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, Spring 2008

Full & free, you can download the issue 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.

    * Taiwan Elections: Foundation for the Future

Military Affairs — James Mulvenon

    * The “Dawn of Heaven”?—A New Player in Sino-U.S. Mil-Mil

Economic Policy — Barry Naughton

    * SASAC and Rising Corporate Power in China

Political Reform — Joseph Fewsmith

    * A New Upsurge in Political Reform?—Maybe

Party Affairs — Alice L. Miller

    * The Work System of the New Hu Leadership

The Provinces — Cheng Li

    * Hu’s Southern Expedition: Changing Leadership in Guangdong

PRC-Taiwan-United States
By Alan D. Romberg

"Taiwan Elections: Foundation for the Future"

The January Legislative Yuan elections in Taiwan demonstrated that, for better or worse, the Chen Shui-bian era is over. The rout of Chen’s Democratic Progressive Party by the opposition Kuomintang sent a clear message that the people of Taiwan were utterly dissatisfied with the government’s performance over the past eight years and that they rejected the politics of ideology. Whomever they choose in the March presidential election, it is obvious that the people of Taiwan—while rejecting unification with the Mainland today, anxious to participate actively in the international community, and resentful of steps taken by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to thwart virtually every effort by Taiwan to do so—are far more concerned about securing their future well-being and de facto independence than about pushing “principled” stands on the island’s de jure status. The nightmare scenarios that Beijing has conjured up about how Chen might declare an emergency and enforce “Taiwan independence” to perpetuate himself in office have little relevance to Taiwan’s reality in 2008.

The hard-fought presidential campaign, following the course of many Taiwan political contests, is being conducted in a manner that might offend the Marquis of Queensberry. But Taiwan voters seem largely unimpressed and retain their focus on the issues. The critical question facing all the relevant players after a new Taiwan leader takes office in May will be whether the two sides of the Strait can seize the opportunity presented by the change in Taipei—whoever is elected—to lay a new foundation for the future. If for any reason the parties miss the moment, they might well set in concrete a competitive and even confrontational cross-Strait structure that will deepen existing tensions, complicate U.S.-PRC relations, and continue to threaten the well-being of all concerned.

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