Chapter 4 focused on leaders’ attributes and dispositions to demonstrate the incompleteness of rationalist explanations for Sino-Russian gas interdependence variations. The chapter presented evidence of significant trends. In 2014, Russia and China concluded a thirty-year, $400 billion deal to ship Russian gas to China. The chapter emphasizes the importance of historically contextualizing such turning moments and deals of large geopolitical value. Second, the culmination of Sino-Russian gas cooperation in 2014 was undergirded by important personal relationships between Presidents Putin and Xi and between Russian and Chinese corporate partners. The chapter highlights the role of political entrepreneurs to shape worldviews. The international and domestic contexts in which states are embedded shape their societies’ identities in powerful ways. It suggests how China’s rapid adoption of net-zero targets fits a broader normative turn in global climate governance and Russian gas is bound to play a bridge role in Beijing’s low-carbon future. Finally, it considered the war in Ukraine and the further deepening of Sino-Russian gas trade.

The current Dissent phase is characterized by four drivers: nationalism, economic statecraft, negative power, and the absence of social purpose. With the rise of negative power and unprecedented diversity among meaningful actors who disagree over global rules and norms, the exercise of power in world politics has never been more important or more frustrating for so many kinds of actors. International entropy is on the rise. Domestic politics are increasingly salient in a changing world. Sudden and dramatic national growth induces massive social and political dislocations. A world in transition is a deeply uncertain one for both structural and motivational reasons. Emergent systems encounter unpredictable and often destabilizing power shifts among the system’s most powerful actors. They also experience changing state motivations associated with relative power positions in flux. Just as we expect people who go from rags to riches or vice versa to change their personal ambitions, rising and declining powers can be expected to expand or contract their national goals.

Systemic change by means of hegemonic war amounts to a transformation of the parameters of political legitimacy. The war decides who rules and the content of legitimacy at the global level. As such, only the most extensive major-power wars – ones that end in a new phase of substantial capability re-concentration and global military-political and economic leadership – can be designated hegemonic wars. The history of international order and, therefore, of the Long Cycle started with the Italian renaissance and the West European maritime explorations of the late fifteenth century. I identify four hegemonic wars: the Italian Wars (1496–1559), the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815), and World War II (1939–1945). To this list, I add one “failed” power transition, the end of the Cold War (1989–1991). A new Long Cycle began in 1991, with the United States serving as the lone World Power. This chapter explores each Long Cycle and all four phases therein. This discussion is comparatively brief for the first two long cycles, becoming more extensive for the three most recent cases, for they offer more “usable pasts” than the earlier cycles from which to draw relevant lessons for modern times.

Xi Jinping’s drive for power has destabilized elite political consensus and dismantled power-sharing norms that evolved since the 1980s. By removing de jure term limits on the office of the presidency – and thus far refusing to nominate his successor for this and his other leadership positions – Xi has solidified his own authority at the expense of the regular and peaceful transfer of power. In doing so, he has pushed China towards a potential destabilizing succession crisis. This chapter assesses China’s possible leadership succession scenarios in the coming years. Is Xi akin to Stalin after the purges of the 1930s – a leader who has so thoroughly eliminated rivals and cowed the system that he will remain in power until he can no longer perform the duties of office, leaving a succession battle in his wake? Or will the system produce a reaction against his all-encompassing power, either forcing him out of office prematurely or at least pushing him to set a timetable for his departure? Alternatively, what are Xi’s options for presiding over an orderly succession in the next 5 to 10 years? Solving the succession problem will be critical for the party’s future survival.

This chapter examines what is known about China’s remedied wrongful convictions including three well-publicized “back from the dead” cases. The predominant cause was false confessions obtained through police torture. As in the United States, remedied cases typically involved multiple rounds of litigation that establish proven or obvious innocence. China’s responses to well-publicized wrongful convictions from 2006 to 2013, including the introduction of an exclusionary rule for involuntary confessions, are assessed. These reforms may help legitimate or wrongful conviction wash an unjust system. Unremedied wrongful convictions may increase under a 2018 law to encourage guilty pleas. The precarious and marginal role of defence lawyers is examined. Compensation has increased for the wrongfully convicted and is available to the wrongfully detained. The extension of the authoritarian Chinese system would have regressive effects, given Hong Kong’s broader focus on miscarriages of justice and Taiwan’s more democratic approach and lesser reliance on guilty pleas.

The Chinese economy has entered its most challenging period. The China Model, while less effective in growing personal income, was able to grow GDP in the past. Now even its ability to grow GDP has deteriorated, both because of the structural problems created by the China Model and because of the self-inflicted damage of the CPC’s policy choices in domestic and foreign affairs. The economic slowdown accentuates social tensions that can be destabilizing politically, all the more so because the costs of running Chinese government are exorbitant, as measured by the payroll size of the government employees. Unlike the Mao era, when low GDP growth was matched with low outlays, or the Deng era, when high growth was matched with high outlays, Xi’s China faces a rising disequilibrium in which there is a mismatch between low growth and its costly expenditures. China needs to make a consequential judgment call – whether to break away decisively from the China Model or to continue on its current path. This is ultimately a political, not an economic call, and given the opacity and the centralized nature of the Chinese political system it is a prediction we cannot make with any degree of certainty.

This concluding chapter outlines the contours of the Party-state and develops a conceptual framework to explain its distinctive mode of governance. At its core is a dual normative system: a legal system grounded in popular sovereignty is overseen and constrained by a power-based normative system designed to uphold the absolute authority of the Party Center—an organizing principle essential to maintaining the structural integrity of the Party-state. The chapter argues that the governance logic of the Party-state is best captured by the theory of Normalized Political Prerogative (NPP). According to this theory, governance unfolds through a three-step process: operationalization, normalization, and regulation. Together, these constitute the formal institutional foundation of Party-state rule. The NPP framework elucidates the systemic proliferation of corruption as an inherent byproduct of this mode of governance, the role of the Party’s disciplinary apparatus as a self-correcting mechanism to mitigate its adverse effects, and the evolving dynamics between institutions and leadership that shape politicking and power struggles within the Politburo.

In this chapter, I analyze the methodology of the Party’s anticorruption program under Xi Jinping. This program has two goals. The first is to shock and awe. This goal has been achieved successfully through the anti-corruption campaign in 2012-2017, which is attributable to two main factors: leadership qualities of both Xi himself and the campaign’s chief director Wang Qishan and the institutional infrastructure provided by the Party’s disciplinary system that had been built by Xi’s predecessors. The campaign’s success also shows that the institutional performance of the Party is susceptible to leadership influence, under which the same tools, devices, and mechanisms can be employed and exploited to different effects. The second goal of Xi’s anti-corruption program is to provide long-term solutions to some of the perpetuating problems of the Party’s disciplinary system. This reform marks a significant transformation in the Party-state relationship: instead of undermining the state for its own preservation, the Party now strengthens its political governance by empowering the state and drawing legitimacy from it. Lastly, I also discuss two recent developments: the gradual decline of Wang Qishan’s influence and the retraction of power from the CCDI.

In this chapter, I survey major historical cases to examine different paradigms under which a disciplinary action against a Politburo member could be launched and how these paradigms were observed, abandoned, or changed over time. I find two prominent paradigms. One is a highly ideologized model developed during the Yan’an Rectification Campaign in 1941-1942. This model enables the winning party to conduct a purge of its adversaries with broad scope and impact, while reinforcing Party unity. It also has several disadvantages, including heightened social disruption, excessive purging, and the exposure of divisions in the Party leadership. The other is the de-ideologized corruption model. The paradigm shift was spurred by the political crisis of 1989, attributed at least in part to the exposure of an ideological split at the Party Center. Another reason for the shift was the introduction of the age-limit norm, which provided an alternative mechanism to facilitate peaceful exits of Politburo members in a regular and predictable manner. Under Xi Jinping's rule, the utility of the corruption model has been maximized. At the same time, the resulting power shakeup led to widespread political resentment, which, in turn, triggered the politicization of the corruption model.

This chapter argues that China’s recent economic trajectory mirrors the earlier experience of the East Asian “Little Dragons” (South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore), which experienced rapid growth followed by a slowdown due to increasing social complexity and exhaustion of growth drivers. China now faces a similar “crisis of success,” where its previous annual growth rate of nearly 10 percent is projected to decline to about 3 percent by 2030. However, unlike the Little Dragons, China under Xi Jinping is resisting the necessary shift toward market-oriented reforms and greater political flexibility. Instead, it is doubling down on centralized economic management and prioritizing party control over economic liberalization. This strategy risks suppressing innovation, increasing corruption, creating inefficiencies, and ultimately reducing China’s long-term economic dynamism and global influence.

Chapter 13 examines the evolution of regionally administered totalitarianism (RADT) in post-Mao China. The reforms were implemented to safeguard totalitarianism within the boundaries of its core principles. Economic reforms, particularly those implemented in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, inadvertently strengthened the private sector and civil society under RADT, which ultimately saved the regime. Yet this development also unintentionally created a new liberal type of institutional genes and steered China in the direction of regionally decentralized authoritarianism (RDA). The chapter explores the tug-of-war between the old institutional genes of the RADT/RDA system and the new institutional genes, with the authoritarian system exerting force to suppress the nascent traits, followed by a subsequent shift back to rigid totalitarian control. Finally, the chapter assesses the economic constraints imposed by the totalitarian structure, the changes in the party-state incentives, the precarious position of the private sector, and the overarching influence of communist totalitarianism on China’s economic progress.

Far from being “the end of history,” the post-Cold War era has seen dramatic new developments in East Asia. China rose with astonishing speed to superpower status, and reasserted Communist Party control after a period when it seemed in danger of becoming irrelevant to China’s new consumer society. China is now openly challenging the United States and western Europe for global leadership. China has also, surprisingly, witnessed some revival of old traditions such as Confucianism. South Korea has captivated the world with its attractive modern pop culture, as well as with the products of its industry such as smartphones and automobiles. South Korea has also ended authoritarian rule and become a democracy (while North Korea, on the other hand, still seems to be mired in the Cold War). Japan has remained economically stagnant after the bursting of its stock market and real estate bubbles in 1990, but Japan has also made itself a globalizing center of exciting new pop culture. Vietnam, meanwhile, consolidated its socialist reunification, and implemented some of the same kinds of market-based economic reforms that had been pioneered in China.

Chapter 7 concludes by summarizing what a leadership approach contributes to the analysis of China’s politics and economy. It introduces the concept of the “intra-organizational politics of reform”: the daily dynamics of cooperation and conflict between leaders and their subordinates inside public-sector organizations. While elite politics and bargaining among different parts and levels of the Chinese bureaucracy have received much attention, the internal world of public-sector organizations is also a crucial arena for reform politics. Such intra-organizational politics both constitute the everyday substance of reform and shape its ultimate course. Next, the chapter discusses the increasingly global context and effects of leadership in Chinese SOEs. It explains why leadership continues to matter despite the ongoing centralization of political authority under Xi Jinping. Finally, it outlines several directions for future research on leadership in China’s public sector during the Xi era.

This chapter examines major events in US–China–North Korea triangular relations before and during the Trump years and considers Trump’s legacy and the outlook for the Biden administration. It concludes that the US under Trump failed to decouple US–China relations from US–North Korea relations in its policymaking and considers US–China relations on its own terms.

This chapter first retraces the origins and evolution of the community of shared future for mankind (CSFM) terminology up to its incorporation in the preamble to the Chinese Constitution, while highlighting its centrality in XI Jinping’s ‘Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’. The chapter then examines the main tenets of the CSFM, which is portrayed as a symbol of China’s commitment to fostering a ‘new development paradigm and pursuing mutual benefit and win–win cooperation’ on a global scale, on the basis of XI Jinping’s writings. In doing this, it pays particular attention to how the CSFM builds on some of the fundamental principles of international law and how it is furthermore being fleshed out through various international legal initiatives. To better illustrate this analysis, the chapter conceptually analyzes the nine core elements of the CSFM with the visual aid of the metaphoric architectural form of a ‘paifang’. The chapter concludes by pointing to some factors weighing in favour of China’s further deepening its legalist approach to international relations as the most fitting companion to its grand strategy of ‘peaceful/development rise’.