The benign depiction of the Belt and Road Initiative as a New Silk Road or a Marshall Plan, or even as a project aiming to aid developing countries, seems to be a thing of the past. A negative narrative has taken over, depicting the belt and road as a risky initiative that may burden [...]
Now that China has done away with presidential term limits, Xi Jinping can retain all his current titles and power long into the future. Most commentary defending the move argues that Xi is consolidating power to push through difficult reforms and strengthen China, and that he wants to remain in charge beyond 2022 to [...]
The narrative of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as spanning over 65 countries and gathering 62 percent of the world population, 31 percent of its GDP, and 40 percent of global land area should once and for all disappear now that China has announced the extension of the BRI to Latin America. Ever [...]
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 [...]
After Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic Party primary and was then elected US president, he offered her the post of secretary of state. In Australia, Julia Gillard did the same once she unseated Kevin Rudd from the prime ministership in 2010: she named him foreign minister. Throughout the world, the [...]
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 [...]
A party strategy “If we fail to handle this issue [corruption] well, it could prove fatal to the party and even cause the collapse of the party and the fall of the state”. Thus spoke the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party at the party’s 18th National Congress, in November 2012. This ominous warning [...]