Until 1989, the concept of “generations” within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership did not exist. The founding fathers of the People’s Republic of China had been invariably referred to as “old generation revolutionaries” (lao yi dai ge ming jia), but no further delineation was made to differentiate veteran leaders. “First-generation leadership” was posthumously reconstructed by Deng Xiaoping. According to Deng, the CCP’s leaders from 1921 to 1935 were not worth consideration because none of them had been mature enough. The first mature CCP leadership started with Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, and Zhu De.¹

Deng also dismissed Mao’s...

In this chapter we aim to answer a key question on contemporary China by narrating the evolution of China’s formal political structures since the reform and open door policy of the late 1970s: To what extent have China’s formal political structures developed to either constrain or empower China’s political leadership in policy making and implementation in their response to a changing political environment, in particular the responses by the new leadership under the helm of Xi Jinping? In the pre-reform era, Mao Zedong’s personal dictatorship caused political disaster for China, both during the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961) and during...

China’s new leaders inherit an economy that has experienced unprecedented economic success over the last thirty years, but they also face profound economic and political challenges. The first part of this chapter sketches China’s current economic landscape, noting a few political landmarks as well. It describes the achievements and the rapidly changing economic conditions and emphasizes that both the achievements and the changes have contributed to a crisis of confidence in the ability of China’s new leaders to get out in front of change and implement reforms. The second part analyzes the choices the new leaders face in confronting a...

China’s domestic situation presents what seem like glaring contradictions. On the one hand Chinese citizens express considerable optimism about their own lives. For instance, some 70 percent of Chinese say that they and their families are better off now than they were five years ago, and nearly as many believe they will be better off five years from now.¹ Although a growing number of Chinese (50 percent, compared to 39 percent of four years prior) see corruption as a major problem, 45 percent agree that most will succeed if they work hard (though 33 percent believe hard work is no...

In the wake of the Eighteenth Party Congress, a growing call rose within Chinese policy-making circles for the adoption of a “grand strategy” by the incoming leadership of Xi Jinping. China already has five-and tenyear plans, but many believed the country lacked an overall plan for its rising international standing and expanding global interests. The demand was voiced from both within and outside the Communist Party. Outspoken international affairs scholars debated this issue in public and proposed various grand strategies for the new leadership.¹ It is broadly believed that the adoption of a grand strategy by the Chinese leadership would...

The emergence of new foreign policy actors in China is transforming the country’s decision-making environment.¹ As China has become more powerful—economically, politically, and militarily—its global outreach has expanded. Simultaneously, the number of groups and institutions seeking to influence China’s foreign policy has multiplied. Decisions made about China’s policies in the international arena, on issues ranging from commerce and investment to anti-piracy and climate change, affect broad sectors of Chinese society and are scrutinized by the numerous actors who wish to advance their own agendas. These actors are both influential organizations or institutions within the official decision-making apparatus of...

We live in an age of increasing international normativity. To a degree unprecedented in history, the world is governed by international “regimes,” which can be defined as the formal and informal norms and institutions that regulate interactions at the supranational level—that is, on global, regional, multilateral, and bilateral bases, and usually, but not exclusively, among nationstates.¹ After World War II, and then with renewed vigor since the mid-1970s, these international regimes have increased in number, complexity, and scope, and—more controversially, but supported by most scholarship—in actual influence over the behavior of states and other international actors.²

The...

Countries that are economically interdependent are disposed to behaving peacefully toward one another, more so than they would absent such interdependence. This is the view that Immanuel Kant articulated in what has subsequently become a widely applauded thesis. When applied to China, the Kantian peace thesis holds that China’s increasing integration with the global economy is placing the country in a situation of ever-expanding economic interdependence. In more concrete terms, the Kantian argument would hold that its dependence on exports and foreign investments and imports of technology and natural resources, as well as its huge investments in bonds in the...

Since 2009 East Asia has become more volatile, with tensions and disputes arising in the Korean Peninsula, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea. All of these security flashpoints have involved China. China’s heavyhanded security policy has deepened the apprehensions of many regional states toward China, so much so that by 2012 China’s relations with the United States and much of the region were in a worse state than they had ever been in the previous two decades. Not even its economic importance as an exporter of inexpensive goods, as an investor, or as an official aid provider...