Evening Presentation by KERRY BROWN, Executive Director, China Studies Center & Professor of Chinese Politics, University of Sydney
Drinks reception at 6.30pm
Presentation at 7pm
Close at 8pm

Barely two years into what is expected to be a 10 year reign, President Xi Jinping seems to have secured all the visible sources of power in contemporary China. Descriptions of him range from “China's Godfather” to a new kind of emperor - a strongman unlike any since the era of Deng Xiaoping. But how does this sit with the remarkable conformity within the elite of the Party to his rise, and with the consensus driven political program that has been set out over the last two years - building legality, creating loyalty in party members and leaders, and managing the tough transition to middle income status by 2021 - many of the elements of which seem to cut against strongman politics? In what way is the President's power related to the pragmatic need of the Party itself to navigate one of the toughest transitions a country can ever make, on a scale no country has ever tried before?

Kerry Brown is Executive Director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and Professor of Chinese Politics. He led the European Union-funded Europe China Research and Advice Network from 2011 to 2014 and is an Associate on the Asia Program at Chatham House. He was previously with the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, and has served as first secretary, Beijing and Head of the Indonesia East Timor Section. Professor Brown is the author of 11 books on China, most recently “The New Emperors: Power and the Princelings in China”. He was educated at Cambridge and London universities and completed his PhD at the University of Leeds in Modern Chinese Language and Politics.