[WEBCAST] Politics and Theater: Making Sense of China’s National People’s Congress
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After a COVID-related delay, China has now held its annual “Two Sessions”—the convening of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. These important political gatherings of senior Communist Party cadres and officials report on the government’s work over the previous year and lay out policy and economic guidance and targets for the year ahead. This year’s sessions sought to showcase China’s success in bringing COVID-19 under control at home, but did so amid significant worry over the economic fallout from the pandemic and the global downturn. The robust agenda covered issues of public health, unemployment, a new civil code, and a range of domestic issues. Looming over the sessions as well was the escalating friction in U.S.-China relations and strains in cross strait relations with Taiwan. Most dramatic and troubling was Beijing’s promulgation of a new draft national security law for Hong Kong that has called into question Hong Kong’s autonomy and elicited international criticism and punitive measures by the United States.
What did we learn from the two sessions about how China plans to move forward from the COVID crisis? About Xi Jinping’s grip on power? What are the prospects for China’s economic recovery and job generation, and for its reform agenda? How will the Belt and Road Initiative fare as a global recession looms? What should we expect now from Beijing on Hong Kong and Taiwan? Where will the U.S.-China relationship go from here, particularly as President Trump noted at the end of May he would “begin the process” of ending the U.S. government’s special status with Hong Kong?
Join the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) and the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations for a discussion on these questions and more, featuring ASPI President Kevin Rudd, Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations Orville Schell, and Chair of 21st Century China Center at the University of California at San Diego Susan Shirk.
This program is part of the Asia Society Policy Institute's (ASPI) series entitled “Coronavirus, Asia, and the World.” All events will be live-streamed on YouTube and Facebook. For information about future events in this series and for ASPI’s additional coronavirus content see here.
SPEAKERS
The Hon. Kevin Rudd is inaugural President of the Asia Society Policy Institute. He served as 26th Prime Minister of Australia (2007 to 2010, 2013) and as Foreign Minister (2010 to 2012). He is Chair of the Board of the International Peace Institute in New York, and Chair of Sanitation and Water for All, a global partnership of government and non-government organizations dedicated to the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 6. He is a Distinguished Fellow at Chatham House and the Paulson Institute, and a Distinguished Statesman with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is a member of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization’s Group of Eminent Persons, and also is on IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva's new external advisory group.
Orville Schell is Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society. He is a former professor and Dean at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and author of fifteen books, ten of them about China, and a contributor to numerous edited volumes.
Susan Shirk is research professor and chair of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego. She previously served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (1997-2000), responsible for U.S. policy toward China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mongolia and she founded and continues to lead the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue, an unofficial forum for discussions of security issues. Director emeritus and advisory board chair of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, Shirk served as a member of the U.S. Defense Policy board, the board of governors for the East-West Center (Hawaii), the board of trustees of the U.S.-Japan Foundation and the board of directors of the National Committee on United States-China Relations.