Party leadership, governance, law and the machinery of the Chinese state. 73 articles from 2002 to 2022.
The early 1980s saw the first glimpses of China's domestic reforms and interactions with people and economies outside China. This loosening was dangerous territory for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which...
This is an edited version of the original book review published in the U.S. China Perception Monitor , November 15, 2021. https://uscnpm.org/2021/11/15/review-desmond-shums-red-roulette/ Book Review: Desmond...
The security and economic landscape in the Indo-Pacific is increasingly difficult to navigate. While trade agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the...
On March 13, 1988, at the height of Gorbachev’s glasnost’ policy, an elderly teacher from Leningrad named Nina Andreeva published a letter in a conservative (i.e. anti-perestroika) Russian newspaper, defending...
Every year since the death of Mao, it has become increasingly clear that China is on the rise and likely – though never certain – to emerge as a superpower. These four-and-a-half decades were not without...
Thank you very much for the kind introduction. I want to thank the World Trade Center, The Carter Center and the China Research Center for inviting me to be here with you. I am honored there are many people on...
This essay is a response to the The Carter Center’s Report, “Finding Firmer Ground.” The Carter Center recently released a report, entitled Finding Firmer Ground: The Role of Civil Society and NGOs in...
Describing Taiwan as an island is appropriate both literally and figuratively. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it lies about 100 miles off China’s southeastern coast. It is surrounded by the South China...
On September 3, 2015, the Commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of the Victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and The World Anti-Fascist War military parade was underway...
In January 2020, Charles Lieber, the Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, was led into a federal court in Boston in a yellow jumpsuit and handcuffs. Lieber, whose...
Editor’s note: Dr. Barry Naughton, the China Research Center’s 2020 annual lecturer, sat down for a wide-ranging interview with China Currents Managing Editor Penelope Prime and Center associates John Garver...
Introduction Ethiopia has emerged as one of China’s closest political and economic partners in China’s wider engagement in Africa. In exchange for infrastructure development and support in its ambitions for...
What to think about China and its rising power? What is the historical background and contemporary rationale behind the many and varied views about the emergence of China on the global stage? How to understand...
Introduction Over the past two years, U.S. officials have frequently pointed out China’s negative effects on the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region’s development and stability. U.S. Secretary of State...
The full-fledged economic ties between China, Latin America, and the Caribbean are important indicators of China’s role as a global player. In the ongoing and heightened debate about China’s rise, China’s...
Introduction Since the beginning of the 21st century, China’s presence in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has been substantial in practically all socio-economic fields: cultural, bilateral, and...
An Interview with Yawei Liu conducted by Sun Lu Liu Yawei is the director of the China Program at The Carter Center in the United States and member of the China Research Center’s Board of Directors. Sun Lu is...
In late 2012, early 2013, newly selected Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping ordered an intensification of the regime’s ongoing attack on corruption. Party investigators and the...
Since the publication of my review of Chinese administrative reform in China Currents five years ago, significant changes have happened in China’s governance system. Most notable is the debut of a new round of...
Centuries before President Donald Trump began withdrawing from multilateral trade agreements and retreating from international leadership roles, while promising to build a “big, beautiful wall,” there was...
Suing the Rural Chinese State and the Shift from Tax Reform to Land Seizures Introduction Beginning in the 1990s, both scholars and central officials repeatedly suggested that taxes and fees imposed on...
Students of international relations have long pondered the question of world political order and its changes. It is generally believed that either a shift of the distribution and concentration of power in the...
Xi Jinping's 19th Party Congress Report Just after the 19 th Party Congress in October, when a second volume of Xi Jinping’s Thoughts was published, I quickly moved to order my own copy through Amazon. Weeks...
China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative is perhaps the most ambitious development plan ever devised by any nation-state. Plans call for trillions of dollars to be invested in roads, railways, and ports to...
Three issues bedevil Sino-Indian relations at present. These are the long-pending boundary dispute, the huge trade deficit in favor of China, and the Chinese initiated “One Belt, One Road” proposal, which –...
Iran is emerging as an arena of rivalry between China and India. Beijing is using its substantial leverage with Tehran to persuade Iran to expand cooperation in economic, connectivity, political, and security...
This piece was originally published by the China Policy Institute: Analysis , based at the School of Politics and International Relations, the University of Nottingham. An earlier article in China Currents...
Penelope B. Prime , Georgia State University Chinese goods seem to be everywhere these days. Consider this: At the Olympics in Rio this summer, Chinese companies supplied the mascot dolls, much of the sports...
A review of China’s Future? David Shambaugh, London: Polity Press, 2016. John W. Garver, Emeritus Professor Georgia Institute of Technology A leading U.S. authority on China’s politics, David Shambaugh of...
The photo depicts Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meeting President Hu Jintao in 2006, and is from TV footage from Times Now in India. This photo is used in the cover art for the book Are We Deceiving Ourselves...
Rap propaganda is the latest manifestation of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s campaign to consolidate power using soft culture tropes to massage his image with audiences in China. Early in 2016, an official rap...
A 2011 biography of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah or king of Iran from 1941 to 1979, lays out a number of haunting similarities between Iran’s experience under the shah and the Chinese Communist Party’s rule...
In November 1978, Deng Xiaoping presided over the Third Plenum of the Eleventh National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which launched China’s reform and opening up. Thirty five years later, the...
China watchers are to Third Plenums of Chinese Communist Party Congresses as film buffs are to the Oscars. One reason is the storied history of Third Plenum Decisions in the post-Mao era. Two of them marked...
The Communist Party of China has been grappling with corruption almost from its birth. Corruption was one of the major issues during the 1989 anti-government demonstrations. The leadership, in fact, responded...
State-building seems to be a never-ending task for the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Since its founding, the government has revamped its administrative system more than 10 times. Reform has sped up...
Stress on Internal Stability and National Security The political direction outlined by the Third Plenum in November 2013 for China’s international relations embodied a contradiction. It coupled a call for...
China’s political leaders are grasping for ways to clean up a notoriously polluted environment without sidetracking economic growth plans. For longtime observers of the East Asia scene, this evokes a sense of...
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) being currently negotiated by eleven economies from both sides of the Pacific is an exceptional trade agreement in its ambitious coverage of issues and the emphasis on new...
In early 2012, China's government, in cooperation with the World Bank, issued a major white paper on the economic and social challenges facing the country in the period through 2030. The report called for a...
On November 14, 2012, after a week of listening, discussing and “electing,” the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) finally came to an end. The next day, the new Central Committee had...
After the beginning of the post-Mao reform period in 1978-79, China experienced a marked worsening of corruption. The pre-reform period was not free from corruption, but a series of large-scale mass campaigns...
Over its history of 91 years, the Chinese Communist Party has held 18 national congresses. Seven came before 1949 when the CCP came to power and 11 were convened since then. Only 12 delegates attended the...
Negotiations about Iran’s nuclear program moved to a crucial stage in May and June of 2012. Unless Tehran accedes to international demands that it open to international inspections that verify that Iran’s...
The agreement between China and Vietnam on the process to guide the settlement of maritime issues signed in October 2011 may be a first step in easing tensions over the contentious issue of who controls the...
With the successful launch of the Shenzhou V on October 15, 2003, China became the third country in the world that could independently send people into space. The accomplishment enkindled a worldwide debate...
The turmoil in Libya that began in February 2011, together with the need to evacuate an estimated 30,000 Chinese from that country, led to the deployment of a PLA-N frigate to the eastern Mediterranean. The...
Introduction A major talking point in the U.S. media today is the alleged weakening of American influence in the world. The common perception is that power is shifting to East Asia, and particularly to China...
Introduction The late 1980s and early '90s saw unprecedented rapprochement between Taiwan and China. The two sides went from being at a technical state of war to having citizens from both sides visiting one...
Chinese born in the 1980's, known as 80 hou (baling hou in putong hua), are famous to Westerners as the first generation born during the enforcement of China's one-child policy. The 80 hou is a generation of...
As 2008 ended and 2009 dawned, China seemed poised to move into political and social normalcy. The previous year had been filled with unprecedented challenges, but 2009 was supposed to be fun and festive, a...
China is walking a tight-rope in handling the 2009 Iran nuclear crisis. On the one hand, Beijing's overriding strategic interest is to ensure a favorable "macro-climate" for its highly successful post-1978...
China is both a partner and a rival depending on the venue and issue. Both the U.S. and China have benefited from their economic interactions via trade and investment--probably China has benefited more simply...
Labor Contract Law of People’s Republic of China In 2003, research on drafting a Labor Contract Law began. In February 2005, it was announced that the Peoples Republic of China’s Labor Contract Law would be...
"Xinfang," or petitioning to authorities, has been one of the channels for the Chinese people to air grievances and seek justice since ancient times. But it has taken a new and disturbing shape in the current...
China’s new labor contract law, adopted by the National People’s Congress in June 2007 and put into force in January 2008, is a landmark in the effort to achieve better labor standards in the country. It can...
In 1988, China began allowing villagers to elect their leaders in an experiment that democracy advocates hoped would eventually lead to more pluralism throughout the political system. Today, the Communist...
Local-central government relations are a hot issue in China today. Many problems result from fuzzy division of responsibilities and the difficulty of designing incentives to achieve multiple goals. These...
China may think of itself as a turtle coming out of its shell into the international arena, lumbering along and minding its own business on the long road to modernization. Trouble is some may see it more as a...
Enough time has passed since the 17th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was held in March, 2007, to begin the assessment of a political event that the Chinese president referred to as being...
On Friday, November 9, 2007 five China specialists sat down at Atlanta’s Carter Center to discuss China’s 17th Party Congress. The roundtable discussion focused on China’s future, specifically with regard to...
Introduction After decades of debate, China enacted its long-awaited Anti-Monopoly Law on August 30, 2007, the first comprehensive antitrust law in history of the People’s Republic. The law was the product of...
October's meeting of the 6th plenum of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) concluded by passing "The Resolution on Some Issues in Building a Harmonious Socialist Society." This...
(This article first appeared in Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the International Relations Center (IRC, www.irc-online.org ) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, www.ips-dc.org )...
Taiwan’s democratization process and its implications on economic, political and social fronts are of great importance to understanding the key to Taiwan’s future and a resolution of the Cross-Straits crisis...
Taiwan and China Must Unite in Order for Both Nations to Prosper. (This article first appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on September 19, 2006; reprinted with permission from Fei_Ling Wang)...
Legislators from both sides of the Taiwan Straits normally stay in the backdrop in the cross-Straits relations. However, interestingly, in the past several months, two legislature-related events marked...
In the summer of 2004 and now almost two years after the 16 th Communist Party Congress of November, 2002 affirmed a succession of leadership in China with a new team drawn from the younger fourth generation...
The Presidential elections on 20 March 2004 were Taiwan’s third direct presidential election. The first in 1996 saw Lee Teng-hui lead the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) to continued rule of the...
The First Session of the 10th Chinese National People's Congress (NPC) was held in Beijing between March 5 to March 18, 2003. This meeting marked the completion of the largest power transfer in a decade in...
The recently concluded 16 th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could well become another major milestone in China’s political history. It elected a group of younger party leaders, endorsed...
On 15 July 2002 the U.S.-China Security Review Commission submitted to the U.S. Congress its first Report under legislation of October 2000. The commission was made up of twelve "commissioners," three each...
The week-long visit to the United States by Chinese Vice President Hu Jintao in late April-early May 2002 was a major step toward Hu's expected appointment as successor to Jiang Zemin as Secretary General of...
Quarterly essays on greater China by scholars who study the region closely, plus notice of our Atlanta events. Published continuously since 2002.