“We don’t want COVID tests. We want to eat,” was one of the sentences scrawled in red on a banner hung off a bridge in Beijing just days before the Party Congress. The act of protest is rare in China, a country that is notorious for its censorship, and this lonely act of defiance will probably not be repeated any time soon.
The People’s Daily, the Communist Party's house newspaper, has this week published two commentaries pledging support of COVID zero, ending hopes that China will relax its pandemic policy at the Party Congress.
Shen Yiqin and Shen Yueyue lack significant policy distinctions, in part because making it to the highest echelons of the Chinese Communist Party requires strategic political deference. But one of them will have the distinction of becoming the next — and likely only — woman in the Politburo.
China’s Party elite get ready to meet…not that it matters much to those living down the street.
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Who is Xi Jinping and what does he want? Stefan Aust and Adrian Geiges unravel the story behind the rise of China’s most powerful leader since Mao, Xi’s ultimate ambition, and what that means for China and the world.
China’s political structure is simultaneously simple and dense. As we approach the Party Congress on October 16 — a monumental meeting in which Xi Jinping is expected to begin a third term as leader — let’s lay out some basics about the Chinese government.
Damien Ma, managing director and co-founder of the MacroPolo think tank, appeared on the Sinica Podcast to discuss China’s political and economic outlook in 2022.
Much of the political maneuvering within the Communist Party of China occurs behind closed doors, off-limits even to state media and most Party cadres. But new technologies like prediction markets and crowd forecasting may improve our understanding of politics in the world’s second-largest economy. Political analyst Neil Thomas explains a new experiment.