A discussion with Cheng Li: Where is Chinese politics going?

Sinica Podcast

Kaiser Kuo

Culture, China News, Hangzhou, Chinese, International Relations, Chongqing, Beijing, Sichuan, Currentaffairs, China, Politics, Chengdu, Shanghai, Guangzhou, China Economy, News, China Politics, Business, Film, Shenzhen

4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2016

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode of Sinica is a wide-ranging conversation with Cheng Li (李成), one of the most prominent international scholars of elite Chinese politics and its relation to grassroots changes and generational shifts. He discusses the historical rise and fall of technocracy, corruption and the campaigns against it, power factions within the Communist Party and the new dynamics of the Xi Jinping era. Cheng Li has authored and edited numerous books and articles on subjects ranging from the politics behind China’s tobacco industry to the nature of collective leadership under Xi. He began his career as a doctor after three years of medical training in the waning years of the Cultural Revolution, then changed course in 1985 to study under scholars such as Robert Scalapino and Chalmers Johnson at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lynn White at Princeton University. He is the director of the John L. Thornton China Center and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, as well as a director of the National Committee on U.S.–China Relations. Recommendations: Jeremy: Hugh White’s review of The Pivot: The Future of American Statecraft in Asia by Kurt Campbell and Kurt Campbell’s reply Cheng: The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks by Joshua Cooper Ramo Kaiser: Scientism in Chinese Thought: 1900-1950 by D. W. Y. Kwok and Xi Jinping is No Mao Zedong by Keyu Jin See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Cynica podcast, a week for discussion of current affairs in China, produced in partnership with SubChina.
0:15.0	SubChina is a great way to stay on top of China news in a few minutes a day with a daily email newsletter, mobile phone app, and on
0:21.8	subChina.com.
0:23.1	It's a feast of business, political, and cultural news about a nation that is reshaping the world.
0:27.8	Today we're coming to you from the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
0:31.1	I'm Kaiser Guo, joined, of course, by a man who only ever communicates from his own secret
0:34.8	email server, Mr. Jeremy Goldcorn.
0:36.6	How are you, Jeremy? I'm doing very well. I just deleted all those emails that you were asking about.
0:43.0	Thank you. I'm glad you. It's actually really rare that the two of us have the opportunity to speak with
0:48.0	somebody who has made his name thinking and writing about the really big topics in Chinese politics.
0:53.6	That's the nature of the leadership itself.
0:56.4	It's composition, the factions that inevitably form and that inevitably contend within the
1:01.6	very highest echelons of Chinese political power.
1:04.6	But today we're very pleased to have somebody who is focused on the party leadership,
1:07.3	who has helped shape thinking about it within American China watching circles,
1:11.2	but who is himself from mainland China of Chinese origins. And so we're very pleased to be joined
1:16.7	by Chung Lee or Li Cheng, as you'd call him in China. He is director of the John L. Thornton
1:22.0	China Center at the Brookings Institution and has authored and edited many articles, papers, and
1:26.9	anthologies about elite politics
1:29.1	in China. Li Cheng or Chung Li, a very warm welcome to Sinica and thanks so much for taking the time
1:34.8	to talk about us.
1:35.0	I'm not to be here.
	...

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