Xi Jinping’s Third Term: Implications for Canada and the World

China’s 20th Party Congress has just sealed a third term for Xi Jinping.  What will the next five years hold for Chinese domestic politics and foreign policy?  How should Canada and the United States be dealing with a China that is economically weaker but continuing its wolf warrior diplomacy abroad? Three experts of Chinese elite politics convened to discuss these pressing issues.  

 

 

Dr. Alfred L Chan is Professor Emeritus at Huron University College, Western University. He obtained his PhD at the University of Toronto, and is a long-term research affiliate with the Asian Institute at the Munk School. A political scientist and China expert, he has taught and researched about China for more than four decades. He is also the author of Xi Jinping: Political Career, Governance, and Leadership, 1953-2018 (Oxford University Press, 2022).

 

 

Diana Fu is Associate Professor of Political Science and the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto, and Director of the East Asia Seminar Series at the Asian Institute, Munk School. She is a non-resident fellow at Brookings and a public intellectuals fellow at the National Committee on US-China Relations. She is also a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists. Her research examines popular contention, state control, civil society, and authoritarian citizenship, with a focus on contemporary China. She is author of the award-winning book Mobilizing Without the Masses: Control and Contention in China (2018, Cambridge University Press and Columbia Weatherhead Series).

 

Cheng Li is the director of the John L. Thornton China Center and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. He is also a Distinguished Fellow of the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto. Li focuses on the transformation of political leaders, generational change, the Chinese middle class, and technological development in China. He is also the author or the editor of numerous books, including The Power of Ideas: The Rising Influence of Thinkers and Think Tanks in China (2017), and Middle Class Shanghai: Reshaping U.S.-China Engagement (2021). He is currently completing a book manuscript with the working title Xi Jinping’s Protégés: Rising Elite Groups in the Chinese Leadership.

 

Victor Shih is an Associate Professor of Political Economy and the Ho Miu Lam Chair in China and Pacific Relations at the School of Global Policy & Strategy, UC San Diego. Professor Shih is an expert on the politics of Chinese banking policies, fiscal policies, and exchange rate, as well as the elite politics of China. He is the author of Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation and Coalitions of the Weak: Elite Politics in China from Mao’s Stratagem to the Rise of Xi, published by the Cambridge University Press. He is also editor of Economic Shocks and Authoritarian Stability: Duration, Institutions and Financial Conditions, published by the University of Michigan Press.