduces the potential set of conflicts and, together with the denser networks, allows for a rich family of stable networks that can exhibit structures similar to networks we see currently. We provide some results on the existence and structure of war and trade stable networks of alliances, showing that structures similar to those observed over the past few decades are economically stable under apparently reasonable parameters. It is important to note that another dramatic change during the post-war period was the introduction of nuclear weapons, which changes the technology of war and is generally thought to have greatly 4 increased the defensive advantage to those with such weapons.10 Our model suggests that although world-wide adoption of nuclear weapons could stabilize things in

the absence of trade, it would result in an empty network of alliances as the stable network. To explain the much denser and more stable networks in the modern age along with the paucity of war in a world where nuclear weapons are limited to a small percentage of countries, our model points to the enormous growth in trade as a big part of the answer. We close the paper with some discussion of this role that the growth

in trade has played in reducing wars over the past half century, and how this relates to the advent of the nuclear age. The model provides some specific predictions for some of the mechanisms that decrease wars: including trade with allies (making it more likely that allies will aid a country and less likely that they will be part of an attacking coalition

against that country), and that increasing trade between any two countries lowers their gains from war with each other making it less likely that they will be at war at any time. We show that both of these effects are observed in the data. Before proceeding, let us say a few words about how this paper contributes to the study of war. The literature on war provides many rationales for why wars occur. Our analysis here fits firmly into what has become a “rationalist” tradition based on cost and benefit analyses by rational actors, with roots seen in writings such as Hobbes

(1651) Leviathan, and has become the foundation for much of the recent international relations literature.11 To our knowledge, there are no previous models of conflict that game-theoretically model networks of alliances between multiple agents/countries based on costs and benefits of wars . 12 There are previous models of coalitions in conflict settings (e.g., see Bloch (2012) for a survey). Here, network structures add several things to the picture. Our model is very much in a similar rationalist perspective of the literature that examines group conflict (e.g., Esteban and Ray (1999, 2001); Esteban and Sakovicz (2003)), but enriching it to admit network structures of alliances and of international trade. This allows us to admit patterns that are consistent with the networks of alliances that are actually observed, which are far from being partitions (e.g., the U.S. is currently allied with both Israel and Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and India, just to mention a couple of many prominent examples). More importantly, our Theorem 3 provides a first model in which such non-partitional such structures are stable and provide insight into peace. Moreover, as we already mentioned above, the observed patterns of wars and

of alliances are not partitional, and so this provides an important advance in moving the models towards matching observed patterns of wars, trade and alliances. Our model thus serves as a foundation upon which one can eventually build more elaborate analyses of multilateral interstate alliances, trade, and wars. It is also important to emphasize that the network of international trade is complex and can in fact be stable (and prevent conflict) precisely because it cuts across coalitions. This is in contrast to coalitional models that generally predict only the grand coalition can be stable or that very exact balances are possible (e.g., see Bloch, Sanchez-Pages, and Soubeyran (2006)).

Again, this is something illustrated in our Theorem 3, and which does not exist in the previous literature. Finally, our model illuminates the relationships between international trade, stable network structures, and peace, something not appearing in the previous literature - as the previous literature that involves international trade and conflict generally revolves around bilateral reasoning or focuses on instability and armament (e.g., Garfinkel, Skaperdas, and Syropoulos (2014)) and does not address the questions that we address here. The complex relationship between trade and conflict is the subject of a growing empirical literature (e.g., Barbieri (1996); Mansfield and Bronson (1997); Martin, Mayer, and Thoenig

(2008); Glick and Taylor (2010); Hegre, Oneal, and Russett (2010)). The literature not only has to face challenges of endogeneity and causation, but also of substantial heterogeneity in relationships, as well as geography, and the level of

conflict. The various correlations between conflict and trade are complex, and a model such as ours that combines military and economic incentives, and others that may follow, can provide structure with which to interpret some of the empirical observations , which we discuss in the following

section.

Trade empirically solves war and poverty.Daniel Griswold ’10 (director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, “Why Populists Are Wrong About Impact of Free Trade,” Naples Daily News on January 5)

Tune in to cable TV, talk radio or the blogosphere in Florida and you will soon be hit over the head with the message that free trade is destroying America. According to the economic populists on the left and right, imports and outsourcing threaten the wages, jobs and futures of Main Street Americans. On trade, as on so much else, the populists have it wrong again. Free trade and globalization are great blessings to families in Naples and across America. Trade is delivering lower prices and more variety to consumers while

creating better-paying jobs for the middle class. Beyond our shores, the spread of economic openness is building a more peaceful, democratic and humane world for our children. Now may seem an odd moment to tout the benefits of trade. After all, unemployment is 10 percent and housing and manufacturing remain in a slump. The great recession of 2008-09 was not caused by trade, however, but by misguided monetary and housing policies that were “Made in the USA.” “ On

trade, as on so much else, the populists have it wrong again.” During difficult economic times, import competition allows more American families to keep their heads above water by delivering lower prices on staples such as food, clothing and shoes. The prices we pay for goods exposed to global trade tend to rise more slowly than inflation or even fall. The imported fresh fruit and vegetables, T-shirts and discounted sneakers sold at big-box retailers are especially important in the budgets of poor and middle-class families. Trade benefits producers by allowing Americans to sell our goods and services in growing markets abroad. Florida companies have been especially successful exporting to Brazil, Mexico and the rest of Latin America. Florida ranks fifth among states in total value of exports, with small and medium-sized companies accounting for almost two-thirds of state exports. For Americans worried about their jobs, it is a big lie that we have been surrendering middle-class manufacturing jobs for low-paying service jobs. In fact, since 1991, two-thirds of the net new jobs created in the U.S. economy have been in sectors such as health care, education and business and professional services where the average pay is higher than in manufacturing. Knock on doors in a typical middle-class neighborhood in southern Florida and you will meet teachers, managers, engineers, computer specialists, truck drivers, accountants, insurance and real-estate agents, registered nurses and other health-care professionals and self-employed business

owners. These are the occupations that now form the backbone of the American middle class. Beyond American shores, the past three decades of expanding trade and globalization have witnessed dramatic global progress .

Between 1981 and 2005, the share of the world’s population living on the equivalent of $1.25 a day dropped by half, from 52 to 25 percent, according to the World Bank. During this same period, real gains have been

made in life expectancy, infant survival, nutrition and literacy. The most dramatic gains against poverty have occurred in those countries, such as China and Chile, that have most aggressively opened themselves to the global economy. As a global middle class has emerged, so too have more democratic forms of government. Trade has spread tools of communication and spurred the growth of civil society as an alternative to authoritarian government . As a result, the share of the world’s population living in countries that respect civil liberties and the right to vote has climbed from 35 percent in 1973 to 46 percent

today, according to Freedom House. Fewer people are dying in wars today than in past decades, in large part because commerce has replaced military competition. Global commerce has allowed nations to gain access to resources through trade rather than conquest, while deeper economic integration has brought former enemies together and raised the cost of war . Even with the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, young American adults living today are far less likely to fight and die in wars than their counterparts

in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. America and the world face daunting tasks today, as in generations past, but expanding trade is part of the solution, not part of the problem. Americans should have the same warm feelings toward free trade and globalization as they do toward iPods, e-mail, online shopping, a well-fed child going off to school and peace on Earth.

Trade Good - Solves Everything

All global problems require effective trade: terrorism, poverty, health, geo-politics, and all the rest require a consolidation of global trade. A vacuum will create trade blocks- causing war. Panitchpakdi ‘4 (Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary-general of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, 2/26/2004, American Leadership and the World Trade Organization, p. http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/spsp_e/spsp22_e.html

The second point is that strengthening the world trading system is essential to America's wider global objectives. Fighting terrorism, reducing poverty, improving health, integrating China and other countries in the global economy — all of these issues are linked, in one way or another, to world trade. This is not to say that trade is the answer to all America's economic concerns; only that meaningful solutions are inconceivable without it.

The world trading system is the linchpin of today's global order — underpinning its security as well as its

prosperity. A successful WTO is an example of how multilateralism can work. Conversely, if it weakens or fails, much else could fail with it. This is something which the US — at the epicentre of a more interdependent world — cannot afford to ignore. These priorities must continue to guide US policy — as they have done since the Second World War. America has been the main driving force behind eight rounds of multilateral trade negotiations, including the successful conclusion of the Uruguay Round and the creation of the WTO. The US — together with the EU — was instrumental in launching the latest Doha Round two years ago. Likewise, the recent initiative, spearheaded by Ambassador Zoellick, to re-energize the negotiations and move them towards a

successful conclusion is yet another example of how essential the US is to the multilateral process — signalling that the US remains committed to further liberalization, that the Round is moving, and that other countries have a tangible reason to get on board. The reality is this: when the US leads the system can move forward; when it withdraws, the system drifts. The fact that US leadership is essential, does not mean it is easy. As WTO rules have expanded, so too has as the complexity of the issues the WTO deals with — everything from agriculture and accounting, to tariffs and telecommunication. The WTO is also exerting huge gravitational pull on countries to join — and participate actively — in the system. The WTO now has 146 Members — up from

just 23 in 1947 — and this could easily rise to 170 or more within a decade. Emerging powers like China, Brazil, and India rightly demand a greater say in an institution in which they have a growing stake. So too do a rising number of voices outside the system as well. More and more people recognize that the WTO matters. More non-state actors — businesses, unions, environmentalists, development NGOs — want the multilateral system to reflect their causes and concerns. A decade ago, few people had even heard of the GATT. Today the WTO is front page news. A more visible WTO has inevitably become a more politicized WTO. The sound and fury surrounding the WTO's recent Ministerial Meeting in Cancun — let alone Seattle — underline how challenging managing the WTO can be. But these challenges can be exaggerated. They exist precisely because so many countries have embraced a common vision. Countries the world over have turned to open trade — and a rules-based system — as the key to their growth and development. They agreed to the Doha Round because they believed their interests lay in freer trade, stronger rules, a more effective WTO. Even in Cancun the great debate was whether the multilateral trading system was moving fast and far enough — not whether it should be rolled back. Indeed, it is critically important that we draw the right conclusions from Cancun — which are only now becoming clearer. The disappointment was that ministers were unable to reach agreement. The achievement was that they exposed the risks of failure, highlighted the need for North-South collaboration, and — after a period of introspection — acknowledged the inescapable logic of negotiation. Cancun showed that, if the challenges have increased, it is because the stakes are higher. The bigger challenge to American leadership comes from inside — not outside — the United States. In America's current debate about trade, jobs and globalization we have heard a lot about the costs of liberalization. We need to hear more about the opportunities. We need to be reminded of the advantages of America's openness and its trade with the world — about the economic growth tied to exports; the inflation-fighting role of imports, the innovative stimulus of global competition. We need to explain that freer trade works precisely because it involves positive change — better products, better job opportunities, better ways of doing things, better standards of living. While it is true that change can be threatening for people and societies, it is equally true that the vulnerable are not helped by resisting change — by putting up barriers and shutting out competition. They are helped by training, education, new and better opportunities that — with the right support policies — can flow from a globalized economy. The fact is that for every job in the US threatened by imports there is a growing number of high-paid, high skill jobs created by exports. Exports supported 7 million workers a decade ago; that number is approaching around 12 million today. And these new jobs — in aerospace, finance, information technology — pay 10 per cent more than the average American wage. We especially need to inject some clarity — and facts — into the current debate over the outsourcing of services jobs. Over the next

decade, the US is projected to create an average of more than 2 million new services jobs a year — compared to roughly 200,000 services jobs that will be outsourced. I am well aware that this issue is the source of much anxiety in America today. Many Americans worry about the potential job losses that might arise from foreign competition in services sectors. But it’s worth remembering that concerns about the impact of foreign competition are not new. Many of the reservations people are expressing today are echoes of what we heard in the 1970s and 1980s. But people at that time didn’t fully appreciate the power of American ingenuity. Remarkable advances in technology and productivity laid the foundation for unprecedented job creation in the 1990s and there is no reason to doubt that this country, which has shown time and again such remarkable potential for competing in the global

economy, will not soon embark again on such a burst of job-creation. America's openness to service-sector trade — combined with the high skills of its workforce — will lead to more growth, stronger industries, and a shift towards higher value-added, higher-paying employment . Conversely, closing the door to service trade is a strategy for killing jobs, not saving them. Americans have never run from a challenge and have never been defeatist in the face of strong competition. Part of this challenge is to create the conditions for global growth and job creation here and around the world. I believe Americans realize what is at stake. The process of opening to global trade can be disruptive, but they recognize that the US economy cannot grow and prosper any other way. They recognize the importance of finding global solutions to shared global problems. Besides, what is the alternative to the WTO? Some argue that the world's only superpower need not be tied down by the constraints of the multilateral system. They claim that US sovereignty is compromised by international rules, and that multilateral institutions limit rather than expand US influence. Americans should be deeply sceptical about these claims.

Almost none of the trade issues facing the US today are any easier to solve unilaterally, bilaterally or regionally. The reality is probably just the opposite. What sense does it make — for example — to negotiate e-commerce rules bilaterally? Who would be interested in disciplining agricultural subsidies in a regional agreement but not globally? How can bilateral deals — even dozens of them — come close to matching the economic impact of agreeing to global free trade among 146 countries? Bilateral and regional deals can sometimes be a complement to the multilateral system, but they can never

be a substitute. There is a bigger danger. By treating some countries preferentially, bilateral and regional deals exclude others — fragmenting global trade and distorting the world economy. Instead of liberalizing trade — and widening growth — they carve it up. Worse, they have a domino effect: bilateral deals inevitably beget more bilateral deals, as countries left outside are forced to seek their own preferential arrangements, or risk further marginalization. This is precisely what we see happening today. There are already over two hundred bilateral and regional agreements in existence, and each month we hear of a new or expanded deal. There is a basic contradiction in the assumption that bilateral approaches serve to strengthen the multilateral, rules-based system. Even when intended to spur free trade, they can ultimately risk undermining it. This is in no one's interest, least of all the

United States. America led in the creation of the multilateral system after 1945 precisely to avoid a return to hostile blocs — blocs that had done so much to fuel interwar instability and conflict . America's vision, in the words of Cordell Hull, was that “enduring peace and the welfare of nations was indissolubly connected with the friendliness, fairness and freedom of world trade”. Trade would bind nations together, making another war unthinkable. Non-discriminatory rules would prevent a return to preferential deals and closed alliances. A network of multilateral initiatives and organizations — the Marshal Plan, the IMF, the World Bank, and the GATT, now the WTO — would provide the institutional bedrock for the international rule of law, not power. Underpinning all this was the idea that freedom — free trade, free democracies, the free exchange of ideas — was essential to peace and prosperity, a more just world. It is a vision that has emerged pre-eminent a half century later. Trade has expanded twenty-fold since 1950. Millions in Asia, Latin America, and Africa are being lifted out of poverty, and millions more have new hope for the future. All the great powers — the US, Europe, Japan, India, China and soon Russia — are part of a rules-based multilateral trading system, greatly increasing the chances for world prosperity and peace. There is a growing realization that — in our interdependent world — sovereignty is constrained, not by multilateral rules, but by the absence of rules.

Trade – AT OutsourcingOutsourcing impacts will be limited – and the economic impact of increased investment outweighsSimon Lester, 12/3/12, CATO, “Do we need an investment treaty with china?” http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/do-we-need-investment-treaty-china, mm

After 18 years of talks, Canada and China recently completed negotiations on an investment treaty. There has been a spirited debate in Canada over whether the treaty was a good idea. The controversy foreshadows a similar discussion in the

United States, as business groups and some politicians push for a U.S.-China investment treaty.¶ One thing missing from the Canadian debate was an effort to squarely address some fundamental questions about such treaties: Are investment treaties the right way to liberalize foreign investment? More specifically, do investment treaties remove barriers to foreign investment, or do

they, instead, mainly encourage litigation?¶ Before examining these questions, let’s start with a basic assumption: foreign investment, both inward and outward, is good. Investment is a fundamental driver of economic growth. The source of the investment is irrelevant, and there are few legitimate concerns with the “foreign” nature

of an investment. Furthermore, when companies locate in the most efficient production area, consumers benefit and the companies become more viable over the long-term. Concerns about job losses from

shifting production abroad (“outsourcing”) are understandable for those affected, but putting up barriers to prevent such market-based outcomes is extremely costly and cannot be sustained in the long run.

Economy – Internal – BIT KeyThe BIT is key to growth – leads to massive boosts in FDI and job growthDavid Marchick, February 2012, Council on Foreign Relations, “fostering greater chinese investment in the United States,” http://www.cfr.org/china/fostering-greater-chinese-investment-united-states/p27310, mm

Openness to foreign investment generally benefits the United States, generating high-paying jobs, facilitating investment in research and development (R&D), and strengthening the country's manufacturing base. President Obama recently stepped up efforts to attract foreign investment, expanding the Commerce

Department's investment promotion arm and proposing other measures to encourage "insourcing."¶ Given the slow pace of the economic recovery, the United States would benefit hugely from additional FDI . Critics argue that Chinese investment could compromise U.S. security interests and lead to job offshoring. While Chinese acquisition of certain U.S. companies in the defense or technology sectors would create national security concerns, the preponderance of potential Chinese

investments in the United States would raise no such issues.¶ Chinese investment would promote new economic activity and expose Chinese companies to Western standards of corporate governance, reporting, and accounting. More FDI would boost U.S. exports to China, as Chinese companies look to their U.S. operations to export back home. Moreover, the jobs created by additional Chinese investment in the United States would help generate greater American support for Chinese investment.¶ Recommendations for US Officials and Companies: ¶ 1. Clarify and amplify that it is U.S. policy to attract Chinese investment. President Obama has made strong statements about overall U.S. policy toward foreign investment. But to this point, no president, Republican or Democrat, has stated U.S. policy toward Chinese investment as clearly as Vice President Joseph Biden did in October 2011: "President Obama and I, we welcome, encourage and see nothing but positive benefit from direct investment in the United States from Chinese businesses and Chinese entities. It means jobs." President Obama should seize the opportunity with Vice President Xi to state clearly that the United States welcomes Chinese investment and that additional investment is in both countries' economic interest.¶ 2. Bust myths and perceived biases. The vast majority of Chinese investments in the United States do not require any regulatory approval, and a number of important recent deals with Chinese companies that do require it have been successfully approved by CFIUS in the initial thirty-day review period. For example, CNOOC, the same company that encountered opposition in its bid for Unocal in 2005, recently acquired minority interests in both the Eagle Ford Shale (in Texas) and Niobrara Shale (in Wyoming and Colorado) without any controversy. U.S. officials should continue to strictly scrutinize those few transactions that potentially harm U.S. national security. But most Chinese investments have not and should not raise real concerns. Senior U.S. officials should highlight the many successful investments Chinese companies have made during the Xi visit, countering the natural tendency to focus on the most problematic investments.¶ 3. Quantify CFIUS's results. The recent CFIUS annual report said that sixteen transactions involving Chinese firms were reviewed by CFIUS between 2008 and 2010, but did not say how many of these were approved. By showing the number of transactions that were approved, which presumably vastly outnumber problematic transactions, Chinese companies would have more confidence to invest.¶ 4. Remove impediments and irritants to FDI. Policymakers can remove impediments to Chinese investment through improvements in visa and tax policies and procedures. Chinese executives who pose neither a security threat nor a risk of staying in the country illegally still face delays and hassles obtaining visas. Tax policies, such as the Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act (FIRPTA), which was adopted in 1980 to curtail Japanese investment in U.S. farmland, now impede foreign investment in the U.S. real estate sector at a time when such investment is needed. Other U.S. laws intended to reduce tax avoidance by citizens and residents have created burdensome reporting requirements that deter foreign investment in the United States. The likelihood of a successful Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) agreement in the foreseeable future remains small because of divisions in both governments and because

China would find it hard to commit to binding open investment principles. Nevertheless, China and the United States should continue to advance BIT negotiations.¶ 5. Encourage private sector support for Chinese investments. U.S. businesses operating in China can help their Chinese partners navigate complex regulations and allay fears of political backlash. For instance, IBM shepherded Lenovo through the regulatory and political process associated with the sale of its personal computer division in 2005. Other U.S. companies should do the same.¶ Recommendations for Chinese Officials and Companies:¶ 1. Further open China to U.S. investment. China, which continues to maintain strict equity caps and sectoral restrictions on inward FDI, should take dramatic steps to eliminate investment barriers. Such actions would benefit the Chinese economy and U.S. investors, and would also increase U.S. receptiveness towards Chinese investment. At the same time, the United States should resist temptation to pursue investment policy based on reciprocity, since inward investment on its own creates economic benefits for the United States.¶ 2. Know the market. Chinese companies also need to be prepared to become more "localized" in the United States. Japan's experience serves as an instructive example. Twenty-five years ago, Japanese investments were erroneously perceived as a threat to the United

States. Today, Japanese investment is perceived positively as integral to the U.S. economy. Japanese companies invested in parts of the country that needed jobs, fostered and strengthened relations with local communities, worked with local officials, and partnered

with U.S. companies, including through the establishment of joint ventures. Chinese companies can do the same.¶ Greater investment by China in the United States is not only a natural evolution in China's economic development; it also

yields significant benefits to the economies and welfare of citizens of both countries. More than $1 trillion of FDI is projected to flow from China into the global economy by 2020 . President Obama, by

articulating the right policies and setting the right tone during the Xi visit, could help ensure that the United States receives a significant share of this investment—for both countries' benefit.

A BIT would boost global economic confidence.Xinua 3/23/16 (“China-U.S. investment treaty talks near completion: former minister,” http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-03/23/c_135216611.htm )

Talks over the China-U.S. bilateral investment treaty (BIT) are nearing completion with most key issues resolved, former Chinese Minister of Commerce Chen Deming said Wednesday. Both sides have agreed in principle to take disputes between host countries

and investors to third party arbitration at the World Bank, Chen told the Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan Province. The treaty is vital for free and easy investment, a key aspect of economic vitality, Chen said. The BIT will help Chinese companies invest overseas and fit better in the global value chain, he added. A total of 24

rounds of talks have been held since negotiations started in 2008. The treaty is regarded as a big boost to Sino-U.S. ties after China became the biggest trading partner of the United States last year , with trade volume

reaching nearly 560 billion U.S. dollars. "Sino-U.S. trade has grown large in volume, but bilateral investment is still trudging a muddy path," said Song Hailiang, president of Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. (ZPMC), a Chinese manufacturer of heavy-duty equipment, calling for the treaty to be signed soon. Merit Janow, dean of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, said China is very open to foreign investment when considered among all

developing countries, and that big progress has been made in this regard, though some sectors are not yet fully opened. The treaty will not only greatly benefit companies of both countries but also help rebuild confidence of the world economy, Janow said. At the conclusion of China's annual legislative session last week, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said China will give American investors wider access to the Chinese market and that it is hoped the United States will do the same when mentioning the ongoing BIT negotiation.

Economy – AT Decline =/= WarDecline causes conflict – numerous academic studies proveNamsuk Kim and Pedro Conceicao, Spring/Summer 2010, (Kim works for the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs; Conceicao works for the UN Development Programme), International Journal of Peace Studies, 15(1), p. 30-31, Project Muse, mm

A recent strand of literature, reviewed in some detail in this paper, suggests that ¶ economic conditions are important determinants of the outbreak and recurrence of ¶ conflict. In particular, wars often start following growth collapses (Collier et al., 2009, p.¶ 15). Sharp economic slowdowns and low levels of income per

capita appear to increase ¶ the likelihood of conflicts. In this context, it is opportune to explore insights from this¶ literature, linking it also with the human development implications of both growth¶ slowdowns and conflict. In particular, the paper highlights the risks of the emergence of¶ low human development/conflict traps.¶ When it comes to the consequences of conflict, there is no doubt that violent¶ conflict is one of the most extreme forms of suppressing choices and advancing rights, and therefore a major threat to human development (UNDP, 2005, p. 151). Since 1990,¶ more than 3 million people have died in armed conflicts in developing countries¶ (Marshall, 2005). The total war deaths are far more than the battle deaths. For example,¶ the total war deaths are estimated as 1.2 million in Ethiopia during 1976-1991, but only¶ 2% of them were directly engaged in the battles. (Lacina and Gleditsch, 2004). Conflict¶ has also non-lethal consequences that may last across generations (UNDP, 2008a). The¶ conflict becomes even more hazardous if conflict results in a persistent conflict trap. A¶ typical country reaching the end of a civil war faces a 44 percent risk of returning to¶ conflict within five years (Collier et al., 2003, p. 83). Whether or not a country will¶ experience a new

civil war can be best predicted by whether the country experienced¶ wars in the past (Collier et al., 2004).¶ As far as drivers of conflict are concerned, one of the most robust findings in the ¶ literature is that many economic conditions (low income, slow growth, and especially¶ severe economic downturns) are correlated with the outbreak of conflict, with some ¶ evidence strongly suggesting that the causal direction runs from economic conditions to ¶ conflict (Collier and Hoeffler, 2004). There is also a rich literature on the impact of¶ horizontal inequality and dependence on natural resources as drivers of increases in the¶ risk of conflict.

Economic decline is the most important factor for explaining conflictNamsuk Kim and Pedro Conceicao, Spring/Summer 2010, (Kim works for the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs; Conceicao works for the UN Development Programme), International Journal of Peace Studies, 15(1), p. 32-33, Project Muse, mm

While there are a number of factors that could cause conflict, empirical studies ¶ find that poor economic performance is associated with higher incidence of conflict. ¶ Being a poor country is correlated with most forms of violence (UNDP, 2008a). Growth¶ rates are also strongly associated with risks of conflict in developing countries. If the¶ growth rate in developing countries is increased by 1 percentage point from the mean, the¶ risk of conflict decreases by 0.6 percentage points to 4.0 percent (Collier et al., 2009).¶ Kang and Meernik (2005) show that the growth rate in conflict countries in the five years¶ prior to conflict, including cases of conflict recurrence, was on average 0.5 percent¶ compared

to 2 percent in the countries that remained peaceful. Figure 2 shows that economic development and conflicts are observed to be ¶ clearly related . The level of GDP is negatively correlated with observing a new conflict.¶ Collier et al. (2009) finds that the predicted risk for a hypothetical country with¶ characteristics set at the study's sample mean was 4.6 percent. If the level of per capita¶ income were to be halved from this level, the risk would be increased to 5.3 percent. Growth rates are also strongly associated with risks of conflict in developing¶ countries. If the growth rate in developing countries is increased by 1 percentage point¶ from the mean, the risk of conflict decreases by 0.6 percentage points to 4.0 percent¶ (Collier et al., 2009). Kang and Meernik (2005) show that the growth rate in conflict¶ countries in the five years prior to conflict, including cases of conflict recurrence, was on¶ average 0.5 percent compared to 2 percent in countries that remained peaceful.

Advantage 2 – Relations

Relations – Solvency

The BIT spills over to other forms of cooperation – prevents conflictJonathan Masters, 10/29/13, Council on Foreign Relations, “the renewing america interview: Jon Huntsman on the wisdom of boosting US-China economic ties,” http://blogs.cfr.org/renewing-america/2013/10/29/the-renewing-america-interview-jon-huntsman-on-the-wisdom-of-boosting-u-s-china-economic-ties/, mm

Aside from the mutual economic benefits, Huntsman says BIT negotiations—which he thinks could take anywhere from five to

ten years—would help counterbalance other bilateral challenges, such as Taiwan or cybersecurity .

“There’s always something going on in the U.S.-China relationship that causes stresses and strains. My biggest challenge as ambassador was making sure there were enough offsetting collaborative issues that can keep us from being completely confrontational. And that’s where something like the bilateral investment treaty really goes a long way in keeping us at the table, working productively toward something that’s more aspirational. My big gripe today about the U.S.-China relationship is we don’t have enough in the way of aspirational work; we don’t have enough in the way of big picture, visionary undertakings that keep us out of trouble.”

A BIT boosts relations – that solves tensions in the SCSRobert Held, 6/29/16, Asia Times, “China: Why reciprocity in market access is pivotal,” http://atimes.com/2016/06/china-why-reciprocity-in-market-access-is-pivotal/, mm

The net outcome of bringing BIT negotiations to a fruitful conclusion would signal a greater amount of trust between the world’s two largest economies. And considering their ongoing geopolitical competition around the South China Sea, that may go beyond the economic realm. Indeed, a BIT would alleviate a variety of issues for both countries. First, it could be a sensitive way of compelling China to commit to its own goals of opening up these sectors to competition and private international

investment. Second, according to the US-China Business Council (USCBC), a “high-quality US-China BIT would give American companies better access to China’s market, and equal rights as Chinese firms, [and] provide American

companies with a better opportunity to expand in China.” Third, a BIT could help alleviate Chinese concerns over the activities of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). China has a long history of complaining about the CFIUS blocking its investments into the US, but a BIT could lead to greater transparency in the review process and clarification of review criteria for both private firms and SOEs.

Tensions are high now – passing the BIT is key – cooperation spills over to other issuesDavid Gordon, 7/11/2014, Reuters, “a missed opportunity to ease tensions with china,” http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/07/11/a-missed-opportunity-to-ease-tensions-with-china/, mm

Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew traveled to Beijing this week for the annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue, at a time when U.S.-China tensions are running higher than at any point in the past decade. Though each country’s bureaucrats were able to put on a good face and paper over significant disagreements, they were unable to make progress on any

major security or economic issue.¶ Unfortunately, the U.S. administration passed up a chance to advance and

elevate the U.S.-China Bilateral Investment Treaty, an agreement that sets the rules of the road for cross-border

investment. Doing so could have yielded major economic benefits and had positive spillover effects on the strategic issues vexing both countries. But now, with little for the two sides to hang their hats on, the

relationship is ripe for more tension.¶ A year ago, when President Barack Obama met with new Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Sunnylands Ranch in California, the two laid out an ambitious agenda, agreeing to discuss contentious cyber issues, the need to increase pressure on North Korea, and more broadly chart a positive course for the world’s most important bilateral relationship.¶ Since the earlier summit, however, a number of issues have set back relations. Increased Japan-China acrimony in the East China Sea, an aggressive Chinese move to set up oil rigs in disputed waters off Vietnam, and the Edward Snowden espionage revelations have set teeth on edge in Washington and Beijing.¶ On the economic side, U.S. indictments of Chinese military hackers, a series of ongoing trade disputes, the recent weakening of China’s currency and continued restrictions on foreign investors have each threatened to undermine the countries’ $500-billion-a-year commercial relationship. While the United States continues to describe relations with China as a delicate balance between cooperation and competition, China looks at the United States through a darker lens, convinced that America is determined to “contain” its rise.¶ At this year’s dialogue, the Obama administration passed up a big opportunity to make progress on the BIT. At the opening ceremony, Xi publicly expressed interest in “speeding up” talks on the treaty, but from the final communique it is clear that the U.S. side did not take up his offer.¶ So, why is the treaty important? Each country would have to treat most foreign business ventures as if they came from home. China could no longer subject U.S. companies to technology-transfer mandates that force them to hand over trade secrets as a price of doing business in the country. Chinese state-owned enterprises would be restricted in their ability to use the government to boost their competitiveness. U.S. firms would be allowed to invest more in sectors like insurance, telecom and banking, which were previously highly restricted to foreigners. They could for the first time seek legal recourse through independent international arbitration. The Chinese economy would benefit from the BIT — both by making U.S. investors more confident in their Chinese exposure, and by allowing more Chinese investment in the United States.¶ Treaty talks remain in the early stages because the Obama administration, it appears, does not want to seem too eager to either engage China or reward the Chinese for bad behavior. But slow-rolling the BIT will reinforce the view of many in China that the only real U.S. economic priority in Asia is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal that China has not been asked to join and which it sees as part of a U.S. containment strategy.¶ At the S&ED, the administration should have pushed to conclude the BIT before President Obama leaves the White House. Such a commitment would have sent a strong signal that Obama remains serious about his statement at Sunnylands that — despite the tension surrounding regional maritime claims, currency manipulation and corporate espionage — the U.S. has a real stake in China’s success.¶ Progress on the BIT will not make regional tensions disappear. Security issues will remain strained as the United States continues to stand strong on maritime issues, a matter of critical importance to America’s treaty-bound allies Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia. By demonstrating resolve in the face of Chinese maritime aggression, U.S. security commitments decrease the odds of conflict. This stance, though,

will inevitably strain U.S.-China relations.¶ Still, the BIT could take at least some of the bite out of a growing list of security challenges. It would be the first major agreement between the United States and China on any issue since

the negotiations for China to gain World Trade Organization membership ended in 2001. During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union came to major agreements on a variety of strategic and economic issues, providing an important safety valve for the relationship. Passage of the BIT would help our two nations create a habit of dealing with difficult issues in a workmanlike way. A major economic breakthrough is more likely to soften Beijing’s territorial assertiveness than holding back on an agreement that would benefit both countries.

Relations - AT Relations ResilientRelations aren’t resilient – high risk of collapse absent compromise Simon Denyer, 2014. Simon Denyer is The Post’s bureau chief in China. He served previously as bureau chief in India and as a Reuters bureau chief in Washington, India and Pakistan. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinas-rise-and-asian-tensions-send-us-relations-into-downward-spiral/2014/07/07/f371cfaa-d5cd-4dd2-925c-246c099f04ed_story.html

Hundreds of rocky islands, islets, sandbanks, reefs and cays lie scattered across Asia’s eastern waters, unimportant-looking

to the naked eye [may] but significant enough to spark what may be the most worrying deterioration in U.S.-China relations in decades. China’s military rise, and its increasingly assertive

claims to sovereignty over these largely uninhabited lumps of rock, coral and sand, have set it on a possible collision course with its neighbors, which also make various claims on the archipelagos, and with the United States, which has important alliances with three of the rival claimants and would be obliged to defend them in the event of an attack. As Chinese and Vietnamese ships ram each other in the contested waters, and Chinese and Japanese fighter jets play games of chicken

in Asia’s disputed skies, the risk of military escalation is growing. Even more significantly, the standoff is generating bad blood between Washington and Beijing and could torpedo cooperation on important global issues, including the Middle East, climate change and nuclear proliferation. Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will visit Beijing on Wednesday and Thursday for the sixth annual Strategic and Economic

Dialogue. And while Washington has been focused more on Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and Russia, some say the U.S.-China relationship is facing its stiffest test since President Richard M. Nixon traveled to Mao Zedong’s China in 1972. “U.S.-China relations are worse than they have been since the normalization of relations , and East Asia today is less stable than at any time since the end of the Cold War,” said Robert Ross, a political science professor at Boston College and associate of Harvard’s John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. The Obama administration’s foreign policy rebalance, or “pivot,” to Asia has been widely interpreted in China as an attempt to contain its rise. U.S. efforts to bolster ties with regional states such as Vietnam and to reassure nervous Asian allies such as Japan and the Philippines that it stands ready to defend them militarily have created a new narrative in Beijing — that the United States has encouraged China’s neighbors to push their territorial claims more aggressively. “It is clear that the disputes are between two sides, but the United States is taking sides, and it is not impartial,” Adm. Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the general staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, said in an interview. In Washington, a rival narrative is taking hold: that China is intent on pushing its territorial claims through the threat of military force

and that it ultimately wants to push the United States out of Asia. There have been more intense crises in U.S.-China relations, including the fallout from the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy protesters, but none, perhaps, as fundamental and structural as this .

Relations - AT SCS Won’t Cause WarThe ECS/SCS is a flashpoint for war between the US and ChinaYuen Fong Khong, Winter 2013/2014, (professor of international relations at Oxford), International Security, “Primacy or World Order?” 38(3), project muse, mm

Friedberg, White, and Yan agree that “uneven growth” is redistributing [End Page 158] power in China’s favor,

even though it will be some time before China approximates the United States in the main dimensions of power. The “undermining of the status quo,” however, can already be seen in China’s extensive claims in the South and East China Seas, forays into Africa and Latin America (giving the developing world a choice between the Washington and Beijing consensuses), and China’s demand for greater influence in the relevant international organizations.10 All three authors expect the world to move in the direction of “a new round of hegemonic conflict,” though they are far from alone in

this evaluation.11 The key question is whether scholars as well as policymakers have learned to “develop an effective mechanism for peaceful change.”¶ Consider, for example, the issue of peaceful change and perceptions of China’s “new assertiveness,” especially in relation to its territorial disputes with the Philippines and Vietnam in the South China Sea and its actions in the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute with Japan.12 Although some observers have [End Page 159] questioned how real this new assertiveness is, the perception in East Asia, especially among those involved in maritime disputes with China, is that the People’s Liberation Army’s Navy has been opportunistic, provocative, and even aggressive.13¶ White sketches a scenario where military hostilities break out between Vietnam/the Philippines and China over disputes in the South China Sea, creating a strategic dilemma for the United States: Could it afford not to come to the aid of a military ally, and if it did deploy military force to help the Philippines, would the result be a major war with China?14 For White, the issue in such a crisis—for both the United States and China—is not about the strategic or economic value of the shoals; it is about the credibility of their power. U.S. allies would question the reliability of the United States if it did not help the Philippines; China’s reputation as a great power and its aspirations as Asia’s hegemon would be severely dented if Beijing backed down in the wake of U.S. military intervention. White’s scenario results in a

U.S.-China war, and it would be a major war, especially if the United States implements its Air-Sea Battle concept.¶ These maritime disputes, together with the North Korean nuclear impasse, are the most serious flash points in Asia’s strategic landscape. Although it is beyond the scope of this essay to delve into them, two points are germane. First, both Friedberg and White rightly treat these disputes within the context of a United States that is rebalancing toward Asia and a rising China with hegemonic ambitions. China’s use of force against Vietnam in 1974 and 1988 to wrest control of contested islands in the Paracels and Spratlys was undoubtedly opportunistic, but it was not perceived to have major consequences for the balance of power

in East Asia. Today, any attempt by China to use force to settle existing maritime disputes in East Asia

becomes a test of wills not just between it and the other claimants, but also between it and the United States. This is because China has become the lead candidate capable of challenging [End Page 160] U.S. hegemony in East Asia, and the challenge would appear particularly stark if China were to use force against a U.S. ally. As suggested by White,

both China and the United States would find it difficult to back down because of the attendant negative implications for their status and prestige in the region (p. 124). Understanding this strategic overlay

is thus essential in anticipating the future trajectory of the South and East China Sea disputes.15¶ Of the two maritime disputes, it is the East China Sea (Senkakus/Diaoyu) that is more dangerous. A rising China “unable to

forget” the past, a resentful Japan “incapable of remembering” its World War II aggression,16 and strident nationalism in both countries all make it harder for the two parties to reconcile their differences and step back from the abyss. Interestingly, China’s superior power vis-à-vis Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines and

Vietnam make it easier for China to adopt conciliatory steps when it wants to. Moreover, the cover provided by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) can play a facilitating role in defusing tense situations. At the China-ASEAN senior officials meeting in Suzhou in September 2013, for example, China indicated greater willingness to embark on negotiations toward a binding Code of Conduct on the South China Sea. No comparable institutions or mechanisms exist in Northeast Asia. The absence of such venues and pre-arranged meetings makes it harder to float, discuss, and negotiate face-saving gestures and compromises when crises arise.

Relations – Laundry List ImpactUS/China coop solves global instability – the alternative is warming, economic collapse and warASH 15 Timothy Garton Ash CMG FRSA is a British historian, author and commentator. He is Professor of European Studies at Oxford University. Much of his work has been concerned with the late modern and contemporary history of Central and Eastern Europe. Garton Ash was educated at St Edmund's School, Hindhead, Surrey,[1] before going on to Sherborne School, followed by Exeter College, Oxford where he studied Modern History. For post-graduate study, he went to St Antony's College, Oxford, and then, in the still divided Berlin, the Free University in West Berlin and theHumboldt University in East Berlin. In the 1980s, Garton Ash was Foreign Editor of The Spectator and a columnist for The Independent. He became a Fellow at St Antony's College in 1989, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution[3] in 2000, and Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford[4] in 2004. He has written a weekly column in The Guardian since 2004 and is a long-time contributor to the New York Review of Books. In 2005 Garton Ash was listed in Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people. China Opinion, “If US China Relations Turn Sour There Will Probably Be War.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/16/us-relations-china-war-america. Published October 16, 2015. <AM>

What is the biggest challenge facing the next president of the United States ? How to deal with China . The relationship between the emerging and the enduring superpower is the greatest geopolitical question of our time. If Washington and Beijing do not get it right, there will probably be war somewhere in Asia some time over the next decade . Vladimir Putin’s neo-imperialist Russia and

the brutality of Islamic State are medium-sized regional challenges by comparison. Climate change and the world economy cannot be managed without American-Chinese cooperation. All this demands a bipartisan American grand strategy for the next 20 years, but US politics seems incapable of generating anything more than a partisan soundbite for the next 20 minutes. In the South China Sea, China has, by massive dredging operations, turned submerged reefs with names out of the novels of Joseph Conrad – Mischief Reef, Fiery Cross Reef – into artificial islands, and is completing a 3,000m runway on Fiery Cross. President Xi Jinping recently presided over a massive, Kremlin-styleparade of China’s military force, with Putin standing beside him as an honoured guest. In support of its claim to a vast area of the South China Sea, within its “nine-dash-line”, China has rammed Philippine fishing boats and buzzed a US spy plane. The US has responded by telling its Asian allies that it will run “freedom of navigation” patrols past the disputed islands. Interestingly, when Chinese warships sailed through US territorial waters around the Aleutian islands last month, the US military reacted coolly, saying the Chinese naval vessels passed “in a manner consistent with international law”. The technical term for this is “innocent passage”. So now watch out for the Chinese reaction when US warships make innocent passage past Fiery Cross or Mischief Reef. Battleships sailing defiantly past disputed islands: what century are we in? All this is bubbling up while Xi is firmly in control at home, with no immediate domestic crisis. But the Chinese Communist party does face a long-term legitimation crisis. For decades, it has derived political legitimacy from impressive economic growth, which is now slowing down. I believe Xi is making a massive Leninist gamble that reasserted single-party rule can manage the development of a complex, maturing economy and satisfy the growing expectations of an increasingly educated, urban and

informed society. The Chinese leadership’s crude attempt to command the Chinese stock markets to rally earlier this year, reminiscent of King Canute’s confrontation with the incoming tide, is not encouraging. They can almost certainly keep the lid on for several years but, as always happens when necessary reform is postponed, the eventual crisis will be larger. At that point, the temptation for the Communist party leadership to play the nationalist card, perhaps with an actual military move, Galtieri-style, against one of China’s Malvinas/Falkland Islands, would be very strong. Probably this would not be a direct confrontation

with a formal US ally, but the risks of miscalculation and escalation would be high. With angry, nationalist public opinion in both countries, neither the Chinese nor the American leader could be seen to lose, and both sides have nuclear weapons. This is not idle scaremongering; it’s something the US military, intelligence and thinktank communities think about all the time, in order to avoid it. Precisely because China’s future course will mainly depend on forces within the country, beyond Washington’s control, the United States needs a wise, consistent, strategic deployment of all the instruments at its disposal. This should be something like the “twin track” strategy adopted by the west during the last two decades of the cold war (although obviously not expecting it to end the same way). On the one hand, there should be no room for doubt in Chinese minds about what the US will accept militarily. US policy should be the opposite of what Barack Obama did over Syria (declare a “red line” and then allow Bashar al-Assad to walk across it with impunity). In China’s case, the US should declare no public red lines but in private communication, and through deeds that speak louder than words,

make it clear that they exist. At the same time Washington should redouble its attempts at constructive engagement. There should be intensive efforts to find shared ground on climate change, the world economy and geopolitical issues from North Korea to Syria. The intensive business ties that already exist should buttress the relationship. There is already an extraordinary people-to-people relationship, embracing many millions of better-off Chinese who have studied, worked and lived in the west. This strategy should be coordinated with key US allies who have their own major relationships with China, such as Australia, Germany and Britain, which will welcome Xi on a state visit next week. The China expert Orville Schell suggests that the next US president should appoint a high-level special envoy to China. President Hillary Clinton, he argues – tongue only half in cheek – would have the perfect candidate in Bill Clinton, who has the prestige of a former president, the experience, and negotiating

skills. President Marco Rubio could offer the job to Jeb Bush, whose father was US envoy to Beijing in 1974–75 and whose brother, George W, presided over a good relationship with China. As it looks at the moment, all this is pie in the sky. Republican presidential candidates make only the most random, sometimes wild, comments about China. Dr Ben Carson tweets a photograph of a US aircraft carrier with the words “This is How to Compete with China”. With a mixture of invincible ignorance and bluster,Donald Trump suggests the trouble is that China’s leaders don’t respect Obama. But if Xi just sat down for a couple of beers with dealmaker Trump, all would be well. And Hillary Clinton, the one candidate with serious policy experience of China? This week, she shamelessly reversed her position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the major trade deal with Asia which she has emphatically supported for many years and when secretary of state described as “the gold standard in trade agreements”. Her volte face is made for transparently opportunistic reasons, to pick up the Democrat labour union and protectionist votes that are currently going to Bernie Sanders, who vows to defeat the “bad trade deal”. Here is the tragedy of a policy on which so much depends for us all. The United States has a sophisticated policy community capable of generating the bipartisan and multilateral grand strategy towards China that we need. Unfortunately it has developed a way of doing politics which makes it impossible to sustain such a strategy. To adapt a famous observation by putative special China envoy Bill Clinton: it’s the politics that are stupid.

Lack of US/Chinese cooperation makes global instability inevitable – causes warThe Atlantic Council 2013 (The Atlantic Council, September 2013, think tank in the field of international affairs, http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/images/publications/China-US_Cooperation_Key_to_the_Global_Future_WEB.pdf)

The global future is likely to be increasingly volatile and uncertain . The rate of change is increasing, driven by the accelerating pace of technological development, unprecedented urbanization and growth of the global middle class, and a wide range of challenges

beyond the control of any one country but potentially affecting the prosperity and security of all countries. Disruptive change in one geographic or functional area will spread quickly.. No country, and certainly not those with the largest populations and largest economies, will be immune. Global challenges like climate change, food and water shortages, and resource scarcities will shape the strategic context for all nations and require reconsideration of traditional national concerns such as sovereignty and maximizing the ability of national leaders to control their country’s destiny. What China and the United States do, individually and together, will have a major impact on the future of the global system. As importantly, our individual fates will be inextricably linked to how that future plays out. The three illustrative

scenarios sketched out below underscore how critical the future of the US-China relationship is to each country and to the world. • Global Drift and Erosion (the present world trajectory): In a world in which nations fail to resolve global problems and strengthen mechanisms of global cooperation, governments gradually turn inward. Each nation seeks to protect and advance its own narrow national interests or to preserve an unsustainable status quo that is rapidly changing in ways that erode the international order. The international community’s lack of ability to cooperate to meet global challenges leads to international crises and instability. • Zero-Sum World: Unsustainable drift leads to a world of predominantly zero-sum competition

and conflict in the face of severe resource constraints. The result is economic crises and internal instability as well as interstate confrontation. There is risk of military conflict between major powers, which increases global mistrust and uncertainty and fosters an “each nation for itself” mentality that further undermines the ability of states to cooperate in the face of growing common challenges. • Global Revitalization and Cooperation: To escape the perils of drift or zero-sum competition, leaders in countries with the most to lose work together to manage and take advantage of global challenges and megatrends. Cooperation makes it possible to achieve win-win outcomes that avoid or mitigate negative consequences of increased demand for resources and the impact of climate change as well as to harness new technologies to improve living conditions through sustainable development. Cooperation creates and utilizes new transnational institutions to prevent conflict and enhance security

for all. China and the United States become more prosperous as we work together . 6 ATLANTIC COUNCIL China-US Cooperation: Key to the Global Future The possible futures sketched out above (and developed at greater length below) are intended to

stimulate thinking about how current trends and uncertainties could lead to very different global and national outcomes. For many reasons, the United States and China will have greater ability and incentives than other countries to cooperate in

determining and shaping developments over the next two decades. Indeed, it is very difficult to imagine a pathway to “global revitalization and cooperation” in which China and the United States do not cooperate and provide critical international leadership. Many factors will shape the future, some of which are beyond the control of any nation state, but China and the United States—and the character of the US-China relationship—will be critical. The mutual dependence on each other’s economic performance and the success of the global economy as a whole was demonstrated during the 2008 financial crisis that began in the United States but quickly spread around the world. US and Chinese leaders recognized that they were in the “same boat” strategically and engaged in a closely coordinated response to the crisis, which played a key—if not

decisive—role in preventing the situation from becoming much worse. The need for joint and coordinated responses to

economic crises and to mounting economic challenges and threats is certain to increase as globalization continues and interdependence deepens.

Relations – Warming SolvencyUS-China cooperation key to solve global warmingSchell 15 (October 6th 2015 “How China and U.S. Became Unlikely Partners on Climate” written by Orville Schell, he is Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society and former dean of the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author of 15 books, 10 of them about China http://e360.yale.edu/feature/how_china_and_us_became_unlikely_partners_on_climate/2917/)

When President Obama went to Beijing last November and met with Chinese President Xi

Jinping , both leaders were aware of the litany of contentious issues that divided the United States and China. But a curious thing happened. Despite a host of intractable disagreements — maritime disputes in the South and East China

Seas, cyber-hacking, human rights abuses, trade protectionism — the two countries found a new area of accord. They

agreed to voluntarily set joint targets for carbon emissions reductions to peak by 2030.Then, even as U.S.-China relations continued to unravel, the two leaders met again in Washington last month. Once again climate change was the issue that brought them together to “reaffirm their shared conviction that climate change is one of the greatest threats facing humanity and that their two countries have a critical role to play in addressing it.” Both leaders promised “to move ahead decisively to implement domestic climate policies, to strengthen bilateral coordination and cooperation, and to promote sustainable development and the transition to green, low-carbon, and climate-resilient economies.” China agreed to match the U.S. by pledging $3.1 billion to help developing countries meet the climate change challenge and then went the U.S. one better: It promised to expand its seven experimental carbon markets into a nationwide cap-and-trade carbon emissions trading system. The U.S.-China relationship turned out to be an unexpected vessel into which despairing climate change activists could place their hopes. But climate change also proved to be an unexpected providence for the increasingly fraught U.S.-China relationship. Regularly touted as the most important bilateral relationship in the world today, Beijing’s relations with Washington had been unraveling under of a host of issues caused by China’s new assertiveness colliding with America’s “pivot to Asia” and Xi Jinping’s new assertiveness abroad and uncompromising authoritarianism at home. But now it suddenly seems to have some new lift under its wings. And heading into the international climate conference in Paris this December, people in other nations also feel encouraged by this new Sino-U.S. rapprochement. Despite the fact that the U.S. is plagued by a Congress filled with climate deniers and that the Chinese Communist Party increasingly views the U.S. as out to covertly overthrow its one-party-system government, the

two nations nonetheless managed to come together. And as world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, China and the U.S. are the essential keystones of any global climate change solution

arch , so their finally finding this common ground gives modest reason for optimism. Unfortunately, like the proverbial elephant in the middle of the room, there still sits one extremely divisive problem that few want to recognize, because almost no one knows what to do about it, and it effects our bilateral ability not just to tackle climate change, but the myriad of other pressing problems — from pandemics and nuclear proliferation to terrorism and humanitarian crises — that afflict our world: The United States and the People's Republic of China have fundamentally irreconcilable political systems and antagonistic value systems. We are a liberal democracy and they are a Leninist one-party state, and nobody quite knows how to factor an equation that includes democracy and autocracy. Yet, to collaborate, we are compelled to pretend this elephant isn’t in the room. The U.S. system of governance derives, of course, from a liberal democratic model stressing constitutionalism, multi-party electoral politics, rule of law, strong governmental checks and balances, and elaborate protections of the rights of the individual, a system purposefully adopted by our founding fathers as a bulwark against monarchical tyrannies. Our value system is drawn from the same wellspring of enlightenment ideals and stresses personal liberty, freedom, and the sanctity of the individual. China’s one-party, Communist system, adopted from the Soviet Union during its darkest Stalinist period, is based on the Leninist principle of “democratic centralism” and the

Marxist notion of the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” that prescribe a strong, hierarchal, uni-party political system organized around discipline, orthodoxy, and unity. These fundamental contradictions make the U.S. and China unlikely partners for any kind of partnership, and yet here we are in a world that begs our collaboration for the sake of planetary survival. The idea that two countries with such different political histories, values, and systems could ever cooperate grew out of two previous historic diplomatic breakthroughs. The first came in 1972 when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger visited Beijing to recast U.S.-China relations with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai as a hedge against the U.S.S.R., The second came in 1979 when Deng Xiaoping visited Washington to reestablish full diplomatic relations with President Jimmy Carter. Out of this rapprochement and Deng’s ambitious new program of “reform and opening up,” a presumption unfolded that China was, at last, beginning to join the West’s notion of history as heading ineluctably (a la Hegel) toward a more open and democratic horizon. Americans hoped that if we just helped it along with a little more free marketization and cultural exchange, slowly China’s political system would evolve and its values would change to become more like ours. It was a naïve dream that we sometimes allowed ourselves to dream, if sometimes to doubt. It did, however, provide grounds for both countries to begin many kinds of constructive collaboration. Unfortunately, this phase of collaboration ended in the bloodshed of 1989 when leaders in Beijing became alarmed at the way their dabbling in political reform almost landed the Chinese Communist Party on the ash heap of history. The result was an almost complete halt in further democratization. Nonetheless, over the ensuing decades, through growing trade the two countries did manage to reknit the U.S.-China relationship back together well enough for both sides to begin imagining that, with more time, economic liberalization, educational exchange, civil society interaction, etc., China might yet evolve into a responsible “stakeholder,” as then-Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick hopefully put it. But since Xi Jinping’s investiture as Communist Party general secretary and president in 2013, he has made it abundantly clear that China is definitely not headed in any direction that is convergent with the West. President Bill Clinton once scolded his Chinese predecessor for being “on the wrong side of history.” Xi has made it emphatically clear that his China was on what he viewed as the “right side” of history, and one with distinctly “Chinese characteristics.” What is more, he seems to be suggesting that China had now also come up with its own viable model of development, one that might be described as “Leninist capitalism.” But if this model is China’s new historical endgame, the U.S.-China bilateral becomes deprived of any semblance of converging long-term political game plans. Instead of sharing the presumption of an even vaguely common political horizon, the two countries now find themselves traveling in diverging historical directions. But, mirabile dictum, climate change has come to the

rescue! By reminding both sides that we exist in a common context and that there will be no solution to climate

change — or many other global problems — without close collaboration between the U.S. and China, the two countries have been given an incipient new common purpose. Whether it will guide these two large, powerful, and often

reckless nations into a new collective direction is now the question. Without such a compact, there is literally

no hope of remedying climate change. Although the two countries still disagree on many things, when President Obama welcomed Xi Jinping to the White House last month with a 21-gun salute on the South Lawn and a state dinner, the two not only took another important step toward such a remedy, but created new momentum that will help at international climate talks in Paris in December. Such Sino-U.S. cooperation is a beguiling dream that is at last edging toward possibility. But, because of the static created by our very different political and values systems, it is still a somewhat naïve dream. Nonetheless, one can only hope that the new sense of a perceived common threat — one that is actually even more compelling than the menace of the Soviet Union back in the 1970s — will now be enough to change not only the U.S.-China relationship, but the whole global climate change equation.

US-China bilateral climate cooperation is modeled---shapes other bilateral agreementsForbes and Lewis 15 – *China expert at the World Resources Institute, **professor of Science, Technology and International Affairs at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service

(Sarah and Joanna, “US-China climate cooperation could be model for more bilateral deals,” http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/237775-us-china-climate-cooperation-could-be-model-for-more)

When U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping jointly announced major targets to combat climate change last November, they did more than chart an ambitious course for their two countries. The leaders of the world’s two biggest economies – which are also the

planet’s two biggest energy consumers and greenhouse gas emitters – showed a way forward for U.S. bilateral cooperation with other countries on energy and climate.∂ In this year’s run-up to critical international climate talks in Paris in December, the United States and other nations are releasing their national commitments to curb heat-trapping emissions. The recently announced U.S. proposal offers more details on its plan to reduce heat-trapping emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. That plan dovetails with Washington’s continuing work with Beijing to address the problems caused by a changing climate.∂ The U.S. and China have been collaborating on climate change on a number of fronts. Their positive engagement should serve as a model for other U.S. bilateral partnerships on this urgent issue.∂ Both countries see the huge potential market for clean energy development. China is the world’s largest investor in low-carbon energy, investing around $90 billion last year – over one-quarter of the world’s total. The United States is second, investing just over $50 billion.∂ China has put climate action and clean energy high on its national agenda. This includes targets announced in November to have its carbon dioxide emissions peak around 2030 — with the intention to do so sooner — and to raise the non-fossil fuel share of energy use to around 20 percent in the next 15 years. China is already setting records for renewable energy growth. It plans to install 100 gigawatts of solar power by 2020 – almost half of current global capacity, and 200 gigawatts of wind power by 2020 likely keeping it well ahead of other countries in terms of total capacity added in that timeframe. In addition to promoting low-emissions sources of energy China has taken other dramatic steps to curb local air pollution, including investing $277 billion in 2013 to improve air quality and ban coal plants in some areas.∂ Bilateral cooperation allows for the identification of clear technical areas of mutual interest. The United States and China have a three-decade track record of successful cooperation on energy and the environment. Early agreements in the 1980s and 1990s focused on a basic framework for cooperation and on energy policy discussions, but over time, the agreements have become more technically focused. This long experience working together has forged a bilateral relationship both nations value.∂ A prime example is the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC), a five-year-old joint project that both countries continue to expand in depth and breadth. Xi and Obama used last year’s joint climate announcement to extend the center’s mandate through 2020, renewing funding for efforts to increase building energy efficiency, improve clean vehicles and pursue advanced coal technologies including carbon capture, use and sequestration. They also launched a new track on the interaction of energy and water.∂ Because CERC is a presidential-level initiative with high-level engagement through ministerial oversight, researchers have confidence that the highest level of government officials support this joint Chinese-U.S. effort. By pairing U.S. researchers with their Chinese counterparts and setting them to work toward a common objective, the center creates a collaborative network that supports innovation. This also builds capacity in the workforce by training students and engaging those in the private sector.∂ CERC has been a two-way street. Both countries come to the table as equal partners with a shared sense of commitment. Each side benefited from the specialized expertise of the other, with more diversity in approaches to the problem and accelerated progress. While a key obstacle to US-China technology cooperation is managing intellectual property, the CERC has developed an innovative agreement to manage how intellectual property is shared and created among its participants. While it is too early to comprehensively assess the benefits from CERC, it serves as a unique a model for collaboration on clean energy.∂ High-level involvement, open and equal

partnership and well-supported collaboration are the hallmarks of climate action cooperation between China and the United States. It’s a long-running relationship that has delivered concrete, positive results. Both countries are making progress developing and deploying low-carbon energy through unique research arrangements with the public and private sectors. This strategy could well be used to reach out to other potential climate partners around the world .∂

Just last week, the United States and Mexico announced a new task force on climate and energy, another successful result from bilateral dialogue. The China-U.S. partnership and the nascent Mexico-U.S. partnership show that the United States can show its climate leadership by working with partners in other countries as the world moves toward the big negotiations in Paris this year.

Relations – Warming – Real/Scientific ConsensusWarming is real and anthropogenic – most comprehensive analysis of peer reviewed climate scientists provesHall et al ‘15

C. Michael, Professor in Marketing in the Department of Management, Marketing & Entrepreneurship @ the University of Canterbury with a PhD in Geography from the University of Western Australia, published with 50 other leading peer-reviewed climate scientists whose names and qualifications can be found here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517714001605, published in Tourism Management, Vol. 47, April 2015, pp. 341-347, “No time for smokescreen skepticism: A rejoinder to Shani and Arad”, Science Direct Online

Abstract∂ Shani and Arad (2014) claimed that tourism scholars tend to endorse the most pessimistic assessments regarding climate change, and that anthropogenic climate change was a “fashionable” and “highly controversial scientific topic”. This brief rejoinder provides the balance that is missing from such climate change denial and skepticism studies on climate change and tourism. Recent research provides substantial evidence that reports on anthropogenic climate change are accurate , and that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, including from the tourism industry, play a significant role in climate change. Some positive net effects may be experienced by some destinations in the short-term, but in the long-term all elements of the tourism system will be impacted. The expansion of tourism emissions at a rate greater than efficiency gains means that it is increasingly urgent that the tourism sector acknowledge, accept and respond to climate change. Debate on tourism-related adaptation and mitigation measures is to be encouraged and welcomed. Climate change denial is not.∂ 1. Introduction∂ Climate change is one of the most contentious areas of public debate of science. However, in scientific terms it is not, what Shani and Arad (2014, p. 82) incorrectly refer to as, “highly controversial”. Anthropogenic climate change is now clearly accepted within the scientific community (Anderegg et al., 2010, Cook et al., 2013, Doran and Zimmerman, 2009 and Oreskes, 2004). As with all areas of scientific knowledge there is systematic interrogation and debate of knowledge claims, results, models, methods, and procedures. However, to dismiss scientific knowledge claims by discrediting climate change science is to deliberately misrepresent both the scientific literature and scientific consensus on the subject . The recent ‘research’ paper in Tourism Management on it being a “time for environmental skepticism” on climate change and tourism ( Shani & Arad, 2014), or to what they refer as “climate change hype” ( Shani & Arad, 2014, p. 83) is such a misrepresentation.∂ Shani and Arad (2014) claim that.∂ •∂ “virtually all” [“tourism scholars and researchers”] “ignore the critical debate on the accurateness and implications of the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), which in actual fact is far from being conclusive” (p. 82);∂ •∂ “the theory of AGW is, in fact, under intense scientific dispute” (p. 83);∂ •∂ “there are shaky scientific foundations to the hypothesis that CO2 concentration in the earth's atmosphere accounts for significant temperature fluctuations, empirical evidence indicates that the sun activity is a more plausible cause for climate variation” (as well as “natural factors” including “changes in the galactic environment”) (p. 83);∂ •∂ “no definitive evidence exists to verify that climate is driven by the concentration of CO2 in the

earth's atmosphere” (p. 83); and∂ •∂ “the theory of AGW is highly controversial among climate scientists” (p. 84).∂ This paper provides a brief response to these statements and to their litany of climate change denial and misrepresentation. Throughout the paper the terms climate change and anthropogenic climate change (ACC) are preferred to AGW given that increases in globally averaged atmospheric and ocean temperatures are one part of the broader changes within the climate system and, hence, global climate change (IPCC, 2013a).∂ 2. The ‘unequivocal’ consensus on anthropogenic climate change∂ There is scientific consensus with respect to the reality of ACC. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2013b, p. 2) concluded, “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased”. The conclusions of the IPCC along with many other scientists are that climate change is real and well advanced. It is not just a future possibility. Evidence for climate change is observational as well as predictive ( IPCC, 2013a).∂ The IPCC concludes it is extremely likely (>95% level of certainty) “that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century” (IPCC, 2013b, p. 15). It is also “extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together” (IPCC, 2013b, p. 15).∂ The extent of the scientific consensus on ACC in peer-reviewed scientific literature , which is also the source material for the IPCC (e.g. Anderegg et al., 2010 and Doran and Zimmerman, 2009); as well as supporting statements from scientific associations (Science, 2001); is substantial. Cook et al. (2013) examined 11,944 climate abstracts of peer-reviewed articles from 1991 to 2011 matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'. They found that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on ACC/AGW, 32.6% endorsed ACC/AGW, 0.7% rejected ACC/AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of climate change. Among abstracts expressing a position on ACC/AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing climate change. Cook et al. (2013) also invited authors to rate their own work. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on ACC/AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on ACC/AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors' self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on ACC/AGW marginally increased. The quantum of peer-reviewed papers rejecting the consensus on ACC is extremely small. The existence of a scientific consensus, especially one as overwhelming as exists for human-induced climate change, raises the level of confidence that the overall findings of that consensus are correct (Bedford & Cook, 2013). There is no scientific controversy although there is an ongoing systematic interrogation of knowledge claims. The misrepresentations of

the scientific knowledge on climate change by Shani and Arad (2014) provides a basis for the further study of agnotology but not of climate change.∂ According to Shani and Arad “most apocalyptic predictions regarding AGW are based on simulations of the IPCC's computer climate models, which so far have not demonstrated a high level of accuracy” (2014, p. 83). Yet, available evidence suggests that as a result of scientific norms of dispassion, skepticism, rationality, and restraint as well as IPCC reports being a synthesis of research undertaken by thousands of scientists funded from hundreds of different sources the reports are conservative interpretations of climate change that favor less rather than more alarming projections (Brysse, Oreskes, O'Reilly, & Oppenheimer, 2013). The IPCC does not assume that warming is occurring at a “destructive rate” as Shani and Arad (2014, p. 82) claim. The word destructive is not used in the AR5 WGI report on the science of climate change (IPCC, 2013a). Nevertheless, the IPCC (2014a) does emphasise the risks posed by climate change especially with respect to food, water and human security (see also IPCC, 2012). Contrary to Shani and Arad's (2014) claims, the benefits of climate change do not outweigh the costs. Even Tol (2013), whose work Shani and Arad (2014) cites, suggests that climate change is not beneficial anymore in the 21st century. “Most rich and most poor countries benefitted from climate change until 1980, but after that the trend is negative for poor countries and positive for rich countries. In the 21st century, impacts turn negative in most countries, rich and poor. Future climate change is a reason for concern” (Tol, 2013, p. 127).∂ Climate models do not reproduce single events but rather they produce statistical properties describing the climate. They therefore capture trends in the climate system not its internal variability. Climate models reproduce observed large-scale mean surface temperature patterns very well (pattern correlation of ∼0.99) (IPCC, 2013a) and their performance continues to improve. There is “very high confidence” that “models reproduce observed continental-scale surface temperature patterns and trends over many decades, including the more rapid warming since the mid-20th century and the cooling immediately following large volcanic eruptions” (IPCC,

2013b, p. 13). Model accuracy has improved for regional scales, but continues to be lower than for the global scale (IPCC, 2013a). Although global mean surface temperature has not risen as rapidly as before, it has still been increasing (IPCC, 2013a). Nevertheless, it must be stressed, “the average rate of warming at the Earth's surface is only one piece in the climate change puzzle” (Nature Geoscience, 2014, p. 157). Simultaneously, ocean warming, ocean acidification and high rates of warming in high latitudes, among other expressions of climate

change, continue to occur (IPCC, 2013a).∂ Shani and Arad (2014, p. 83) claim, “Further studies also confirm that major temperature fluctuations occurred before man-made CO2. If the IPCC's assessments are accurate and natural factors scarcely play any role in today's climate, we would expect a rather flat and uninteresting climate history, which is certainly not the case (Vahrenholt, 2012).” Vahrenholt (2012) is a commentary piece in The Telegraph newspaper by a climate denier, it is not a peer reviewed article. The IPCC does not claim “natural factors scarcely play any role in the climate.” The IPCC (2013a, p. 11) explicitly state, “Natural and anthropogenic substances and processes that alter the Earth's energy budget are drivers of climate change.” The issue is that natural processes alone cannot explain the current changes to climate, including mean atmospheric temperatures. Other claims by Shani and Arad (2014, p. 83) with respect to “shaky scientific foundations to the hypothesis that CO2 concentration in the earth's atmosphere accounts for significant temperature fluctuations”, are supported by references to non-peer-reviewed material from the Heartland Institute and other conservative think tanks, such as the Cato Institute, as well as selective citation of other sources that discuss natural processes that potentially affect climate in specific locations and times. Similar misreadings and selective citation occur with respect to Shani and Arad's claims over historic CO2 concentrations, temperatures, and the so-called current warming ‘pause’ ( Mann, Steinman, & Miller, 2014 ).∂ 3. Tourism

and climate change: research and response∂ According to Shani and Arad, “It seems far too hasty and irresponsible to recommend that the tourism industry take drastic and expensive courses of action that are based on climate forecasting models that have demonstrated very limited success” (2014, p. 83). Recognition of ACC is based on more than just models (IPCC, 2013a). The contribution of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to warming has been at least 50% since 1950 and continues to grow, further pushing surface temperature up. In order to reduce the impacts of climate change emissions will need to be reduced by all sectors including tourism ( IPCC, 2014b).∂ Tourism contributes to climate change through emissions of GHGs of which CO2 is the most recognised. Others include methane (CH4), nitrous oxides (NOx), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), and various short-lived GHGs that are important in the context of aviation and, to a lesser extent, cruise ships (Scott, Hall, & Gössling, 2012). Tourism transport, accommodation, and activities are estimated to have contributed approximately 5% to global anthropogenic emissions of CO2 in 2005 (UNWTO–UNEP–WMO, 2008 and World Economic Forum (WEF), 2009). The majority of tourism-related CO2 emissions are associated with transport, with aviation accounting for 40% of tourism's overall carbon footprint, followed by car transport (32%) and accommodation (21%) (UNWTO–UNEP–WMO, 2008). Cruise ships provide an estimated 19.2 Mt CO2, and account for around 1.5% of global tourism emissions (Eijgelaar, Thaper, & Peeters, 2010). The UNWTO–UNEP–WMO (2008) and WEF (2009) assessments do not include the impact of non-CO2 short-lived GHGs. When radiative forcing (RF) is considered it was estimated that tourism contributed 5.2–12.5% of all anthropogenic forcing in 2005, with a best estimate of approximately 8% (Gössling et al., 2013 and Scott et al., 2010). Tourism related land use change is a further, though unquantified, contribution to climate change.∂ Given that the rate of growth in tourism is increasing at a significantly higher rate than efficiency gains (WEF, 2009), the absolute contribution of tourism to climate change is increasing and, without substantial change, will continue to grow in the foreseeable future (Hall, 2010, Dubois et al., 2011, Gössling, 2013, Gössling et al., 2010, Gössling et al., 2013, Owens et al., 2010, Peeters and Dubois, 2010 and Peeters and Landré, 2012). There are limits to efficiency gains. Given tourism growth forecasts (UNWTO, 2011), measures such as carbon caps and trade schemes, offsetting and behavioral change must be applied if tourism is to meet its emissions targets (Cohen et al., 2014, Dubois et al., 2011, Gössling et al., 2013, Hall, 2014 and Peeters and Dubois, 2010). Such changes do not necessitate a radical reduction in the number of tourist trips, rather a reduction in the emissions per trip, in order to help lower the absolute amount of emissions created by tourism. The close connection between the implementation of climate change mitigation and adaption measures and sustainable tourism strategies will also lessen negative human impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity that constitute the environmental services on which well-being depends (Millennium Assessment, 2005).∂ Climate change also threatens the relative attractiveness and sustainability of tourism destinations and, over time, the tourism system overall. This will occur over various time scales depending on the specific factors e.g. sea level rise, snow loss, ocean acidification, coral bleaching, species loss (Gössling et al., 2012 and Scott et al., 2012). Tourism system wide effects will impact economic well-being and propensities to travel. Although some destinations and generating regions may benefit from climate change in the short-term, the longer-term systemic effects will have significant consequences for tourism everywhere. This is of especial concern for least developed countries that are affected by climate change and emphasise tourism as a development mechanism (IPCC, 2014a and Scott et al., 2012).∂ Many of Shani and Arad's (2014) questions and claims rest on the presumption that ACC, including tourism's contributions to climate change, does not exist. It does. Are they highly contested by the scientific community in scientific terms. No. Is there lack of a “critical approach” (p. 84) or ignorance of “critical debate” (p. 82). No. There is a substantial, and increasing, body of peer-reviewed research on tourism and climate change (e.g. see reviews in Becken and Hay, 2012, Hall, 2008, Kaján and Saarinen, 2013, Scott, 2011, Scott et al., 2012, Scott et al., 2012, Scott and Matthews, 2011 and UNWTO–UNEP–WMO, 2008). Within this body of research there are significant debates and engagements over the framing of ACC as a scientific and societal problem. But, unlike Shani and Arad (2014), there is not a denial that ACC exists.∂ 4. Conclusions: no time for climate change denial∂ The climate change controversy that should be acknowledged is the extent to which a subject of importance is being deliberately misportrayed by vested economic and political interests (Dunlap, 2013, Friel, 2010, Hulme, 2009, Manne, 2012, Oreskes and Conway, 2010 and Mann, 2012). Climate change science recognises that it must improve communication of its work especially where disagreement and uncertainties exist (Anderegg, 2010 and Weichselgartner and Kasperson, 2010). However, improvements in communication can only go so far when competing against extensive campaigns by some organisations, including the role of conservative think tanks with respect to organised environmental skepticism, to discredit climate change science (Gleick et al., 2010, Jacques et al., 2008 and Manne, 2012).∂ There is substantial critical debate over many aspects of climate change, not only over levels of confidence and uncertainty, but also the paradigms and frameworks within which it is understood as a problem to be managed and solved (Hall, 2010, Hall, 2011, Hall, 2013 and Scott, 2011). This has therefore meant substantial contestation over issues of adaptation, mitigation, vulnerability and resilience and the different transition trajectories that should be followed. Such areas are where debate should be focussed especially in light of issues of policy learning and flexibility, climate change governance, the role of the market, consumer behaviour, opportunity costs

and development.∂ Shani and Arad (2014) do not contribute to this debate. It is not a research paper. It could, at best, be described as a commentary or viewpoint. We would argue that it should not even have been published. Not because we disagree with it. But because it hides behind a smokescreen of extremely poor science and deliberately misrepresents the status of scientific knowledge and consensus on climate change (see also Nuccitelli, 2014). A liberal interpretation of what can be published is not an excuse to publish anything. Shani and Arad (2014) do not provide adequate standards of evidence for their knowledge claims. Alternative and outlier studies have their place and should be valued for the perspectives they can bring with respect to problem definition and paradigm change. But they must have a suitable standard of evidence whether by direct research results and/or reputable peer-reviewed sources – and a commentary in The Telegraph is not peer-reviewed science. As Oldfield and Steffen (2014, p. 74) observed, “The bottom line is clear. Denying the relevance and validity of Earth System science is a highly risky, and possibly catastrophic, approach for humanity to take towards its future”. Or, as Tol (2008, p. 37) noted, “Denying that there is a problem [of climate change] is just dumb.”∂ What may change perceptions that ACC does not exist or is negligible? In some cases better communication may help, in others a weather event such as a hurricane, flood or heat wave may occur that makes climate change more believable (Greenberg et al., 2014, Hall, 2006, Kaján, 2013, Lejano et al., 2013 and Schmidt et al., 2013), even though from a climate science

perspective the occurrence of a single high-magnitude weather event cannot be specifically connected to climate change, although the likelihood of intense weather events may have increased (IPCC, 2013a and Scott et al., 2012). However, no matter what arguments are presented there will always be those who will not accept the evidence if it is incongruent with their belief system (Hoffman, 2011). As Dunlap (2013, p. 693) observed, “there is little doubt that many individuals actively involved in the denial campaign are not skeptical of climate science but are in full denial, and no amount of evidence will convince them of the reality of AGW.” Taking action to achieve limits to climate change is not just an economic and technical challenge, it raises profound questions of ethics, values and risk, including the responsibility we bear towards future generations, those who will be most affected, and other species. How these questions can be answered is a vital debate as is the selection of means to achieve desired ends. Debate therefore is welcomed and encouraged. Denial is not.

Warming is real and anthropogenic – 99.9% consensus provesPowell ’15 (James Lawrence Powell, PhD in Geochemistry @ MIT, was a professor of Geology at Oberlin College for over 20 years, twice appointed to the National Science Board for a total of 12 years, currently the Executive Director of the National Physical Science Consortium, served as Acting President of Oberlin College, President of Franklin and Marshall College, President of Reed College, President of the Franklin Institute, and has a minor planet [9739 Powell] named after him. “Global Warming: Could Scientists Be Wrong?” 2 June 2015, http://www.jamespowell.org/resources/CouldScientistsBeWrong.pdf)

Do Scientists Agree? So far we have reviewed the ways in which scientists could turn out to be wrong about global warming and examined some of the evidence that convinces them they are right. Rather than studying that evidence for ourselves, we could have simply taken scientists’ word for it. But first we would have to know what their word is: the extent to which scientists agree about global warming. According to a November 2013 poll by the Pew Research Center, roughly half the American public believe that scientists do not agree. As I will show, that is completely wrong. But it does raise the question of how so many could get such a mistaken impression. Most people understandably do not read scientific journals. Instead they get their information about science from the media: TV, newspapers, and magazines. There, debate and controversy sell; agreement does not. Whenever there is a media story on global warming, we are apt to find on one side a scientist who accepts global warming and on the other side one who rejects it, as though there are two equally-weighted sides on the question. When Congressional committees hold hearings, those who testify are again roughly balanced between the supposed two sides. This attempt to be “fair and balanced” is reasonable when there are two sides, as would be the case if the subject were tax policy, health care, teacher evaluation, or any number of other political and social issues. But science is different: almost never do two roughly balanced groups hold opposite opinions: instead almost all scientists in a field subscribe to the same paradigm. Take evolution. There is only one side: the overwhelming majority of biologists accept the theory. To stage a media debate between one scientist who accepts evolution and one who does not, or to quote each in a newspaper story, would be completely misleading and irresponsible. Global warming is no different , for its acceptance by publishing scientists is as strong as that for evolution. One way to gauge the extent of agreement over a scientific theory is simply to ask scientists for their opinion, as pollsters do when they query

prospective voters. The trouble is, scientific opinion has often turned out to be wrong: otherwise there would have been no scientific revolutions. If one had a time machine and could travel back to 1960 and ask geologists whether they accepted continental drift, nearly 100 percent would say they did not. Ten years later, nearly 100 percent would have said they did. But if instead of polling scientific opinion, one had relied on the peer-reviewed literature from the 1950s and 1960s, one would have found that it contained no convincing evidence that continental drift is false. The literature proved a much more accurate guide to the state of the science than the opinion of scientists. When pollsters ask people how they are going to vote a month before an upcoming election, they get the opinion of the respondent at that moment. But a lot can happen in the last month before an election. Once the results are in, how people had said they would vote matters only to pollsters. We then have the evidence of how people did vote, collectively, and that is all that matters. In science, a peer-reviewed article is like a vote in an election, except that scientists sign their names. We don’t need to ask scientists their opinion, which scientific revolutions show is unreliable: we can judge what scientists accept as true much more reliably from the evidence they publish. But tens of thousands of scientific articles are published each year—surely no one could read them all. True, but thanks to the Internet, there is a way to simplify the task to the point that it becomes manageable. The Web of Science (WoS) is a subscription-based, Internet-hosted reference service of Thompson-Reuters. Most academic libraries subscribe to it. The WoS provides a searchable database of every scientific article published in peer-reviewed journals. If one wants to find out how many articles on the topic “global warming” have been published so far in the twenty-first century, for example, in a few seconds the WoS answers 11,140.7 The WoS provides an exportable list of those articles with author, date, journal, times cited, etc. To assess the state of a scientific consensus, a WoS search allows one to review the titles and abstracts (not the text, which would take forever) of articles on global warming to determine how many reject the theory. But why look for rejections rather than endorsements? Because once a theory has become widely accepted—become the ruling paradigm—scientists rarely explicitly endorse it. One can read hundreds of abstracts about plate tectonics, for example, without finding a single one that directly endorses the theory. Acceptance of the ruling paradigm lies in the background of all that scientists in a field do, understood without the need to say so. But if a scientist had evidence that justified rejecting plate tectonics, for example, that would be clear from the article abstract and no doubt even from its title. Searching for rejections is the only practicable and valid way to judge the extent of acceptance of a scientific theory. Some years ago I began to undertake a review of the peer-reviewed scientific literature on global warming. I reviewed the titles and abstracts of the articles looking for explicit statements of rejection, the kind that those who deny global warming make all the time outside of scientific journals, where anyone can say whatever they like. My first review covered the years 1991-2012 and used the search terms global warming and global climate change. For 2013 and 2014, so as to miss as few articles as possible, I added the search term “climate change.” The chart below shows my latest results. I found a total of 24,210 articles for 2013 and 2014. They had a total of 69,406 authors. There were five rejecting papers , two of which had the same author, so the number of rejecting authors is four . Thus the ratio of rejecting authors to the total is 4/69406 , 1 in 17, 352 or 0.0058% . To be conservative, I conclude that over 99.9% of publishing climate scientists accept that humans are causing global warming. This is as close to unanimous as it gets in science . Of course, we must not forget that

to show that global warming is false might take only a single article—if that one had the facts to back it up. We would not need to conduct a needle-in-the-haystack review of thousands of abstracts to find that article. It would already have made headlines and many other scientists would have cited it in their own articles. But scientists have largely ignored the rejecting articles. Several have never been cited . If an article published in the last 20-plus years had offered compelling evidence that scientists are wrong about global warming, we would know about that article and we don’t. There must be no such evidence, else someone would have published it by now. Summing Up We have reviewed the ways scientists have been wrong before and found none that might apply to global warming. That scientists are engaged in a conspiracy over global warming is not just absurd—it is impossible . The scientific evidence for global warming is overwhelming and there is virtually no published evidence against it . Changes in the plant and animal world and the number and strength of extreme weather events offer compelling testimony that the world is warming. Climate models agree that on the present trajectory, warming will get worse with each passing decade, with no end in sight .

Relations – Warming – AT Slow/No ImpactWarming trends are accelerating Plumer 6/14/13, (Brad Plumer is a reporter at the Washington Post writing about domestic policy, particularly energy and environmental issues, he’s quoting Alexander Otto, a Research Fellow in Climate Decisions at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford and has a Masters in Physics and a phD in economics, “Global warming appears to have slowed lately. That’s no reason to celebrate.”, [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/14/global-warming-appears-to-have-slowed-lately-thats-no-reason-to-celebrate/ ] , //hss-RJ)

A few things stand out. First, the planet has grown considerably warmer since mid-century, by more than half a degree Celsius. Second, even if the overall trend is upward, there's a fair bit of variation year to year. Some of that, as we can see, has to do with El Niño and La Niña cycles, which can shift heat into and out of the ocean. There's a third aspect

of this chart, however, that's getting a barrage of attention lately. The past decade has clearly been the warmest decade on record. But the rate of warming in the last 15 years has been slower than it was in the 20 years before that. And that's despite the fact that greenhouse gases are piling up in the atmosphere at a record pace. So what should we make of this recent "slowdown" in global warming? Is it just a random blip — the sort of natural variation we've seen before and will likely see again? Or does it tell us anything interesting about climate change? Here are are a couple of big

points to consider: 1) Global warming is still very much with us. The recent slowdown in temperature rise has left climatologists a bit puzzled, but it certainly doesn't disprove global warming. The evidence on the effects of greenhouse gases, after all, stretches back more than a century. Scientists know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat on Earth. And it's simple to see that humans are putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. Researchers at NASA, meanwhile, have found that more solar energy is now entering Earth than is escaping back out into space. Basic physics suggests that this "energy imbalance" should, over time, heat up the planet. The mystery, then, is why all that extra energy hasn't translated into even higher surface temperatures in

recent years. Where is the extra heat going? Clearly something else must be at play here... 2) One theory is that the oceans are responsible for the recent warming slowdown. The oceans are vast and have long absorbed more than 90 percent of the extra energy that greenhouse gases trap on Earth. So it's possible that they've somehow been absorbing even more of that heat lately, and hence slowing the rise of temperatures on the surface. Recent work by Magdalena Balmaseda, Kevin Trenberth, and Erland Källén has suggested that the warming of the oceans has accelerated in the past 15 years — and that the "missing heat" may be lurking in the

deep layers, 700 meters below the surface: If the oceans are indeed the reason for the pause, that's not comforting news, since that extra heat should eventually rise to the Earth’s surface in the years ahead, leading to much hotter temperatures. That said, it's not entirely clear why the oceans have been grabbing a bigger share of the heat lately. It's also not certain when, exactly, that heat will return to the surface. Climate models still have trouble capturing the precise mechanisms by which the oceans transfer heat to the surface over short time scales. Which brings us

to our third part... 3) Even if you place a lot of weight on the recent slowdown, it doesn't change projections of future warming too dramatically . Here's a question we can ask. What if the recent slowdown in surface temperatures isn't just a blip, but is actually an extremely important fact about the world? How much should it shift our view of climate change? And the answer turns out to be: A little bit. That's the issue Alexander Otto and his co-authors explored in a recent paper published in Nature Geoscience. They focused on data from the last decade to come up with new estimates of the "transient climate response," or what will happen in the very short term every time we double the amount of

carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Still here. (AP) What Otto and his colleagues found is that, if you look at data from the last decade and extrapolate from there, we can expect the Earth to warm an extra

0.9°C to 2°C in the short term whenever the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles. By contrast, earlier climate models had put that range at between 1°C to 2.5°C. (Note: These are lower numbers than estimates of "climate sensitivity," which measures how the Earth would keep heating up thereafter, as the oceans and ice sheets

reach equilibrium.) That's slightly better news, but the broad picture hasn't change all that much. As Otto told me: "Even if we give a lot of weight to what we’ve seen over the last decade, you’re not getting rid of the problem." And here's how Myles Allen, a co-author, put it: "Taken at face value, our new findings mean that the changes we had previously expected between

now and 2050 might take until 2065 to materialize instead." In a phone interview, Otto also made another point: The temperature trends over the past decade aren't the only data scientists have to work with. When he and his co-authors recalculated the Earth's transient climate response using data from the last 40 years, his results (0.7°C to 2.5°C) lined up more closely with earlier models . (See here for Otto's explanation of the paper.) What's more, scientists have a variety of other ways to estimate longer-term climate sensitivity, including data from prehistoric periods, measures of the Earth's response to volcanic eruptions, and physical models. As NASA's Gavin Schmidt explains, different approaches tend to given different answers, some higher, and some lower. But they're all worth

considering. 4) We're still on pace to blow past that 2°C climate target. Intricate arguments about climate sensitivity often bypass a crucial point. Humanity is on pace to do a lot more than simply double the amount of carbon in the atmosphere by the end of the century (compared with pre-industrial levels). Doubling means going up to 560 parts per million. We’re currently at about 400 ppm and rising fast. "Even if you adjust the transient climate response downwards, if we keep emitting at the pace we are now, we're going to go significantly past the 2°C climate target," Otto says. "There's no reason for complacency here."

Warming – AT IrreversibleWarming’s not inevitable – immediately reversible and no time lagDesjardins 13 – member of Concordia university Media Relations Department, academic writer, citing Damon Matthews; associate professor of the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment at Concordia University, PhD, Member of the Global Environmental and Climate Change Center

(Cléa, “Global Warming: Irreversible but Not Inevitable,” http://www.concordia.ca/now/what-we-do/research/20130402/global-warming-irreversible-but-not-inevitable.php)

Carbon dioxide emission cuts will immediately affect the rate of future global warming Concordia and MIT researchers show Montreal, April 2, 2013 – There is a persistent misconception among both scientists and the public that there is a delay between emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2)

and the climate’s response to those emissions. This misconception has led policy makers to argue that CO2

emission cuts implemented now will not affect the climate system for many decades. This erroneous line of argument makes the climate problem seem more intractable than it actually is , say Concordia

University’s Damon Matthews and MIT’s Susan Solomon in a recent Science article. The researchers show that immediate decreases in CO2 emissions would in fact result in an immediate decrease in the rate of climate warming. Explains Matthews, professor in the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, “If we can successfully decrease CO2 emissions in the near future, this change will be felt by the climate system when the emissions reductions are implemented – not in several decades ."

“The potential for a quick climate response to prompt cuts in CO2 emissions opens up the possibility that the climate benefits of emissions reductions would occur on the same timescale as the political decisions themselves.” In their paper, Matthews and Solomon, Ellen Swallow

Richards professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Science, show that the onus for slowing the rate of global warming falls squarely on current efforts at reducing CO2 emissions, and the resulting future emissions that we produce. This means that there are critical implications for the equity of carbon emission choices currently being discussed internationally. Total emissions from developing countries may soon exceed those from developed nations. But developed countries are expected to maintain a far higher per-capita contribution to present and

possible future warming. “This disparity clarifies the urgency for low-carbon technology investment and diffusion to enable developing countries to continue to develop,” says Matthews. “Emission cuts made now will have an immediate effect on the rate of global warming ,” he asserts. “I see more hope for averting difficult-to-avoid negative impacts by accelerating advances in technology development and diffusion, than for averting climate system changes that are already inevitable. Given the enormous scope and complexity of the climate mitigation challenge,

clarifying these points of hope is critical to motivate change.”

The worst impacts are avoidableStover 15 (Dawn, Science writer based in the Pacific Northwest and is a contributing editor at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Climate change: irreversible but not unstoppable”, 2/26/15, http://thebulletin.org/climate-change-irreversible-not-unstoppable8044)

In ongoing data collection by the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School, fewer than one in four people in a general population

sample in Southeast Florida understood that if human beings stopped emitting carbon dioxide tomorrow,

global temperatures would continue to rise. “Believers” in human-caused global warming were just as likely as “disbelievers” to misunderstand the extent to which we are already committed to future temperature rises. The widespread notion that the climate is something we can fix later—after more pressing priorities have been addressed—may be the biggest obstacle to

actions and policies that would slow global warming, avoid some of its worst potential impacts , and allow more time for humans and other species to adapt to a changing climate . Even though scientists have repeatedly emphasized the urgency of the situation, their message isn’t getting through to the general public or to legislators who could make a difference. What’s missing are vivid, personalized depictions of what life will be like in the future if emissions continue unabated. Human activities have already altered the climate so radically that many scientists refer to the current geologic era as the Anthropocene, from the Greek words for “human” and “new.” But that sounds friendly and progressive compared with what actually lies ahead: a climate very similar to that of Earth’s last major warm period, the Pliocene epoch of

several million years ago, minus the mastodons and mammoths. And unlike nuclear war, it’s not a question of whether climate change will rock our world, only of how bad things will get . Committed to climate change. Though we’re seeing obvious warning signs of what is to come, such as melting glaciers and steadily increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, thus far the global average surface temperature has risen by only about 0.8 of a degree Celsius (or 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1880. However, the climate system has some built-in inertia, and the impacts of past human activities will be felt far into the future. Scientists refer to these unavoidable future changes as our climate change “commitment.” Some of the inertia comes from the elevated levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. If humans were to cease their emissions overnight, the oceans would quickly absorb some of these gases. But the oceans also release gases back to the atmosphere, and the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would not subside back to pre-industrial levels for many centuries. Another problem is that industrial air pollution has a cooling, as well as a warming, effect. Fossil fuel combustion releases aerosols, tiny particles and droplets that reflect sunlight and enhance cloud formation, masking the impacts of greenhouse gases. If we stopped burning fossil fuels, this cooling effect—which is difficult to quantify, but probably has less than half the impact of the

greenhouse warming effect—would end. “A large fraction of climate change is largely irreversible on human time scales,” the most recent assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned. Only if human emissions were “strongly negative over a sustained period”—for example, if tree planting and other activities were to sequester far more carbon than humans release—would climate change begin to be reversed. At the moment, of course, emissions

are still rising rapidly. Points of no return . If the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can be limited to a doubling—from about 280 parts per million (ppm) in the pre-industrial era to 560 ppm in the future (we’re

currently at about 400 ppm)—the IPCC assessment estimated with “high confidence” that Earth’s temperature will reach an equilibrium somewhere between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. However, the report cautioned, “some aspects of climate will continue to change even if temperatures are stabilized.” Among some of the most likely changes: The melting of snow and ice will expose darker patches of water and land that absorb more of the sun’s radiation, accelerating global warming and the retreat of ice sheets and glaciers. Scientists agree that the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet has already gone into an unstoppable decline. Currents that transport heat within the oceans will be disrupted. Ocean acidification will continue to rise, with unknown effects on marine life. Thawing permafrost and sea beds will release methane, a greenhouse gas. Droughts predicted to be the worst in 1,000 years will trigger vegetation changes and wildfires, releasing carbon. Species unable to adapt quickly to a changing climate will go extinct. Coastal communities will be submerged, creating a humanitarian crisis. Some of these changes may persist for hundreds or even thousands of years after the Earth’s temperature stabilizes. Scientists worry that elements of the climate system could even reach tipping points beyond which abrupt and planetary-scale changes might occur, such as the disappearance of monsoon cycles or the Amazon’s

vast tropical forests. Welcome to the Pliocene. Even if countries reduce emissions enough to keep temperatures from rising much above the internationally agreed-upon “danger” threshold of 2 degrees Celsius (which seems increasingly unlikely), we can still look forward to conditions similar to those of the mid-Pliocene epoch of 3 million years ago. At that time, the continents were in much the same positions that they are today, carbon dioxide levels ranged between 350 and 400 ppm, the global average temperature was 2 to 3 degrees Celsius higher than it is today (but up to 20 degrees higher than today at the northernmost latitudes), the global sea level was about 25

meters higher, and most of today’s North American forests were grasslands and savanna. A mid-Pliocene climate looks comfortable , though, compared with what will happen if we continue to emit carbon dioxide at today’s rate. As noted in the Doomsday Clock announcement, the IPCC “warned that warming—if unchecked by urgent and concerted global efforts to greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions—would reach 3 to 8 degrees Celsius (about 5.5 to 14.5 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century.” Social inertia. Is there any way to

avoid Pliocene-like conditions? “If carbon dioxide emissions could be eliminated entirely,” two scientists argued in Nature

Geoscience in 2010, “temperatures would quickly stabilize or even decrease over time. Future warming is therefore driven by

socio-economic inertia, and is only as inevitable as future emissions.” That is about as helpful as telling obese people that if they just stopped eating, they would lose weight quickly. At the moment, we’d be doing well to cut humanity’s diet of fossil fuels to a level that would merely prevent further weight gain. Instead what we see is a planetary binge, with increases in fossil fuel consumption that have dwarfed the development of low-carbon energy sources during the past decade. The scientists, however, put their finger on what is needed to turn things in the right direction: socio-economic action. Changing self-destructive behaviors can be extremely difficult, as any dieter knows, and unrealistic optimism can be just as counterproductive as defeatism. In fact, these are the twin enemies of climate action. Even climate “believers” seem to feel that either there is little they can do to prevent disaster (beyond pointing fingers at “disbelievers,” of course) or, alternatively, that technology is making (or will make) speedy progress against the problem. Those in the over-optimistic camp may think that geoengineering, for example, can turn back the climate clock in a pinch. Unfortunately, although measures such as injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere merit increased research and development, they are not ready to be safely deployed at the scale necessary to combat climate change. As a National Research

Council committee recently concluded, “there is no substitute for dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.” The world needs an emissions diet plan—and a full complement of socio-economic incentives and

support systems to ensure its success. Out of the fire and into the frying pan. The inevitability of climate change doesn’t mean that we don’t have a choice to make: If we act quickly and boldly, there is a small window of opportunity in which we can work to keep global warming to a minimum. Or we can keep accelerating toward catastrophe . As Richard Somerville, one of the climate scientists on the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board, recently told me: “People today, whether they realize it or not, have control of the thermostat that will set the climate for future generations.”

Add-Ons

2AC Add-On - China Econ A BIT is key to sustainable Chinese growthWilliam Mauldin and Mark Magnier, 9/25/2015, The Wall Street Journal, “US, China make progress toward trade and investment deal; US business groups cautiously optimistic over signs of movement,” ProQuest, mm

"We are concerned that anything other than immediate and unfettered market access will allow the Chinese government to continue to pick and choose both the timing and scope of market-access reform, and to limit the role of market forces in China's economy ," Mr. Zimmerman said.¶ Others said a lot would ultimately depend on how any final deal is implemented by Beijing. "We know there is a commitment to move forward, and the agreement between the two presidents is encouraging," said Guanghua School of Management professor Paul Gillis, who has consulted on accounting standards for the World Trade Organization. "But the devil's going to be in the details," he

added.¶ China has expressed great interest in reaching a final bilateral investment deal partly because it sees greater foreign competition as a way to reinvigorate its slowing economy , say

analysts and people close to negotiations. China is struggling to reach its about 7% growth target for 2015, the slowest pace in 25 years.¶ But Beijing needs to convince vested interests inside the country's relatively closed economy to accept market-opening measures contained in any final deal with the U.S., which means that progress toward a full deal is likely to be slow.

Growth slowdown triggers massive instabilityWalter Russell Mead, 2/3/2009, The New Republic, “only makes you stronger,” https://newrepublic.com/article/63068/only-makes-you-stronger, mm

The greatest danger both to U.S.-China relations and to American power itself is probably not that China will rise too far, too

fast; it is that the current crisis might end China's growth miracle. In the worst-case scenario, the turmoil in the international economy will plunge China into a major economic downturn. The Chinese financial system will implode as loans to both state and private enterprises go bad. Millions or even tens of millions of Chinese will be unemployed in a country without an effective social safety net. The collapse of asset bubbles in the stock and

property markets will wipe out the savings of a generation of the Chinese middle class. The political consequences could include dangerous unrest --and a bitter climate of anti-foreign feeling that blames others for China's woes. (Think of Weimar Germany, when both Nazi and communist politicians blamed the West for Germany's economic travails.) Worse, instability could lead to a vicious cycle, as nervous investors moved their money out of the country, further slowing growth and, in turn, fomenting ever-greater bitterness. Thanks to a generation of rapid economic

growth, China has so far been able to manage the stresses and conflicts of modernization and change; nobody knows what will happen if the growth stops.

Instability and party collapse causes nuclear war

Yee & Storey 2 (Professor of Politics and International Relations at Hong Kong Baptist University and Lecturer in Defence Studies at Deakin University, The China Threat: Perceptions, Myths and Reality, pg. 5)

The fourth factor contributing to the perception of a China threat is the fear of political and economic collapse in the PRC, result ing in territorial fragmentation, civil war and waves of refugees pouring into neighbouring countries. Naturally, any or all of these scenarios would have a profoundly negative impact on regional stability. Today the Chinese leadership faces a raft of internal problems, including the increasing political demands of its citizens, a growing population, a shortage of natural resources and a deterioration in the natural environment caused by rapid industrialization and pollution. These problems are putting

a strain on the central government’s ability to govern effectively. Political disintegration or a Chinese civil war might result in millions of Chinese refugees seeking asylum in neighbouring countries . Such an unprecedented exodus of refugees from a collapsed PRC would no doubt put a severe strain on the limited resources of China’s neighbours. A fragmented China could also result in another nightmare scenario – nuclear weapons falling into the hands of irresponsible local provincial leaders or warlords .12 From this perspective, a disintegrating China would also pose a threat to its

neighbours and the world.

China Econ – SolvencyThe BIT is key to transitioning China’s economy away from export-led growthDeborah Lehr, 2/13/15, Paulson Institute, “why a US-China bilateral investment treaty matters,” http://www.paulsoninstitute.org/paulson-blog/2015/02/13/why-a-us-china-bilateral-investment-treaty-matters/, mm

A bilateral investment treaty (BIT) with China would benefit the economies of both the United States and China, by creating new streams of two-way trade and investment. The growing and interdependent economic relationship between the United States and China is the underlying fabric that binds our countries together. It provides a foundation that allows us to disagree on specific issues without threatening the overall relationship. As China becomes a more active player on the world stage, it’s important for the United States to work with China and to support their entry and full participation in global, rules-based institutions.¶ To delve into the importance of a bilateral investment treaty to both countries, the Paulson Institute—with its partners, Goldman Sachs, the US-China Business Council and the China Development Reform Foundation—convened a US-China CEO Investment Dialogue to explore the implications of a possible agreement to both countries. The discussions included the US Secretary of Commerce, the US Trade Representative, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the Chinese Ambassador, as well as leading US and Chinese CEOs, Mayors and high level opinion leaders. A lively discussion ensued about potential opportunities for increasing jobs, investment and exports. All agreed that it was important that China continue to be part of the rules based systems on trade.¶ As a former US trade negotiator with China during the WTO and other negotiations, I witnessed first hand how bringing China into the rules based trading systems pays off. In the early 1990s, one of the most transformational commitments we obtained came down to one important line. It simply required China to publish its own trade laws. Previously, China’s trade laws and regulations had been confidential; while companies were expected to abide by them, they could be arrested if they actually read or owned a copy. This requirement of transparency fundamentally changed the trading regime to the benefit of both Chinese and US companies. Two decades later, laws are published and commented on, making the

playing field more balanced.¶ China’s WTO accession provided a ten-year road map for opening and reform of China’s economy. It outlined how sectors would open to foreign competition. And both countries benefited from this transparency. Low cost Chinese exports to the United States have increased over 330 percent since the signing of the

agreement. And US exports to China rose by 533 percent since China’s accession.¶ Yet that ten-year road map ran out four years ago. A high standard bilateral investment treaty can fill the resulting gap. It would bring greater transparency and consistency to the investment environment for both countries .¶ A bilateral investment treaty would be good for China because the required opening of the market would bring in investments, encouraging more competition in the consumer and services sectors. That in turn would help China achieve its ambitious plan to transform its economic model away from export led growth to a more consumption based model . Such a treaty would also help clarify regulations for Chinese companies investing in the United States.

2AC Add-On – Cyber SecurityThe BIT is key to a follow-on cyber security regime – this prevents escaltory waves of cyber attacksScott J. Shackelford et al ’15 (* J.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Business Law and Ethics, Indiana University- Distinguished Visiting Fellow, University of Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study; Senior Fellow, Indiana University Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research. Eric L. Richards- J.D., L.L.M., Assistant Professor of Business Law and Ethics, Indiana University; Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law, Maurer School of Law, Indiana University; Visiting Fellow in International Commercial Law, Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary, University of London, Anjanette H. Raymond , J.D., Professor of Business Law, Indiana University; Chair, East Asian Initiatives, and Amanda N. Craig- J.D., Indiana University Maurer School of Law; Ms. C., University of Oxford, “Using BITs to Protect Bytes: Promoting Cyber Peace by Safeguarding Trade Secrets Through Bilateral Investment Treaties,” American Business Law Journal 52 Am. Bus. L.J. 1)

In December 2013, the U.K. government decided to expand the authority of one of its intelligence agencies, the Gov-ernment Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), to aid in the screening of incoming telecom products from Huawei, a leading Chinese manufacturer of information and communications technology. n1 British policy makers' fear, which is shared by the U.S. Congress, as well as other legislative bodies, is that Huawei's alleged close ties with the Chinese state could compromise national security. n2 Yet Huawei "has become a major player in the UK telecoms [*2] sector," n3 as it has in developed and emerging markets around the world, n4 underscoring the difficulty of promoting open markets while also managing cyber insecurity. Cyber attacks constitute a vast, evolving, and controversial class of incidents. In August 2013 alone, the Syrian Electronic Army allegedly launched cyber attacks against the New York Times and Twitter among other outlets, one of the largest cyber attacks in history targeted China, and new

revelations came to light regarding the National Security Agency's (NSA) surveillance programs. n5 Indeed, "cyber weapons" are being developed around the world without a transparent discussion about the circumstances in which they may be used. n6 But the specter of cyber warfare is far from the only component of the cyber threat; cybercrime and espionage are on the rise and pose significant challenges to companies and countries alike. n7 The true extent of cybercrime is unknown, but contested estimates have placed losses at $ 1 trillion for 2010, prompting U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, to suggest that "we are suffering what is probably the biggest transfer of wealth

through theft and piracy in the history of man-kind." n8 In addition, many nations are engaging [*3] in cyber espionage, including the theft of trade secrets, n9 prompting the consideration of novel strategies to enhance cybersecurity. One such strategy is presented in this arti-cle: using international trade law and particularly bilateral investment treaties (BITs) as a vehicle to mitigate cyber attacks and better protect trade secrets, which according to some estimates "comprise an average of two-thirds of the value of firms' information portfolios." n10 BITs long have been an important component of international investment law. n11 By 2013, there were 2857 BITs involving the vast majority of countries. n12 These agreements cover a huge range of industry sectors and business activities, and

generally include a forum for resolving disputes in the form of investor-state arbitration. n13 At the July 2013 U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, the United States and China publicized plans to begin ne-gotiating an expansive BIT that will reportedly include the difficult Issue of enhancing bilateral cybersecuri-ty. n14 According to U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew, if successful, this would be "the first time China has agreed to negotiate a bilateral investment treaty, to include all sectors and stages of investment, with another coun-try." n15 Although some questions already have arisen regarding the seriousness of both sides in the negotiations, with direct investment between China and the United States increasing and trade secrets theft showing few signs of abating, n16 the potential for significant progress that could help deepen the U.S.-Chinese cybersecurity dialogue exists . n17 Aside from BITs, cybersecurity is also becoming an important topic in regional and global trade negotiations. Ongoing U.S.-European

Union (EU) trade talks have been shaped at least initially by concerns over NSA surveillance programs and intellectual property (or IP) protections; n18 the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership also has a cyberse-curity component; n19 and even the World Trade Organization (WTO) employs enforcement mechanisms that may be applicable to cyber attacks if national security concerns could be

overcome. n20 Together, these investment and trade regimes could provide a basis for fostering bilateral and regional collaboration to enhance global cybersecurity generally and better protect trade secrets in particular at a time of slow progress on domestic and multi-lateral progress toward cybersecurity policy making. n21 Yet the applicability of these regimes to cybersecurity has been underappreciated in the literature to date. n22 The world trading community still lacks a cohesive international mechanism for the protection of foreign investments and cybersecurity. Thus, BITs could be instrumental in building a law of cyber peace applicable below the armed attack threshold . Although cyber attacks n26 in one form or another date back to at least the 1980s, n27 they have proliferated in num-bers, sophistication, and severity in recent years. Consider the events of January 12, 2010. On that day, Google re-ported that cyber attacks allegedly originating from within China had been directed at stealing Google's intellectual property along with data belonging to dozens of other firms. n28 These attacks, dubbed "Operation Aurora" by the cybersecurity firm McAfee, formed part of a sophisticated economic espionage campaign. n29 The attacks were noteworthy in part because of the type of intellectual property that was stolen: the companies' proprietary source code, which is its core trade secret. n30 Such an attack is indicative of changes in the cyber threat matrix-no longer would governments be the primary targets of sophisticated cyber attacks. According to Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research for McAfee, "We have never ever, outside of the defense industry, seen commercial industrial compa-nies come under that level of sophisticated attack." n31 Attacks such as [*8] Aurora have been termed "advanced persistent threats" (APTs). n32 Although governments and defense industries have long been addressing these sorts of incidents, corporate entities have also become targets of APTs as Aurora demonstrates. n33 Moreover, Aurora was particularly noteworthy because the campaign illustrated the extent to which state-sponsored attacks-in this case al-legedly emanating from China-are targeting companies' trade secrets. n34 Google is not alone in facing cyber attacks targeting its trade secrets. In early 2013, Facebook, Apple, and Mi-crosoft, along with a who's who of Fortune 500 companies, were compromised, in many cases multiple times. n35 Organized campaigns such as Operation Aurora are also proliferating. For example, more than seventy different gov-ernments and organizations, including the United Nations, India, the International Olympic Committee, and defense and security firms were the targets of cyber attacks (dubbed "Operation Shady RAT" by McAfee) in 2011. This cam-paign was also allegedly sponsored by China, though positive attribution in this case is exceptionally difficult. n36 Still, this evidence lends some credence to the U.S. Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive's conclusion that "Chinese actors are the world's most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage." n37 [*9] China, though, is not alone in sponsoring cyber attacks, and it is often used as a scapegoat given the ex-tent to which attacks are routed through porous Chinese systems. n38 For instance, any U.S. ambitions of stewarding global efforts to safeguard cybersecurity suffered a serious setback after revelations that the NSA hacked into millions of telephone and Internet communications. n39 Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff canceled a state visit to the United States in response to reports that the NSA had spied on both her and Petrobras, Brazil's national oil company. n40 Corporate managers in Germany have also voiced President Roussell's concern that the U.S. intelligence program "might have been used to steal trade secrets" n41 after learning that the NSA had eavesdropped on German Chancel-lor Angela Merkel. They viewed the reports as "confirmation of what they already knew: that powerful states want to steal their most prized secrets and these data must therefore be guarded at all costs." n42 In fact, an Ernst & Young [*10] survey of German companies, conducted in July 2013, concluded "the US now poses almost as big a risk as China when it comes to industrial espionage and data theft." n43 While none of the leaked reports provide evidence that the U.S. government has forwarded any stolen trade se-crets to U.S. businesses, n44 the damage to U.S. credibility as a global leader in cybersecurity is clear. n45 The situa-tion is fluid, though, with new reports surfacing in March 2014 of the NSA hacking into Huawei's systems, causing one spokesmen for the Chinese government to urge an end to cyber espionage. n46 At least in the short term, the worldwide furor over the revelations has forced the United States "to abandon its naming-and-shaming campaign against Chinese hacking." n47 This is troublesome in light of the fact that a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate pub-lished in February 2013 listed China in the first tier of offenders who hack for economic intelligence. n48 Neither the United States nor other victim nations should permit this controversy to thwart efforts to protect businesses from piracy. The U.S. International Trade Commission estimated that theft of intellectual [*11] prop-erty in China cost the U.S. economy nearly $ 50 billion in 2011. n49 Estimates of losses caused by Chinese trade secrets misappropriation alone were approximately $ 1.1 billion. n50 Some would argue that these losses are a direct result of China's official policy of "indigenous innovation," which encourages "enhancing original innovation through co-innovation and re-innovation based on the assimilation of imported technologies" as a fallback option

should true domestic innovation not transpire." n51 However, the key point is that the U.S.-China relationship is a critical one on which to focus given that it involves the two largest economies in the world with increasingly deep trade and investment links, and both countries are cyber superpowers developing some of the most advanced offensive and defensive cyber capabilities in the world .

This part attempts to put the proposed U.S.-China BIT and bilateral cybersecurity dialogue (explored further in Part III) in context by introducing the cyber threat to the private sector. The focus then narrows to an inquiry of trade secrets theft

and the failure of current conceptual approaches to mitigate this aspect of the cyber threat in the U.S.-China context. This part concludes with an introduction of the extent to which state-sponsored trade secrets theft might be mitigated by using investment and trade law to develop the law of cyber peace. However, it should be noted that categorizing cyber attacks into the topics of cybercrime, espionage, terrorism, and war is exceedingly difficult given the extent to which actors and motivations overlap, and doing so has arguably not been all that effective. n52 For example, in the instance of trade secrets theft, the motivations are often more than merely economic, and the ac-tors involved often come from various sources not restricted to the private sector. Thus,

trade secrets theft straddles the categories of economic espionage and cybercrime, n53 and has involved state sponsorship in the past, including in the Operation Aurora and Shady RAT campaigns. Instead of classifying cyber attacks according to existing pigeon holes, policy makers may more productively analyze strategies to manage cyber attacks occurring below the armed attack threshold to help build a global culture of cybersecurity. n54 This necessitates framing a law of cyber peace to help regulate the vast majority of cyber attacks, including trade secrets theft, cybercrime, and espionage. Applying international investment and trade law represents one facet of this movement. Before taking a deep dive into this area, though, it is necessary to first finish our introduction of the cyber threat by focusing on trade se-crets. As the previous sections demonstrated, numerous bilateral, regional, and multilateral legal mechanisms may contrib-ute to enhancing global cybersecurity. The challenge is vast and will likely require that several of these mechanisms work in concert.

Given that the United States and China are global economic and cyber powers, their support is critical to developing cyber norms, including more robust legal protection against economic espionage. n160 As such, this part focuses on the background and negotiation process of the U.S.-China BIT, seeking ultimately

to evaluate whether a U.S.-China BIT could properly include a trade secrets theft or related provision designed to protect intellectual property in these nations and, ultimately, enhance bilateral cybersecurity. To do so, this part begins by briefly dis-cussing U.S.-China FDI and trade secrets theft. Next, it analyzes the evolution of Chinese BITs, demonstrating Chi-na's changing interests and recent flexibility. Finally, this part discusses the U.S.-China BIT, for which negotiations were relaunched in july 2013. It evaluates U.S. and Chinese issues and goals in the BIT negotiation process, potential trade secrets treaty language to enhance cybersecurity, and the impact of investor-state arbitration treaty language on a final agreement. A. U.S.-China FDI In the mid-2000s, after China joined the WTO and as it experienced rapid economic growth, a misperception about the flow of U.S. FDI and its impact in China and on U.S.-China trade persisted. n161 While U.S. investment in China was certainly significant, U.S. FDI represented only about [*35] one percent of foreign investment in China. n162 Likewise, Chinese FDI represented less than one percent of foreign investment in the United States. n163 Interesting-ly, during the same time frame, China and the United States initiated relatively few BITs. n164 Eventually, though, both countries came to recognize the mutual opportunity to expand into one another's market. Indeed, according to U.S. government statistics, U.S. investment in China nearly doubled from 2007 to 2008, and Chinese investment in the United States more than quadrupled over the next five years. n165 In June 2008, at the conclusion of the Fourth Cabinet-Level Meeting of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, the United States and China announced their inten-tions to relaunch BIT negotiations, n166 which had first been initiated in the 1980s. However, from 2008 to 2013, ne-gotiators made little progress. Still, relative to the United States' and China's contributions as the largest economies in the world, as well as their "weight in global trade," their bilateral investment in each other's economies is "significantly underweighted." n167 Even so, "[i]n recent years, China has ramped up its FDI into the United States and shown itself to be a key player on the world overseas investment stage." n168 As importantly, "Chinese FDI into the U.S. after 2008 has been targeted more toward technology-sector [*36] acquisitions of existing facilities, as well as a growing number of greenfield investments." n169 However, historic hesitancies continue today as Chinese in-vestment in the United States still represents less than one percent of total incoming FDI (see Figures I and 2), n170 and U.S. investment in China only represents one to two percent of outgoing U.S. FDI (see Figures 3 and 4). n171 Market access issues have been among the largest stumbling blocks to increased U.S. FDI in China as "U.S. in-vestors face barriers or ownership limits in about 90 Chinese sectors," n172 including transportation, telecommunica-tion, chemical, and energy companies, as well as the service sector. n173 Notably, as is discussed below, until July 2013, China resisted agreeing to market access obligations, preserving its "discretion over investment approvals." n174 Meanwhile, Chinese investors in the United States fear "political backlash" over Chinese ownership, nation-al-security based congressional rejections, and visa difficulties among other challenges n175-as was briefly alluded to in the Huawei saga in the Introduction. n176

As such, negotiating an investment treaty that addresses these issues "could dramatically expand business opportunities for both countries." n177 B. U.S.-Chinese Trade Secrets Theft As has been introduced, a looming challenge to U.S.-China bilateral investment involves the theft and misappropriation of trade secrets . Unfortunately, a difficult history exists between China and the United States in terms of the theft of trade secrets, and the issue does not seem to be dissipating . For example, in 2013 the U.S. Trade Representa-tive's Office criticized China for failing to deter both cyber and conventional theft of U.S. trade secrets. n178 This was not based on a particular case. Meanwhile, a White House report cites numerous examples of trade secrets theft, a

majority of which were allegedly perpetuated by Chinese firms or individuals. n179 Likewise, Chinese officials have accused the United [*42] States of cyber espionage--accusations that have been given added weight by former NSA contractor Edward

Snowden's revelations. n180 Because of the significant economic and security problems that trade secrets theft poses and the high-profile accusations that each country has increasingly slung at the other, a provision about trade secrets theft in a U.S.-China BIT would represent an important step toward deepening cooperation on cybersecurity issues.

Cyber attacks cause nuclear war – accidents Gady 15 (Franz Stefan, Associate Editor of The Diplomat, Senior Fellow with the EastWest Institute. Article quotes: James Cartwright, retired US Marine Corps General and eighth Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Greg Austin of the EastWest Institute in New York, and Pavel Sharikov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, “Could Cyber Attacks Lead to Nuclear War?”, http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/could-cyber-attacks-lead-to-nuclear-war/)

Short fuses on U.S. and Russian strategic forces have particularly increased the risk of accidental nuclear war, according to Cartwright, while ”the sophistication of the cyberthreat [to nuclear weapons] has increased exponentially.” “One-half of their [U.S. and Russian] strategic arsenals are continuously maintained on high alert. Hundreds of missiles carrying nearly 1,800 warheads are ready to fly at a moment’s notice,” a policy report compiled by a study group chaired by the retired U.S. general

summarized. “At the brink of conflict, nuclear command and warning networks around the world may be besieged by electronic intruders whose onslaught degrades the coherence and rationality of nuclear decision-making,” the report further points out. The War Games-like scenario could unfold in one of the following three ways: First, sophisticated attackers from cyberspace could spoof U.S. or Russian early warning networks into reporting that nuclear missiles have been launched, which would demand immediate retaliatory strikes according to both nations’ nuclear warfare

doctrines. Second, online hackers could manipulate communication systems into issuing unauthorized launch orders to missile crews. Third and last, attackers could directly hack into missile c ommand a n d c ontrol systems launching the weapon or dismantling it on site ( a highly unlikely scenario). To reduce the likelihood of such an scenario ever occurring, Cartwright proposes that Moscow and Washington should adjust their nuclear war contingency plan timetables from calling for missiles to be launched within 3 to 5 minutes to 24 to 72 hours. Reducing the lead time to prepare nuclear missiles for launch would not diminish the deterrent value of the weapons, Cartwright, who headed Strategic Command from 2004 to 2007 and was vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before retiring in 2011, emphasized. However, the Obama White House has so far rejected the idea, particularly due to the recent deterioration of U.S.-Russia relations. Also, Robert Scher, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities, testified in Congress this month arguing “it did not make any great sense to de-alert forces” because nuclear missiles “needed to be ready and effective and able to prosecute the mission at any point in time.” Cartwright’s credibility may have also suffered among Washington policy circles ever since he has been under investigation for leaking information about the top secret Stuxnet virus – a sophisticated cyber weapon

allegedly jointly developed by Israel and the United States – to the New York Times. Nevertheless, a co-authored paper, seen in

draft by The Diplomat, argues that “ cyber weapons and strategies have brought us to a situation of aggravated nuclear instability that needs to be more explicitly and more openly addressed in the diplomacy of leading powers, both in private and in public.” The authors, Greg Austin of the EastWest Institute in New York (and a regular contributor to The Diplomat) and Pavel Sharikov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, have concluded that “Russia now sees U.S. plans to disrupt the command and control of its nuclear weapons as the only actual (current) threat at the strategic level of warfare.” Laura Saalman of the Asia Pacific Research Centre in Hawaii has also warned of the need to look at the impact of U.S. strategies and nuclear force posture on China in a 2014 paper titled “Prompt Global Strike: China and the Spear”.

Cyber Security – SolvencyBIT solves US-China cybersecurity disputeShackelford et al 2015 – J.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Business Law and Ethics, Indiana University; Distinguished Visiting Fellow, University of Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study; Senior Fellow, Indiana University Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research. Eric L. Richards, J.D., Professor of Business Law, Indiana University; Chair, East Asian Initiatives. Anjanette H. Raymond, J.D., L.L.M., Assistant Professor of Business Law and Ethics, Indiana University; Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law, Maurer School of Law, Indiana University; Visiting Fellow in International Commercial Law, Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary, University of London. and Amanda N. Craig. J.D., Indiana University Maurer School of Law; Ms. C., University of Oxford. (“Using BITs to Protect Bytes: Promoting Cyber Peace by Safeguarding Trade Secrets Through Bilateral Investment Treaties,” 52 Am. Bus. L.J. 1)

Although cyber attacks n26 in one form or another date back to at least the 1980s, n27 they have proliferated in numbers, sophistication, and severity in recent years. Consider the events of January 12, 2010. On that day, Google reported that cyber attacks allegedly originating from within China had been directed at stealing Google's intellectual property along with data belonging to dozens of other firms. n28 These attacks, dubbed "Operation Aurora" by the cybersecurity firm McAfee, formed part of a sophisticated economic espionage campaign. n29 The attacks were noteworthy in part because of the type of intellectual property that was stolen: the companies' proprietary source code, which is its core trade secret. n30 Such an attack is indicative of changes in the cyber threat matrix-no longer would governments be the primary targets of sophisticated cyber attacks. According to Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research for McAfee, "We have never ever, outside of the defense industry, seen commercial industrial companies come under that level of sophisticated attack." n31 Attacks such as [*8] Aurora have been termed "advanced persistent threats" (APTs). n32 Although governments and defense industries have long been addressing these sorts of incidents, corporate entities have also become targets of APTs

as Aurora demonstrates. n33 Moreover, Aurora was particularly noteworthy because the campaign illustrated the extent to which state-sponsored attacks-in this case allegedly emanating from China-are targeting companies' trade secrets. n34 Google is not alone in facing cyber attacks targeting its trade secrets. In early 2013, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft, along with a who's who of Fortune 500 companies, were compromised, in many cases multiple times. n35 Organized campaigns such as Operation Aurora are also proliferating. For example, more than seventy different governments and organizations, including the United Nations, India, the International Olympic Committee, and defense and security firms were the targets of cyber attacks (dubbed "Operation Shady RAT" by McAfee) in 2011. This campaign was also allegedly sponsored by China, though positive attribution in this case is exceptionally difficult. n36 Still, this evidence lends some credence to the U.S. Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive's conclusion that "Chinese actors are the world's most active and persistent perpetrators of economic

espionage." n37 [*9] China, though, is not alone in sponsoring cyber attacks, and it is often used as a scapegoat given the extent to which attacks are routed through porous Chinese systems. n38 For instance, any U.S. ambitions of stewarding global efforts to safeguard cybersecurity suffered a serious setback after revelations that the NSA hacked into millions of telephone and Internet communications. n39 Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff canceled a state visit to the United States in response to reports that the NSA had spied on both her and Petrobras, Brazil's national oil company. n40 Corporate managers in Germany have also voiced President Roussell's concern that the U.S. intelligence program "might have been used to steal trade secrets" n41 after learning that the NSA had eavesdropped on German Chancellor Angela Merkel. They viewed the reports as "confirmation of what they already knew: that powerful states want to steal their most prized secrets and these data must therefore be guarded at all costs." n42 In fact, an Ernst & Young [*10] survey of German companies, conducted in July 2013, concluded "the US now poses almost as big a risk as China when it comes to industrial espionage and data theft." n43 While none of the leaked reports provide

evidence that the U.S. government has forwarded any stolen trade secrets to U.S. businesses, n44 the damage to U.S. credibility as a global leader in cybersecurity is clear. n45 The situation is fluid, though, with new reports surfacing in March 2014 of the NSA hacking into Huawei's systems, causing one spokesmen for the Chinese government to urge an end to cyber espionage. n46 At least in the short term,

the worldwide furor over the revelations has forced the United States "to abandon its naming-and-shaming campaign against Chinese hacking." n47 This is troublesome in light of the fact that a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate published in February 2013 listed China in the first tier of offenders who hack for economic intelligence. n48 Neither the United States nor other victim nations should permit this controversy to thwart efforts to protect businesses from piracy. The U.S. International Trade Commission estimated that theft of intellectual [*11] property in China cost the U.S. economy nearly $ 50 billion in 2011. n49 Estimates of losses caused by Chinese trade secrets misappropriation alone were approximately $ 1.1 billion. n50 Some would argue that these losses are a direct result of China's official policy of "indigenous innovation," which encourages "enhancing original innovation through co-innovation and re-innovation based on the assimilation of imported technologies" as a fallback

option should true domestic innovation not transpire." n51 However, the key point is that the U.S.-China relationship is a critical one on which to focus given that it involves the two largest economies in the world with

increasingly deep trade and investment links, and both countries are cyber superpowers developing some of the most advanced offensive and defensive cyber capabilities in the world.

This part attempts to put the proposed U.S.-China BIT and bilateral cybersecurity dialogue (explored further in Part III) in context by introducing the cyber threat to the private sector. The focus then narrows to an inquiry of trade secrets theft and the failure of current conceptual approaches to

mitigate this aspect of the cyber threat in the U.S.-China context. This part concludes with an introduction of the extent to which state-sponsored trade secrets theft might be mitigated by using investment and trade law to develop the law of cyber peace. However, it should be noted that categorizing cyber attacks into the topics of cybercrime, espionage, terrorism, and war is exceedingly difficult given the extent to which actors and motivations overlap, and doing so has arguably not been all that effective. n52 For example, in the instance of trade secrets theft, the motivations are often more than merely economic, and the actors involved often come from various sources not restricted to the private sector. Thus, trade secrets theft straddles the categories of economic espionage and [*12] cybercrime, n53 and has involved state sponsorship in the past, including in the Operation Aurora and Shady RAT campaigns. Instead of classifying cyber attacks according to existing pigeon holes, policy makers may more productively analyze strategies to manage cyber attacks occurring below the armed attack threshold to help build a global culture of cybersecurity. n54 This necessitates framing a law of cyber peace to help regulate the vast majority of cyber attacks, including trade secrets theft, cybercrime, and espionage. Applying international investment and trade law represents one facet of this movement. Before taking a deep dive into this area, though, it is necessary to first finish our introduction of the cyber threat by focusing on trade secrets.

AT Politics

Plan PopularThe plan would be popular – Republicans would overwhelmingly support the BITC. Fred Bergsten, February 2015, Peterson Institute for International Economics, “toward a US-China investment treaty,” https://piie.com/publications/briefings/piieb15-1.pdf, mm

The restoration of Republican control of the Senate in 2015 should help the prospects for ratification¶ of a BIT because Republicans are more pro-trade, pro-FDI, and generally more pro- business (the biggest sup-porters of the BIT) than Democrats. They may also be a bit less sympathetic to China than the Democrats. On¶ balance, however, this shift in the Senate is likely to be supportive of the proposed BIT. Since the Democrats¶ could regain control of the Senate in the 2016 election, when many more Republican incumbents will be on¶ the ballot, proponents of the BIT should make a major effort to reach agreement quickly enough to place the¶ issue before the current Senate.

BIT solves security concerns – binds China to predictable rulesNguyen 2016 (Yen, “Bilateral Investment Treaty,” Balancing Cooperation and Competition: A New Era In U.S.-China Relations Task Force Report March 2016 The Henry M. Jackson Foundation at the University of Washington)

Congress had proved to be difficult towards the “openness of the United States to Chinese capital.”35 For instance, when Chinese enterprises had begun seeking opportunities to invest in the U.S., a significant concern from Beijing was that Washington would block them for security reasons. This concern turned out to be correct. The blockage, however, was not only from the executive branch, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, but also from Congress. Congress feared that Chinese companies would be free-riding on the haven of U.S. opportunities and dodging security reviews while U.S. investors and potential investors, would still suffer from restrictions within China.36 Similarly, CFIUS is unwilling to change its procedures and track record of using political pressure to not jeopardize national security.37 However, with a complete BIT, the fears of Congress and CFIUS would be alleviated. Upon this treaty, “A U.S.-China BIT is unlikely to change the CFIUS process because of the difficult political climate, but it could foster greater disclosure of unclassified evidence, arguments, and allegations considered in CFIUS deliberations.”38 CFIUS can use the opportunity of the BIT or other investment agreement talks to lay out conditions for Chinese investors so that the U.S. national security isn’t compromised, thus alleviating CFIUS’ concerns.

Empirically Congress supports BITs to open up markets – China is implementing reforms now which make the plan popular Chilton 15

Adam Chilton. March 2015. The Politics of the United States' Bilateral Investment Treaty Program. Assistant Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School. http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2409&context=law_and_economics

Second, two independent variables are used to test whether a counties’ political importance to the United States drove BIT formation. The first is the natural log of the amount of Military Aid received

from the United States in a given year. Previous research has suggested that military aid is a strong proxy for political importance to the United States because the recipients of military aid are perhaps the most crucial states to U.S. foreign policy objectives (Meernik, Krueger, and Poe 1998; Poe and Meernick 1995). If the U.S. BITs program was motivated by political

considerations, Military Aid should have a positive effect on the likelihood of a BIT being signed. The second variable that measures a country’s political importance is whether the country was a Former Communist state.13 At the end of the Cold War, securing and improving relationships with countries from the former Eastern Bloc was a major foreign policy goal of the United States . In fact, in the Support for

Eastern European Democracy (SEED) Act of 1989, Congress specifically urged the President to sign BITs with Poland and Hungary.14 Although the United States likely also hoped to open up these markets for investment, improving relationships with these countries was a clear priority independent of any economic concerns. As a result, if the U.S. BITs program was motivated by economic factors, Former Communist should have a positive effect on the likelihood of a BIT being signed (even after conditioning on investment considerations).

AT Elections

Plan PopularStimulating investment solves the linkIkenson 2012 – Daniel Ikenson is director of the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. (“Trade Policy Priority One: Averting a U.S.-China “Trade War”,” http://www.cato.org/publications/free-trade-bulletin/trade-policy-priority-one-averting-uschina-trade-war?utm_source=Cato+Institute+Emails&utm_campaign=c986bc133f-Cato_Today&utm_medium=email&mc_cid=c986bc133f&mc_eid=348d0d3f0a)

The most significant determinant of the quality and direction of the U.S.-China relationship is American self-confidence. In other

words, U.S.-China relations will be driven more by actions in Washington than by actions in Beijing. If the U.S. economy starts to grow at a stronger pace and businesses begin to invest and hire more rigorously, the temptation of politicians and the media to scapegoat China for self-induced, domestic woes will diminish.

BITs are popular with the public– protecting investors is popular Chilton 15Adam Chilton. March 2015. The Politics of the United States' Bilateral Investment Treaty Program. Assistant Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School. http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2409&context=law_and_economics

The foundation of this theory is the idea that there are four features of BITs make them a particularly useful foreign policy tool from the United States perspective. First, BITs are inexpensive. Unlike other tools that can be used

to improve alliances—such as foreign aid— BITs do not require the United States to outlay funds. Second, BITs require the United States to only make “redundant” promises (or at least they were initially seen by U.S. policymakers that way (Gann 1985, 374)). That is to say, investors with capital in the United States are already given access to U.S. courts, and the

government believed that it was unlikely to expropriate foreign investment in any event.6 Thus, the promises extracted from the United States were things the government had already pledged to do and thus created no

new obligations. Third, BITs are easy to sell domestically. To both the United States Congress and the public, these treaties can be presented as a way to ensure that American investors are protected and given the same legal rights abroad that America extends to foreigners . Fourth, there is

a standard model in place so that negotiating additional BITs requires relatively little effort.7

AT Topicality

BIT = Economic EngagementThe BIT is an example of economic engagementMannish Singh, 6/24/15, Forbes, “forget the TPP, let’s talk about the BIT with china,” http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2015/06/24/forget-the-tpp-lets-talk-about-the-bit-with-china/#1392c8897c53, mm

China is a part of the American economic equation and U.S. policy makers must find ways to acknowledge this fact. The BIT will not compensate for violations of international trade laws or immediately remedy the

portion of the trade deficit attributable to China. It would, however, create a new set of rules to give U.S. investors greater ability to access a market with enormous potential and provide a certain set of remedies if they are not accorded fair treatment. China’s President Xi is establishing relationships around the region, including strong new economic partnerships with both Russia and India and has established a bank to compete with the U.S.-led World Bank. In light of global economic and geopolitical realities as well as our own best interest, our posture toward China

should be one of thoughtful, strategic engagement rather than one of adversarial retreat. A high standard, carefully negotiated BIT presents one opportunity for such engagement .