Who would have imagined street stalls could grab so much attention in China? Premier Li Keqiang’s comments about expanding street stalls to promote employment and the apparent pushback by Xi Jinping’s allies against his proposal have also revealed something that has become an afterthought in the Xi era: the power and importance of the [...]
Huawei has steadily emerged as a 5G pioneer, showing how a Chinese company can become a global heavyweight. Yet it has also become a different kind of pioneer: the first victim of a foreign blockade of Chinese technology companies, which could upend Beijing’s plans to become a global tech leader. The argument underpinning [...]
Xi Jinping said it and the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) confirmed it: it’s a new era, including for the party and its process of institutionalization. Xi entered the congress as a very powerful leader, but one who still respected almost all of the traditions and precedents that guided Chinese [...]
It really is a new era. As members of China’s Politburo Standing Committee walked onto the stage to greet the press, it became clear that no successor to President Xi Jinping has been anointed. Instead, three politicians born in the 1960s – Hu Chunhua, Chen Miner and Ding Xuexiang – have become members of [...]
Until recently, Sun Zhengcai, the party secretary of the metropolis of Chongqing, “the Chicago on the Yangtze”, was seen as a possible successor to Xi Jinping. Then, in July, the Communist Party of China launched an investigation against him for corruption, leading to Sun’s dismissal from office and the precipitous end to his political [...]
China’s political system has two problems. The first is its secrecy. The second problem, though, is very different: the simplified, hyperbolic caricature often presented in the West, where Chinese politics is usually depicted as a totally unpredictable fight for power. In this view, political events in China are simply the result of a power [...]
Over the past three years, a narrative about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s desire to remain at China’s helm for another five or ten years after 2022 has steadily taken hold. Together with this “Xi Forever” narrative, there has been growing speculation that, in order to break a precedent that requires leaders to retire at [...]