Where are Chinese politics heading after General Secretary Xi Jinping’s triumph at the 20th Party Congress in October 2022? Beijing is encouraging private businesses and foreign investors to help revive the domestic economy but is investigating several high-profile firms and tightening national security restrictions in commercial domains. Overseas, Beijing is pursuing constructive diplomacy with Europe and the Middle East but is deepening ties with Russia, continuing to intimidate Taiwan, and gearing up for what Xi describes as a protracted struggle in the face of U.S.-led “containment, encirclement, and suppression.” What explains these outwardly conflicting actions? How has the new leadership team influenced policymaking? Have priorities shifted since the Congress? Does Xi remain all-powerful? The answers to these questions will have profound consequences for policymakers, investors, and businesses across the world.

The Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis (CCA) is pleased to present a timely webinar in conjunction with the launch of Decoding Chinese Politics, a fully revised and updated version of CCA’s popular digital product formerly known as Decoding the 20th Party Congress. Decoding Chinese Politics unpacks the black box of Chinese politics through innovative and interactive graphics, informed analytical insights and updates, and extensive mapping of the formal institutions, key individuals, informal networks, and political connections that drive personnel decisions and policy directions in Beijing and beyond.

Please join us for an online discussion with CCA Senior Fellows Christopher K. Johnson, Jessica Chen Weiss, and Guoguang Wu, as well as CCA Co-Founder and Managing Director Jing Qian and CCA Fellow Neil Thomas, moderated by CCA Senior Fellow Susan Jakes. CCA Executive Director Bates Gill will provide opening remarks and officially launch the new version of Decoding Chinese Politics.

SPEAKERS

Christopher K. Johnson is a Senior Fellow on Chinese Politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis. He is also the President and CEO of China Strategies Group, a political risk consulting firm. As one of the top China experts in the field, his insights frequently are sought out by the world’s leading corporate, financial, and other business interests to help develop strategies for clients pursuing opportunities in China and regionally. Chris is based in New York but spends nearly half his time in China and the rest of Asia. Chris also serves as a senior fellow in the office of the president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). His views and analysis on China frequently are featured in the world’s leading business, policy, and media outlets. An accomplished Asian affairs specialist, Chris spent nearly two decades serving in the United States Government’s intelligence and foreign affairs communities. Chris worked as a senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he chronicled China’s dynamic political and economic transformation, the development of its robust military modernization program, and Beijing’s resurgence as a regional and global power.

Jessica Chen Weiss is a Senior Fellow on Chinese Politics, Foreign Policy, and National Security at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. She is also the Michael J. Zak Professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies in the Department of Government at Cornell University. From August 2021 to July 2022, she served as senior advisor to the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department on a Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars (IAF-TIRS). Weiss is the author of Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations (Oxford University Press, 2014). Her research appears in International Organization, China Quarterly, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, and Review of International Political Economy, as well as in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Quarterly. Weiss was previously an assistant professor at Yale University and founded FACES, the Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford University. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, she received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego.

Guoguang Wu is a Senior Fellow on Chinese Politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis. With a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University, now he is a Senior Research Scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, Stanford University. His research specializes in Chinese politics and comparative political economy, including, in China studies, elite politics, national political institutions and policy making mechanisms, transition from communism, the politics of development, China’s search for its position in the world, and, in comparative political economy, transition of capitalism with globalization, the emergence of capitalism in comparative perspectives, and the worldwide rise of the economic state. He is the author of four books, which include two major research monographs: Globalization against Democracy: The Political Economy of Capitalism after Its Global Triumph (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and China’s Party Congress: Power, Legitimacy, and Institutional Manipulation (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Jing Qian is Co-Founder and Managing Director of Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis and serves as Senior Advisor to the Hon. Dr. Kevin Rudd. At CCA, Jing leads and coordinates strategy, research, and policy work (including Track 1.5/2 dialogues) on China with Kevin Rudd. Prior to joining Asia Society, Jing served as a research fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, focusing on China’s elite politics and its impact on China’s domestic and foreign policy, particularly regarding U.S.-China relations. Jing leads the Decoding Chinese Politics project with Neil Thomas and Nathan Levine and the Cure4Cancer International Clinical Trials Collaboration project with Dr. Bob Li. He has also been a founding member of the New Economy Forum International Cancer Coalition. He is a Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, a member of the Advisory Board of the Research Program on Sustainability Policy and Management at Columbia University and is deeply interested in the liberal arts and sustainability education. Jing holds a Master of Laws degree with honors from Harvard Law School, a Ph.D. (ABD) in law and society, a Master of Laws degree from the University of Victoria in Canada, and a Bachelor of Laws from China.

Neil Thomas is a Fellow on Chinese Politics at Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis, where he studies elite politics, political economy, and foreign policy. Previously, he was a Senior Analyst for China and Northeast Asia at Eurasia Group, the world’s leading political risk advisory and consulting firm, a Senior Research Associate at MacroPolo, the in-house think tank of the Paulson Institute, and a lecturer at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. He has testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission and written for publications including The China Story, ChinaFile, Foreign Policy, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Lowy Interpreter, The Washington Post, and The Wire China. He is regularly quoted by major media outlets such as Bloomberg, CNN, Financial Times, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He holds a Master in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Western Australia, and certificates from Renmin University, Tsinghua University, and Zhejiang University.

Susan Jakes is a Senior Fellow at Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis and the Editor-in-Chief of ChinaFile, the online magazine whose editorial operations she has led since its launch in 2013. From 2000-2007, she reported on China for Time magazine, first as a reporter and editor based in Hong Kong and then as the magazine’s Beijing Correspondent. She covered a wide range of topics for Time’s international and domestic editions, including student nationalism, human rights, the environment, public health, education, architecture, kung fu, North Korea’s nuclear weapons, and the making of Bhutan’s first feature film. Jakes was awarded the Society of Publishers in Asia’s Young Journalist of the Year Award for her coverage of Chinese youth culture. In 2003, she broke the story of the Chinese government’s cover-up of the SARS epidemic in Beijing, for which she received a Henry Luce Public Service Award. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. Jakes speaks Mandarin and holds a B.A. and M.A. from Yale in history. Her doctoral studies at Yale, which she suspended to join ChinaFile, focused on China’s environmental history and the global history of ecology.

Dr. Bates Gill is Executive Director of Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis where he leads its team of research fellows, associated researchers, and administrative staff to deliver on the Center’s aim to be a global leader for policy-relevant, objective analysis of China’s politics, economy, and society and its impact on Asia and the world. Prior to joining the Asia Society, Bates held several research and academic leadership positions in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and United States. Most recently, he was professor and chair of the Department of Security Studies and Criminology at Macquarie University in Sydney and was also the inaugural Scholar-in-Residence with the Asia Society Australia. In other previous roles, he served as director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), as the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and as founding director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. Among his other professional affiliations, Bates is a Senior Associate Fellow with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London and serves on the Board of Governors of the Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and on the Board of Advisors of the National Bureau of Asian Research. The author or editor of nine books on China- and Asia-related topics, his most recent book, Daring to Struggle: China’s Global Ambitions under Xi Jinping was published in 2022 by Oxford University Press.