Both China and the US needed a successful summit to take place for their own domestic reasons, and the San Francisco meeting achieved that, says EAI senior research fellow Lance Gore. However, the real question is whether the US is actually going for a win-win cooperation with China, or a lose-lose situation hoping that China will lose more?
Politics
Politics
To build the “community of shared destiny for mankind”, it is necessary to hold hands with liberalism, for it is still the international mainstream. However, finding points of agreement does not entail complete Westernisation, says East Asian Institute senior research fellow Lance Gore. What it means is to do better than the Western countries in actualising a system of human values that is identical or similar. Before China gets the world's approval in soft power, it's not ready for a showdown.
Politics
Among President Xi Jinping’s efforts to ensure the permanence of the Chinese Communist Party’s regime, institutional restructuring has been an area of great focus. After two major rounds of integrated party-state institutional reform, a party-centred administrative regime appears to be emerging to add to the diversity of the regime types of the world.
Politics
Whether China can prove naysayers wrong and keep up its good national fortunes depends on solving old problems associated with restarting the mechanisms of the Soviet Union model, and tackling new problems arising from successful development.
Politics
In this key period of China’s rise, it can either choose to adopt a hard line or to cool down. History tells us that the hard line is likely to prevail, but China should be aware that this may lead to one overestimating its own strength, challenging the existing hegemon too soon, and ultimately meeting failure. The crucial question is whether the hard line is backed by wisdom. What China is going to do with the strength it has gained remains a puzzle to most countries, and this is the root of the perception of the Chinese threat.
Politics
While the ruling system in China, carried over from ancient history, has the features of power combined with moral authority, recent events show that change is happening in Chinese politics. With netizens increasingly challenging the central authority openly, refuting official views and commentaries, will there be greater adjustments to Chinese state-society relations?
Politics
Today, China faces almost the same set of problems that the capitalist states are struggling with. In a post-capitalist world where an entire demographic degenerate into the “useless class”, capitalism will lose the market on which it depends. EAI senior research fellow Lance Gore imagines what this could mean for the Chinese Communist Party and other advocates of the socialist path.
Politics
Currently, deglobalisation and efforts to decouple from China benefit no one. Not only that, identity politics, with ideology at its core, fuels Western nations’ foolish ways of achieving a pyrrhic victory. To deal with this, the CCP’s utmost priority is to avoid being constrained by others’ definitions and to present a new image of socialism with Chinese characteristics. But is China ready to do this?
Politics
Capitalist and socialist societies are faced with the same universal conflict between power and self-interest on the one hand, and fairness and justice on the other. As socialism seeks to reclaim the “better angels of our nature”, as mentioned by former US President Abraham Lincoln, the contemporary mass society that results may be a worthy alternative to a democratic system on the point of collapse. But can China achieve this goal?