The China Leadership Monitor seeks to inform the American foreign policy community about current trends in China's leadership politics and in its foreign and domestic policies.

The Monitor proceeds on the premise that as China's importance in international affairs grows, American policy-makers and the broader policy-interested public increasingly need analysis of politics among China's leadership that is accurate, comprehensive, systematic, current, and relevant to major areas of interest to the United States.

China Leadership Monitor analysis rests heavily on traditional China-watching methods of interpreting information in China's state-controlled media. Use of these methods was once universal among specialists in contemporary Chinese affairs.

Although the use of these methods has declined as opportunities to study China using other approaches have opened up in recent decades, their value in following politics among China's top leadership has not. Monitor analysis also brings to bear some of the new avenues of information and insight that have opened up since the normalization of U.S.-China relations and China's policy "opening to the outside world" in the late 1970s.

The China Leadership Monitor website is updated with new analyses quarterly.

View The China Leadership Monitor, Fall 2008

Full & free. You can also download the issues in PDF format.

The China Leadership Monitor is sponsored by the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University. Its general editor is Hoover Institution Research Fellow Alice Miller.

FALL 2008: 26
PRC-Taiwan-United States — Alan D. Romberg
    * Cross-Strait Relations: First the Easy Steps, Then the Difficult Ones

Several events have driven relations between China and Taiwan recently. The first meeting in 10 years between Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and the PRC’s Association for Relations Across the Strait (ARATS); the agreement to begin weekend cross-Strait passenger charter flights in early July and Mainland tourist travel to Taiwan two weeks later; and the atmospherics and leadership meetings accompanying Taiwan’s participation in the Olympics have all bolstered a sense of cross-Strait momentum.

Despite the opposition DPP’s relentless attacks on Ma Ying-jeou’s cross-Strait policies, Ma and other senior officials have laid out the comprehensive policy rationales for their moves with the Mainland, and thus far they seem to be retaining popular support.

At the same time, the administration has suffered a significant drop in overall support due to Taiwan’s poor economic performance. Economic recovery and cross-Strait relations will be inextricably intertwined, as the recovery will depend in important measure on greater involvement with the Mainland, while Ma’s ability to sustain the opening to the Mainland—and to forge a broad consensus for more difficult, political decisions on cross-Strait relations in the months ahead—will depend on his success in turning the economy around. ...

Military Affairs — James Mulvenon
    * The Party Holds The Ring: Civil-Military Relations and Olympic Security

Economic Policy — Barry Naughton
    * A New Team Faces Unprecedented Economic Challenges

Following the 11th National People’s Congress in March 2008, a new economics team was installed in the Chinese government. The distribution of responsibilities among this new team was hammered out very late in the day, months after the key vice-premiers were chosen. Whether because or in spite of its late inception, the new division of labor crumbled in the face of a global economic environment of unprecedented complexity that requires difficult and urgent policy choices.

At mid-year, the economic leadership responded with a highly scripted and formalized policy exercise that culminated in a significant loosening of macroeconomic policy. Through this process we may dimly perceive a big increase in the behind-the-scenes influence of Wang Qishan, the vice-premier with the strongest economic background.

Until 2008, the challenges facing Chinese economic policymakers were fairly straightforward. Experiencing China’s unprecedented economic boom, policymakers essentially had two tasks. First, they had to tap the economic brakes, slowing the economy’s growth surge in order to sustain a more moderate growth over the long term.

Second, they had to nudge quantitatively rapid growth into a qualitatively superior growth, providing more environmentally friendly development that contributed a better quality of life to a broader share of the population. These are not easy tasks, by any means, but policymakers could count on a shared framework for understanding problems, even as vigorous debate raged about the amplitude and rigor of specific policy measures. ...

Political Reform — Joseph Fewsmith
    * An “Anger-Venting” Mass Incident Catches the Attention of China’s Leadership

Party Affairs — Alice L. Miller
    * The CCP Central Committee’s Leading Small Groups

The Provinces — Cheng Li
    * From Selection to Election?—Experiments in the Recruitment of Chinese Political Elites

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