Bunche Hall, Rm 10383
The centralization of power under Xi Jinping and the likelihood that he will serve for life have raised the question about the future of China under the leadership of an ageing but powerful individual. Will China experience similar political turmoil and economic setback as it did during the last decade of Mao Zedong's rule? How will the Chinese Communist Party adapt and survive in adverse domestic and external environments? Can the party handle the difficult succession problem? What are the possibilities of major policy adjustments under Xi's rule if the current negative trajectories continue? As access to information about elite politics, economic conditions, and policy-making process in China becomes increasingly limited, we can only turn to China's past for insights into its future.

This CCS event features a dialogue between Dr. Minxin Pei and Dr. Guoguang Wu and a Q&A session moderated by Prof. Alex Wang.

Minxin Pei, the Tom and Margot Pritzker '72 Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College and used to work as a senior associate in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a frequent contributor to a number of newspapers and periodicals, including The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Diplomat, Fortune, and Foreign Affairs, and is an opinion columnist of Bloomberg. His recent books include The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China (forthcoming, Harvard University Press), China's Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay (Harvard 2016), and China's Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Harvard University Press, 2006)

Guoguang Wu is a political scientist and senior research scholar at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, Stanford University. In the late 1980s, he worked in Beijing as an editorialist and a political commentator in Renmin Ribao (The People's Daily) and, concurrently, a policy adviser on political reform and a speechwriter to the Zhao Ziyang leadership. His research specializes in Chinese politics and comparative political economy.
He is the author of four books, including China’s Party Congress: Power, Legitimacy, and Institutional Manipulation (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and Globalization against Democracy: A Political Economy of Capitalism After its Global Triumph (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Alex Wang is a professor of law at UCLA Law School & the Walter and Shirley Wang Chair in U.S.-China Relations and Communications. His research focuses on the law and politics of Chinese environmental governance and his previous work has examined Chinese climate policy, U.S.-China environmental cooperation and competition, environmental bureaucracy, information disclosure, public interest litigation, the role of state-owned enterprises in environmental governance, and symbolic uses of governance reform.

Sponsor(s): Center for Chinese Studies