his talk will invite robust audience  engagement on a topic of interest to all: China’s place in a changing  world. The talk will begin with a lively back-and-forth between Steve  Marsheid and Terry Cooke on three focal issues pertinent to the topic:  (1) China’s exercise of soft power (economic & cultural), hard power  (militarization), and sharp power (economic coercion, as cited by last  week’s G7 leaders) internationally; (2) China’s intertwined interests in  Ukraine and Taiwan; and (3) China’s bid to build an alternative to the  U.S./Western-led liberal, rules-based, democratic global order.

This will set the stage for a longer-than-typical audience involvement  segment, structured not strictly as Q&A but more so as open  discussion on these and other sub-topics. To engage the maximum number  of people in productive and enjoyable consideration of the myriad  perspectives that can be brought to bear on this broad topic, we  encourage all participants to cultivate a Taoist approach – led more be  questions than advocacy of fixed positions and favoring brevity over  discursiveness.  The idea is that we’re all like the blind-folded Indian  sages feeling different parts of the elephant.  The whole will  ultimately best be apprehended by attending to all the individual  perspectives.