Viewpoint
11.08.12
Who is Xi Jinping?
In an era of great change and economic uncertainty around the world, one might expect a leadership transition at the top of one of the world’s rising powers to shine a light on that country’s prospective next leaders so the public might form an...
Viewpoint
11.07.12
Peering Inside the ‘Black Box’
Just hours after the United States voted for its next president, China, too, is preparing for a leadership change—although much less is known about that process, which begins Thursday with the start of the 18th National Congress of the Communist...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.04.12Generational Change on Hold in China’s Leadership Transition
South China Morning Post
If this list turns out to be true, it signals that a more meaningful generational transition is most likely to take place at the 19th congress in 2017, when more youthful officials would be elected into the Standing Committee.It also sends a clear...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.23.12Candidates Debate Rise of China; China Debates Reform
Deal Book
China's presumptive next president, Xi Jinping, may wish his economy were the juggernaut many Americans think it is. He will inherit an economy in desperate need of reform and rebalancing. As discussed in an earlier China...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.12Many Urge China’s Next Leader to Liberalize
New York Times
After it was leaked that Xi Jinping, the man anointed to be the next Communist Party chief of China, had met in private with a well-known supporter of political liberalization, the capital’s elite began to buzz about the import of...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.19.12The Creation Myth of Xi Jinping
Foreign Policy
If every modern president needs a creation myth, then Xi Jinping's begins on the dusty loess plateau of northwest China. It was here that Xi spent seven formative years, working among the peasants and living in a lice-infested cave dug...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.10.12China Gets Back to Work
New York Times
After China's Golden Week holiday, a round-up of important recent stories on economy and politics.
Sinica Podcast
09.21.12
The Island Imbroglio
from Sinica Podcast
As Xi Jinping has stepped back into the public eye this week, the reappearance of China’s heir apparent has been upstaged by large demonstrations across the country as tensions mount over territorial claims to the Diaoyu (or Senkaku) Islands. As...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.17.12Panetta to Meet Xi Jinping on Extended Trip to China
Reuters
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's trip to China has been extended by a day and will include meetings with Vice President Xi Jinping, U.S. defense officials said on Monday.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.16.12A Chinese Leader Returns Amid Tumult
New York Times
The reappearance on Saturday of Xi Jinping, a top Chinese leader who had vanished from public view, removes one question mark facing the Communist Party, but a wave of protests against Japan is a sign that internal power struggles are far...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.14.12Off-Script Scramble for Power in a Chinese Leader’s Absence
New York Times
With still no sign of China’s designated new leader, Xi Jinping, who has not been seen in public since Sept. 1, many insiders and well-connected analysts say the Chinese political ship is adrift, with factions jockeying to...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.11.12Where’s Xi? Using New Code Words, China’s Netizens Speculate by the Thousands
It’s a cat and mouse game for netizens who are interested in Mr. Xi’s coming and goings. Certain code words for Mr. Xi, such as “Crown Prince (太子)” or XJP, are blocked search terms on Sina Weibo. However, netizens have invented others, such as heir...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.10.12China’s Presumptive New Leader Is Mysteriously Absent
New York Times
Speculation intensified on Monday over the whereabouts of China’s presumptive new president, Xi Jinping, who has been missing from public view in recent days as the country prepares for a crucial leadership change.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.10.12Rumors Swirl as China's Xi Vanishes
Financial Times
Over the last week Mr Xi has cancelled at least four scheduled meetings with visiting dignitaries, including a Russian delegation, the prime minister of Singapore and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last Wednesday, and the prime minister of...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.03.12China Faces New Scandal Over Crash of a Ferrari
New York Times
China’s carefully scripted leadership transition appears to have suffered another glitch: a fatal car crash involving a Ferrari, a privileged son and two women.
ChinaFile Recommends
08.31.12Does China's Next Leader Have a Soft Spot for Tibet
Reuters
Few people know what Xi, whose ascent to the leadership is likely to be approved at a Communist Party congress later this year, thinks of Tibet or the Dalai Lama. But his late father, Xi Zhongxun, a liberal-minded former vice premier, had a...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.22.12Security Suggests Party Congress Is Nearing
Hindu
Even as Chinese officials have maintained a steady silence on when the Party Congress — the most important meeting in a decade — will be convened, the government has put in place security measures and issued corruption warnings — the first...
Sinica Podcast
08.10.12
The Chairman
from Sinica Podcast
Ten years after his elevation to General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, Hu Jintao remains almost as much of an enigma now as he was on first taking power. What do we know about the man beyond his reputation as a somewhat robotic...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.07.12Party Bristles at Military’s Push for More Sway in China
New York Times
With China’s once-a-decade leadership transition only months away, the party is pushing back with a highly visible campaign against disloyalty and corruption, even requiring all officers to report financial assets.
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07.29.12China Keeps Up Block on Bloomberg Site
Financial Times
Bloomberg’s news website remains blocked by China’s state censors a full month after it detailed the riches amassed by the family of Xi Jinping, the man who is expected to be the country’s next president. Although periodic outages...
Media
06.30.12
Bloomberg Unearths Xi Jinping’s Family Fortune
A recent Bloomberg report detailing the millionaire assets of the extended family of Xi Jinping, China’s presumptive next leader, has drawn praise from the community of China media observers for its thorough investigative work and fact-...
Reports
04.30.12
Leadership Transition and the “Top-Level Design” of Economic Reform
He Jianan
China Leadership Monitor
As China’s 18th Party Congress looms, it is clear that we are now in the thick of transition. The impending transition creates uncertainty about China’s future, but it also opens up new possibilities. Already, the discussion of economic policies in...
Reports
04.30.12
Prospects for Solidarity in the Xi Jinping Leadership
He Jianan
China Leadership Monitor
It may be true, as is often observed, that if all the world’s economists were laid end to end, they would never reach a conclusion. It is all the more notable, therefore, that an increasing number of observers of China’s economy are skeptical that...
Sinica Podcast
02.24.12
Journey to the West
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are pleased to host Ed Wong from The New York Times, along with Adrienne Mong, whom you’ve seen on NBC News. First up is Xi Jinping’s recent visit to the United States, and a closer look at the...
Reports
01.06.12
Liu Yuan: Archetype of a “Xi Jinping Man” in the PLA?
China Leadership Monitor
Liu Yuan and Xi Jinping clearly share a great deal in common. Both were born to senior CCP cadres, and are members of the elite “princelings” cohort. Yet both men’s fathers were subjected to purge and mistreatment during the late Mao era, and both...
The NYRB China Archive
08.22.11China’s ‘Liberation’ of Tibet: Rules of the Game
from New York Review of Books
Much of the talk about Vice President Joe Biden’s four-day visit to China last week centered on the man who hosted him: Xi Jinping, expected to become the country’s next president in 2012. Biden’s office has said that the principal purposes of his...
Sinica Podcast
12.10.10
The Wikileaks Revelations, Part III
from Sinica Podcast
As Interpol deepens its investigation into Mr. Assange’s use of birth control and financial service companies feel the wrath of script-kiddies worldwide, our own crew of Internet vigilantes sifts through the remains of the Wikileaks data-dump in...
The NYRB China Archive
10.20.10Rumblings of Reform in Beijing?
from New York Review of Books
Over the past six weeks, China’s thin class of the politically aware has been gripped by a faint hope that maybe, against all odds, some sort of political opening might be in the cards this year. Monday’s conclusion of a key Communist Party meeting...